Seth: Hey everybody, how's it going? This is Seth Williams. You're listening to the REtipster podcast. This is episode 201.

Today I'm talking with a new friend I met earlier this year at a conference. His name is Jon Newth. At this conference, he walked up to me to say “thank you” because apparently I had played some small role in helping him discover and figure out how to make it work in the land investing business. He went through the Land Investing Masterclass in late 2021.

Jon was just telling me about his land business and what it has turned into. As he was talking, I kept thinking, "Wow, this guy isn't messing around. He's really done something pretty amazing here." Everything he told me made me think, "I've got to get this guy on the podcast." There's a lot of gold here.

As usual, I'm not sure exactly what's going to come out of this, but I'm fairly confident there's going to be a lot of good stuff because Jon has nothing to sell you. He's got no reason to lie to you. He's just a normal guy who has done pretty extraordinary things. In my experience, these are some of the best people to learn from because we can hopefully get to the bottom of how he's been able to do what he's done.

So I asked him and he agreed to do this. So, Jon, welcome to the show. How are you doing?

Jon: Seth, hey, I'm doing great, man. Thanks for having me on. Like most of your intros, you made it sound like I wear a cape.

Seth: Pretty much.

Jon: But yeah, I think it was an understatement to say that you played some small role in what I was doing or in my life. It was pretty huge. It was my gateway to land. So I consider it huge. Happy to be here.

Seth: That's awesome, man. Has anybody ever told you you look like…

Jon: Topher Grace?

Seth: Yes.

Jon: I'm surprised you said that with the mustache because usually people were telling me for a long time when I was working in retail. I was maybe 18 to 20, 21 or so, because "That '70s Show" wasn't that old. People started saying, "Hey, you look like Eric Foreman." I got it daily. That was his character in "That '70s Show."

Then as he went on to do other things, people started telling me, as I got older, "You look a lot like Topher Grace." I actually didn't know his real name, so I was like, "Oh really? Who's this Topher Grace guy?" Finally, I looked him up one day, and sure enough, the doppelganger had followed me.

Seth: Well, actually, I didn't see this at all when we met in person. This never even occurred to me. Just looking at you now through the screen, that's when I'm seeing it. I don’t know, maybe I was looking at you from a wrong angle or something.

Jon: I've been getting it more again over the last few years. I think it's because he was in "BlacKkKlansman" and he had a mustache, so it resurfaced again.

Seth: Is that like a good thing? Do you ever use that to your advantage or manipulate people in any way?

Jon: A friend of mine had mentioned I look like him, and when I lived down in LA, he said, "We've got to go down to Third Street in Santa Monica and you wear sunglasses and we'll have people taking pictures with you and see if we could fool people into thinking that Topher Grace is here." We never did it, but no, I don't mind. He's a decent-looking guy, so I'll take it.

Seth: Awesome, man. Cool. Well, I'm glad I'm not the only one.

Why don't we start this conversation the way we normally do when I'm talking to land investors? I think you kind of mentioned REtipster was the gateway, but let's talk more about that. How did you first discover this? Did you find a YouTube video or blog post or podcast episode? How did this all start for you?

Jon: Yeah, that's a great question. It started when I was looking for land locally here in the greater Seattle area where I live. Some guys at work had told me that they had bought vacant land early in their career and had held onto it and paid it off while they could afford the land payments without a house, and had planned to build in retirement or as they got close to retirement, sort of build their dream home, custom home.

Coming from LA and moving up to where we are—we're northeast of Seattle by about 45 minutes, so coming from La proper to the suburbs of Seattle in western Washington—this whole idea of owning acreage was completely new to me. Never would I have tried to even own an acre down in LA unless I wanted to unload a couple million bucks, which I didn't have. The idea of snagging five acres for a couple hundred thousand was really appealing to me.

I started looking around at land, and, as I do with a lot of things—my wife will tell you—I kind of jump in two feet forward and jump on the bandwagon. So I got kind of nerdy about land and I was looking at all these land listings and watching land clearing videos late at night. I noticed that in all the listings, they said things like "buyer to do their own due diligence." That was scary because I didn't know anything about how to qualify land. Now there's this new thing called due diligence I had to figure out.

So I Googled "what is due diligence for vacant land?" I don't remember if yours was one of the first links that came up or if I went down the YouTube algorithm, but somehow I ended up on an REtipster video where you were talking about how to do due diligence on vacant land. It was great—super clear, right down to the point. I was like, "Man, this guy is really helpful with the due diligence part of this." Then it didn't take me long into the video to realize that you were actually doing this on properties you're investing in and flipping. You're doing this all the time on all kinds of parcels.

Immediately I was interested because I had dabbled with other side gigs. I did some user experience design that kind of fizzled out because the margins were thin and it's just a huge lift to try to get that started, let alone to get it to scale. I had dabbled with different things and I knew that I always wanted to create something of my own. I just didn't really know what it was. I was just immediately turned on to this idea of land flipping.

Obviously, I went to your channel, found the podcast, started binging it. I remember pretty vividly, I hate running—I just absolutely hate running—but I do it for my health. I was on the treadmill and I ended up running for over an hour because I was listening to your episodes on double speed. The amount of information that was in there and learning about an industry that I didn't even know existed... I had never heard of people wholesaling vacant land. I had never even dabbled in real estate, so I didn't know much about real estate anyway.

I remember running and running and just crushing two or three episodes and then realizing that I was pretty hooked. About six, eight months had gone by and we had our first kid, our first son in 2021 in July. I had some paternity leave from the state. I was going to be off—I have a W-2, I'm a firefighter paramedic. That's what I do full time. I wasn't going to go to work for six weeks, so I was just going to be home helping the wife with the house and the baby. I decided, "Hey, I'm going to take Seth's course. I'm just going to give this a shot. What better time to do it?"

That was how I got into it. And we can go more into sort of my first attempt and my second attempt, which I'm in now, but yeah that's how I got turned on to land.

Seth: Is it weird being on this podcast now? What if there's some other Jon out there who's listening to this right now as he runs on the treadmill, almost about to die, and he's listening to you? Is it weird being on the other side of this?

Jon: It is weird. Yeah, it's weird. And I'd be lying if I said I wasn't nervous about it. When I think of land, I think REtipster. That's just how it is for me. That was the primacy effect. This was how I found land. It is weird in a way because I feel like when I was binging those episodes, they were actually old episodes. I tend to start with podcasts at the beginning, just because as they mature, they kind of get beyond the beginner a little bit.

So I started in the beginning… when did you start? 2016 or 2017?

Seth: The podcast started in… I want to say 2018 something. Yeah, something like that.

Jon: Yeah, they released a couple years old. But in the beginning, you had all these people that were coming on. This was when land was like, nobody was doing it, right? A handful of people. You had people coming on that were hand-addressing envelopes and putting the stamps on themselves and sending the letters out. They were sending 200 letters and getting five deals or whatever—numbers that are a little unheard of now.

Yeah, it's weird because that's what I got hooked on—the success stories from just the average person, the average Joe, who decided to give it a shot, ended up quitting their W-2 because it was just that good. Something that changed their life.

Now it's a little weird coming on here because I feel like most of the episodes now are talking about how to get AI to clone themselves, make yourself your own CEO, and not have to work, and all these crazy strategies out there—subdivides, entitlements and all this. It’s kinda trippy because I feel like we don't really hear from the regular person who's just flipping land and changing their life anymore.

Seth: Yeah, I know. That's why it's so important that you're here. You can tell us all about it.

So did you start in 2021? Is that when you first gave this a shot? What did your first year look like and how did things, I guess, what did you learn or how did things start to morph over the years that you've been into this?

Jon: Yeah, that's a loaded question. I started in 2021, which was a great time to flip land. Land was going bananas and everybody wanted to buy it. People were still willing to sell it pretty cheap from what I understand. I did your course, went through everything, used the templates. I downloaded the lists, did the market selection. I sent out some postcards.

I got a handful of calls from people. Most of them were trying to sell me their house, so I must've made a mistake in pulling my data because I'd say like a third of the calls, maybe more, were people that wanted to sell their house. Pretty sure I mailed vacant land but I must have made a mistake.

Seth: What did you do on those houses? Were you just throwing them out because you didn't want them?

Jon: I just threw them out. Yeah, I wasn't up to taking on a house. I got calls from leads and talked to them, but I was just calling them back, making an offer and got no deals.

In hindsight, I learned a lot about things that I needed to process. I needed a strategy. I needed better market selection. I needed to have some target clients. I was sort of just doing this shotgun approach and thought I could maybe wing it.

