You're listening to the REtipster podcast. Seth Williams and Ajay Sharma here, and this is episode 174.

And today, we're talking with a good friend of mine, Chris Johnsen. So I met Chris earlier this year when he decided to fly out to REWBCON, where we hung out together for a few days in Phoenix, along with our friend Peter Nukasani, who was also there.

And funny enough, Chris, Peter and I have actually become pretty good friends. We got together again a few weeks ago in New Orleans to make even more memories together. And I've wanted to get Chris on the podcast pretty much since I met him because I recognized immediately that he has a great combination of a successful track record as a land investor, along with a very interesting story about how he discovered the business and how his business has evolved since he got started.

And this guy is killing it as a land investor right now. He's an action-taker and an all-around great guy to know. And on this episode, we're going to learn everything we can from Chris's experience in the land business so far.

So Chris, welcome to the show. How are you doing?

Chris: Wow, what an intro. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me, Seth. Nice to finally meet you, Ajay.

Ajay: Yeah. Likewise, Chris. This would be fun.

Chris, why don't we get started here with you? Just letting us know your origin story. So how did you first discover the land business? What were you doing before you discovered land? Just tell us about that first few months or first year or so in the business.

Chris: Yeah, so I was an electrician for 15 or so years. Right out of high school I started doing electrical work and maybe for twelve years, I worked for large electrical companies. And then in 2018, I quit that and started my own electrical business. And I did that for about three years. I kind of fell backwards into land investing.

I had a lot next to my house that wasn't for sale or anything, but I wanted to buy it just to make sure nobody moved in next to me. So I kind of just figured out how to use the assessor's website, find the owner's name. I ended up contacting her and buying the lot from her directly and I didn't really realize you could do that. And a couple of months later, somebody had offered me money for the lot, which was a good bit more than what I paid for it. And I guess a light bulb kind of went off.

So I still didn't know that land investing or land investors were a thing. I ended up going to the county next to mine and using their assessor's website and manually clicking on parcels and writing down their phone numbers or screenshotting them. And then I would call and text people for a few weeks and I finally picked up six acres that I was able to buy for 15,000, which is all I had to play with. I had $15,000 in like a spare savings account and pulled it out. My wife was on board, surprisingly.

Anyway, I bought that six acres for $15,000 and a few weeks later I sold it for like $38,000, made a little over $20,000 on it. And I realized that's a lot of electrical work that you would have to do to make $20,000. My last year as an electrician working for myself, it was me and one helper. I probably did around $100,000 that year and maybe took home $65-ish thousand. So to make $20,000 in one flip, I realized, like, there's got to be something to this.

And that's when I did a deep dive online and found REtipster and binged the podcast. I've never taken a course or anything, but I just listened to all the podcast episodes and read the blogs and just took a bunch of action. So I started cutting my electrical days short. I would work from like 6 a.m. to lunchtime doing electrical work and I would come home, play with the kids for a little while, and then go back out to my office and for like three or four hours a day just call and text people from my personal cell phone.

And after the third deal, I basically told my wife that I was just going to go full time with it. And after the third deal, I had made enough money to where it made sense and she was on board with it. I think I did 40 flips in 2022. Probably averaged like a $10,000 profit on each one. Obviously, I didn't do that with my personal cell phone. I started using text messaging software and I only do text messaging, so I was using Smarter Contact for my text messaging software at first and now I use Launch Control. But that's what I did to do my first 40 or so flips last year.

Seth: Yeah, that's really fascinating, man. I'm sure this happens, but I don't know of any other person I can think of who discovered this land business on their own, just totally independent of anything they read online. It's not like they saw some ad or something. It's like, hey, I can just do this. And they put it together and then they kind of go backwards compared to most people, where then they kind of figure out this education stuff that's really cool.

I wonder if there's a lot of other people who do it that way. Or even if they do discover they can do this. Like then making the next leap of figuring out, oh, and I can make an actual business out of it by doing this again and again. So I thought that was pretty unique about you.

Ajay: Talk about a leap of faith too, right? Like, Chris, you trusted yourself to do this over and over and over again. I know everybody's family is a little bit different. I'm kind of curious, what was that conversation like with your wife when you said, hey, I'm going to go do this full time? Because I know that's a conversation a lot of people in this community have where it's like, hey, you know, this semi-consistent thing. I guess you were already running your own business, so maybe we were used to hunting for income at some level.

But what was that conversation like?

Chris: Yeah, I think she just trusts me from the other business. When I told her that I was quitting my well-paying electrical job to start my own business, she had the same worries, but I made it work. And she realized that it was a good idea. And I think she thought the same thing about this one. It's not like I just shut my electrical business down immediately and jumped full-time into land. And then when you get those checks for $10,000 to $20,000, it just changes your mind about things. And I'm glad I did.

Seth: Yeah. It is kind of crazy how you start thinking differently about money once you see what kind of money can be made with this, because know what you mean. Like a lot of people, when they look at this idea of being an electrician for themselves and grossing 100K, taking home 60 or 65 or whatever it was you said, that's not a bad life. You work for yourself, you have some kind of freedom and autonomy. But it's probably really hard to imagine going back to that after you have discovered what you've found so far.

Chris: I always say that I can do it just because I know that I have that to fall back on. But yeah, it would suck. It would definitely suck.

Also, I brought home $65,000, but I probably shouldn't say this on the Internet, but there's a lot of cash that goes around in the electrical business. Making a good amount of stock money too, which doesn't happen as much in land.

Seth: Yeah, totally. So in that first year, actually, I don't know if you said, when exactly did this all happen? Like, what year was it when you did this first deal on your own and then you kind of decided to try to when you discovered REtipster and tried to make it into actual business? When did that happen?

Chris: Yes, so I started texting off my personal phone probably in February of 2022. And then I think I bought the first piece in March of 2022 and then had it sold by April. And then that's kind of when I got those next two or so deals, probably by May-ish. And then after that, I didn't do any more electrical work.

Seth: So this is like not that long ago we were recording this November 2023. And I know the first time I met you in May of this year, 2023, it seemed like you were doing really well back then.

Chris: Yeah, I mean, I'm definitely blessed. I don't know, my business looks a lot different than a lot of people's, I think a lot of land investors. I don't work with the profit margins that a lot of people do. That first one, that was a typical deal. I mean, that wasn't a typical deal for me, where you make more than 100% return. Usually I do… Well, now I'll do bigger deals.

