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

Today, I'm talking with one of the most enthusiastic and inspiring land investors I know in the REtipster community, Arturo, or Art for short. So Arturo is an Italian Navy officer living in Rome at the moment, and he's running his land investing business in the U.S.

So ever since Arturo joined the REtipster community and enrolled in the Land Investing Masterclass, it's been fascinating and inspiring to watch him post questions in our forum and share his experiences in the Facebook group as he tries to figure out the best ways to handle various situations. And because of his inquisitive nature, he really helps a lot of people figure stuff out just by asking the right questions that other people either don't think to ask or are too scared to ask. There's a lot of learning that comes from guys like Arturo who just put it out there and just aren't afraid to ask questions and figure out what to do.

And I'm just fascinated by how he has been doing this business from a long ways away, in another part of the world, in a very different time zone, speaking a very different language while working a very full-time job. This guy has a lot of natural challenges to work around, as many of us do, but they're even more intense for him, I think, because of where he's coming from. So we're going to talk with Art and find out how his business works, what his journey has looked like, and I think we're all going to learn something from this.

So, Art, welcome to the show. How are you doing?

Arturo: I'm doing very well, thanks. And it's a pleasure to be here. Thank you very much.

Seth: Yeah, absolutely. So let's start at the very beginning. So how did you first learn about land investing and what made you decide to give it a shot?

Arturo: Yeah, as you were mentioning, it was a few years ago, and I was looking for an investment opportunity. As many of us, you want to put your money to work. And I've always been kind of real estate geek. I run some rentals in Italy, but the truth is that Italy, which is a beautiful country, and everyone is invited and all the audience is invited—not all at once, just one at a time—but yeah, it's a beautiful country. It's not the best country, in my opinion, and probably I will get a lot of Italian enemies now, but it's not the best place to live and it's not the best place to invest, including (and probably especially) in real estate.

So I started to look at opportunities outside of Italy, and at that time, I came across the BiggerPockets Podcast, and I found out that in the U.S., when it comes to real estate, there are these incredible things like the 1% rule, VA loans, etc. And in Italy it's just wow, it's impossible. So I said I want to do that. Now, the problem is that to access the housing market, there is a fee. To access this market, you need to have some money, or you need to have connections, or you need to get a mortgage, something that I cannot have in the U.S. because I don't have a Social Security number.

So I tried alternative ways and at the same time I met a guy in Italy who was already doing tax liens and tax deeds in the U.S. And he helped me start my company in the U.S. And so I started with tax liens and tax deeds. But that was not my thing. It was not a good fit for me. I know that it's not a good fit for you. And at that same moment, because of probably the internet algorithm, I was suggested a video on YouTube that was the Land Flipping Lifecycle. That is 20 minutes of how land flipping works in a nutshell and is an amazing video. And I said this is what I must do. I mean, I am on the other side of the ocean. There are no tenants, there are no roofs to repair, no windows. Whatever hurricane or climate issues come, they aren't going to affect my business. So this is what I want to do.

And so I pivoted my business from tax liens and tax deeds to land flipping. And that was the moment when I contacted you and I started the Land Investing Masterclass. And before I finished it, I had already closed my first deal in Arizona, they were 15 infield lots, self-closed. Since then, it’s history.

Seth: Just out of curiosity, you mentioned that Italy wasn't the best place to live or invest in real estate. Why is that? What is it that Italy doesn't have that the U.S. does?

Arturo: Well, I talked with a lot, I still talk actually with a lot of investors all over the world, Alicia Jarrett in Australia, Jesse Kwong and others. And it's not only for Italy, but I just talk for Italy in this case. The thing is, in Italy, we say it's an elephant. It's like a very slow machine when it comes to bureaucracy. For example, and this is one thing. So what I can find about a parcel, for example, in ten minutes in front of my computer parcel in the U.S., would take probably two months, three months in Italy, because most of the time you need to go in person to the equivalent of the county office. And then they receive only on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and then they give you a template to fill in. So it's very complicated.

Things are slightly changing and probably the children of my son will see the light at the end of the tunnel. But now it is not a thing. Plus, there is also something in Italy—and you can like it or not, but in the U.S. it is not a real thing—which is privacy. So in Italy, to get information about the owner, does it have a mortgage, did it pay all the taxes? In Italy, that’s impossible. And so this is the reason why investing here is difficult.

There are also other aspects. For example, access to credit from banks is not as easy as it can be in the U.S. for someone who has the possibility to do it. Of course, to create a business in Italy is expensive. I mean, to have the equivalent of the LLC in Italy is called SRL, but it's the same thing essentially, is complicated. And also the taxation is not as good as it is in the U.S.

So there are many reasons why you don't want to invest in Italy. I have rentals here in my name, my name and my brother's name, some of them, you know that the 1% rule is not a thing. I mean, it's not that it's difficult, it's impossible. And also appreciation, unless you are in some areas, like you are in the center of Rome, center of Venice, center of Florence, otherwise, appreciation is not a real thing in Italy. I mean, talking about houses in this case. But yeah, this is the reason why it's difficult. I mean, the main reasons.

Seth: So does a 30-year mortgage even exist in Italy? Can you get that? Or do you just have to buy it cash or buy it with owner financing? How does that work?

Arturo: No, the mortgages, they exist. The problem is that the process to get approved for a mortgage is tough. Take me, for example. I have a mortgage on one of the houses that I own and I tried to negotiate the mortgage to get a lower interest and it was refused twice. Even if I have apartments, I have cash flow from my rentals, I have a job from the government. So every month I have money to put into the bank to cover the mortgage. But it was refused because for them the houses were not enough, because today you rent, tomorrow you don't. So it's not sure.

I don't say that it's impossible, it's just complicated and you can see it. Also, this is one of the reasons, I think this is why in the U.S. you have so many young people doing real estate. You have people that become millionaires at 25 doing real estate and they have 50 or 60 doors. And in Italy, a family might have difficulties to keep their own house because a person that is 20 years old will never get a credit. And those from the bank and those who can have a mortgage, it's difficult to reinvest in somewhere else. We don't have refinancing, for example. So you cannot refinance a house and get that 70% to 80% of the spread between the new price of the house. After that, you fix it.

And so there are many things in Italy that do not exist, that exist in the U.S. That makes us, I think, unique because as I was saying, I was talking also with other people, and this is pretty much something that is common in many states outside of the U.S.

Seth: Yeah, I know that. The lack of access to data and even the financing difficulty, that's not unique to Italy at all. I've heard this in many different countries where it makes it really hard to buy and sell real estate in general. And I don't know why. I mean, not that the U.S. has everything figured out, we certainly don't, but I don't know. I'm surprised more countries don't change something about that just to make it a little bit easier. Maybe it's like a systemic issue where it's like so many different industries would have to change so many things in order to make it as easy as it is here. I don't know. But yeah, it's kind of interesting. Maybe it'll change in the years to come.

Arturo: We'll have to wait and see, hopefully. I think it's resistance to change.

Seth: So you're in the navy, right? The Italian Navy Tell me about that. How long have you been in the navy? And is that like your main thing in addition to the land business?

Arturo: Yes, I joined the Naval Academy in Livorno, which is the equivalent of Annapolis, in 1993. So you do the math. It was 33 years ago. And now I'm in the rank of commander. And I've lived in many places around the world, recently in Egypt and Turkey. And I'm very thankful of what I've done so far in the navy because it allowed me to live experiences that are not for everyone, for sure, and probably also to shape my kind of mindset. So I am very committed in what I decide to do and I'm very focused and discipline is an asset for me.

So, yeah, my main job, I would say like my day job is in the military and when I finish my job, and normally this happens around 05:00 in the afternoon, I run home and I start to work in my land business. And the good thing is that the time zone is okay because when I come home at that time, let's say 06:00, I am at home, East Coast is lunchtime at twelve, and the West Coast is morning.

Seth: Works there pretty well.

Arturo: It's okay. The only struggle is that I have to work until late at night and then wake up in the morning. So I don't have a lot of social life, but this is a choice. I just like land. If I want to cut time for myself, sometimes I need it, I just do it. This is what I like, actually. When I tell someone, many people say, you live a sad life. I don't. I just choose to live the way that I live. And I do things and I can do things that many people cannot because of land and because of you. Because you made me know about land.

Seth: Thanks. Glad I could help out with that. Yeah.

Arturo: I don't know if you realize, but you have so many years because I met you, but I don't know how long you have done land, but you have affected the life of so many people, and this is heavy, but in a positive way. So this is a merit to you.

Seth: Yeah, I appreciate you saying that. And I kind of got a feel for that at the Land Unconference that we were both at a couple of months ago, because I get emails like that to that effect. I don't know, probably on a weekly basis from people, and it's always an amazing thing. But it was crazy going to that conference and everybody knew who I was, and a lot of people were saying stuff to that effect, and it was just like, man, this is amazing. I can't believe this. Many people care and have done cool things in their life. A lot of times I just don't hear about it. People do cool stuff and I don't really know. I'm none the wiser.

So I mean, it sounds sort of similar to a lot of people out there. I mean, myself, I was kind of a similar thing, different time zone issue, but it's very similar. In the early years of my land business, I would get home from my job and just go right to work right after dinner and just kind of work until bedtime and spend a lot of my weekends. I can totally see why a lot of people would have thought that was a depressing existence, but look where I'm at now and look where they're at and they're still kind of stuck, and I'm not stuck anymore. So I think it's just the toll a lot of us have to pay to get out of our state to get to the next thing.

But in terms of being in the navy, are you on the road a lot or do you come home to the same spot? Is it like every two years you have to go to a new location or how does that work in terms of travel and mobility?

Arturo: Yeah, let's say that now I am at a point where I am in Rome, and if I want to settle in Rome, it's easy that I will stay in Rome until I retire. Until a few years ago, mobility was a real thing. And it's not only about mobility. It's about the fact that many times these movements are unpredictable. So you plan, I don't know, a closing, and then they call you and you have to move, and you cannot do that. Didn't happen. Never happened. Thanks, God.

But there are things that sometimes you need to find a way to work around. Now it's easier for me to cut time for myself, for myself, for my business. If I decide to get out and come at home because I have to work normally, I do my job, and then I can come. And I also recently started to work with a crazy good VA. That is helping me a lot and taking a lot of stuff off my shoulders. And this is something that is helping me, definitely. And I understand that a VA is not a thing that you start a business and you get a VA, but you need one as soon as possible. That is money well- spent, for me, at least, if you have a day job.

Seth: I would think with your busy life, that would be a really important thing. Being a commander, is that like, one step beneath general or something? Where is that in the line of power?

Arturo: It's two steps. Two steps before admiral, which is the equivalent of general.

Seth: Seriously?

Arturo: Commander? Yes.

Seth: Wow.

Arturo: Yes. It's not as close as it looks, but yeah, it's just two steps. And there is the rank of commander, and then the rank of captain, which is colonel in the army or the air force, and then the admiral, which is the equivalent of general.

Seth: Wow, man. Are you going to shoot for that, or are you going to focus more on land? Admiral or land investor?

Arturo: Land on my life.

Seth: That's got to tell you something. When you see the privileges of an admiral in the Italian Navy, you'd rather go towards land investing.

Arturo: Well, I might be both. Who knows?

Seth: Yeah, that's true.

Arturo: You could probably have both, I take it. Yeah, why not?

Seth: Yeah. In the U.S. military, I hear it's 20 years before you can retire with a pretty decent pension. I don't know all the exact rules for that, but I think, if I remember right, you were telling me in the Italian Navy, it's 40 years, is that correct?

Arturo: Yeah, it's 40 years. Yeah, it's a long time, and the pension is not even comparable to the U.S. one, but it's okay because also the cost of life here, of course, is less expensive than most of the places in the U.S. But yeah, 40 years. So I could retire in, like, let's say probably eight years, ten years, more or less, yeah. I'm considering a few options for my future, but yeah, normally I could retire 8 to 10 years from now.

Seth: So are you, like, traveling around on a boat on a regular basis or how does that work? Are you in an office somewhere?

Arturo: No, not anymore. I was doing it until the rank of major, it’s Lieutenant Commander in our organization, but in the navy, but let's say until probably—we are in 2023—until 13 years ago. So I was onboard ships. I was doing stuff onboard ships. I was chief of operation of a destroyer and other things. But since then, when you start to work in the staff, in the headquarters and to provide your expertise to the Chief of the Navy or the Chief of Operations of the Navy, you completely change. You go and work on a desk.

And then I started to work for international organizations. I had this chance and I loved it. In 2012 the first time. And I started to go and travel, but not on a ship, just to stay abroad and do other stuff abroad. Okay, but that was exciting and I liked it. And now it's two years since I'm back in Rome, actually, I don't know if I will go abroad again. We will see.

Seth: So, just so people kind of understand the context of what your business looks like, sounds like you started in 2020, is that right?

Arturo: Late, early 2021.

Seth: So with the time that you have and your part-time hours to do this, how many deals would you say you're doing per year? Like, what's a typical deal size? Just so people can understand, like, you know, what we're working with.

Arturo: At the beginning I was working on, like many of us, I started just with low price land. As I was mentioning, my first deal was 15 infill lots from one person is the portfolio takedown, but I didn't know that it was called that way. I just bought them and I bought them for 300 more or less each. And they sold after a few weeks, 2200 each. And part of them I sold to a big investor also. And he sold at a way higher price. But it's okay. I knew it. I just needed the proof of concept and I was super happy with the profit that I had.

But that was the kind of deal that I started with self-closing. I self-closed the first probably five deals. And then I decided that I didn't want to do it anymore because there is too much risk associated, too much work and having a day job and not having yet a VA, it was not worth my time. And so I decided to move towards higher price land. Since then, I started to consider the minimum profit that I want to put in my pocket is $10,000, which means that if I use an equity partner, normally I try to profit $20,000 because there is a 50% split, right? I mean, the biggest deal at today has been a double close that I made in Pennsylvania that I put under contract for 100 and I sold for 160.

Seth: Nice.

