Seth: Hey folks, how's it going? This is Seth Williams. You're listening to the REtipster Podcast and today I'm talking with an old friend. If you're a longtime listener to the show, you almost certainly know this guy because he was the co-host of the podcast for about 100 episodes, I think.

Of course I'm talking about Jaren Barnes. So Jaren has been running his own community for the past couple of years called the Land Maverick Society. He's also one of the very select few REtipster Certified Coaches, meaning he's someone that I know, like, and trust. He aligns very well with the REtipster brand and whenever people ask me where they can find a good coach in the land business, Jaren is one of the people that I point them to.

By the way, you can find out more about Jaren at landmavericks.com.

But today Jaren and I are going to discuss our thoughts on the current state of the market, some of the challenges that many land investors have had this past year, and more importantly, some reasons why we should all have hope. I'm sure we're going to hit on all kinds of other stuff in this conversation, as we usually do.

But Jaren, welcome back. How are you doing?

Jaren: Doing well, man. It's an honor to be here. Now I actually have been talking to quite a few people in my network about who's kind of the go-to authority when it comes to real estate these days, because for a really long time it was BiggerPockets. But I think BiggerPockets, it's safe to say, they're losing their steam.

And I was poking around on different social media platforms, asking questions about BiggerPockets, and everyone in the land community pretty much has said, "REtipster is the new BiggerPockets," at least when it comes to that.

Seth: Really? Wow.

Jaren: Yeah.

Seth: That's cool.

Jaren: Just wanted to throw that out there, man. Got nothing but mad love for REtipster and mad love for you, man. I really won’t have what I have at all if it wasn't for you. And I definitely got to go give honor where honors are due. I owe you a ton, man. And every time I think about you, I'm just super grateful.

Seth: Wow. I appreciate that very much. Yeah. I mean, BiggerPockets definitely has set quite the high standard just in terms of what real estate investing is and what people think about, especially in the internet space. So being compared to that in any way, that's awesome, man.

Jaren: Yeah. I think what it is, is they've gotten away from stuff that actually are practical how-tos for beginners. They really kind of optimize for large guests that really get a lot of eyeballs, as opposed to really giving people what they used to back in the way they have for several years.

So at least it's anecdotal. I'm not by any means talking down Bigger Pockets. BiggerPockets is an amazing platform and I owe BiggerPockets quite a bit as well. So I just noticed that as of late, it's not really what it used to be. And it seems like most people in the real estate space kind of agree with that. Hopefully they turn things around.

Seth: Well, in terms of the land business, I know this past year, it seems like… I'm sure you've probably seen a similar thing or maybe different things than I have, but it seems like a year of, I mean, I don't want to say the struggle defines this year, but I just feel like I've heard a lot of that. At least when people are willing to be open and honest about it and not just talk about their successes.

Seems like the common theme is that things are kind of getting harder. Things aren't coming as easily as they once did. And, I don't know, have you seen a similar thing or what's been your thoughts and your observations working in the trenches?

Jaren: Yeah. So I think the vast majority of active land investors right now have come up either right before or during what I like to call “the COVID frenzy from 2020 to 2023.” There was a bit of a gravy train where properties were moving faster than I've ever seen them move.

And there was just a lot of activity. It was almost like a perfect storm because, on one hand, you had people who were freaking out about the government and they were hitting the hills and wanting to buy land. And simultaneously, you had kind of this artificially inflated economy where things were booming because the government literally gave out… what was it called? When they were giving out checks and stuff, there was a particular technical title for it.

Seth: Stimulus or something?

Jaren: Stimulus checks. When they were giving the stimulus checks, they simulated the environment, the economy, and it wasn't quite the gravy train, but now we're on the other side of it. And I do think that we are approaching a downturn in the market. I think everybody is kind of at the edge of their seat, just kind of anticipating what's about to happen.

But the reality is, at least in my experience, I would say that the current state of things is just slightly slower than what's normal. I wouldn't say that they are over the top. I don't think that the sky is falling. I don't think that there's anything really to be super worried or anxious about. I just think people have gotten really, I don't want to say lazy because that sounds mean, but I think people have gotten spoiled. I think that's a better word.

I think what they were experiencing, what I was experiencing, what everybody was experiencing was a gravy train. And the gravy train always comes to a stop. What goes up must come down. And before I was doing the land business back in 2016, 17, 18, it was pretty similar to what it is now.

I'd just say, my guess is that it's predominantly because of the election cycle. I think because we're approaching an election, everybody's just holding onto their breath, waiting to see what happens on both sides of the aisle.

But my average days on market before the COVID frenzy was four to six months. I would actually prep backup funders, or people who came in to fund the deals for me and I'd say, "Hey, this thing sits for six months. It's normal on land. Don't worry." Now we get to a year point, then that's something to be concerned about. But I wouldn't even touch properties for the first three months if I just anticipated that it would take a little bit to sell.

So I think that with what's happening, it's really easy to get caught up in the noise of the day. And I just really want to encourage people that are listening right now, the future is bright.

And to be honest, I have been waiting my entire professional career for a downturn in the market. I know when I was working with you, Seth, back in the day, we would always talk about it every year. Everyone would say, "The sky was falling and is this going to be the year?" And nope. It was a really long run of just going up and up and up and up.

But on the other side of this downturn, no matter how severe or how minor the downturn ends up being, on the other side is an upturn. On the other side is an upswing. And I don't understand because I don't really feel like I'm that smart. I don't really feel like I'm that special. But when I read books about investing, kind of, Investing 101 is buy low and sell high. And so what that means is like, this is nothing new. There's nothing new under the sun. If everybody is selling, you buy low. And if everybody is buying, you sell high.

So, I just want to encourage people that this is very normal and that on the other side of this, if you can weather the storms and navigate through the waters, you're going to be okay. And you're actually going to be able to ride an upswing. So, just buckle up. And whether it's three months, six months, or a couple years, on the other side, I think a lot of millionaires, multi-millionaires are going to be made because we're existing right now for such a time as this.

So, just really want to encourage people. You know, you do need to remain nimble. You do need to be able to pivot aggressively at the turn of a dime. But as long as you can sustain the waters of turbulence right now, you're going to be absolutely okay. The land business is an amazing model.

Seth: So, yeah, it's interesting because I think there's kind of a couple things going on. On one hand, the market is cyclical and things go up or down or sideways like that has happened before. That's nothing new.

