Seth: How's it going? Welcome to the REtipster podcast. This is Seth Williams, and today's conversation is going to be a little bit different from most of the interviews I've done. I'm talking with Mike Ferreira, someone that longtime listeners might recognize from way back in episode 44. Mike was an early member of the REtipster club and a full-time land investor, and for years, one of the heavy hitters in this business.

And Mike had what a lot of people chase. He had volume, cash flow, predictable income, and a system that worked really, really well until it didn't. And this episode is not about celebrating wins or flexing deal numbers. It's about what happens after a nearly decade-long run of success in the land business when the market shifts, warning signs get ignored, ego creeps in, and the same strategy that once printed money starts destroying it.

So Mike is being unusually transparent about what went wrong from failing to pivot to selling the wrong kind of product for too long to the personal fallout that compounded everything. So if you've ever assumed that success means safety or that success is forever, this might make you think differently. And that's kind of the idea. So, Mike, welcome to the show. Thanks for being here. How's it going?

Mike: Hey, Seth. Yep. Happy to be here. Looking forward to sharing my story in the hopes that others don't fall into the same trap that I did in just hoping to save other people from the fate that I experienced.

Seth: Yeah, of course. And I'll just say it's very rare that I hear anybody even talk about something that didn't go well in the business, even if it's like a single deal, let alone what we're going to get in here to today. And I'll also say that I did not prompt Mike to do this at all. He asked me if he could come on in the hopes of helping save other people from future grief and hassle. So, Mike, thank you for doing this. Really appreciate it.

Mike: Yep, happy to do that.

Seth: Just to give people a recap, for those who have not heard episode 44 or maybe who are not familiar with you, just help us understand, like at the height of your land flipping business, what did it look like? How many deals were you doing per year? What were the typical properties you dealt with? How was it actually what your business consisted of?

Mike: My land business evolved, and it evolved in a very similar way that the early 2000s, pioneers or developers, business models evolved. I kind of sealed my fate by reading an old out-of-print book called The Great Land Hustle by a guy named Morton Paulson. And this book explained and outlined all of these different subdivisions that we see now, a lot of them that are still paper subdivisions, whether they're in Florida or Arizona, New Mexico, these big companies the way they started out is they developed land with the sole purpose for people to build houses on it.

They put the infrastructure in, roads, full utilities, down in places like Port Charlotte and North Port in Florida and other places around the country. And the demand was so great that they would just sell out. I mean, it was just gangbusters business. They would sell out. So then they figured, well, you know what, what if we just make the lots and put in the roads, but we don't spend all that money on the infrastructure. You know, people can do well in septic, eventually we'll run power to the area. And they did that.

And it's all like crazy. And then somebody said, hey, what if we just plait out the lots, forget about the roads, sell them as investments? It's going to be high margin and it's not going to cost us a penny in development. Let's just do that. And it worked. There's still evidence, areas in New Mexico and, like I said, Arizona and still in Florida. There's miles and miles and miles of all these lots, a lot of them with no access even. And from the 70s when they did it, still to this day, there's just nothing there.

That's kind of how my business went. I started near me in some areas that I knew there were lots and people were building, and I was flipping those kind of lots. And then I started getting into cheaper and cheaper land without utilities and still maybe some access and I tapped into a market where I would just sell on terms like $99 down, $199 document fee, low monthly payments and I looked at everything by margin like, not deal size, but percentage margin. So, I would make at least 7 to 10x of what I paid for a property, plus I charged sky-high interest of 16% and sold via land contracts.

And somehow, over time, it just devolved to the point where a large percent of my business was completely inaccessible lots. Some of them wetlands, some of them in the middle of the green swamp in Polk County, Florida. It seemed to work out great because, first of all, nobody in their right mind were nailing these people. And I could buy land for 500 bucks an acre and sell it maybe for 4,000 bucks an acre, plus get that interest.

And my business just blew up. I wasn't interested in getting a bunch of VAs or whatever. And instead, I decided to automate. So I had everything automated to the point that someone would go on my website, usually in the middle of the night for whatever reason. Maybe they were drinking. I don't know. They would check out to purchase the property. They pay their down payment and document fee. I had it automatically set up so their contract would be there, they'd electronically sign the contract, and the deal would be done.

And my wife at the time, who was helping me with the business and was a partner and the CPA for the business, all she had to do was copy and paste some information, put it into QuickBooks Online, they'd be set up on an auto debit, and that was it. Yeah. And it was the same type of properties I sold over and over. So I was basically copying, pasting the same ads and just putting a little different detail. It was easy. It was just ridiculously easy.

Seth: Who were these people that were buying these things? And like, why were they so okay paying so much for wetland property that they couldn't use?