Arturo: But I did a few others very close to it. And now I am working with two partners on one seven-figure deal. It is an entitlement thing. So things are going pretty well. And I have another one like this in my pipeline that is going to start soon. I don't want to say that I'm pivoting towards entitlements because my main business, if not the only one for me, is flipping but if there is the opportunity to do it, why not?

And one of my partners actually in this endeavor is a guy that is 35 years experienced land planner and civil engineer. So he's done this all his life and he is actually doing all the job. We brought the deal—I say we because me and the other partner of mine, we brought the deal to him and he's doing all the job and he's great actually and his name is David Hansen. So if you can find him on Facebook, he's huge.

Seth: So how many of your deals involve partners at this point?

Arturo: As a volume? Consider that probably I am now on more or less 25 or 30 deals per year. Okay, so this is more or less the volume. I'm trying to increase it, so I'm trying to increase the volume of my marketing efforts so possibly there will be more in the next future.

About your question on how many? I use funders as many times as possible. I want to keep the money that I have on my business bank account for marketing essentially and for all the operational expenses and use other people money to buy. Now it can be like an equity partner, so joint venture, it can be like someone who is available to give me a loan at 1.52%. And as a lot of times I hear you and other people talking about if you have a good deal it's almost impossible not to find someone that is willing to invest with you. So it's easy.

Seth: Yeah. There was an interesting video I saw from Alex Hormozi not long ago where I even screenshotted what he put on the screen because it was just like it was so obvious the way he explained it. But for some reason it fails to click with me sometimes. But he just says when you're looking for outside investors or outside partners the bottom line is everyone can afford it if they believe the value is there. I mean, if you really get somebody to believe that legitimately not making stuff out but if somebody truly trusts you and believes that the value is there in that investment, they would be dumb not to find the money from somewhere and contribute to the cause.

It's just that question of the doubt. What are the risks, what are the unknowns? And if you can minimize those unknowns and explain why you know what you're doing then you can usually put something together pretty easily.

Arturo: Yeah, I agree.

Seth: Take us back to when you first did your first direct mail campaign or when you started looking for deals and you found these 15 in Arizona. So what were some of the biggest challenges? I kind of understand what my challenges were working from within the U.S., but I'm sure there are new wrinkles that come into the picture when you're doing this from Italy. So what was particularly difficult about this, if anything, was it the time difference? Was it like opening up a U.S bank account? Was it, I don't know, help us understand what the challenges are of doing this internationally.

Arturo: Yeah, so let's say to do this from Italy many times there is this concept, that it's in our mind, and you think U.S, Italy, they are so far apart, it's impossible. But I think that we live in a time where the concepts of distance and time are not physical anymore. I mean, I am talking with you real time and we are one click of the mouse away from each other. So this is the distance that we have.

You can apply this to the business as well. I was lucky enough to meet two guys actually. One is the guy that taught me also about tax liens and tax deeds is Emmanuel, who has a company, my user service that I used, he was already working in the U.S. So I used his service to open my company and he works pretty well. And then I pivoted and now I use another guy to manage my company who is Tony Durante, at tonydurante.net. And Tony is my manager and he lives in the U.S. So we are now also friends and he is the guy that actually does the magic in the sense that he is the one that…

And this is very important for everyone who is investing from outside of the U.S. Many times I hear people saying well, you take a virtual mailbox, for example, but a virtual mailbox allows you to receive the mailers in PDF that they receive and you can read them. But what if you need to go to the bank? What if you need to go to the post office? You don't have that possibility. If you use a virtual mailbox, a physical presence in the U.S., possibly well-connected with the local bank, with a post office, that can do you a favor and go somewhere and do something for you or you pay him, it's a game-changer. And this is what Tony, my manager, is doing today.

Not that it's really needed, but it happened to me a couple of times that the title company wanted a wet signature on the deed and Tony in my operating agreement is allowed to sign on behalf of the company. So he is the manager of my company and I know that he is also with other people, I am friends with him, as I was saying. But if someone doesn't know Tony and he does also with power of attorney so there are ways, and I don't know who said that probably Ron has said if you want to find a solution, you find a way, otherwise you find an excuse. And this is totally true. I mean, it's just about stay there and think how can I overcome these difficulties? But the solutions are there and you just need to find the right people and to kind of duplicate yourself in the U.S.

And in this way I was able to close that first deal, but also all the following ones pretty easily. The biggest concern at that time, my first deal actually was a little bit probably the language. Okay, I speak English, but it's different when you have to talk with someone that probably assumes that you are American and starts to ask you questions and you don't know what questions are going to be asked of you and probably are going to ask you things. Probably he knows his land or land in general more than you do. He could ask something that you don't have this huge knowledge at the beginning. So my concern is what if I look like dumb on the phone?

But it was just also that in my mind, that's not the case. Once you jump on the phone, you talk and you realize that most of the time, sellers and people who are not actively involved in land, they know way less than you, even if you are a beginner, because at least you started before you do your first deal.

Seth: Yeah. Wow. So you hit on a couple of really interesting things there. So Tony Durante. Is that his name?

Arturo: Yes.

Seth: Dot net?

Arturo: Yes, Tony Durante.

Seth: So he basically acts as your boots on the ground in the U.S. If you're somewhere else when it comes to things like wet signatures, notary signatures, opening up a bank account, he's literally a part of your company. And does he charge a monthly fee for this or something or a fee per service or how does that work?

Arturo: No. Okay. To keep the company up and running. I don't know if I'm right, so don't quote me on that. I think it's around $400 or $500 per year, but I'm not sure about it. And then every service, like for example, yesterday I had to send a check to Roxboro, North Carolina for one HOA that I had to pay became due. And so I sent an email to Tony. And so he had already gone to the bank. So he has the check in my office in Florida. And he took the check. He wrote the check as I said him to write the check. I prepared the COVID letter to attach to the check. And I said to him, you need to send this to this address. And he did.

And this is one of the thousand things that you can do very easily with someone that is on the ground when you have to take a cashier’s check. He also actually is very well-connected with CPAs and bookkeepers. So that's also important. I met a very cool guy, James Baker. He's a CPA, actually. He was also a land investor with LandGeek. But I think that he's not investing in land anymore. But this guy is huge. He also has a YouTube channel and his main job is to facilitate people to start companies in the U.S from a CPA perspective. So he knows a lot about it. So he's not my CPA yet, but I think that he will be starting next year. The real asset of my business is Tony Durante. That guy is legit and is great, does a great job.

Seth: Yeah, I mean I had a bunch of different questions for you. How did you open up a bank account? How do you get notary signatures? But it sounds like he basically solves all those, right?

Arturo: Yeah, he went to the bank and he's very well-connected with the bank. Today in the U.S I have four bank accounts because I have two companies. So I have two bank accounts, Truist with one company and with another company, Mercury. I opened it myself. It's super easy and everyone can do what you or someone in the audience read like Profit First for real estate.

Mercury is one of the banks that is suggested by the author and works very well, it's very easy to use. And Truist is the bank where before I had Bank of America and then I changed to Truist and in that case Tony had to go to the bank, explain to the manager. I went also when I came to the U.S, I wanted to know the bank manager and so he knew me in person and I also opened a savings account and other things. But yeah, I work with Tony but I'm sure that there are similar solutions outside that if someone is available and wants to lose a little bit of time on the internet, probably can find alternatives.

Seth: So how many times have you been to the U.S since you started this land business and how necessary were those trips? Like were those just for fun or did you really need to be here in order to get something done?

Arturo: No, I came for fun. But when I go around as I see a piece of land, the first thing that I think is I should buy this, let me see. And so I go on my right land ID, I try to see who is the owner. So it's always fun, but it's never fun. I came I think three times. The last one was for the conference but it was never like, just work. Most of the time was to have fun, do some work. Probably I had to meet someone that was just some investor, some funder, and keep good relations with everyone.

But for me, as long as it's land for me I like it so much that I don't feel like it’s work. For me, if I want to have fun, I go on my computer and I do market analysis and other things that are related to my land business. So it's absolutely a pleasure for me to do land. I'm passionate about what I do. The fact that it's profitable is just a plus. As I say to you, a lot of people every time that I meet them say that even if it was not profitable—and it is—I would probably do it in any case. I like it.

Seth: Yeah, that's really a gift to find any kind of profession that you love so much that you do it for fun and it also makes good money. I mean that's like the Holy Grail right there. So I'm glad you're able to find that.

So how do you speak English so well? Is it normal for people in Italy to know English as well as you do or I don't know, I'm always curious like I wouldn't expect that but the fact that you like did you try really hard or get educated or you just watch American-made movies and learn that way or what's your secret?

Arturo: I am flattered. I don't think that my English is too good. I think it's enough to be able to run my business. I was lucky enough to work for a long time. Every time that I was abroad I was working mainly with native English speakers. In Egypt they were Australians, New Zealanders, Canadians, and Americans.

Now talking about the last places where I lived. When I was in Turkey, I was working in NATO so of course I was hanging around with a lot of U.S. guys and met other people of other nationalities but we were still talking in English. So it has become natural to the point that today most of the time when I dream, I dream in English. So it's a natural language.

And also when I watch—I don't have television—but I watch Netflix from time to time or when I see things on YouTube it's always in English. I cannot see things in Italian, I cannot watch or listen to things in Italian. I try to absorb as much knowledge as I can from podcasts, audiobooks, and YouTube videos and everything is in English and normally it's related to real estate to land and doing this in the U.S. All the things are in English. So that is my first language today. I would say that today I speak more English than Italian on a daily basis.

Seth: Wow. Do you feel like your English has improved since you started this business or has it just kind of always been there?

Arturo: Probably yes, probably has improved a little bit. I don't know how much the business is a part of. It could be like watching films in English or talking to friends that are Americans and people that are Americans living here in Rome that I hang out with. So probably it's a combination of all the above but sure, the business which is the thing that absorbs most of my time has a big part in it. But do I speak good English? Are you serious? I don't think that I speak such good English.

Seth: Well, the thing you mentioned about, I mean, I don't know if you said this, but it sounded like you had some anxiety early on about getting on the phone with people and what if they ask questions you don't know and that kind of thing. That's a very normal thing that many people deal with. I remember I had that a lot and it sounds like you were able to get over it relatively soon. Like it didn't cripple you or anything.

Do you think it was just by repetition? Like just by doing it? Just leaning into the discomfort and exposure therapy they call it, where whatever the thing is you're afraid to do just do it and then do it again and then do it again until it becomes so common it's not a problem anymore. Is that how you did it?

Arturo: Exactly. The more you do something and you kind of overcome your fears, the more you become good at that. And I'm seeing it now also. I don't have that problem now. When I talk to sellers, when I talk to people trying to buy their land or talk to agents or I talk to title companies, attorneys and blah, blah, blah, I don’t have that problem anymore. The thing that I am struggling with a little bit, and this is something that is one of the things that I need to work on, is my closing skills. So at the moment, as I said, I have a VA but the one making the offer to the seller, it's me. And it's not about being afraid of what they can say, it's about closing skills. That is like the next level, right? It's about how to make the conversation in a way that doesn't seem too salesy or to sell the offer to the seller.

But I also realized that since I started to do it more and more and more, and also some books that I read like Chris Voss’ Never Split the Difference, and Dale Carnegie and others, actually, they have some things that you’d say, let me try this. And when you try this, you realize that it puts the other person in a mood that probably makes the conversation easier. But yeah, it's always due to repetition and knowledge and don't be afraid to make mistakes.

It's the same as when I speak English with my son, for example, when he comes with me abroad, we travel together sometimes. I will come back to the U.S in August and he will come with me for his birthday. And when we are out, I say to him okay, order something. And for example, we are at the restaurant. I said no dad, you do it. You do it. Why you don't do it? And he is kind of scared of the reaction of the other people. I said, you don't have to. It's not a problem. I mean, the worst-case scenario, they don't understand, and I can jump in, or you try to explain them in another way. And this is more or less the same when you have to talk on the phone with some client or other person that is involved in our businesses.

Seth: Yeah, it's really interesting. It almost sounds like a shyness issue because I know my six year old son and my eight year old daughter. My eight year old is not that shy. She's pretty good socially, but my son is very shy, which I was very shy, and I still am kind of shy. Like, the other day, we were walking through our neighborhood, and I noticed some new people were moving into the house down the street. I was like, Come on, Luke, you want to go say hi to those people? And he's just like, no, what if they're mean to me? I'm just like, Why would they be mean to you?

But I totally understood where he was coming from. It's uncomfortable for us shy people to get out of our shell and take the first step and make the first move. But, yeah, I think it has a lot to do with your beliefs a little bit in yourself. Why would you believe they're going to be mean to you? Why does your brain go there, of all places? And I don't really know the magic bullet for how to fix your thinking.

But I think that is where the issue is, being confident in yourself and believing that I have a right to be at this table. I can make this offer, and if they get mad, it doesn't make me the bad guy. It means we just don't see eye to eye. There's all kinds of different narratives that we can tell ourselves that will either make this process easier or harder. And some of us just have natural narratives that aren't helpful. We think things that are destructive in nature, and it's important to identify that and consciously try to think differently when you can.

So you mentioned your son there. So how do you balance your job in the military with the land business, with your family, with everything else going on? Is that a difficult thing? Like, how do you stay on top of that and make sure something's not getting neglected?

Arturo: Well, no, it's not difficult because my son is 23 years old, so he lives by himself in another town. He studies at university, and we just like to, of course, spend time together. But he's super busy. He is in a medical school in a town in the very northern part of Italy. I am in Rome, which is in the center part of Italy, so it's not easy to see each other. He is super busy. I am super busy. But we talk often and sometimes we can do something nice together like some trips. And he came to visit me in Turkey and in Egypt and other places where he could come and visit. So that's not a problem. I mean, with my son, it’s not a big deal.

The thing is, the biggest struggle, is… The most effective days, like today for example, I didn't go to work (and probably is just something that was supposed to happen even if I was going to work) but this is not the first time that it happens which make me think and I come to the point today I was able to put two properties under contract in one day and I was not going to work. Every time that I'm not going to work, I can do so many things and so well and also find time for myself, go to the gym, and try to get a little bit of time to just recover my mental sanity. I want to just watch a little bit of Netflix or go to the gym or do something that is not just land work. I can do it.