But the other side of it is like the unique thing with the land business because, with the last major downturn, there weren't really other land investors. You could literally say there was no competition for this particular model. And now there is competition. And so, to go through another downturn, it's not exactly the same thing as what happened before because you've got the market going down, but there's also a bunch of other people trying to do it.

And so that's where I kind of get hung up. Or not hung up, but just really curious to see what that's going to look like because people really need to be buying for a very, very, very cheap price if prices are plummeting to kind of shield themselves and give that buffer of protection. But that'll be a little harder if everybody else is trying to do the same thing.

So I feel like when that time comes, we'll probably see some people get out of the land business. It's one of those things where… there's a guy named John Paul Getty. He's got a quote where he said, "In times of rapid change, experience could be your worst enemy."

And I think that's really true because a lot of people that are struggling right now, or maybe people who've even gotten out of it, part of the reason is because they're using that past experience as what they call “normal.” It's supposed to work this one way and it's hard to be nimble. It's hard to change and figure out how to reshape and reform yourself and change your expectations as the world changes.

I mean, I know that better than anybody. I'm really not good at that, frankly. I have a hard time getting on the bandwagon and rethinking things, but you really have to. I mean, if you want to survive, you have to be willing to hit the reset button.

And I think it does help to pay attention to interviews like this, or even Facebook groups and forums and stuff, just to figure out, “What is everybody struggling with right now? What are you seeing?” The land scaling summit that you and I were just at, it was just helpful to have those conversations with people, especially when it's one-on-one, person to person. Nobody else is listening in.

It's not like a podcast interview where the whole world is looking for success stories. It's like, "No, let's just be real. What is really hard for you right now? Tell me." Or “What's not working for you?” That kind of thing is really helpful, too.

Jaren: Yeah, man. I got a couple of thoughts. You unpacked quite a bit there.

Seth: Yeah, let's hear it.

Jaren: I do think that you are a hundred percent spot-on that your prior experience can really hinder your future success if you are really rigid and firm on staying the course of what you built your whole operation on.

But I think that's business. And even me right now, I've kind of been, I don't know, branded the guy that does land specialized agents to dispo property. But I'm thinking of ways on how to supplement my disposition efforts in conjunction with agents. Because I think the biggest thing that we're seeing in our own land business, not even talking about our members and the people that I train at Land Mavericks Society, agents are starting to get a little lazy, it seems like.

And I think maybe it's because, I don't know for sure, but I think possibly they rode a gravy train too for the last three years and they're sitting on some cash and they're kind of taking it easy while they're kind of weathering the storm of the coming election and what's going to happen on the other side of the new year.

And I have been having a lot of talks with my wife and our team about doing some things where we track days on market on our inventory. And if it hits like 90 days or it hits certain intervals, we have a series of activities that we do to support our agent and generate leads that they service, because we need to have them justify their commission, so I still want them to work.

But it's hard to shy away completely from agents in our model because we go after more premium property and I would not feel comfortable buying any property that I didn't have somebody's eyes on before taking title. They don't have to necessarily be mine, but you know, our agents will walk every single property, take pictures, do videos, and really make sure that we're not losing our shirt.

And it's really hard to do that without an agent unless you want to be doing it yourself to the degree of working with an agent because they have a trained eye. They can look at what type of timber quality is on the property. They can look at a lot of different things that kind of we go look at or some random person on task, have it or whatever, they want to be able to do for you.

The other thing though, I do want to say on what you mentioned, yeah, there is a competition, but in every business, every industry, let's say, there's going to be competition. But in land in particular, I think that I still am an advocate for saying that we have some of the lowest competition in existence when it comes to other industries.

Back in the day at REtipster, I was in the process of making a blog post and never made the light of day. And depending on what source you cite, they say that only three to six percent of the land mass in the United States is developed. So that means all infrastructure, all cities, all roads, all towns, everything is, let's call it six percent. Let's even bump it up and call it 10 percent. If 10 percent of the entire land mass is what we call society and what we know as civilization, that means that potentially 90 percent of the land mass is viable for doing deals.

Let's even take it a step further though and call it not 90 percent, but let's call it 50 percent because there are federally owned federal reserves and unusable property stuff that has too severe slope and wetlands or whatever. Let's even go shorter and call it 30 percent. If we have all of the acres upon acres upon acres of city and civilization that we have developed is only on, say, 10 percent, which we're being conservative. And let's just say there's a total of 30 percent that's viable for doing deals.

Again, being super conservative, we have so much threshold for competition. There's only about seven states that the vast majority of the industry is actually actively doing deals in. Nobody talks about Maine. Nobody talks about upstate New York. Nobody talks about Alaska. There are viable places, I think, honeyholes that haven't been discovered yet.

I think that when you couple that with more advanced strategies or alternative approaches to certain things, such as becoming an expert in converting landlocked property to an easement access road or you specialize in extreme title issues or even you talk about subdivides or that you can make your niche that sets you apart from the crowd. There's so much opportunity.

It's funny when I hear land investors talk about it because I've got a lot of friends in the house wholesaling world. In the house wholesaling world, they define a market as oftentimes a section of a city, but let's call it a city or a town. We land investors call a market an entire county.

And so we just inherently have so much more volume, so much more opportunity. It's incredible. And a lot of these house wholesalers, they are, on average, I mean, I'm running into people, I have friends that have been house wholesaling for years and years since back in my simple wholesaling days when I worked for a household seller named Brett Snodgrass based in Indianapolis. They're routinely seeing house wholesalers having to do $70,000 to $90,000 a month in marketing just to do five, 10 deals to be relevant. Whereas you're a really big deal if you're spending more than $10,000 a month in marketing in land.

So the long and short of it is, again, I do hear what you're saying. And yeah, it is different than it used to be. You could literally just suck wind and get deals all day long in land way back in the day. But with every industry, it matures, it grows, it becomes more efficient. And that's just normal.

Those are the normal waters of what it is to be an entrepreneur. So I still completely have rose-tinted glasses over here. I think land is amazing. I think the future is bright.

Seth: You know, it is interesting though to draw the correlation. I've heard that the number one killer of all marriages is really failed expectations. People expect one thing and they get something else.

You could probably say the same thing about a lot of stuff in life, including land investing. Like people have certain expectations, especially those who have been in it for a while or those who have just been sold on it through some kind of podcast or webinar or something like that. But these expectations are painted as, yeah, this is going to be amazing and all this stuff.

And it may still be that way, but like it's just changing. It's not that it's like bad or a poor business model, it's just different. And that's okay. I think people who can adjust expectations or maybe even have the fewest possible expectations are probably going to do the best. People who can just be flexible and roll with the punches and that kind of thing.