Mike: In hindsight, looking back and to my experience of what ended up happening, these were people who could not afford any other kind of land. They could not afford a nice property, even with owner financing. These were the people who were living paycheck to paycheck, people who bought their cars at the Pay Here Car Lot, the people who would get the payday loans. It was those people. They were just happy for the opportunity to own something, anything.

Seth: Were they in the U.S.? Like, did they live here?

Mike: Most of them were in the U.S. There was kind of a higher percentage of immigrants. A lot of Haitian immigrants for some reason, Hispanic immigrants, and then just a lot of good old boys with a pickup truck type of buyer.

Seth: And why do you think they were okay with this? Like they just didn't understand what they were doing or?

Mike: That's hard to say. I thought I was being a good guy because I disclosed things in the ad because I put all the details of everything in the contract. It wasn't like the old days where it was scammy, I guess you would say. I thought I was being a good guy because I disclosed everything. Now, in hindsight, I realized part of it was people don't read. If I put a Facebook marketplace listing and I have all this in paragraphs of information, anyone selling land on a place like Facebook knows, you could put one acre lot in the title of the ad, and people are going to message you asking, how big is the lot? Because people just, they don't read.

Seth: Yeah, that's very true, though. I found the same thing. I think a lot of it was they weren't reading. They didn't realize what they were buying, even though it was in writing.

Mike: And then the other part, I said they just wanted to own something, whether it was a cultural thing, which I think some immigrants from other places, it's a cultural status to own land in the United States. And so they got something. It's all they could afford, so they got it.

Seth: So it sounds like this whole thing was working great for a while. If we rewind to the moment where things started going wrong. So not when everything collapsed, but when the first cracks appeared, what were the warning signs?

Mike: The warning signs were that, of course, sales started slowing. My buyers list, which was like the heart of my business, which consistently, if I would do an email blast on a Friday afternoon with a bunch of properties, I would sell at least 20 properties over the course of the weekend. And then that number started declining. And also, I started getting more replies to those emails saying, hey, do you have this? Do you have that? Like, request for better property, which I just kind of stupidly ignored. And also, I started seeing a higher number of unsubscribes because people were getting sick of the same crappy properties being slung at them over and over and over again.

Seth: How did these people get on your buyers list that was the heart of your business? Did they sign up for it through your website or like, had you called them before? Like, who were these people?

Mike: Whenever I put ads anywhere on Facebook or anywhere I was doing advertising at the time, my goal was always to drive people to the website. For one thing is I was spoiled and I didn't want to talk to them. So I wanted them to go to the website and learn everything they could there. When they went to the website, there would be a pop-up to join the buyers list. And they did. My buyers list grew to, I don't know, where it ended up 6,000, 7,000 people on a buyers list.

Seth: When did these warning signs start happening? Like, was this a result of something happening in the market? Or what do you think caused this shift that you chose to ignore?

Mike: I think part of it was general economics. These people, typical customers of mine, reasons for their default when they would communicate about it would be something as simple as their truck broke down and they couldn't pay anymore. Or I'd get a call from like a buyer's girlfriend. Well, he's in jail and can't make his payments. I got a lot of those.

Or people would finally, because like I said, they wouldn't read the ad or the contract. And they finally, maybe a year later, would try to get to the property or wanted to do something with the property and found out that what they wanted to do, they couldn't do. Then they would walk away.

Seth: What percentage of all your sales ended up being seller finance like this? Like, was it most of them? Is that kind of what you wanted people to do?

Mike: Like 99% were these owner finance.

Seth: And what, if anything, did you do to like qualify these people? Was it kind of just like, hey, if you have a pulse, you're approved? That kind of thing?

Mike: Almost all of my customers I had never had any contact with before they made the purchase. I would wake up in the morning. I had new customers. Never recognized the name. They hadn't messaged me. They hadn't emailed me. They hadn't called me. So that's why I thought, what a great way to do business, because I really was not a fan of talking on the phone a lot, if I could avoid it. So it worked great for me.

Seth: Was there any like fraud that you encountered? I mean, it sounds like the perfect environment for fraudulent transactions if they're just kind of doing it in the night and if there's no title company involved. I assume there wasn't. But ever encounter that or?

Mike: No. Well, I did it via land contract and I didn't record the land contracts. So there was no way that they could defraud me.

Seth: So like what was your default rate when you were doing it that way?

Mike: During the good times, it was about five a month. And I didn't care about that. But as time went on, it started climbing. I can't even say exactly what the rate got at the worst, but it was significantly more than that. 10 to 20 maybe in a month at the worst part.