In hindsight, I think if I just kept mailing, I probably would have gotten deals because people were getting deals. But I made the rookie mistake of just stopping. So I did one mailer it didn't work didn't turn to any deals and so I just I stopped.

Seth: Do you remember how big that mailer was? Like how many did you send out?

Jon: I think it was 2,500. It wasn't very big. I was up and down the West Coast, which is something I've learned I'm probably not ever going to do again unless I have some sort of niche strategy. I put it on the back burner and I definitely wasn't giving up on land. I was still hooked. I was just disappointed that I didn't get any deals.

At the time, I had just started working for the fire department. It was my first real career, big boy job. It was more money than I'd ever made in the past. We were so short-staffed that I mean, you could work, especially for medics, you could work any day that you wanted. And 24 hours of overtime for working a day adds up pretty quick, especially when you're 30 or 31 and you're thinking, "Oh man, I'm so rich, I'm creating my own wealth at my W-2," which was a lie and a misconception.

I just got comfortable. I felt like we were doing OK financially and I wanted to do land, but I just sort of put it on the back burner for about two years. Kept listening a lot. I'd go in phases, back and forth. I'd stop listening and I'd get back on it and get excited about it again.

About two years went by. Finally, I decided it was time to try it again. I wanted to try it again. Actually, I remember I was outside mowing the lawn and I just wanted to listen to something about land. So I went to REtipster and I was looking through episodes and there was one that I had already listened to—you had Travis King on there. It showed as already played, and I thought something about this... I remember I liked this episode. I didn't remember much about it, so I put it on.

He went through his whole strategy, the land boss strategy, and it just really resonated with me as I started to remember a lot of the things he was saying. I remembered why I had liked the episode. He mentioned that he offered coaching. I know that you had something on your site directing people to him for coaching.

We had some money saved up—I think we had $45,000 sitting in a savings account from just being forced to work a lot, even when I didn't want to. We keep our expenses low—we don't live very lavishly. I was thinking, "I've got the money. I tried this once without any guidance and didn't really know what I was doing. I'm just going to jump in with both feet. I'm going to go for coaching."

So I reached out to him. He hooked me up with one of his coaches and we wrote the check. That was just about a year ago. I think that was in July, but we didn't really start until we sent mail at the beginning of September last year.

That was how I got into it the second time.

Seth: And when you started the second time, what did you do differently? I assume things started working better then. What were the specific differences or what happened that made this start to work better that didn't happen the first time?

Jon: Having a coach is invaluable, as long as you have a good coach. I was blessed with a great coach and we're pretty good friends now. He's actually also a firefighter, so we've got a lot in common. We met up in Colorado at the Supercars event where I met you. We're working on some other side projects together now. If you have a good coach, it's invaluable.

I think the biggest thing was from day one, he sat me down and asked me to write down my goals, which is something I hadn't done before. It was just sort of like, "Let's see what we can make in land." He asked me to write down my goals financially, time frame, why I had those goals. Then we really just built a very simple process around that.

I know I don't expect to blow anyone away or knock them back out of their chair by saying that, but it's really easy to step over those simple foundational steps and think that you're just going to wing it. I mean, if I kept mailing, I probably would have got deals, but it's just gone infinitely better after setting up a game plan and a process built around our goals from day one. He helped me set up everything from the mapping tools, the phone system, our marketing and mailers, his advice on the mailers, the type of letter, all that. Really just everything.

Moving forward, it was like having the bumpers on. I already had proof of concept of this. Even though I had failed, I just kind of owned that myself. I knew that it was me because I had heard countless people come on your show and other shows talking about how they had found success. I knew that first time the issue was me—it was operator error.

I kind of just went forward as if I already had my own proof of concept because I had heard it from so many people. But having that and then having a coach, it was like having the bumpers on. Somebody was looking over my shoulder and I was running things by him, and we're checking in every two weeks.

The amount I paid in coaching—we 10x'd that investment in the first eight months. But he also not only helped me make a lot more money, he probably saved me from some expensive mistakes or errors of omission, if you will.

So that was really the biggest difference, that somebody who knew what they were doing and and guiding me through the process and making sure that I wasn't leaving out vital steps that I might have sort of underestimated and just pushed to the side.

Seth: Yeah, it's interesting. How much of that do you think is like having specific instructions like "do this, Jon, not that," and how much of it was just knowing, "Okay, I got to get on a call with Travis on this date and this time, and he's going to ask me how I'm doing, and I don't want to say that I'm doing nothing. I need to have some accountability here."

Like how much of it is just the accountability motivation versus now I actually know specifically what to do differently based on my situation and my market and my goals and all this stuff?

Jon: Yeah, that's a great question. Just to be clear, Travis connected me with a coach that he's got in his community. So I wasn't actually coaching one-on-one with Travis. Though I tried—he was booked.

Seth: Who was that you were getting coached by?

Jon: Buck Rizvi.

To answer your question, a big part of it was accountability. That was actually a big driving force for me—I was going to write a fairly large check for six months of coaching, which was high-value stuff. Another part of me just wanted to create that accountability because I knew I had six months to get my butt in gear and get these things done. And I would do it because I wrote the check. I wouldn't do what I did the first time, which is send a mailer, get a little bit demotivated and then see something else to do and just let myself get distracted.

So yeah, a big part of it was that yeah not wanting to get on a call and and look like I was wasting anyone's time.

Seth: Yeah. How many deals are you doing in a typical year? What sizes are these deals? What does your business look like today?

Jon: Right now, I think I just had to pull everything up to reorient myself to the deals, but I've got them here. We're at eight deals for the year. This year. Now, it's kind of funny, because as anyone knows, when you start in land, you've got like six months of just sending mail and spending money, which is really uncomfortable, before you have even enough time for the land flipping lifestyle cycle to occur. I mean, you've got to go through the mailers waiting for them to call you back, two months of closing, three months listed, another month to close.

So that September to December last year was me just spending money and sending mail and making my wife really, really nervous to the point that she asked me, "When do we quit? When do we decide this doesn't work?"

But this year, starting from January, which is where my books are tracking, we're at eight deals. So we're averaging one a month. And that's going to sound really low to a lot of people, but it's worked great for us. Travis's approach is very focused on higher value properties. So market value of $40,000 or $50,000 minimum and using Realtors, title attorneys, soil guys—like paying for those jobs to get done. When you have a larger spread, you can certainly delegate a lot of that work and not have to do it yourself.

Yeah, we're at eight deals. And the numbers are all over the place. Actually, in my spreadsheet here, I got some averages and totals. We can go into detail on some deals that I think are are fun learning for use cases. It looks like the average contracted purchase price is $41,000 and some change. And average sale price is $105,000, $106,000.

Seth: Wow. And you're doing one of these a month, right? Kind of like clockwork?

Jon: I wouldn't say clockwork. I had this "when it rains, it pours" sort of experience this year. We slowly acquired them over the first several months of the year. And then when we listed them, the listings happened over like a month period and they all sold immediately. Like when I met you, I was closing on like five listings that weekend, which is kind of weird. It's just they all happened to close around the same time.

And so then that created like two months where I didn't have any deals closing. And then we're about to close one on September 6th, and I haven't closed one since when I met you—was it end of May or end of June?

Seth: End of June.

Jon: Yeah, it's kind of wonky with the timing. We just recently set up Profit First with our CFO. He had to sort of address that because we don't have any sort of monthly deal that we can count on. We're averaging one a month for the year and we've got a few in the pipeline. I know fall gets a little slow, but we're hoping to keep it at one a month. More would be great, if we do less than that, that's okay. We're doing pretty okay for the year.

Seth: Is that like 60-ish grand or more per deal? I forget what the high number was you said you sold it for.

Jon: Yeah, if you round up a hundred bucks, it's $106,000 and we're buying for $41,000. And we're using realtors and all that, so we're losing anywhere from 6% to 10% on that. But here, I mean, net profit per deal—and this number comes from the HUD payout—if we average it, it's $52,500 per deal is what we're actually netting per deal.

Seth: Let's just do some math here. So that's $600,000 bucks a year, not including your…

Jon: Yeah.

Seth: That's nuts, man. That's awesome.

Jon: When you say it like that... yeah.

Seth: I mean, that's an incredible income to be doing part-time. It is interesting. I think sometimes people like to throw around numbers, almost like selectively picking numbers to make themselves sound really cool. Like "I do thousands of deals"—nevermind the fact that they each make me like 500 bucks a piece, but I did thousands of deals. Whereas you can say, "No, I don't do that many deals, but I've got a really good income from this."