So my obligations with my military job that I like and again it allowed me to do a lot of things that I'm doing now, but it is the fact that there are always 24 hours for everyone. So I have to put the remaining hours from 06:00 in the afternoon until 06:00 in the morning when I wake up. I need to use them in the best way, which for me many times, means to sleep like 4 hours per night because I have to work. And you do this for three days, can be okay. If you do this for 15 days, it starts to be tough. But again there is this nice book that is, I think Dan Sullivan who wrote Who Not How and that book was quite life-changing for me and it's nice because almost at the beginning he says I didn't write this book. This other guy, Benjamin, I don't remember the name he wrote for me, Benjamin Hardy, actually it's about finding people that are better than you at doing what you do. And my VA actually is way better than me in doing what she does. She was already coming from a real estate environment so I'm happy that I found her.

Seth: Yeah, it's funny you say that. Just this morning I was working on this project, not land-related, it was with my self-storage facility where I was trying to put together these parking posts that indicate the number of each parking spot throughout our RV and boat parking area. And in my mind there was a very specific way that we were going to put these posts together and put the signs on each post and drill them into the ground. And I kind of had this idea that I kind of felt like I was the only person that could do it. Anybody else I would hire would just be incompetent and they would screw it up and make it look bad.

But my business partner, he had some people that he hired to come in and do it, and they were doing it way better than I was. It looked better, they were faster at it. And it was like, you know, maybe I'm not this genius. Like, maybe a lot of other people could do this a lot better than me. I just need to actually try. Or I don't know, maybe it takes more scrutiny than what I normally put on people, but there's definitely talent out there that can make your life way easier. And you're kind of like a disservice to yourself to not explore that and just try to handle it all in-house because there's only so much you can do and only so much that you're good at on your own.

Arturo: And this is actually if you think also we were talking before, about Tony. Tony is another example. I mean, without him, I wouldn't be able to do what I do, how I do it. I could do it because there are people doing it right, but it would be way more difficult because the reason that I was mentioning before, you cannot go to the postal office, the bank and all this kind of stuff. So to replicate yourself is the best thing that you can do for your business, I think.

Seth: Yeah, for sure. One question. Earlier you were talking about these books you read by Chris Voss and how when you have the right words to say to the people, it makes them more receptive or something like that to your offers. So what is some of that stuff? Like, what have you been saying that makes it work better for the person on the other end of the call?

Arturo: It's more about some techniques that it teaches. Like, for example, there is this mirroring thing that repeats the last words of the person that is talking to you.

Seth: Repeat the last words of the person talking to you?

Arturo: Yeah.

Seth: You see what I did there? I just mirrored with you.

Arturo: Yeah. And then you put it like, Are you doing this? And he creates this kind of empathy. But this is just an example. There are other techniques that he explains. There are practical things that you can apply to the way that you speak. I mean, that book was actually I knew about it because Howard Zonder, he was talking about it, and I said it was a moment that I just finished a call with a seller that was quite frustrating. It was one of those frustrating calls where you said, I messed up everything. I said, I need to do something. And I said, let's have a look at this book. And it was really illuminating for me.

So yeah, it's like a bunch of techniques that he explained. There is also Carnegie and what is the name? How to influence people and win friends. Something like that.

Seth: How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie.

Arturo: Yeah, exactly. That is also another one and I still have to finish it, but that is great. I read a lot and I consume a lot of books and education online. Most of it is for free. And actually I think that to someone that is starting today, I always suggest, okay, enroll in a course, but do not stop there. First of all, you have to apply what you learn. So you learn something and you apply it in your business. Don't wait to finish the course to do it. I bought my first deal when I didn't even know how to sell them. And it doesn't matter. Do it and you will find a way. Once you have them, you have to sell them, you will learn.

But other than that, once you've done the course, do not stop there. Education, especially if it's free, but even if you pay for a course, is such a small amount of money, almost or zero money that you put down and the return on your investment is infinite. Right? Because you can really change your life just with following someone like Alex or other people that are there, and they explain about business or about land. Listen to podcasts. It can really change your life, the life of your children, the life of your grandkids, and cost you almost zero. So education and application of the education is the best thing that you can do for yourself.

Seth: I think I know part of the answer to this next question, but I'm curious to hear what you have to say about it. So when you consider the different things that you are good at, naturally, as a person with your personality and just the way you're wired, what would you say is your unique unfair advantage? Like what personality traits have helped you get to where you are?

Arturo: I try not to take myself too seriously. So even if there is something very important when I have to talk to someone and this is also the reason why it is easier for me to speak in English if I was having an Italian business would be more difficult because in Italy we have this way to talk completely different, to change the pronouns and the verbs. When you talk to someone in a formal way or in an informal way. Well, in the U.S. you always have you ,right. And you can write it to a lawyer and say hey Larry, this is Art, and blah, blah, blah, and it's totally fine. And you create this kind of nice bubble and you make him feel comfortable and like, yeah, we are working, you're going to be paid, but let's talk about it in an amicable way. I have this thing that my superpower kind of is that I can make people feel comfortable when I talk with them and normally they try to open up to me and that comes pretty easy to me.

Seth: How do you make people so comfortable? Like what is it you're doing that makes them open up?

Arturo: I think it's just me being, you know, putting on a smile and making, I don't want to say a joke. For example, I was talking with this lady, Kim, and this is the second entitlement that we are working on. It just started like a couple of days ago actually. We are still waiting for confirmation of our offer but it should be accepted. And she was saying to me, yeah, we had this piece of land, it's 25 acres in Pennsylvania and we were thinking of subdividing but my kids decided—and she's from a very little, sad village in Pennsylvania—to move to Seattle and to Miami, the two kids. So we changed our plans and I said, “Well, how do we blame them?” And this made her smile and this made all the things that we talked after that easier to talk about because it put the person in a mood.

That is not always true. You can also find the person that wants to keep it super formal and then in that case you are screwed. But most of the time, according to my experience, people are willing to talk, and are willing to have a nice conversation with other people. It's not that all people is grumpy, on the contrary actually. So if you create the right environment just by talking, the words that you use, kind of be nice with people, don't be too formal and you can get the things done even if you are not.

Which is probably a little bit in contrast with my military thing because there is hierarchy and other things. But it is what it is. I am this way and it works well with my business and I think it depends on the kind of look that you want to give to your business. I want to look super professional, though. I'm coming here with the tie and the jacket and just talking very or you come here and you don't have problem to talk about everything and you are happy to talk about land and making some jokes from time to time. So it depends how you approach the business actually.

Seth: Has there ever been any low points for you in the land business? Have you encountered anything that was like wow, that was hard or that deal went bad or that campaign bombed. Was there a point where you felt like you were going to give up or have you just been kind of in good spirits since you started this and things have always gone well?

Arturo: Yes, actually there was a moment where when I came back from Turkey for several reasons I was having a very bad time, a very bad moment of my life and I didn't close a deal for months. And I said, this is not working. So I was so near quitting, but then I said, well, if I quit, I quit, it's fine. But what if I try and then I decide to quit? Which is at the end you quit in both cases, but in one case you say, at least I tried. And I knew that I couldn't make it. So it's true that I couldn't make it. It's proof that I couldn't make it. In the other case, it's just I think I cannot make it. So I quit.

And fortunately I decided to go with the first one. So I said, okay, you know that they say the last rep is never the last rep. So I tried to push a little harder and wait a little more and do the work. Because at the end it's always about doing the same boring work for long enough until you succeed. And actually I had already succeeded and so it was just about our business this way. Especially when you don't have big volumes and you don't send out thousands, tens of thousands of mailers out. You can have months that you don't close on anything and it's fine. Now I know it.

And it happened again that I had like two, three months. I was not able to close on anything. But it's okay, I just have my emergency funds. Let's say I have enough money to say, okay, even if I don't close on anything, I'm fine. And I keep doing mailers because sooner or later they will respond. And then what happens is that you send out 10,000 mailers or text messages and nobody answers. And then all of a sudden, like it happened yesterday, for example, to me, two people accept your offers and the risk is that you quit and the next person that was going to call you was the deal that you were going to close. So that is not acceptable.

Seth: Yeah, it's simple yet profound. This whole idea of you could either quit or you could try and then quit, that's actually kind of kind of a big deal just to realize that there's those two Paturzos. Because I feel like the easy thing to do is just to know and that's the end of the story and you never had to try or take any risks.

There's an author, Brene Brown, I heard her doing a speech one time and she closed with that whole idea of I mean, it's way better to try things and get hurt than to get to the end of your life on your deathbed. And you're just asking yourself, man, what could have been? Like, what if I had gone out of the limb and done that thing? How much different or better could my life have been if I'd tried that and it worked out? And even if you try and it fails at least you answered that question. You didn't just leave a giant question mark there. And it almost kind of gives you some peace of mind. If you gave it one last try and it still didn't work, at least you can officially put that to bed. Doesn't mean it's guaranteed to work and that everything's going to be peachy, but at least you gave it a shot.

Arturo: Yeah, definitely.

Seth: So do you have any long-term plan where you want this to go? Like, where do you see yourself in five years or ten years? Are you still going to be doing land investing? Are you going to pivot and do something else or what are your thoughts on that?

Arturo: So I don't see myself always doing land investing as the first thing. I have a number in my mind that I want to reach, after which I will probably start to investigate other opportunities, like multifamily commercial or something else, but probably developments. At the moment, I am very focused on land, so it will be not land forever, but at the moment it's land. I mean, there is not a reason why it shouldn't be. It's simple. And I'm still on this side of the ocean, so it's easy because it’s the same reason: no roof, no tenants, and I know how to do it, and I know people who can help me and funders, other investors. Actually, there is not a reason why I shouldn't do it, but in five years or ten years from now, probably five years from now, I will have started to do something else. Most likely.

Seth: Last few questions here before we get to the final round here, and these are probably the most important questions I'm going to ask. So who makes better pizza, America or Italy?

Arturo: Yeah, American of course. No, no. Just kidding.

Seth: Wow.

Arturo: No, no. You see, this is the biggest struggle. I mean, America is a great country, and I am really blessed that it exists and there are so many opportunities there, but every time that I come to the U.S., to eat is a struggle. I'm Italian, so I like good food. It's always a struggle.

Seth: I'm curious because I've never been to Italy. I've never had, like, outside of the Olive Garden, I've never had real authentic Italian food. So when you come here and you're disappointed in our food, what is it you're trying that you're disappointed in? What am I missing out on that I need to go to Italy to try?

Arturo: The worst thing is to go to the U.S looking for Italian food. You don't have to go to the U.S. I'm sure that there are good Italian restaurants. I just didn't find them. So what is a typical dish in the U.S? Don't tell me the turkey at Thanksgiving. What is a typical dish? You mentioned pizza for Italians, and I could say I know, there are others that I know, for example, in the Ukraine, but what is a typical dish in America? Hamburger?

Seth: Yeah, good question. Kind of depends on who you talk to and what they like to eat. I know we borrow from a lot of other cultures and basically screw it up and call it the best thing ever. Mean, there's like hamburgers, which are from Germany, and there's spaghetti and there's hot dogs and there's grilled chicken, you know, stuff like that.

Arturo: Can you say that grilled chicken is American?

Seth: I don't know. Does that originate from someplace else? I don't even know about that one.

Arturo: I don't think so.

Seth: Yeah, and I know, like Chinese food, sushi, stuff like that. A lot of people like that here. I don't even know if there is any actual American food because when you think about everybody not everybody, but many people here came from somewhere else and took their culture with them. So I don't know.

Arturo: Yeah, I can tell you, I don't think that there is. And probably when people see this, they will comment on it and will say, no, there is this thing and I would like to try it. But hamburger, I find hamburgers in Italy. And pizza, I find that pizza is food is the only thing that I don't like in the U.S.

Seth: Well, who do you think makes a better sports car, italy or America?

Arturo: I mean, we want to talk about sports car. I'm still in Italy. And if you think about Ferrari or Lamborghini.

Seth: It's kind of hard to argue with that. I would agree. I don't even know what we… I mean, we've got Corvette, we've got the Camaro, we've got the Dodge Challenger, but none of those really compare to a Ferrari or Lambo. I mean, they're just a different class of car. What kind of car do you drive again? Don't you have a nice car?

Arturo: Yeah, I have a convertible Mercedes AMG E 300. Convertible Mercedes. I like it. I mean, Mercedes is great. It's not Italian, but it's great.

Seth: So, final three questions, for real this time. And I actually haven't done this in a while. I feel like a lot of other interviews, I've just been too busy to get to these. But at the end of some of our shows, we like to go one step further, learn a little bit more about our guests and understand how they tick. So, question number one: what is your biggest fear?

Arturo: My biggest fear is something that you mentioned before, the day that I die, if I will be in my bed. And for me it's a kind of hell. My idea of hell is to look back at my life and not being happy with how I lived it, to say I could have done this, why I didn't, and do not have an answer. So that is my biggest fear.

Seth: Totally understand that. What are you most proud of?

Arturo: I am most proud of the difficulties that I overcame in life. I am most proud of, and this is especially as a father and also as a businessman, I'm well aware that I created something that is nice business-wise. The thing is that, and I think I'm working on it, but I'm not too good at that, is that when I think of something good that I did in my business or in my life, even if I'm proud, I tend to say, okay, I've been good, but how can I do it better? So I've been good is very short and I'm more focused on how can I be better?

So the joy is present, but it's just, okay, I've been good. Pat on my back. It's a never-ending cycle. It's always trying to improve things, which means probably I don't enjoy the moment enough. But I am proud of the things that I did business-wise and as a father.

Seth: Is there anything you can think of where it's like, I did that well enough? Like there's nothing else I could have done. Job well done, end of story. Or is it always like, oh, no, but I could have done this and I could have done that and I could do this in the future. It almost seems kind of like self-torture if you're never there.

Arturo: Yeah, it is. Like, for example, you close a great deal and you say, yeah, good, I had this $50,000 cash in my bank account, but I could have had 60. You had 50?