Seth: And it sounds like that's normally not a problem if you can fairly easily resell these things and the constant line of buyers lined up to get it. But when the default rate goes up and the properties become harder to sell, is that kind of when things started falling apart?

Mike: That's what happened. Not that I ever wanted anyone to default. And I would try to work with people so that wouldn't happen. But when they did, it was golden free money for me. I would just turn around and put the listing back live on my website, sell it again from scratch. And there's properties that have gone through their seventh or eighth buyer. At this point. I mean, owner financing can be great. It's a wonderful tool. Don't get me wrong. But I learned that making a sale with owner financing is not a sale. You haven't sold the property. You haven't sold the property till you've gotten all your money.

Seth: It sounds like throughout this process, you kind of stopped being teachable. You kind of felt like you had it all figured out. Things were going well. Was there a moment in time at which you realized, oh, all right. I've got this all wrong.

Mike: It happened. And then I would kind of get ready to make some changes. And then I would slide back to my old ways. One interesting part was, I forget what it was, but there was a panel of people, a presentation. You were on there and Eddie Speed was there. And Eddie Speed made some comments about junk land. I know exactly what you're talking about. I remember this. Yeah. One comment was he referred to people who sow junk land as bad players, and that kind of hurt my feelings a little bit.

But he also said they're the first to go down the drain or however he word it when things turn. His comments about it really got me thinking a lot. And I thought, I'm setting myself up for failure if I keep doing it this way and the market turns. I mean, this guy, he's been around. He's the old timer and he knows his stuff and I should listen to it. I thought about it for a while and I was going to change, but things were still going good at that time.

And in my mind, I guess I thought I was such a genius for having this completely automated land business that I barely had to touch. I didn't make a change. Then when I started feeling a little more pressure that this was not right and I wanted to make a change, I actually tried to be teachable temporarily, and I shelled out some money, and I actually paid our mutual friend, Jaron Barnes, to teach me some new ways, which is funny because I taught him some stuff when he started in land, like some tips of some things, but I paid him.

I said, Jaron, you know, I want to get into doing better land. I want to get out of the owner financing, and I like the idea of how you use realtors for selling and my direct mail is not having the punch it used to be I want to learn the texting and all of this so he taught me stuff and you know got the launch control going and then I was dealing with all these phone calls I had to make and these people who weren't serious and like wanted sky high offers and everything.

And then there were some realtors I tried to reach out to that were completely non-responsive. In my head, I was like, the heck with this. You know, I won't just go back to my old way and I don't have to have this kind of aggravation. And that was a big mistake. I should have stuck with that and I should have listened he tried to show me a better way to do it and i just was too stubborn i look back it's all about ego.

It's all about ego and a lack of humility. Nobody who knows me, who would interact with me, would ever in a million years say, oh, Mike's an ego maniac. He's an egotistical person. He lacks humility. They would never say that in a million years. But it was inside. And I don't quote the Bible much or anything like that. But the thing that sticks out is pride goes before destruction. And that was the heart of the whole thing.

I lacked humility in my heart and my ego was running the show even though I didn't let anybody in the world outside see it. I thought I knew everything. I thought I'm the OG of the land business. I still had so many people contacting me to pick my brain and get my words of wisdom. I got carried away with it all and I was not teachable. I was not changeable.

Seth: Yeah, that's a really tricky thing. I think I've heard it said things like pride and greed are talked about in the Bible like way, way, way more than other sins like adultery or murder and things like that. And part of the reason is because pride and ego and greed can be such like covert things that you don't even see in yourself like it just kind of happens to you you don't see you're not even aware of it you know whereas like something like murder and adultery like you know when you're doing it nobody's oblivious here.

I'm wondering if i'm you how do i notice when pride is taking over in real time is there some question or test i can put myself through to be like Seth you gotta hit the reset button like you're not thinking clearly. You are inebriated by the drug of pride. How can you step back and reevaluate? Like, how do you know that?

Mike: That's a good question. And I wish I knew that in time. For me, it took getting absolutely crushed. The first podcast I did with you was Zero to Rockstar. And I went Rockstar to Zero. And I wish it was to Zero because I discovered that it doesn't stop at Zero because negative happens. And negative goes a long, long way. So I went from basically being a millionaire to being a couple hundred grand in debt. It sucks.

So it took a forced feeding of humble pie for me to get it. And I guess that's what I needed. I mean, in the grand scheme of things, it's made me a better person. It will make my future business dealings a lot better. It's been an excruciating road but I know it's probably in some ways the best thing that could happen.

