Seth: Hey folks, how's it going? This is Seth Williams. You're listening to the REtipster podcast. This is episode 202.

And today I'm talking with my friend, Denise Ford. I've known Denise for years now, and for a long time, I've wanted to interview her because she's been doing some pretty cool things, both in and outside of her land business. She's got a great story to tell about the things she's seen and done as a real estate investor, some of the obstacles she's overcome in life—and not just to the point of getting by, but really, truly thriving in spite of the challenges. So this is going to be another awesome Land Investor Spotlight interview. I'm excited for it.

Denise, welcome to the show. How are you doing?

Denise: Hello, Seth. Thank you so much for having me. I'm very pleased to be here and honored that you asked me. Obviously, I think like most of your listeners, we've been listening to you for years. You're—I think I told you before—you're kind of the encyclopedia. You're the trusted source.

Seth: Thanks for listening. People don't know what encyclopedias are anymore, I don't think.

Denise: But there used to be these hard books full of knowledge, but you are that trusted source.

Seth: I vaguely remember those things. Yeah, you bet. So let's start this the way we normally start these things. Why don't you tell us your backstory? You've been in land investing for a while now. When did you first discover this? What made you decide to give it a shot?

Denise: I discovered it back in 2021. I didn't know anything about real estate, honestly. My background—I started in management, but my full background was in marketing and business. I also had art, so I did a lot of design. That was my W-2 for the majority of my life. I raised kids as a single mom in Illinois unexpectedly, but did that until they all grew up and went off to college, and then I could move wherever I wanted. We lived in Illinois around family, so it was really important to have that support system.

Everyone scattered from there. I moved down to Arizona and found a job in marketing. That's what I knew how to do. I always had side jobs, though, because I had to put food on the table, education—you name it, everything for the kids. Besides my main day job, I was an adjunct college teacher. I had my own marketing company, so I worked with hundreds of companies. I had to dig into many, many fields, really understand it to be able to speak for them. I've just had so many miscellaneous crazy jobs, but you do what you have to do, and that has probably been one of the best characteristics that's carried forward.

I was doing marketing full-time, and my last W-2 was in the election industry, which is fascinating. Going through the 2020 elections was quite a wild ride. But I believe in being an entrepreneur. My whole family—all of my five siblings, my parents—we all had our own companies. So I knew that W-2 wasn't going to fulfill retirement because that started late, and just my drive to build something, to do something.

Denise: So I started listening to podcasts. I came across one where Mark Podolsky was on it, and he started talking about land. I thought, "What is this? It sounds too good to be true." So I just started to dig into more research on that. Like I said, I had very little real estate background or knowledge besides buying my own place.

I found the right mastermind, the right coaches for me because I had to find a good fit. I wanted something a little smaller where I could really get that one-on-one because I knew I needed it. So I joined on with that while still working my W-2. I thought, "Let's try this." My first direct mail campaign had 17 deals that I put into escrow, and I was shocked.

Seth: How big was that campaign?

Denise: About 2,500 letters.

Seth: Were these like teeny tiny deals? That sounds like a ton, even for back then.

Denise: They were a mix. I remember my coach just kind of did a quick once-over of my mailing list, and they said, "Yeah, these are not the normal offers, like a few thousand dollars." It was a total range from small deals up to 100K purchase price—you name it. Just went with that. I think 15 of them closed because, being naive, my goal was to close 100%. I thought, "I'm going to do it." Well, it doesn't always work out like that.

I continued with that, got through all of those deals, and still sent out mail. So nothing like the 17, maybe half of those on future campaigns. But then in March 2022, I unexpectedly lost my W-2 job—they let go of the marketing department with an hour and a half notice. It was like, "Alright, here we go." It wasn't, "Okay, what do I do now?" It was, "Thank goodness I already have this thing that I see incredible potential with."

I took about a day to try to process that it was all me now, but I was working over a hundred hours on my W-2, just killing myself. Marketing is backend for sales, and you're seeing the salespeople reap the rewards, and you get a little pat on the back, which is great teamwork, but the realization was, "Okay, now this is 100% you working for you and team members that you bring on." Let's go for this. And that was the day that we kicked it into full force.

Seth: Wow. There's a lot to dig into there. Tell me about this transition from the W-2 to your land business. Was your land business fully self-sustaining enough for you to live off of at that moment? Or was it like several months of "Oh no, what are we going to do? Is this going to work or not?" Was it a big dramatic thing? What was that like?

Denise: Was it self-sustaining? No, because at the time I was doing all cash deals. I didn't have any notes—that's just what people wanted. It was around the time when things also started to slow down. You know, there's a period where you could sell anything pretty quickly. So I started to see the hills and valleys, and it wasn't ever a question of "Oh no, is this what I'm going to do?" It wasn't an "if," it was a "how."

