How many people aren't like in business anymore at all went from making like seven figures down to losing money very quick. There is no plan B with land. You can't rent it. You can't do anything with it other than sell it. If you're not buying the cream of the crop, or if you don't think you're getting an excellent property that you would not want to own yourself, be very careful trying to buy it for somebody else. So if you don't start at the top of the funnel with volume, then none of the rest works. The ones that are going to thrive in the future are the ones that can adapt to the new market conditions the fastest. It's different voices, but all one community. It can be lonely out there and you're trying to figure out what's my next step. What am I going to do? Be part of community. You are not alone. Hey, everybody. How's it going? This is Seth Williams. You're listening to the REtipster podcast. Today's episode is a little bit different. Usually the show is about tactics and deal structures and due diligence and all the nuts and bolts of building a real estate investing business. But today we're talking about something a bit bigger. It's the REtipster podcast network.

So for those of you who don't know, REtipster is more than just a single podcast now. I started the REtipster podcast way back in 2018, but back in March of 2025, Neil Clements started the first additional podcast called The Real Deal with Neil Clements. And then just recently in April of 2026, Dave Dennison came on board with the Leadership in Land podcast. We're going to talk about how this came together and why three very different people decided to build something together and what we think this community actually needs right now. So over the past few years, I've gotten to know both Dave and Neil really well. And what started as conversations and collaborations and events and podcast appearances slowly evolved into something more intentional. With each of us pursuing our own respective podcasts under the REtipster brand and network. And at the same time, the land business has gone through a lot of real changes lately. It's been a lot of talk about what's hard right now and what's broken and what's stopped working. So today, we also want to talk about the opposite of that. So what is working right now and what are we changing in our businesses and what are we seeing in the market and what opportunities are still very real if people want to adapt. So this is going to be part origin story, part business conversation, part honest market discussion. And hopefully it gives you a clearer picture of where this industry is headed and why collaboration matters more than ever. So Dave and Neil, welcome back. How are you both doing? Awesome. Happy to be here. Always a privilege, gentlemen.

Thank you, guys. It's like a Wyoming reunion, you know, little mini reunion for last year. Yeah, yeah, totally. So tell me, did either of you guys ever expect to be part of something like a podcast network or a media brand in land investing? Was that on the radar years ago? I'll tell you, it sure wasn't for me.

It definitely was not. I was recording a few videos, had my own personal YouTube channel kind of going, but I never expected doing anything like this. And Seth, it really kind of evolved out of our market update calls and into something bigger, having the real deal with Neil podcast. So I'm sure we'll get a little bit more about that later. But.

In short, no, I definitely never expected it, but super privileged and blessed to be here. Yeah, totally. Fully agree with that. And I feel honored to be part of this journey with you, Seth. I mean, I think not to lay it on too thick, but I think everyone listening to this podcast knows how genuine and kind of a person that you are and just open and transparent, which is something that I think is needed more of in the land business. And I've been blessed in doing a bunch of different podcasts over the years. And I never had any intention of joining someone's network. And like you said, it just kind of organically came about that like, oh, well, let's let's try and do this and see what happens kind of a thing. Yeah. And it's interesting when you do this long enough, people kind of just come out of the woodwork, people who are like really good at this in their own right and willing to contribute and join forces like this. And, you know, I'll say this was never on my radar either. Like I never really set out to start a network. I had heard about the concept back in January of 2025 when I was at the PodFest conference and I talked to a couple of the people who had done this. I was like, huh, interesting. I actually know a few people who would probably be really good at this. And here we are. It's working out. So pretty cool.

Seth, I was just going to say, like, I mean, what what made you originally want to put like a network like this together? I know you went to the event that you went to, but I just remember you went to that event and you sent me a microphone and you said, hey, man, kind of like, hey, we're doing this. So I was like, cool, man, we're doing it. Let's go. But what was your evolution, I guess, to get to this point? How did you even get started? I don't think a lot of people know.

Your evolution. I think they see where you are now. They see REtipster, they see the success, but they don't know the origin. And so like, how did, how did you get to this point even of having this? Yeah. So part of the reason it was never really on my radar is because I'm not super good at like utilizing other people or like managing people or building teams or motivating people or anything like that. I'm pretty good at like putting my head down and doing what I do best and just staying busy with that. And I kind of just missed the forest from the trees sometimes. And Neil, you and I have been talking for many months about like, what are different ways we could work together? We tried this, we tried that, we threw all kinds of ideas around. Nothing really seemed to stick. There was always some like weird obstacle on the way. But when I heard about this podcast network idea where you can utilize other people who have something to say and the things they have to say are things that I can't really say because I don't really know the stuff that you know, Neil or Dave. You guys have your own little areas of expertise and even beyond that, just your own network of people that you know. It's like, man, what a great way to like leverage other really smart people to reach even further and help even more people without me having to do all the work.

And I think part of the barrier to that is actually knowing the right people and then those people actually being happy to do the, you know, put in the effort that it takes to make this happen. And both of you checked all the boxes and you were willing to do it and happy to do it. So it's kind of just worked out in a mysterious way. I think too, just if people don't know the podcasting thing, the best part about it is the connections you make with other people. It's not for the money.

We're all here because we genuinely love to help other folks, not because we have dollar signs behind our eyes of how can we extract every single penny out of people? That's not the heart of REtipster or any of us individually. And I think that alignment is probably really important with you, Seth. Just can you maybe talk a little bit about kind of what you see out there, you know, in the industry in general and how you want to be different, you know, in doing what you do? To be honest, I actually don't spend a ton of time like analyzing what other podcasts in our niche are doing. I mean, maybe a couple just because like I'm friends with them and I just happen to see what they're doing. But I don't necessarily like see behind the scenes of how their podcast works and if and how they monetize it and all that. But I know for the REtipster podcast anyway, the only reason I started it years ago was because I realized that some people will only ever listen to a podcast. Like they're not going to read a blog. They're not going to watch YouTube. If you can't meet them on their drive to work or on their jog in the morning, like they're just never going to hear from you.