Seth: There's clear evidence of you eating that humble pie, because if you hadn't, I know you wouldn't even be here right now. I just don't know many people who would even be willing to talk about this publicly. Failure is a private thing that we hide. Like nobody wants to look like a fool. And this is a big reason why the older and older you get, the harder and harder it becomes to try new things. Because nobody wants to look like a fool when they're older in age. You know, that's something young people do. I just think it's unique and I admire you for being willing to even talk about this stuff.

Mike: What adds to it is over the years, there are people that were brand new in the business that would come to me for advice. Or even sometimes they'd happen to be coming through Sarasota and we'd meet for lunch and they'd kind of pick my brain and they were all excited about their new venture. Some of them are killing it today. Yeah. And I'm busted. If that doesn't humble you, what would?

Seth: As you've watched other land investors pivot into better land and bigger parcels and sub-divides and all kinds of different stuff people are doing now, was there any story you were telling yourself about why you should stay put? I mean, have you thought about trying those things at this point?

Mike: This point, I am definitely a lot more open-minded. And I've really stepped back from it altogether for a while. I was just licking my wounds. I went through a divorce in the process. It didn't have to do with the business collapsing or finance, but it kind of co-occurred. And between the business going bad and a very unpleasant divorce with a wife who was also my business partner and my CPA, I got crushed and I was depressed for quite a while, to tell you the truth. I was in a depression, and you don't really get very creative or productive when you're in a depression. So it took me a while to work through that. I loved the business, and I hated being away from it.

And I love the community that is around the land business, which is unlike other niches of communities. For example, my previous business, which was a gold and silver business, is not a community. It's a snake pit. You know, they're not all helping. It's not kumbaya, let's help the new guy at all. It's, you know, who can we stab in the back first and make sure our business is on top. So apologies to anyone that's still in gold and silver business, but that's the truth.

Seth: Well, you mentioned the divorce situation with your wife, who is also your business partner, your CPA. I'm wondering, do you recommend that people work with their spouses or family members or friends, or is that just a terrible idea? Like with what you've experienced, would you ever do that kind of thing again?

Mike: I know a lot of people work with their spouses in this business, so I certainly don't want to scare anyone. But the way I did it is all I focused on was buying and selling, acquisitions and dispositions. I paid almost zero attention to the numbers, except periodically taking a cursory review of numbers that were shown to me. And I don't recommend that. That's all I'll say on that matter.

It seemed like it worked for a while, and I wouldn't give it a rule of thumb that nobody should do that. But I think there's the saying, trust God, but tie your camel or something like that. I forget the saying, but trust, but verify different things. Treat it like any other partnership to a certain extent and just keep your eyes open, make sure everything's going the way that you think it's going. That's about all I better say about that.

Seth: I mean, I understand what you're saying because my wife does my bookkeeping and, you know, looks at a lot of the numbers and it is a huge luxury that I completely take for granted sometimes that like, I just don't think about that stuff. Like I don't have room in my brain for that stuff to occupy space. And sometimes I think like, man, if she wasn't there, like I'd be paying a heck of a lot more money to a bookkeeper or something. Like it would not be nearly as easy as it is right now.

And I'm wondering for you, if, and when you ever get back into this business, how much harder do you think it's going to be to do this without her?

Mike: I'm going to do the business completely differently and I'm going to eliminate some of that. I don't see myself, at least for this foreseeable future, going back into owner financing. Not that there's anything wrong with owner financing and it's great and it has its place, but I feel burned out with that and dealing with the customers. I never was a fan of wholesaling, partly because there's some other groups, other educators that lean heavily into owner financing. And in those groups, it seems like the majority of the discussion is different how to fake your way through and be deceptive to the seller, be deceptive to the buyer, how to word things so you don't get in trouble, but it seems like you own the property and all of that. So I never really liked that.

However, I realize now that there's a space for someone who is completely ultimately transparent doing that kind of business and that it could work. So that's what I'm looking at as my next step to get properties under contract and do assignments, maybe some double closes, but deal more with other investors instead of the retail buyers. I think that would be more enjoyable for me.

That can be quite a relatively simple business, and I think that's going to be my springboard of getting back into it. And then as I get more up to date on all the new exciting things that are going on in the land business, all the new great tools that are out there that weren't there when I was doing it last, I'll get into more things, maybe the subdivides and all of that as well. But one step at a time.

Seth: You know, again, if and when you get back in the land.

Mike: Oh, I'm getting back. I've definitely gotten back.

Seth: So when you get back in the land. Yes. Just trying to narrow down any specifics, if you have them clearly enough in your mind. What do you absolutely refuse to do again, even if it means slower growth or less cash flow? And what kind of things will you insist on being true? Like, we have to do it this way. We will never do it this way again. Anything come to mind?

