Seth: Hey, everybody. How's it going? This is Seth Williams. You're listening to the REtipster podcast, and this is episode 238. And today I'm joined once again by my friend, Travis King.

If you've been following this show for a while, you already know Travis. We make a point of getting him on the show every year because he's a thought leader in the space. He's an REtipster certified coach, and he's got a great land business, and he's helped a lot of others get a lot further in their businesses.

So he's a very familiar voice around here, and I always love taking the chance to catch up with him, hear what he's working on in his business right now. And as we've seen the land business changing so much in 2025 with a lot of people exiting the business, we're going to talk through some of the biggest reasons why most land investors quit and how and why the top 20% push through and actually win.

It's going to be a great conversation. Travis, welcome back. How's it going?

Travis: Hey, Seth, thanks for having me again. You're right. We probably need to do this yearly or maybe even quarterly, because the market changes that much in the last couple of years. You really need to have your finger on the pulse of the market.

I'm happy to talk about it because it feels like the state of the union. It's not a yearly thing anymore. It's almost like a quarterly thing now.

Seth: Yeah, it's changing very rapidly. Yeah, it's actually it's funny because I there are times when I record these podcast episodes like way in advance, like something doesn't get published until like two months after I record it. And it got to the point last year where it's like, man, that's like way too much time.

Like the world could actually change substantially in like two or three months. So I'd like try to tighten that up a little bit. But I'm wondering, since we talked last year, what has changed for you personally and professionally? What's going on in your world?

Travis: Well, personally, we have a 15-month-old right now. So that's been an absolute blast because our next youngest is 10 years old. It's been nearly a decade since we've done this.

It's been a joy and a blessing. Knowing that this is probably the last one definitely hits different. Knowing that this is the last time you get to do this makes it so much more special.

It's been really fun because our little baby has his older brothers now. We didn't have that before - they're at an age where they can help and play with him. I think it's going to be a blast. I think we've definitely preemptively addressed that empty nest syndrome.

By having a little one now, we're going to be parenting and have kids around for the next 20 years. They're going to be dads when they're older. It's been really neat to have that different dynamic with older boys around.

We're doing college visits at the same time as we're changing diapers. It's crazy - it's like two very different worlds coming together.

Seth: Yeah exactly the bookends are pretty far apart but it's been a blast is there anything surprising about having a baby again or is it like you've kind of been through it all before like yeah we get it we got it down

Travis: I feel like you forget a lot and you wonder what did this child do or what did we do with the other ones. You definitely don't overreact as much as with a new parent or your first one. We're certainly more patient and more casual with things now.

It's probably like learning to ride a bike to some extent - once you've got it, you have the basics for life, but maybe some of the finer details get lost with time.

Seth: Yeah you're no longer like seeking like advice on how do I handle this you're like we got this but it's but there are certainly things where you go I don't really remember when do they start walking when do they start talking you know what do the other ones do

Travis: Right and on the professional business front what's new on that side yeah well by design I guess that is kind of has to fit in and around the personal life right that again by design back in the W-2 days like you try to fit life in right you try to fit wife kids life in in the after hours outside of the working hours so we're basically.

Uber drivers right now for the older boys running them to sports and all these things and then work is a little more fragmented you know like on the business side so it kind of works well with like batching things and time blocking because you don't have eight hours to sit down at the computer and blaze through work so it's very much like 90 minutes of deep work and then really being calendar driven and being intentional you know with your time but on the business side it's kind of an interesting season because we're I'm a growth guy.

I'm a start new things, you know, scale guy. And we've, we have four companies right now. So it's really more about like operations and executing, you know what I mean? And optimizing than it is about that. There's always, you always want growth, but in this market, it's kind of more about like being lean, being smart, being profitable and operating what you've got.

And so for me, it's just an interesting season. Cause I've always been read more books, learn more, learn more. And it's more about. Implementing and executing what we already know right now. You know what I mean? And just cutting expenses and trying to increase profit across all businesses. So yeah, it's definitely a different, a shift into operations mode, right? From like founders mode or growth mode.

Seth: It's interesting, like implementing what you already know. Have you realized any things over the past 12 to 24 months where it's like, we already knew this, but like, it's not true anymore. Like it doesn't work this way anymore. Like, have you had to like relearn things or like take old ideas and throw them out? And how have you figured those things out?

Travis: Yeah, I think there's a lot of things where like you, when the economy is cranking, when rates are low, when properties are selling fast, there's kind of a lot of grace and forgiveness, right? And you really don't look at your expenses. Like there's the P&L and you kind of, you know what I mean? You kind of don't look at your expenses that much, but as properties sit longer, waiting to sell his costs go up you all of a sudden start to like view expenses is like reverse income and rather than going how do I go out and get more income you go all right you know what I mean what am I paying for now that I don't need to do that's a conversation my wife's really good with like do you need seven data memberships like you know what I mean do you need these softwares do you need so I think like going through and just going like what's the excess let's trim the obvious.

Excess versus like when, you know, every year is a million dollar a year. You're not that concerned or you're not looking at it that closely. So I think this is really good because we're better positioned like as the market kind of recovers. I feel like the lessons we've learned, we go, okay, I won't be that lazy or that sloppy.

Again, I'll run things a little tighter. But I think that's the other thing is just recognizing across different industries. I've helped some friends in their small businesses that have nothing to do with the land and just noticing like the transferable skills that we all have where we go, okay, every business, you got to get customers, you know, for customers, there's like a database or a data set somewhere like a marketing list.

Where is that marketing list? How do we, you know, get narrow with who we go after? How do we generate leads? What's the cost of a lead? How many leads to a conversion? You know, So I think I've learned that is that although different asset classes and different businesses, there's certainly significant differences. There's a lot of transferable skills from one business to the next.

So I think that's something that was kind of like a good reminder or surprise at going, hey, there's 60% of the framework we can just repurpose with the next company. Then there's other industries like software, right? Where you go, whoa, there's a way bigger learning curve. And there's not as much transferable as moving from flipping land and subdividing it to software is a bigger leap.

But I think that's something that I was surprised about. Almost every business. If we look at it, like it's driven by customers, client, it's either like, you know, property acquisition or a client acquisition or something, and we need marketing. And so just kind of recognizing that, that, oh, cool. Like no matter what industry we go into, I feel like we have, we could pretty quickly get our footing.

Seth: It's been interesting to see over the past year or two, just the realization that the market can make a genius or an idiot out of anybody. It's not really that you're that smart. You were just kind of riding the wave as it came. And I think there is some skill in there. Like you can actually identify where the wave is and where it's coming and where it's going sometimes. Like there are definitely signs for that.

But a lot of people like I don't think they really knew that and still don't know that. They just kind of were in the right place at the right time. People that we heard these huge success stories from a few years ago and now they're like out of it.

Travis: I would say that like timing, like to be on the right side or wrong side of it, everybody's got a story, right? Where like either you bought like right before the market crashed, whether it's a house or a stock, or something, or you maybe never read a book about real estate, but you just happened to buy a house and then all of a sudden everything went up. So I do think so much of it's about timing. And for some people, it's just like a story of luck. And for other people, you learn from it, you can kind of exploit it, you can see it coming. And then other times it just blindsides you.

So like I'd say right now, we don't know. We really don't know what things will look like 12 months from now, but I'm confident interest rates will be lower. And I think that'll improve, you know, land and dispositions. So for me, I'm going, well, I don't want to have a lot of inventory right now. And that kind of, this is going to timestamp this, right? Because things change whenever you're listening to this, but right now I don't want to have a ton of inventory, but I think I might want to have some inventory 12 months from now.