And to be honest, like podcasting for the first few years of doing it, like I kind of struggled with it. It was not my natural format where I just found the most comfort and could just, even to this day, for me to just sit down and do a solo episode and wing it, like I cannot do that. I have to like really think through every single thing I'm trying to say and make a point. And I'm not one who rambles on for the most part, unless I get really excited about something. So it's kind of been hard, like doing podcasting is something that for quite a while I didn't even really look forward to doing it until I got in this regular habit of doing it. But through doing it, I started to realize like the key thing here is that I care about what we're talking about, that like I want to talk to this person because if I want to talk to them, the right questions are going to come out. I really want to get it. Like I want to understand everything behind what you're saying. And it's kind of fun because sometimes I realize the person that I'm interviewing, like they don't even really understand why they do what they do. And through asking the right questions, like we can both figure it out together. So it's just a ton of fun to be able to do that. And a lot of the comments that I see over the years are like, man, Seth, like you asked the exact question that I had in my head. And first of all, I'm like, awesome. It's really cool. But really.

I'm just asking what I want to know. And I've lived long enough to know that if I have a question about something or if I don't get what they just said, there's probably a bunch of other people who also don't get it. So like ask the question, dig as deep as you can while you have them right there on the line. So it's really turned into like one of my favorite things that I do because kind of realize I have a knack for it, I think. And it's really fun to get to know people and understand how their business works. And it's stuff I would never be able to do if I didn't have a podcast to do it. What about you guys? Why do you do this? I personally, I mean, my podcast is a little different. It's a stretch maybe even to call it a podcast, as some have told me.

Just because it's individual videos of me talking. Now, we have had some recent guests on there that you would actually consider a podcast guest and we'll be doing more of that in the future. But I don't know. First off, I enjoy it. Like Dave said, it's definitely not for the money. There's not a lot of money in niche land investing podcasting.

You know, it's more to build relationships with people. It's to build credibility. And it's also just to give, I guess, people the head start that I didn't necessarily have. And to try to give tactical advice for people in really short form. I feel like Seth was doing a lot of really long form, 60 minutes, 90 minute plus podcast episodes. I felt like that's what a lot of the channel was. And so I wanted to give people who came to REtipster the chance to have digestible 5, 10, 15 minute videos, very tactical, very quick.

And be able to kind of fill that gap of Seth was killing it and doing the long form podcasting. And I wanted to add some short form videos content there. So my life motto, or at least one of them is half the words double the meaning. And so that's kind of what the real deal with Neil does is tries to get punchy value and really short videos. So that's why I do it. What you did? Well, I think what Neil's doing is absolutely great and bringing A lot of times what Neil does is he brings attention to some stuff that we don't focus on as much in the other podcasts. Like you've talked about mobile homes and bringing more of the stick up the building and what does that look like and your own journey to it, which is awesome. For me, really what fueled me is just the love and the passion for the game.

And I've done a podcast for doctors on financial freedom. I've done a retail sell side podcast for land called Land Stories. And I had kind of put both of those off to the side as we were scaling the land business. And I kind of missed it, to be honest. And I felt like I had done the Freedom Formula for Physicians, which you were a guest on a couple of times for about 10 years. And I felt like I just kind of ran the course with that in terms of what I wanted to say into the world and physicians and finances. And as I started putting on the LandOn Conference and all these different events, there's so many great stories and amazing people that I've met along the way.

I was also inspired to a degree on like what Pete Reese did with his channel, which, hey, let me be open and vulnerable. Pat Flynn, one of the great podcasters out there used to have his monthly reports of, hey, here's what's happening in my business for you to really see transparent.

And I wanted to bring that same spirit to the land game and really be like, hey, here's here's my business fully transparently. Here's what's going on and specific deals and cash flow and a lot of this stuff, that doesn't get talked about on other podcasts. There's plenty of people that boast about numbers, but you don't really know the full story. So trying to bring that transparency as well as highlighting all these amazing, wonderful people that I have the chance of doing life with and going on events with and finding out kind of what's what's their secret sauce. How are they leading their team? Because I feel that was kind of another hole is is I'm building this business. I've never done this before. What the heck am I doing? And trying to share lessons along my journey. I don't have it all figured out, but along with other people's journey and just try and take bits and pieces for how do you lead a team? What does that look like? And stuff like that. So that's that's kind of the origin story. Neil had mentioned something kind of similar to the Dave Ramsey model, where for many years it was Dave Ramsey, like he was the guy. But now there's different personalities on that show and the Dave Ramsey network. Is that what they call it? I'm not sure what they call it now. But, you know, there's it's not just Dave Ramsey.

I think he probably sees the writing on the wall that like he's not going to live forever. Like he wants this business to outlive himself. And it's a great idea to bring other really smart people into the mix and kind of build on their expertise, too. And it's really interesting. He actually shifted his domain name from DaveRamsey.com to Ramsey Solutions. And so when you look at it that way, you know, Seth, you were already, I guess, ahead of the game.

You know, you weren't SethWilliams.com, you were already tipster already. And in the way that I see it is exactly like you said, is it's different voices, but all one community. And really, at the end of the day, like none of us really plan to be here, but we just kept on doing our own things for long enough that I guess each other saw value in each other, if that makes sense. Or Seth saw value in you and me, Dave, and decided, hey, you know what? They're doing really cool things. I'm doing something really cool, too. And how can we bring the most value to the community possible? And I think that's what it's all about for all of us. Yeah, I think something, some people may wonder is like, why do we do this? Like, why do we share so much information? Like, why do we spend all the hours that it takes to create something like this just to, like, give it away? I think we probably all have our own reasons for it. But what are some of your reasons, Neil and Dave? Like, are there certain benefits that you expected to see out of this or any benefits that you didn't expect that have come about from doing this kind of thing? Like, what's your motivation here? I would say on my end, certainly it's a chance for me to engage with the community by far. And one of the things I've just loved about the land business, it's really brought to me a lot of good quality friendships in my life. I'm more introverted and I find a lot of people boring, but the land people are totally my people. And it means a lot to connect with folks I actually relate to rather than people that I'm not that interested in. So I feel very lucky and blessed with the community. And part of that for me.