Mike: Obviously, no more junk properties. The rule of thumb that's going to be for me going forward is I won't engage in any business where any of the other people involved in a transaction aren't doing better than I am. In the deal. I don't think that would be a bad way to do business, so.

Seth: I know when you've learned a certain way of doing things, it can be very, very difficult to unlearn those established norms and go at it from scratch. Do you think you have it in you to relearn stuff?

Mike: Absolutely. I have been humbled. I've been humbled now for sure, and I've become teachable again. I'm looking at it with fresh eyes. I'm looking at it with a beginner's mindset, but I'm also taking the valuable knowledge that transfers over from over a decade of doing this and in applying it to new ways of doing it.

Seth: When you look back at the whole collapse that happened, I don't know if you've thought this deeply about it, but do you look at this as like a punishment or a correction or preparation for something? Or do you think there was any deeper meaning behind it? Or I don't know, any thoughts with that?

Mike: When I was at my lowest point with this emotionally, I know it's not true, but there were times I told myself that God was punishing me, that perhaps I was a bad actor. Perhaps I should have put all the bad stuff in the front of the listings and not, you know, in there. Or perhaps I just shouldn't have done it at all the way I did it when it was at a certain point.

And I think you know, and most people know, you don't have a punishing God. God may feel that way sometimes, but that's not really the case. It was a lesson. It was a very intense lesson for me, life-changing lesson.

Seth: It's interesting how some people look at that. I don't know if it's so much God punishing as much as it's just like letting people learn from what they're doing wrong. Like he doesn't have to come in and hurt you. Like you're going to kind of hurt yourself and figure it out that way. Basically just like, I'm not going to step in and save you from what you're doing wrong. I'm going to let you do that.

And it's not that the warning isn't there. It's just a matter of, will you heed that warning? And I think the pride and ego thing, it's probably the number one culprit that just gets in the way of that. Because when Steph is going well, it's like, why would you listen? You know?

Mike: Yeah.

Seth: So what parts of this business do you think don't work today? Like what part of the business from five years ago do people need to just completely forget? And what is still very true? Anything come to mind?

Mike: Ultra-low-end properties. I have proof. Even though I went through everything with the divorce and I turned over the assets of the business to my wife, and now she's the sole owner of that LLC. Despite it all and the conflicts we had, since she knows nothing about selling, I told her that I would set up a website, not my brand that I had, but I would set up a website. And when she got defaults, I would post them on a website and I'd post them on Facebook. And I would do that for her because otherwise she would not know what to do. So I just recycle those things and they're not selling. Very rarely is there a sale. Very rarely is there any interest. I would not recommend anybody to do the cheap, low-end properties.

Seth: What do you think this shows us about who actually bears the risk in seller financing?

Mike: Seller. The seller bears the risk. Because even if it's a good property, and even if, say, you transfer a title, so you don't have to deal with some of the nonsense that goes on when you're doing a land contract, like someone moving a rusted-out RV onto the property and having code enforcement issues. If that property is destroyed in some way, which happens, I guess not a lot, but it happens. It's happened to me. And you go through the court and get the property back, you're stuck with whatever's gone on.

And also, it's not guaranteed, especially in today's market, it that you'll be able to resell it for what you sold it for before. So you might have paid more for it than you can sell it for, possibly. I'm not saying it's all bad. I still think it's great, but kind of have your eyes open that it's not perfect.

Seth: You know, the whole discussion about pride and ego, do you think that is ever a good thing? Like, does it ever serve your business in a good way to have that? Or is it just kind of all downside?

Mike: Any ounce of that is just pure negative. There's ego that obviously serves people. And with ego comes an air of confidence. And an air of confidence makes deals happen and makes sales happen. Nobody wants to buy something or do business with someone who shows a lack of confidence. So there's got to be a way to separate and have confidence because you're competent and do away with the ego part, which is just false.

Seth: I think in the world we live in, ego can bring about good results on paper in terms of like getting you the deal or making the money or doing the thing. But that doesn't necessarily mean that that's what's good eternally or long term. There are things that I can do that I get what I want, but it's not good for me. You know, there's all kinds of things that I want. They're awful. So it's probably good just to acknowledge that like ego can serve you in an earthly way, but that doesn't mean that's ultimately what you want long term.

Mike: Absolutely. A hundred percent.

Seth: So right now, to the best of my knowledge, you're kind of scraping by with side hustles, which is a massive contrast to your previous life. If you look at this process like a refining fire that kind of burns away impurities, flaws, and imperfections. What do you think this has burned away? And what are some of the good parts from this that have risen to the top?

Mike: It's burned away anything in my business dealings, whether it was or wasn't, would even seem slightly different. Shady. It has burned away anything that didn't prioritize a win-win attitude in business. I mean, even my interest rate I charged was 16% and people never questioned it. So I thought that was all great. But really, is that what I should have been charging for interest? No, that wasn't right.