So just as an example, I don't have any kind of deal cap because I double-close so much. I guess that's kind of where you're getting at. The 40 flips in 2022 would not have been possible if I didn't discover double closing, because at first I was just using all my own money, which was only $15,000, but it ended up being $30,000. I'm sorry, $38,000, which I put into like four more deals, which ended up making me around $50,000.

And I just kept working my way up. But then I just got capped out after about 15 to 20 deals, and my title agent told me about double closing, and I started doing that for probably 15 of the last 20 deals in 2022. So basically, it's just wholesaling. But they were all true double closes. Yeah.

Seth: And when you're doing these double closings, is this using single-source funding where the end buyer’s funds are paying for the A to B transaction and the B to C transaction so you don't have to have any short-term cash involved? Or are you getting some kind of transactional funding to pay for those in the meantime?

Chris: Yeah, it's a true A to C or whatever it is. I then use the end buyer's funds to pay the seller, and then they write me a check for the difference.

Seth: Yeah, that's awesome.

Chris: Which sounds awesome, but it's also way more labor-intensive on the selling side versus a lot of people's strategy in this business.

Seth: How do you mean? Like what's more labor-intensive about it?

Chris: So I'll get a property under contract, and I will immediately list it for sale on Facebook. And then at this point, I know a lot of Realtors, but at first I would get it under contract, I'd get it listed on Facebook. I would call local Realtors, surveyors, just anybody I could think of that might know a land buyer or buy land themselves in that county.

Last year was a lot easier because stuff was selling a lot faster. And I might buy for 60% and sell for 85%. So they sell pretty quickly, too. I sell most of my stuff on Facebook, but anytime I get a larger property, I'll still list it on Facebook, but I'll start making some phone calls and really trying to drum up leads for buyers in that county. And I'll usually put the contracts out 45 to 60 days to give me a little time.

Chris: For how long, Chris?

Chris: 45 to 60 days on the contract. I can usually sell them pretty fast. I've bought a few that didn't sell as fast as I thought they would, but I've still ended up selling them at some point, even if I had to purchase it. But yeah, most of the stuff I sell within 45 days.

Seth: Yeah, that's pretty good, man. That's really good. Did you end up like, I guess whatever markets you're working in? Did you do a ton of research to find, okay, I'm only going to work in these places because they're growing like crazy? And is that why they're selling so fast? Or is that attributable to your effort that you're putting into putting them on Facebook and pounding the pavement, so to speak, and searching high and low for these buyers?

I'm just trying to figure out because that's a huge advantage when you can consistently sell properties that quickly, you're not waiting around for six or nine or twelve months for everything to sell and you can actually do this double closing stuff. So, I mean, have you tried to replicate this anywhere else? Or have you just been doing this in one market that you kind of got lucky on or that you searched really hard to find where properties sell really quick?

Chris: No, I literally went through every single county in Mississippi last year and probably hit every single landowner in Mississippi that's over five acres. It doesn't matter what county it is in, I'll buy it if I can get it cheap enough to where I think I can sell it pretty quickly.

And even if I can't, I've been doing some options lately. So I'll put an option deposit of maybe $1,000 down, but if I can make 30 grand on the flip, it's worth sacrificing the option fee if for some reason it doesn't work out. But I'm usually pretty sure it's going to work out before I buy it or before I put it under contract.

Seth: How often are you just buying things outright and just taking title and waiting for them to sell?

Chris: Probably 25% of the time. That's only when I buy something that I guess I'm trying to squeeze a little more profit out than what I could get. If I wholesaled it, I try not to ever do it.

Seth: Yeah, until recently. And maybe this is still what you're doing, but I know you were just using texting to find deals, which was another somewhat unique thing. Most people I know, they at least start with direct mail and then maybe migrate to texting or something like that. But from what I know, I think you've always been doing texting, and direct mail has never been a thing that you've done.

Is that accurate? And if so, how have things been working for you now that the texting game has changed so much?

Chris: Yeah, it's definitely changing. I still only do text, but I just signed up with Landcaller. I do feel like there's going to be some opportunity in rural Mississippi because a lot of people don't text. So I'm hoping that's like a new revenue stream for me.

But yeah, I do all texting right now. I use Launch Control. The new regulations definitely affect me because before, when I was using Smarter Contact, there was none of that “text YES to opt in” or “text STOP to opt out” messaging. So I could basically just sound like I'm just a guy. I'm just a guy trying to buy your land. And they would call me.

And I'm pretty good at just kind of feeling out the person and I guess mimicking the way they talk or just knowing what these people want to hear. I feel like I'm pretty good on the phone way. And it was a lot easier when somebody thought they were just selling to just a person, which I am, just a person. It's just me and I have one part-time employee. But when you text stuff like “text STOP to opt out” or “text YES to opt in,” it just looks so much more corporate.

Ajay: Yeah. So we were 100% text message up until October this year. It’s funny, Seth. We mentioned direct mail. We got back into direct mail right before kind of the big shifts with Launch Control and the mandatory opt-out messaging and AT&T punching everybody in the face. Maybe I shouldn't say that here, but we were 100% text message, five on staff, two of which were 100% dedicated to texting all day. And so it was a really unique time.

I'm kind of curious to see what you're seeing, Chris, on the text front, because we just decided I'm extreme. I think anybody that's been around me knows that, but we decided to just pull the plug on it. I said I don't like my business being subject to regulation in this manner. And we just stopped text messaging altogether. I redeployed my texting team to be scouting for some on market subdivide opportunities and we dropped 25,000 mailers. Like the moment we got a whiff of things changing and the stuff that’s been coming in, the lead quality is drastically different. Like, generally folks that come in through mail are much higher quality versus a text message lead, as I'm sure you're well aware of, Chris.

But I'm curious what you've just been seeing the past few weeks as you're gearing up with you only have your texting leads to play with. What's that stuff looking like for you?

Chris: It's hard for me to say about the last few weeks. The same as last year during the holidays, things kind of slowed down for me last year and it's kind of slow for me this year. And I don't know if that's a holiday thing because I haven't been around long enough to know that or if that's just like a mindset thing that I need to deal with.

But I'm still getting decent responses from text messaging, but, yeah, the quality has gone down. The good thing is now the people who really want to sell are going to text you back, because the people who just thought I was just Joe Blow would text me back out of politeness, and these people aren't going to text me back unless they're really interested in selling.

Now, most people want 110% of market value, but it's still a good lead source, I think. But I can't compare that to anything. I've never done direct mail and I'll report back in six months about our cold calling and let you know how it goes. Do you do any cold calling?