As I mentioned, was the LandOn Conference. So at the end of the day, I'm looking to serve, but I hope that people enjoy coming to some of the events. We have kind of the larger event with the landing conference, then doing some smaller events. So earlier, I literally just got back from Yosemite where we had a trip of six of us land investors, guys that were just talking life, talking struggles, and talking joys and learning from one another and enjoying one another's presence. And to me, those experiences ultimately are what it's all about. And the podcast is a vehicle with which to guide people through whether they can come on those trips or not of, hey, here's my journey. I hope this helps you along the way I'm learning from other people. So that's kind of my heart into it.

I would say similarly, the community and the reputation. I mean, I look at basically what you would say, who is, I don't remember if it's Kylie or Kendall Jenner. It's one of the two. But you remember with her gaining all the reputation, all the trust, she basically launches a lipstick brand and escalates it. She's a billionaire or something like that. The Rock did the same thing. Several other examples of big media outlets that, were essentially able to build trust, build recognition, and then be able to, on the back end, find products that people need, that people want, and to be able to fulfill that demand. And so, and I think that's exactly what you were kind of saying, Dave, with the LandOn Conference. You know, for me right now, that's probably the REtipster and Inner Circle, the events that we're doing there. And then also funding and a few different things that Seth and I have going together in that regard. So, you know, those are the two, I guess, monetization pieces.

Because I feel like I'm good at speaking, I'm good at communicating, and a lot of people have, I guess, said that I have a gift for it and I enjoy doing it. And so I was trying to figure out a way to, I guess, show show reputability, give value to people while also at the same time providing opportunities to work with people. I mean, I guess that's the best way to say it. Well, I want to say, too, I think something that I believe all of us would agree on. I think the idea of having impact. You know, I'm not somebody that is great at...

Speaking in front of a whole bunch of group of people, but in a one-on-one conversation, I enjoy it so much. It's much easier for me to manage that kind of conversation. And the hope being that people get something from this, whether it's a year from now, two years from now, three years from now, five years from now, that we can impact thousands of land investors, help them achieve their dreams, help them to gain friendships and community. And I think that's very much the heart of what all of us are about. What do you think, Seth? Yeah, I would agree. I'm wondering, do you think you guys ever worry about competition or anything? Like, for example, by sharing the things that you know, maybe any specifics about your strategy or the model that you follow that might be unique. If you put that out there, like, what if other people start trying to copy you and doing the same thing that you've done? Or in any way, like, how do you draw the line between collaboration and competition in this business? Like, do you try to look at things with the abundance mindset or the scarcity mindset? I mean, I actually think there is a time and a place for both. I think I hear some people talk about the abundance mindset, like that's all there is. And that's always what you should have.

I'm not that convinced about that. But what do you guys think? Yeah, going back to what Dave said previously about impact, I would say that if somebody was able to change their life like I did through land investing, just by watching our videos or our network, then everything we're doing here is completely worth it. And that's what I would say about impact because land investing completely changed my life, completely flipped the script upside down. And if we can do that for anybody, that makes it all worth it.

And so in that same theme or in that same regard, I mean, the videos that I make and the people that I meet with, like I'm not holding anything back. I mean, if I really, you know, if I wanted to like hold this information back, I guess I could put up behind a course wall, or I guess I could, you know, not make the videos, but.

I think that the reason that people engage with The Real Deal with Neal, in addition to Leadership Plan and REtipster, all of the above, is because we all are genuine. We all are transparent. We all are truthful. And everybody can see that we play all out and we don't hold information back. And to me, first off, less than 1 out of 100 is probably going to do what we're talking about anyways. That's just the reality of it. So no, I'm not worried about it. That one out of a hundred is probably a peer that's kind of equal with all of us on this call. And we've already told them several times about this model behind the scenes anyway. So why wouldn't we just give it to everybody else? And then third, probably none of us should have gotten into this industry, real estate investing or land investing if we were afraid of people copycatting us. Because I don't know, it's not that hard. If you do marketing, you do acquisitions, you do dispositions, you have funding and you can like do it all over again and build systems and staff. Like this business is not that hard. And so there's not really that much that's truly a secret or that you like would share that would revolutionize somebody that they wouldn't already be able to find elsewhere. So to answer your question, no, I'm comfortable sharing pretty much anything for those reasons.

What are you not comfortable sharing? Digs the question. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, is there? I get hesitant when we talk big numbers about sharing specific deals.

Just because only for the fact of I don't want to brag. And I think that y'all would probably feel the same way. I mean, there's some deals that we've made, you know, six high sixes, low seven figures on. And so like to share those kind of deals and to kind of go in the nuts and bolts of those, like I'm happy to do, but it just, it makes me nervous that people are going to see this bragging and that's not the heart behind it.

So that's my only hesitancy. Anyways, what do you have to, or Seth, go ahead. I think for me, it's probably a combination of the two in a sense where like we have a free course on, on leadership stuff. And I feel anybody and everybody can benefit from the things we have there. And there's different places, people, I often get asked, Hey, where would you put stuff? Oh, here's the course link to different places you can apply to find people there. And, and obviously I share my numbers. I talk about what we're doing. We talk about specific deals and specific counties. And for me, part of it is I feel like what I'm doing now may not be what I'm doing tomorrow. Plus, there's often a time lag in between when when we're sharing stuff. There are certain people in this industry who talk about and we joke about all the time, the secret county list and stuff like that, which they try and hold something like that back. At the same token, nowadays, which we've talked about in length, hey, it is more competitive than it used to be.