How am I going to make this happen? How do I need to shift? So I had to step back and think, "First of all, you need some notes. You need some passive income coming in." So I would try to target areas that maybe I wouldn't have, that are a little more typical for notes. And also, when I started the company, I was not coming in with big pockets. I would say even today, maybe my business personally funds about a third, and then I have investors for the rest. So the good news is if I wanted to keep getting more deals, even if I had inventory, I had resources to make that happen.

Seth: When you were talking about that first campaign you did with the offer amounts ranging from a few thousand to a hundred thousand—how were you doing that hundred-thousand-dollar deal? Did you have a funder or something back then? Or did you somehow have the cash to take that down yourself in the beginning?

Denise: I had a mix. I did use land funders for some of my deals at the beginning. Eventually, I stopped using those because I lost land—I didn't write contracts correctly, full accountability on my own error. So I phased that out, but I had people coming to me wanting to see my numbers, saying, "Hey, what do you have going on here? This is better than what I can get elsewhere."

Because I had lost deals to land funders, it really changed how I talk to people. I am 100% transparent. I want them to fully read every single inch of it. All of my documents are through attorneys. I want to make sure everything's crystal clear.

Denise: No, and like I said, it was just online. He saw my contact information through RubCon on the website. So no, he would not have.

Seth: It's interesting. I know a lot of times at those conferences, it's weird how important the relationships can be that come out of those things. And you never really know it until you just show up and just see what happens. But that's kind of an interesting example of that. And you didn't just go to the conference. You actually went that extra mile. I bet most land investors have never thought of that, of doing that kind of thing, but it seemed to work for you.

Denise: I am a big believer in conferences and relationships. I think when people talk about their tools that are successful in their business—boy, it has been the people and the relationships, and not just with land. I like to go to conferences for all real estate. I like to get that bigger picture.

My close people and my trusted people have been through all different kinds of real estate conferences. Do I repeat and go to them all the time? No, I don't. You learn the value of them if you want to go back, but by nature, I'm very, very shy. So going to a conference by myself is petrifying. And then I just tell myself, "This is why you're here. Go out there, introduce yourself to people you don't know and see where it takes you."

Seth: Do you find it's easier to get over that shyness the more of those conferences you go to?

Denise: Yeah, that fear always comes back, but it's okay because I see the gains. Hopefully, I'm returning some value to those friendships, but it's been a wonderful wild ride from meeting people. I know it's—gosh, I can't remember which one it was, but one of my goals was to hike Kilimanjaro.

So I went to, I think it was an investor conference, met Sarah Weaver, and she does midterm rentals. Within two weeks, I'm signed up to go to Kilimanjaro. And it's with a real estate group of people, so you can write it off on taxes. You're talking about it the whole time. But my point is, if I wouldn't have gone to that, the people that I hiked with are some of my best friends now. They do assisted living, they do all different industries. And you'll find your people out there. It's been a lifesaver for me.

Seth: I bet that would almost like compound the networking effect just because you're not just shaking hands at some banquet table or something. It's like you're actually suffering alongside them. Like it's something nobody's ever going to forget. Like that would really solidify a relationship, I would think.

Denise: Yeah, it could go either way. Right? You could love them or hate them. You are snuggled in a tent at 19,000 feet with somebody you just met.

Seth: Are there any people you hate as a result of that?

Denise: No, probably don't want to drop any names, but maybe not regular weekly calls or anything.

Seth: Yeah. Well, it's interesting because I have the same shyness thing I have to overcome as well at these conferences. And kind of weird this past year, I did so many of them, like an unusually high number of them that by the end there, I was kind of getting into a groove. Like it wasn't hard hardly at all anymore. Like I was just so in the mode of exercising that networking muscle that I didn't really feel nervousness or apprehensiveness. It was just, let's do it. So it's probably similar to public speakers, how the more they do it, they don't really get nervous anymore because it's just part of what they do.

Denise: Thanks. I appreciate that.

Seth: I am curious with your marketing background—sounds like you worked with a marketing job, but then you also had your own marketing agency, if I heard you right. So how important has that been in your land business? Do you think that's part of why your first campaign did so well? Or is that like an unfair advantage you have? Do you know something that most people don't know?

Denise: You know, I wish I knew the secret to the first campaign's success. Maybe it was timing, who knows? So I don't know if I can attribute the marketing to that. I do the letters—is it something about the letters? I don't know. I don't have the answer for that. But what I can say is that working with so many different clients, from small to anything—the guy next door, his restaurant to Amazon—having to dig in and learning different industries, so I don't have that fear, has helped a lot. You know, I'm very big into conquering fears and figuring out how to solve problems.

I will say with my last job in elections, we're working with counties all the time, right? And secretaries of state. And so in the land industry, having to pick up the phone, call the counties and really talk to them—I think my biggest lesson was they're just people on the other side. Yeah, it's scary to call and ask questions to government offices, but they're just anybody on the other line. Just talk to them and be as approachable as possible. You get more bees with honey. So try to find those commonalities when you're talking.

Seth: In your marketing career in your agency—what kind of marketing was this? Was this like online ads or something, or direct mail or something totally different, or all across the board?