So for me, like I'm the thing that used to be like, oh no, the subdivide takes nine to 12 months to go through the process. That's almost more of an asset than a liability right now, because I don't want all that inventory, right? I want the inventory to get gobbled up. But I think if rates are lower and the dispo market improves, that might be good timing for me.

So kind of front running things like front running rate cuts, you can kind of look at those things. And some of them are assumptions, right? It's a little bit speculation, but yeah, there are certainly people. And I was one of where you just like, if you time things right, you might think you're a genius. Until the market cracks and then you get exposed and you either like get educated, right? And kind of re-approach it more intelligently or you like, you tap out. But yeah, timing has everything.

Seth: I think Warren Buffett has a great quote about this, that, you know, when the tide goes out, those who are naked underneath are exposed, right? I forget, I'm paraphrasing it, but it's something like that. We're basically exposed, you know, in bad markets, whether we knew what we were doing, whether we were, you know, clothed and knew what we were doing or we were naked underneath the surface and didn't, right?

You are a very well-known and sought-after coach in the land space. You've worked with a lot of people. I've heard endless stories of people who have worked with you, and as a result, got a lot further. It's kind of like the turning point is like, once I met Travis, that's when everything changed. Of the people that you've worked with over the past year, have you come across anybody who isn't struggling? Or is everybody kind of feeling it to some extent?

Travis: I think everybody's feeling the disposition side being slower. That's something nobody's immune to. On the acquisition side, the more mature your business is, the longer you've been in business, you probably have that stuff dialed in - your scripts, your conversion rates. Those things haven't changed much on acquisitions that you can't adjust to.

It's more on the disposition side where everybody's fighting the same battle of longer days on market. That's the commonality whether you're a beginner or experienced person. Then it's about how do I combat that? Rather than self-funding, taking ownership and listing, does it make sense to double close and list those properties to combat the disposition side? That's something I think everybody's struggling with - increased days on market from what they're used to.

Seth: Is there anything that you personally have had to change in your land business or things you've been looking at changing as a result of what's been going on in the market or like, how's it been going for you?

Travis: Absolutely. Moving from county-level to zip code-level investing wasn't because we didn't know this years ago - it was just incredibly manual and we didn't have the software. Over the decade I've been doing this, every educator talked in terms of selecting counties. That was the hierarchy because everything's assessed at the county level. That's how they bill your taxes. We speak in terms of counties.

We would pick counties, select counties, and market to counties. "This is a good county, that's a bad county." A lot of that was based on manual work - unless you had a VA, which we did. It was a ton of work because I had to create SOPs and training videos before having a VA go on Zillow and look at sold-to-for-sale ratios within zip codes for certain acreage ranges.

We didn't have software tools. Fortunately, even in the last year, some software and web tools have emerged that let us move from picking markets at a county level to avoiding all the dead spots by becoming zip code investors. We can avoid these dead zones within the county that we would be paying for - those records, that data, paying for the marketing.

That's a big shift we've made - moving from being county-only investors to zip code investors, attempting to avoid all those dead markets where land exists but transactions aren't occurring. That's one of the biggest changes we've made. We always knew it, but it was super manual and challenging to pull off.

Seth: It's a great point, though, because like, I don't know of any county that isn't like this, where like there's great parts of it and bad parts of it. Like the best counties have like armpits and great parts of it and other, you know, when we really step back and just forget everything you ever learned about it. It's like zip codes kind of do make more sense. It just requires a lot more. Instead of picking one county, I got to pick like how many dozens of zip codes at a time. It just feels like more work.

Is that kind of what you're doing? Like do you pick 20 or 30 or 40 different zip codes in multiple counties or how do you keep that organized when you're doing it that way?

Travis: I'll approach it at a state level and I'll stack rank zip codes, you know, and just cherry pick the best zip codes. In the county, we can say, hey, in my business, you know, our businesses might be the same, right? Or our business might be different. The price ranges we go after. So you might look at median prices in that zip code.

And maybe some people are, you know, going after stuff over $500,000. And other people go, no, I want the median price to be $25,000. So it's very much like specific to your business on the disposition side. It's more of like, I would say, going starting at the state level and then saying, hey, let's skip that county hierarchy.

Because sometimes at a county level, if we lump together all acreages, we might miss out on good zip codes because the county as a whole doesn't look good because we're lumping the large acreage properties that sit for long days on market together. But there's certain acreage ranges that move really well in that county or within a zip code.

So I think if we kind of skip that hierarchy of state, county, zip, and we start out at the state level, and then we cherry pick the best zip codes that meet our criteria in our business, that's probably the best approach. And then what I do is on the acquisition side, when the lead comes in, we're doing this in funding too, which it used to be like, hey, that's a good county. Yeah, we'll fund that. And it was kind of like that. Like historically, we've done well in that county.

Things move quick, but it was kind of a generalized statement. And now we're more going, okay, in that zip code, at that acreage range, what are the days on market? What's the sell-through rate? So we're trying to be more intelligent about what we buy, looking ahead at the dispo side and say, are properties in that zip code at that acreage range moving, not just like at the county level?

So I think it's definitely become a little more sophisticated. And that's for the better, because even if the market gets easier, you have that skill set and you're being so sloppy or so generalized. But all of that, again, a lot of that is like the industry's matured. We now have tools available we didn't. And that allows us to do things that we might have thought of or known. But didn't know how to do it without it being so manual and just living in a spreadsheet, right?

Seth: Yeah, I've heard a number of times. Yeah, I sent an offer to this person that said, yeah, I've got like 15 different offers in the mail this past month. It makes you think, whoa, this place is saturated. There's way too many land investors here. And I don't have any proof to this, but I'm wondering if that's happening because there's software out there now that just tells you, hey, like go to this county. Like if you're looking

So for this sell-through rate or sold-to-for-sell ratio or whatever the thing is you're looking for, go here. And perhaps it's sending a lot of people to the same markets. But I wonder if you could instead target the counties that look horrible. Make a list of them, and then go to those counties and pick out the zip codes that look good. So you're like hitting the good places in what appear to be a bad area. Do you think that makes good sense?

Travis: It does. And what happens is like the people that are kind of leading the pack or innovating, they figure this stuff out and then they become echoes. And then a year, 12 to 18 months later, everybody's like, yeah, that's how we do it, too. That's how we go. So like you kind of have that edge for a while. And then eventually, yeah, either the tools come out or word gets out or, you know, I'm on here, sharing the secret. So people figure it out and that's OK. But you have this time to exploit that.

But yeah exactly you no longer qualify or disqualify it us internally and then me and coaching at the county level we go boy there's there's four great zip codes in this county that has 12 zip codes but the other eight it's not that they're bad it's just things are taking like 11 months to sell and we want them to be selling at five months or something so yeah I think kind of shifting to that but there's these drop-off points Seth like it's kind of like going back to very beginning, there's like awareness, right?

Like I'm driving in the vehicle, I'm listening to a podcast, myself, a hundred thousand other people hear episode about flipping land, right? Maybe you're on bigger pockets, right? Of those people... How many move from awareness to action and actually do something. So that's kind of like the first, there's just drop off points with everything.

So I wouldn't say like annoys me, but I would say like, there's more to it when people just go, Hey, it's saturated or too many people know. Cause I'd say we start out with who's heard of it, who takes action. And then within that action, who sticks with it. And then when times get tough, who adapts and continues to stick with it.