Seth: Yeah.

Arturo: But still, of course I'm happy, but I struggle a little bit, so how can I have 60 next time? And I try to improve, which is good for my business, but I ask a lot of myself in everything that I do.

Seth: Yeah, I think that's maybe the curse of an ambitious person is like never quite being there and always demanding more from yourself, which, in a lot of ways, that's super admirable. I guess it's good to hear that you still do experience joy in the moment. It's not like it's just constantly cracking the whip on, “Is there's something there?”

Arturo: I am now in the podcast with you, right? I am now in the podcast and I'm already thinking, when is Joe Rogan going to call me? Right?

Seth: Next week, probably after he hears this.

Arturo: Very happy to be.

Seth: So let's pretend for a moment that you just got $100 million wired to your bank account and you're not allowed to continue investing in land and you're not allowed to stay in the navy. You have to completely change what you're doing, but you can do anything else you want for the rest of your life and money is no issue here. So what would you do?

Arturo: I think that I am very much a giver, so I like to give to people, and I've seen many situations around the world, very horrible situations, and kids dying on the road. And so I think that if I cannot use it for my… and even if I can use it for my business, actually I want to help people that are not as fortunate as I am. So probably I would try to give as much as possible.

Besides, I truly believe that the more you give, the more you get back. And this is true. I was reading it and I was not believing it, but I can tell it's true. And I think it's because something happened and you kind of attract some positive energy. I don't know what it is about, but it happened to me. And you don't have to do it because you are getting back something. But this is a nice plus. This is how I would use most of my money if I couldn't use it in land I was not in the navy.

Seth: Is there anything specific you would do? Like a certain cause or charity or I don't know.

Arturo: This is the thing that I would do. I would probably take the money that I have and I would go where there are kids because to see kids dying on the road is bad. To see kids with a rifle, it's bad. This cannot happen. And if I had the possibility, I would be happy to do my part and I do it now as I can.

Seth: So you don't have to share this, you're not obligated to. But if people want to get a hold of you or learn anything more or connect in any way, is there a way they should do that? Like a website or social media or anything like that?

Arturo: Well, they can find me. The easiest way probably is Facebook. Arturo Paturzo, P-A-T-U-R-Z-O. And I am in all the main groups talking about land. I'm always available to talk and I always have to learn from people who know a lot more than I do. And also I learn a lot from people who know less than I do because they went through a different experience, probably, that I didn't go through. So many times I engage with people that started probably six months ago, but they say I faced this, I didn't know that.

And so Facebook is probably the easiest way. Otherwise, through email is arturo.paturzo@diendei.com, which is the name of my company. But I would say Facebook is the easier way.

Seth: He's very active on our Facebook group in our forum. He asks tons of awesome questions. He'll address issues that most of us have, but most people just kind of figure it out on their own or they don't think to actually ask the community. He just does a great job of elevating those issues and bringing them up. And yeah, it's good to have voices like him in the room.

Arturo: Thank you.

Seth: Art, thank you again for talking with me. It's been awesome to get to know you better and hear your story and learn from the lessons that you've learned in your land investing career. And I hope we'll talk again soon. It was really cool seeing you at the Land Unconference and hopefully we will cross paths again in the not-too-distant future.

Arturo: I'm sure we will. Thank you very much, Seth, it's been a pleasure.

Seth: Absolutely. Thanks.

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

Today we have the honor of interviewing Ajay Sharma. Ajay has been a vacant land investor for nearly two years now. He started part-time shortly after graduating college at Indiana University, and he got some early wins to propel him into being able to quit his job about 18 months after he started.

Ajay now gets to work full time from his desk in downtown Chicago. And get this… The guy is just 24 years old. Jaren is actually pretty good friends with Ajay. They know each other pretty well. And I just met Ajay at a conference earlier this year. And just in my brief interaction with him, I could tell within like two minutes, this guy has a very bright future ahead of him.

So, Ajay, welcome to the show. How are you doing?

Ajay: Thanks so much for that introduction, Seth. I am living the dream. It's an honor to be here guys.

Jaren: Yeah, man. It's an honor to have you.

Seth: Ajay, you probably remember this. I think it was in our first conversation ever. I was like, man, we got to get you on the podcast because I was just kind of blown away by the things that I've heard that you're doing and how far you've gotten in such a short amount of time. So, I'm really excited for this.

Jaren: I think I had a similar conversation very quickly after meeting you as well.

Ajay: Yeah, yeah. I remember these conversations and I held off for a bit just because I wanted to mentally prepare myself, had to psych myself up.

Seth: Yeah, totally. I get that.

Jaren: I think maybe to kick this conversation off, let's start with your real estate origin story. How did you first hear about land and then how did you ultimately get started?

Ajay: Yeah, good question. If we go way back into the beginning time. I remember as a junior in college, thinking just about my future, careers, wealth, all that fun stuff. And I stumbled across a book that you guys have maybe heard of Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki.

Seth: Ah, I've never heard of that one.

Jaren: I should write that one now.

Ajay: Well, it spawned into an interest of real estate. And started binging BiggerPockets, which I feel like everyone's pretty familiar with. As I got into BiggerPockets, I knew I wanted to get into real estate eventually. Fast forward a couple years, I had my first full-time job out of college. I still hadn't started anything out of real estate, but I had a good job. I was making a good amount of money. Didn't have any debt thankfully. And so, two, three months into my job, I'm thinking, “All right, it's time, let's start buying properties. Let's start building up wealth, passive income.” All this fun stuff.

And I finally started analyzing properties. I'm looking at markets and even cheaper markets. If you're wanting to buy, let's say, a single-family home in Northwest Indiana or Southern Wisconsin, you're looking at a duplex for $140,000 to $150,000. 20% down on that is still a pretty considerable chunk of change when you're looking. So, I thought, okay, my two options here are save and wait, which again, I had a good job, but it wasn't like I was pocketing $20,000 a month.

And then you could go raise capital. Well, in my mind, I was not comfortable raising private capital at a place where I couldn't actually tell an investor how their investment was going to perform. I can't say, “Hey, this is going to give you a 12% return” when this isn't anything I've done before. I can read all the books and listen to the podcasts and watch the YouTube videos. But at the end of the day…

Jaren: Good on you for having integrity. Because not a lot of people… People will go all around saying that. They promised the world on the silver platter and they can't perform. So at least you had integrity. That's a good one.

Ajay: I appreciate that. Like I said, yeah, it scared me too. I sleep very well at night the way I invest now. And I wasn't looking at changing that up. And so thankfully the mighty YouTube algorithm pitched me a video from REtipster. It was like seven ways you can make a thousand dollars or so in passive income, if you remember that video guys.

Seth: I remember that.

Ajay: I watched it and was like, “Huh? Land investing?” Not even a niche I was familiar with, I had ever heard of. And I just started binging REtipster. I mean that night I went for a walk and I was listening to stuff at probably 1.5 times speed. By the end of the night, it was 10:30 PM. I think I had gotten through like eight or nine episodes or something crazy. I would just be plowing through this stuff. And I was like, “Okay, I think I know enough that this is something I want to try out.”

So, that night I bought the course. About a week later, I had my website set up, a phone number, a mailbox and said, “Okay, I've got enough. Let's start calling up counties, getting these tax delinquent lists.” I feel like that's where everybody's got to start, but I got lucky in it. In my first I think three counties I had hit up, I got hit with a small town in Wisconsin, a nice older gentleman that had quite a bit of acreage. Ended up just picking up one of his parcels. $2,000 was the purchase price. There were about $1,100 in back taxes. There's some junk on there I had to get hauled off.

And so, miscellaneous costs, that was all in at about $3,500. I got pretty lucky, had found just the cream of the crop realtor in the area, a sixth-generation native to this town with a population of 12,000 people. She knew everyone. Before we had hit the market, she had six buyers lined up.

And again, I'm 22 at this point. I had never paid $3,500 for anything in my life. This is a lot of money. But having the assurance to make that decision and then we ended up selling it for about $15,000 shortly thereafter. After I'd paid the realtor and title fees, I netted about $9,000 and knew, “Okay, there's something here, let's dive into this.”

And all this was in a span of probably about six weeks. I think I had bought the course either August 31st or September 1st of 2020. And then it was October 8th that I purchased this property. These dates stick in my head, because there were such big moments for me. About three weeks after that though, we had sold the property and it was an awesome quick win to fuel some momentum.

Seth: Wow. Just to confirm, when you say you bought this course, you're talking about the Land Investing Masterclass?

Ajay: Yes. Yeah, that's the one I'm talking about.

Seth: I just wanted to make sure. I wanted to be happy for myself. Sweet, man. That's awesome. For a first deal, that is a slam dunk. That's really exciting.

Ajay: No kidding.

Seth: If I remember right, was that the one that turned into more deals in the future or something?

Ajay: Absolutely. Time went on. I think I had gotten about five deals under my belt at this point. I'll actually take a step back. It's funny. This deal set me up for… I want to call it failure, but let's just say I had very poor expectations for how the land business worked because I think I had sent out about 150 yellow postcards to get this deal. And so, in my mind I'm like, wow, send out $75 worth of postcards, make $9,000. We are going to be so rich so fast.

Well, unfortunately, that expectation meant I sent out not nearly enough marketing to get my next deal until about February is when I had my next buy. I had a good early win and then it took me four months to get into more traction. I remember vividly telling myself you are not going to be a one-hit wonder. You were going to figure this out. You are going to make it work. And so, it wasn't until June. I think at that point I had five or six deals under my belt.

I was out to dinner with one of my best friends from high school and his parents. And they had actually just downsized their home. And I told my good friend what I was doing and he had mentioned it to his parents and they were like, “Oh, well we actually just downsized. We're sitting on a little bit over six figures in cash. Can you do anything with it?” And again, guys, I'd done like four or five deals at this point, right? That's a mind-boggling number to… I think I maybe just turned 23 at this point. I’ve done five deals. I was still working full time. I was like, I don't even know how I would structure this, what I would do, how to find a deal that's worth this much. Because I don't think I'd purchased anything under $10,000 at that point. And I don't think I had sold anything over $35,000 at this point.

I had no idea how to deploy that much capital. And then a light bulb went off. “Huh? I wonder if the rest of this acreage is still for sale.” So, I actually called this seller back up to see if he was still interested in selling. And I honestly think he was willing to work with me, by the grace of God. I had heard through the grapevine that several other people had approached him, neighbors, local investors. He just didn't trust anyone. I really think God had softened his heart to let down some walls and be vulnerable to me and trusted me. And so, we got back on the phone, he said what he wanted. He said he wanted a thousand acres. He had 113 acres. So, I offered him about $110,000. He agreed to it.

And I raised some private capital. My friends actually took out a personal loan, which I wouldn't recommend to other people. But again, I had a lot of confidence in this deal. I just piled the rest of my cash into this. I had an embarrassingly low amount of cash for a short period of time because I just put all my chips into this deal.

We had bought it for $110,000, ended up selling it in two chunks. One at $350,000 and at $100,000. That's life-changing money very, very quickly. Again, not all of that went into my pocket. I had private investors, I had debt. I had to pay stuff off. There were attorney fees involved and a lot of other stuff, but regardless was just a catapult for me, being able to invest in the business. I was able to confidently put money into more marketing, higher coaches and really get the ball rolling. So, yeah. It was a really fun kind of boomerang story to go back to this.

Seth: Imagine if you had just been a one-hit wonder. You got the first win, you couldn't figure it out. “Oh, that doesn't work. I'm done.” I don’t know. It's just crazy, those moments of opportunity in life when you can pick which road you want to go down. And a lot of that has to do with your beliefs, I think. If you believe that this works or believe that it doesn't, whatever you believe, that's going to be the truth.

Ajay: Right. And I actually wanted to make a quick note on that because I remember when we had that first conversation, me and the seller, he was interested in selling all of his acreage. And I had told myself that again, limiting beliefs. I had told myself that I couldn't pull that off. And it was my first deal again. So, we had the whole factor of, “I don't know how this will return, blah, blah, blah.” And I was more comfortable using my own capital.

But I think your listeners might benefit from hearing you can only make as much as you let yourself. And that's a really interesting statement there, but I believe it with my whole heart I told myself I couldn't make that amount. It wasn't feasible in my brain to actually capture that amount of equity and then go forth and sell that deal.

And so, really thinking about, “Well, there's not really a ceiling, right?” We live in a capitalist society. Love it, hate it, whatever you want, the fact of the matter is we live in capitalist society and it's up to you whether you want to capitalize on that. But you need to let yourself believe that you can make a certain amount before you go make that amount. And if you don't, it probably won't happen.

It's Brandon Turner who talks about how success is never a surprise. You never wake up one day and say, “Oh my gosh, I've got washboard abs.” Right? It's the same idea and philosophy when it comes to…

Seth: That would be awesome.

Ajay: Yeah.

Jaren: That would be awesome.

Ajay: But it's the same thing with investing. I don't know a single millionaire that woke up one day and said, “Oh, hey, look at that. We're millionaires.” It came from consistency, discipline, hard work, intention, focus. And so, yeah, just a really good lesson that I've picked up myself over these past two years.

Jaren: Yeah. It's really interesting that you bring that up because I'll be very vague in my description here because I don't want to give away private information about people. But one of my tenants happens to make some good money so much that he wouldn't need to rent, but he still rents (or she). I might be changing the gender on you guys to be more incognito.

What's interesting is that I've noticed, my sister has a boyfriend-turned-fiancé at some point who refused to have a bank account. He would only take his check from work. He would have it in, he'd go and cash it. He'd keep everything in cash. And I think that a lot of these limiting practices or these limiting beliefs really do hinge on mindset. If you approach life small-minded or thinking like that you don't deserve, or you're not good enough or capable, then you are what you actually think. There are a lot of different versions of that. “What a man thinks so is he,” Napoleon Hill. There are so many versions of this.

But actually, if you're going to do this, I feel like every investor needs to be optimistic about the future. Like all this stuff about the economy and all this fear and all this stuff is like guys, if you're literally going to be investing, you should be by default biased towards an optimistic feature because what's the point otherwise? What are you doing? I don't know where I was going with that, but I really liked what you said there.