That's hard because you have to have some expectations. You can't just not have any, but how do you have the appropriate amount of them?

Jaren: And you actually bring up a really good point, Seth. I want to shout from the rooftops, land requires a lot of work. It's extremely lucrative. And yeah, depending on how you structure things, you can turn it into a very lifestyle-friendly-based business, but it is not `passive. It is not, I'm going to hit an easy button and press that and just kind of print out cash on the other side. It takes a lot of work.

It is very common for both me and my wife to wake up at four in the morning, do a bunch of prep stuff. I'll talk specifically about my wife because she is more in the trenches of the land business. She'll wake up at say four o'clock in the morning. I know because I'm the one that's waking her up and she'll comp for two or three hours before her team comes in preparing offer amounts so that her team can then run with the offers and get things going.

If you want to make a lot of money in the land business, it is a full-time commitment and a full-time job. You know, definitely you can make say 10,000, 20,000 a month maybe on some part-time hours, but I would never, ever come into the land business starting with that mindset ever because that is a recipe for disaster. You need to have the hustle on and then figure out the land business, overcome your learning curve, and then on the other side of that, sure, maybe you can optimize and try to start pulling back your time a little bit.

But this is not a get-rich-quick scheme by any stretch of the imagination. This is a true and tried business that takes a lot of effort. But as long as you're willing to put it in there, it's extremely rewarding.

Seth: Yeah, totally. So a few minutes ago, you just kind of mentioned in passing, you were talking about how some land-specialized real estate agents are getting lazy and that may very well be. But I was curious, so what makes an agent lazy or not?

Because it's kind of interesting. Sometimes I think about this and when you're selling a property, there is a limit to what you can do, sort of like putting together the best set of information, the best set of images, like really thinking through the price, maybe offering the best possible terms. And then making it visible in as many places as conceivably possible so that people can find it. Maybe an agent could go so far as to call up very specific people that they know are buying if they have a big buyers list or are calling builders or developers.

But when you say that, okay, this person's getting lazy, versus, man, they work hard. What is the differentiator there? How do you know if somebody is working, doing everything they can to do the job?

Jaren: Yeah. So I would say first, communication. Promptness is the number one indicator of a good or bad agent. Beyond that, though, dispositions, whether it's being facilitated, the activities of dispositions, whether it's being facilitated by an agent or by a land investor or somebody on your team, it's all kind of the same.

Sure, agents have a bit of an advantage because if they're good, they have an active buyers list that they've been nurturing for a long time, and they have certain people that are actively looking for specific types of property that hopefully, if your subject property matches, they can kind of reverse engineer and just send it out. Maybe do a double close or whatever. So there is some benefit to kind of tapping into an already existing spinning wheel.

But there's a lot of things that even were highlighted in the land scaling summit that we were at, that I think are very true. And when agents are hungry, they do a lot of that type of stuff like sending out marketing to other agents, other listed agents beyond the MLS via SMS blasts of some sort or direct mail campaign or what have you. Making sure that there is actually a sign in front of the property, a big in your face sign, this is property for sale.

You know, it's not rocket science, but there's a certain amount of activities that you have to make sure happen. And oftentimes right now, the agents aren't doing that as promptly or without us having to ask. So, you know, like we, my wife and I had a little argument, let's call it, with one of our agents we've worked with for years, because all of a sudden she stopped doing drone footage on the right types of properties and then started saying that she wants to charge her listing clients for those.

And that's fine, whether we pay for it or whatever, but the fact that we had to catch it and then initiate, like, hey, why all of a sudden, did you stop facilitating drone footage on premium property? You know, doing things like reaching out to recent cash buyers, the neighbors, all that stuff that's highlighted on various podcasts and various, whether it's land or household selling or what have you, all that stuff is pretty crucial to move property, especially if you've hit certain days on market.

And a lot of times in a kind of COVID frenzy top of the market scenario, you don't have to. You just throw something on the MLS and then you got a frenzy of buyers chomping up the bits to, you know, tour the property and make something happen. And that's not the case in this market. So you have to adjust that.

And you also have to make sure that you're managing your agents appropriately, that they're facilitating those types of activities.

Seth: Yeah. That's interesting. Communication stuff. There's so much that lives inside that word, like so many, I mean, we've got the speed of communication, we've got the clarity of communication, the method of communication. There's like a person you communicate with. There's just a lot there.

If I feel like if a person can master that in any area of life, like that will just put them so far ahead of everybody else out there. Cause I feel like most people are pretty bad at it. Like that's kind of the standard is to just not be that good at it or at least struggle in one of the different ways a person could struggle at it.

I remember seeing this in banking all the time. Like people would just be awful at whether they responded at all or if they did send an email or something, it was just, it was really hard to understand what they were saying, just stuff like that.

So yeah, that's, I guess, a lesson to everybody out there, whether you're new or experienced, just know it matters a lot. And people make initial and repeat buying decisions based on

your quality of communication. So it's worth the effort to figure out how to do it well.

Jaren: I agree. And I got lessons to learn there too.

Seth: So tell me about Land Mavericks. Like what are you up to? What's new over the past year? What are you looking to do over the next year? I don't know if this is part of Land Mavericks or if it's like a sister company or something, but like you guys are funding deals now.

You know, you have kind of a different approach to coaching than what I see from most coaches out there. I mean, there's a lot of stuff we can get into as well, but where should we start? You want to talk about maybe your unique approach to coaching? Like how it's not necessarily what you might expect from most coaches.

Jaren: Yeah, man. And I appreciate you asking.

So most coaches in some form or fashion will meet with you once a week, maybe a couple times a week to just kind of throw a bunch of theory at you. And then they kind of salute you off and say, “Good luck implementing. Here's some really nice information.”

And some of the information is really, really good, but the vast majority of people, particularly in the realm of just getting started, they need more than just a bunch of really good information. They need you to hold their hand in the trenches and showcase, “All right, we're working seller leads together. Here, I'm going to take a call.” You take a call and really showcase what it looks like and fine-tune nuanced details.

And so, coaching is kind of a loaded word and maybe I'm not really a coach. Maybe I'm something else, but I can't find a better word for it. I'm kind of like a fractional partner of our members team. So I am available to call seller leads, call agents, help run due diligence, help select markets, kind of the full kit and caboodle as though I am on their team.

