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

Seth: Today, I'm talking with Jon Jasniak. Jon runs a large-scale land business focused on buying raw land, subdividing it, and selling it with owner financing. He's done hundreds of deals, worked on massive subdivision projects, and has built a reputation for doing things a little different than most land investors do.

Seth: He also owns an entire town in West Texas. We're going to get into that too. Today, we're going to talk about why land has worked so well for him, how seller financing really plays out over time, and what happens when deals can go sideways, and why he decided to buy that town in West Texas.

Seth: So, Jon, welcome to the show. How are you doing?

Jon: Doing awesome, Seth. Thank you so much for having me, man. Long-time listener from way back in the day, and it's an honor to be here. I appreciate you having me on.

Seth: Yeah, absolutely. Glad you could make time for it. Let's rewind the clock a little bit and talk about your origin story. So I was looking at your LinkedIn profile. It looks like you went to school for petroleum engineering, right? And that's a fairly safe and respectable path.

Seth: But do you remember the first moment that you thought, I cannot do this eight to five thing for the rest of my life?

Jon: Interesting question. And yeah, you hit it right on the head. My LinkedIn ain't even that active. So you're digging deep in the weeds here. I love it.

Jon: But yeah, I went to school at Texas Tech, studied petroleum engineering four years. I got out and it was my first six months and I was in a business development group doing all this crazy economic analysis on oil wells and everything. And I felt like I was crushing it.

Jon: I go into my manager's office for review time. It's a one to five scale on the bonus. And, you know, he's Jon. You crushed it, man. Like, sad news is we don't ever give out fives on a bonus review.

Jon: Like, we don't care how much of a stud you are. You're not going to get a five. So you're going to get a four. And at that moment, it just kind of went off in my head. I was frustrated.

Jon: Ticked me off. I was like, man, no matter how hard I work, no matter how much value I provide to another company in this case, I can never be good enough. I'm never going to get a five. And so that kind of kicked off kind of my entrepreneurial route, I guess.

Jon: Like I was headfirst diving into a bunch of different things. It wasn't land at first. It pissed me off, man. I was ready to go.

Seth: That sounds like a really terrible motivator for a team to just say like, you can't be perfect. You can't win. It's kind of weird. Maybe there's some strategy behind that, but I don't get it.

Jon: Yeah. Those mid-level managers, man, and the corporations, they can be brutal, but you know, who knows what was behind it. Shout out to my manager, Dylan. He was a great guy. And you know, he gave me what was the top of the top, a four out of five.

Jon: And the five out of five was just not in reach for anybody.

Seth: So did you try other stuff before you discovered land? Like what else did you try your hand at?

Jon: I did. So right after that, I got really heavy into stock trading. Like I had a dual monitor set up. I was trading penny stocks. Wasn't that successful at it. I was like kind of break even at the end of it.

Jon: I was, you know, journaling, logging my trades, the whole nine yards that kind of morphed into like starting my own websites, a little bit of product development, oil field, blogging, stuff like that. Nothing really clicked until I found out about land basically.

Seth: What year was that? Like how long have you been in the business?

Jon: 2016 shout out class of 2016 time flies. It's crazy. I was just thinking about that the other day. It's been nine years now, man. That's insane.

Seth: That is crazy that 2016 was that long ago. As you made this transition and discovered land and started getting into that, did you have people in your life who kind of heard you talking about land deals that thought you were nuts or anything like that? Or did people kind of understand it?

Seth: Like, yeah, Jon, you go, you're doing awesome.

Jon: Very much than not understanding, especially my family in particular, my dad, and then I think some of my friends as well. Like most, I started off with finding out about this on a podcast like this. Shout out Nick Loper, Side Hustle Show, episode 108.

Jon: Mark Podolsky was on there. I bought a couple of courses, Mark's course, another course, and kind of just started diving into it. And as I got going, started having some success. It was met with a little bit of hate.

Jon: I feel like, hey, you got a petroleum engineering job. You're making $150,000, $200,000 a year. What are you going to do flipping land or buying real estate? You went to school for four years to get this degree. Why would you quit?

Jon: I heard it all along the way. I guess I'm grateful that I just pushed through that and just kind of blocked out the noise, honestly.

Seth: Yeah, I had a similar thing. It wasn't so much hate, but it was kind of confusion. Or if anything, it was like, that's cute. You think you can do that, Seth? Good for you. But like, nobody actually thought this was going anywhere.

Jon: Well, for being honest, land is a confusing business. Most people don't understand it, in my opinion.

Seth: Yeah, for sure. Have those people like come around and be like, man, Jon, you're a genius. I'm so glad you didn't listen to us and did what you did.

Jon: I think so. Especially my dad, when I took him out for a spin in Lamborghini a few months back, I think he may have finally understood that we were hopefully going somewhere with this business.

Seth: Yeah, that's awesome, man. So tell me about your very first land deal. Was it kind of just smooth sailing right as you started or was it hard or good or just tell us that story?

Jon: Man, if I'm being honest, it kind of was smooth sailing. Interestingly enough, my first deal was out in Hudspeth County, which is where I'm at right now. Full circle. That's where Cornutis is at.

Jon: And so my first deal was out in the Gunsite Ranch in Hudspeth County, just north of Sierra Blanca. I bought a 53-acre tract. And what's interesting is I found that deal online, which is how I find most of my deals nowadays.

Jon: And so this guy out of Florida was selling 53 acres for $8,500. It was already chopped up into five separate 10.6-acre lots. So I buy it from this dude, get the deed recorded and everything and hit Facebook Marketplace and start selling these 10.6 acre lots.

Jon: And next thing I know, they were selling. I think all of them sold in probably three months and I doubled my money, sold it all for like 17 G's, made $8,500 profit. And then from there, it was like, okay, how can we find more? How can we do more?

Jon: And that's kind of what kicked off the whole adventure, I guess.

Seth: When you say you find most of your deals online, is this Facebook Marketplace or Land.com or Craigslist or Zillow or how are you finding these things?

Jon: Mostly on the MLS, so land.com, realtor.com, Zillow. But from time to time, I get pocket listings and whatnot from brokers or find something interesting on Facebook. There's a lot of beginners in this business, so they might be selling land on their website, on Facebook, whatever, and that's just not priced right.

Jon: So there's always opportunity out there. But everything I buy basically nowadays is on market.

Seth: So do you do any outbound marketing?

Jon: Not at the moment. However, I was listening to your podcast with Land AI. I got a call booked with them and I really want to try that out. I think that could be something that's really useful for my business. So it's coming.

Jon: We do a small amount of mail, maybe 1,000 or 2,000 mailers a year for large parcels, but I'm interested to try out the land AI stuff.