Seth: To add on that though. I forget where I was reading this the other day, but just to illustrate that point even further because I think a lot of us have heard that. Like “You are what you believe or your thoughts guide your life.” All this stuff, which is true. But I was thinking, “What are some crazy things people do that they dobecause of their beliefs?” People go to war because of beliefs. People commit suicide because of beliefs. People succeed and fail. People choose careers, spouses, everything is your beliefs. That's what it comes down to.

When I kind of read those examples of really life-changing and life-ending things sometimes that people do because of what they believe. It's like, “Wow, it's really important to examine my beliefs and not just be a victim of whatever I'm feeling, but really understand why do I believe that?”

I think that the tricky thing about that for me is that I can believe that I can fly, but I can't fly. I can believe all kinds of stupid things too. So, it's like, it's not that cut-and-dry. And so, I think that's where you have to sort of look at it from, “What are just the cold hard facts? What is reality? And where do my beliefs fit into that?” Almost when you look at a floor that isn't leveled and you pour a leveling compound on it. Your beliefs are that leveling compound, like it expands to fit this situation.

Whereas if you were to just put a rock on the ground and it just falls where it is, it doesn't go anywhere. It is rigid. It's not going to level anything out, but a leveling compound that expands to wherever it needs to, to make it level, make it work.

Jaren: Yeah, I really appreciate you bringing up that counterpoint because it is very true. And I don't know where the line is because I think even David Goggins, I don't know if you guys have read David Goggins's book, but he actually opens the book where he's sitting around with a bunch of college professors that are these research professors that are talking about mental toughness. And they're like, “There is a cap, there is a limit to mental toughness. The body has physical limitations.” And then they asked David what his thoughts were. And he is like, “Well, I wasn't going to say anything, but I know I'm not going to turn away from a point-blank question.” So, he just said, “Well, it's something to be said for something to be theorized versus something lived. And I lived it.”

And so, I don't know where the line is, but I do know that there is fruit from having a line to some degree. For example, I've recently come to terms with the fact that I need to sleep at night. All-nighters do not work. And no matter how much I push… Yeah, it's 30 years in. 31 years in, I just had a birthday actually. That's a primary example. There's a clear limiting physical imitation on functioning without sleep that's going to have very, very negative consequences if you don't meet that requirement.

I know there's a line somewhere and it's very helpful. It's good to be realistic. Like, yo, I'm not going to go become an NBA player at 31 years old with my life. it's not going to happen. So, maybe I love basketball and I can go become like a rec coach or something and have it be a part of my life, but I'm not going to go be one of the stars. So, I think it's healthy to have that counterbalance to it.

But where is the line? Because the whole point of belief is to combat limitations.

Ajay: Just to add to that, we keep talking about the line. I think that's the game. It’s pushing that line to say, “Well, can I do this?” I'm a really big fan of the Mamba Mentality, Kobe Bryant. I keep telling myself that I'm 24. So, this is my Mamba year. And it's like, okay, where, where is that line? What's the cap?

And as business people, I think it's really easy to quantify your success in terms of dollars. I think Mark Cuban says that it's not about, “I have money, this that as much as dollars are the success metric in a business. Your performance is based on that dollar amount, whether it's free cash flow, profit, whatever you want to call it.”

And so, in my mind, I often think, well, someone else is doing this. Somebody else is making that amount. So, I know there's not a physical limitation. It's a shortage of either resources or information. And then the game is “Okay, how do I get there as fast as possible?” Because we know that we are mortal unfortunately or fortunately, whichever way you want to look at it.

Jaren: I have my doubts about Seth.

Seth: Oh, I'm definitely mortal.

Ajay: But yeah, this discussion just kind of excites me because it's like, “Well, where is that line? I don't know. Let's find out and let's just keep pushing it.” And that changes as time goes on and your constraints change. Like I’ll probably have different constraints at age 75.

Jaren: Your strength increases.

Ajay: Yeah, absolutely. Fun game to play.

Seth: Another way to look at that almost from another angle is, at some point we are all settling for something. We are accepting the fact that it doesn't get better than this. So, I'm going to stop. Whether that's the business or the job you have, at what point am I saying, “Okay, it doesn't get better than this, or I can't do better or it's not worth working harder to do better?” And is that inherently a bad thing? Or is it just like, “Nope, I'm choosing to end the battle here?” So, good to go.

Jaren: I think that being content is the arch nemesis of drive, though. If you're wanting to be an ambitious person, it's very interesting. I've been getting a lot of life out of listening to Jewish rabbis of all things recently. And that's one of the things that they talk about. At least I've heard that theme brought up quite a bit. It's like, there's this tension, because if you want to make a lot of money, you don't really want to be content because you need to have that hunger to push through. Because if you're content, you're not hungry. You're like you want to go take a nap and enjoy the backyard.

So, it's a totally different mindset. It's this weird tension of how do you live in this place of gratefulness and gratitude, but also this perpetual, there's more, there's more? And it's not necessarily greed, it can be, but I feel like that's a really weird avenue to come at it from. I think it's more “I want to improve. I want to become better in every area.” So, if it's financially, the metric is money, but if it's spiritually, it's something else, or if it's physical or whatever.

I think that's how I'm kind of wired. Good, bad, and ugly, my Achilles heel and probably my superpower is that I just am incessant about wanting to get better. I think that's the key to success. I don’t know. I'd love to hear your guy’s thoughts. I know I kind of went on a tangent there, but I thought it was a good one.

Seth: Yeah. I think all betterment of humanity is driven by that kind of attitude. People who think it can be better and are willing to try and are willing to fail at it. But on the same coin, you'll never really get there. You're never going to achieve that perfect state where everything is as it should be.

So, it's just a question of, “How hard do you want to work at this? We know we'll never get there, but we can probably do better than we are now. When is it good enough?” And maybe it's that point of equilibrium where you've pushed your own abilities as far as they can go and you've found all the people and they've done everything they can do. And it's acceptable. I don't know.

Ajay: I think that's where we can get into, like Gary V is always talking about loving the process. And how an end result doesn't even necessarily need to be a thought. Now don't get me wrong. You should have goals so that you have metrics and KPIs to track against so you know you're working towards something, but it's not as much as “Oh my gosh, I crossed a dollar threshold. Life is done. It's over. That was it.” As much as it is “I love playing this game. Let's wake up every day and have fun running this business, doing this thing, hanging out with my family, writing a book.” Whatever it is for you.

But if you truly love the game that you're playing, then there's almost an element of “You want to get better at the game and you love getting better at the game.” And life is just this fun journey the whole time.

And that's how it's felt for me. Since I've been able to go full-time, I'm not sure at this angle, if we can see it or not, but I've got a whiteboard to my right here. And I can't tell you the amount of fun I have when it is just a blank whiteboard and I've got these ideas in my brain and I get to bring them to some form of reality. And it's a big nerd thing, but it is a ton of fun. I have a true blast just getting to plot this stuff out. So right now, I’m loving the process.

Jaren: Well, I think that's actually a good segue to one of the questions that I wanted to ask you just about your background as a kid. I'm just curious, were you entrepreneurial, were you the guy that was selling candy in high school and stuff, or did land just light the fire for you?

Ajay: Yeah. Good question. I'll say a couple of things about that. Number one, I think my earliest venture that I can remember was in elementary school. I grew up in Southern Indiana and summers would get kind of hot. School started in August. It was still pretty hot. And I remember a vivid recess where it was probably like 110 in humid. So, just sticky and gross. The kids just weren't having fun. I say the kids, I was one of them. I was probably nine at the time. The playground was made of mulch, like tire mulch, not wood chip or manure mulch. Very relevant to the story.

I remember thinking, “Okay, let's make some shade.” And I had basically built a fort out of mulch using various pieces of the playground and an absurd amount of mulch. I don't know how I did this in our 30-minute recess. But I created this, and called it the Shady Shack, and actually started charging students at recess $2 a pop to get to enjoy the Shady Shack. We got shut down very quickly.

Seth: Did you make any sales?

Ajay: I think I got like $6 out of it or something. It was awesome. And I tried rebuilding it the rest of the week and the teachers just were not happy with me, but that's kind of the earliest venture that I remember.

Aside from that, I come from a family of entrepreneurs. Down in Indiana, we ran a gas station down there. And as early as I can remember I was working the cash register. I was dealing with cash and programming our POS system point of sale and looking at margins and how much we are making on this gas shipment this much versus this versus that. And it was fun. It was really fun to look at this stuff and I'd always been into math and into numbers, but I was exposed to entrepreneurship at a very early age.

And so, in my subconscious, I was programmed to believe that you should have control over your income. And as I got older, and then got to the salary position again, a phenomenal job working with great people, good work-life balance. I enjoyed what I was doing to some extent, but I hated with conviction that I couldn't control my earnings. Even if I went and sold work to some massive client given it is professional services, I was doing tech consulting. If I were to go sell like a million-dollar project, at my level, I wouldn't get a penny of it. It was like, well, what's the motivation?

And so, looking back on it in hindsight, maybe I should have gotten a sales job or something that had more of control that you could control what you were doing, but you were kind of handed some more resources.

But I always knew I would end up in entrepreneurship. In college even I was actually an entrepreneur entrepreneurship major, which exists very seldomly. So, I'm glad I found one. Yeah. They pair it. So, they call it entrepreneurship and corporate innovation. So that you're actually marketable when you go try to get a job after college. But I always knew I was going to end up in entrepreneurship. I didn't know the timeline. I didn't know how, I didn't know when, but I knew it's what I was wired to do and what I wanted to do.

Jaren: Wow. That's awesome.

Seth: Yeah.

Jaren: Very cool.

Seth: On your land business today, you've been at it for a couple of years now. It sounds like you started the way most of us do, kind of just that boilerplate process of finding deals. How have things changed over the past couple of years? What are you doing today that's unique or different or what were some discoveries? Whether it be the markets you're working in, where it's just like, “Hey, you know what? There's a better way. I'm going to try this other way and do it that way now and see how that works?”

Ajay: Yeah. I'm going to talk about a couple of different things here because one of my goals with signing up to be here was I want to provide value to the audience. I want to start with just how things have changed a bit and maneuvers that I've been making to make sure my business is insulated from some form of risk.

When I got started, it was awesome. Like I said, 150 tax lingual letters to $9,000 net deal. Maybe not quite how the business was, but I do remember, I could send out about 1,100 blind offers at probably 20, 25 cents on the dollar. And I would get a deal or two from those pretty frequently.

Jaren: What market? Florida?

Ajay: Florida. Florida is really good. I would buy it $5,000, $6,000, $7,000 and sell it $25,000 to $35,000 in really good growing secondary markets around Orlando. It was kind of where I got started and got some early success and stuff. But that stopped probably later in 2021. I don't want to say stop. Sorry. It slowed down. The numbers changed. It took more volume to get there.

So, I think a couple of things have happened that have changed that. The first thing I'll say is I was doing all infill lots essentially. Despite my really big success being in some rural land for whatever reason, infill lots were just the easiest. The comps were readily available so easy to have security to go forth and actually know that you have the information to close the deal, make your return, whatever.

In infill lots, though, you have to look at a couple of different elements. Number one, a lot of wholesalers that were in house wholesaling, some education people that came in and were teaching wholesaling, basically flooded the infill lot space. And what that did, especially in markets like Florida, where so many people were moving from the East coast with the big push from COVID. DC, Boston, Maryland, New York, they like staying on their coast. So, they all came down to Florida.

So, you have this insane demand. Lots were selling like hotcakes down there, which is great. Except when people are making money, it's hard to keep it a secret. And so, these wholesalers were coming in and they were okay making $5,000 on an assignment because they basically didn't have to put any capital down. And they already had a lot of systems in place from when they were household selling.

Again, I'm not saying competition makes it so there's no opportunity, but it definitely changed the numbers on how much marketing to deal that it took. I would see markets where I was mailing and getting good deals and no joke, in like a three-to-six-month span, it was like all the feedback I'm getting is I just got an offer for four times what you're offering on a deal that I would buy at $7,000 and sell at $25,000 - $30,000. All of a sudden, they're getting offers for $20,000. And I'm like, “What? Who's making money on that?” And it's like, well, they've got a buyer's list. They're disposing of it for $5,000. They're basically not having to float capital to put into the deal. They're not spending as much on marketing because maybe they're doing cheaper means of marketing, what have you.

But it's been interesting watching that shift in terms of competition. Sorry, I like to set a bunch of assumptions before I start talking about how I've changed my strategy. So, this might be long-winded here.

The second thing I'll say is the change in interest rates has definitely affected infill lots probably more than any other class of land. I think I could be wrong here. And if anybody else wants to chime in, please message me, comment on this, whatever. I'd love to hear other people's feedback and what other people are seeing.

But I had contracts with really good builders actually that I signed in April. Interest rates started going up. We were supposed to close in June. They called me the day before closing and said, “We need a $4,000 price reduction or we're going to walk.” I'm like “What? Guys, this is not a good integrity play on your part. I mean, this is really slimy.”

But what do I do? I either take their escrow money and go remarket the deal, but maybe I needed the cash. And so, let's just go ahead and close it or I don't want to deal with it, whatever. There are timelines you've got to be aware of. But when you think about who is buying this and why they're buying it, and I think that's a really important thing everybody should pay attention to, as they're thinking about the type of land they're marketing to.

With an infill lot, you're either going directly to a retail buyer, who's going to put a home on it or you're going to a builder who's going to build it, rent it or build it, and sell it to somebody who's going to live in it. And so, regardless of where this is going, more often than not somebody who's going to get a mortgage, which means payments are going to go up.

Obviously, unless you've been living under a rock, the supply chain has been an issue. Materials have gone up. Labor has gone up over the past 18 months. So, it's this perfect storm that sucks for builders. I would hate to be a home builder right now because your costs are going up. Land has also gone up. And then all of a sudden with the interest rates going up now, your consumers can't afford to pay as much for your homes. And so, I would say that's probably the most affected type of land in the land niche.