To me, that's the beauty of the land business. The fact that you don't have to do that many deals and you can still make an awesome income from that. Congrats, man. My hat's off to you. That's a great job.

Jon: No, thank you. I appreciate it. And you know, it's really true what you just said. I was a bit intimidated getting into this because I thought, "Man, this is going to be a big undertaking. I got to juggle all these deals." And one of the things I loved about Travis's approach was "what if you just did less deals with a higher spread?" And it sounds like, "Oh, that's too simple. Everybody would do that."

But I think the reality is—and this is another topic we can talk about if you want—there are some soft skills involved in this business that if you don't have them, you're not gonna be able to take down some of these bigger deals. I'm in a mastermind with another guy who I've become good buddies with, and in Denver, we were looking at our businesses and comparing things. He was sitting right at the same sort of profit before taxes as I was at the time, and I had done at that time, I think, deal number six had closed when I was up there and he was on like 46 or 47.

He's done way more transactions. He's self-listing. I don't know if he's self-closing, but it sounds like—I mean, I get a headache thinking about that, but he came from e-commerce and he's doing this full time and he seems to love it. He's really good at it. That fits his lifestyle and he's crushing it. Every time we get on the mastermind with that group, a lot of times people ask me what's new and I say, "Well, I'm still working the same deals. They're progressing slowly." And he's like, "Oh, we closed 12 last month."

So it's like, you're right. You can look at the numbers and get intimidated and feel like you should be doing more deals or you should be making more per deal. But the reality is you can tailor this to what works for your life. He and I have talked and I told him, "Hey Mike, you gotta show me how to do these smaller deals, man, because if I can add that to my business next year, it's a lot of money I'm leaving on the table."

But at the same time, if it didn't work for us, we don't have to do that. We started—we got into this and I told my coach, he said, "What do you want to do in the first year?" and I said, "Man, if I could just replace my overtime with land money, that would be a huge win. I don't have to go to work an extra two or three days a month, be away from my family."

And he said, "Well, what do you want to make? Like what would really, really cover that overtime? And then some?" I said, "I don't know, 50 grand." And I think he kind of wanted to laugh at me because I didn't know getting into land. I didn't know what I could do. And so we've well surpassed that and it's working for us.

So you can create the model that works for you. And I guess coming on here as somebody who's not doing anything really mind-blowing, it's not cutting-edge or ahead of the curve at all. I hope that anyone who's thinking about getting into land or is new into land can just sort of take away the message and the lesson that land is still great. You hear a lot of people say, "Oh, it's not what it used to be. It's way more competitive. The deal flow is lower. You got to do all these new things to get deals."

My business is so simple, it's laughable. I mean, I shouldn't be admitting this, but I don't even track my KPIs, partly because I don't have time. I'm just too busy. My thing is if it's not broke, I'm not going to try to fix it or improve it just yet. I had some other things that took priority getting my finances in order with a CFO and a CPA and things like that.

I'm not saying don't track your KPIs—I'm simply saying I was so busy and still wanted to do land that this is what I could do. I could send mail, I could talk to sellers on the phone and apply what soft skills I had gained from I think 10 years on an ambulance, talking to people and solving their problems, to closing some land deals. And that's it. And then I hand them over to a realtor and I let them sell them.

So it really is part-time. My schedule gets a little wonky and I think maybe you wanted to ask about that. We could talk about it more, but somebody was asking me recently how much time I spend on it. That's also not something I track, but I can tell you for a fact, if I could get up in the morning and have three hours or four hours uninterrupted Monday to Thursday, I'd have more than enough time. And I'd be able to implement some of those new things I should be doing.

But even not having that, we've been able to figure it out one step at a time and we're making money.

Seth: Do you have like a team in place or something? Like, is it just you, or do you have a bunch of people working behind the scenes to make this all happen?

Jon: Not a bunch. I've got one VA. She works in the Philippines and she works 20 hours a week.

Seth: What does she do in your business?

Jon: She does all the low-level tasks of managing my Open Phone. As soon as somebody calls or texts or emails, they submit through our Pebble, they submit a web form, our Traveling Mailbox—she checks all of that and she puts the leads into the CRM. She updates their contact info across all our platforms so that they're always there, gets the Land ID links, the REgrid links, Google Maps or Google Earth, grabs all the county info, puts it in the first node in Pebble.

She basically tees it up, oh, she qualifies the properties too. I've given her criteria about floodplains and wetlands access and slope. She puts all the supposedly disqualified properties into a pile for me to just quickly review and double-check. And she puts all the clearly qualified properties into a stack on Pebble. She basically tees it up so that if I come home from a shift in the morning, I can see my family, have breakfast, and then sit down at 10 o'clock in the morning with a cup of coffee and just start looking at properties and calling sellers back and go through them. And that's it.

Now we've added—well, before I say that, I'll say this: We've got in the counties we're working, we have a Realtor who's my primary Realtor. Actually, I'd say I've got two, but they cover multiple counties each. So I've got my regions kind of covered with really great Realtors. And they're great in land, they're also just very personable, very easy to talk to. They're super helpful.

One guy, I was asking for opinion of values and he was calling me on the phone, talking about the area, talking about the property for like six months before I brought him a deal. And I think I just got super lucky. They were just really willing to help.

I've got a soil guy who is in the region and he'll go to all my properties and he gets out there within two or three weeks. He's got a report after that within a week.

So I don't employ them—they're contracted, but those people feel like they're actually part of the team here at Newth Properties.

Seth: I know you mentioned earlier that you're using direct mail. Is that all you're using? Are you using any other marketing channels to find these deals?

Jon: No, just direct mail.

Seth: Okay. Do you have any kind of complex follow-up sequence? I mean, probably not just mail, but like, I don't know if a person doesn't respond to the first one, do you hit them again at some point? Or is it just one and done?

Jon: The only time somebody doesn't get future letters is if they call and tell us explicitly not to mail them or we just have a terrible experience. Some people have sent me letters back drawing human anatomy on the letter, and I take that to mean that they probably don't want another letter. Unless you do something like that, you're going to continue to get our letters, and every quarter we are kind of at this point repeating the same counties and it's working.

As for follow-up, that's another thing that, if I could just get a little more time, I need to build that out—a better follow-up system. I've just kind of got them in a stack, and I'm going through them every several weeks or a month. And it's really bad to probably admit that, but I'm just bugging people. It's high on my list, actually—follow-up, probably higher than some other things, like even KPIs and stuff. But no, I haven't built it out.

Seth: What kinds of letters are you sending if it's totally relying on direct mail, which is actually really interesting. I do hear occasionally from people who are still just sticking to direct mail and I'm always like, "Man, how are you making that work?" Like, it seems like that doesn't work anymore. It's too expensive or the response rate isn't good enough.

But let's talk about that. Like what kind of mail are you sending? What kind of offers are you making? How are you making this work?

Jon: Yeah, so the direct mail thing is funny because that's all I had really heard about until a couple of years ago. Because as you know, I was listening for a few years and everybody was doing direct mail. And I remember when texting, ringless voicemail, cold calling—people were sort of, you know, you had people on the show—it was like, "Hey, look at this fancy new shiny method" that house wholesalers are probably using for years. That was all sort of coming out.

Like most people, I don't love change. And for better or worse, I just loved how simple direct mail was. I don't have to add anybody. I didn't need any extra staff to respond to text messages or hire someone to do cold calling. And so I just stuck with direct mail. It was actually Travis's advice that we stick with direct mail in the beginning, just because it was so simple. And I just got hooked on the simplicity.

I am paying a lot for marketing. I think my marketing costs are probably around seven to eight, sometimes 10, 12 grand a month. I've played with more mailers and less. I've kind of settled around the 10,000 mailer mark. But yeah, I'm paying $6,500-$7,000 for mail every month. But when you close a deal and the spread is 50 grand or our biggest was 150, you can afford to do it.

For me too, most of the people that are calling me in the states and the counties that I'm in are people that are middle, late age, conservative voters. Have large acreage that's been in the family for years. Two deals that I was working recently, one fell through, the other one's still going, were both on roads that were named after the seller's family. And that's happened quite a few times, actually.

And so those people, I think they like getting mail. I've dabbled with texting with some side projects. I have not done the texting, but leads have come from text messaging and it's definitely a different vibe. I think different people respond to text messages, but for the most part, the people that I am sort of targeting now, I realize are the people that probably like mail more. And so I'm just happy to stick with it.