And we're different in that, you know, for our two top tier tiers of membership, I give my personal cell phone number out to our members and we offer unlimited one-on-one sessions. And that sounds crazy. Like how do you handle all of that?

But the vast majority of the time, people don't need one-on-one as much as you would imagine. Most of the time, it's only in the very beginning stages to, you know, get things going. And then, you know, they're going to reach out to you if they actually have a problem that they're stuck on.

So I've really made myself available and plan to continue to do so because sometimes it really is, hey, you're not qualifying your leads properly, or hey, you're not calling people enough. Like you just sent one call. Yeah, you made one call and then they didn't answer. So you left the voicemail and then now you're expecting them to actually call you back.

And it's funny to me because that's so foreign to what actually works in the business. You have to be aggressive, you have to be kind of err on the side of being politely annoying. And it really boils down to three core skill sets. It's running comps and due diligence, talking to motivated sellers, and building a connection with them. And then it's finding, vetting, and managing land-specialized agents. Every problem of somebody that I have coached over the last couple years has boiled down to one of those three things.

And a lot of times it's the talk track. A lot of people really don't handle talking to sellers correctly. And it's pretty funny because it comes so second nature to some of us who've been in some form of sales business or business, or who have some kind of background in sales or a prior business of some form or fashion, talking to prospects comes second nature. But for the vast majority of beginners, it's not. They are kind of stuck in a world where the industry that they're coming from is you want to get ahold of somebody, send them an email, you don't want to bother people.

And so having to reframe and relearn, no, in real estate, whether we're talking about agents or county reps or vendors or sellers, you need to err on the side of being politely annoying, pick up the phone, call them, and not be afraid of that. And then also having like opportunity to practice.

So kind of zooming back out a little bit, kind of going more high level. In Land Mavericks Society we have three programs. We have Greenhorns, which is kind of just for those that are, you know, kind of limited on working capital, but still want to be exposed to the community and kind of the live training events that we do at the Land Maverick Academy, our video library and all that. We have a once a month group coaching program, so once a month we meet and it's a six-month program. And those are for Greenhorns, those that are just going to get started.

Then we have Pathfinders, which is kind of reserved for people who have maybe done a handful of deals, but they're just trying to shift in some form or fashion towards maybe a new market, marketing channel, strategy, what have you. And that's a three-month program that is kind of reserved for, hey, I don't have to teach you how to run comps and due diligence, but I'm here to give you kind of more high-level strategy and help you implement. Build out automatic follow-up systems, find your first hire, whether it's an overseas VA or a local in the states.

And then kind of our flagship program is called Trailblazers. So Trailblazers is a six-month program and it's full access. Generally working with people who are just getting started all the way up to scaling. I would say 80% of our community are beginners and 20% of our community are people who are experienced and they're just looking to fine-tune or shift a couple things around.

So during that, every week we have three core sessions of the week. We have a sales mastery training where I kind of give an example of a talk track and then we break into breakout groups on Zoom where you get to meet other Land Mavericks and role=play based on kind of the direction of that week's talk track. We have a foundations core session, which kind of cycles through the main tenants of the land business.

And then on Fridays, we have a deal review party of the week where, at the time of this recording, my wife joins me and people just kind of come at a first come first served basis, drop an APN in the county and we run comps and do diligence live and kind of showcase how we would generate an offer amount.

So it's very hands-on, at a high level, what we're trying to accomplish, and we still have our work cut out for us, but what we're trying to accomplish is providing everything that's needed for you to thrive as a land investor, going from all the way from the absolute bottom of getting started all the way scaling to the top where you're doing 100K months or beyond.

Seth: So of those three things you mentioned, which is the one where you're basically like a fractional COO of sorts and you kind of work alongside them?

Jaren: So that would be in Trailblazers and in Pathfinders. It manifests slightly differently because the objective, the goal, is a little bit different.

Again, with Pathfinders, we are helping people who already are established in some form or fashion in the land business, and then we're just trying to help them go to the next level. But Trailblazers starts generally from ground zero and builds all the way up.

Seth: Yeah. And I will say that's, that's pretty unusual in a very cool way. I don't think I've ever had a coach that like, would actually get into the weeds with me, like getting their hands dirty in my actual business.

I don't even know if you'd call that coaching. It's like, again, like a fractional COO or C-something where someone was really there, looking over your shoulder, doing everything with you, making sure you get it. So that's pretty special.

Jaren: I'm very passionate about it. I make a lot more money. At least my family makes a lot more money actually just doing land deals. And sometimes it would be more simple for me to just be in the trenches doing my own deals. But I believe it's a calling on my life and what I'm supposed to be doing.

And, you know, for the foreseeable future, I don't think there's any looking to the right or to the left. It's just Land Mavericks Society and continuing to bring more and more resources to the table to help people really get breakthroughs in this business, because it's an incredible business model.

And you do have to work hard. And it's not all sunshine and rainbows. There are days where you had five contracts out and then all of them fell through abruptly and it's just demoralizing. You got to have kind of a strong head on your shoulders to kind of navigate through some of the emotional ups and downs. But if you put your hand in the plow and you commit yourself, anybody can do this business.

I mean, I really want to emphasize that. And I don't mean to mic hog here. But this is worth saying, our logo at the Land Maverick Society is of a tortoise. And that's very intentional, because I didn't graduate college, I was college dropout. I was the first out of five sons on my dad's side to graduate high school. I pretty much perpetually failed. I don't have the same story as like the sexy Ajay Sharma’s out there (Ajay is one of my best friends, so I can get away with saying that) where, you know, within his first five deals, he made like $300,000.

I pretty much failed forward my entire 20s. My land business was a side hustle for a good five years or so, before we finally figured it out. I often tell people, me and my wife just held on long enough for it to finally figure itself out.

Now, if you were to ask me what I think is the number one key to success is just not quitting. And no matter how many times you get to moralize and you want to quit, you just start afresh the next day and take every ounce of feedback, like, how can I improve? How can I get better? When I was a managing broker for the state of Indiana, I took my license test for becoming a realtor five times, I had to go five days consecutively over and over and over again.

And I'm not special, I don't think that I'm the smartest or greatest or any of that. I just know that if you don't quit and God is on your side, it will work. If you dig in your heels and you have the result that I'm going to figure this thing out and you grab the tunnel vision, don't get distracted and really go all in. That is the key to success.

So if I can do this, you can do it too.

Seth: Earlier, just going back five or ten minutes, you had mentioned kind of these big three things that people need to figure out how to do well, which is running comps and due diligence, talk with motivated sellers, and then finding and managing land specialized agents.