Now in terms of what I'm doing, I'm shifting into more rural. I've got some marketing. I actually am acquiring. This is actually from another investor. Sorry, a couple of different stories here, but I'm purchasing from another investor a lot in Colorado. A 40-acre desert square. When you think about the buyer pool of that, it's got not great road access, but it has an easement.

So, who's going out there? Somebody that wants a four-wheeler, a camper, RV, whatever, camping, shooting, whatever you want to do. Your buyer pool is somebody that probably has the cash because either you're offering owner financing or you're selling it cash and there's enough of a buyer pool that's going to pay cash for it because your sales price is maybe that $25,000 to $35,000.

And there are enough people that want that product that had the cash before interest rates went up and have the cash after interest rates went up because they're buying it cash. And so, the payments don't change. You're somewhat insulated from that buyer pool under the assumption their income doesn't change. As long as this is somebody that didn't lose a job, I hope they weren’t a loan officer at Chase, for example, because I think a couple thousand of those guys just got laid off. But we're only really seeing, I don't know, this could turn into a very deep economic discussion very quickly so I want to be careful. But I would say going more rural in markets where your buyer pool is less affected is one thing you can do.

And another strategy is actually the forcing appreciation strategies. You guys have had Travis King, Mike Marshall on here. I'm working on my first subdivision project. I actually just brought in a partner who's going to be seeking out specific subdivision projects, looking at these at an individual level to see, “Hey, in this state, here are the exceptions. What can we target? Let's look at a county. Here are the 600 plots that we could look at. Let's go individually target these people.”

If you can force appreciation into the land, you're even more so insulated from risk if you're buying it at a discount of what it's worth today. Just for a number example for everybody, if let's say a lot is worth $100,000 and you force appreciation into it now it's worth $200,000 and you bought it for maybe 60 cents on the dollars.

Jaren: What strategy? Subdividing?

Ajay: Yeah. I'm so sorry. I just said forced depreciation, didn't I? Yeah. Even minor subdivisions, I'm working on a subdivision right now. It's 40 acres in Arizona. Maybe I'll talk about my actual deal instead of a hypothetical one. Because it's closer to home. I'm picking it up for $72,000. I could probably sell it today for $100,000 to $120,000 maybe. But we're cutting it up. I'm pricing it really aggressively just because I want it in out. Buying it for $72,000, $5,000 in survey fees and all that fun jazz. I've got realtors lined up and we're going to cut it up into a 20-acre and two tens. The 20 acres should sell at $75,000. The two tens should sell at $45,000 a pop. We're looking at a buy at $72,000, all in right under $80,000. We'll dispose of about $165,000.

You're doubling your numbers pretty effectively. And even if there were some kinds of correction, there are different levers you can pull all across the business. I'm looking at offering seller financing within the next three to six months if too much changes. It's a lever you can pull. And even if you're a very cash-heavy business, you can season your note for a certain period of time. And there are people in secondary markets that buy notes. And so, you can still create somewhat of a cash business as long as you're okay with the delayed gratification of building out a process where you're getting the cash six months from now instead of one month from now.

So, there are different levers you can pull to protect yourself. But I think oftentimes people are looking at it way too macro. Like it's not U.S. real estate. Prior to 2008, bubbles were regional. What happened in San Francisco was not the same thing that happened in Munster, Indiana. Right. They were very, very different buyer pools, seller pools.

Jaren: It's so funny that you're referencing local places. No one else who is listening to this knows Munster, Indiana. They are going to look it up after and be like, “Oh man, should I buy rental properties here in Michigan City, Indiana?”

Ajay: What is it? East Chicago?

Jaren: East Chicago.

Ajay: These are a bunch of Northwest Indiana towns for everybody that doesn't know the geography around. And you shouldn't. They're random, but actually, I have a rental in Valparaiso, Indiana.

Jaren: That's a great rental market.

Ajay: Yeah. So, thinking about the different levers you can pull down the line to keep yourself insulated from risk, thinking through who's your buyer on this land product type and who are the other buyers and sellers and what's the timeline for this stuff of selling and assessing demand on some fundamental level.

And I'm not super analytical necessarily in how I'm assessing demand, but even the tactics that we've talked about on different REtipster videos and podcasts before just looking at recent sales versus stuff that's on the market, that kind of a thing. You can assess some form of demand by calling local agents to figure out what the market is doing right now. You can often find people with buyers lists or they'll tell you, “Oh my gosh, 20 acres in this area, that fly off the shelf at this price.”

So, there are ways you can get information before purchasing, before marketing even as you're doing research. A lot of the changes I've been making and that doesn't even talk about a whole conversation about the actual marketing channels that I'm using. So, sorry, that was probably a 10-minute event there.

Jaren: The whole time you were saying that I was like, “Seth, what were you doing at 24? What was I doing at 24 years old?” I need to get all of my life, man, make something of myself.

I think that's actually a good segue to one of the key things that I wanted to pull out of this conversation is like, how did you do that? Let's kind of do a deep dive into how. If you could dissect what you've done in the last two years, and you could distill it down into some principles, what would they be? What was the thing that was most challenging? What was the thing that was most helpful?

Ajay: That's a really good question. What I really would want to boil it down to is information. And I think that's a very broad thing to say, so I'll elaborate. Whenever anyone needs to make a decision, you don't need time, you need information. And once you have enough information, and there's a whole discussion we could have about what is defined as enough. But once you have enough information and you're informed, you can go make a decision.

And so, for me, I recognized I have the same 24 hours in a day as Jaren Barnes, as Seth Williams, as Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. And so how do I, as a young person… Listen, I recognize because I'm 24, there is so much life I have not experienced, so many market cycles that I haven't seen, that I want to learn from those that have and figure out what information they can distill and pass on into my brain so that I can make informed decisions on how to run my business going forward. Because I don't know it all.

And I think that's my biggest strength is that I want to believe that I have the humility and that I'm humble enough to know that I do not know at all. So, I have aggressively sought out other investors in the market. I would say I am in several masterminds more than I want to admit with high-quality investors.

Seth: That'll get you a lot of information.

Ajay: So fast. And again, it's funny too, because there's a level of experience, I do think you need to have to make some decisions. You guys have had Travis King on the podcast before I coached with him. He's one of my coaches. And it's funny looking back on some of the lessons we've had where he'll tell me something and I'm like, “Oh, that doesn't really make sense.” And then three months later I'll be like, ‘Hey, I did what you said and it worked.” And so, there's a level of experience you need to have to have conviction on a decision sometimes too.

But for me, I would say the way I've been able to achieve this so quickly would be leveraging other people's experiences to get information as quickly as possible. So, I was actually counting in my life, not even just across land, I have five different forms of either coaching or accountability in my life. And these are all paid forms of accountability.

Just to count them off for fun. I have a personal trainer for health and fitness. We meet at least twice a week to do weight training. I do not like lifting weights. I don't like thinking about lifting weights and I would much rather somebody lead me through it. So, I knew if I paid for it, I'd show up.

I have a life coach, a great guy out of Bulgaria. His name is Stan. We've been working together for six or seven months now and it's been really good. We talk about mindset. He's been really good for mindset. Getting rid of head trash, telling myself I'm not enough. I can't tell you how many times before I've met with an investor, been on a call, gone to some kind of a conference where I'm like, “Stan, I don't know if I'm worthy to be at this.”

Impostor syndrome is so real. Even after you have the experience, even after you can tell yourself I'm a six-figure investor for over two years now, I do deserve to be in this room for whatever reason you don't believe it. But life coaching has been so healthy for me.

As we talk about mindset, I have an accountability coach specifically for focusing on weekly high-leverage tasks. So, every week we assess, “Hey, what are three things I need to get done that will be the biggest push that moves the needle the most? And make sure I identify those and write out the subtasks and what those tasks look like when they're completed.

And then aside from those other forms of coaching, I have two land-specific coaches. I work with both Clint Turner and Travis King. And I can't even describe how helpful they've been in not even getting my mindset right, but talking about marketing, connecting me with other people, talking about certain sets of approaches, and then being able to be in their networks. So, there is just so much information out there and being able to find somebody who's an expert who's credible that you can trust so that you're able to have enough information to move forward and make an informed decision has been probably the biggest thing in my journey.

Jaren: I have a couple of questions. My first question is, I'm just curious, would you be comfortable sharing a ballpark figure of how much you're spending on coaching and accountability right now on an ongoing basis? And then what you've spent on coaching and education in land in general?

Ajay: I would say coaching specifically, we talk about all five forms of accountability I have. And I think I'm spending somewhere between, gosh, when I say this out loud, it sounds crazy. Somewhere between $3,500 to $4,000 a month. So, that is I'm realizing a full-time salary potentially, but I can't describe how much my ROI is from that.

You talk about little tips. I'll give an example, actually, with regard to my coaching with Travis King. We were talking and I had mentioned to him that I was interested in doing some cold calling. And he pointed me to a resource that he was aware of, somebody he trusted, which is huge. We talk about, there's all these resources, there's all this stuff on the internet. But trust is something that's really, really hard to verify until you've actually had the experience, which is why the power of referral is so strong as you talk about business holistically.

And so, Travis King is somebody I respect, somebody I trust. He gives me a referral? This is somebody I've worked with, who has delivered. Okay, that signals to me I can go give this guy X amount of dollars and he will deliver. And so, I remember after this conversation, the service we used was Lead Mining Pros. They're great at doing a job-type cold-calling campaign. So, I don't use them for ongoing stuff necessarily. I actually work with a different vendor that I don't necessarily want to talk about yet because I don't know that I would recommend them. It's not been long-lived enough.

You can send out, say like 2,000 dials. 2,000 cold calls. And I'm not joking. This is going to make everybody want to do cold calling now. We can talk about that as a separate discussion.

Jaren: Yeah. Be careful.

Ajay: Yeah. I think the third lead that I got was a woman who wanted to sell two properties in a nice market in Florida, some good infill lots. And she said she wanted $20,000 a pop for them. I ended up disposing of those lots I assigned them. One of them for $37,500 and one of them for $32,000. So, what does that come out to? What's 17.5 plus 12? Anybody who's good at math? 29.5.

But that was a marketing channel I wouldn't have used. A lead I wouldn't have gotten. And in that one instance, I got a deal where I made $29,500. That's more than I spend on coaching with Travis alone for an entire year. That doesn't even include how you quantify the success you're going to have five years from now because of that instance, not even thinking about the reinvestment I can do in the business thanks to that capital. Not even including the understanding of working with that marketing channel.

I learned so much about cold calling by doing that job and I was able to take the jump. How do you quantify the confidence to go forth and actually take action on something? Sure, in that one instance, I got more than my ROI and that's just one thing that I've done with the coach. And so, I can't recommend working with experts and coaches enough.

Jaren: I have a couple follow-up questions on this because this is very interesting. Because what you just said is very dangerous. If we were to just end the conversation right here and we were just, “Hey, go spend money on education. See you guys later. That's the key to success guys.” That could be very damaging to a lot of people. So, let's clarify this a little bit.

One of the things that I have said even offline multiple times with you around is one of the things that I'm highly impressed by is that you have this innate ability to identify not only just randomly pick a good land course, but the best land course or the best few takes on land. The fact that Callen is on your radar, Travis, me, Seth, Clint, all these people you gravitated towards, in my opinion, are some of the best in the land space in terms of quality of education. How did you do that? How did you know to pick the right moves?

Because it goes back to the 80/20 versus 10X Rule conversations that we had. It's not just applied paying for a course and then taking action on what that course says. It's getting the quality course, getting the right course, the right lever and pulling that 80/20 lever right there so that you can get the exponential return.

So, how did you do that? And then I have another question afterward.

Ajay: Okay. That's a good question. I think what I would start by saying is thinking through the results of whoever you're thinking about doing education with. Has this person been where I want to go? Assessing, if my goal is to run a seven-figure business, I should probably do coaching with somebody that's running a seven-figure business. And recognizing, okay, I have heard through the podcasts. I think Jesse Quang has a whole title on one of his that “This is a seven-figure investor, Travis King.” I'm like, okay, I should learn from him because he knows how to do this.

I think that'd be the first thing is recognizing have they achieved what I'm seeking to achieve? And then number two would be kind of an integrity thing as you have an intro call with whoever that is. Figure out who that person is, identify them and then go get to know them a little bit.

More often than not, I feel like everybody's got some form of an intro “Book 15 minutes on call with me.” And so, get 15 minutes with that person and assess what their motives are. Try to peel back the curtain. And it's like, “Why does this person want to do this”? Some people are truly fulfilled by helping people get to the next level. I'm sure you guys know this. How many people reach out to you and they're like, “What do I do? How do I do this?” How rewarding is it when somebody actually takes action based on what you're trying to distill to them. Here's the playbook, if you do this and do it consistently for X amount of time, you will read their award. How fulfilling is it when that actually pays through?

What I would say is the second thing is finding a mentor or even just somebody that likes to share information genuinely. I love knowing that other people are achieving success from this. If you can find that person who, one, has been where you want to be, and two, genuinely enjoys from a character perspective, seeing other people succeed, if you can pair those together in a way that's mutually beneficial to the both of you, you're off to the races.

Jaren: My third question, and that's very insightful, but one of the things that I have personally struggled with when it comes to subscribing to different education outlets and different industries and topics and so on, everybody has a different approach. And sometimes you have conflicting information. If you get a vegan and you get a pro carnivore diet person in the same room, it's really interesting because they get very similar results and you're scratching your head. They're saying completely opposite things, but yet they're both getting results somehow.

I'm just curious how you navigated that because it seems like I'm really impressed that you've subscribed to education and then took action on them. Because you've taken action on different camps that have totally different approaches to things. Like Travis has I think actually he came up with the concept of a range letter, I think. And I've never done a range letter in my life.

Seth: You mean a range offer?

Jaren: Yeah. A range offer. Sorry. So, how do you go into a framework without any preconceived notions and then extract what's the most valuable for you and your unique situation and then forget the rest? Because that's taking the best from here and then applying it and creating your own framework is also hard for me to do because I feel like “Who am I to trust my own bias when I haven't gotten the success that other people have?” So maybe once I've gotten success, then I can justify it.