Seth: So given those direct mail costs, I guess that brings your annual net income from land down to a measly half million or so.

Jon: I think it's probably less than that because we had, last year, remember from September to December, we were mailing, you know, 10 grand a month or so. And so we racked up some debt there plus 20 grand for coaching. My bookkeeper that we hired is actually fixing what the QuickBooks Online people were trying to do. We're somewhere around 300 or so once you take out all the expenses.

Seth: Yeah. Well, so more on this direct mail stuff. What kinds of letters are you sending? Are these blind offers? Are these neutral letters or range offers? Or what's your approach there?

Jon: Yeah, so I've really settled on neutral. We did try blind offers in the beginning, but I just could not find a way to get that algorithm, you know, the sort of auto-generated comps—I could not find a way to get that thing accurate. I had people, my phone rang off the hook early in the mail campaign with people who had a property worth 22 grand that I offered 65. There was just—I never got somebody back down to 11,000 from 65k. It just wasn't going to happen.

Other people were—I got a lot more hate messages when I did that too, because anybody I lowballed, you know, offer 10 grand, their property's worth 70, they're pretty upset. So they would call and chew me out.

I tried range offers a little bit, but the response rate was just like almost nothing. I don't think—I think people saw it as just non-committal maybe. I probably didn't do the best job at it because I know other people get range letters sent out and get deals. But yeah, we've really settled on neutral. It seems to work the best.

Seth: So it makes me wonder, like a neutral letter, there's nothing terribly complicated about what that type of letter says, but it sounds like when you started getting coaching from Buck, you had made some key changes to your mail piece or something. So I'm just wondering what changed exactly, like what made it suddenly start working or start working just because you started doing it more consistently?

Jon: That's trade industry secrets, man. I can't share it. No, I'm kidding. I'm happy to share. I'm just messing around.

You know, I don't know if anybody's received—well, people receive letters for properties they buy as an investor. So if you ever look at them, and I actually have friends up here that own property in Montana. When I told them about what I was doing, they were like, "Oh, I get letters all the time." And I said, "Hey, save the letters and just send me a picture of it. I just want to see what else is floating around out there."

You'd be surprised how many people send pretty simple generic letters—black text, white background, "Dear Mr. So-and-so, Mrs. So-and-so." And then they write this novel sometimes, or it's too much information, I think. Or sometimes it'll be a blind offer and it'll say, "I buy land for cash, sign here and I'll buy it for this much." It just, to me, feels scammy.

Some of the things that we did was we put a little bit of graphic design on it. So there's a little bit of color in our letter. And this is sort of high-level stuff, but this is what I was taught, and I think it works really well. We put a little bit of color in there. We were very mindful of the copy. You don't want to waste any words—people want to skim this and decide. When I open my mail, I don't bring it in the house. I take it out of the mailbox, I go to my trash bins, I set the stack on top of the bin, and then if it looks like trash, it goes right into the recycling. So I screen it before I even bring it in my house.

You want people to be able to read the letter and say, "Oh, this is a real person and they're just trying to buy some land" or "This is garbage and they're just generic spam—I'm gonna throw it out." They're gonna make that decision really quickly. And if they can't decide, they're probably going to throw it out.

So being mindful of the copy, don't waste any words, add a little formatting. I mean, a short blurb about who you are. I think I have like three or four bullet points of why you should work with us instead of a realtor. They're the obvious reasons. And then at the bottom, I say, "Hey, reach out for a cash offer."

And I do say on there, we buy on a certain date. And so we put it 45 days out so that when they get it, they've got about a month left to respond. And I've thought about taking that off and seeing if it changes anything, but it's not a bad thing to say. Because in the letter, we also say, "Hey, we're looking to buy one to two properties in X county this month." And so it sort of creates that scarcity of, "Hey, this is just a regular guy."

I write on there, "My wife and I run a land investing business and we're looking for one or two properties in this county" and "reach out by this date and we're happy to make you an offer."

And yeah, people—it's weird. When they're calling and why me, I say, "Hey, I'm sure you get a lot of letters, text messages, calls about your land. I'm just curious what made you call us." And no one's ever been able to tell me exactly why, but a lot of them have said, "You know, I don't know. There was just something about your letter that I decided I wouldn't throw it out. I'd give you a call and just see what you were about."

I think if you can pique people's interest to who you are by showing them in any way you can, that I'm just a regular person and I'm a fireman by trade. I put that on there because again, middle, late age, conservative voters, first responder—they're not going to be that mad at me for mailing them. And “My wife and I are trying to create a family legacy by investing in vacant land. Give me a call if you'd be interested in selling.” Sometimes they're just curious. And so they'll give us a call.

Seth: Just to understand a little bit more about what these deals look like when you buy them. So are these properties that you're taking title to every time? Like you're taking title, holding it and then selling it? And like, how much are you offering? Is it like half of market value or 60% or 40%?

Because all this stuff goes into what makes it all work, like your acceptance rate and the fact that direct mail is working for you. There's a lot of assumptions that live underneath that, that we've got to uncover in terms of why is it working for you?

So like, how much do you offer on these typical things and how complicated is the deal?

Jon: Yeah, that's a great question. And it's a great question because I think I've heard a lot of people say, especially in the last few years, "Hey, this strategy of offering 30, 40 cents on the dollar just isn't going to work for more expensive properties." You know, you get past—some people say past $50,000, you get to $100,000 and the owners are just too savvy there. They don't need the money as much. They're just not going to sell it for half. We've bought all of ours for just about half.

To answer your first question, they've been almost all flips. So we've done eight. They've been all flips except two of them. One was an assignment, which we could talk about later if you want, but it was sort of salvaging a deal that fell through and just trying to get paid back for the due diligence. And we actually ended up making like seven grand on it. That was an assignment because we couldn't flip it.

And the other one was a partnership with Pete because I can't remember—I think I was getting a bottleneck and needed funding. And so I reached out to him and he took it, flipped it, and it was a 50-50 split. So it was a flip, but it was, you know how that works—you hand the whole thing over.

All the other ones, yep, buy, take title, go ahead, relist it right away with a Realtor. And they've all sold pretty quickly.

I just follow Ajay, which I think probably most of the community is following him now, or at least aware of him. And I have a very simple process where I try to get back to them within a business day. Half the time it doesn't work because, you know, when the chief comes to you and says, "Newth, you can't go home because we don't have a medic here." Now they're getting a call two, three business days later.

So I try to get back to them quickly, but it's the whole speed to lead thing. I try to get back to them within at least a couple of days. And I just touch base with them. And stop me if this is going into more detail than you want, but on that first call, I do two calls. The first one is exactly what Ajay has been teaching, which is just get to know them, make some small talk, and try to unpack the problem that you're going to solve.

A lot of the deals that I've had have not been people that have said, "Yeah, I'm interested in selling, but I might not." Almost all those fall through. They're not going to sell for half market value. But the person who's got a property that's in a family partnership and needs seven signatures and he's not even sure they're all going to sign, but they do want to get rid of it and they're fighting about it—that one worked really well.

The real estate company that owned six lots in a subdivision that we bought and wanted to unload them, but had some perk issues—we were able to solve the perk issues in our due diligence, and we were able to get that turned around and flip it.

There's others, but when you get into these higher value properties, you really, really are trying to solve a problem. I think that point—that's the case with most acquisitions, but it's really the point when you're dealing with these higher value properties because someone's got to have a little bit more motivation to let it go for less than you would expect.

That first call is just having a conversation with them. I like talking to people anyway. I mean, I sit in the back of an ambulance and talk to people all the time and ask them what they used to do for a living, where their kids live, why'd you move to Washington, and I make a lot of small talk. I actually love small talk. I like learning about other people and what they're doing, because you find these little gems in people that you talk to, like pearls of wisdom that you wouldn't otherwise get unless you're willing to make small talk.

Yeah, I really just talk to them and I usually lead with, "Hey, you know, I can look at the APN number, I can look at the specs, I can go to the county all day long. I'd rather hear the story of this property and how you like, what possessed you to pick it up. How'd you end up with it? What have you used it for? What does it look like right now? What are your plans for in the future? I'd rather hear a story about the property, frankly, than have you tell me all the numbers."

And so then usually people, they think for a second and then they just unload. They're happy to tell you the story of their life and the property. It's not uncommon for me to sit on the phone with somebody for like 20 to 45 minutes. I had a lady talk to me for 45 minutes the other day about her knee surgery and the land and her in-laws don't want her to sell it and this and that go back and forth.