Ajay: Was that a question if I do any cold calling, Chris?

Chris: Yes.

Ajay: Man, this is a loaded topic. I've tested out, I want to say, five different cold calling vendors in my time as an investor. So here's a little bit about me, just I'm going to share myself a bit. I don't know if you're familiar with the enneagram, Chris. It's a personality assessment. I am a type 7, which is an Enthusiast. I have reverence and love for life, but I'm a wing 8. I'm a Challenger, which is like a control freak.

And the thing I struggle with, with cold calling in my business is that I lack control. And here's what I mean by that, is you kind of have two different routes you can go down when it comes to cold calling, right?

Number one is in house. Number two is outsource, right? And so if I am in-house cold calling, meaning I have staff that's cold calling that are my employees or contractors or whatever, well, now I have to QC. I need to quality control these staff members to make sure they're doing the right things. They're asking the right questions. They're driving the right leads forward, because you want to control some level of qualification. And if you don't, on the flip side, I lose control over what those conversations look like, how quality they are, who my caller is.

I really like controlling certain variables. We find that women tend to convert better than men, and so I'd like more women on the phone sometimes, and it's stuff like that. So I like a lot of control in my business and I feel like I don't get control over time of day, certain verbiages, the way things are pushed, the level of quality of the leads, versus just, hey, here's somebody with a pulse that said they're interested in selling their property, right?

And now it's another form of high-touch type marketing, similar to texting, which we know how to convert really well. But long story long here, Chris. We currently are not doing any cold calling, and that's by choice. I know it works. We've made six figures cold calling. I'm an advocate for it, for people that want to run that type of business. I've tested a lot of the different channels and decided that it's not a channel I want to be actively working right now. Does that answer your question? Sorry, that was a long one.

Chris: Those are all the things that I'm kind of worried about, too. I think it's going to be very labor-intensive, which I'm worried about, and we'll see how it goes. I really wanted to filter down my list a little better, but Landcaller, they have you give them a list of 10,000 properties, which is a lot of properties, especially if you're doing any kind of filtering for what you need. I think that's like 20 or 30 counties’ worth of data for them.

So they're going to be all over the place too. No county is the same, and when you have 30 counties, that's all across the state. So I know it's going to be very labor-intensive, but if it brings me a couple of deals, we'll see how it goes.

Seth: I've actually had this conversation with a few people over the past week about cold calling, specifically about the pain point. Seems to be like finding that person who's really good on the phone basically like a great salesperson. And that's hard. This is a common thing in any business where sales is important, which is literally every business, is finding that rock star salesperson who isn't the company owner, yet they know how to convey the value and have these conversations.

And with verbal communication like that, there's so many ways for it to either get screwed up or just not be done as well as it could be. And I'm sure you guys have heard about Air.ai at this point, right? And listeners out there, if you haven't heard of it, just go to Air.ai and you'll kind of get the idea. But it's this artificial intelligence, cold calling, sales calling software that does a surprisingly effective job. So it seems, according to their demos at talking to cold leads and getting them to convert in some cases.

But even if it doesn't do a great job, it's AI. It's not a human, so it can go like 24/7. It doesn't require all of the maintenance that a human being requires, but the downside is that it's very expensive. I don't know exactly what the price is. I've heard like 100 grand or something to get it set up. So it kind of prices out a lot of smaller land investors like us who just don't have that money or aren't willing to spend that money.

But the interesting thing is I don't know if either you guys are subscribers to ChatGPT Plus, but ChatGPT, not long ago it unveiled this new thing where you can now, like if you have the app on your phone, you can just verbally talk to it. And when it replies to you, it sounds stunningly real, like a human. Like there's pauses for breaths and it has all the normal… Like, if I didn't know any better, I would probably think I was talking to a human.

So I have a feeling this kind of technology is going to get way cheaper a lot faster than a lot of us might think. So just because Air.ai might be super expensive today, I'm willing to that in the next year there's going to be probably a lot of other companies coming up with this technology for a lot cheaper.

And I was just talking this morning to Tim Krause on Facebook Messenger and he was telling me he's been using ChatGPT to do like cold calling training where you get on ChatGPT and say, “Hey, I'm a land investor, I'm sending out direct mail to people who want to sell their property,” blah, blah, blah. Just explain what you're trying to do and ask it to do role-playing with you as one of these motivated sellers. And you can pretend you're talking to somebody on the phone about selling their property.

And I haven't tried this yet, I literally just heard about it an hour before we got on this call. But point is, I think this kind of technology is going to come pretty quickly in terms of price going way down and just becoming more widely available. And if it does, that's a huge deal because that's a big potential pain point of finding a great human being to do the job that now you don't need a human being for anymore. So I'm excited to see where that goes.

Ajay: Yeah, so that's super interesting. I actually had my poor executive assistant, her name is Kaylee, she's a rock star, but I had her spend like an entire week looking up different conversational AI platforms to see if we could implement this. And there were some more affordable options—that don’t exist yet today—but there were some affordable options on the horizon is kind of the sentiment that I got. Like everybody we talked to, there's a lot of appointment-setting AI out there. So, hey, if you just want us to message and email and text and DM people, they're setting allegedly an alarming amount of appointments, which could be good if you wanted to go like cold traffic to a call with a lead manager, for example.

But from what I understand, one of the big vendors we chatted with was WooSender. I'm not advocating, I've not worked with these guys yet, so I don't have testament, but we took a couple of calls with their team and they said they were going to have a semi-affordable conversational phone option. I think it was December and I feel like anytime I've talked to a tech company, they're always a few months behind whatever the goal is. So probably sometime in Q1, it'll actually come out.

But allallegedly, one of their biggest clients is the Army. They use them for recruiting. And so I'm like, all right. I mean, if that statement is true, I trust this company a bit more, I think, and so super interesting, but I think you're totally right, Seth, and there's an element, like, in any business, where more vendors and more competition makes things more affordable to end users. So I think you're totally right that over a long enough time horizon, we're definitely going to see prices come down to where the average Joes can afford some good old conversational AI in our back pockets.

Seth: Yeah. Or even if you eliminate this whole need for an audible voice to be talking, which is huge if you can, but what if we just limit this to chatbots and that's it? I saw Rocket Print’s QR code you can put on postcards where it generates a text message and sends it to your number so that they opt in and then you can talk to them freely because they just opted in and it's not a cold text anymore.