But in the beginning, if I'm going to be learning from somebody or taking a course, I need to go in humble, go in with no preconceived notions and just say, “Okay, I'm going to do exactly what this person says.” But then what happens when you have two coaches telling you to do different things on the same issue? How do you reconcile all that?

Seth: Does that happen a lot where you get people telling you conflicting things? I mean, I'm sure it does, but I know just looking at the land courses, for example. 80% of what everybody says is the same thing. There are definitely differences, but for the most part we're kind of on the same page, it's just a matter of the richness of information.

Jaren: I think 80% for sure. But for example, I exclusively sell through agents. There are entire frameworks that don't even consider agents. On the flip side of that, there are people who intentionally go in with the goal of assigning and double closing. So, they intentionally figure out how to get deals at 25 cents on the dollar and sell it 50 cents to the dollar to another investor.

And so, there are all these different approaches to market research. I use growth metrics. Other people use totally different things. Some people just go after tourism and national parks and that kind of thing. So, maybe I am attached to details too much. Maybe this is just a Jaren Barnes issue, but in case it's helpful for anyone else out there, I was just curious, what do you do when you have Travis says to do X, Y, Z in this situation, Clint says do A, B, C in this situation? I don't know what to do.

Ajay: The first thing I'll say is I haven't had a specific instance where I'm getting two camps telling me completely opposite things. I haven't had two coaches say “Don't do that.” What I will say is when I am learning new material, I often think about what the process is and why people are teaching me what they're teaching me.

For example, some of the camps that teach not to invest with a realtor, why are they doing that? I think number one, you think about some of the camps that buy the really cheap desert squares for $1,000, sell them for $10,000, whatever.

The reason they're doing that is because one, a lot of realtors don't want to sell that stuff. Number two, your margins would suck sometimes if you're selling with the realtor at that price point. And number three, they just enjoy the simplicity of the process of self-closing at that price point. It just makes a lot more sense at that price point. That's number one.

Number two, we talk about the camps that do kind of like the assignments “go find another investor.” Well, the reason for that is it's really hard to list without there being some gray areas here with broker lists and some platforms like that. And some realtors and brokers are okay listing without actual title to the property but I would say a majority aren't and it's a whole conversation to describe and find the right person. And you could probably spend an entire day trying to find the right realtor in one market and come up with nothing if you don't own the property.

When I think about the inputs, I want to drive into my business and how I want my process to look, that's typically how I make my decisions. It’s “Okay, well, this camp is teaching you to just do all neutral letters for example, or all blind offers.” Well, why do they do that? Let's think about that. Well, all neutral letters would mean maybe you have a higher response rate and that higher response rate could turn into opportunities that you wouldn't have seen otherwise. Maybe if you do all blind offers, it's because you can do it more at scale and people who want 60, 70, 80 cents on the dollar won't even call you, which is better for you if you don't have the time or the team or the bandwidth or the processes in place to sift through all the responses you would've gotten, had it been some kind of a neutral messaging.

And so, when I'm looking at making a decision based on information presented in front of me, I try to look at the holistic process to think about what is this going to look like and how do I want it to look? How do I want to build my systems? How do I want to build my teams? And I think this is a good segue actually into that I list almost all of my properties with realtors. The reasoning for that, it's funny actually, I was having a conversation with Jaren a few weeks ago. And a lot of my investing is in Florida and he was telling me a lot of our strategies aren't that different. You invest in Florida, I invest in Florida. You use realtors, I use realtors. And I said to him, I said, “Jaren, that's not a coincidence. I learned everything I know through REtipster. When I heard you doing stuff, I was like, “Oh, I'm going to go do that.” So, it's not a coincidence in the slightest.

I've yet to find out of an instance where we're actually competing with each other for a deal. Florida's a really, really big market. And I think both of us do a little bit of stuff in some other states too.

Jaren: Yeah, I'm doing a lot of stuff in other states right now.

Ajay: Yeah. Yeah. So that's great. Regardless, I think the point being, I like using realtors for a couple different reasons. Number one, earlier, we talked about information. If you can get this information as fast as possible from somebody who's a local expert, you're going to stage yourself so many headaches down the line.

For example, I have markets where it's like, “Oh, well, yeah, this is the same zip code. But if you're north of the river, that's $6,000 an acre. And if you're south of the river, that's $3,000 an acre.” How would you know that? How would you know that if you have three comps north of the river and one south? You would just average them out potentially. And so, there are some pieces of information that you just cannot get without a local expert. I'm not saying it's a limitation necessarily, but I'm talking about the best possible case scenario for your exit strategy on a property.

Number one is information. Number two is the management of the disposition element of your business. If anybody here has done any work with Clint Turner or Learn Land and that community, he'll frequently talk about how there are four pillars in land business. He breaks it down as acquisitions is a pillar, your data, your marketing, you're getting deals. You have your operations getting stuff done. You have your financing, whether you're using financing companies, funding, assigning, whatever. And then you have your dispositions, actually selling your properties.

I outsource my entire disposition side to agents for 6% to 10% off the top line of these properties. When you think about it, through that lens, the amount of headaches, the amount of responses I don't have to receive. And given for a long time, I have had no team until recently. I just got my first VA. I even had the bandwidth to even think through all the potential calls that would come in from interested parties for these lots.

Maybe I'm losing out on money, but in my mind, I am repurposing that time into building a better business. And so, I love using agents exclusively because I outsource my disposition side and I'm getting that information. Again, you want to make sure you're talking to the right person. I think Seth talked about this. It might have been in your last most recent episode that got posted. Again, today we're recording. I don't know what's going to get posted between now and then. But with Doug Smith, you talked about how you used to just call any old agent.

I unfortunately also had to learn you cannot call any old agent when it comes to land. That comes with mistakes, and you don't learn what you quite thought was important. So, you want agents that Jaren’s got resources, REtipster got resources on how to find a land-specialized agent. Other people talk about how to find land-specialized agents. But make sure it is somebody that understands land, has worked in land, sells land actively, has active listings. You want sold listings more than you want actives. If you're thinking about it, I want a realtor that's sold properties versus them to just have the ability to list them. But I love working with realtors and outsourcing my disposition side in that sense. Sorry, I went on a side tangent. I know the original question was conflicting viewpoints through camps.

Seth: No, you totally nailed them, man. I actually thought that was a better answer than I would've even given. The way you said that kind of helped me understand, people have reasons for what they do. They're not just wrong, which I think that's sometimes how I don’t know if you want to call them influencers or coaches or whatever. Not always, but sometimes they position it like that almost to be intentionally combative to drive the point home. And Grant Cardone is huge on this kind of thing. But to your point, it doesn't have to be this hostile thing. We all have our reasons and it works for different reasons. I just understand what's going on in the background. That's really smart.

Ajay: If I could add to that, even thinking through these educators, a lot of them actually don't want investors to be thinking for themselves in the early stages and I'll elaborate. Because if you think for yourself, and this is going to be kind of weird here, but if you think for yourself trying to get your first deal, you are going to have, not all the time, but more often than not, a lot of analysis paralysis. People don't know what decisions to make and it's just going to stop them from making them.

I think a lot of these education camps do a good job of being like, “Here are the steps, go do the steps, get your first deal.” Because they know that's how that works. Maybe it's not the most optimal way, but it'll get you to your first deal. And once you get that experience, I talked about earlier, how there's an element of conviction and understanding you get once you have that experience under your belt, then go make the decisions on how you want to grow and scale and be like, I didn't like that piece of the process. Okay, go change it. But you're not going to go change your process before no process exists. You can't change your process that doesn't exist. And so, I don't think the education camps are wrong. I don't think anyone's teaching is incorrect. I mean, maybe some people, I don't know them all.

Jaren: Yeah, I'm not going to name names, but unfortunately, I have coaching students that come my direction from going into other camps and getting taught really bad information.

Ajay: That's too bad.

Jaren: It's really unfortunate. But it definitely exists out there. There's a short list of really solid people that do it right in the education space for land. But again, that was your superpower. You knew how to identify those somehow. Guys, the takeaway of this is yes, go pay for education. That seems to be the biggest leverage point, but don't just go pay anybody. Really know to pick the right people who are going to really be the ROI on your investment in education.

Ajay: Even to add to that, if you could have anybody that if you're thinking about doing coaching with somebody, ask for a client, if you can talk to a client of theirs. “Hey, what was your experience? Did you get success?” I think that's a really easy way to vet through somebody probably. And if they say no, probably a red flag. If somebody's like, “No, no, no, you can't talk to any of my clients.”

Seth: I mostly would agree with you, Ajay. The issue I've seen with that though is that everybody has testimonials. Everybody has these canned things that even if they're not a great educator, when you've churned through thousands of people, eventually somebody's going to stick up for you. It doesn't necessarily mean that they are the best or anything, but in terms of how a person would know that, I don't know. I guess what you're saying, that's probably what I would do too, but it's one of those things. It's just not a black-and-white thing.

Jaren: I would figure out a Facebook group or something of the educator. And then I would go and reach out directly to the students. Not have the referrals come from the coach.

Seth: Yeah. That's a good point.

Jaren: Hey you guys, I wanted to circle back before we jump off the call today, and circle back to what you were talking about Ajay related to the shifting trends in the economy and the market and all that. And really just hone in on what you see working today and what the current climate is today. You said that you noticed you had to do more direct mail, for example, recently.

How much more mail are you seeing? What's your typical direct mail-to-deal ratio? Let's just dive into all that.

Ajay: Yeah. Mail-to-deal ratio will depend on the type of mail you're sending, what markets you're hitting, and what price points you're hitting the map. I'm going to start there.

Jaren: You mean there is no one-size-fits-all?

Ajay: Yeah. No guys, you just send out 150 yellow letters and you're going to make $9,000. If you take nothing from this today, send out some tax delinquent postcards, you'll make money. This is a joke. This is a joke for everybody. It’s not financial advice.

I'm probably sending out between 8,000 and 10,000 mailers a month right now. Some months a little bit more. I would say in 2022, probably a few months a little bit less.

Jaren: Across how many states?

Ajay: Mostly one. I've almost done entirely Florida. I probably haven't sent more than 5,000 mailers total in other states this year. Again, Florida's a huge market. You could hit it. I've hit some markets twice even this year, just because I've been farming deals out of markets that I'm learning and stuff. But yeah, I'm sitting out between 8,000 and 10,000 mailers. And I would say that probably returns, again, depending on your price points, depending on your mail. I've switched things up a couple times throughout the year, but somewhere between two and five deals. Again, just depending.

Direct mail still works. Anybody that tells you it doesn't is maybe not sending out enough, maybe not following up. There's a whole element of follow-up sequence that I don't think is talked about enough in the land community. In terms of I have leads that it took me six months of follow-up before I finally closed. I had people that went into comas and came back that I am buying land off of.

I'm not saying that happens all the time but what I am saying is do not mark a lead until somebody has told you to go pound sand, until somebody has straight up said, “No, they're not interested, stop calling. I don't want to sell my land to you.” But if somebody has said yes, and you have not gotten back on the phone with them to make an offer, they are not to be marked as lost. You should follow up with them until the day you die. Maybe not.

But my point being follow-up sequences are so important. Continue that. I haven't figured out the perfect timeline or what communication channel is the best versus emails, text calls, voicemails, whatever. But I will say that my business has grown exponentially since I started following up with people more regularly.

Seth: Well, what is your follow-up sequence? Is this start with mail and then a number of other things after that? Is it more mail or texting or something else? Walk us through that.

Ajay: Yeah, it's very seldomly more mail. I'd say a majority of it is calls. I will call and leave a voicemail probably every three days or so. If it's a mobile number, again, I'll have my VA send out a text through OpenPhone to just follow up. Again, you're trying to trigger a response essentially. If somebody doesn't want to sell me, just tell me that. That's fine. I don't mind. But at some point, you are interested in selling your land to me and I want to make sure I can get you an offer if that's the case. And we've either prepared an offer or have additional questions regardless.

But if I've learned anything over time, you have to meet people where they are. If I only do follow up at 9:00 AM, 10:00 AM, I am not going to catch all the people that are at work at that time and can't answer their phone. And then after a long day of work, maybe they don't want to have a conversation about this. So, I'll do follow-up sometimes on a Saturday, you catch people in a great mood and maybe try not to catch them in between stuff. Again, play the times, figure it out, be conscious of the time zones you're calling and texting and whatever.

Seth, I would say my follow-up sequence is not as methodical as I would like it to be. I really just generally follow up with people every two, three days. A lot of it is calls. I have definitely gotten some voicemail inboxes where their inboxes end up full because of our follow-up sequences, but they end up calling back.

Seth: Yeah. On that thing, are you talking about ringless voicemail drops, or are you literally on the phone leaving an individualized message for them?

Ajay: I am on the phone leaving an individualized voice message. These are myself or my VA, one or the other.

Seth: This is a fairly time-consuming thing, right? If you're calling hundreds of people and leaving voice calls for them.

Ajay: Yes. Which is again, why I will say, or my VA, because she has freed up so much of my time on the acquisition side. Her job is basically initial due diligence, first touchpoint with sellers and follow-up sequence. So, if I myself have been following up with somebody two, three times, and then it gets to a point where I can't catch them, I then tag her in Pebble and say, “Hey, this is yours now. Let me know if you catch something.” And she continues to call them and she'll leave notes every week or so. I have her send me end of day kind of notes of just everything she's done that day.

But it will suck a lot of your time if you were doing follow-ups every single day. I mean, you could spend two to three hours on that alone, which you could argue is a revenue generating activity, but you could also argue there are better revenue-generating activities.

We talk about 80/20. And I want to focus my time on what's more effective.