They're definitely, I felt that. I think back when things were easier, I felt even more free in sharing. But I do, frankly, find myself holding back some. On here is the very, very, very specific thing of, oh, here's a letter that we used or here's something that I feel gives us maybe a little bit of a leg up. And there's other things. Hey, it's totally free. So I feel more of that now than I did in the past, just fully transparently. And it is a little bit of a struggle, like in terms of should I share this? Should I not share this? You know, kind of a thing. But at the same time being real and authentic and transparent about what's happening in the business. And sometimes, you know, frankly, I think there are people far ahead of Neil or myself or Seth in terms of knowledge or specialization. And in some ways you're giving the competition a leg up. So I do think about that from time to time, but I usually say, ah, screw it. I'm just going to put it out there and try and help the world.

But definitely those are thoughts battling in my mind, at least, you know, here's what to share and not to share kind of thing. I'm curious, Neil, if somebody ever were to like steal a deal out from under you, like a deal where you were going to make a $500,000 profit, would you have any regret over sharing stuff? Because, hey, that wouldn't have happened if I hadn't shared it. I realize this probably has not happened to you. So it's probably hard to really imagine that happening. But.

What if that was going to happen? Would that change anything about what you would hold back? It would be incredibly difficult to attribute that to back to the real deal or to REtipster or anything that I've said. I mean, I liken it. So before I even started doing this podcast, I would teach at my local market center. I'm also a real estate agent. And so you were saying, Dave, you taught doctors how to invest their money. I was a real estate agent and I taught real estate agents how to invest in real estate. And that's how I built my home flipping business before I got into land flipping and it was highly successful. And my partner at the time had a similar concern. He was saying, Neil, you're teaching all these people who are realtors, who are bringing us deals. You're teaching them how to do exactly what you're doing and you're teaching them how to cut us out. And that did actually happen. There were deals that I know of for a fact that would have been ours that other people got. But the reality is that if you come from an abundance mindset, if people focus on real estate investing, you teach realtors how to bring you deals, you go from receiving a lead a day to two to three leads a day.

That instantly makes up for the one or two properties or three properties you're going to lose a year because somebody all of a sudden became their own investor. In addition to that, like Dave said, this business is ever evolving. And eventually, I will probably not do deals anymore. And I'll probably be a lender or funder full time. Maybe not anytime soon, but 5, 10, 20 years down the line, I will let my capital do the talking and not necessarily my deal flow. And so if I'm looking at it from that lens, wouldn't I want to make everybody I know have the same knowledge that I have and be as great of an operator that I am so that I can eventually lend them money? So I think when you play the long game and you look at your inevitable future.

I think that all the stars align to making people the best they can be without holding back. Yeah, I think that ability and the willingness to sort of have like a multi-pronged approach where it's like, I'm not just a land flipper. Like I can come at this from like 10 different ways and benefit from this deal. I think that's kind of what makes it okay in a lot of ways, because like you're no longer a one trick pony. There's so many different ways you can pivot to make something work. I can't think of a time, I don't think, where I've been like burned specifically by a person because of a thing that I said. But I definitely have had times where like I've gotten a, you know, offer in the mail using my template that somebody sent to me, not knowing who they sent it to. And it's just like, oh, man, what did I do with this?

So like sometimes I have that, but I do sort of struggle with this abundance mentality thing that people like to talk about. And some people might think that's crazy that I struggle with that because of how much stuff I've put out there over the years. But like, I think the reason I struggle with it is not because I don't believe in it. But a lot of times when I hear somebody preaching about the abundance mentality, what's going on there is they have a financial incentive for me to think that there is abundance when there's not. Or maybe that there is a infinite supply of something when it's like, it may be a big supply, but it's not infinite. And there will come a time at which it starts to get impacted in a negative way by competition. And I feel like the land business is a perfect example of that because for a long time, it was abundant. Like there was just stuff everywhere. Like you could send mail and a person had never gotten a letter before, but that's not true anymore. And it kind of makes me rethink this whole abundance mentality thing or maybe think like it is often the correct mentality, but not always. There are exceptions. And I think that's what I'm struggling with is like, what are those exceptions? Like, where are the parts where like, I shouldn't tell the world that this is abundant when it's not, or it's not an infinite supply of something. You know what I mean? Well, I do think that you're both, Dave, you and Seth have both pointed to this. Don't give away something that you know will kill your business. And I would completely agree with that 1000%. That's not like withholding abundance. That's just using common sense.

And so like, Like, yeah, Dave, if the mailers are your secret sauce, yeah, don't I mean, don't give everybody your templates. Same thing. If if this is your secret sauce to what makes the tipster brand work or whatever you would say, like, yeah, or stride or, you know, whatever else you're involved in.

Yeah, don't don't give that away. But there's a way to still give 100 percent effort and 100 percent knowledge without actually providing somebody your templates. Is my opinion. Yeah. And I think things like templates, I mean, really, if you're a good creative person, like those things are a dime a dozen. Like you can always make another template and come up with some new version that you've never shown anybody before. And so I've never really had a hard time giving that away. It's not like, oh, this is the one thing that will ever work. But yeah, I don't really have an answer. Just thinking out loud. Curious what you guys think about. Well, I think the size of a lot of things have gotten smaller. Like, for example, I participate in a lot of tax lien and tax deed auctions. The supply is limited in those cases, and it does create competition by having other people involved in it, right? So I don't talk about that side of it because it is a limited supply. I don't want to create competition for myself on where I am doing that and stuff like that. So that'd be an example of something that I've held back. People that know me probably know exactly where I do it because it's not, you know, some absolute secret. But.

On the other hand, like Neil said, hey, there are certain things that, and the vast majority of things, frankly, that we can share and we will share. And I think we can have an abundance mindset on. So I think it is a mixture of the two at the end of the day. But yeah, I guess that's all I got on that subject. So there's been a lot of conversation lately about what's not working in land. So let's flip this around. What is working right now for both of you guys? I'll go first, I guess. So in terms of what is working. So as a matter of fact, this week is probably, cross the fingers, going to be the biggest week we've ever had in our land business. We're expecting something like $800,000 of revenue coming into our land business in this one week.