You know what? I mean, we've looked at the numbers. I'm happy to listen to them because unless they feel like you are on board and you understand them and you're trying—you're on the same team as them. People are right—they're not going to sell their property for pennies on the dollar.

Then at the end of that call, I will say, "Hey, I do have a checklist of questions. I should probably cross my T's. Can I ask you a few of these?" And, you know, I try to have fun with it. I always say like, "Hey, do you have a crazy family member that we have to track down to get them to sign? Or is it just you?" and this and that. "Do you like throwing your bills in the trash or do you pay your property taxes?" Like if it'll work with them.

Yeah, just try to keep having fun. I do ask the checklist of questions and then I try to get back to them—I actually push it sometimes up to a week and I say, "Hey, I was able to really dig into this neighborhood on the second call and run some comps and there's some interesting things going on." I'll search the news, find out who's drilling for lithium nearby that's affecting the wells and causing property values to come down.

I want them to feel like I really took the time to get to know them and to get to know their property and the area and took all that into account when presenting a cash offer rather than having them feel like I'm just an investor who's going to find out what it's worth and then slash a big discount and hand you a cash offer.

Seth: What would you say is the close rate on these mails you're sending out? Like for every 10,000 you send out, how many deals come out of that?

Jon: Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, I don't track all this, but one number would be mailers to signed contracts, but a lot of signed contracts will fall through. A lot of them, I'm not falling through just because they're not worth the time. They're only worth $30,000. And so for me to flip it from 14 to let's say 28 grand, if I'm going to be more conservative after a Realtor fee and all that, because I'm not self-listing, just isn't worth it.

Seth: What made you get the contract signed if it's not worth it? Apparently, you thought it was worth an effort to do that.

Jon: Yeah, I won't fully comp the property until they sign. There's been a few that I've gotten contracts on that I thought, "I think I know somebody that would be interested in this" and so I'll get a contract on it and then they're not interested. I've considered closing them myself. There's a part of me that's always like, "This is a great time to learn about self-closing" and just start adding that to my business. And then I realized how busy I am and I just go, "Oh, this isn't going to work."

That was mostly early on. I was getting these signed contracts because I was excited. At this point, I think we know after looking at a property, this is going to fit our criteria or it's not. And so now we just tell people, "Hey, it's a great property, but it's just a little bit below what we're looking for."

But I mean, if we're sending 10,000—I just got my calculator—they're 10,000 a month, and we'll just count this year, I guess. And so that's 80,000 mailers. So I guess we're getting a deal for every 10,000-ish. Now, we've sent more mail and less mail, but I think we'd probably average around 8,000 to 10,000 mailers, and we're doing about one a month. So we're somewhere in the 8,000 to 10,000 range.

Seth: In your mailer that you send out, when you tell them to contact you if they want to sell, do you just give them a phone number for them to call? Or do you give them a website or an email address? Or what are the ways you tell them to respond? And then when they respond, what do they hear? Like, do they call and hear a pre-recorded voicemail greeting? Or do they call PATLive? Or do they go to your live phone? Like, what's that experience they go through?

Jon: Yeah, so we put all of it on there. It says, "reach out for your cash offer." And we've got phone, fax, email. It says on there like "call or text" so they can text us too. And they do. Sometimes they mail the letters back with a note on it. It's really tough because they never put their contact info, so I can't actually call them when they do that.

When they call, they do get a voicemail. I was trying to answer the phone live and I realized it was just too much. The lead flow was too high. And my VA, her English is good, but she's not been the best on the phone with sellers. Like not able to be quick on her feet. Her land knowledge is not quite there yet.

So yeah, we've really just sort of put them straight to voicemail. And then I give them a call back as soon as I can. And sometimes, you know, I'll call them back. I'll see the voicemail. I'll call them back and say, "Hey, I saw you called. Sorry, I missed you. Can I give you a call tomorrow?" And we talk about this just to sort of make a connection. But yeah, for better or worse right now, I just kind of have to let them go to voicemail.

Seth: The reason I'm asking all these details is because I think about all these things, like the fact that you're offering around 50% of market value and using direct mail, you're telling them to go through these steps, you're getting these different ways to respond to you. You're calling back within X number of days. Sounds like you're pretty good on the phone. You know how to build rapport and all this stuff.

And I just think about somebody else who might be trying to do the exact same thing you're doing, but maybe the only difference is they're only ever going to offer 40% of market value. Like if you were to start doing that today, would that like destroy your whole business? Because a lot of deals won't happen unless it's 50% of market value. Like trying to think of what screws would have to come undone for this to just not work anymore.

Jon: That's a great question. Man, I wish I knew because I kept coming into this—I expected to pay 60, 65, 70% market value and start having to do double closes. There's probably deals I could have had if I was doing that, but yeah, I don't know why they're saying yes. I wish I knew the answer. A lot of our deals actually are less than 50%.

Seth: On that same coin, it also makes you wonder not only what screws would have to come undone for this to fall apart, but what extra screws would make this do like twice as much.

Jon: That's the bigger question. And that's where I think it's really good for people when they get started to play around with different things in land. I never dreamed I'd be flipping six-figure properties. Never. We have another one, and I don't want to count my eggs before they hatch, so you probably won't go into detail on this one, but we've got a very large contract on a 60-acre parcel that's going to be a subdivide that's going to be more than we've made in all these other deals combined.

Man, I thought if I could be making a couple grand per property, like what a great side gig—make two, four, six thousand a month extra on the side. This would be amazing. Now this is just where we've sort of landed and where I'm comfortable. And this is where I like being.

Your question is really pertinent. Like, how do you make the machine robust for that specific client and those specific deals? Because if I could do two of these a month, I mean, obviously we'd just be doing that much better. And so the question comes up, do I bother with the small deals and adding that to my machine? Or do I say, why not just make the machine stronger and more specialized in this area?

I've been doing a lot of reflecting on that. But a lot of the deals we've gotten, return on investment for some of these—so it looks like our highest one was 210% return on investment. Yeah, and that was actually, I thought that one wasn't going to work because I thought it was worth like maybe 25 grand. So we bought it for nine, but it sold for 40. And then the next one, 161% return, that one we bought for 20 grand, listed it for a hundred, but it ended up selling for 65.

Seth: Remind me, I don't know if you said specifically, when was it that you started working with Buck doing this coaching and basically when did you jump back into this full steam ahead—was that a year ago or how long?

Jon: Yeah, about exactly a year ago. I think we signed up in July but we didn't get mail out till September because I was traveling and it just took a minute. So yeah, we're pretty much right about a year.

Seth: Yeah, so you've really only been at this like super seriously for about a year now. We're recording this in September 2024. This will get aired months after this because we're backed up at this point, but I think that's just interesting and it's worth noting for people out there who listen to this to realize like, you don't need to be doing this for like 10 years to earn the right to make a half million bucks a year. Like you can do it pretty soon if you just decide to do it and make your goals and start moving forward, right?

Jon: Totally. Yeah. And maybe I said this already earlier in the show, but man, if people take anything from this, it's for the younger members in the community that want to get started and people they keep saying "Hey, it's not what it used to be, it's more competitive, it's harder to get deals"—and they're not wrong, I mean, it's definitely changed since even since I started listening, but people who are listening just be careful not to take that as it doesn't work because that's just not the case.

I definitely had hesitation getting in when I started with Buck because I thought, "Man, I think I missed the boat." Everybody keeps saying it's so much more competitive. It's harder and you can't do these high-value deals. It's not going to work. People are getting smart to it. I was worried that I just sort of missed the boat.

And so if you're thinking about getting into land or if you're just starting, it still works. It's still great. Even if we made half of what we made this year, I'd have been stoked. So if you want to do land and you want to make money doing it, plenty of opportunity, it still works. And you can do it very, very simply, right? Just doing the basics, just focusing on those foundational components, you can still flip land.

Seth: These deals, when you're putting $40,000 cash into it or whatever the number happens to be, whether it's more or less than that, a lot of people, especially newer people, might be looking at that and be like, "Man, that's a ton of money." Like and I know you said you had like 45 grand saved up from just working too much and that kind of thing—like that's all of that money.

Was that hard for you to like take that leap and just trust the process and believe that "Yes, I'm going to do this and I believe what's going to happen on the other end?" Was that a hard thing for you or are you the type who can just do it willy-nilly and not think too much about it?

Jon: This might not be a good thing, but I am—I don't really care about money very much. And so I tend to be a little reckless with it. And so I'm not advocating that people be reckless, but I think that, and maybe my other job helps with this, but if you can think critically about the situation and say on paper, this checks out and I've done my due diligence, right? You've done your underwriting and you know your underwriting is solid. There's just no reason to tell yourself that it's not going to work when everything is saying that it's going to work.