Seth: But for those 2,000 mailers per year that you send out, that sounds like a small amount, which makes me think you've like really handpicked these things. Like they're very specific parcels. Is that true? Or like how and why do you send any mail at all if you're only doing that much?

Jon: Yeah, it is true. And another component is if you're targeting like me, a hundred plus acres in a given county, there's only so much data in that county. There might be 500 owners who own that much land in a given county.

Jon: And then we have probably 10 counties that are really hyper-focused and specialize in, in Texas, all Texas-based and have experience elsewhere, but all Texas-based. So it's a component of just lack of ownership data for that size parcel than just the hyper-focused targeting.

Seth: When you say Texas-based, how many counties does that consist of? How many counties are you regularly working in?

Jon: 10 to 15. I mean, I know basically every county in Texas, but for my business model, not every county is good. Some counties, I'm just not interested in buying land for 1,000 an acre and selling it for 2,000 an acre.

Jon: That's great for a beginner, but I'm not interested in wasting my time on that nowadays. So there's got to be certain metrics, certain criteria, you know. Water access close to a major city and regulations is a huge part of subdividing. So there's probably 10 to 15 counties that really hit that criteria for me.

Seth: If you were like suddenly forced out of Texas for some reason, maybe they made land investing illegal or whatever, some non-existent thing that'll never happen. But if that happened, what would you do? What filter do you have to go through to say, this is a great county? I'm going to focus on this one.

Jon: A lot of it comes down to the regulation. So state level first and then county level. And what I always tell people is they see me work in Texas and doing all this stuff. Like Texas is not even the most friendly for land development.

Jon: Tennessee, Alabama, Oklahoma, Arkansas, all these other areas, in my opinion, are way more friendly for subdividing land and developing it. Like you go to Oklahoma, you call a county. A lot of those counties don't even know what subdivision regulations are. They have never had a regulation in their life.

Jon: So it's like, there's other areas I think are a target, Tennessee, Oklahoma, maybe Alabama, if Texas got hit by a nuke or something crazy. But people don't understand Texas is not even the most development-friendly state, in my opinion.

Seth: So why are you there? Why don't you go to these other places?

Jon: Well, I love Texas. I grew up in Michigan, moved out when I was 18 to go to Texas Tech. And I don't know, I consider myself more of a Texan than a Midwesterner or Northerner. And so I love Texas, great economy.

Jon: And when you get into the subdividing and development space, you really got to have this hyper-focus. So Texas, I guess, kind of by happenstance, because I was here, went to school here, live here, love it. It's honestly not the best. It's more of the focus component.

Seth: I hear what you're saying about the focus. I think that's actually huge, being able to like really understand a state and how it works, even if certain parts of it are hard, like there's something to understanding that when other people don't like just knowing it's not abnormal that this is difficult.

Seth: This is just how Texas works. Do you think any part of that decision is emotional just because you consider yourself a Texan and that kind of thing?

Jon: Yeah. And that's one thing when I coach people or teach people or, you know, people come to me, it's like, they're looking for a place to start or, you know, where am I going to buy and sell land. It's like, there's really not a set answer, in my opinion, from a business perspective, because as a business, this can be done almost anywhere.

Jon: I mean, there's other areas, states that are better than others, but at the end of the day, it's more about what land interests you. Do you like tall trees and pines? Do you like mountains? Maybe you're working Colorado.

Jon: Are you just a Texan and like guns and cowboys and, you know, the Texas people? I mean, it's more of a personal decision when it comes down to it.

Seth: Well, I appreciate you just being upfront about that and real, because I have a similar thing with Michigan. It's absolutely not the best state, but like, this is the place where I cut my teeth on this business and like really work through a lot of hard things with nobody explaining anything to me.

Seth: Like I just had to figure it out. And, you know, it's not that the best opportunities are always here, but it's like an old comfortable shoe. Like you just get it, you know, and you're willing to deal with the other issues to be comfortable.

Jon: Absolutely, man. Fellow Michigander. I love it. Michigan's a great state, beautiful, good land, good place to be.

Seth: Apparently not as good as Texas though, because you left, right?

Jon: So do you use Facebook Marketplace?

Seth: A lot of Facebook Marketplace. I run six figures of ads per year on Facebook Marketplace.

Seth: Running ads on Facebook Marketplace, is that different than running ads on just the normal Facebook feed that everybody sees?

Jon: It is, yeah. It's a completely different algorithm and needs to be run from your personal page. I run both Marketplace and business page ads, so we have both components going. I don't know how much we spent in 2025, probably about $150,000 across the board just on ads, but it's two completely separate algorithms, two separate use cases in some scenarios.

Jon: And they're both, in my opinion, should be utilized.

Seth: And are you using this to buy or to sell properties?

Jon: Sell.

Seth: Okay. Got you. Are you able to measurably determine like, because we did this on Facebook marketplace, it sold X number of days faster? Like, do you advertise in other places at the same time as Facebook marketplace?

Jon: Yeah. I mean, we advertise all over Texas, do a lot of stuff in West Texas, some stuff in Central Texas. So I guess over the years to specifically answer your question, we've kind of honed in what works for us on Marketplace, like how the copy should be written, how many photos, do you want text on the photos.

Jon: Geotargeting, all that good stuff. And it's going to vary from market to market, whether you're on Marketplace or your business page. So to answer your question, yes, I live in Fort Worth, so we'll be advertising West Texas land from Fort Worth.

Seth: And the way that you're able to verify that a sale came from Facebook Marketplace, I guess, just how they start the conversation, like where and how they message you or call you or something. Is that how you know?

Jon: Yeah, I mean, when you're in Marketplace, it's all getting routed through Facebook Messenger. So, you know, in our internal database, we could easily mark it down that, hey, this was sold on Facebook, which if I'm being honest, we probably don't do a great job of tracking where leads come from.

Jon: But at the same time, probably 95% of our sales come on Facebook Marketplace.

Seth: When a lead comes in, how do you know that that came in because of your ad versus like, yeah, they just would have found your organic ad anyway because you posted for free on Facebook Marketplace? Is there a way to know that?

Jon: When you boost an ad on Facebook Marketplace, Facebook's tracking internally if that lead, that message was from your ad. And then you get what spits out a cost per message. I call it a cost per lead on that ad. And then your messenger box opens, of course, it shows the land that they're messaging on.

Jon: And so one thing that's highly critical for us is our cost per lead, call it our cost per message. $10 or under is kind of the sweet spot for me. Anything $5 or less is really smoking. The problem with Facebook Marketplace, though, is there are a lot of tire kickers.

Jon: I think that's why a lot of people get turned off from Facebook. It's like, hey, you know, is this still available? Asking stupid questions. And so you will get a lot of that stuff. But you do have a very broad reach, which we love.