So there's kind of like this, like, you know, that moving from awareness and motivation to like commitment you know what I mean and that's in the beginning everything starts with like whether you're here on a podcast or maybe you went to some seminar or something and you got this sugar rush of motivation but really are you committed to doing this for 12 months let's say so there's a big drop-off there and then you move kind of the next thing or the next drop-off is like that disconnect between expectations and reality right well maybe the podcast you heard somebody said hey I sent out 500 letters and I got a deal and you didn't factor in they were targeting five thousand dollar properties and you're marketing to fifty thousand dollar properties and go well I sent out 500 letters and I didn't get a deal you know so there's kind of like with each stage like there's that like cost disconnect of like after that motivation you go the time cost of like boy they made this sound easy on the podcast but I'm putting in 15 hours a week.

In addition to my job, it's taken away from my family. There's a time cost and there's a marketing cost. So again, more people drop off. And so as we keep like continue down, like the line, of people that are doing it. And not just sending out that initial campaign. The funnel gets much narrower, I would say.

And then even just something for people to shed a limiting belief or a bias is that the total number of offers somebody gets doesn't have anything to do with it. And the best point, the absolute best example I have is a guy I wrote about in my book, who is Whale, a portfolio owner that had 130 properties and we bought from multiple times. I'm coaching a student who sent him a letter and then sent me, hey, I got this lead with all these properties and we review it. And I'm like, yeah, that's my guy, right? We buy from him all the time. Like, why is he responding to you? He knows he can just call me, right? And it's a timing thing.

The guy wanted to do a 1031 exchange, get out of this land, into rentals. So I would say it's so much about timing more so than total volume. And this guy will tell you, he had 200 plus letters, right? One of the most heavily worked counties, I would say, in the nation, right? So it was more of when that letter hit. So timing has a lot to do with things too.

It's easy from afar, to like go like, man, I heard this or somebody who's got a little bit of experience, but maybe not enough to be like speaking as an authority will say things like, that's a bad state. Well, if you even have less experience than that amateur, because you haven't even done it yet, you might go, well, I heard this is a bad state. And I go, you know, you or I would go, the whole state is bad. You know what I mean? Like, really? The whole entire state? Or maybe this just region or this county or like, again, the zip code thing, right?

So there's some, you know what I mean? There's some like information that were, or yeah, I heard that used to be really good, but now everybody's doing it. On to the next asset class. So it comes back to kind of commitment, like, how bad do you want to do this? Will you stick to this? Or are you just dabbling?

Seth: I feel like it's very easy to be misled by statistics in this business because there's just so much that goes into anything working and you can just rattle off a number. Like my response rate was X. It's like. That doesn't really mean anything unless you really understand what they were sending, what they were targeting, what they were offering, what the conversation looked like, all this stuff or, you know, the stuff about, yeah, the state is bad or something.

Even the point about, you know, if you talk to a motivated seller or just any seller who says they got 15 offers over the past week, it's like that also doesn't really mean anything in terms of like whether they'll accept your offer.

Travis: And like you said, I would say, yeah, the tools have made it easier. That's a pro and a con, right? The con is kind of, boy, there's not as many barriers to entry. Like when I started there, you couldn't go by single user other than like list source. Like there was very, very few or maybe agent pro, very few data sources where you could click like unimproved vacant land, you know. And so like we were pulling lists off of the county GIS parcel viewer, as in a CSV. And then we were doing mail merges.

So those are barriers to entries for a lot of people. They go, I don't know what to do with the CSV and how to figure out a mail merge and then how to send this out. So there's barriers to entries that are gone now because these softwares have made things so much easier. But it still comes back to like, are you following up? Are you calling these people?

And that's you'll hear that a lot of times. I've got a lot of offers like, oh, that's great. Like how many calls have you had or how many people have followed up with you? And then that's again, that's a drop off. Like follow up because and I've been there. like maybe people are working a job, you know, and they're trying to call on their break or their lunches or after work. So there's kind of the best effort people.

So yeah, I don't let that stuff discourage me. I just more like, well, boy, that's a lot of offers. Any good ones? Or what's the best one in there? Why haven't you taken it? There's times I go, man, I would have taken that and I would have like ran to the title office with that offer because I can't come anywhere near that. Why didn't you take that?

And then they might share something. Well, they're putting in new roads or power in here and it's going to go up and then you go. Okay, well, I wasn't going to convert them, but I just learned something new about the area, right? But yeah, so you're absolutely, and it's just human nature to kind of be like a skeptic until you've got some proof of concept on your own. And until you're a believer, you're a skeptic with anything, right? Whether we say that's like side hustle, business, religion, anything, right? You start as a skeptic usually, and then once you become a believer, it's hard for somebody else to convince you otherwise.

Seth: On that whole question of commitment versus motivation, I don't think anybody who starts the land business or any business has some level of motivation or they wouldn't do anything, but is there a way a person can test themselves and be like, am I committed? Am I just excited or will I actually stick to this? Or is it just a matter of knowing oneself? You just have to know, what's my history? Do I actually follow through on stuff or do I jump from thing to thing?

Travis: I think that's really valuable to be introspective about that, right? Because if we don't have something in our life that's holding up a mirror and pointing those things out. Then you kind of got to be like introspective and go like, what have I done with the last two or three things I've attempted?

So you you go, OK, I gave each of them six months. I move on to the next thing. Well, totaled up, that's two or three years of different things for six months. So you go, is this different or is my level of commitment different? So I think that's fair to kind of like just hold up a mirror and be honest with yourself. What do I tend to do? Because I was kind of a move on to the next thing if I didn't have fast traction.

But I think kind of like going, you know, am I motivated or not? I think I would say that people that go, I will give this a year no matter what. I find those people not like a three or four months, right? If you go, all right, if I give anything a year, if it's not working at a year, either it's the wrong timing for the market and I should revisit it later or I have the wrong approach or it's not for me.

But I think you really do got to give anything a year because that first year, there's such a learning curve to anything new that you do. So I think yeah if you're not willing to give it a year and you don't have you come in like just you just don't have the money for marketing and you're not paired up with somebody else or something I think there's like reality checks where it's like it's okay.

If you don't have the resources right now and you just want to self-educate for a year, well, you figure that part out. I'm kind of a take action and figure it out later. But at the same time, I hate for people to start something before they're committed. Before they're really committed to it.

But usually the commitment part has so much more to do rather than this deciding. It has to do with your personal situation. Like, are you miserable in your job or are you unfulfilled? And there's something like yearning. You need something more like on your every day, every meeting you sit in, like you're spaced out and you're just all you're thinking about is what if I own my own company? What if I own my own business or like how many more of these meetings do I have to sit through?

If there's something that's kind of like that pain or pleasure. If you've got pain in your life and it's driving you towards this and you've got like a stronger why I find people are more committed than the person who maybe has the golden handcuffs with the six figure job. and they're just kind of looking to dabble. You know what I mean? Because it doesn't matter that much to them if it sticks or not.

But the guy who knows they've got more to give, right? But just can't figure it out within their W-2, that's the person that might have more grit and more stick-to-it-ness than the other guy who's kind of just like looking for something outside of the cushy corporate gig. But it's okay, or it's not bad. You know, there's usually got to be something, you know, like either driving you much stronger for it to stick.

Seth: Well, I know sometimes the reason people don't last is because they have like misaligned expectations. They're expecting something that's just not realistic, or maybe somebody sold them on an idea that's just not accurate about how this works.