You know, the first six, eight months in this business, someone called it the “hazing period.” And I think it's true. I mean, it feels like the universe wants you to quit. Like at every turn, there's another reason why you should just say, "You know, forget it. This is—we haven't made money yet. Let's just not do it." And then you finally get a deal and you're right. You need to shell out—at one point, you know, we bought for $110,000. And so it was like, now I'm going to shell out six figures. I still don't really have proof of concept personally, but the reality is if it checks out on paper, for me, that was good enough.

Like I mentioned, I had heard so many success stories that I knew that if I was taking the appropriate steps and I was checking the right boxes, then there was no—it would be silly to think that it wouldn't work because other people were doing it. It was working. And I had a coach who was doing it and it was working. And so there was never a point where I thought it was going to fail. There was never a point where I was even nervous about it.

I think a big part of that was having Buck because he's—I mean, he's a serial entrepreneur anyway, he's done a bunch of different ventures, and so yeah, I trust him on that front and he's also a land investor. So when he was doing the second level of underwriting and saying "I agree, I think this is a great deal" then we just trudged forward.

But I understand that it definitely can be scary. But I tell you what, man, I've—maybe not $100,000, but I've wasted a lot of money on stupider things. Not that land is stupid, but I've wasted a lot of money. I mean, I spent my 20s just spending money on all kinds of crazy things. And none of them had a return on investment at all.

So to me, the margin that we buy at is so safe that even if a realtor is off by 30%, I mean, they can be off by 40% and we're still going to get our money back. And so it's—that's a bummer, you know, it's not something we're celebrating, but at least you didn't lose money, which, you know, is rule number one.

Seth: Well, when you think about how things have gotten more challenging and maybe, maybe you don't have enough time to really see it full scale, but I mean, we can agree things have gotten more challenging as time has gone on. And when you think about just the work that goes into making the money that you do from this, how hard is this? Like, is any part of it hard? Or is it kind of like, no, it's just something I plug away at and the money comes in. Like, any thoughts on that?

Jon: Yeah, no, I do. I think it's both. I think it's hard, and I think it's something that, as you said, as long as I plug away at it, money comes in. And I think that's most things in life. I've done some challenging things in life. I mean, again, nothing worth writing a book about, but I've certainly challenged myself with things. And one of the things I've learned is if you get in touch with the right people and you get the right guidance, there's a solution to every obstacle.

People will ask me what I'm doing at work because I'll be at work when we have downtime, I'm trying to get back to sellers or title companies or whatever. And so they're asking me about it. And when I explained the general model, I think it sounds like I'm just printing money. Like it sounds really easy. Like, "Wow, you buy this for half and sell it for double. And you're just going to ride off into the sunset with a big bag of money."

But the reality is there's all these—there's a lot of little things that come up on a day-to-day basis that you've got to handle. And when you're new, everything, you're doing it for the first time. So it seems like this huge problem. And maybe it's really not. But yeah, I think I'm not going to call it easy. I definitely mean, it's something you got to give attention to several days a week, otherwise, it's going to fall apart.

But there's nothing out there that someone can't help you with. And one of the reasons I love how simple our business is, is I'm never going to run into a problem—I shouldn't say never, I'm most likely not going to run into a problem that somebody on the REtipster or the Land Boss community can't help me with. And this community is so giving that I've already reached out with questions like in between my coaching when Buck was traveling or something, I just throw it on the communities, cross-posts on a couple of them and I get flooded with answers.

So that's one of the reasons I love doing the most simple kind of version of this—someone can help me with anything that comes up.

Seth: I am wondering, is there anything unique about the way you're running your business that other land investors don't do? Because it doesn't really sound like it, but maybe there's something that I'm missing in this.

Jon: Yeah, no, there's absolutely nothing unique or special or cutting-edge. And that's by design.

Seth: Maybe another way to ask the question, and it is a different question, but it's kind of similar—when you consider the things that you're good at, do you think you have any unfair advantages here? Like, are you willing to do certain kind of work or are you skilled in some way that the average person might not be?

Jon: Yeah, I don't know that it's an unfair advantage because I think probably a lot of people are better at this than they realize.

But as I mentioned earlier, I think one of my biggest strengths is listening to people. And a lot of people say like, "Oh, I'm great at talking to people." And anyone can talk at people or talk to people. But I think if you can listen to people, and again, I mean, I sit in the back of an ambulance for the last 10 years, countless hours. And when they're not super sick, you know, when you don't have to breathe for them, you can talk to them.

If you just ask somebody about themselves or their life, their property, they'll tell you more than you want to know. At my other job, I actually have to pull the reins all the time and be like, "All right, I understand. I understand you lost your prescription or you were diagnosed with this or missed your appointment, but let's get back on track. Why are we here?" In land, I want to listen to all that.

So I think it's, again, not an unfair advantage, but definitely one of my strengths would be listening to people and listening for the little nuances—I mean, everything down to the tone of their voice, their word choices, to when they hesitate to respond to things or whatever. Just getting a real feel for where this person's at and their relationship with the property, their relationship with money, their motive. And I guess catering my approach to that, I think, is probably the key.

Because people aren't wrong when they say that people that own a property worth—and our biggest one, it was worth $300,000 and we bought it for $110,000. We ended up selling it for $280,000 for a quick sale. But yeah, someone with a $300,000 property is more savvy. So be savvy yourself. You know, and they'll like you for that and they'll want to work with you.

Seth: Well, I'm happy to hear—I think, in my opinion, you have a pretty accurate assessment of what one of your strengths is, which is just your strength on the phone. I remember in Colorado, I just—I was outside on the phone as well. And I just overheard you talking in the background. You probably didn't know I was there, but I just heard you talking and like you just sounded really easy to talk to.

And it's almost like, I think sometimes when somebody is overly polished on the phone, like they're just so good at being a salesman, it's almost like my defenses go up personally. It's like, why don't you sound normal? Like, are you trying to sell me on something? Whereas when I hear you, like nothing about you sounds like you're trying to get me or like make something sound better than it really is. Like you're just being a normal person and it is its own strength in itself.

And I think that's like, I take encouragement from that, frankly, because I don't consider myself that polished, but it's like, I don't really have to be. If I can kind of be like Jon, maybe I can do this too. And he just sounds like a normal guy and it works really well for him.

So I know when I interviewed Chris Johnsen in episode 174, it was a very similar thing where like, he's not super polished. He's just a normal country boy and things work out well when you're talking to people in the country. Like he just kind of knows how to vibe the right way.

And that can go a long way, especially when you don't hate getting on the phone. Like you can totally do this. It's not a miserable experience for you. It's a fun part of the job. And it just happens to be a very profitable part of the job indirectly.

Jon: Yeah, no, I appreciate the words. And I think you're exactly right. Sometimes when I answer the phone, I'll just—well, I'll say this. I had an experience recently where I triple-dialed somebody and they finally picked up on the third ring. And I don't know why I sounded this way, but as the words were coming out, I could tell I sounded like too polished. And they finally answered. And maybe I was just—something about them told me that the way they answered, maybe I thought they were going to be aggressive.

And I just said, "Oh, hey, this is John. I'm a land investor just returning your call for blah, blah, blah." And as I was saying it, I was like, you sound like one of those delayed recordings, you know, that comes on and tries to sound like a real person, but you could tell something's not quite right. And they promptly hung up on me. And I was like, all right. So call them a fourth time, left a voicemail and try to be more normal. We'll see if they call back.

But yeah, no, I mean, when people call, I tell them all the time, like, you know, if I answer, like sometimes I'll leave a voicemail and I'm ready to take the call. They don't answer. I leave a voicemail. Well, what I found, and you'll find this too, if you're getting started in land is people won't answer your call. You'll leave them a voicemail and they will call while you're changing your kid's diaper or while you're trying to get in the shower or like the most inopportune times.

And I started just answering the phone. Like if I'm holding a kid or feeding them, I just answer and say, "Oh, hey, Charles, thanks for calling me back. This is Jon here." And they'll say, "Oh, hey, Jon." I'll just tell them, "Hey, you caught me feeding my kid right now. But I'm happy to chat for a few minutes and then we could schedule another call or whatever."

When I'm at work, I answer and tell them pretty early in the call, like, "Hey, I'm happy to chat, but just know that I'm at the firehouse. So if something—if the tones drop, I do have to run. But let's try to get a conversation in while we can." And so, yeah, I think just being normal.