Seth: What do you think is the right amount of interest to charge?

Mike: Well, that's a good question. I don't know. I guess it depends on the situation, but not 16%. I can say that. Maybe, I don't know, 8% maybe? I don't know. I don't even know anymore. I haven't really pondered that. It was usurious even though it was legal. In Florida, 18% is the cap. And I thought I was a good guy because it was just 16%. And I wasn't a good guy for charging 16%.

Seth: That's always the tricky thing to me, because like, where is the line? Like, when does it become wrong? Or like, is it wrong for you, but not for me? You look at a bank, like they're never going to really ask themselves these questions. Like, they'll stop short of what the law tells them they can't do. Like, they're in it for the money.

Mike: Yeah, well, Chase will charge me 30% with a smile on a credit card. You know, it's ridiculous.

Seth: And like, is the onus on the consumer? Like, is it up to them to decide this isn't right for me? I shouldn't do it. Or is it your fault? Whose moral responsibility is it to make those decisions and figure that out?

Mike: It depends. I think that's all part of the target buyer too. My target buyer was in a weakened financial position. My target buyer had no other options if they wanted to own land flat out. At the time, it never occurred to me that I was taking advantage of people, I didn't see myself as that guy. I didn't go out with the intention of doing that. But now with the soul searching that I've done over the past couple of years, that's what the end result was.

Seth: Well, even when you look at the acquisition side, this is what we do as land flippers for the most part, is we run a machine that makes discounted offers to people, knowing that the offer is less than their property's worth. And it's not that we're hiding that fact from people, like we're being upfront about this is what this is. You don't have to sell it to me, but if you want it to happen fast and for cash, this is your option that I can give you.

But some people will look at that and be like, that's immoral for a land flipper to make a low offer. Whereas we would look at that and be like, I'm just making an offer. You don't have to say yes to it. It's up to you to decide for yourself. I don't know how well you segment the people that you bought from, but I certainly never went through to understand the financial situation of the seller. Like I just made them an offer and let them decide. I didn't try to like make the moral judgment based on, well, okay, you know, you have this much on your balance sheet, so I'm gonna make a higher offer because of that. It's like, this is what makes sense for me. But I wonder sometimes about like the ethics and morals behind that. Do you think that's ever questionable what we do or?

Mike: I think on the buy side, it's a little bit different. And I'll give you an example. There was a time I ended up with an extra vehicle. I had a Ford F-150 truck in great condition, and just a few years old. I didn't need it anymore. I had other vehicles, and I was very busy. And I just wanted to get rid of it.

Now, I could have listed it, on the internet. And I could have had people come in and look, taking up my time, test driving it and going, bickering back and forth about price and just have to deal with the phone calls and the emails and all that. But I just didn't want to. So I brought it to the dealer. They made me an offer. I knew the offer was a lot lower than I could have gotten if I took time to sell it on the retail market, but it was so convenient and it freed up my time to do other things that I just took it.

So the way we do things is also a convenience. It's not having to deal with realtors and back and forth, everything that goes along with that or waiting forever to get it sold. You can see some decent properties. You go on Zillow, you see they're on the market for 500 days or something. Well, that's not really doing very much good to those people either.

Seth: Do you think your pride and ego will ever come back? I know things are kind of in the dumps right now, but say you figure out the new version of the land business and you kill it for five years straight, making millions. Do you think you're immune from this coming back and becoming a problem again?

Mike: Hopefully, if every morning and every night I pray that it doesn't, it won't. That's about it. That's all I can do.

Seth: Yeah, I ask this because I've had very similar stuff in my life. Many times I can point to where pride came before the fall. It was terrible, just awful. And usually it solved my pride problem for a good long time, but it did not make me immune. Like it could just as well come back or maybe pride comes back in a completely different unrelated area in life.

I like what you're saying about as long as you pray it won't come back. It probably won't because you're being conscious of it. But then there comes the moment when you stop praying for that. Because like it's not even in your mind anymore. Like that's how insidious it is. Like it just takes over when you don't even know.

Mike: Well, I'm going to give it a try. If it does happen, hopefully someone will call me on it. And there's one other thing that's slightly unrelated. And maybe it's related in a way. My first interview with you at the very end, you asked for some advice. And I said, live below your means. And I gave examples how I see all these boats and I really want a big boat and I'm not going to do it. You know, I had a larger house in the past. I'm going to stay in a more modest home.