But what if you get one of these sales chatbots on that platform where now we're back to just texting and it's fine because they opted in and you don't even need to worry about the human element. I mean, they've got chatbots out there right now for that that are doing a fairly effective job. There are a lot of options out there that are available today and will get way better as time goes on.

Ajay: Yeah, absolutely. That's fascinating.

Chris: That sounds like a really good idea. Who knows where AI is going to go next in three to five years? It's going to look so different than what it does now.

Ajay: Yeah. Have you guys seen the Terminator? I think that's probably a pretty good picture of what.

Seth: Yeah, I feel like every other AI conversation I have, somebody mentions Skynet and how it's going to become sentient and take over and nuke the whole world.

Ajay: Yeah, it may happen, it may not. I think we've had this conversation before, actually, Seth. I'm like, man, I just really need to not think about things outside of my control. If it happens, man, what am I going to do against a nuclear AI? I'm just one dude. I'm going to keep flipping land until I can't, you know what I mean?

Seth: Sounds like a healthy way to think through it, which is not the way that I do it.

But back to Chris. So, Chris, when you consider the things you're good at, what do you think is your unfair advantage in this business? I know I've heard you say, you're pretty good on the phone, which I actually find really interesting because you don't sound like a slick salesperson to me. You sound like just a very normal guy who's just kind of down to earth and you are who you are and maybe that's why you're so good on the phone.

But would you say that's one of your unfair advantages. Or is there anything else that you think you're just naturally good at that has lent itself well to your success at this point?

Chris: Yeah, I think that's one of the things that benefits me, just being on the phone and sounding like a regular guy. You could tell a salesman as soon as they pick up the phone and just by their demeanor. I can tell a salesman. Maybe not everybody can, but I just feel like it helps to say, “Yes, ma'am,” “No, sir,” just be a regular person.

Besides that superpower, it's probably like having a good family around me. There's no way I could do what I do without having a great wife. And my mom and dad are close. My in-laws are close. Like, we have a lot of help with the kids, and I have great kids, so I feel like I have a leg up on some people by just that fact.

But as far as superpowers go, I don't have any superpowers. I'm like a regular guy that's literally in construction for 15 years. So I don't think you actually need superpowers in this kind of stuff.

Seth: Well, I don't know, man. It requires a person to take a lot of action and be intentional about the way they're living their life to get where you are. So I'm sure you do have something that allows you to get here. Maybe it might not seem that special to you, but when you think of…

Actually, that's a good question. How much time do you spend working in this business? Like, how many hours a week does it take for you to run this business where you're making multiple six figures a year?

Chris: Probably an average of 30 hours a week. I mean, that's actually in my office, like, working. I send text messages and emails from my phone while I'm out, but, like, actual office time, maybe 30 hours a week.

Seth: Okay, and then you have a team, I'm assuming, or how many people are on your team and what do they do?

Chris: I have one part-time employee, and she does a lot of administration stuff. She does kind of like my bookkeeping. We have a thing called The Deal Sheet, which is just an Excel file that keeps track of everything. She handles that, she handles coordination between sellers or buyers and title companies.

She was my title agent at the title company I used a hundred times, so they ended up closing down her branch. So I ended up hiring her part time. And she also now works for the clerk's office in one of the counties that I do work in. So I kind of have, like, an inside scoop there, too, which is pretty cool. But it's just me and her.

Seth: I know we've sort of talked about you mentioned in passing the acquisition and sale price, but what are your average deals? What do they look like? How much are you buying for? How much are you selling for and are there any deals that stick out as like this one was amazing. Like this was the biggest or the coolest deal I did.

Chris: Yeah, my deals are kind of all over the place, so it's hard to give an average. I guess if I had to give an average, it'd be like buy for 50, sell for 70-ish. But those averages are just kind of whack because here's a deal. Let's see. I bought for 341,000, sold for 384,000. So I made…

Seth: Double closings, right?

Chris: Yeah, double closed it. But it throws my averages way off.

Same thing here's one that I bought for 320, sold for 355. So I made 35 grand on that one. But they were all double closes. But yeah, my average profit this year for 2023 is probably closer to 20,000. And I'll probably do the same amount of volume, about 40 by the end of the year.

As far as the deals that stick out, a few months ago, I bought 70 acres with the intention to subdivide. I think it was like 345,000. I thought I could break it up and sell it for around maybe 550,000. I thought I could make around 200,000, but it was going to take a bank loan and probably four to six months to sell everything off. But before I got the bank loan, I had another investor approach me.

And he basically just bought it from me wholesale. And I made 100 grand on that, bought for 345, sold to them for 445, and just got in and out and then deployed that money into other deals instead of waiting around for the subdivide.

Seth: Yeah. So this whole double closing approach that you take, so it kind of changes things. It does change things a lot in terms of how much you can offer for properties and that kind of thing.

So a few questions on that. I'm assuming you're getting like just a straight up simple purchase agreement signed with X number of days or months to get the thing closed. Is that accurate? Like, how much time are you giving yourself to find that other buyer and make it happen?

Chris: Yeah, usually 45 to 60 days. It's just a regular purchase agreement. I have like a semi-escape clause in there. And if I feel like the person is going to be complicated, I'll just say the earnest money is non refundable and I'll sacrifice the $500 to $1,500 to them if I feel like they're going to try to sue me or something if I don't end up buying it in the end.

Seth: Yeah. And how often does this not work out? Like what percentage of the time do you sign it for? 45 to 60 days. And it's like, oh, couldn't make it happen. And why not make it 180 days? Why keep it there or even 90 days or something like that.

Chris: Most people that want to sell are like, looking for that's. The reason they come to me is because they want the cash quickly, I guess, or they say yes because they're ready for that money, most people. So I don't think they would go for them.

That's probably just limiting beliefs, but I would imagine a lot of people would push back on 180 days closing time. That's kind of ridiculous.

Ajay: Can I chime in here? So, Chris, we do quite a few double closings on our team, and I honestly will say it's a little bit of a limiting belief. Something we do to gauge whether they'll go for a long closing time is set the expectations before you even make the offer.

So my acquisitions manager, Veronica, she's phenomenal at this. She'll be like, “Hey, did our lead manager, Nikki, have a chance to say much about the company and what we do?”

“No, not really.”

“Okay, got it.”

Like, we're specialized in extremely simple transactions. We want things to be so easy for everyone to do. Typically, how this plays out is we're going to have this conversation should we come to terms. We're going to go over a really simple agreement today. Typically, it takes us about X amount of time to get this done, and we'll insert either 90 or 180 days, depending on the deal, depending on the location, depending on the price, all that type of stuff. But I think her de facto is 90. But we've done 180 before.