And you know what? Ajay says this all the time. He says it'll be weird if you make it weird. So don't make it weird. Just when they even on their triple dial, when they finally answer, just, you know, "Oh, hey, Joe, it's Jon. I was calling you about blah, blah, blah, whatever." And just roll into it and they'll usually react the way you react.

So yeah, I think there's something to be said about being too polished because you got to figure most people probably are too polished so if you're not that, you're already different in some way.

Seth: Yeah I think my strength is making things weird. I can also find way to make it weird.

Jon: So you just you just need to find a niche part of real estate where you gotta make people feel weird.

Seth: Oh, man. What would you say has been your biggest struggle in this business? Like, have there ever been moments when you felt tempted to quit or like you didn't think you were going to make it? And if so, like, what were those things, if anything?

Jon: To answer the second question first, there was never a point when I was going to quit. I had sort of fallen in love with this idea of land investing from the years of listening. And I just wanted to be one of those people that could talk to Seth Williams and tell him about their success. And so, you know, there's a huge milestone. We're checking a big box today, but no, never wanted to quit. I don't get nervous about the things that most people get nervous about.

Strangely, but maybe, maybe that's my other job. Just learning to cool it when things are hitting the fan.

Seth: But maybe that's another unfair advantage you've got.

Jon: It could be, it could be, yeah. You know, a title issue doesn't mean anybody's going to die or that we have to do some invasive treatment. So yeah, the problems in land to me are just fun compared to problems where the stakes are high.

But as far as struggles in the business, you know, just going back to being an average guy, time management, got to be a husband, got to be a father to two boys. I'm a pretty active member in my church and I've got a full-time W-2.

And so time management is tough for the obvious reasons, but also because our schedule is weird. We do 24-hour shifts. So we're on, then we're off, then we're on, then we're off for five. And so if my five off lands like Monday to Friday, peaches. Like I can get up every day early. I can do my three, four hours. And those weeks go really smooth. When my day, maybe I got two shifts and a trade payback, you know, Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Now I got two weekdays to try to cram everything in. And when I'm coming off shift, I'm getting home late. So I'm not, those mornings aren't very productive.

And so that makes it kind of wonky. So, you know, if anyone's got an abnormal shift-type work, maybe you're a nurse or something, or maybe you work graveyard shifts somewhere, security or whatever, time management has been a struggle because land business is a nine to five, typically, right? That's when people are available. And so fitting my W-2, which is wonky, into a very normal, traditional nine to five type industry has been difficult, but not something we couldn't overcome.

And then finding my niche is the other thing. You know, there are a lot of people that are very willing to share a lot of different strategies. And I'm just going to lead with saying, like, I love this community. I love the abundance mindset, how willing people are to share and reach out and help you, but it can be overwhelming at times.

And, you know, it's really important to receive all the great information that's out there with the right perspective and the right mindset. Because if you start to feel overwhelmed, you got to own that. It's just you because we don't want people to stop sharing. Like there's a great little community that we have. And hopefully that never changes. I would hate for it to become competitive and cutthroat because it just wouldn't be fun anymore. And I just don't like doing things that aren't fun. So I would probably honestly leave and do something else.

Finding my niche was a struggle because as deals come across your desk, you feel like you should be pursuing everything. And we're at a point now where after getting proof of concept, I feel very comfortable saying, if something comes across my desk, this might be a great deal for someone. And if I know someone, I'm happy to try to get it for them and just pass it on. I'm not even looking to make money on it. I'm happy to just give it to the right people.

But when I don't, and it's just a commercial property that's got some issues and it's just a problem for somebody else that I don't even know, I'm happy to just say it doesn't meet my criteria. And the next deal is right around the corner.

Early on, I would freak out that if I passed on the only deals in my pipeline, nothing else was going to show up because I hadn't had that proof that actually every month deals come in. And I would load my pipeline with deals. And we talked about this, some signed contracts on deals that I probably had no business doing because the spread was too small. I wasn't going to self-list, all these things. But I was too nervous to let go of them.

And two weeks later, I get another killer contract on a deal where the spread is amazing. And it's all I need for a few months.

So finding my niche was a little bit nerve-wracking at first, feeling like I should be doing everything. If I wasn't building a seller financing, double closing, assigning entitlement, land flipping machine, then I was failing. But in reality, maybe I can make $4 million a year doing that, but I'm far happier making what we're making and having a better balance and feeling like I can actually tweak this machine a little bit to get my work-life balance just where I want it to be.

And then start thinking about what's next. It doesn't have to be immediately just because someone else is doing it or someone came on a podcast and talked about this new amazing AI technique that everyone should be implementing. If it works great, but if you don't have the time to do it and you're making money, it's okay to just sort of write it down and put it to the side for now.

Seth: I am curious because it sounds like the phone is a key component of your success here. Just your ability to get on the phone when you're holding the baby or whatever you're doing. Is that ever a problem? Like, does your family ever have an issue with you being on the phone like that? Because mine does. It's like actually a huge challenge. I can't just pick up the phone whenever somebody calls me. It's like most of the time, if I'm not in the office, I can't answer because it's kind of like ignoring my family for the moment.

So is that a problem with you? And if so, like, how do you deal with that?

Jon: Yeah, that's a great question. And the short answer is yes, it has been a problem. You know, there's been multiple times where I, after the fact, I look back at a phone call and just told myself like that straight up wasn't worth it. And there's been times I've actually hung up on sellers. I was pulling into my driveway, I was almost home from work and—my son breaks my heart to even tell the story—but I was on my way home, coming down the street and somebody called and I'd been waiting to hear back from him.

And so I was like, "I'm just going to answer it and tell him, you know, I got to be quick" or whatever. It was dumb. You can't do that. So just don't answer the phone. But I answered the phone. I'm pulling in the driveway, my son's already coming out on the porch to see me. And I already feel terrible. And the guy starts getting real aggressive with me. And it was at that moment that I was like, this is not worth it. I just gave this really special time to some random yahoo who just wants to cuss me out.

I don't hang up on people on the phone—it's unprofessional—but in that instance, it was like, the triage algorithm came into my head and it was like, what's the greater good here? And so I just hung up on him, got out of the truck, pretended it never happened, and greeted my son.

The phone thing is tough. It is important for me to be on the phone—that's how I communicate with people. Even when they email or text, I try to get to a phone call. And every time the phone rings, it's like, is this the next big one? Or this guy I've been trying to get to call me back? And this could be it.

What I've realized is people would just leave a voicemail. I can call them back. And you can follow up nowadays, most of the time, with a text message. And again, going back to being a real person, like if we're getting ready to go out to an event at our church, or we're going out on a family date night or something, I just noticed my Realtors do it with me and I'm completely understanding.

So I do it with my sellers now—I just text them back and say, "Hey Jill, really appreciate you calling me back. I'm sorry I missed you. I'm just walking out with the family to go to dinner. Can I call you tomorrow?" Who's going to—unless they're a real turd—who's going to be mad at you for saying like, "I'm actually with my family right now. Can I call you during normal business hours?"

And when it is normal business hours, I do tend to answer more and just say, "Hey, I could talk for a couple minutes, but I'm actually at the park with my son. Let's chat for a minute, and then we can set up another time." And people are always fine with it.

Seth: Do you use that thing in Open Phone where you can automatically send a text to them when you don't answer?

Jon: No, I didn't actually even know about that feature.

Seth: I mean, it's not going to have that personalization where it's like, "Hey, Jill," that kind of thing. But you can at least send like a generic, "Hey sir, I missed your call. You want to send me the details about your property?" You know, whatever you want to say, just so they they feel heard and realize that there is somebody on the other line and “They'll call me back,” that kind of thing.

Jon: Yeah, that would actually be good for when I go on vacation because we actually travel a lot given my other job and having a lot of time off. And I'm always changing my voicemail when I remember to say, "Hey, I'm out of town until this date." That way, if I don't get back to them until I'm back, at least they were warned, but that'd actually be great for that.

Seth: I do have a little video tutorial about Open Phone that shows exactly how to do this by the way. So if everybody out there's hearing this and they want to set that up for themselves, I'll have that blog post in the show notes at retipster.com/201.

Why are you still working your job? Like, what would it take for you to quit? Just out of curiosity.

Jon: Yeah, that's a great question. So when I got into this originally, like I said, I thought it'd be great to just not have to work the overtime because being a firefighter, being a paramedic, it's a fun job. I love being able to do that as a career. Sometimes when I'm at work, I have those moments where I have to sit there and be like, "This is my job. Like I'm actually getting paid to do this." And we're having fun on calls or we're playing pickleball, we're eating together—it's a great job.