I'm curious in your experience with that, which of those things do the most people have the most trouble with? And what is wrong there? What are the problems that people are encountering? What are they doing wrong that you help them figure out?

Jaren: Comps. 100%. Yeah, the hardest part of land is comps. Even conventional banks rarely will fund on land that's just vacant, unless it's signed into like a builder's loan, where somebody's going to put a structure on it. Even professional appraisers, like property appraisers really struggle to wrap their heads around land.

It's really hard. I'm not going to sugarcoat it, but the big key to solving it is having multiple data sources. So I've heard a lot of people talk about in the name of optimizing or streamlining their business system, just using a go-to source like Redfin or Prycd or Land.com, whatever. But that's not sufficient because different databases, different sources of data will conflict.

So if you just stick with one, you can skew your results and be overly optimistic or overly pessimistic. You need to have a suite of resources. Like in our business, we use PropStream, Redfin, Zillow, DataTree sometimes, and we'll use Land.id because people don't often know, but if you click around Land.id, oftentimes, if you see an adjacent vacant land parcel, it will oftentimes show what they bought it for and when it sold.

So you can actually get comps from Land.id and other sources, even in non-disclosure states. Like PropStream, you oftentimes can get MLS sold within a non-disclosure state. So having a wide spectrum of data and then learning how to factor in outliers and remove them from your analysis, that's crucial.

Seth: Yeah. The comp thing, I think it varies depending on the vacant lot and the market and how much data is out there. Some markets and some properties are pretty easy to find.

But I was on Prycd about a week ago looking at this beachfront property right on the coastline, literally on the beach. I ran that into the Prycd comping tool and usually what I've seen is that Prycd will overvalue a property, but in this case, it undervalued it by a lot.

And when I clicked on the comp report and looked at all the different parcels in it, it was basically just factored in the local area and then properties that recently sold or were for sale based on that size. But more than half of the comps it picked were not on the beach. They were like a mile inland, or just basically they didn't have that feature, which is a huge differentiating factor. It has everything to do with why that property would be worth more. But a handful of these comps were on the beach.

So it was just a matter of understanding, okay, those are not appropriate comps, kick them out. These other ones, they are, because they're like just down the beach. It's like right there, it's pretty much the same thing.

And sometimes it's just like, I call it common sense. But for somebody who's never done this, maybe it's not common sense. But just looking at stuff like that and being able to think critically and be like, nope, those don't belong on there. I'm not paying attention to those and sort of rerunning the comps based on that.

And of course, sometimes you'll get situations where there literally are no comps that are perfectly appropriate. But I think that's when I have the most trouble is when there just isn't a similar property like this. Like you can take other ones that are like half the same, but half very different.

So what do you do with that? How do you use that and then back into a reliable, trustworthy number? What would you do in that case if there were truly no comps out there? How do you make that leap and go out on a limb?

Jaren: I would do a lot on the front end. I would look at, you know, maybe even higher acreage than kind of the ideal acreage range for my subject property. I would look at maybe two years of sold data or three years of sold data. I would do quite a bit.

But if I really got to the end of the line, my catch all would be to just reach out to a land-specialized agent.

Seth: I think that's huge. If you can find one that you really trust. That is kind of an unfair advantage if you have somebody that truly understands that market and has done enough of those deals to be confident.

Jaren: And you have to be really good at vetting land-specialized agents because there's a big difference between an agent that has a land listing and a local land-specialized agent. But you really need to make sure you compare apples to apples as much as possible, because to your point on waterfront property, you can be in a particular subdivision where waterfront property goes for higher than an adjacent mile away, a subdivision on the water. There's a lot of nuance that goes into it.

Seth: So that whole thing on the land-specialized agents and finding one that's actually experienced and knows what they're talking about. So that's a big deal.

And I'm wondering, because I mean, there's a certain amount of information you can find about these people online before you reach out to them. But, you know, all the accolades in the world, all the listings in the world still is not a guarantee that they're going to be perfect or the best or anything like that. Sometimes you just have to start working with them to find out what they're really made of. It's kind of like hiring any person.

But I'm wondering when you think back to experiences you've had where you found a land-specialized agent and it didn't work out that well, it turned out like, oh, they're not really as good as I thought. Can you kind of like reverse engineer that and figure out, okay, why weren't they very good or what could I have seen if I had asked the right questions on the front end or what should I have been looking for to uncover this truth about them?

Like, is there any way to make your vetting process more reliable so that when you actually sign a listing agreement with them, you can be more confident that they're actually going to know what they're doing? Any thoughts on that?

Jaren: Yeah. So I would address it. And I feel like there's kind of two questions in there.

One is what, on the front end, before I reach out to a land-specialized agent, are certain key parameters and things that I look for that give me a high indicator that they would be a good agent.

And then what do I do once I have hired a new land-specialized agent and thought that they were good and they turned out not to be good. And what are those KPIs?

Am I understanding you correctly?

Seth: Yeah. And I think the things for vetting that agent, I mean, you wrote a whole blog post about it. I can link to it in the show notes just so people can kind of see what that whole thing looks like.

But like, when things don't turn out that well, like, what went wrong? Why weren't they as good as you thought? And is there anything that could have been done on the front end to be like, oh, that's going to be a problem. And here's why, or maybe there is nothing. I don't know. Maybe you just have to try it and see. What are your thoughts?

Jaren: I really try to look at data, right? Like data is the tell-all. So when I am approaching for canvassing for a new land-specialized agent, I want to look them up online. And I want to look at their current and past listings.

So different listing websites like Zillow, Redfin, Realtor.com, even there's a new one that is a fantastic source for agents called LandSearch, not LandWatch or Land.com but Land Search. That entire platform is kind of land-specialized. And it's not the cure-all because sometimes you have certain areas where people aren't really using it. And so you still have to kind of go through the trenches of randomly looking at different Zillow profiles online and all that.

But I want to find somebody who either has a land listing near my subject property and has good quality listings, so very thorough description, really high quality pictures. And then I'm going to look at them up and see are there at least, roughly, 30% land to other types of real estate? Are they specifically mentioning land-oriented things in their description, like I live on a farm or I have chickens and cows or they literally have a picture of them in camo with a buck that they just shot?

Like, you know, those are the things. It's stereotyping a little bit but there's a culture, there's a culture to land and its rules, conservative, nature, all that. So if you can look at those things and then, when you identify one, handle the talk track correctly. And you use certain industry-related terms like perc test or slope, like these types of just kind of run-of-the-mill, normal everyday conversations that we have. That's a foreign language to somebody who's not in our industry.