And you just set all those expectations up front and then people aren't surprised later on when they see it in the contract. But if they are going to be surprised, it'll be addressed right then and there.

So something that's worked really well for us is why does it take 90 days? Well, typically we want to get some tests done and we may partner with another investor, and so we may need to market the property and blah, blah, blah. And if they're okay with that, great. And if they do need the money, they'll tell you, hey, really, I'm just looking to get this done in the next 30 days. Got it. Now I know I can only offer them a flip price, though. It's going to be really hard for me to double close with 15 margin in a compressed timeline, unless my market's really hot or I'm really good at marketing.

But I'll tell you, you'd be surprised at how many sellers will go for 90 days as long as you just set the expectation up front.

Chris: Yeah, that's a really good point. I actually do that sometimes as well. If it's just like a crazy good price, I'll put 30 days on it because I want to close it as possible.

Ajay: Yeah, you don't want to lose the deal.

Chris: It's like, is this really a deal? Let me just test it out. Yeah, it's always a little bit longer. I've just never gone all the way up to 180 days. If it gets past 45 and I haven't even got any nibbles on it, I pretty much know that it's not a deal at that point. I would assume if I'm doing like 400-acre farms or 1000-acre ranch, I would go a lot longer just to give my agent time to market it.

And at that point we have a clause in our contract when an agent has to market it to just give me the right to do that. But I try not to send that purchase agreement too much because that definitely scares people off when they see that power of attorney or that you're going to be marketing the property to other people. I guess on a larger property, that's probably not as big of a deal. But when you're person to person trying to buy it from somebody and you tell them that you're going to immediately go market it, it's kind of off-putting to them.

Seth: I think it is a little bit in how you explain it to them. If you just kind of explain like, this is normal, this is how we network with their nationwide list of buyers across the country and we do this and we did that, and the goal is to get you the price that you want and just kind of, I guess, salesmanship, sort of. I hesitate to say that because I don't really consider myself good at that either. But I think it can be verbally conveyed in a way if you just kind of know how to frame it right.

Ajay: Yeah. And I would also say, I think some of the best advice I ever got from one of my coaches, Jenny Hudsmith, she said to me, it's only a big deal if you make it a big deal, you know?

And so when we're conveying things if in our subconscious, in the back of our head, we're like, oh my gosh, this is like this big old thing and like a big deal, it's going to convey that way. But if you're just like, “Hey, you see, in clause eight we have an assignment marketing clause in case we shop it around with some retail partners or investors. This just allows us to do that. Just need to legally be able to show folks the deal and market it with your permission.”

Something to that effect. More casual. I'd polish that a bit. But if you don't make it a big deal kind of exactly what Seth just said, I find that sellers will surprisingly just go with it. I can't remember the verbiage you just used, Seth, but it was really good. Something to the effect of if you just frame it up right.

No, I mean, you're a salesman if I've ever known one. Seth, you sold us on coming here.

Seth: I was wondering, Chris, a lot of land flippers will follow this idea of buy for 25%, sell for half, or buy for 40%, sell for 60% or 80%, that kind of thing. It sounds like you're not necessarily adhering to that. Right? Like, if you see a property that the market value is 400 grand, given that your money is not getting tied up in this thing ever to begin with, you're just double closing it. How do you decide, okay, this is the offer I'm going to make to that person. It'll be this versus the market value.

Chris: Yeah. I use LandWatch for a lot of my comps, and if I don't feel comfortable with that, I'll make calls to local Realtors and just kind of explain what I do. And some of them want to hear from me, and some of them don't want to hear from me. But I do feel like people abuse that a lot with Realtors. They're calling them all the time, asking them for comps, and then never talking to them again. So I try not to do that.

But I've also worked with a lot of Realtors that will sell my off-market properties if I put it under contract, they'll bring a buyer. I'll still pay commissions to them, and they're okay with the double close. It just depends on who the agent is, and you got to explain that to them.

I feel like more and more agents are kind of getting on board with all that creative investor stuff because they have to now. They can't just slap something on the MLS and have it sold in 20 days.

I honestly don't even remember your original question. I just went off on that random tangent.

Seth: Yeah, mainly just trying to figure out is there a standard you're following in terms of if the property is worth X amount, say, $100,000? My offer to them is going to be this, so that I have this much of a delta through which to make my money.

Is there some model you're trying to follow, or is it just kind of whatever feels good based on your conversation with the seller? Or are they getting close to market value and you're just marking it up to 20 grand or something like that? Or how do you think through that?

Chris: I wish I had some kind of formula to follow, but it is almost like a gut feeling at this point. I'm sure a year ago, I would have been a lot more data-driven and, like, hard evidence on the stuff that I put under contract. But now I've pretty much sold a property in every county in the state, so I know how long stuff takes.

And I subscribe to all these Realtor mailings, and they'll send me an email when something's available, and then when something goes under contract and I can't kind of see what's moving in that area, but yeah, it's just a feeling. If I think I can make 25 grand on something by putting it under contract and selling it pretty quickly, I'll do it. I think I did one that was like $8,000 a few weeks ago. So I'm not too good to do the smaller stuff either, because it pays the bills.

Seth: Yeah, interesting. So I wonder if you were to try to do what most land investors do or land flippers do when they're doing this blind offer thing where they're making offers for 40% of market value or something like that.

I don't know, do you think you'd struggle at that because you're just not used to doing that? You're used to giving sellers a lot closer to market value and what they want and that's how deals are able to happen. They'll probably severely limit what you're able to do if you were only to do these.

Or like, what if you did start way lower and then when they scoff at it, then you bring it up because you've got that margin baked in there anyway. Like you're ready to go there, you're just not starting there.

Chris: Yeah, I always start with 40% to 50%. The number of people who go with that is very slim. I could have just done the great deals, but instead of doing 80 deals to date, in 18 months, I would have done like 25. It doesn't make any sense to me.

I don't know, the amount of deals that I've bought for under 50% might be 20 to 25 of the 80 that I've bought. And the 80 that I've bought have been way more revenue than the 20 that's 20 smaller ones that I was able to buy for 40% of market value and flip it.

Seth: Yeah. You know what's interesting to me is it feels like with the way you run your business, how the phone is a big part of it and texting has been a big part of it, both of which can be very time-consuming and kind of mentally taxing in different ways. And yet you're still making tons of money and you're working 30 hours a week.