Denise: It was across the board. Oh my goodness, I think I have done—and a lot of times it was design involved because I went to business school and then I went to art school. So I could be designing hundred-foot billboards to making videos. Actually, Amazon was a really good project because you know the little guides you get with your speaker that tell you how to put it together, how to use it? I wrote those. And it's like the geekiest job ever, but it's an SOP process. You have to think through every single step, and then you have to work with the illustrator and you have to work with the manufacturer in China and put all the pieces together. So it's all about coordinating things.

I've done probably every kind of marketing. The downside is I am so bad at doing it for myself now. It's good to do it for everybody else, but don't look for me on social media because I am not out there. So I need to practice.

Seth: Why do you think it's harder to do for yourself?

Denise: Because I need to allot more time to that. And I don't know if I'll see the return. If I have X number of hours and people and resources, what do I know is going to make money? So it might not be social media. Can I do it for people? Absolutely. But I don't know if that's going to be for me. So I need to spend my time smarter where I know the ROI—I'm going to see it.

Seth: You probably heard that saying—I don't know who said it—but like "Half of my marketing dollars are wasted, I just don't know which half." Did you agree with that? Or have you gotten it to like 60-40 or 70-30? Is there any way to triangulate like, "No, no, this is working, do this more" versus "I don't know, it's just a shotgun, we'll see what happens"?

Denise: Well, I've changed my approach over time. So instead of just sending direct mail, my deals are not just from there. I get them from the MLS. I get them from wholesalers. I get them from colleagues just partnering together. So I'm putting less dollars out to direct mail. I think what I've found—there's so many people in the land industry, they've built these amazing, huge business machines, right? They're sending out a ton of mail. They're getting a ton of deals. That's probably not where I'm going to go. I'm finding deals in more unique ways. And maybe I'm not having to put out as much money for those, but maybe I have to pay closer to market price. That's part of adjusting to the market as well, the ebbs and flows, trying to figure out how to make changes.

Seth: Yeah, that's pretty interesting. So what does your average deal look like? Where are you typically finding it? How much are you paying? Tell me those details.

Denise: I do still do some marketing, some direct mail. So I would say the purchase price is normally anywhere 20 to 80K in there. And ideally at least double, but at the 80K, maybe it won't be, but maybe that's when I'm going to split and then it will far exceed that. So definitely looking for more subdivides, adding utilities, adding manufactured homes. That's relatively new in the last year, which I really like. So is it looking for land that maybe has utilities, and I can also subdivide that? And can I put four manufactured homes on it?

Not too long ago, there was one on the MLS that I knew exactly where this beautiful site was, and it would be great to split, but manufacturers weren't right. And it would have been home sites, you know, home builds. And we put it into escrow. I don't know very little about building a home from the ground up. So what do you do? You dig into education. And I knew enough from other projects to talk the talk a little bit, but then I went down, set appointments, met with the home builders, toured their homes, asked questions, talked about potential JVs, not being scared about it.

Seth: So it sounds like, would you say more often than not, your deals are not just straight flips—you're actually doing something to the property, whether it's subdividing it or getting manufactured homes on it? Or how often is it just like, "Nope, we're just buying, doing nothing and selling" versus "Nope, we're paying a higher price because we're going to do all this stuff to it and then resell it"?

Denise: I would say about 60% right now is still flips because it's also figuring out where the income stream is. My goal is to still get more passive income, so I'm getting more notes. So that's what those flips are good for. My creative side wants to build, do something to them, bring value, affordable homes—you know, those are needed. So how can I actually help people? I mean, they're pretty nice. There's quite a range of manufactured homes. Some of them are kind of high price, but I love the projects and working with team members on that.

Seth: And how does that work? So you're buying a property, you're subdividing it. Are you partnering with a manufactured home company or something, or are you buying these homes and putting them on there and then you're selling them? Who else is involved with this? Like where does your work stop and where does somebody else come in and do some of this before it gets sold?

Denise: Right. And that may change in the future, but right now for the current ones that I have going—and I consider my real estate agent, I probably sell 95% of my properties through her. She is a trusted person, she is a teammate—connected me with a manufactured dealer. So they are allowed to buy directly from the wholesalers, and in theory, they GC the whole project. I'm in charge of utilities, so those are in my name. I've had to put septic on them, so I coordinate that. I'm paying for that, and then he's just telling me, "Hey, we need the water in. We need the water set up." So he's the coordinator on that. So right now that's how those are going.

Seth: So you said this dealer, when he buys from wholesalers—when you say wholesaler, you mean manufactured home wholesaler?

Denise: Yeah.

Seth: Okay. So you basically get the property, you subdivide it if it needs to be, you get the utilities on there on each parcel if they're not already there. And then he's the guy who will get the home from the wholesaler and then get it on there, but you're still the title owner of the land. Right? So how do you guys share in the spoils of each one of these deals when it sells? Do you have to pay him a fee for his work and then you take the money, or how does that work?