Seth: Do you have any read on like. 10% of the leads there come from the free stuff, or maybe you don't even post the free stuff, right? If you're just boosting everything, like do you pay for every single Facebook ad you put out there?

Jon: 95% of the stuff we pay for in boost. Yes. To answer your question, you could theoretically calculate if you took your total messages on that ad and you subtracted what messenger tells you you received, let's say you got 50 total messages, messenger's telling you that 45 people message you in the ad, you know, that five are organic.

Jon: I've never tracked that. If I had to guess, it's certainly less than 10% is from organic. Facebook's algorithm sucks on the organic side. Nowadays, it's kind of a scam. You know, they're making money on advertising. So unless you're advertising, I would expect your reach and your leads to be very low.

Seth: Yeah. I'm just asking this stuff in case somebody is out there and they've only ever tried the free Facebook marketplace stuff. And they're wondering like, I wonder what the upside is if I pay for it. Like maybe it's worth trying that. I don't know many people who have gotten into that.

Seth: Maybe I'm just not that well connected or haven't asked those questions, but appreciate you sharing your experience with that. So you're known for subdividing. It's a huge thing you do. Tell me about your typical subdivise. Like how big are they? Where are they? What needs to be true for you to pursue one of these deals?

Jon: Well, nowadays it's certainly got to be probably at least a $500,000 purchase. Like we're talking multi, multi six figure range, but it didn't always start that way. Right? Like my first subdivision was back in 2017, back in Hudspeth County, literally two miles that way in Cornutis, the Northeast, where I bought 534 acres for $40,000.

Jon: It was like $78 per acre. And I made like $250,000 on the deal. Perfect beginner's deal, in my opinion. But nowadays, for instance, someone just passed me a subdivision the other day. It was 40 acres somewhere in Central Texas. It was like a purchase price of $300,000.

Jon: I always aim to double my money. So let's say I exit for $600,000. That's probably not worth my time nowadays. Buy for $300,000, all out for $600,000. Really the smallest I'll consider is probably a $500,000 purchase. I call it a minimum of $500,000 profit by the time I'm doubling my money.

Jon: So nowadays, the typical deal is buy for anywhere from $1 to $5 million and expect to double my money within a year.

Seth: So when you say, I think you said acquisition price of 500,000 or more. So how many acres are we talking?

Jon: Well, it depends, right? Like if you're in a beginner's market, that's going to be two, 300 acres you're buying for 1500 or 2000 an acre back to my criteria nowadays, that's probably not worth my time. Like I'm trying to buy for, let's say at least 5,000 per acre.

Jon: So, you know, call it a hundred acres or more, which is pretty standard. I guess we got one going on right now. That's 85 acres, but I bought it for 10,000 an acre. So I think the purchase price per acre is probably got to be at least 5K an acre.

Jon: So you're talking at least a hundred acres, but perhaps there's a deal that's 40 acres and then buying for 10K an acre, 12K an acre, and I'm selling it for 30, 40,000 an acre. So it depends on the market, obviously, whether you're in middle of nowhere or close to the city, but I'd say probably 5K an acre is a good number, a hundred acres.

Seth: Of all these subdivisions you do, how many of them are like the minor exempt subdivisions and how many of them are like the major or platted subdivisions.

Jon: Over the last couple of years, I would say probably 70 or 80% have been minor. But just this last year, I've kind of been focusing on a business pivot, call it. And so kind of transitioning to 80 to 90% major subdivisions. We got three going on right now.

Jon: So the minor subdivide stuff, it's great. It's perfect for a beginner. It's super easy. But it's also becoming a little bit more saturated, just like the flipping side, right? because it is so easy and you got a sweet parcel with a mile long of road frontage, that seller's probably gonna want a premium for that.

Jon: So traditionally mostly miners, but transitioning and have transitioned in the last year to mostly majors.

Seth: Has that been going well so far? Like, is there any part of it where it's like, man, this is not that fun. This is way more difficult, takes more time, more money. Do you ever miss the old business or has it just been all upside since you made that change?

Jon: It has been all upside, but to your point, it is definitely way more challenging. More stressful, but it's more scalable. My goal is to grow a $100 million land business. And I think right now, Jazzland and its companies probably sit at 10 to 15 million, depending on the day.

Jon: And it's just really hard to scale a business of that size doing minor subdivides because how much land in Texas, if I'm doing minor 10-acre subdivides, can I buy? If I buy 1,000 acres, I got 100 lots. If I made even 10,000 per lot, that's only 10 million bucks.

Jon: It's like to do that again and again and again, it's very difficult. It's way more challenging to do major subdivides for sure. Now you're stepping into paving roads, doing water studies, running water infrastructure. Like the one we got going right now, it's going to be a $400,000 waterline infrastructure upgrade, 70 lots.

Jon: And so to handle that to make sure the engineers have what they need, stay on top of them. Get it all surveyed, the contractors, make sure they're putting in the pipe right. It's like there's so many different things that go into it. It's not practical for the average person, which I like because there's a lot less competition, right?

Seth: Now, a major subdivide, it's not just more time and money to get the deal done, but it's also higher risk. Is that accurate?

Jon: I would say so, but I specialize in doing this outside the city limits. I'm just dealing with state and then county regulations. So there's like no crazy entitlements or rezoning or anything like that. But to your point, yes.

Jon: For instance, we just got done terminating a contract for a 200-acre parcel. We spent, I think it was about $30,000 between the option and testing for water. We went out there and we drilled three test water wells. We wanted to do a groundwater study and it's required in Texas for groundwater.

Jon: So we go out there, we drill the first well, it's dry. We drill the second well, we hit water. We drill the third well, it's dry. So at that point, there's nothing you can do because there's no water. So I just lit $30,000 up in flames.

Jon: Now the potential upside was three or 4 million bucks. We do everything obviously we can to mitigate that going in, looking at groundwater data, talking to hydrologists, doing ground penetrating radar, but there's only so much you can do and there's always going to be risk.

Jon: We try to mitigate as much, if not all of it before we start.

Seth: How often does that happen where you basically just have to light a bunch of money on fire? Like you just mentioned a couple of things there, but are there other ways that you can de-risk these kinds of deals? Or do you just have to be willing to tolerate that if you're going to play this game?

Jon: At a certain point, you got to be willing to tolerate it. I would say it's rare. Something like this probably happens 10% of the time, maybe 20% of the time. When you're getting into option money and doing some light engineering, maybe you're drilling a water well, et cetera, like bare minimum, you ought to be able to light $10,000 on fire, probably up to 30, 40, 50,000, depending on the project.

Jon: But bare minimum, them, I think 10K could be risked, lit on fire and just gone.

Seth: Now you mentioned you want to get up to a hundred million dollar, is that per year gross income land business?

Jon: I wish that'd be fantastic.