And over time, because of ego, that exact advice that I gave, I no longer followed. Bought the boat. The public beach here was suddenly beneath me. So I had to join a place called the Longbow Key Club, which was a private beach. Where you sit in your little cabana, they bring your food and drinks to you right on the beach. And the Ritz-Carlton here also has a private beach called, yeah, join that one. And spent money, like spoiled my two kids rotten. Just spoiled them, give them whatever they wanted, not earned, just blew money unnecessarily.

That when the business collapsed and the divorce happened, and I lost everything. Part of it was because I had my boys, my teenage boys, half time. I wanted them to have the same quality of life that they were having. And I didn't want disparity between mom's house and my house. So I spent, I kept up that same lifestyle. I mean, I got rid of the boat, got rid of the memberships, but still way higher living expenses than was coming in.

And that's what destroyed me. That's what brought me from zero to a couple hundred thousand dollars below zero. And it's going to be a long road back from that. And so I just want to reiterate that no matter how good your business is doing, nothing lasts forever. Buddhists always talk about impermanence. You never know what's going to happen. And so I implore everyone, live below your means. You don't need to be in a Lambo unless you've got so much money that a Lambo is just a speck. Just be modest.

Seth: Is there anything that you wish you would have done with the money you had made back when you made it? Like maybe invest in something more long-term or unrelated to the land business?

Mike: Yeah, well, hit it. That was a joke. Yes, absolutely. I look at that and now it's all wasted because I don't have any of that anymore. So that was all money just flushed down the toilet. Because I never thought I would be in this situation. I would have invested it safely and wisely.

Seth: If you were to rewind the clock five years back and put that money into the perfect asset? Like, what would you do? Just put it in the stock market or like buy a building or know what you know now? What do you think you should have done?

Mike: Up until a few days ago, I wish I had kept all the gold and silver that I had sold. That would have been nice.

Seth: You still have any of that sitting around?

Mike: No, unfortunately. I sold ridiculous loads of silver at 30 bucks and thought I was doing great. Yeah. So that just...

Seth: And what's it at now?

Mike: I think it went up to, what, 114, but a couple days ago it crashed back down. I don't know what it's at now. I get so disgusted with it, all 75 maybe, but it was well over 100.

But I would have diversified theoretically into some very safe things and then some with a little bit more risk and maybe some rental properties or something. Although rents are slowly ticking downward where I am in Florida. So anything would be better than just blowing it.

Seth: Do you have any people in your life who can challenge you and call out your pride if they see it? Like you have an accountability partner? Have you ever thought about that?

Mike: Yeah, I'll tell you a personal thing. Wasn't planning on sharing it, but it's okay to air it. I'm a recovering alcoholic. I've been sober coming up on 29 years.

Seth: Congrats. That's awesome.

Mike: You know, there's a community around that and where I share my innermost thoughts with. There's people in that community that would say, hey, jerk, look what you're doing. You know, there's people who call me out there and some other people close to me would.

Seth: That's a tough thing, because like, even if you've got an accountability partner, you can still hide it from them, too. You know, I think pride is something that kind of bleeds through a little bit. Like it just kind of shows in your behavior and things you do, but it's important to invite that kind of thing into your life at some point because like if nobody can call you on anything you're just a danger to yourself you know there's things that other people can see in you that you'll never see and you'll just choose blindness to so yeah i think everybody should have that on some level. Yeah.

Seth: So if you had to design the most dangerous land business model possible, one that looks amazing on paper but implodes under stress, what would that include? Is it basically the land business you used to run? Or do you think it could have been even worse than that?

Mike: I can't imagine it getting worse than that, to tell you the truth.

Seth: Yeah, marketing to people who have no business investing in land is definitely dangerous. And when you say no business investing, is that just because of their financial situation?

Mike: And how do you even know that? Like, how do you know their financial situation if you're not pulling any reports or anything like that?

Seth: Well, I think a $99 down payment. It attracts a certain kind of person type thing?

Mike: It does. Low down payment, low monthly payment. That's who it's attracting. Somebody who's savvy, knows what they're doing, wants to make a smart investment, wants to buy a place that they can build on or retire to or whatever. They're not the ones who are buying the $99, $100 a month or whatever it is, squares in the desert or the swamp or wherever they are.

Seth: Yeah, it makes me think like these existential questions like, is it foolish or ethically wrong to run a business that sells people impulse purchases? Like, for example, my first job out of college, I worked for Pepsi. Pepsi's entire business is selling impulse purchases and things that are generally not good for you, but it is a multi-billion dollar business, probably even higher than that. So like tons of money to be made.

I don't know many people that would look at Pepsi and say, that's an immoral business. I mean maybe not like the most essential business out there but when i look at like selling cheap land to people who probably shouldn't be buying it but it's like hey if you want to spend the money okay go for it is it a similar thing in any way?