Denise: Well, what we do for these—and I'm thinking of two in particular, like I said, there's different options you could do. So I could potentially buy the unit myself. For these two dealers, I brought the land. I bring the utilities. He is bringing the manufactured unit—I mean, he's paying for it. And yeah, then his crews are doing the ground set, they're doing the trenching. We're coordinating all that. We list it on the market. So our particular JV is we're doing a capital profit split according to our proportion of capital put in.

And you learn a lot of lessons along the way. Like I've had to build in some timelines. And if this is going either one of our responsibilities, if I'm dragging this out further than it should be, my split's going to go down. If his job isn't done when it should be—you know, consideration, things do change. But if it goes way over timeline, then his proportion is going to change. So we try to make it fair.

Seth: So I have heard—and I know very little about this, only what I hear—but I've heard that it's hard to create new manufactured home neighborhoods, or maybe I'm thinking mobile home neighborhoods. But are there challenges to getting the townships or the cities to accept these things when you try to establish them? Or are people like, "No, take it. We want it. We need the affordable housing."

Denise: It all depends. The ones that I have bought are already pre-zoned for manufactured. So that can be done. And then it's really per county. I have some more that I'm looking at in particular, and I want to make those connections in that county. I want to talk to the planning and zoning, and I want to find out for this land, is it best for manufactured or is it best—can I get it under contract and rezone it for commercial? What are the needs of the community? I love the rezoning play as well.

Seth: So like this manufactured home dealer—what's keeping you from being the dealer? Why couldn't you do that kind of thing?

Denise: It's definitely in the forefront. And I've done road trips to go meet with the manufacturer. You tour the facilities, you make those connections. You need to get a license and that's done through the counties. So it's not overly complicated. You have to do a test, not as extensive as a real estate agent license or something. You have to get bonded. So I think it's like a 25 or 50K bond you have to get. So fees and licensing, and then, like I said, build the relationships and then get the boots on the ground, like getting your trusted team. So I don't want to be the GC on the ground every time, but I definitely will for the first ones. You have to know ground up what's happening.

Seth: Well, I'm curious—is it a lot more profitable to stay involved with the process up through the point of getting this manufactured home on there and then selling it? Or would it be easier to just say, "No, I'm just going to sell the land to you, manufactured home person, and then you deal with it"? It sounds like the ends justify the means, right? Like it's worth the hassle to do that?

Denise: Yeah. If I'm going to sell everything in the end or—I mean, then again, you could do a manufactured home and lease the land. I mean, that's really good. But that's a whole—

Seth: You ever do that? Where you lease land out?

Denise: Not yet, but I have some I'm holding and I'm trying to figure out what to do with it. And that's definitely—I have a lot of land that I hope to get into escrow in the next month for that exact play, because it's all about your goals. What are my goals? Where am I lacking? More passive income. Have to look at my long-term play. So at the end of the year, just stepping back and going, "Okay, what do my goals look like? Where do I need to go still?" And hopefully everybody does that, does goal setting and has accountability partners. Very, very important as well.

Seth: How many accountability partners do you have?

Denise: I have several. So I joined Better Life Tribe, which is Brandon Turner's new mastermind. I joined that when it started and they divide you down into smaller pods. So I have a group of six of us, we meet every week and they are from—nobody's from land. They're from, you know, they have trailer homes, they have assisted living, they have everything across the board, a lot of commercial. So we have spreadsheets. We're doing our annual quarterly weekly goals. And then I also have other trusted friends that I set up monthly accountability meetings with.

Seth: You're a nomadic working land investor. What's that all about?

Denise: Yes. So when I did the trip to Kilimanjaro and you're off grid—I was off grid for eight days where I literally had no accessibility to Internet. So it's a good test for your systems. My life before was raising kids, like every minute of your day is for other people. And now I have more—I get to decide where the career is going and it's your why, right? My why is family, friends, adventure—love my adventure. So how do I do that with my business now?

Seth: How does that work when you're off the grid for eight days? You have a team or something?

Denise: Yes. Yeah, you definitely have a team and you plan things accordingly. So I did a little tester. My goal is to work remote from other countries and other places. I rent, I house hack my place. So a lot of times I'm homeless during the year anyway. So if I can go to Guatemala and work for a month and I'm living below that number, then I'm living for free essentially. But I can go climb a volcano or do other amazing things and meet people. So that's where, that's my why now. And it's very workable, but business is all about the numbers. It's about relationships, but if the numbers aren't working, then those are vacations. And this has to be a lifestyle where the numbers are working.

Seth: Now, tell me a little bit about working as a single mother. When did your kids all leave the house? How long has it just been you?

Denise: 2014. So I'm trying to think—in 2000, we lived on the East coast for a while. Well, in 2000, we moved back to Illinois and were there for about 16 years until they all went off to college. So 2014 is when I moved down to Arizona. It's amazing. I can spend—I spent more time with my family and friends in the last two years than I ever have, like quality time. And let's build those memories and just enjoy each other. And yeah, I might be working in the bedroom, but that's okay.