So, I mean, with the people that you talk to and or the people that you've seen getting out of this, when a new investor is starting out, where do you see the biggest disconnect between their expectations and the actual time or money it takes to succeed? Like what should they be planning on?

Travis: I'll be honest. I think it's harder right now because like when I started, there's probably like four tier one educators, you know, you being one of them and it's noisy. I had my VA go through and do this and I've got like some notes here I'm glancing up at. There are 63 educators that she could pull on a spreadsheet. Like five tier one educators, 16, what I'd call like tier two and then 42, like tier three, you know, guys who've been doing it a year and you know what I mean? Like coaching somebody else that maybe they're not set up to run a whole education business, but they're 12 months ahead of the guy who hasn't done any deals.

So I'd say it's like really noisy for people. And that can be hard to when you're starting, like going, who do I go with? And so I think a problem is kind of focus where people, I heard this on Seth's podcast, but I heard this over here. And then I heard this, you know, and people try to mix and marry different things. And each of us probably have our own method that works if you stick to it. But when you start patching things together, it's kind of clunky and fragmented, you know.

So I think people start out not like being focused. Like you got it. You listen to people till you find somebody that resonates with you and you want to stick with. I would say at that point, tune out others. Put the blinders on and roll with that until you get traction. And then maybe you outgrow them or maybe you're just at a point where like you've emulated till you're profitable, right? And now you can kind of like innovate or search out more advanced strategies.

So I think focus is like one of the first things like people have split focus, they're learning from too many different places. That's kind of like, I would say, where the biggest problem where it starts. Or even when you start coaching somebody, if they don't have buy-in or commitment to the strategy or the method, it's hard to duplicate or replicate results, right?

Seth: Now, let's talk a little bit about outdated playbooks. So you wrote a book, The Land Investor's Playbooks, best land investing book I've ever read. And I just love how it like breaks down these seven different plays that a land investor can take. And it's cool because you can almost kind of like reinvent the business with a slightly different or very different model, depending on which play you take. It's not just one static thing that everybody has to follow, but just in general, especially that original vanilla template that every land flipper was following.

Just sending direct mail, pulling your list from DataTree or wherever you get it, sending super low offers, just like the thing that everybody does in the beginning. Do you think that's outdated? Or what are some strategies in general that people need to abandon? And what's working better instead? What should they stop doing and just forget about that? And relearn it this way instead.

Travis: Yeah. I think it's timing of the market that you're in, right? And like you said, so if you peel back the curtains for people and you kind of say like, what's the easiest for an educator or for a speaker for anybody, right? Well, like write and perfect the same speech and then travel one city to the next and give the speech and charge for it. You know what I'm saying? Like that makes the most sense, for the speaker, the educator, same thing, write the course once delivered to everybody.

Well, like the message, The speech should change with the market, the times. And it's the same thing like with the education. So like the playbook, let's say in the early 2000s for almost like 10 years or so, when we had really, really low interest rates. I remember when I was researching being an investor and I'm like coming across the strategy of like the subject to method, where you would take over somebody's loan and keep their interest rate. And it made no sense to me. I'm like going, what?

Why would I do that? I can go get a new loan for 3%. Why would I take over their 7%? It didn't compute because that is a play that somebody created in the 80s when interest rates went up like 18% to 21%. So who would want to originate their new mortgage or new loan? You don't. You go assume the other guys who's much lower. So that play worked during that time. And then it did until it didn't. When rates dropped and got crazy low, almost nobody was running that or teaching that. And then like, for example, like along came Pace Morby, kind of repackaged an existing play is the sub two method, because rates were going up, you know what I mean?

So now all of a sudden that play, it's not that the playbook's dead. It's just in this market that play doesn't make sense to run it right now. And it does right now, rather than originate a new loan at seven or 8%, you probably want to assume somebody else is at three or four, right? So I'd say there's times that these things work, and then there's other times where they don't work, but you can't just keep running the same play head on into a market that is not cooperative.

And I think that's kind of a challenge is that some of the education has stayed the same. And people that when that method was working, when they were an active investor, that method worked for them, but they are no longer an active investor. So they don't have a read on the pulse of the market. so they don't know how to adjust. Or the market changes so quickly and software interfaces change so quickly.

I'll share like as an educator, it's tough. I might record a course and in six months, because I'm feeding these software people feature requests, you know, I'm my own enemy. They're adding new dropdowns. They're making interface changes with new features. And all of a sudden that course I just recorded feels dated because, you know, software moves faster, Interface move faster. Market moves faster.

so you you've got to be really current really current with things and and what I like like with the plays in the playbook for me it was thank heaven everybody else kind of introduced these fundamentals of these concepts because that got me into it and again I completely emulated others I copy it's like the copycat method I copied others methods that worked until we were profitable and we're experienced enough to like recognize ways to innovate you know and put our own spin on it and a lot of those spins were like our first subdivide.

2019 when I was talking about minor subdivides I couldn't find a person in the industry teaching or talking about that but that was something that we just stumbled across as investors and I said hey this is a plate add to the playbook instead of the generic county-wide single parcel campaign and then again as we like reinvented our seller finance business after we created a hundred plus self-service notes, this is terrible. I don't want to do this. If I rebuilt this, the 2.0, how would I do it?

And for me, I'm like, I would collect bigger notes, 250 to 750, five to 15 years service by somebody else. So you kind of go, okay, well, that's for us. That's a new play. So there's, and then like targeting portfolio owners, right? That was my, probably my biggest, most impactful, like epiphany was how to get intentional about targeting multi-parcel portfolio owners.

But you pick up these things along the way and you're still in the asset class of land and you're still in the strategy of land flipping, but it's just kind of your own spin or your own take. And I would say that's kind of a challenge right now is if you're using outdated. Old, broad methods that worked for somebody, it worked really well for them, but it was in that market. And maybe it was five or 10 years ago, maybe it's even three years ago.

Like you have to really be current right now because the market seems to change quicker than it used to. So you've just got to be operating with current information. You know, to be successful. And some of it, even like these methods, like I said, some of them, you go, well, this works well in this market or that play is a good play, but it's not appropriate right now.

But when somebody is getting started, what I don't want to do is like say, Hey, here's a hundred plays to run. And you go, Oh, I'm, what do I do? I'm so overwhelmed. So like, you know, as, as a teacher, as an educator, we kind of want to show one on ramp. We want to, you know what I mean? We don't want a bunch of forks in the road early on before people know what they're doing.

So it's not a disservice or anything, any educators done wrong it's just like going hey when we're when people are a beginner and they're getting oriented we don't want to muddy the waters with complexity. So we kind of want to give them like a simple overview to get started. But I would say after you've done that, that's where you start to have to go, how do I differentiate from what the masses are doing?

And I feel like that's what's helped us a lot is just adapting along the way versus throwing our hands up and going, well, rates doubled or days on market doubled, capital dried up or you know what I mean? So I think that's kind of the stick to it and the adapting is key if you're trying to be like a land professional long-term, right? And that's more speaking to like, this is a career, you're making a career out of it versus just, Hey, I'm jumping in, going to try to make six figures and pop out. No big deal. They're two different, you know, two different intentions and approaches.

Seth: There are two different competing trains of thought, which I think are both wise, depending on the time and the place. One of them is to focus on one thing, like just keep your head down on one thing, become the best at that, do only that. The other one is diversify, do this and that. So if one of these things stops working, the other one is there to support you. Maybe do three things, maybe four. I don't know. But obviously the more things you do, the lower the quality of each of those things becomes.