Mike: It is because it absolutely was an impulse purchase like i said a lot of them it would be two three o'clock in the morning they're buying land so they're either drunk or have insomnia or whatever they're doing and also the people that i they did from time to time communicate, like maybe they'd send me one of those, is this available Facebook message? And I'd send them to the website. And then a minute, two minutes later, they've paid, they filled out in their information, they've scrolled through a six-page land contract as if they're scrolling through the terms and conditions of an Apple update. They electronically sign and it's done. They didn't even read the contract. It's obvious they didn't read the contract because nobody would be able to read that fast. So it was an impulse. It was a poorly thought out impulse.

Seth: When you look at your current situation, what do you think is harder right now? Is it rebuilding capital or rebuilding confidence?

Mike: My confidence is coming back. I definitely, even a few months ago, I would have for sure said confidence because it was still kind of at a base level. It's coming back as I start researching all the latest and greatest ways to do land. And capital, you don't have to have capital to get started in this business. We all know that. So, rebuilding capital can happen without having a lot of capital.

So, I guess the confidence thing would be the more difficult. If I get into wholesaling or find a good deal and find a funder, then I'm not putting a bunch of capital. I'm just paying for the tools. And there's some great tool. I've been reading about your Stride and I've been looking at Land Portal and all this stuff that didn't exist. Yeah, it is pretty great.

It's exciting again to me because I'm seeing all these new things. And just a fun little side note, I use Grok all the time. That's my favorite AI. And when I'm doing some research on land and stuff, guess who keeps getting reference? REtipster. Go consider joining REtipster. And I'll see all the little citations of REtipster. REtipster. Grok knows Seth.

Seth: Sounds like Grok is doing it right. Grok is on your side, Seth. That's great to know. Yeah.

When you think about restarting this, what fundamentals do you think you will just totally think differently about, other than obviously the quality of the property? That's a given. But like, will you go about the acquisition piece in a different way?

Mike: I think I'm probably going to give texting another try. I know some improvements have been done in the programs for that as well. I think I'm going to try it that way again, because again, now I'm looking at it differently. I used to think it was just not necessary to talk to people. And that's what turned me off about texting, because I had to call them and talk to them. And what a spoiled little brat I was. Because I can talk to people. And when I have talked to people, it's always gone well.

When I sold better properties, it was requiring me talking to people. And if I talked to somebody, it was a good chance they were going to buy or they were going to sell. Because I could have a good rapport with them. Now that my ego is out of the way and I'm not above anything, being on the phone a considerable amount of time. I'm going to try that avenue first and then maybe go back to letters.

Seth: Well, it's kind of a big realization, I think. It's one thing to say, yeah, my business fell apart, doesn't work. I'm going to restart again. But it's another thing to actually put your finger on the thing you're going to do different. And I think what you're saying there in terms of just being willing to talk to people, not running from it, but leaning into that, if that was all you did, that seems like a huge 80-20 needle mover. Because when you're not fighting that anymore, when you just accept it, this is just the reality of it, and you know it's going to go better, it's like, man, that'll probably make a huge difference, just that alone.

Mike: Yeah, absolutely.

Seth: Mike, again, just want to thank you for doing this. If somebody is listening right now and they are killing it in land and they feel untouchable, what is one sentence that you would want ringing in their ear after they hear this episode.

Mike: Nothing is certain in this life but change. Whatever you're doing, it's going to change. The market's going to change. The way you're doing deals is going to change. The technology you're using is going to change. Change is inevitable. You've got to be willing to change, and you've got to be willing to be teachable and learn new things.

Seth: Is change something that you have been good at historically in your life? Or are you one that kind of tries to resist it? Obviously, in the previous situation, there was a reason to resist it because things seemed to be working well. Also, why change? But like, aside from that kind of thing, like you change pretty easily or?

Mike: Yeah, except for that, I was not bad with change.

Seth: Awesome. Mike, thanks again. It's awesome to talk to you again. Awesome to have you open the kimono and be willing to share all this super vulnerable stuff that most people would never talk about. If people want to reach out to you, is there a way they can or should do this?

Mike: Yeah. There's a couple of ways. I'm on Facebook. I'm in the REtipster group. I'm in the REtipster on your website. And also, I just have a placeholder website that has nothing but a contact form for right now. They can just go to floridaholesaleland.com and they can reach out that way. And at the time of this recording, it's not really a website yet, but just the contact form and anyone who reaches out through that form, I'll get right back to them and say hi.

Seth: And if anyone wants to check out the show notes for this episode, it's retipster.com/259. I'll have links to everything we just talked about there. Mike, thanks again. And all the listeners out there, we will talk to you next time.