Seth: So, and maybe you just told me, was it—you say it was 16 years you were working as a single mother or how many years was it up to you to make this all work?

Denise: 16 years. It was really hard. I'm not going to lie.

Seth: I can only imagine that sounds very hard.

Denise: The kids were great, but obviously there were family situations coming out of divorce. The kids were young—they were four years old to 11. My saving grace was I had—they had cousins around. I had my parents, so they grew up around family, but it literally is putting food on the table. There's no way to sugarcoat that.

One of the passions that I have in real estate is helping, whether it's homeless or single families, you know, single mothers and kids, because if I didn't have that family to move back to and help support me, even though I was working three or four jobs—you know, it's just that crossroads. What if somebody didn't have that? I understand how somebody might be homeless. I understand it was just life and luck that I did. So I try to carry that with me. I think it's really important.

Seth: That's intense. Were you working your W-2 marketing job this entire time or did you have different careers during that 16-year spread of time?

Denise: Yeah. When I moved back, because I had switched schools, I had about five years, but I didn't have my official degree yet. So my parents had a restaurant, which my sister and brother-in-law bought. So they're like, "Hey, you can manage it in the day." So I could bring the kids to school in the morning, manage it in the day. I usually had a 20-minute gap before they'd come home to go out for a run. That was just my little me time. And then you're taking the kids to activities until 10 at night. And then I did other jobs and went back to school. So it was nonstop, but it was worth every minute of it. You know, the kids learn something from that too. They know the work ethic.

Seth: Did you ever have times when like, you didn't think you were going to make it? Like you thought you were going to die or something? I mean, if I think about what it's like to be in that position—I mean, I don't know what else you can do other than just doing the best you can. But I've observed people in similar situations where it's like, I just don't know how they're making it day to day. Like it's just overwhelming to think about it, and I'm not the person living it, you know. So did you ever have moments like that, or where do you find the power to survive in those circumstances?

Denise: Yeah, I don't think I ever thought I was going to die, but maybe I wanted to crawl under the covers for a couple days, which doesn't happen either. Because I wanted to be that role model for the kids. There isn't a—like I said before—there's not a yes or no, it's a how. You have to show them that no matter what's in front of you, there is a way to figure it out. There are always answers that might not be clear. It's not going to be fun all the time. You just push forward. There's no option.

Seth: Yeah. I remember—so my experience is absolutely nothing like yours, I don't mean to compare myself to you—but I remember when I was shortly after I graduated college, it was a terrible job market. I could not find—like the best job I could find, it was not a good job. It was just not a good situation. And like, I didn't know about land. I didn't know when I was going to get out of it or how. I just felt very stuck. In mind you, I was married, no kids. So again, not even a comparison to what you were going through, but I think in a way it was kind of helpful for me to experience that hopeless feeling, because it gives me a little bit more sympathy and a little more, I guess, emotional intelligence.

When I see somebody who is like stuck or struggling, I mean, one thing is to say, "Well, you just got to work harder, like just pull yourself out of it." But it's like, some people literally can't, like they are stuck. They don't know about the land business or whatever this great thing is that they're working on. Like they're just trying to survive day to day. And it was helpful for me to experience that firsthand because I can see people who are struggling and not judge them, not think they're not working hard enough. Just feel like, I feel for you. How can I help? Let me know what I can do.

To use the suffering—I don't think everybody gets that. I think some people are, I don't know if they're born into privilege or maybe they kind of got lucky. They certainly worked hard, but things kind of went in their favor too. I don't know. I don't ever want to be blissfully ignorant of that.

Denise: No, I think that's really good. You know, we all have those moments. So that—I think that's really special that first of all, that you recognized it, right? That not everybody does, maybe they're just like, "Oh, remember," and kind of growl about it, but that keeping that compassion for people inside of you.

And I think one of the other ways that really helped me going through that is now that it's just me, I'm like, "Oh, you know, I'm good." That fear factor of what if you don't have food on the table? That's gone. It's totally doable. So you definitely get tougher. So yeah, we need to keep some compassion, even though it is business in numbers. There's real people on the other side of the phone, right?

Seth: Yeah, for sure. I'm trying to think, is there anything like—I mean, we've already kind of covered some ways that your business is unique—just speaking specifically about the land business. Does anything else come to mind? Like anything you're doing different that you don't hear other land investors doing? Or maybe you have some kind of unfair advantage or some unique edge that not everybody knows about. Anything come to mind?

Denise: I think from—because I went to a couple land conferences this summer, which I don't always do, but it was really special to just be able to be like, "Ah, I know what you're talking about." But I approach my land business by taking a broader approach and learning other real estate industries. I don't see a lot of people doing that.

You know, I started with BiggerPockets, and I got into a multifamily course that was so important. And then a self-storage mastermind and learning about the midterm rental. Does it mean I'm going to go into those? No, but there's so many different variables involved in analyzing properties, but also you can—it's how you're approaching that. You can apply that to land.