Obviously, there's stuff I've shared across the way that hey this isn't always rainbows and sunshine but um, I think part of part of the goal for many of us, you know, is pivoting and figuring out what's working and not working and then doubling down on what is. So for us, I was inspired by Neil and in our mastermind that we did together in Wyoming because our mailers were having a harder and harder time yielding. So we pivoted to doing on market splits and subdivides and messy title. So it's been a process, but now we're just starting to reap the rewards of that time spent. We had a number of subdivides that came in from old mailers. So, you know, really trying to focus on how do we do that? As a matter of fact.

Two out of the three properties are closing like tomorrow. And those went under contract, like within a week of when we put it on market. And so really targeting certain areas. And hey, now that we had success in that market, now let's go back and mail it again to try and get more of the same result. Maybe we will be successful. Maybe we won't. I don't know. And same thing with the on-market subdivide we had in Wisconsin, which for us was the biggest deal we had ever bought. Buy for $5.50, sell for $9.50 to $1 million, which for us was the biggest amount of money we ever did. And we used owner financing for half of that. So we were able, rather than going to a bank, getting the owner to put up the capital.

And so we're selling out two out of the four lots again this week. From that subdivide we found on market, on Zillow, no secret there in terms of where to source that kind of a thing. And I would love to be more and more a specialist. If you listen to my journey, we've done a lot of business in a lot of different areas and really becoming a better expert in a smaller number of areas, particularly as we have success, right? Go back to those wells over and over and over again. I don't see us specializing in one state. I like the geographic diversification, But I don't like us having specialized, quote unquote, specialized in 25 out of the 50 states. So for us, more focus, more intention, while still having some degree of diversity, I think, currently in this current market is working for us. Yeah, I would say what's working for us is specialization. I think you hit it on the head, Dave, is specialization and what we're choosing to be specialized in. And what's also working for us is, I guess, cutting down on the things that we do, which is kind of the same theme as what Dave was saying, was, you know, he was land investing, but being very general mailing, you know, 25 different states, and then now condensing becoming a specialist. For us, it was condensing, we're a real estate agent, a land investor who does subdivides, as is flips, seller financing, manufactured houses now, we flip houses.

And so for us, it was condensing and okay, let's take real estate agent off the table for a little while. Let's take home flips off the table for a little while. Let's just focus on land. Let's just do it in this geographic area. And let's specifically figure out how can we do on market subdivides in mass. And so that's what we are currently working on.

What's also working very well is going the extra step and actually doing the minor subdivisions. And so and just keeping it instead of just keeping it exempt, actually going through the full plotting process, which in the states of in the area of Texas, we work in really only like four months. It's not really that difficult. It's just a minor inconvenience in most circumstances. And so that's working well for us. We put, you know, two 500,000 plus subdivides net profit under contract late last year into this year. And we've got, you know, house flips. We've got manufactured homes coming up where we're putting in them on the lots. And so we're really, really trying to. Do more profit for less work. And that has been the continual refinement of our business over time. So like, for example, one subdivision is a buy for 200. It is five acres. We're making five one acre lots out of it. And then I believe our exit is going to be something like probably 2 million at the end of the day, 1.52 million after we put manufactured homes on them. We should net anywhere from 500 to 700 doing that. And so just, just cause all the numbers, all the expenses of the manufactured homes. So what we're trying to do is what nobody else is willing. You are so braggadocious, Neil. You just love to brag about your numbers, man. Thanks, bro. The one time I shared numbers.

But anyways, I just, I, it's hard. It's hard because I want to show the magnitude of what we're able to achieve, but I don't want to brag about it. So it is a very, it's a very hard mix sometimes, if that makes sense. I think for me, the things that I'm excited about, I can't say I've got like proven success at it yet, but I've gotten highly intrigued by hearing Neil, handful of other friends who are doing the land home package thing, either subdividing, putting manufactured houses on there, or just buying single lots and putting them on there. There's a lot of reasons that's very intriguing to me and exciting with my experience with self-storage investing. It's like a much easier version of that from a development standpoint. And I love the fact that like you're creating a product that is very much in need and will likely sell very fast. There's just something kind of fulfilling about that. But I've been trying to, actually go back and get delinquent tax lists. That's what I'm working with right now. It's the first time I've done this in years. I have not bothered with delinquent tax lists. And part of the reason I didn't was reasons that anybody probably knows if they've ever tried to get one. If they're hard to get. They're usually a total mess to sort through. It's a highly inefficient process. A lot of the properties that are on that list are junk anyway. It's like you don't even want them. There's.

I will say with the advent of Claude Code and Claude Cowork, man, a lot of that inefficiency is dealt with very swiftly. I've actually made a couple of videos on this recently, but you can get like just a disaster of a delinquent tax list from any county, something that would normally take days to sort through manually and do it in a matter of seconds and not just sort through it, but like, add supplemental information to the list. So if certain key bits of information aren't there, like, for example, I got one and the acreage was not included. It's kind of important. I kind of want to know that. And I was able to hook it up to land portal and went through the whole list and added the acreage and the zoning and whether it was landlocked, whether it was a flood zone and wetlands, all that stuff for everything that was not normally on the list. And I can go back to it and say, hey, like I kind of just want the ones that I can put a mobile home on. And I know I probably can't for most of these. Can you go one by one through the zoning and research every single one and tell me, do you think a mobile home could go on here? Give me like a yes, no, or a maybe. And it'll like score it and color code it all the way through the list. Stuff like that, that was just like unthinkable even a year ago.

It's very doable and easy now, really. So anybody out there has either never even tried a delinquent tax list because they're scared of how hard it is, or if you've tried it and just couldn't stand it because it was such a pain, it's not really a pain anymore. So kind of excited to see where that goes. I am curious, what would you say, because we've got three pretty good operators on here. What is like the biggest thing that you've had to change in your business since the market has taken the turn that it has?