And the playbook that you've got and just these different angles that you can go out the land business, they're kind of the same because it's all within land. It's not that crazy different, but they are different. And I'm wondering like the people that you work with, at what point do you see these alternatives as shiny objects that they shouldn't be messing with versus like, no, it's wise to try this and that. How do you help people figure out how to focus on what really matters?

Travis: Well, I would say like, I'm a fan of the one thing, but the one thing to me is like the asset class. Land is the one thing. Inside of that, we can have multiple strategies, right? But the one thing is like, hey, we're not doing land on Tuesdays and Wednesday. We're trying to syndicate a multifamily deal. And then Thursday, we're trying to get our first Airbnb. That's kind of the challenge, with the lack of focus.

So I would say the one thing can be asset class. and you might like flipping land might be your one thing just flips until you find a niche that you're it's either super profitable or you're just really passionate about it and you gravitate towards it and then within the asset class of land you might have one thing like subdivide or something or double close the something that you go okay this is the one thing I'm doing right now within it so I'm a fan of data or focusing but I think that's the biggest thing I see is people pop more broader from asset class to asset class, like Airbnb.

Multifamily, the BRRRR method, and then land. Those are too broad and too far apart. You do have to lock in, I think, on one asset class. Now you can make a bunch of money in land and push that into single family or multifamily. That's brilliant. But I would say overall, your investment method should be one thing. And then you can diversify the profits or where you place that cash.

We know houses, single-family, multifamily, way better depreciation, taxes and stuff than land. So it makes a lot of sense to cash flow from land, push that in somewhere else. But I think when people, your focus is split on the asset class or the approach is where it's a challenge. I think that's really more where people struggle than just, pulling off these different plays the plays I introduce are more like hey when you maybe you're a beginner and you're marketing at a county level a lead comes back let's not just look at it like I'm a hammer that's a nail all I do is hit you if it doesn't fit that flip flip flip it's just more like saying hey use your peripheral vision and kind of go could this be a subdivide is this waterfront do they own more properties or other properties would this be good for seller financing.

It's just kind of like going, okay, as you process the leads, what's the highest and best use of this and how can we exploit it or replicate it? It's kind of what I'm trying to teach, but it's not like, hey, here's seven forks in the road and you got to pick a play. Just stick to the land flip until you get traction and profitable. And then you're going to find something that resonates with you.

I've got a guy in my mastermind that I taught in 2021, one minor subdivides. That's all he's ever done. So he's like, I've never done a different thing. Like I absolutely love it. And why would I ever do something else? For me, it's more about, I like variety. So, you know, I like to have my hands in lots of things and different strategies. So that fits my personality. But yeah, the, the one thing you can take it as far as you want the niche, or you get into a strategy in the niche.

Some of my biggest coaching clients run double closed only businesses. Right. That's their one thing inside a land. That's their one method. So yeah, I'm, I'm a fan of focus and one thing you just have to like, understand it. Macro, micro, am I one thing in the macro or the micro?

Seth: All right. Can you think of any times in your business or maybe people you've worked with where they found a deal? It could have been just a straight flip, super simple, but they chose to do something a little bit more complicated, like subdividing it or entitlements or whatever. So they chose to do that and then they regretted it. They were like, Oh, I shouldn't have done that. I should have just kept this simple. Does that ever happen?

Travis: It does. And it's like sometimes where like I'll introduce somebody, they'll go, well, this could be a subdivide. I see a lot next door that's half the size of this. And then they might want to split the lot. But what they don't understand is like, we're splitting one into two. It either A, doesn't force enough appreciation or add enough value to go through that cost or exercise, or it's just, we still have all our eggs in like the two baskets, right?

So like, I'm a fan of like, if we can, we want to get four parcels or maybe five out of the subdivide so that we know we can sell a couple off and get some money back, right? So you know what I mean? You're either not adding enough value or not creating enough parcels to kind of split your investment up and get that back.

So there's sometimes people, they take that first layer and they go, yeah, you know what? This is a subdivide cannon. I'm going to subdivide it. But then you go, okay, you know, for how long it's going to take and how much value you're adding, did that make sense? Or should you have just flipped it and moved on to the next one? So there are nuances within the strategies like that.

Or even a portfolio. Doesn't mean you got to buy everything just because they own a lot of properties. Maybe you don't take all the bad with the good. So there are definitely nuances that come with as part of coaching and screen sharing and saying like, love this one. I would hard no on this one or take it if they make you, but it's a throw in. So there's some of those little things you got to watch out for, especially if it's your first time running the play and you're running it by yourself.

Seth: I don't know how many people you've encountered whose businesses have folded or they've just scaled things way down. But of the ones that you have, can you think of like a common problem that they've had? Like, is it making the wrong fundamental decisions or is it like lack of consistency or can they just not adjust to the new world or what is taking them out exactly?

Travis: It comes back to, and these aren't. Sexy or fun. Some of the key levers or pillars, whatever you want to call them, some are pretty boring. And we talked about like commitment, in the beginning, consistency is a huge lever. It's a huge pillar and it's, it even sounds boring, right? Like consistency, it's like discipline, right? But it's, we're marketing. It's a kind of analogy like the flywheel, right?

It takes a lot of inertia. It takes a lot of effort to get it moving. And when people put it forth that effort and get the flywheel moving, but then they stop to process the leads, to buy a property, to list it, to sell it, to get money. And then they go back to marketing again. And the flywheel has stopped spinning in that time. And it takes, you know what I mean? You're starting over.

So I think like consistent marketing is one of the most obvious, obvious to me, you know, not to maybe somebody else, but sticking with like figuring out your budget and sticking with consistent marketing, because that creates consistent lead flow, And then that creates predictable acquisitions, which hopefully is predictable revenue on the display. So consistency is just a huge one. When people are sporadic with their campaigns, their business looks like a roller coaster.

Good months, good quarters, bad months, bad quarters. My business is pretty boring. We might do an outsized waterfront flip or a subdivide and sell off two parcels. You know what I mean? Two big parcels. And that looks way different than the month where we just did a couple small flips, So like, there's still like, you know, ups and downs, but it's not so dramatic. You know what I mean? It doesn't look like a heart rate monitor.

It's kind of like you want consistency and you want boring and you want consistency and And I think that's the thing is people have surges of optimism, surges of energy, and then surges of injecting capital in the business, like that sugar rush, and then they back off. And so I see that really frequently. That's almost the most obvious, easiest thing right away to look at somebody when they go, well, I've had good months, bad months, good course, bad course. I don't know what's going on.

I bet if we look six months back, what you were doing three months ago is showing now or six months ago. So I'd say that's kind of like the consistencies. Like it's like I said, it's so boring. It's this thing. It's like exercising or something where like it doesn't help if you just go like do a full body workout once every two weeks. You can't do that. You can't just go to the gym for eight hours, one day a month.

Or it's the same thing with the marketing, like consistency compounds. It just kind of compounds with time. And I think that's one of the biggest pillars or levers.

Seth: Like one of my problems is I'm actually really good at consistency, but sometimes I do things that are consistently not profitable or consistently don't make money. And I think part of the issue is busy work traps, mistaking activity for profitability. Does that come to mind for you? Like consistent things that you see people doing that are not helpful. Like don't spend your time on that. Spend it where it's going to move the needle over here.

Travis: Yeah, I've seen it all the time and I'm guilty of it from the beginning. Like I said, I am fortunate enough to have a wife and business partner who had pointed out when I was doing it. Because I'm like the guy who's like, oh, I want to like, here's an example. I've done this and then I've seen clients do it where like you're spending your time like on your logo, on your website, or like I'm building the follow-up sequence, the most killer, best follow-up sequence ever. Meanwhile, there's like leads in this stage that need to be spoken with and called and followed, right?