I think I go against the grain a little bit where a lot of land investors say, "Find the thing you're good at and do it, you know, only do that." I don't completely agree with that because I think there's more risk involved. I want to spread out that risk a little bit more. So if land is going up and down, you know what, I'm going to get a self-storage with more passive income. I'm going to rent my place out. I'm going to just keep the proportion smart and workable. So I don't think as many people do that, but it works for me.

Seth: Really, when you were talking about working off the grid or I guess traveling off the grid when you're gone for eight days, we kind of touched on like you've got this team and you've got some automations and that kind of thing. What does that look like? Like who is on your team and what are they doing? And do you have software that's working around the clock when you're sleeping? Let's hear about that.

Denise: Yeah. My team is relatively small. I have—I mean, a lot of like the answering services and that type of thing, I don't consider those teams necessarily, but they're taking those intake calls. I have pretty basic—I've revised my CRM. I use Zoho, which is basically like a smaller Salesforce, but it could be across the board. So I like it. I have three part-time people and I pull them in like one's really good at email, one's good at Zoho, one's good at whatever their skill sets are. And then separate contractors, like my developer, talk to him all the time. And so it's not huge. I'm my only W-2 employee.

Denise: One other thing I want to add that I don't think people talk a lot about is not only having your attorneys, but tax strategists and setting up your company. So maybe people are getting into it new. If they think this is really how they're going to go, then look at setting up an S-Corp. There are huge tax advantages, and so it's been an adjustment. I have to pay myself a W-2, so there are smart ways to set up your business. That's been a really big thing for me in the last year.

Seth: Yeah. This tax strategist, are they the reason why you set up an S-Corp? And like, how did you find this tax person? Like if I wanted to go find one right now, because I hear about this a lot. People frequently complain about their accountants or people that don't really understand the best ways to get them the best deals and all this stuff on taxes. So how did you find that person and put that all together?

Denise: I heard that more from other real estate friends who are not in land. First of all, they're talking about your tax strategy and your accountants—two separate people a lot of the time. I'm actually switching. So I found my original through a conference and kind of, I was oversold a little bit. However, we did integrate that S-Corp. We did do a few of the plays on that. Get another property, do a cost seg. You know, how can you really mitigate your taxes a little bit instead of just purely cash coming in? So I would say, ask people for referrals, ask who's doing it really well for them. And I just—I won't do that on camera, but there are a lot of really good people out there.

Seth: Yeah. That's interesting how your tax strategist and your accountant aren't necessarily the same person. For me, they're the same person. I don't know if that's normal or not, or maybe I'm being dumb. Maybe I need to find a different tax strategist, but my accountant always finds good stuff for me every year. I feel like I kind of got lucky. I do pay him a lot of money.

Denise: Yeah. I think that's one of my biggest write-offs is actually to bookkeeping and my accountant.

Seth: So when you look back at your years in the land business, what do you think has been the hardest part of this business for you? Like have you ever had moments where like you didn't think you were going to make it? Or has there ever been a time where you were tempted to quit, or has it never been that way? Has it always just been great?

Denise: It hasn't always been great, but it has never been "Do I go back to W-2?"—like that puts a knot in my stomach. Being able to ride the waves, figuring out how to mitigate the risk and really look for the long-term play. You have to be able to shift. You have to be able to look at things, see what's working and shift. And if you can do that, you're going to be fine.

Seth: That's surprisingly difficult for a lot of people, myself included. Like it's when you figure out something that just works and then you're told it doesn't work anymore or it doesn't work as well. Like changing gears is very difficult, especially when you have to like try something for the first time and there's a 50-50 chance it's not going to work and you know that going into it. I don't know, it's just—it's hard to go out on a limb knowing there's a fair chance it's going to fail, but you still have to try. Like you can't just keep doing what you've always been doing.

Denise: Yeah, definitely. We all have to get out of those comfort zones.

Seth: Are there any examples of like when you've had to shift when you weren't comfortable?

Denise: I definitely had to shift when the land sales were going down. I knew I needed to get some notes. There was a little bit of a panic going, "Okay, this is not working anymore. What do I need to do?" So like I mentioned, I did shift markets. I thought, "It seems to be working up here for notes a little bit more," but that's also when I shifted to different real estate industries as well. It's like, how else can you make this work?

You know, even when I started to look at multifamily relationships—petrified. I knew nothing about it. And going to talk to the commercial brokers, going to visit those—did I end up getting it? Not yet. Am I open to it? Potentially, but you also have to weigh the risk there. I mean, that is just such a different ballgame with your toilets and your tenants and all the typical things there. So where do you want to spend your time? That was a question for me. So dividing up what your land channel looks like, what proportion is cash, what's seller financing, what's long-term leasing for commercial—just be really smart. And that's where my biggest shift has come, I think.

Seth: How many properties do you sell with seller financing these days? Is that a big part of your business or just kind of here and there?