Or like, you know, for you, Seth, like, what are you seeing? Maybe other people have to change. Dave, what are you seeing in your business? Like, what's the biggest thing that you've changed? Um...

Sure. Yeah, I think one of the big things that come to mind, which to a tool like the land portal, has been great. Before we had, we were having hiring people to scrub properties manually, piece by piece. And now with some of these wonderful filters and everything that that happened now, which you could argue it's a good thing or a bad thing, but that's definitely saved us the labor costs. Before we paid DataTree, right? We're paying them monthly and then we'd have all these data costs and junk. And now with some of the tools out there and the overlays, it really saved a lot of labor and time and money. So before I had a staff of close to 25, which a lot of those were part-time people.

And now we're much more concentrated with a staff of like eight to 10 or something like that. And I would like to stay around the same staff size, but just do more with some of these AI tools that we have. Because I believe at the end of the day, it's an enhancement, not a replacement for a lot of quality people. Now, maybe for really low-end tasks, like the scrubbing I was talking about before, it is a replacement for those kinds. But I think, at least at this stage, it still requires thought process and verification. You take what Seth just said about the zoning. Well, is that actually right or not? Because I've found ChatGPT and some of those even have trouble adding up numbers sometimes. So I'm cautiously optimistic about what some of those tools can do.

I already mentioned about some of how we've changed with mailing. You know, we were sending out 50 to 60,000 mailers a month for about eight months a year. And so now really focusing on saving that overhead, being a better.

More nimble operator, you know, as some of the things that we're focusing. I've been talking to some land investors that it's just them or maybe them and an assistant. And they're able to run things really lean with some of these tools. So I feel a little more bloated relative to other land investors, but I feel that also gives us more capacity to be able to do more as we get the staff fully trained on AI and doing more AI stuff. I think I only see our capacity growing bigger and bigger and bigger as time goes on. At least that's my hope. We'll see what happens. Yeah, I think probably a consistent thing I've seen from most people, including me, is basically cutting staff, not having as many people on board.

I do think, I don't want to say it's impossible, but I feel like the change that I've seen a lot of people doing is there has to be some kind of value add component in the land business to just like do straight flips on cheap stuff. Again, not saying it's impossible, but like that kind of thing is way harder to just be a one trick pony in that regard. And also even just like going after cheap stuff in general. I know a handful of people that still do that. But that used to be like what everybody did. Like everybody just did cheap desert square stuff. And I think the whole is the juice worth the squeeze thing is very real. And even like what you're talking about, Dave, doing on market subdivides, like just buying something off the MLS, like that kind of thing was unthinkable just a handful of years ago. And I know a bunch of people that do that now. And wow, does that kind of make things simpler when you don't need to take all these calls from motivated sellers and like send out all this mail and stuff. I mean, there's benefits to doing that too, but like, what if you didn't have to do that? Think of like how else you could redirect your energies and efforts to doing deals that make a lot more anyway. So seeing a lot more of that going on too. Yeah. Ton of consolidation. And Dave, I know you've spoken a lot about that in some of your videos and podcasts and even articles where.

The margins are compressing. If you're just doing straight land flips, especially the cheaper ones, the margins are compressing. You're going to have to pay more in this market. And I agree the same way. And we've had that compression all the way back to maybe even 2020 in Texas, especially for the size properties that we do, 300, 500 million purchase price. Those have always been compressed margins and it is what it is. But for us, the obvious one is that we're just having to reprice everything.

Chris Duff did a fantastic article on the REtipster blog about how to price for the future and not how to price for today. And that's incredibly relevant to the subdivide business that we do because how long it takes to get things through the pipeline. I mean, we're trying to predict the market nine months to 12 months away in a lot of circumstances. And so we're actively using aggressive pricing. We're actively cutting properties in our own minds before we even buy them 10 or 20%. And you mentioned Pete Reese earlier, he had a fantastic motto about offering. You don't offer say 50% of market value, you offer 50% of what the property will sell for in 60 days. So the 60 day sales price is what you run your metrics off of, not market value because market value can take a year. And I think that the people who are surviving have survived because they've changed their underwriting characteristics of their fundamental business. And the ones that are going to thrive in the future are the ones that can adapt to the new market conditions the fastest, change their business model, pivot. And then also, like David said many times, we'll focus on money velocity and not just on profiting on every deal.

And, and I, Dave, I don't know if you want to explain that more, but I, that was a huge, you said that last year in Wyoming, and that definitely changed the course of my business trajectory for the future. Yeah. Well, I think that's, that's definitely a thing or just getting out, you know, from a property. We we've had a couple of cases of properties we've been holding onto for a year and a half and two years, and we're still cutting the price to try and find the bottom for those, those particular ones. Then I would love to have had that money back a year ago to keep moving. Um, but I think overall, you know, we've been talking a lot about on-market sub-divides, right? So now everyone goes and does on-market sub-divides. Well, guess what? That's going to get crowded too. So I'm already thinking a step or two ahead of that because I know as we talk about this and we talk with other investors about it, guess what? That's going to get crowded too. It's going to become harder to do those kinds of deals. So what's the next thing? What's the next thing after that? What did that look like? So I'd encourage everyone to be thinking about that and not get tied into doing one thing one the way. We are still doing some of those cheaper desert square kind of things, if you will. And those still have profit for us, but we found different ways to do it to make it work. And so I think diversification is an incredibly healthy thing to have. If your business becomes dependent on one way of doing things, that is the cause for failure. I see too many land investors that got over levered in this time period we've been going through.