But you know what I mean? Like some of that, that should seem obvious and it is when you say it out loud, but like you go, well, for me, I'm like the visionary, the creator, even the integrator. I like to do some of these things myself, create and integrate, but sometimes you lean towards what you're interested in. And those are, like I say, my wife would be like, let's do revenue generating profit-driven activities.

Will this result in profit? Capturing equity? Maybe not realize profit, but are we capturing equity or are we realizing profit? Because if there's no way to measure that, it can probably go down the list of priorities or somebody else should be doing it. So I think that is definitely like mistaking activity for profitability is one. That's some examples.

Another one is I'll share. I still remember probably about four years ago right now, I did a like a discovery call with somebody who's looking into coaching and they shared with me like their business model and and they had four VAs and they they were flipping a high volume, you know, 50 plus small cheap parcels. And we kind of looked at their business and they were pretty happy with it, pretty proud of it and but wanting to do you know bigger deals and we kind of unpacked it and said like well how much are you making per deal how many hours a week do you input into the business it was like you know it's just kind of like a spotlight on the problems it's like dude you're a job creator like pat yourself on the back like you're a good man you've created jobs for four other people but like with your pay scale like it makes more sense for you to work overtime at your day job than it does for you to do this because you're making $30 an hour in your land business after we get rid of the data, software, the marketing, buying properties, and paying labor.

And if you just work some more hours at work, you'd be well over $100 an hour in your time and a half. So that's kind of like the mistaking activity for profitability. It's kind of like, hey, we keep everything in place and yeah, just go after bigger deals so it makes more sense, or we can even shed some people but I think there's a lot of times where you go hey I'm a business owner I'm doing this I'm doing deals but like that doesn't necessarily mean it's profitable because you don't measure your inputs a lot is like a whether you're going to call it like a entrepreneur or side hustler whatever you want to call yourself like.

You're not like if it's work, you know, people will it's a badge of honor. I worked 15 hours of overtime this week. And you log it, you track it, you turn it in, you want to be paid for it. But when you're on your own business, a lot of times you don't measure what you're doing. You know, you don't know if you work 12 hours or 22 on the business. But if you did, you'd go, this doesn't compute. It doesn't make a lot of sense.

So I think that's where like you've got to know, like after the marketing, after the software, the data, the memberships, maybe the VA or VAs, whatever. Like how profitable is this for my my time? And maybe I need a different approach so that it makes sense. You know, do we need the whole team or should we just be doing one big deal by ourself every year? Versus 50 small deals and having a team of four. So I think like kind of sometimes just slowing down and going, am I busy or am I profitable?

Seth: What do you think are like one or two of the most profitable activities land investors should double down on right now?

Travis: I think negotiations really is just the absolute fastest way when we're negotiating. And that doesn't mean like we're being wordsmiths and how we persuade somebody to sell. But like just the act of making offers, following up with people. You know, making those offers, following up with people and negotiating back and forth.

I've got one right now where here's an example I'm I'm countering right now. So it hasn't been accepted yet, but I already know like my next three steps. And that's I'm making an offer and they're going to come back and they're going to say, whoa, that's way under. This one's actually an on market. So I'm making the offer to my agent. He'll make it to their agent and they're going to say that's way too low and then I'm going to say well I looked into this and I want to subdivide it but the county is requiring me to like put in a 30-foot easement and this is true around the whole perimeter of the property so for me that amounts to I'm losing like six acres on this this property that's just under 100 acres I'm.

First, I'm going to try to get them, I'm going to kind of like do the back and forth and anchor and we'll try to meet in the middle on price. Then I'm going to, once we get there and they agree on that, then I'm going to share with them. Well, actually, I checked with the county and it turns out, you know, I'm not getting, you know what I mean? Like I'm buying this 85 acres or 84 acres, but I'm really only getting 78.

Like I want to share that with you. Like, would you be okay? I'm happy to pay your price per acre we've agreed on, but I don't want to pay for all those unusable acres. So that'll be a way after we've agreed on a lower price than they wanted to even nibble and get a little more so I think those like the negotiations the offer making the negotiating kind of being creative with it per you know like not even per hour like these are a lot of times these are per minute you know conversations it's just like we're talking ten thousand dollar twenty $50,000 per hour activities and sometimes per minute activities.

So I think that's like the linchpin or everything's tethered to like, have you estimated value correctly? So that's the kind of the key that comes before that is like, let's make sure we're super confident in our valuation before we go through this process. But I think that's the biggest thing is, you know, negotiating the best deal you can get or the best terms.

And sometimes like for me, if they won't take this cash offer. It might be like, well, you know what? Okay. I'll meet you at your price, but I can only do it if you can sell or finance it to me. I can't do that cash. We'll meet your price, but I need to come in with 20% down. And then you've got to be willing to let me make improvements, like subdividing it while it's under a note.

So I think negotiation is probably the highest dollar per hour activity that there is. And that starts with like, you can't negotiate if you don't pick up the phone and make offers. So that's, in my opinion, the highest and best use of your time is the operator, is the owner.

Seth: Yeah, it's interesting because I, do you feel like you're a pretty good negotiator just naturally or did you have to learn a lot of this? Because I feel like there's different varying levels of skill and just like to your point, it's not that you need to like wordsmith it necessarily, but like it does matter what you say to a point, like responding the right way to certain objections and that kind of thing.

And like, if somebody just feels really unconfident in that, like they can acknowledge what you're saying is true. Negotiation is important, but like, I don't know how to do it. Or like, I'm nervous to do it. I don't know what to say. Or I do it and I screw it up. It's really bad. Like, how do you get better at that kind of thing?

Travis: Yeah, well, man, that is a self-development. That's why I say like consistency is much easier than like self-improvement, So self-improvement takes time. So I'd say get consistent with everything before. And that is just reps at first. But yeah, you're gonna continue to learn. But also with what we're doing, there's not a wide variety of objections. You're going to hear the same 10 things over and over. So it's more like, how do I field the same? What's my rebuttals to like these same objections?

And then I think knowing where the conversation's headed versus like, you probably know as the host right now, you probably know what direction you want to take this conversation five, 10, 15 minutes from now. I might not as the guest, It's the same thing when you're calling, As the acquisitionist and the seller, they're living in the moment. Yeah, they want a number, but at the same time, you know, the next three steps or you should in your conversation and they don't. So you can kind of lead the conversation.

And I think for me, the biggest tip, because I focus so much on like all these different like strategies, I would say more of like going through that exercise prior to the call, going through that exercise. If they say this, what will I say? Kind of anticipate that. And then the biggest challenge I had personally was I wanted to offer up everything at once. And with negotiating, I think you have to realize some information you have to keep in your back pocket.

Until it's appropriate or beneficial to you and that's like I shared with you like I want to like I want to knock off the seller's asking price to get it down and we can agree on that and maybe they win that maybe we don't meet in the middle maybe we're kind of closer to theirs but I want to get it there before I introduce or share that piece of information that hey I called the county and they require a 30-foot roadies man around the whole perimeter I've lost six acres if I share that at first, they go, okay, yeah, let's deduct that. That makes sense, right?

So I think like the second you share information, you lose leverage. So for me, that was probably my hardest thing is knowing when to share it and when to hang on to it, negotiate the price. And then there can be some nibbles after like where we go, hey, there's some, you know, got an acre or two of slope back here. We've got a river or we had the survey done and we've lost this acreage due to these environmental constraints?