How does that work? Part of me would think, oh, man, Chris is a slave to his business. Like it kind of takes so much time, but it's not taking so much time. Seems like it's fairly laid back, if anything. So how does that work? Do you just only limit yourself to certain phone conversations that you know are going to be high value? Or maybe it's because the conversations you have, you're always willing to offer so much so they pan out and end up happening a lot more often than not. Any thoughts on that?

Chris: I don't really look at it that way. I send maybe 2,000 to 3,000 texts per month and then out of that I'm able to get two to three deals.

Seth: And this is you sending all these texts, right? You don't have an assistant doing it?

Chris: My assistant does help me on it, but I mean, it's Launch Control. You send a couple of batches, he might send 300, 450 a day. Yeah, I'll send them at 9 in the morning, and I'll sit in here until about lunchtime responding to people. After that, after they've been responded to, like, you know, the three or four that are actually serious. And then you can continue the conversation either that afternoon, tomorrow, or whenever.

Usually I'll tell people, hey, can I check the property out and get back with you tomorrow or the next day? And they'll say yes. And then that'll give me enough time to make some phone calls or get on Land ID and do my due diligence and come up with an offer that I want to offer them.

Ajay: This is so interesting, Chris, because I feel like I know. So there's like two types of investors that are in Launch Control. I feel like there's the ones that are in it themselves, and then there's the ones that wouldn't want to touch it with a ten-foot pole.

And what I'll tell you is, unfortunately, I'm part of school number two. I sent out a batch of probably 200 or so just to get a lay of the land and then immediately hired people to do it all for me, because I was like, I don't want to be in here.

I will tell you, though, every investor that I know that is willing to roll up their sleeves and get into it, like, you're talking about converts at a way higher rate, because we have built an assembly line, which was awesome. We're not actively doing it now, but when we were, we built an assembly line that had very, very regular deal flow, but our conversions were probably a quarter of what yours are.

And I think a big reason for that, Chris, is you're just always going to respond with a level of urgency and specificity that somebody who isn't an owner, frankly, just wouldn't more often than not. Like, I know, Jaren Barnes's wife, she is somebody who, similar to you, rolled up her sleeves and pretty similar conversion rates. They would get a deal for about every one, text messages or something crazy. And I'm like, how are you doing that?

And it's because she's not afraid to roll her sleeves up. So I just want to commend you and praise you, Chris, because, number one, not a lot of people are willing to do it, but more importantly, number two, the ones that are can really get ahead. So you got a really cool personality to be willing to get your hands into it and really just crank, man.

So, anyways, just wanted to point out that there's just a huge, huge... I think, Seth, you asked a good question. There's some uniqueness and superpower in what you're doing, Chris, to be able to show up at that level, always have that urgency, treat these leads well, and convert them very regularly.

Chris: Yeah. I appreciate it if you would have seen what I was doing for work three years ago, you'd realize why I don't mind this little bit of work that I have. This is nothing compared to digging trenches and crawling around in attics, crawl spaces, and running wires. So I'm super grateful for this opportunity.

Seth: So I'm curious because it sounds like you're a very important individual for your business, which is very common. I'd say most land flippers are in that same boat. But, say if you were tasked with the goal of tripling your net income by this time next year, how are you going to do that? What would be your plan for making that happen?

Chris: When I was at the Land Unconference a few weeks ago, this is the thought that just kept coming through my mind. Like, how do I scale this? It's impossible to scale what I do now without some drastic changes.

So I don't think I'm going to make any drastic changes this year besides subdividing a little more and going for a little bit bigger deals. Like, stop worrying about these $8,000 to $10,000 deals and don't do anything under $15,000 to $20,000 and try to do the same amount of volume.

But if I wanted to triple, I guess I would bite the bullet and hire somebody for $80,000 to $100,000 a year just to be like, an absolute rock star, which I don't know how I would find them. I'm sure I could figure it out, but I think that would be the way to go. Keep my $40,000-something employee, hire an $80,000 employee to kind of replace me in some of the things that's probably a good salesman but doesn't sound salesy, and then just see how we could all mesh together.

I would also have to figure out, like, double closing is great, but when you're trying to do a bunch of double closing really fast, that's going to be so overwhelming. So I would figure out how to raise some capital or partner with people with money to scale up as well as doing bigger deals. Also do double or 1.5 times the volume. I guess that's how I would do it.

Seth: Yeah.

Chris: I don't know that I want that, though. Not immediately, anyway.

Seth: You wouldn't want to triple your income or net income? Of course I'd want to triple it, but I don't know if I'd want that headache right now, and I don't think that I'm in the position to do that right now.

And I'd like to grind for one more year, do bigger and bigger deals, get into some subdividing, possibly look into entitlement. I didn't even know what entitlements were six months ago. So it's just a whole different lens to look at these land deals through. I've always been too wholesale-happy on these subdivides, and I've been wholesaling them, but this year I'm going to do a few of them. I'm in the middle of one right now.

I bought 40 acres for $60,000 in Little Town in Mississippi, and I got that split up into five pieces. I bought for 60, I should be able to sell for, like, 175-ish, or I could wholesale it for 120.

Ajay: These entitlement deals are super interesting. Chris, just to boil down what you said, I think Alex Hormozi says, when you’re scaling a business, there's two options: you can do more and you can do better.

So more wholesale would be more, bigger deals would be better, subdivides would be better, entitlements would be better. Both of them result in more money.

I will say it's just so interesting. We are currently underwriting our first entitlement deal right now that I think I don't want to jinx it, but I think we're going to be able to do. The price is within the realm of possibility, and we've already gotten, like, preliminary engineering studies done, and we even got a verbal from the city and the county that the plat should get approved. so a few more stars need to align. we got to get some stuff in writing, but it's this really pretty lot about an hour from Dallas.

We actually drove to it on Sunday. Today's Tuesday, so two days ago, we drove the property and just paper lots, like, just doing entitlements. There's potential for, like, a seven-figure spread on this. And I'm like, oh, my gosh, you're telling me I could make how much money in one deal?

But there are a bunch of contingencies. You might have to sink $10,000 to $40,000 in due diligence for it to lead nowhere. And you're contingent on these builders basically being end buyers. It's a very different business model, and it takes so much longer. So you could send out a text batch today and make $20,000 in a month to 45 days.