And now there's a question of, are they going to survive? And so for us, Generation Family Properties, we've always used a combination of equity and debt along the way, along with a lot of owner financing. And that has what's allowed the business to continue and be profitable and all those kinds of things. So I think really people thinking through their capital stack, how they're using it. And I think really as the tide's gone out, there's been people left, stranded on the beach. And so building the right business, the right way to protect yourself in up cycles and down cycles, I would really encourage everyone to think about is a huge takeaway I've seen as I've talked to numerous land investors along the way. I don't know if there's more we can speak to on that, fellas, but I think that's a really important point I want to make as we look going forward. Dave, with these properties that are selling really quick for you, talking about this $800,000 of revenue in one week, did you buy those properties because you thought they were going to sell fast? Like, was it very intentionally planned out or is this kind of just like a lucky thing that came up? I think the answer is bullet. We did intentionally plan it out. We did intentionally pick those markets. But there's a saying in the financial advisory world, past performance does not guarantee future results.

So we're looking backward on some of this data. There's no guarantee that's going to continue.

So I think there is luck involved in there, no doubt. And for me, just as a measure of faith and who I am, it's a step of faith in this business and believing things are going to turn out. There's no guarantees at all. Everything can look right. And then something ends up going wrong. But that intelligence and foresight to be able to choose those. Neil mentioned, hey, where are things going in the future?

And so to have that kind of discipline and thought, you could be wrong, right? But you're putting the odds on your side by picking certain markets that are moving relatively quickly or markets you think are changing. You can look at some of these statistics and saying, hey, in the last three months, these markets are heating up. Let me get ahead of there beyond all these other people that are looking the last year of data. So there's ways of manipulating and looking at those numbers to try and put yourself in the best possible position. No guarantees, but I think there are ways you can be smart and intelligent about how to position yourself. Do you guys think there's anything in the land business that used to work extremely well, but is now permanently less effective? It's kind of a big statement. Does he permanently or just doesn't work across the board? But I don't know. Does anything come to mind? Yes. Unideal properties, floodplain, lack of access. What was the gentleman who came on your podcast? This was several months ago. One of the more popular ones where his business has completely crumbled because the properties were not great properties.

That's exactly when I think of answering your question, that's exactly what came to my head was non-ideal properties. I mean, because I look at, We're blessed to still, we still do some house flips and mobile home flips. So like we've got the residential side, but we've also got the land side. So I can see both sides of it. And even people buying houses right now are so freaking picky. Now, granted, I'm in definitely a buyer's market, Dallas, Fort Worth, Texas, but my gosh, they are picky with our land. My gosh, they are picky. You know, you have a slightly irregular shaped lot instead of perfectly rectangular or square, and you're going to be on market twice as many days as you were before. And back in early COVID timeframes, maybe even two or three years ago, that wasn't the case. And so I do believe land investors have to be more diligent than ever on underwriting, on those types of properties, on utilities. Like Dave said, their capital stack. Oh my gosh, like leveraging, be incredibly careful right now.

Because there is no plan B with land, right? You can't rent it. You can't do anything with it other than sell it. And so I would just say like, if you're not buying the cream of the crop or if you don't think you're getting an excellent property that you would not want to own yourself, be very careful trying to buy it for somebody else. So why do you think it used to work, but it doesn't now? That the explosion of demand from cheap money financing that caused people to buy literal pieces of junk just to be able to say that they own a piece of land. And that's what I think it is. And Dave, I mean, you run a business, not necessarily with such crummy land, but you have a lot of notes and you have defaults and you have things going on. So you probably could talk better about this than anybody. Yeah, well, I think to answer your question, Seth, I don't think anything is permanently changed in terms of the ability. And let me stand a picture of what I mean by that.

I'll put my financial advisor hat on here for a second. I think everything goes in cycles. And so imagine a scenario, which hopefully this doesn't happen anytime soon, but it's possible, a black swan event where, everything is just going down, down, down, and there's some sort of financial crisis or whatever that happened. Guess what? Asset values will drop. And the people who are able to at that time buy things when they've had the crap kicked out of them, there will be supply to buy in that crisis. Now, whether that's six months away, a year away, five years away, 10 years away, I don't know. But I do think I see medium flips coming back in that environment where things have depreciated so much that you can pick up things for pennies on the dollar. A recession will happen again. When that is, I don't know. But I do believe that those turbulent times will lead to amazing, fantastic opportunities for land investors. And as hard as the last two years have been, that ain't a recession like a big pullback has been. That being said, I do think it would be harder on an average time like we are right now. And to Neil's point, exactly what he said is true for where we are right now today. But to think things are always going to be permanently that way.

I don't think so, in my two cents of an opinion, having been through several financial market cycles in my career.

Not as a land investor, but as a financial advisor and seeing asset values drop, if that makes sense. I guess it's hard to say anything's permanently changed, but it does seem like sending out like super cheap blind offers with very little scrumming stuff that people used to be able to get away with very easily years ago. I've not heard a lot of people having a ton of success with that right now. If anything, that's like something I've had to totally just move on from. Or if they are doing it, like something's got to be unique about that. Maybe they're offering a lot more or scrubbing their list way better or they're great at sales or something. But yeah, just that kind of the easy land deals. I don't know if they'll never come back, but they're not there right now, I don't think. Like, for example, in 2021, which was COVID was really, really hot, I bought 350 lots at a Mojave County tax deed auction. That opportunity hasn't resurfaced since because the county held back for years. And so there was like thousands, thousands, I think it was 10,000 properties that were for sale, of which we were interested in 3,500 of the 10,000. Those opportunities will happen again. When? I don't know. And that'll be true of mailing too, in my opinion. You'll be able to pick up those same things at that time, but you have to have that financial stress, which we have not had since 2008, 2009.

So I think it'll be rare. Those opportunities will be rare, but they will come around. Is that going to be the average? No. I don't think that that is going to be our average year, average time period. Those will be unusual, but I do think that those opportunities will be available and mailers will work then and auctions will work then and everything will work in that time period for acquisition. I'm not saying this is going to be easy, but in terms of just acquiring properties.