I still want to move forward with it, but obviously I can't build a house on the creek or the river or the slope. Is it fair that I continue to pay the price per acre we agreed on, but we subtract out the unbuildable land, So sometimes it's like a two or three step process. And early on, I just thought it was like, here's my offer, take it or leave it, or the whole classic, let's split the difference type of thing. And it's, there's more to it.

But I think kind of just going through that exercise in your own head of the conversation helped me because self-development and sales and negotiation is, it takes time. You know what I mean? It's like health or something, Like you might be able to get in shape quick, but that doesn't mean you're healthy. You know, it might take more time to be healthy. So it's, there's not a quick fix. on sales and negotiation.

The quick fixes are like, you can immediately plug holes in the bucket with follow-up. Like be consistent, follow up with every lead, Make the offers. If they say no, still send them a hard copy offer. So you can kind of do some of these things to combat if you're not that legend on the phone, that closer, You can do that thing to combat while you're in the background concurrently, like trying to get better or doing some training.

That that's been my experience and my approach I do have people who that was their day job like they were on the phone like calling and for them like oh my gosh Travis you here dude you pull the data you send me the list you pick my mark it's like here I don't care like I'm not coaching you to teach me how to I can handle if I can get them on the phone I can close the deal better than me probably but they go but I don't want to do have anything to do it's like what like land use code or you know what I mean these filters and pulling lists or things is not my thing.

So everybody's kind of got their superpowers, but mine definitely was not sales and negotiate. And it matters less when you're operating on cheap properties. There's not a whole bunch of negotiation that goes on on a $5,000 lot, but 10% is a lot different on a $500,000 property than a $5,000. So inevitably it comes up. So you can kind of like avoid that weakness until it rears its head again, but ultimately you're going to have to address it eventually, you know?

Seth: Yeah. If anybody's interested in all this negotiation stuff. So just a few episodes ago, I was talking with Ajay Sharma about this exact subject where he breaks down the four big objections to overcome and check that out at retipster.com/233. I'll have a link to it as well in the show notes for this one, retipster.com/238.

Travis, I don't know how often you talk to people who are like on the brink of quitting, like they're just about to give up and it probably depends on the specifics of why and that person. But is there any advice you have for those people if and when that comes up? I know it's kind of a broad question because it's very situation dependent, but no, like you've got like a checklist of tighten up these three or five things in your business and try again. Anything like that?

Travis: Well, sometimes it's like, for example, I've got a client who for him, it was just like, hey, the. Doing this big marketing span and cold calling every month, the costs are just stacking up after four or five months, My conversion rate's not that great. And so for him, it's like, well, you have the hours, you have the man hours to put into the business.

So for you, let's handpick, let's curate these lists. Let's go after the Pareto principle, Let's 80-20 your list. And instead of mass marketing, let's have you build a list of waterfront properties. Let's have you go after portfolio owners. So it's kind of like, how do we hopefully capture more equity with less marketing spend?

So always before somebody quits, I go, Hey, whether you're coaching with me or not, or doing on your own, I don't want you to quit. Cause my guess is whatever was going on in your life or whatever, like inner thing, like led you to want to do this, that's still going to be there. You know what I mean? You can suppress it, but a year from now, you're going to be in that meeting or on that commute and it's going to come back up. And then you're going to go try something new and have that whole start over year.

So I'm always more of a fan of going, Hey, how can we re-approach this differently in a way that's in alignment with what your issue is? Like maybe you've spent too much and haven't got a deal yet, or maybe like it's just taking more time than you had planned on. And you're feeling like you're in the office working and your wife and kids are like, where's dad, Ever since dad started this land thing, like it's a negative thing.

So maybe we just go, okay, for you, we probably don't want you doing like neutral letters or cold calling and having all these discovery calls and negotiating. Maybe we just want you to spend your time like pricing out your campaigns and really dialing in your offers and you're just sending blind offers. To be more efficient so that you know what I mean it's kind it take it yes or no and that works better for your life so I'm a fan of more like going hey how can we adjust to make this work than just quitting but sometimes like people you have to set things down and that's okay you you are a family member having health issue maybe a baby's born like there's seasons in life where you go I can't give this business the time or money it deserves but it's the whole like it doesn't have to like quit is so permanent it's like fail like fail is not like.

Fail like for me probably through my 20s to even mid-30s I thought of fail as like this permanent thing that's like a stain or a stamp and you realize now like failures are things that just happen So I think it's same thing you don't necessarily have to quit and don't beat yourself up maybe you set it down pick things back up when you've got more time to give the business or more money to give the business.

So there's other ways too, like with, as other people quit, that presents opportunity. Maybe they'll sell you their note portfolio. If somebody's getting out of it, maybe they have inventory that they'll fire sale to you. So anytime anybody's quitting anything that if others are, if you're thinking of it, others are doing it, there's opportunity there to help them bail out and help yourself.

Or for you, I'm more about like trying to make a tweak but I get it that's just the reality of it sometimes it like you said when you get into the market matters somebody got into this really easy at some kind of during covid when it felt like everything you listed sold flew off the shelf for maybe more than you're asking price you know that guy started then and you're starting now and you're like geez I'm having a hard time getting a deal or taking a long time to sell it won't be like that forever.

Just kind of take that long view. But I can tell you from all the different side hustles I approach, if something got you into this, there's this inner calling or yearning or you're unfulfilled or something, you can't suppress that. That won't go away. It'll come back. So you either set things down or figure out how to adjust.

Seth: Yeah. Sometimes I hear people say, some people treat this business like a hobby and other people treat it like a business. And I don't know exactly what they're saying by that other than some people maybe have things more tightened up with better practices or something, but it almost kind of sounds like they're saying, if you're treating this like a hobby, then like, you're not really a land investor. You're probably doomed to fail at some point. Like you're kind of one of these losers over in the corner.

The real winners, the real heroes are the ones who treat it like a business, whatever that means. But when I hear that, I think to myself, what's wrong with being a hobbyist? Like, what if you just want to do three days a year? Like, if it works, go for it. How do you think about that?

Travis: I agree. And I'd say some people don't hate their jobs. Some people like what they do and they just want a second stream of income. So everybody's purpose behind this. And if you're just going, hey, I just want to be able to buy a new boat or take a better vacation or just stack some cash on the side outside of what I'm doing. But I either I don't mind or even like my job. There's different reasons.

Yeah. Like let's let's go. How do we how do we get the most profit with the least effort? And we don't want you to build a team that you have to manage. It's a different approach. So that's where kind of for me, like when I'm coaching, I do a discovery call and some people are itching to get started. And that's not the discovery. That's like coaching call one. But before coaching call one is discovery call. Like, what are you trying to accomplish?

How much time can you give the business? How much money can you give the business? And what do you want it to look like? And then let's build it that way so that you and your family like the business that you've built, because it's not the same, for each person. Yeah, there's nothing wrong with going, boy, how can I sneak in as a hobbyist and, you know, make the most with a few deals and not have to, like, build these, have all these softwares and build systems and automations. There's, man, there's nothing at all wrong with that.

It's just so unique, to everybody's, your own situation. But I think there are, and some of it can do with, have to do with age, You know, how you kind of shed your ego, you get over yourself as you get older, or hopefully you do. But some of that, like how big your team is, or, you know, these things like I own a business, well, the solo investor, you know, making 250 or 500 grand a year with no team, like, how am I going to knock them, you know, versus the guy that has, you know, running a team of five or six, you know what I mean? And it's probably net profit is probably the same, but they have way more headache.