With these entitlement deals, it could be somewhere between six and 18 months before you make any money. So it's a different game. But it's been really interesting to think through as you're thinking about getting into subdivides and entitlements. What does that look like baked into your existing strategy?

Chris: Yeah, it's a good addition. I wouldn't want to do that full time because I don't know that much about it. But I agree with you. And then, once you make seven figures on something, your brain is going to be broken.

Seth: Chris, I've got a question for you. What would you say has been the hardest part of this business for you? Look back the past year and a half you've been doing this. What are the biggest challenges, the struggles? Has there ever been a point where you didn't know if you're going to make it? Does anything ever tempt you to quit this business? Tell us about the hard stuff.

Chris: Yeah, I've never been tempted to quit. I'm a worrier like you are, so, I mean, every couple of weeks, I'm worrying about something. There are times in this business where you don't do anything for a month or two, and it is scary, but if you look at it over a long enough time horizon, you realize there's nothing that's going to beat this. So just chill out. Just like me in the holidays right now. I'm sure everybody's feeling the same way. Nobody's worried about your land, right? So have a good holidays and chill out.

Seth: I think I've heard this every year, by the way, in terms of the holiday lull, it's not an uncommon thing.

Chris: I was kind of freaking out last year about it. This year I've decided to just enjoy myself, appreciate what I have. But yeah, I struggle with like, “nobody does it better than me”-type syndrome. That's why I'm struggling a little bit to scale.

Seth: Yeah, I'm very familiar with that.

Chris: My biggest problem was scaling. Like, how do I scale with my limited amount of money? Then I realized how to do that was double closing. And now I'm back to my biggest problem is how to scale, which is that there is no trick to it anymore. I've got to start offloading some stuff that I personally do. And then also staying focused. I called you Saturday about a random warehouse that's for sale. I need to stop doing that kind of stuff and just focus on my land business.

Last year I was considering or my plan was do the land business, buy one or two long-term assets every year, and then by the end of ten years, I'll have a bunch of either rentals or commercial rentals or whatever I end up buying. But I'm really just trying to stay focused on my land flipping this year. Do a little bit bigger deals, do some subdivides. Don't go chasing something every time you see a potential deal that isn't land.

Seth: So you're thinking next five to ten years from now, you want to have like X number of, I don't know, triple net lease, commercial properties, rental properties, or something like that?

Chris: Yeah, I have two residential rental properties right now and I hate them.

Seth: Sounds like a good future plan to keep getting more of those!

Chris: That's why the warehouse was so appealing. Like a triple net lease just sounds super appealing to me, but it just seems riskier. I mean, you have one tenant in this massive warehouse, if he goes under, like, you're just screwed. And you got to wait around for the next guy to move into there.

But if you can get a five- to ten-year lease on it and you basically just get checks every month and you're not worried about the maintenance or the stupid phone calls, that just seems like where it's at to me.

Seth: Yeah.

Chris: As far as like, ten years, I don't even know. I feel like AI is going to take over by year five, and everything's going to look so different that I can't even plan ten years ahead right now. Especially for the land business. This is going to look so much different in five years with all the technology that's coming out. I just hope that all the inefficiencies are still there in the market so the little guys still have a chance to make some money.

Seth: Five years ago, for the first time ever, I put together free mastermind groups for people in the Land Investing Masterclass. And one of those groups is still alive and functioning very well today. And I was invited to sit in on their five-year anniversary mastermind meeting. It's really cool to see that that was working out, but these are all really high-level guys who've done awesome things and was talking to them.

I like to ask these kind of questions sometimes, kind of because they're ridiculous questions and just because it makes people think a little bit. But if you saw the writing on the wall and, like, a year from now, the land business is going to be destroyed, like, it's not going to work anymore. Nothing is going to work. You have to figure something else out, diversify, get your money into something else, figure out some other business. What would you do?

I feel like we've had these conversations a few times, Chris, where it's like we sort of are implying that five years from now, things will not be anything like they are today. Who knows how the land business will continue to work. So, like, if you had to speed up that learning curve and figure out something else really quickly, what would you do?

I guess, Ajay. That's a good question for you, too. I'd be curious to hear your input.

Ajay: Yeah, my answer is going to be boring, guys. I'm such a nerd. I just love business so much. I would get into either mergers and acquisitions as, like, a brokerage. Like, I would broker businesses, or I would just start a private equity company and I'd start buying them myself. I just love the game of business so much, and I love working with really strong operators. That's what I would go to.

And I think business, regardless of industry, will always exist. Kind of agnostic, right? And there are good principles. I think we were talking about how everything is sales and marketing. Right, Seth? And so if you understand that stuff, you can provide value in any business vehicle.

So yeah, that's where I'd go.

Chris: You sound like you've been listening to a lot of Alex Hormozi.

Ajay: Always, man. That guy is always in my ears.

Chris: I just love his podcast. Like, the way he breaks stuff down, it makes it so simple to understand business. I feel like I've got a master's degree in business just from listening to his podcast.

Ajay: No kidding.

Seth: Yeah, I think he's, like, one of the highest value YouTubers I know of in the business world. Every video is just so good. I don't know how he does that, how he finds the time. For me, it takes a solid week to make a five-minute video that nobody's going to watch, but he just whips out these things day after day, and they're awesome. He's got great books and everything.

But what would you do, Chris, in terms of if you can't do mergers and acquisitions like Ajay, what are you going to do? Or maybe you can, I don’t know.

Chris: I already picked it. I would do something similar, but I wouldn't even know where to get started with what Ajay's talking about. I would probably start a couple small businesses, and just with the amount of business knowledge that I've picked up over the last year and a half, just from doing this kind of stuff, I feel like I can scale them a little bit better.

Like, even if it was an electrical company or some kind of service company, because I feel like there's a huge shortage of service companies out there that are worth a crap. I'm sure if you guys have had to call an electrician or literally any kind of tradesman, you know that you got to call like eight different people and the people aren't going to show up, and there's just all kinds of problems. So I feel like any decent construction or service-based business should be doing well right now.

Seth: Yeah, that's actually a really good point. I see this all the time, and it's probably true in any business, like you mentioned, Chris, but in self-storage, it's a big deal. Take something like grocery stores or consignment shops or anything. Fill in the blank. There are so many businesses out there that are run by people who just don't understand marketing. They don't understand how to get their name out there, they don't understand how to use social media. There are just so many missed opportunities. It's kind of painful to watch.