So intentionally bringing those things up, you can kind of gauge and vet them. You can also just point blank ask, “Have you ever worked with other investors like myself? You know, this is kind of my business model.”

And circling back to what people struggle with. I think the first is comps, second is talking on the phone. And it kind of hits both sellers and agents because you need to use a lot of finesse to do it correctly and to have it really be a favorable outcome in both cases, both with agents and with sellers. But yeah, so that's what I would look in on the front end.

Now if I had thought that they were great and I hired them, and I listed with them. Again, going back to data, how many views am I having on my Zillow listing? How many actual walkthroughs are we having? How much calls are we having?

And funny enough, the times that come to mind when I had a really dismal experience with an agent on the front end, they were selling me like so hard. They were like, oh yeah, I always treat my clients the absolute best and I'm going to make sure that you're number one priority and I'm going to do this and I'm going to do that.

And then after they got the listing, they just kind of threw it on the MLS and that was it. Whereas a good agent oftentimes is just a lot more detail-oriented.

Prime example. There's one deal that I was looking at in New Mexico recently where I sent an agent or property and she's like, “Oh, I know that lady. She actually tried to sell her property for double what she's selling it to you for. And just so you know, no houses can be developed on that street.” There's some kind of weird thing going on with the zoning that I would have never known about ever without talking to the agent.

So, they're just in their emails that they're sending back to me. It's so thorough, with really not only a regurgitation of the comps that's on the MLS, but like, “Hey, here are the comps. I want to use this one and this one because of XYZ, but I think these ones are really solid because of ABC.”

Those types of things are invaluable. And one story that comes to mind with my specialized agent didn't end up working out. They sold me a… it was in Pueblo County, Colorado and they seem super awesome. We connected on a bunch of stuff and after about three months, I'm like, why haven't we sold this property? This property is great. It's in a great area.

And after pressing the agent, I came to find out the guy didn't have MLS access to Pueblo County. He had access to an adjacent county's MLS. And so he just was like fronting the whole time, trying to get this listing. And I was like, what are you doing? So I promptly let him go.

And oftentimes you have a six-month listing agreement. And technically, you have to navigate those waters carefully, but you know, generally, if you ask an agent, “Hey, I'd really like to just take this off the market,” and kind of sign a cancellation, they're going to just honor it. Technically they could give you some pushback, but I have never had an agent do that, but all I did with that property, I found a land specialization in the right county that had MLS access and we sold it in a month.

Seth: So you partner with people on deals. Is that right? How does that work? Do you fund deals for people or do you lou buy it together? What does this partnership look like?

Jaren: Yeah. So for our active members. So if you're an active paid member of the Land Maverick Society, we will fund all of your deals if you want us to. Pretty much the parameters are 15,000 acquisition or higher with a list set of multiple generally. So if we buy it at 15, then list at 30, or by 30 listed at 60 and so on.

The reason why we don't open up the flood gates to the industry at large, all of our members have been trained on how to identify at least on the high level, bare bones, basic approach of what we call a deal versus just something that's going to be a waste of time. Like people who submit deals to underwriting for funding. None of them are covered in wetlands landlocked in at a, you know, 95-degree slope. They already know a little bit.

So it's not going to be a bottleneck on our time where we're just constantly running through the hamster wheel of underwriting a bunch of deals that are not viable deals.

They also are going to be trained on how to handle the conversations a lot better. And we always make it so that there are three things required to submit a deal to underwriting: a signed copy of the signed purchase agreement, an agent’s opinion of value and the agent's phone number, and then a completed thorough due diligence questionnaire that walks them through how to reach out to the county and ask a bunch of due diligence questions related to setbacks and per ctest and a bunch of stuff. And so they do a lot of the groundwork for us on the underwriting side.

And I don't make it where it's a forced thing where people have to use us for funding. But for a lot of beginners, it's kind of a security blanket in a lot of ways because they feel like, hey, if you know, Jaren and Asiya. And really, my wife is the senior underwriter. She makes the call at the end of the day. If they think it's a deal, then it's for sure a deal.

We generally buy at 50 cents on the dollar, but if it goes up to 250,000 acquisition or higher, we normally default to 60/40 split in our favor between 15,000 and 250. It's a 50/50 split generally. But we're starting to loosen up our parameters more. It's kind of case-by-case. Right now we haven't land exactly in a nice box with a bow on top how this looks, but we are trying to fund on thinner margins. If our member will put up some of the capital themselves, or if it is thinner margins, a higher split in our favor.

So I'm the advocate for the members. So I go to this Tortoise Capital Group, is what it's called, and it's an entire funding company solely designed and created to support our members and funding our members’ deals. Uh, but I always go to bat and be like, hey guys, we should never deny anybody ever. We should always just counter and say, “We would approve you based on these conditions.”

I cannot tell you how many 20,000-, 30,000-, 50,000-dollar spreads we've walked away from because it's not a buy at 50 cents on the dollar. When you buy a property at a hundred thousand and you list that 135, maybe sell 120, that's $20,000. That just got left on the table.

It's hard to navigate the waters there because to some of your points earlier that you brought up, Seth, like you do need to have a certain margin of error to make sure that if you're wrong and the agent's wrong and everything is wrong, that you're not going to lose your shirt. Even if you lose a little bit of money, you don't want to lose more than like a thousand bucks because it's not fun. It's not fun to lose more.

Seth: Yeah, I know. It's interesting though; like you mentioned, I don't know if you said security blanket or something like that, it's nicer to have a funder in the deal or somebody to look over your shoulder and say I believe in this deal so much that I'll put my money into it.

I would love to have that even now. There are certain deals that are just like in my mind, they just seem huge. And I just don't want to put my money on it. What if I end up being wrong? Even if I'm sure about it's just helpful to have somebody else review it and not just say, yeah, that looks good, but say, that looks so good, I'll invest my money into that thing. And then you don't have to put your money at risk at all. Like, that's a huge benefit.

I think some people miss that when they think about working with funders, they just look at the cost of, man, my cost of funds is so high because I’ve given up half the profit. And to that, I say, first of all, your cost of funds is zero because you're not putting any funds into the deal, but also think of the security you get from that. You don't have to put your own money at risk. If this thing blows up and goes horribly wrong, it's not your money. It’s really great to get somebody else with the means to invest in that kind of thing.