Denise: I would say, boy, it's really increased over the last year. We had so many inquiries on seller financing and I'm totally fine with that. Having to deal with my first defaults, which again, I'm like, "I'm never going to have a default," right? We always want to have 100%. That's not how it works. So dealing with that and also being willing for the people who are struggling to restructure that loan. I've done that a couple of times. They don't want to pay X number into their land and then walk away from it. So how do we work? You know, maybe you have a year left, let's spread that out to three or four years instead and lower that payment. I am going through my first legal case where we literally had to take the land away. It's a very crazy, complicated story, but strap up your boots because you don't know what's coming.

Seth: When you're selling properties with owner financing, like what are the sale prices of these things? Like what kind of value range are we talking about?

Denise: Interesting enough, it has been from as low as I think $8,000 to $300,000.

Seth: I like the $300,000 one.

Denise: Well, and on that whole thing—

Seth: So I know one of the drawbacks of seller financing is that you got to wait to get your profit, like three or five or however many years you set the thing up for. So do you manage this by collecting just a huge down payment from these things? Or is that a struggle at all? Or if so, like, how do you manage that?

Denise: Well, first of all, I do all of my management through title companies. So I don't work with any kind of note companies, which is nice. They're literally managing it.

Seth: So the title company that closes the deal is also collecting all the payments for you?

Denise: Yeah. So those companies are the ones that—I had my own documents prepared, the promissory note, the lender and structure, all that. So they have our documents that they're going to include. I don't do a huge down payment. I know a lot of people want to cover their initial payment purchase price. I don't—it's usually 20%. And then I work with them for theirs.

Something different, though, that I don't know if other people do—so if I JV on one of those, I set it up usually where my JV partner gets the balance of what the buyers paid. And then they will get paid out for like the first three years until they regain their capital and their profit. And then I don't jump in until the very end. So I have to be patient. But I call that my retirement fund. I'll get that many years if I remember about them.

Seth: Interesting. Is there a reason you set it up that way instead of like, "Nope, we're all going to get paid off at the same rate"?

Denise: I like to get my investors their money first. And most of the time they want to reinvest it anyway.

Seth: Do you do any kind of underwriting for those people, like to make sure that they're a good borrower? Or what kind of stuff do you do?

Denise: It's pretty light. First of all, a lot of that is through my agent. She's having those hard conversations and she's getting a feel for it. Sometimes we'll pull credit scores. We don't do full-on underwriting. So I would say credit scores and trying to get their work background and some basics. But sometimes life happens. Like one of the most recent ones—it's divorce, it's loss of job. There's nothing to do about that.

Seth: That's interesting. So your agent handles those conversations and I'm sure there's some value in that. Even if it's not like a full blown, what a bank would do, just putting up some hoops they have to jump through to get some information instead of just blindly giving it to whoever. But given that you have an agent involved and you got to pay them their six or 10% commission or whatever it is, do you pay them that out of the 20% down payment that you get?

Denise: I make sure the agent gets paid and then closing costs are covered. And then there's always some kind of balance that goes towards either myself or the investor. And I will throw out there that one of the podcasts I was just listening to of yours—and you were going through all the items, like the personal guarantee, you kind of went through a checklist. I hadn't thought about those in a while. I'm like, "Oh, that's really good." And we just had a deal come up where they want to buy our land on seller financing, and they're going to build a house on it. The bank does not want us as a second lien holder. So they only want themselves on it. So they're trying to figure out how to still buy the land. And so we came back with the personal guarantee between my agent bringing it up and just listening to your podcast. So thank you for that.

Seth: So you don't have any kind of lien or collateral position on the property itself. It's just the personal guarantee?

Denise: It's not in writing yet, but yes, the bank would take the land and we would have a personal guarantee on some other proven piece of collateral that has at least that value.

Seth: Yeah. That's where seller financing really—it actually starts to get fun when you realize how many different things you can play with. Like it's not at all a static thing. It's not a cookie-cutter thing. I mean, banks might look at it that way, but like when you're the lender and you can dictate whatever you want based on what they're willing to accept, like there's tons of ways to skin a cat. It's pretty fun. I enjoy it.

Denise: It is cool.

Seth: Is that personal guarantee like secured by anything or is it just kind of like a whatever? We'll just come after you if you don't pay.

Denise: No, we'll secure it with something. We want something in writing, showing value of—you know, whether it's, I don't know, it's kind of a pricey piece of land. So whether it's a couple of cars or another house or hopefully not their mother or anybody that they really value, but yeah, I was going to see the value in writing.

Seth: If anyone wants to hear what Denise is talking about, it's a podcast episode I did called "The Seller's Advantage." I'll put a link to it in the show notes. Show notes are at retipster.com/202.

So what's your long-term plan? Like, where do you want this business to go? Like in five or 10 or however many years from now, like, is there some end goal where you want to phase out of the land business or will land always be a part of what you're doing? What are your thoughts on that?