Seth: Well, to touch your point right there, what's funny about the land space is a lot of people like to talk gross numbers, right? Which me and some people always kind of scoff at and laugh at. The way I value my business is three components, your inventory, right?

Seth: You have X amount of lots in inventory. Those have value. Secondarily, your notes receivable, which, you know, my company holds millions in notes receivable, people paying me monthly on owner financing. And then thirdly, just what's your revenue per year from cash sales or selling notes?

Seth: So there's really the cash sale, note sale component. The notes receivable owner financing component, and then the inventory component. So kind of when you pair those three together, that's where I would get my $100 million goal. Perhaps I had $70 or $80 million in notes.

Seth: Perhaps I have 10, 20 in inventory, and maybe it's doing 10 or 20 a year in cash, whatever it is.

Jon: So it's almost kind of like a balance sheet measurement of what is the current snapshot and I guess the expected revenue from this year or something like that?

Seth: Sure. Yeah.

Seth: I think you mentioned that to me when we first talked in Colorado a year and a half ago. And I just don't know any other land investors who even think that way. It's not even on their radar to try to get that big. I don't know if they're just not thinking big enough or they don't think it's possible, but why do you think it's possible?

Seth: Like, what is your plan to get to that point exactly? And when do you think it'll happen?

Jon: Yeah, it's a great question. And to touch on something real quick first, there's a lot of land investors don't know their numbers. I feel like you mentioned Colorado. Our friend Mason McDonald gave a great talk and he talked about EBITDA and knowing your numbers, which most land investors do not.

Jon: And when you drill into their numbers and what they're actually netting their EBITDA, it's something stupid low. My goal yearly is a 30% to 40% EBITDA, which is fantastic. Most businesses cannot achieve that in other industries. But when you drill into other land investors, by the time they pay for VAs, direct mail, whatever services, data, et cetera, that they're using, a lot of times you find they have this glorious gross number, but their EBITDA, they're really only netting 10%.

Jon: So they might do 5 million in sales, but they walk away with $500,000. If I do $5 million in sales, I better be able to walk away with about $2 million. Now, to answer your question, yes, I think most land investors don't think big enough. I don't think they think it's possible.

Jon: They think when you hear land investing, it's mostly the flipping route. That people talk about. So they're just not accustomed to the big numbers at the same time to hit that scale is challenging. Like I have two full-time employees. I have an attorney, a retainer, I have a CFO, I have a bookkeeper, I have a CPA.

Jon: So when you get to that scale, you can't just have VAs work with you. Like I'm a huge proponent of in-person labor. We all live in Fort Worth. We all work, we all do projects, et cetera. So it is possible. Most people don't think big enough.

Jon: Their business is not structured correctly. They're not doing the correct deals. How do I know it's possible to hit $100 million? I've done in multiple different counties just $10 million in a given county. Call it West Texas. There's counties out there I've done over $10 million just in one county.

Jon: Looking at my numbers for 2025, we did $13 million in sales, both cash, note, and owner financing originations and note sales. And so that's just in one year with kind of what I would say is a small operation from a development perspective. So certainly you could be doing 50 million at least a year in five to 10 counties.

Seth: I mean, do you think you would have to clone yourself, have more Jons out there working under you doing the same thing? Or did you feel like you worked a lot last year and took a tons of risk to get to what you did? Or was that just easy? It's just kind of a lazy year making that much.

Jon: I had a good mentor of mine once tell me that from a business perspective, you should be focused on imagining yourself as a weightlifter, lifting this 500-pound chest press dumbbell. And you need two right-hand men on either side who can grab that dumbbell and help you lift it up.

Jon: And you'd be surprised in real estate how much you can accomplish with a small team. Last year, I mean, I don't feel like I worked that much. No, I felt a lot of my time was actually in Cornutis. If I didn't have this town and was just focused on land, I think I'd be a lot further off in the land business for sure.

Jon: So do I work hard? Yes. Did I take a lot of risk? Not really in my mind. Do we try to de-risk as much as possible? Could I be accomplishing way more? Definitely.

Seth: Can you think of any subdivision mistakes you made early on that you kind of cringe when you think about it now? Ways that you used to operate years ago and it's just completely changed now.

Jon: Yeah. One thing that a lot of people make a mistake is they just go into it and they hire an engineer, they hire a consultant, they hire a surveyor, and they don't study the regulations themselves. You'd be surprised how many of the developers that we know in the land space are doing stuff similar to me who have never opened a statewide development code.

Jon: In Texas, it's local code 232. I try to know that like the back of my hand, but a lot of people do not study those regulations. So I had a deal in Howard County, Texas. It would have been 2020 out near Big Spring where I bought 160 acres, made 15 10-ish acre lots.

Jon: And the surveyor told me, hey, you're going to be fine. Just do a private road easement. You're not going to have to plat it. Well, in Texas, before the platting regulation changed here in 2023, that was not the case. It was 2020. And so we did this whole thing.

Jon: And the county was like, hey, you put this private road easement in there. And because you're constructing a road, you have to go through a planning process that required a groundwater study that required a fire suppression system. So a lot of these beginners make the mistake of not doing the deep dive.

Jon: They just think they can kind of third party it or outsource it and they don't know it themselves. And they try to delegate. And a lot of these surveyors, engineers, consultants don't know the rules themselves. Heck, a lot of the counties don't know the rules. We're in a legal dispute with the county right now, fighting them over regulations.

Jon: It's always, it's constant. The county officials don't know. The clerks don't know. The commissioners don't know. The surveyors and engineers certainly don't know. So it's up to you. It's your responsibility to know those things.

Seth: So like how do you get to the bottom of that if they don't even know their own rules? Like do you eventually find the guy that does? Or like do you ultimately just have to educate them? Just so you know, your stuff says this. So get off my back. Is that how it works?

Jon: It's more of the educating. Yeah, we're six for six now on educating these counties over the last two or three years. When you get to this size, you really need a decent real estate attorney who knows land development law in your particular state. I think I got a pretty good one who specializes in Texas, obviously.

Jon: So as soon as we hear that from the county, as soon as it starts going that route, what's funny is a lot of these counties don't respect me as a developer, right? They're like, oh, this guy's another developer trying to subdivide land the wrong way. But it's not until I say, hey, here's the rules, and they don't listen.

Jon: Then I sick the attorney on them as, oh, it's an attorney that kind of strikes the fear into them. And then they start having conversations and you start to educate them. And in this case, the dispute that we're in, a potential actual legal battle over these regulations.

Seth: So how many of your deals that you sell are sold with seller financing versus cash?

Jon: 85% owner financed on the sale side.

Seth: Now, there can be a lot of upsides and great things about selling with owner financing. Are there any dark sides or big trade-offs with this? Like, do you ever wish that you hadn't sold so many with seller financing or is it just always great?