And especially somebody who's not just a funder, but also like a land investor. And they can really understand, or you can understand, that they believe in it just as much as you do. That's a big deal.

Jaren: I agree. And at least in our case, we also carry our weight because once you get a deal approved for funding, we handle all the disposition. So we are working with the agent. We are making sure that things are moving, you know, putting pressure on the agent if we need to. We also oftentimes will cover the cost of due diligence. It's kind of case-by-case, but oftentimes we'll cover the cost of a survey, or we'll cover the cost of per test. Sometimes kind of our default is to have the member put up the money for a perc test. And then, if it’s approved, we will reimburse them on the acquisition side, and then reimburse the company on the disposition side before we disburse proceeds.

So, it's pretty phenomenal to have $0 into a deal and have no real risk, and then be able to get 50% of the upside, especially when you're not doing anything on the dispo side.

Seth: So Jaren, I know some people out there may be listening to this and maybe they like me where I just didn't have the money in the beginning to hire a coach. The money just wasn't there. I had to figure it out on my own. Or maybe they're going to hire a coach at some point, but not now, or maybe there's another coach that they're looking at.

Just curious about your thoughts being somebody who's a coach or fractional CEO or whatever we want to call what you're doing, do you have any recommendations? Like, if somebody doesn't work with you, what do you suggest they look for in a good coach? What would be some green flags, some red flags? What should they be asking that coach before they get any further with them?

Jaren: But before I answer that question, I want to address a couple of things you baked into kind of your explanation there.

Most people should not be getting into paying a coach or a course or what have you until they have a certain baseline of financial setup. They're not the hard way, so I definitely drank the Kool-Aid on like just hustle through it and fake it till you make it and like get on credit cards and la la la. That's a bunch of nonsense.

Seth: How much cash do you think they should have? I know it's actually a good point, and I'm glad you brought that up. Because the land world has changed a whole lot since when I got into it. You do kind of need a little bit more money now, I think, than you used to.

So what do you think is a baseline? Have at least this much? Any thoughts?

Jaren: Yeah, I think you should at least have 10,000 to 20,000.

I think if you really want to strip it down to the absolute minimum needed to get a deal, if you have hustle, you can get for a hundred bucks, you can go to DealMachine. And there's a lot of errors and a lot of things, at least at the recording of this video, with DealMachine as it pertains to land.

But if you use land that has a full mailing address, like it can work and $99 a month gets you unlimited skip tracing, unlimited contacts, and you can use your cell phone and you can just start calling a bunch of people. And you can probably figure it out reading some blog posts at REtipster and watching the YouTube videos at REtipster. So you can bootstrap your way through it, but that should be a bootstrap. That should be a side hustle.

And you should be making some real money from something, even if it's a job you hate, because, but I mean, I say that 'cause I'm in a different vantage point. I have kids and I have a family, and it is my moral responsibility to make sure that there's food on the table.

But if you're a young guy, in college or freshly out of college, sure, if you can take the risk, go for it. You can get into double closing. You can get into reaching out to different funders like Drew Haney with Rooster Capital. You can figure out a path forward with very little money.

But if you're really wanting to take this thing seriously and build an infrastructure where you at least have one to two deals a month to four deals a month, you're probably looking at at least 20,000 and then needing to rely on a funder to be able to make that happen.

Seth: And when you say that, are you making the assumption that they're sending direct mail or using a particular marketing medium, like offering 50% on the dollar? Because I know a lot of these assumptions have a huge impact on how much you do end up needing.

Jaren: I was kind of doing a catchall. You know, I know a lot of people just start with direct mail. I do think all things being equal, direct mail produces the highest qualified leads. So they're easier generally. I mean, you have to do it right.

But if you're in a market that can facilitate blind offers, like Florida, it can be pretty shimmy. Florida is very high on the competition side right now. So maybe that's not the best route to go. But if you can make that work, you only boil down to three responses: yes, no, or let's negotiate. So it's pretty streamlined there.

But you take something like texting, cold calling, or ringless voicemails, there's a lot more qualifying of the leads that you have to do on your side before. Like I look at texting, that's our predominant medium of marketing right now. We kind of categorize all responses as Phase One, total responses; Phase Two, prospects; and then Phase Three, leads. And leads are those that have, in some form or fashion, said that they'll be willing to sell at a discount.

So there's a lot of activity and a lot of kind of reading in between the lines and really trying

to vet whether this response is a prospect and then if this prospect is an actual lead. And that takes a lot more kind of skill set takes a trained eye, trained ear, and what have you. But I do think direct mail is getting more and more expensive. So in my model, I kind of prefer to use it as kind of a sniper instead of like a shotgun; I'd rather shotgun on something cheaper like texting.

But there's pros and cons, we'd really have to get into the nuances of everybody's unique circumstances and stuff to really land on what the right channel would be. But again, you can do it for like 100 bucks a month because you had just an cell phone and Google Sheets, you know, and you could just be going hard.

I think you can do that to get to your first deal but to make it into a business, you know, that it has reoccurring revenue coming in every month and all that, I think it's a little bit more of a bigger lift. And so I think you're safer to have at least 20,000, you know, 15,000 to 20,000. I think you can do it with 10, especially if you go after cheaper properties that you might sell on terms or what have you.

But I think that you're going to be better off coming in around 15 to 20.

Seth: And just a few random things I'll mention just to kind of support this conversation we're having.

So we've got a blog post that I updated earlier this year, but it's called “Land Investing: How Much Will It Really Cost You?” And it gets into a lot of this nuance of how much should you have depending on what your approach is and what things you decide to spend money on upfront versus not, lots of stuff to talk about there.

It's a huge blog post because there's a lot of things to clarify. But I'll put that on the show notes at retipster.com/195 you find a link to that.

Also, if you are somebody who's into direct mail during the month of October 2024 only, ITI Direct Mail, they're already the cheapest direct mail outfit out there. But I was able to negotiate even cheaper pricing with them. Again, just for this month, if you want to check it out retipster.com/itipromo and I'll put that link in the show notes as well. Again, retipster.com/195.

Any notable member success stories come to mind when you think about the people who have been through the Land Maverick Society to date?

Jaren: Yeah, you know, this is the stuff that really gets me up in the morning and to face another day, especially we all go through ups and downs. And the land business is not a get out of jail free card. Like you have your days where you're high and you have your days where you're low.

But for me, the thing that really gives me fuel to keep going and to be on top of the world, like I would much rather have one of our members get breakthrough than we just get another deal. Because I know how to do it. I know how to get another deal. And it's cool, it's fun. But I'm not

like money motivated that way. I'm very much like, I think at my core, I'm a teacher, because I just like, I cannot tell you how excited I get.