And you could step into pretty much any existing business and find all kinds of ways to boost sales pretty quickly just by turning on different things that have never been tried before. So that is kind of the cool thing. Once you have run a business like this, it's kind of like the ultimate resume builder in a way, in that all of a sudden you have experience with all of these highly relevant things that pretty much every business needs. As long as you have some of that knowledge and have this go-get-em attitude, you can get a lot done in pretty much any business operation out there.

If you're looking at somebody who's looking at getting into the land business today in the current environment we're in, what would be your biggest word of advice for them?

Chris: Yeah, there's definitely no better time to get in than right now. I don't think it's going to get that much better in the future. So I think there's still a ton of opportunity out there, and I would just start. Everybody says it or thinks that you need a bunch of money to start, you really don't. I did have $15,000 to buy that first piece of property, but if I didn't have that and I would have done a little research, I could have wholesaled that for 25, no problem, and made $10,000 off of using Google and my cell phone.

So if they want it bad enough, just start. Sacrifice two, three months of your life or your evenings and do something like I did. Or if you have a few thousand dollars, look into actual marketing, send some direct mail, pull some data, get some cell phone numbers and text them from your personal cell phone. There's opportunity out there, especially if you're stuck in a $40,000 to $60,000 job and you hate it. And if you just want to make some side money, you can do that with just a few hours a week and your cell phone and a couple of hundred bucks. I really think there's some opportunity to make chunks of cash like that for people.

Seth: Yeah, for sure.

So I want to ask a few non-business-related questions, sort of just to learn a little bit more about you. Maybe our audience can understand more of where you're coming from and how you think.

So, question number one, and I know we've talked a little bit about worrying, which you and I are both very good and skilled at doing. What is your biggest fear?

Chris: I would say just losing my family or just not being able to provide for my family. I love my kids so much, and I just enjoy the age that they're at right now and just not being able to… or just saying or doing something wrong that negatively affects them one day.

I worry about that a lot. I worry about going to heaven. Am I being a good Christian? Am I too worried about money? Am I too worried about worldly stuff? That's the kind of stuff that keeps me up at night.

Seth: Yeah, I know what you mean, man. There's a lot of stuff like, you just don't know what you don't know. And I know that living on earth is hard. There's so many opportunities to screw stuff up. I mean, it'll just happen to you. And I'm very familiar with that. So I totally get it. I appreciate you sharing.

So question number two. What are you most proud of?

Chris: Kind of the same thing. My kids. This business that I've built, the business that I built before that, my dad was self-employed and my grandpa was self-employed, my uncles are self-employed.

And I just always knew that I wasn't going to work a nine to five for the rest of my life. And so I'm super proud of just being able to get out of that because I have a lot of friends that have those 40 to 60 hours a week jobs that they hate, and it's hard to even talk to them about it because I don't want to make them feel bad for having it. And I don't want to sound like I'm bragging. So we don't even talk about work anymore because I don't want them to feel like I'm better than them or anything because I was in that situation, like, less than two years ago.

Yeah, definitely proud of my family, proud of my kids. My son just got done with his first soccer season and didn't score a goal all season until the very last game. I was like, man, I've waited for that for a long time.

Seth: Wow. Did he do, like, a celebratory dance or anything or what was that like?

Chris: No, he's too cool for that. He's four.

I don't know how many people know this, but I was, like, getting choked. I'm the coach on the field, and I was, like, getting choked up a little bit. Like, all right, pull it together. Just a soccer ball. I can't imagine what I'm going to be like at his graduation.

Seth: Oh, I know, man. I think about that all the time. I can't imagine my kids getting married. My kids, like, moving out of the house, going to college if they go there, just all that stuff. I mean, just them going to preschool was a little bit of an emotional ordeal. Yeah, I hear you.

So last question here. Suppose you just got $100 million wired to your bank account. You're not allowed to stay on your current career path, so you can't continue doing land or real estate on any level, but you can do anything else you want for the rest of your life. What would you do?

Chris: I've thought about this question so many times after all your podcast episodes. I haven't changed it recently. What I would do is I guess it's a little bit real estate-related, but not really. I would buy a huge piece of land and start, like, a sports complex. I just think that would be really cool to have.

I play a lot of soccer. I play a lot of pickleball now because I'm getting old.

Seth: That’s what you're supposed to do when you get old—play pickleball, right?

Chris: Yeah, pickleball is so much fun. You guys don't even know.

Ajay: I play some pickleball. I love it.

Chris: Really? We'll have to get together sometime.

Ajay: Let's do it.

Chris: But yeah, I would start a big sports complex and soccer fields, indoor pickleball, tennis, baseball fields. Just try to bring something to do for young people in this area because there's a handful of sports stuff around here. But I just feel like there's a lot more room for improvement.

And when kids don't have anything to do, it's like, when they get in trouble. So you raise kids through, like, junior high and they don't have any kind of extracurricular activities, the chance of them getting in trouble is, like, way higher.

But I think that's what I would do. I just love sports. I love hanging out with kids and coaching and stuff like that, so I would do that.

Seth: Yeah. That's interesting. I wonder if most of humanity's problems boil down to people not having productive things to do with their time, or just maybe not choosing the productive thing to do, but there's something healthy about just staying busy with something that's constructive in some way. Cool, man.

Well, Chris really appreciate you coming on the show. It's great to talk to you. If people want to find out more about you, is there anything they should do? You don't have to share anything. It's not obligated, but in case you want to, now is your chance to do that. Any thoughts?

Chris: Yeah, I mean, they can reach out to me on Facebook. I don't have a big social media following or anything. I literally did this because I feel like you're my friend and I've made tons of money and you've changed my life. So I feel like if nothing else, I didn't even buy your course, so I felt like I owed you.

Seth: Well, I appreciate it, man.

Chris: I appreciate you having me on. And they can reach out to me on Facebook if they'd like to. Or I guess we could put my email in the show notes, if you want.

Seth: Absolutely. Maybe I'll find your Facebook profile and like that. Would that work?

Chris: Yeah, that'll work.

Seth: Yeah, me and Chris talked about this ahead of time. It's like, you can either give me a quarter million dollars for all your success, or you can come on the podcast and we chose this. That's worth even more than the money. I'm just kidding.

Awesome. Well, for all the listeners out there, this is episode 174. If you want to see the show notes, you can go to retipster.com/174. If you're listening on your phone, go ahead and text the word “free,” F-R-E-E, to the number 3377.

You can get on the REtipster email list. Stay up to date with everything that's happening in our community. Thanks again, everybody, for listening, and we'll talk to you again in the next episode.