Jon: Definitely not always great the biggest downside is obviously lack of capital so when you're selling it with probably a lower down payment you don't have that capital to go put back to work have i had some horror stories with stuff yes we're still trying to evict this one guy from a piece of land you know if someone defaults and we have to foreclose them sometimes they leave junk out there sometimes they give you a hard time people kind of over inflate that risk it is a minor risk, but you got to know the risks.

Jon: Texas, I'm blessed, is very easy to repossess land. It's a non-judicial foreclosure. You can walk to the courthouse steps. I did one two days ago. I literally read off a script, file a trustee's deed. The land comes back to me. It's ready to be resold.

Jon: Not every state's the same. Some states are more difficult. So the biggest challenge is lack of capital, especially if you're doing lower down payments, which. If I'm going back and doing it again, I probably try to get a little bit higher down payments. And then just the crazy horror stories that are possible, but they're rare, in my opinion.

Seth: What percentage of your seller finance deals end up defaulting?

Jon: Depends on the project. Nowadays, I really try to stay away. It's another reason why I try to stay away from this cheap land. Like if you're getting less than $500 per month, I have found your default rate goes way up just because people, they don't care about a $500 a month payment, especially if you're doing a low down payment.

Jon: So like if I sell land in Huspeth County, it's probably a 20 to 30% default rate. People are paying two, three, 400 a month. They got a low down payment. You know, if I'm selling land near Houston, where they've given me 10,000 down and $1,000 per month, it's under 5% default rate on a project like that.

Seth: Yeah. I got to think 10K down. That's serious money, you know, like who's just going to throw that away?

Jon: You'd be surprised though. Some people like they'll give me 10,000 bucks, they'll make a payment or two and then they disappear. And I'm like, okay, I got $12,000 or $13,000 and we're back at it. That does happen. It's great for you though.

Seth: Yeah, it is. And we like the money, but at the end of the day, I'd rather just get paid so I don't have to resell the land.

Seth: Historically, people know that I'm a huge proponent of low down payments. That was another component of our business pivot that we made the last year is trying to get those down payments 7.5%, at least, hopefully 10%. In the past, I was historically like 2.5% or less, like 1,500 down, 1,500 a month for 120 months.

Seth: And I ran into issues with note buyers not wanting the low down payments and the low seasoning. Then I ran into higher default rates and it just kind of became a nightmare.

Jon: How often do you sell your notes?

Seth: Pretty often. Is that kind of a plan?

Jon: It is, yeah. I think at 25, I sold 2 million in notes. At 26, it'll probably be significantly higher. So probably 40 or 50 notes a year at this point are being sold to various different investors.

Seth: Are you finding those on like paper stack or something, or you just have these sort of backdoor connections with people that just are ready to buy whenever you're ready to sell?

Jon: Both. Yeah. I've had great success on paper stack. I recommend it for anyone who's trying to get in the note buying or selling space. And I've had a great success finding a couple of buyers who I met on there and they keep coming back to me for more because we treat them right.

Jon: And then, you know, over the years, you start to build this network, right? Like if you're at events, if you're at conferences, if you meet an investor who wants to employ capital into land or real estate and can get a return, you kind of build this network. And I recommend keeping that close to your vest, man.

Jon: I can't tell you how many people ask me, hey, do you have any note buyers for me? It's like, come on, man, I'm not going to give you my note buyers. You're buying $500 million a year from me.

Seth: So I think you've openly said that defaults don't bother you that much. So was that always true or did you have to like emotionally rewire how you think about foreclosures and defaults it was always true because we focus on buying high quality land so if someone defaults i know i can resell quickly and i get this quote-unquote free money but it is an admin and paperwork and just got to be resold and remarketed so it's kind of a pain in the butt but yeah it's always been that way just because we focus on high quality land and we know we can resell real quick and what kind of loan instrument are you using there in texas,

Jon: Deed of trust.

Seth: Okay. Because land contract's a big no-no there, right?

Jon: It is, yeah. I do use them for really small desert pieces, which I don't really do anymore. But if I got a $10,000 piece in Huntspeth County, I'm probably on a land contract. It's just easier. But there's a whole issue with contract for deeds in Texas, especially if it becomes a primary residence.

Jon: And then the things that you actually need to disclose and provide to the buyers, you're just better off using the deed of trust. Plus, the note buyers don't like contract for deeds. So if you want to sell that note, you better be on a deed of trust.

Seth: Let's talk a little bit about Cornutis, Texas. So buying an entire town site on Sane, it seems like it either a visionary or an insane move. So which one did it feel like the moment that your wire went through?

Jon: Probably an insane move. The funny thing about Cornutis is I mostly bought it for the personal branding and all the stuff I do in social media. I thought, hey, what better way to get more attention than to own a town? Of course, I'm eight and a half hours away in Fort Worth.

Jon: When I first bought it, I definitely thought it'd be a lot easier than it has been. But the amount of work and everything, I mean, the money over a million dollars into it now and just, you know, the amount of work and things that have gone wrong. I mean, it's kind of a blessing in disguise because I've learned so much all the way from concrete to drywall to painting, plumbing, like whatever you want to.

Jon: Name. I've probably done it here in Cornutis, but yeah, it has been a time sink from the land business, but it's been a lot of fun at the same time.

Seth: What exactly does this town consist of?

Jon: Cornutis, Texas is an unincorporated town about 50 miles east of El Paso. It's in Huntsville County in the middle of the desert. It's 28 acres of land and on it, you got the historic cafe, the motel, an RV park. We got four mobile homes, a few storage buildings and whatnot.

Jon: fronts the highway. Imagine somebody having a salvage yard slash hoarder slash knickknacks all over. You see that behind me, all this was left in Cornutis. I walk in and pretty much everything except for very personal items was just left.

Seth: When you say that cafe is historic, what makes it historic? Is that a big thing that you play up to make it seem cooler or something? How does that work?

Jon: Yeah, so that's what Cornutis is most known for is the cafe. I guess we don't technically know when it started. The history, it's one thing I wish I knew better about Cornutis, is no one really knows the exact history. I mean, it was established in 1929, the cafe's been around.

Jon: Maybe since before then in some fashion, but certainly since the 50s, I would say, most notably May Carson from 1982 to 2019. She ran a cafe and was out here flipping burgers. The Cornutis Burger, which is a green chili burger, became famous. It's a spot in between El Paso and Carlsbad on a pretty major highway.

Jon: And I mean, it's a full service cafe who had a burger up there today, a gift shop. It's the main building. I mean, it's the main storefront.

Seth: Yeah, I mean, it seems like a smart marketing play. Like I could call any property historic, right? Like literally every place on earth is historic. When you bought it, like, did you know it was a special designated building or something? Or did you like have to do something to make it special or?