I think it's all in what you, I just say, like design the business based on what you want to own and what your needs are versus copycatting somebody else's. Model because I've ran large, I've been operations director. I've had lots of people report to me, I don't care for it. I did to me, like, you know, I don't like lots of people. I like the most revenue with the least headcount possible and the least man hour input or the least effort, So I think that's one of those where you kind of just have to do like a self inventory and go, why am I doing this? Why do I want to do this? Is it just to squeeze the money out of it?

or maybe you love land and you're like, like you love, like you go, I want to drive to each property. Travis said, you can just flip them remotely, but like, I love land. I want to go out there. I want to clear it. You know what I mean? I want to work on the land. I'm a naturist. Like I love it. Well, that should, you should build your business around that. So although there's kind of like framework that's proven, you can deviate a little to fit yourself, you know, or your personality.

Seth: Well, Travis, you know, you've been running your coaching program for a while now. I send people to you all the time. Whenever the question comes up, it's like, go to Travis. He's the guy you want to talk to. I'm curious, is there anything new with your coaching program? How is it working right now? And like, where are your students finding the most success right now?

Travis: Yeah. Well, I think market selection, like we talked about earlier, I've had the most emphasis on of like saying, hey, let's pick markets where things are moving quickly. One thing's market selection. Another is I'm kind of having people on the more expensive properties. I'm kind of guiding them more towards like double closing, getting it under contract, just kind of de-risk, like don't put your money into the deal.

Funding has been more of a challenge because we're not seeing as many signed purchase agreements at that kind of 50% that myself or all the other funders, most of them want you to be at. So when you have to offer more than that, you lose options on funders. So you have a higher conversion rate if you can offer more.

So if double closing works well to be able to give a high offer rate, get a higher conversion rate, and then not have to split with the funder, And it also just de-risks you from taking ownership and then having stale inventory. You get to test the market and see if there's demand without taking ownership.

So I think being more selective, more of a ninja on market selection at the zip code level is what I'm teaching, like picking markets. And then on the sell side, I'm just going, hey, we don't self-fund everything and we don't even fund everything some stuff will do a double close approach so there's just kind of adjustments or tweaks and then it's really looking at like for them like do you have time to like if you're doing the calls yourself do you have time like should we do neutral letters and like I said cold calls can bury people in discovery calls so do you have time to do that is that in alignment with like your lifestyle or just being like kind of working with them on like do you enjoy being in the spreadsheet and running comps and pricing out things like are you an engineer or developer and we should have you doing that it just makes sense or would you rather be the person that's on the phone so kind of trying to build their business for them and like you said some people one to three deals a year is the business they want others are like I want to build a machine and I want to run a team so I think just that for me that kind of onboarding and discovery call and going.

What are you trying to accomplish here? Let's design it for that. And then obviously like mark your budget dictates a lot of these things. You know, you can have like a goal of a million dollars, but a marketing budget of 500 bucks a month. And so there's a disconnect, you know, so you kind of address those, like you said, those expectations, you know, you kind of address the expectations early on.

And I think that's where I think people kind of appreciate that. Although a lot of people are just itching, like, okay, give me the tactical, give me the screen share show me where to click my mouse and what how to do this and you go well we'll do a lot of that but like first let's like what's working what's not because sometimes if you're an existing investor we need to blow up your whole business maybe we just need to complement and add bigger deals to your smaller deals business model that's working so it has so much to do with just like what's working for them what isn't and then seeing for me kind of like from my vantage just this objective view of like auditing somebody's business and going sometimes there's low hanging fruit, like, boy, your cost per record, your skip trace, you know, like you're throwing away money here. Let's just switch these softwares or marketing channels.

So it's really kind of just doing an audit with somebody and then trying to work through what's the obvious things. How do we cut expenses? You know, how do we more efficiently spend our marketing? But I think always like market selection, It seems to kind of be the critical piece that I feel like when you, you teach somebody, they can go off on their own. You're not building a dependency as a coach. You're not going, hey, every time you want to pick a new market, hire me for another six months, Like you want to teach these concepts that how much inventory is there? What are the days of market? What's the absorption rate? What's the sell through rate?

Like these things are timeless. Looking at like the inventory and the demand. Although the tools might change, those things don't, So kind of trying to teach market selection, I find, are one of those skills that you're going to teach somebody. And they're going to take that with them no matter what they do or even what asset class they're kind of analyzing a deal on.

Seth: The stuff you were mentioning about that discovery call, as I hear you talking, I don't know if maybe I underestimated the importance of that. I'm kind of one who, when I get excited about something, I'll just jump in and start going at it without taking the time to understand what do I actually want? What do I enjoy doing? And I think it's probably easy for a lot of action takers to just like move before they know what they're doing. Not that that's even wrong. I think taking action is really powerful, actually.

But it would almost be an interesting idea for like a blog post or a video or something is like, do a discovery call with yourself. What questions should you be asking yourself about what you want and why you're doing this and how you measure success? Because I think a lot of people skip that and they probably don't figure it out until they've gone way down the road and made a lot of decisions without even thinking through that stuff.

Travis: I'll have people of some people record a loom video of themselves. And I say, you don't even have to send it to me if you don't want to. It's up to you if you do. But like talk about why you're doing this, why you want to do this, what would make it a success one year from now, Type of thing. And then they can revisit it a year from now. Some people are willing to share that some, you know, kind of want to keep it private, but okay. It's like a journal. You reference it a year from now because there's sometimes when things do go right or they go half right.

And like you're doing well, you kind of don't, it's the whole Dan Sullivan. If you haven't right at the gap and the gain, like you don't give yourself credit for how far you've come or what you've done because you're always looking ahead at what's next. You know what I mean? And I think sometimes remembering where you were, like there's months where like, I'm really, I'm disappointed in our numbers or something. And then I look back and I go, that's like 5X what like my original goal was. How's that a bad month?

It's relative to now, but yeah, I think that we skip over that part of it. And that's something even like I'm an action taker. So I tend to want to just like start, Hey, here's all the secrets. Here's how I'm different. Here's how I can teach you what others can't, you know, that are kind of being generic. And Becca, she's much higher social IQ than me, my wife. And she'll be like, how many kids do they have? What college did they go to? Like, what do they like to do? And you're like, Oh, you know, cause you want to get into the tactical. You're like, we're talking land here. Let's build your business.

But it's a human, you know, it's a relationship. So you want to invest that. But sometimes, you know, somebody's planning to pay you for something. So they want to get the most out of it as fast as possible. And you want to give them that value as fast as possible. But I think it's important to just slow down a little bit, get to know each other and get to know what they're trying to do.

Seth: Yeah, absolutely. Well, Travis, if people want to connect with you in any way, what's the best way they should do that? A website or social media? What do you suggest?

Travis: I know you've got us up, Seth, there on the coaching page, If somebody's interested in reaching out for coaching, that's probably the best one through your website. But also going to travisking.com is another good spot where you give the book away for free. We're always running things there. So I think travisking.com is a good one-stop shop as well.

Seth: Sounds good. Well, Travis, thanks again. It's always great to have you here. People want to check out the show notes. We'll find links to all the stuff that we've talked about throughout this conversation, including Travis's website. Just go to retipster.com/238. Travis, thanks again. We will talk to everybody next time.

Travis: Absolutely. Thanks, Seth. A blast as always. Thank you.