But I've been on an ambulance since I was 23. So I've been not sleeping right for the last whatever, 10, 12 years. And it's not really something I want to do till I'm 60. I like to do things that I enjoy, things that are fun. And I like to have the freedom to move around a bit.

Initially, I thought, "Hey, if I could just not have to work overtime, and just sort of reduce the amount of time I'm there, that would be a win in and of itself." And then I realized, "Hey, I could probably just replace this whole income." And so that is my five-year goal. I'm 35 now, I would love by 40 to have the option to leave the fire service.

And I say the option because maybe something will change with deployment and it'll actually be better and healthier. And maybe I'll be at a slower spot and just really enjoying going to work still. And I might want to keep it. Frankly, I doubt that. I think that at that point, that'll be close to 20 years in EMS and I'll be done. But by 40, I would like to have the option to leave. And so maybe we'll leave sooner than that, as long as this keeps going really well. But I just don't want to rush into anything.

It's one of those things too—I mean, it took me years to get hired. It's a pretty competitive industry to get into. And it's not to say that they wouldn't hire me back. I think we've only got a couple hundred people. So we're a smaller department and I'd like to think they'd give me my job back. But then I'm starting over.

And so it's not one of those things where, if I worked as a software engineer or something, I could just say like, "I'll just take a break. And then if I need to, I'll go back to it." It's a pretty big lift to go back into it. And I've seen guys that have recycled and come back and it's not something I try to do. So yeah, no, it's on the radar. This is—I see land as our sort of gateway to freedom.

Seth: Well, if anybody out there is listening to this, maybe they are not in land yet, or maybe they're like just getting started right now, like early on in their journey. Any words of advice you would have for them?

Jon: I think just to sum up what most of what we've talked about, I would say it's still great. Don't let people make you think that you can't do it anymore, or you're not going to have these great returns. I still don't know what industry you could go into and get even a 60% return on investment. I'm sure they're out there. I get ads all the time for watch flipping. I don't know if anyone else is getting those.

Seth: I've heard of that, but I never get ads for them.

Jon: Yeah, everybody's into it. So I watched a quick video on it to see what it was about and the margins were laughable.

Seth: Rolexes and that kind of thing?

Jon: Yeah, luxury watches, you know, sort of those more rare, scarce watches. But hey, maybe there's an industry out there where you could flip something and make this much money, but you can still do it. You can still get into it. It's still great. The community is still great. The people in it are great.

So if you're thinking about it, I would say, don't hesitate unless you have something that really just is making it not feasible for you to do this.

But I would proceed with a plan. Again, just to state the obvious, but things that as human beings, we like to just sort of focus on the big shiny fun parts of it and not do the homework and the things that we should do initially—write down your goals, figure out why you want to do it, what it's going to do for you.

And if you can use a coach, man, I'll always recommend using a coach. It's been invaluable for us, but if you can't, that's okay. The communities are great. There's even group coaching. I know Travis does group coaching. It's way more affordable and I think they meet once a week and I've sat in on a few of them and they're great.

So yeah, know why you're doing it and stick to that. It's really easy to feel like the industry is just light years ahead of you as a new investor, and that you're already failing by not being cutting-edge in all these different ways. But the reality is, it's okay to start slow and to build the machine that works for you and your life.

And it's okay if you never want to change that as long as the industry still works for that. But you can also grow at a pace that works for you. And it doesn't mean you won't get to be one of those top players—you just don't have to do it immediately. Not everybody's set up or built for shooting to the top within the first couple of years and that's okay.

I mean, we're not—I don't ever expect that to be the case, but maybe one day we'll be a top performer. But even if we're not, I'm pretty happy with where I've been.

You know, Teddy Roosevelt said, and probably someone said it before him but he's the one that gets credit for it all the time—"Comparison is the thief of joy." And just a short story about that—when I met you in Colorado, I had been getting some large wires for some of these deals the Thursday before the event. So the day before it started, I think I met you on the Friday morning and came up to you to talk to you.

And man, I was on cloud nine. I knew it was going to work, but I now had personal proof of concept that these huge wires were coming in. We were officially profitable, and it wasn't like, "Oh, we were profitable by 10 grand." I think it was like 180 grand. We immediately threw us into the black and it was great.

It was awesome. And I mean, I couldn't have been happier. I was there with Buck and I met Travis. I met you, like all the people that had mentored me either directly or indirectly. I was meeting them. I was in the room with them. I was meeting other investors who were getting started. And it was just awesome.

And then I still had these feelings come up during the event that my business was, and this sounds extreme to say, was somewhat of a failure because it was just antiquated and it wasn't doing all these things that people were speaking about. And they're speaking about those things because not everyone's doing them. So it makes sense that that's why they're speaking about them.

But even with where I'm at now, compared to where I even wanted to be in the first year, we've blown our goals out of the water. And I still had these feelings because of human nature that like, "Ah, our business is just unremarkable. It's just nothing to even talk about. It's kind of a flop of a land investing business."

And I know it sounds crazy to say, because man, I think back to when we started a year ago—if you told me we'd be here within the first 12 months, man, I might've quit my W-2. I might've got too excited and said like, "Man, we're going to be rich, I don't have to work anymore."

Don't compare yourself to others. Just gratefully accept the information people are willing to share. But don't compare yourself to them. Compare yourself to you last month or last quarter or last year. And actually, when you do that, as long as you've made some progress, you're going to start to feel better about yourself and realize some of the things you've accomplished and the strengths you've developed along the way. And that will take you way further, I think, than looking at others who are on the hill above you and saying, "Well, I wish I was there" because that'll just deflate you.

Seth: Yeah, it's really interesting to hear you say that, man. And I can't say I'm surprised about it, about the whole comparison game and how everybody deals with that too.

It's just weird how the human mind works, how these voices that tell lies get into our head. I don't know where they come from. With all the good things that go on, why we somehow find ways to be unhappy with that. But I'm totally, totally a victim of that.

I almost get annoyed sometimes when I see people like posting a huge check on a forum or something. If it's done from the standpoint of like, "This is how I can help you all get better" instead of just like, "Oh, by the way, I have this thing you can sign up for, opt into this, or sign up for this course," or just like, "Look how awesome I am." Like it's just not helpful. And if anything, it just kind of makes a lot of people feel bad by comparison because they don't have that giant check.

It's kind of hard to blame them because I get why they're excited about it. I don't know that it's wrong for them to do that, but it's just, I guess it's something I try to be mindful of. If I ever have something awesome to say about myself, I either don't say it because I know it's going to make other people feel worse, or if I do say it, it's got a lot of disclaimers about how it's like, "This is not normal. And I'm saying this to help you, not to help me."

But I'm glad you mentioned it though, because I think you're not alone in that at all.

Jon: Yeah, I agree.

Seth: Well, Jon, thanks so much for sharing. It's been an awesome conversation. Appreciate all of the wisdom you dished out here. You don't have to share anything, but if people wanted to find out more about you or get a hold of you for anything, you want to share anything? It's up to you.

Jon: Yeah, well, hey, thank you for having me on the show. Again, this was a huge milestone, checking a big box here. Never thought I'd be coming on REtipster to talk about land. So again, comparing to a couple of years ago, couldn't be happier. And yeah, I hope people can relate to what I'm saying and hopefully it resonates and they find some value in it.

But yeah, I hope to be the person that I was looking for when I was getting started. So if anyone has any questions about anything I've said, or if they just want to chat about land, maybe they're on the fence—I've talked to a couple of people that were sort of on the fence about it—just send me an email. Email is jon@newthproperties.com. That's N-E-W-T-H.

Oh, and if you live in the Pacific Northwest, reach out and say hi. Because Jesse Kwong and I are trying to get a semi-regular meetup going. And so he was telling me there's just not really many land investors in Pacific Northwest, and we've tracked down, I think five, maybe four or five of us. And so I'm sure there's more, we just don't know about them. So if you're in the Pacific Northwest, I'm in the Seattle area, Jesse's up in BC, I think Vancouver.

And so, yeah, if you want to get together, reach out, say hi, and we'll put you on the list and we'll try to get a meetup going.

Seth: Jon, thanks again. It's great to talk to you. Hopefully we'll talk again soon. And again, if anybody wants to check out the show notes, retipster.com/201.

Jon, thanks again. And talk to everybody next time.

Jon: Thanks, Seth.