Jon: When I bought it, it was known to be historic. And that's kind of why I bought it. We actually looked into changing the name to like jazz, like all my companies, J-A-Z, short for my nickname, Jazzniac. I was like, can I rename this town to Jazz? And we couldn't really find a way to do that in Texas.

Jon: and I kind of just made the decision, like Cornutis is historic. It's named after the Cornutis Mountains, which is off to the north. It's been here forever. People know it. And so we just decided to keep the name and roll with it.

Seth: How did you find this thing? Like if I want to go out and buy a town, what would I have to do? Was it just like a lucky find or like, were you looking for this kind of thing?

Jon: It kind of was a lucky find. Someone sent it to me on Facebook. They just posted it on Facebook for sale. And from time to time, you'll see these quote unquote towns come for sale. People send them to me on social media. They just get listed on MLS. And it was definitely the most interesting real estate transaction I've ever done.

Jon: Threatened to be killed or shot multiple times by the previous owner, like bought it sight unseen. He had back taxes on it, like the whole nine yards. Multiple times I didn't think it would get done, but somehow I guess at the end we figured it out.

Seth: So like when you bought it, was it being marketed as a town or like, was it being marketed as 28 acres? And then you realized, oh, this is a town.

Jon: No, it was being marketed as a town. Right. And funny enough, I came out, it would have been late 2022 with my dad. We drove all the way out from Fort Worth at a round trip the same day, left in the morning, came out and saw it, went back the same day.

Jon: And I was out here and getting the tour from the guy. I remember being out in the back in his truck, the previous owners, I was trying to take a video. I was like, can I get a video of this? And he just goes, nope, stay in the truck. There's plenty of videos online.

Jon: I wanted to get a sample of the water from the well just to make sure it wasn't like nuclear water or anything. And I was like, Jeff, can I go to a sample of the water? And he's like, you can, but I'll shoot you. And so it just turned into this whole thing where he's like, you want to buy it? No inspection. You've got to buy it.

Seth: So these death threats all came before you bought it, not after?

Jon: That's right. Yeah. Before I bought it. Apparently, the previous owner made the title agent cry immediately. On the phone right before closing. Like he was just getting so worked up. He had these back tax and everything on it.

Seth: Buying this thing sight and seen. So I can understand that with land, but when you have like buildings involved, how did you get comfortable with that? I mean, some buildings are just nasty. I don't know how bad these things were, but was it just really, really cheap? Is that how you got comfortable with it?

Jon: I think I got comfortable with it because worst case, I told myself that I could subdivide it and make some smaller lots and sell off all the good equipment and still make money. So I think I could have. To your point, there were a lot of things that were wrong.

Jon: For instance, the cafe has a water tank that stores water. We can't use the wet water here because it's too hard, too much salt, so I'll just truck it in for El Paso. So there's this old water tank out there. First time I come out, I was like, let's fill up the water tank. Let's fire up this cafe.

Jon: So we fill it up, get a 3,000 gallon load out. We wake up the next morning and all the water's gone. We go to turn down the sink, the water's gone. Like what, did someone leave the water on? Like what happened? We couldn't figure it out, couldn't figure it out.

Jon: and then we go up and look down in the water tank and there's a bunch of holes in the bottom of the tank. All the water had just leaked out. And so there was so many things like that. There was just no way of knowing when I bought this thing, right? And we just, we just figured it out along the way, honestly.

Seth: Now, when you visited this thing for the first time, how bad was it compared to what you were expecting? Like, was it way worse? Or was it like, yeah, that's about what I thought it would be.

Jon: I think it was worse, not way worse, but worse. I remember my dad making a comment like, you're not actually gonna buy this thing, are you? I think I kind of am. And it was just like, this is wrong. That is wrong. This is wrong. Like the roof's leaking, you know, there's junk all over the place.

Jon: Like everything you can imagine out here has been fixed. I think it was worse than I was expecting. And then when we got into it, it was really worse than I thought it would be.

Seth: I think you said you spent over a million bucks trying to turn this town into a destination. Is that right?

Jon: That's right. All funded by the land business. Thank God. So why do people go there?

Jon: It's a two pronged component. And I would say, one, it's a travel stop on this highway in the middle of the desert. It's 70 miles one way, 50 miles the other, where there's nothing. So US-62-180 gets 2,500 cars a day. So, you know, Cornutis right now probably averages about $1,000 per day in sales, maybe a little more, closer to $1,300.

Jon: Breakeven's like, I think we calculated it at $1,450 per day. So like, we're still not profitable. We're close. So you got your travelers and passerbys who stop, you know, at a convenience store to get food or, you know, buy a gift or whatever. And then our second component is El Paso.

Jon: El Paso is less than an hour away. So when we run events, when we have something going on, we promote and advertise and get people out from El Paso. And that's kind of our secondary income stream.

Seth: There's this cafe, there's this hotel. Are those both fully functional?

Jon: They are, yeah.

Seth: Okay. And are these like, there's people that are working that you employ? Like these are businesses that you own operating in those places?

Jon: There is, yeah. So my team, Jazzland, I got the two full-time employees, the ops manager, the sales manager, and then you got the attorney and bookkeeper, blah, blah, blah. And then Cornutis is my second biggest business. It's got one full-time employee, anywhere from six to 10 part-time hourly employees.

Jon: You know, that's your chef, your labor, handyman, people cleaning, whatever. So you got six to 10 hourly, one full-time out here, plus my crew, which also does work and everything out here. But yeah, those are all operated and run by my company.

Seth: Do you have like a business manager or something? Because like, when I think about this, I just think like, I don't have time to like find a chef to run this thing and make sure he's doing a good job. But so like, do you spend your time on that or do you have an employee who looks after all this stuff?

Jon: Yeah, it's my one full-time employee out here, mostly Charlie. He's the operations manager of Cornutis. He's on salary. He does most of that. But at the end of the day, like, look, I have the final say and we have a WhatsApp. I run all my businesses on WhatsApp.

Jon: We have a group and it's like, you know, hey, are you okay? We're talking up here before the call. Are you okay with September 19th for the chili cook off? Okay, what charity do we need to get involved in, et cetera? So like, we're always having discussions and running that through me.

Jon: I guess one thing I really pride myself is like truly being a business operator, right? Like I have three main businesses, it's the land, it's Cornutis, and it's the coaching business. I run them all. I have 100% in all of them. I'm a huge proponent of that. I don't have any partners.

Jon: I like owning and operating everything myself. I'm not really a micromanager. I'll let Charlie make most of those decisions, but I like to be the higher up as the final say and actually in the weeds technical operator.

Seth: What does success look like with Cornutis? What was the outcome that you were hoping for and how close are you to that?