So a couple of stories that come to mind. I'll change up people's names, protect the privacy, whatever. But there was a particular gentleman that I have been working with for quite some time. And when he first got started, he really struggled with computers. He might listen to this at some point. So I won't be very sensitive to this.

But, you know, he really struggled, even like copying and pasting, using command-V or command-C on his keyboard was something that he was just still having to figure out. I had to spend the first, probably month and a half, two months just teaching them computer skills because we literally couldn't do anything because he couldn't navigate Pebble or he couldn't navigate setting up direct mail, all that stuff.

Most coaches wouldn't do that. Most coaches are you got to have a minimum of like five deals under your belt or have a certain level of experience. And if they realized that it was going to be that much of a lift, they would have just said, “Hey, here's your money back. Sorry, you're not a good fit.”

But no, I just don't do it that way. And I know more than anybody else because I live with myself every day all day that if I can do this business, anybody can. And so I finally got to a point where I made a whole mini-course, be like, watch all these random YouTube videos that I've put together for you so that you can just learn some basic computer skills. And he went through them all and he learned them all.

And we went through a handful of different direct mail campaigns. And then, you know, trying some other stuff. And the talk, the way that he handled the calls of the sellers were, it was needed a lot of work and needed a lot of love. And we just kept working at it, kept working at it. And eventually they clicked and he ended up getting that deal in Sevier County, Tennessee, that's on the market right now.

I think we're in our fourth month or so, but when I listened to his call reviews, because, you know, I have a whole mechanism where our members can submit comp reviews and call reviews for me to say, "Yeah, you did it good," or just provide feedback or whatever. And his calls are totally different. Like he's like a totally different animal. And it's just something that brings tears to your eyes if I don't watch myself right here. It's so amazing.

And there's been other people. There was a lady that I was introduced to by Jessey Kwong over at REI Pebble who had given her entire life savings to some guru at what I call the enemy camp. I'll spare the names, but, you know, she came to me literally crying, saying, "I've spent $30,000. I have no money. This is my entire life savings. Will you help me?"

I had to put her on payment and said, "We'll do something." And by the time we stopped working together, she had seven deals under contract and had worked out some niche strategy about figuring out how to target Canadian owners because she was based in Canada that had property in the state. So she had that point of connection and was off to the races.

And I mean, over and over again, there's so many times where oftentimes there's some kind of resistance or some kind of hazing process when you first get started. Like it can take people several months to get to their first deal, but then their second comes in a day. Like there's something psychologically that people have to go through in order to facilitate this business.

But then when it clicks, it clicks and it's amazing. I mean, that's just the tip of the iceberg. But man, I've seen members, you know, on 2,000 units of direct mail, there was a couple, like not a couple, but they were business partners, two ladies out of Israel and out of 2,000 units of mail, they got a deal that had over a hundred thousand dollars in deal spread. And it sold in like a month and a half.

And over and over again, man, there's so many stories. I do a horrible job of collecting testimonies. I'm trying to really aggressively fix that because even if it's just for me to sit around when I'm old and gray with my boys, be like, let's listen to all these. It just lights me up like nothing else.

Seth: Yeah, that's really interesting, man. It's just funny how these people come from a position of great difficulty or challenge. You know, you've got people who don't know how to use a computer or people who have lost their life savings through some other means, people living outside of the country, things where like the odds are kind of stacked against them in some way. But they figure it out and do it well in a big way that changes their life.

At the same time, you've got people who don't have any of those challenges going against them, just kind of the usual hard things. And they give up almost instantly or they at the first little sign of resistance and they're done.

It's just interesting, how that whatever is making those people with the challenges succeed, there's clearly some difference in perspective or it's worth it to figure this out. It just kind of goes to show like the opportunity is there. That doesn't mean it's going to be an easy road, but people who are willing to go through those, go through the wringer, they're probably going to get there. Just a matter of whether they stick with it or not.

Jaren: Yeah. I'm telling you the tortoise always wins the race. I read the book. I got at least that one. I got that life lesson down pat. I'm the tortoise, man. And I think, in a lot of ways, we’re a tribe of tortoises. I don't know if I’m like the community head or something that attracts certain types of personality that are similar to mine.

There are other fancier communities like REI Optimize, Callan, she has all the AI stuff and leading technology stuff, but there's something about the grit of I don't care what it takes. I'm going to make this work. And then having me and our team to really support them and that, it gets them over the hump as long as they don't throw in the towel.

Because I mean, that was me. That was me having to figure it out in the trenches, you know? And I did eventually, cause I didn't quit. So, yeah, man.

Seth: That's awesome. Well, Jaren, thanks for spending some time with me. It's great to hear the update on what you've been up to. Great to hear your thoughts on the market and all the things we've talked about.

If people want to connect with you or find out more about Land Mavericks, is it landmavericks.com or any other place that you go and check it out?

Jaren: Actually, give me one second. I have a special offer for everybody listening to this podcast here.

So if you text the phrase, “REtipster Maverick,” so two words.

Seth: Is there a space between those?

Jaren: REtipster space maverick, to the number 219-419-7797. Again, that's REtipster space maverick to 219-419-7797, I will give you a free 30-minute coaching call. You can talk about what your objectives are. Of course, we'll see if maybe there's in a soft pitch way, I guess, if there's an opportunity for us to possibly work together. Got to make sure it's a mutual fit both ways, both for me and for you.

But even beyond that, if you just have some things that you're trying to navigate through or need some advice, a free 30-minute coaching call with yours truly.

Seth: Again, that's REtipster (not REItipster) space maverick, MAVERICK, to 219-419-7797. Sounds awesome, man. I appreciate you sharing that. Thanks again for being here.

And if anybody wants to connect with Jaren, you know how to do that now.

Thanks again everybody for listening. Again, if you want to see the show notes for this episode, it's retipster.com/195. That's where you can find links to everything we talked about here and Jaren.

Thanks again, man.

Jaren: Hey man, it was an honor and a true privilege. Again, Seth, as I said in the beginning of this interview, I owe you a lot. I owe REtipster a lot. And really, to the degree that we can continue to align whatever we're doing, man, I just hope you know I got nothing but mad love for you. And I'm down to do deals. I'm down to hang out. Just know you got a friend in me, man.

Seth: Awesome. Appreciate that so much. Thanks, Jaren. See you, everybody.