That that would become a wonderful, fantastic time. I do feel some of what's shifting right in terms of work as we think about AI. So maybe you can make the argument some of those cheaper properties as you have people that are doing jobs that could be more easily replaced by AI and we have that friction. It could become more and more harder to sell those properties. Maybe defaults go up. I think those kinds of things could be very possible as we have that economic friction in the next five to 10 years where what are all these people going to do for work? They can't afford, you know, $100 or $200 for a piece of land anymore. They just got to survive. So I do think, not to be too doomsday kind of a thing, but I do think that that is a possibility of what could hurt cheaper properties. Do you think there's any part of this business that almost nobody talks about honestly enough? The only thing that comes to my head as far as what people don't talk honestly enough is how difficult it is to maybe run a high volume seller finance operation, which I'm sure Dave could chive into, definitely very easily, how difficult that is. I think also people don't talk enough about how hard it was to transition from the market of maybe 2022 or 2021 until now and how many people truly dropped.

And how many people aren't like in business anymore at all. Went from making like seven figures down to losing money very quick kind of thing.

And then I don't think very many people talk about, I guess, how difficult it truly is to make a business based upon minor and major subdivides, and how much work that really is. I think it gets a lot of glory and a lot of people are like, oh, my gosh, he makes so much money. But they don't realize how much risk, time, and staff headache that it is. Those are the three things that pop immediately into my head. Yeah. I can't think of many things that nobody talks about, honestly enough. I think people talk about them, but perhaps the people with the loudest voices, with the biggest megaphones, they don't necessarily talk about them because they've got some motive to make land investing sound awesome and great and easy. So it's not that the conversations aren't happening. It's just some things don't get as much publicity. I always appreciate those conversations in the REtipster Facebook group when they come up, when somebody is just like totally raw and real about something that's going terrible. I mean, it's not fun to see that, obviously. Nobody wants to suffer, but it's just refreshing to hear like, okay, good. Like, I'm not the only one. It's probably, if anything, like I feel like on REtipster, we've talked about a lot of the negative, not because I love being negative, but like, I want people to hear this stuff. Like, I want them to know like, hey, it's not all awesome right now. Like, if you're struggling, you're not alone. That's okay. Don't feel shame about that. So that's part of why we're taking time to talk about what we think is working. What about you guys? Neil hit on a lot of great points there. I think the entitlement space, you've had Arturo come and talk.

About that, which has huge amounts of profits to it. We've looked at a number of different entitlement deals, but nothing ever got accepted in terms of what we are able to do or something like that. I think, Overall, I think to Neil's point, the amount of volume you need in terms of looking at deals probably isn't talked about enough. Like even on market subdivides, it's taken us thousands to get to the one that we had and we had offers accepted on another three. And so it's taken thousands and thousands of deals to get to that, which they are out there, right? You can find them. And that's true of mailers. That's true of texting. That's true of all of the different marketing channels that people do. I think...

The thing that you're bringing more and more attention to as well, Seth, with Stride and things like that is really the emphasis on follow-up. You know, being easy, before a lot of things were just manual, right? Or maybe we would drop one big ringless voicemail. I think the ability of follow-up to be the person they think of when the deal, they are ready to sell. I did a study back about a year ago and about of the people we were talking to where we got an acquisition manager conversation, about 30% of those properties did sell within a year of when we were talking to these people. And so really being diligent about setting your follow-up, especially because it's so cheap and easy now, you know, get Stride and some of the things you can do there, as well as other CRMs, setting that up. So that way you have a machine working for you to have inbound leads rather than outbound leads and follow up with people, I think is absolutely huge in today's environment. Dave, the one thing I would double down on that you said, which I think is very intelligent, is the volume at which it takes to be successful in this market. Whether that's analyzing on-market subdivides, doing mailers, doing texting, doing cold calling, whatever it is.

I think that people might listen to this and say, well, you know, Dave went from doing 50,000 mailers a month and now he's analyzing a thousand subdivides. Well, yeah, he had to do 50 times less work. Well, that's not the case, right? It's kind of like the same work, the same volume that you had to put out there for you and your team to analyze 1,000 subdivis, negotiate three or four deals as it is to mail 50,000 mailers, right? And so, I think that a lot of people watching this don't realize that the people who are killing it in the space and to some extent, even the people who are just surviving are the ones who are putting volume into some kind of lead generation. This business is land investing. Even all of real estate investing is simply a volume lead generation marketing game. And if you don't get your wings or if you don't earn the right through getting volume and lead generation, you won't have conversion. You won't have due diligence, you won't have funding, you won't have properties to sell and you won't have money to make.

And so if you don't start at the top of the funnel with volume, then none of the rest works. Well, guys, we should probably wrap this up. If people want to check out either one of your shows, I'm going to have links to both of them in the description beneath this podcast. You can also check out the REtipster YouTube channel, where you can find both podcasts. Any closing thoughts as we wrap this up? Man, I'm just happy to be here. Happy to be a part of a network that has great guys like yourself. And that's not just buttering you guys up. I mean, seriously, Dave, I think the world of you, Seth, I think the world of you as well. And I can't believe how much value you two give to the land investing community on a daily basis. So I'm honored to be standing next to you guys. I'm honored to be associated with you guys and just incredibly blessed and privileged from God to be here. Likewise, Neil, it's amazing to work with you on all these different things we got going on. Dave, Sam, it's been really great to see both of you, what you're doing for the land community and glad you can both be part of it with REtipster. Let me just say too to everybody, You know, it can be lonely out there and you're trying to figure out what's my next step. What am I going to do?

And so whether you come to the REtipster Inner Circle events or you come to the LandOn Conference, be part of community. You know, you are not alone. So many of us, myself, Neil, Seth, we're all pivoting along the way and having that support, making brotherhood, sisterhood, community around you is so incredibly important. So listen to the podcast, but also be part of meeting people live, shaking hands and giving hugs and just be part of that overall community. So come and hang out with us. We'd love to see you. And we'll look forward to talking to you guys soon. Yeah, you bet. I'll be sure to include links to the LandOn Conference, REtipster Inner Circle, lots of different things we've talked about here in the show notes, retipster.com forward slash 280. Thanks everybody for listening. Neil and Dave, thanks for being here and we will talk to you all next time.