Jon: Primarily, I think the main outcome was the attention for myself, my businesses, etc. And if I'm just judging it on that, I think we've had success because I've had investors out here. I've raised probably millions from people coming out to Cornutis. I've had events. I've met random people who I never would have met.

Jon: And that's been a huge help in my life, both business, family, friends, etc. But from the monetary perspective, secondarily, is to make money. obviously. And we're not quite profitable yet. We're very close. I think we'll hit that probably mid-2026, hopefully sooner. So I guess we're kind of halfway there and then the money components lagging behind a little bit, but I think we're going to get there.

Seth: Some people don't think of it this way, but I think there's some truth to it that like, it doesn't have to be about making a lot of money if there's other intangibles that can lead to making money in other ways. I know, I don't know how many millions of views your YouTube videos have gotten about this, but.

Seth: I feel like it puts you on the map in a lot of ways. Would you agree with that?

Jon: Yeah, for sure. Like some of the reels I've done out here, 1 million, 3 million, 5 million, you know, on Instagram, the YouTube page, hundreds of thousands, if not millions. Yeah. It's put me on the maps, give me a lot of opportunities. If I wanted to go into politics one day, if I wanted to try and develop the desert or, you know, have crazy celebrities and artists out here.

Jon: And one thing I like to tell people is the halo effect, right? Like you can't really quantify the halo effect, whether it's social media, whether it's a business, it's a relationship. You might meet seth williams because you want to do land or learn about land with him but they don't know something else you got going on whether it's you know a storage deal or you're off doing some other sort of asset class or real estate investment and they can't quantify that when they first meet you but perhaps one day you're having coffee with them and they got a multifamily project going on and you decide to invest a hundred thousand dollars with them it's like you would have never known that learning land from seth williams absolutely yeah and i can totally attest to that.

Seth: There's all kinds of opportunities that fall in your lap just because you kind of make a name for yourself. It's cool. It's hard to like know when that's going to happen, but it's a real thing. On the note we were talking about earlier about, you know, investing in Texas being somewhat of an emotional decision. Do you think Cornutis is a bit of an emotional decision too?

Jon: Yeah, for sure. People ask me all the time, do you plan on selling this? Are you trying to grow it to sell it or whatever? It's like, no, I plan on holding this thing subject to change until I die. This is something that is going to be a legacy thing for me.

Jon: I hope to be out here for a long time. I enjoy coming out to the desert. We're out. If you look up Hudspeth County, the listeners, this is the desert. There's some mountains out here. It's flat, rolling terrain. There's not a single tree, very different from the city.

Jon: I love spending time in Fort Worth in the city and then coming out here 25% of the time into the desert, shooting guns, smoking barbecue, doing projects, swinging a hammer. It's fun, that dichotomy.

Seth: How old are you now, Jon?

Jon: 32, about to be 33. I'm getting old.

Seth: So you're in your early 30s and I assume you're financially independent. Long beyond that, you know, for a lot of us, we kind of have this initial fear when we're working our job of just like financially surviving and getting established. But for you, you're far beyond that.

Seth: I'm wondering now that you are financially independent, are there any like new fears that show up when you're at this new level?

Jon: Well, I think there's always a fear of like losing it all, whether it's like money or reputation, I think, especially with owning the town, like doing all the social media stuff, like maybe a new fear of mine is like the reputational component. Like, you know, if you do something wrong or we host an event out here in Cornutis and someone dies or, you know, I have a land project and losing much money for investors or something, it's more like the reputational component.

Jon: So I try to always operate with that in mind, like absolutely do the right thing, be super ethical, be on top of things, take responsibility. When you get to that level and have a little bit of following and reputation, like it could all go away in an instant. We know that. I think that's probably the main thing.

Seth: If land investing suddenly stopped working tomorrow, what skill that you've built over the past decade would you bet your future on? Cause I know doing the YouTube thing, being a coach, like you just develop a lot of additional skills through doing that stuff. So does anything stick out as like, yeah, this is my next biggest asset.

Jon: Well, I think maybe a few, I mean, I've always had kind of this underlying confidence that I could figure things out no matter what. I'm a very fast learner and problem solver. So no matter what it is, I think I could figure it out. I think probably deal making sales and negotiation.

Jon: So like if I wasn't doing land or whatever, I'd be just like wheeling and dealing and doing some negotiating or sales somewhere else, whether it's for cars all the way up to some other asset class in real estate or investment banking, whatever. It's kind of just like connecting the dots and negotiating and deal making and just like figuring out a way to piece everything together.

Seth: I am wondering if you had to like start completely over with no audience and no capital and no credibility, what would you do in the next 90 days? Like how would you get back to where you are now or at least be well on your way to that journey?

Jon: Yeah, it's funny. There's a great show, Undercover Billionaire. I had a couple seasons where they do exactly that. They literally take away everything and they send them out. I'd be trying to wheel and deal and find something where I can get in there and find somewhere where I know something is undervalued and I can either turn around and sell it for more or barter it for more or just leverage it for more, whether it's a relationship or straight money or whatever it is.

Jon: I think I would be out just literally hustling and just hitting the streets, hitting the books, like just give me my phone. I think that's all I would need to figure something out, whether I'm firing up like chat GPT or just Googling around, I would figure it out and I would find somewhere to add value and just make a deal.

Seth: You know, you've really got something when just you and your phone could build an empire based on that. You know, I mean, that tells you you've really got some inherent skill because a lot of people, you know, they need a bunch of money first and then they can do it. But we've got a good thing.

Jon: I think a lot of people, man, they just get stuck in that mindset where they're just afraid to take action. They're afraid to try to figure it out because they might fail or they don't know. Like you're going to figure it out. Like as long as you're comfortable with yourself and your skills, like guarantee you will find a way to figure it out.

Jon: Everything can be figured out. We're just talking about how to do the world's largest burger this morning, like 2000 pounds. Like how can we do it? I don't know. We will figure it out. We'll customize an oven or whatever we need to do. Like I guarantee we'll figure it out.

Seth: This is like a Cornutis thing.

Jon: Yeah. Yeah. I want to do the Guinness world largest burger I think would be cool out here.

Seth: Wow. That's really interesting ways that you can bring significance to a place just by having these like cool ideas, you know, to hype stuff up and get people to come out there. It's a great idea.

Jon: It's all about attention, man. Like in that scenario, I'm envisioning the world's largest burger, the burger statue out front with a plaque, news coverage, you know, of course, social media and everything. So like transition that to the land space as well. It's like.

Jon: What can you do to put yourself on the map? Maybe it's a super unique project. Maybe you took a hog farm and converted it to sustainable housing or something like just something that, gets you attention and puts it on a map because we live in an attention-driven world, sadly, nowadays, but I don't make the rules. So don't hate the player, hate the game.