Denise: I think it'll definitely—I love it. It's fun. I would call land fun, right? Because there's so many different options to build things. Definitely long-term. I do want to get into the leasing. I do want to get into more commercial. So yeah, I want to continue this on. Hey, if any of my kids ever want to jump on and learn it as well, that's wonderful. But, you know, if it could become legacy. But, yeah, long term for sure. And let's build out those notes. And maybe I won't have to work quite as much someday. And I could do it from other parts of the world.

Seth: Do you think you would get bored if you, like, didn't have to work anymore? What would you spend all your time doing?

Denise: Oh, I would not be good. No, I get very bored if I'm not doing things. Even if I'm traveling, I like—I have that energy to build and create things and be productive. I like to be productive. I remember when I was little—so I mentioned I have five siblings and we didn't get to watch TV very much so my mom put construction paper and stuff and like, "Mom, we're bored" and she's like "Do something constructive" and literally go make something. So I think that's where that seed was, but yeah, it's too enjoyable meeting people and collaborating and making valuable friendships and partnerships.

Seth: Yeah. You know, I think about that sometimes, like, what is my end goal? Like, is it really to not work someday? 'Cause that sounds kind of miserable. Like, what would I do? Like just some pointless hobby? I don't know. Like I kind of have that same thing where it's like, even if it's not making money, like, I want to feel like I've produced something, like I've somehow created something that's making the world better or something. But yeah, I don't get it. I kind of feel bad for people who don't want to work anymore because that tells me that they don't like what they're doing, which is like a horrible existence.

Denise: That is true. So you have to promise that you will continue to do the Storyland. And I know you didn't ask for this, but I'm plugging this. So I will share that part of my traveling was visiting family. So I picked up my two grandkids for a week, flew with them. So I picked them up in Fayetteville, three-hour ride to the Charlotte airport. Fifteen minutes in, my granddaughter's bored. "How—you know, when are we going to get there?" So turned on Seth's Storyland. It saved me. I tell you what, even if we went to the grocery store for five minutes, we had to listen to Storyland. So if any of you have little ones, it is—they loved it. So keep on doing that.

Seth: That is awesome. That's amazing. If anybody wants to learn more about that, just go to storyland.press. That's my kids' story podcast that I just kind of made up in my very little bit of spare time a few years ago. And it kind of blew up. It's amazing. Thanks for the plug. Appreciate it.

So if there's a new investor out there listening in and they want to be where you're at, would you have any words of advice for them?

Denise: Test the waters. And if you're going to go in, go all in. Like keep your side job, you know, you want to pay your bills, and there's so many younger people in this industry as well—but I think they're a little more fearless too, right, which is not a bad thing. But if you decide you're going to go full force, then get your secure systems, get your legal documents, get your attorney, your tax people, get a really strong solid foundation. That would be the best piece of advice.

Seth: Yeah. Do you think of yourself as fearless, or are you one who—are you like me where you like overanalyze everything and you think of every possible thing that could go wrong? How would you rate yourself?

Denise: I go towards fearful things because life's too short. And if I—and it needs to be across the board, so if it's a physical thing, if it's jumping from an airplane or going scuba diving or whatever that is that scares me, if I overcome that, then I can certainly go walk up to a stranger at a conference. I can have those hard conversations with my investors. I can—it really crosses over all levels.

Seth: Is that always how you respond to fear where you almost see it as like a challenge to overcome, or is that more the exception than the rule?

Denise: I think once I had the freedom to do it, when the kids were older, it changed. But that background of getting through so many hard trials like—okay, you can do this, you got this.

Seth: Cool. Yeah. That is something that I feel like it's a common thread I see of people who do like astoundingly well in land is—I don't want to say they're fearless, but like they don't have as much fear as I do. Like, I feel like they can just kind of pull the trigger without overthinking it. And it might go bad, but it usually doesn't. Usually it's fine if they stick to the fundamentals. And I think that's a big advantage. If anybody out there can either become that way or get the courage to be that way, or if they're just naturally that way, that seems to be a common thing. I guess there's like, there's stupid fearlessness too. I mean, it's not always smart, but if you understand the fundamentals and stick to it, it seems to work out.

Denise: Yeah, definitely. And think about everything that has failed. That's—oh my gosh, that's your learning right there. That's your education. I mean, except for maybe skydiving, we won't talk about that, but anything else, you can learn something from it.

Seth: Yeah, totally. Awesome. Well, Denise, appreciate your time. It was awesome talking to you. If people want to reach out to you and say hi—you don't have to share anything, but if you want to, it's up to you. How would they do that?

Denise: Absolutely. They can reach me at info@landsandbox.com. And I'll be happy to chat with them, whether it's new people or other people who want to do business or just talk, make a connection and be happy to.

Seth: Awesome. I know Denise hangs out in our REtipster Facebook group and the REtipster forum. I've seen her in there a number of times over the years. She's an awesome voice in the room. And Denise, thanks again. Appreciate your time. And hopefully we'll talk again at a conference sometime this next year.

Denise: That sounds great. Thank you so much. And thanks to your listeners as well. It's a great community.

Seth: You bet. Thanks a lot.