Seth: If you're smart about it, if you know what you're doing, like you can get attention with YouTube shorts and, you know, little videos and stuff. Like it's doable. I won't say it's like obvious or easy, but I can totally see how you could bring attention to a seemingly obscure place.

Seth: You know, there's this show Diners and Dives where they go to these different dive restaurants that like terrible location, like nothing pretty about it, but people flock there and like line up to get inside because like, there's something special about that place.

Jon: Anything's possible.

Seth: Yeah. This is all comes down to creativity, man.

Seth: So as we wrap this up, I am curious, you know, we both know the land business has changed a lot in the past few years. Can you think of any beliefs about land investing that you used to preach confidently that you've since changed your mind about?

Jon: That's easy, especially from the subdividing component, even flipping nowadays. Any mother, brother, uncle, and sister, whatever, could get in there and send some direct mail and have success. Nowadays, I think you more have to be a business operator. You need to know sales. You need to know marketing, so many different things.

Jon: I mean, yeah, of course it used to be easy, which I've been kind of thinking more about that. I have this new thesis where I'm actually not quite sure that land is even a good business. I kind of think it's a poor business because.

Jon: If you get 100 Seth Williams or 500 developers or flippers in there sending direct mail and it breaks a business, was it that good of a business to start with? From the flipping component, I think that's certainly true. From the developing component, that's less true just because it's so challenging and difficult.

Jon: We got all these different things going on. I think that'll kind of always be a blue ocean. I'm doing these big subdivides, but it's kind of my new thesis. I'd be curious what you think. I don't know that, especially flipping, is that good of a business?

Seth: I've never asked myself that question with that much clarity, but that's a great question. Maybe it never was. If all it takes is a market shift or like a few thousand extra people and it all falls apart, not that it has. It hasn't fallen apart. That's for sure. You could certainly still make money, but it's gotten a lot more challenging.

Seth: If a business becomes that much more challenging with only a thousand people sending out 5,000 mailers a month. A similar thing could be said about a lot of other businesses too, like household selling and the banking industry. I mean, that almost totally imploded back in 2009 with the whole crash to say that like banking isn't a good business. It's like, I don't know.

Seth: I mean, it's a pretty big deal. It'll always be there.

Jon: So true. When you say land business, it's like, what does that mean? Because there could be like a hundred different versions of that, depending on what you're going after and where you're doing it and what you're good at and all this stuff. As you know, it's a great question though. It's worth wrestling with that and probably coming at it from different angles with assumptions about what kind of business you're talking about.

Jon: I think some of the super easy stuff... I mean, obviously it was great when it lasted, but it was not very resilient, you know, if it became that much harder that so many people got out of it.

Seth: Yeah. And I think one thing people need to get hyper focused about in the land space is what exactly do you want out of it? Because we both know this. When you look at the land industry, there's so many different ways to make money, whether it's flipping, it's entitling, it's subdividing, it's wholesaling.

Seth: Do you want to do three deals a year and make an extra 50,000 or do you want to scale a hundred million dollar business? If you come into this business with a lack of clarity of exactly what you want, exactly what you're going to put into it, then get out of it. That's where a lot of these beginners have challenges and they kind of run around with their head cut off.

Seth: They start trying to hire VAs, buy a million different data platforms. Send crazy amounts of direct mail. They don't get a deal. It's like, okay, let's just take a step back. What were you expecting out of this business? And then what do you want to get out of it?

Jon: I think part of what makes that hard for a beginner is like, They don't really know. Like they just kind of see people making money here. So it's like, hey, I don't know what I'm good at, but I'm just going to throw my hat in the ring and just start doing stuff and eventually they'll figure it out.

Seth: I think another huge problem in the land business, man, is people do not treat it like a business. It's a hobby for most people.

Jon: And if you don't treat it like a business, it will not perform like a business. But again, that's back to your personal preference. If you want to be a hobby and do three deals a year, it's exactly where you're going to get out of it. But don't think you're just going to send 200 mailers and have a million dollar business. It needs to be treated like a business if you want it to produce like a business.

Seth: And when you say treat it like a business, I know you mentioned being good at sales and marketing. Can you think of any other qualifiers? Like this is when you're treating it like a business. This is when you're treating it like a hobby. Like what does that mean in your mind?

Jon: knowing your numbers, knowing how to hire people and fire people, knowing how to manage people, knowing how to negotiate is a big one. You touched on sales and marketing. Those are obviously huge people. Oftentimes in the land business, they don't step outside of the business to learn something.

Jon: Like if I'm trying to learn sales, no offense to some of the great salespeople in the land space, I would like to consider myself maybe a decent salesperson, but I want to go learn sales from someone who's great and specialized in sales. I want to go learn negotiation from Chris Voss or someone like that who's specialized in negotiation.

Jon: We want to learn negotiation. Don't come to Jon Jasniak. Just go straight to the top. Go to Chris Voss. People don't really do that in this business. They kind of just get in here and they're like, okay, I want to learn from Ajay how to sell or Jon how to subdivide.

Jon: Well, there's probably people who've done better at subdividing than me. Go learn from them. And I try to provide as much value as I can, but there's a lot of things to be learned outside of this business.

Seth: Yeah. And there's a lot of geniuses out there who like don't have a platform. Like they're not trying to build a name for themselves. Like it's almost like a luck thing. If you can get in the same circles with them and realize, oh, you do this. I was talking about this the other week, networking, networking.

Seth: People don't realize that's like a full-time job when you're in business.

Jon: Like, it's not like I'm going to a meetup like once a month and that's my networking. It's like picking up the phone every single day. Who can you call? Can I send Seth a DM, connect with him? Like networking is full time in most businesses, but especially in real estate, because who you know is what's going to make you the money.

Seth: Yeah, that's very true. I mean, if I can say I'm going to send Jon an email and he's going to respond or I'll call him and he'll pick up the phone. Like just that truth is worth something, you know, and that comes about by getting to know people, you know, outside of just sending DMs and Facebook comments and that kind of thing.

Jon: 100%.

Seth: Well, Jon, it's a pleasure to talk to you. Thanks for coming on the show. So if people want to find out more about you or check you out in some other place, where should they go? What should they do?

Jon: JonJasniak.com or JonJasniak all over social media, biggest on Instagram, YouTube. I put out a ton of free stuff. I'm not as big a fan of the coaching and education space nowadays. I just want to put it out for free and everyone can enjoy.

Jon: And I try to put some entertainment in it, make some cool and funny videos. But I like looking at deals. So shoot me a DM, shoot me an email. would love to chat land especially development with anyone out there.

Seth: Yeah awesome and Ii'll be sure to link to all that stuff in the show notes, retipster.com/256. Jon, again, thanks so much for coming on and all the listeners out there we will talk to you next time.