I think the other thing I'll say too is my VA's job is essentially to disqualify a seller as fast as possible. When you think about guarding your own time, now given if it's an opportunity, I want to be able to jump at it. So, we have processes in place that, “Hey, if this seems like an opportunity, or this is something you're not familiar with, let me know and I'll jump in.” We market to an area in Mass and we know everything here sells for $25,000 and this guy says they want $30,000. Okay. I take a look at the note and I hit lost in Pebble. This is not worth my time. Very seldomly, are they going to accept an offer for $12,000? If I want to offer 50 cents off the dollar, if they're asking for $30,000 that day. And maybe I'm wrong and maybe they'll call back and maybe I'm losing out on leads. But I would say in Mass, in my experience, that is not a lead I need to be following up with.

Seth: Yeah. I guess with all this cold calling or texting, or whatever's involved there, is any of this automated at all? How do you even keep track of, “Okay, these people didn't respond on the mail, put them on the list for cold calling and I'll just spend a couple of hours on Saturday doing that.” Is there any kind of software you're using to do that? It just seems like a ton of stuff to keep organized. How many times have I contacted them and this kind of stuff?

Ajay: Yep. I think the first thing I'll say is I do cold calling, I do cold texting and we do direct mail. Those are my three marketing channels, any lead that comes in through direct mail, if it's not going directly to my VA goes through PATLive. And PATLive has a form that they enter in my website that feeds right into Pebble. So, I see it. I get a notification. I know it's in our pipe.

With regards to the cold calling and the texting. I myself am not doing the dials and I myself am not sending out the text messages. My VA sends out the texts. I have a third-party company that does the cold calling. The third-party company that does the cold calling sends leads into the project management software Asana. If anyone's not familiar with it, it's a nice project management tool.

It keeps track of stuff. There's a free version that basically is a Kanban board, really nice, easy way to keep track of stuff. My VA has access to this board.

And so, I'll spend maybe some time during that day, depending on what new leads came in through cold calling campaigns, vetting “here's what we can offer on this property.” If it seems like an opportunity, we move it into Pebble. If it doesn't, again, sometimes there are notes from the cold caller, they want $50,000. I look at it, it's worth $40,000. Okay. Not worth our time. Or more often than not, I will still have my VA actually reach out to the seller and still make an offer. Because you just never know. And marginally, in my mind, if we just get one deal that we wouldn't have otherwise throughout the course of the year making offers on that, we get an ROI pretty easily.

Anyways, Asana kind of acts as a screening board. I don't want leads into Pebble if they're not qualified leads in some sense. And if they come in through direct mail, we've got columns that are lead in and due diligence and we try to disqualify them as fast as possible before it becomes qualified. And then we have a follow-up sequence and then there are all these other columns I could talk about that I have in Pebble.

But I would say there's kind of a screening process in between Asana that goes to Pebble. And Pebble is like our source of truth. And then again, we use OpenPhone. So we're able to see our history of any seller, like, okay, we've got 16 outbound calls on this seller. And maybe after a certain point, I will send out another piece of mail to follow up and just see again, if it invokes a response or whatever. But I will very transparently tell you I do not have the perfect follow-up sequence here. There are other investors that definitely have more dialed-in strategies than I do.

Jaren: Callan.

Ajay: Callan is phenomenal. She is brilliant. Listen to her about follow-up sequences. But yeah, it's definitely a work in progress, but I use both, Launch Control, which is what we use for texting and Asana project management board with leads that come in from cold calling. It's a kind of screening so that it doesn't go into Pebble right away. But as soon as we have any indication that they're either looking for an offer or it might be a deal, it goes right into Pebble.

Seth: Of all those different mediums, we got cold calling, direct mail, texting. I don't know if you do email or ringless voicemail or any of that stuff, but what is most effective do you think? Is mail the default that you start with or do you start with something else? I don’t know, just in terms of time and money for value, what do you get the best response from?

Ajay: Yeah. I'm going to set a couple of expectations here. Number one, all three work. Direct mail works, cold calling works, text messaging works. Talk to anyone that's been doing it consistently for six to 12 months and they'll tell you that.

The second thing I'll say is I have been doing direct mail the longest and it is the process that I understand the best. I would never recommend any investor stop a process that's working. That is the fastest way to stop getting leads into your pipeline because you start marketing through these other methods.

You might not realize it, but maybe you don't have the team in place to handle that volume of leads. Maybe you can't do due diligence in these new markets as fast as you thought you could because you either haven't found the agent, don't know the county sites, don't even know what due diligence pitfalls to look out for. I'm not looking at slopes that often in Florida and I'm not looking at wetlands that often in Arizona. I still check for those things because actually in Arizona there are some floodplains and wetlands every now and then, but that's a different conversation.

My point being there are different due diligence pitfalls in different markets. The second thing I'll say is I've only been doing cold calling since April and as we're recording this today, we're halfway through July. So, I'm very hesitant to share mass results in over a three-month period because it's not long enough for me to have conclusive evidence in my opinion. I will say I've gotten deals from cold calling campaigns. Again, I'll emphasize that it works, but you have to sit through more information. So, make sure you have the bandwidth to do that.

It's the same thing for text messages. You were doing cold marketing, which invokes a higher response rate, which means you are going to need more time to sift through those leads as they come in. And if you either don't have the team or it's not a market that you know well enough, it’s going to suck your time fast. I could tell you I've spent hours finding realtors and areas that have busted and you just wasted three hours of your day. Versus if I'm in a market I know, I get a lead and I spend three minutes comping and I know exactly how to do my due diligence. So maybe I'll spend an accumulative 15 minutes because I know my exact processes there. Unless I got to get some kind of a surveyor out there, which is a different conversation. If you know your market's really, really well, it's probably easy to explore these different methods of communication.

But again, it depends, which is kind of a cop-out answer here. But I can't tell you with conviction which one is the best necessarily. What I can tell you is I personally have the most experience in direct mail. Direct mail does bring me deals. Cold calling does bring me deals. Text messaging is just beginning to get me deals. And if you do it consistently over enough time, you will get deals.

Seth: Maybe a better way to ask the question is, which one do you like the best when you just think about what you feel when you think of one of those? Which do you like the best and why? Is it because it brings the most, those deals, or just because it's easier?

Jaren: That’s a good question.

Ajay: That is a good question. I don't know if I've put a lot of thought into which is my favorite. I feel like it's like picking a favorite kid, Seth. Who's your favorite kid? I'm just kidding.

Seth: That’s a pretty good analogy. But I'll just say the worst is direct mail and I'll look at your face. Are you smiling?

Ajay: No, I'm just kidding. Yeah. I'm sorry. Again, I would say take time to learn what the process is going to look like with all of these. I'm enjoying, I guess, cold calling from the sense that it is the easiest to outsource that process. There are all kinds of cold-calling agencies out there. And so, having it pretty turnkey in the sense that I send them a list and then leads get uploaded into Asana. They've recorded the calls. So, I can listen to the calls if I want to, or my VA can listen to the calls and they've got notes in there. It's probably easiest in the sense of resources. If you think through resource capacity, if we're doing texting, we ourselves are doing the texting and converting those into conversations. If we're doing direct mail, it's the same thing.

I will say though, I feel like the most qualified leads come from direct mail, is maybe my caveat. You call somebody, “Hey, you want to sell your land?” “Sure. Give me an offer.” You get that all the time. And so, I would say the most qualified leads will typically come from direct mail.

Jaren: But that's the variable too, because the list of numbers you can try and get a better qualifier of some sort, some data set that would increase the motivation of the sellers. It's really hard to answer this question, but keep going. It's fun to watch your answer because I've struggled many times to answer that question.

Seth: You mentioned something about cold calling agencies. So, tell me about that. Have you hired an agency or you just know of it? How does that work?

Ajay: I hired one. They basically do. I think it's 20 or 25 hours a week of cold calling. I just send them a list. And that's the one that they'll end up uploading this into Asana. Basically, you send them a list and they've got dialers. So, they manage the dialers. It's something you don't think about if you're not doing cold calling, but you need several phone numbers. After a certain set of days, you start getting marked as spam. Actually, if anybody's ever gotten a phone call and it says spam risk. You don't want that. So, these cold calling agencies not only manage the dialers, meaning like the mojo dialer, not like the people dialing the phones, but the actual technological dialers. They'll manage the phone numbers. So, the agency I'm using right now burns the numbers every 10 days and then gives you a different number so that you're not marked as spam.

And then there's actually management of your caller so that I'm not managing another resource. It was the fastest way for me to get into this marketing channel without having to spend a bunch of time learning all this stuff, make sure I'm compliant, all that jazz. And then second actually managing a resource because I don't really want to coach up a cold caller, especially considering I myself haven't done cold calls. So, I don't know how valuable I'd be when it comes to training that. How do you train on a process that you yourself have not done effectively in my mind?

And so, for me it was the most turnkey solution. Full transparency, I think right now I'm paying about $1,100 a month to have that 25 hours a week. And it's probably bringing in anywhere between one and five leads every single day. So, it's a good lead source. Of those, again, I've only been doing this for three months, so I can't tell you conclusive evidence of those leads converted to deals again, because that follow-up sometimes takes a long time.

I have leads in my pipeline that were from cold calling sequences that I'm still following up with that I've sent contracts to that said they're interested in selling and we're just waiting to close this up. And some of this stuff just takes time. It's not today or tomorrow kind of a thing. And so, bring me back in six months and maybe I'll have a different tune.

Seth: Is it REI Call Center? Is that what it is?

Ajay: Yeah, that's it. Sorry. Yeah, I think so.

Seth: I just Googled them. Sorry for the question on this. I haven't talked to many people who have done this on land, but the idea is you give them the numbers, you give them some kind of script of what they have to ask. How deep do they go into this conversation? Say if it turns out to be a good lead, do they gather all the information and then give it to you? Or is it just like, “Hey, this guy's interested. Now you follow up Ajay.” How does that work?

Ajay: Yeah. There's definitely a script. I would say it mirrors a lot of what you'll find in the house wholesaling world. And that's another thing I would really recommend listeners to dive into is the house wholesaling world in the sense that these guys have been doing it a lot longer than the land industry in some sense. And they've got really mature processes for their marketing. Their acquisition side of the business is extremely similar to ours. It's very different on the disposition side is what I'll say. It's a different product. It's a different disposition.

But in terms of techniques, we can learn from acquisitions, I think there are a lot of good learning lessons from there. If I could recommend another podcast, if that's allowed, Steve Trang’s Real Estate Disruptors is phenomenal. They really just sit down and open up their playbook. And I have drawn all kinds of stuff about sales process learning.

That's another thing I want to briefly touch on is a lot of people don't realize that when they start in the land business. But if you're on the phone with the seller, you’re selling cash, you're selling money, you're selling convenience. You're in sales, whether you like it or not. And so, you really should try to learn sales as much as you can. I actually have it as a rock this quarter, rock being a terminology from the book Traction by Gina Wickman about a quarterly objective to master my sales process in my business. If you look behind me, this box right here is actually a pamphlet and a set of stuff from the 80s. Xerox, like a printer company, spent tens of millions of dollars pouring into their sales stuff. And I'm going to go through it sometime this quarter, learn everything I can from sales and try to include it into the business if I can.

I'm taking techniques from wholesalers all the time, trying to use neurolinguistics. I think you've had guests about that kind of stuff before. What can we do to just raise the bar and get as many leads to closings as possible, especially if you're willing to be creative. Because as a business owner, you're in the business of solving problems. And if somebody needs a property sold, just because you can't buy it at 50 cents on the dollar, you just had Jesse on here a few months ago, can you do an option contract? Can you assign it? Do you know somebody else that's in this market? Can you partner? There are other things you can do to de-risk yourself. But sorry, that's a side tangent, Seth. Let me answer your question now.

I will send them a script and the information they gather is pretty limited. We confirm name, we confirm the area or address. If the property's gotten address to make sure we've got the right person, right property on the phone. And then they're actually going to gather just motivation. “Why are you looking to sell?” They try to get a price point if they can. “You own it for a long time. What are you looking for?” And off the top of my head, that might be it. So, it's really just motivation. “Are you interested in selling? Why are you interested in selling? What would you sell for? And what's your timeline? We typically close within 30 days. Is that a timeline you can work with?” “No, actually my brother-in-law also has the property and he's…”

You want to get some of this stuff. Again, you're trying to disqualify as fast as you can. If somebody says they want a million dollars on a $200,000 property, you're probably not going to buy it. I might still make an offer with my VA. I might call them up and say, “Hey, we can give you $100,000,” and they're going to tell you to pound sand. And if they do, that's fine, but we made an offer. So, trying to collect that stuff and disqualify.

Seth: And you said this stuff is all recorded, right? So, you can go back and listen to whatever they said.

Ajay: Yes.

Seth: Do they only give you the recordings of the people who are, “Yes, this is a good lead” or do they just dump everything in your inbox and you got to sift through it?

Ajay: I think I have access to everything. Don't quote me on that. I can't say I've tried to listen to the bad calls because that sounds like a nightmare. I barely listen to all the good ones. There are much better forms of entertainment out there guys. Like REtipster is great. I'm going to set up a YouTube channel just for this.

Jaren: That actually would be a really good podcast or a YouTube channel.

Ajay: Yeah, no kidding.

Jaren: And you just had the real estate blooper calls and everybody sends their worst motivated seller calls of all time.

Ajay: Even voicemails of all the angry sellers. All right. We're getting too sidetracked here. What I will say though, is they attach the recording of the call to the file in Asana. So, there'll be a downloadable audio file in Asana that I can then download and listen to for all the successful calls. I think there's a dashboard I can log into to listen to all of them. If I wanted to spend four hours of my day listening. Maybe I'll listen to them at 2X speed or something to get through quicker. But to my knowledge, yes, but don't quote me on it.

Seth: Yeah. But I guess one of the main takeaways for the cold calling and this maybe applies to texting and other stuff too, but the main takeaway is these are people who for whatever reason were not responsive to direct mail. Maybe they threw their mail away. Maybe they just don't like how you come across direct mail. So, if you hadn't cold-called them, that never would've been materialized. Is that accurate or am I missing that?

Ajay: I think so. And I think there's something to recognize about a call to action. So, you think about direct mail and the onus is now on the seller. You have sent them this and they have to either call or submit it on the website or do whatever other option you have for a seller to reach out to you. The onus is on them.

But when you're already on the phone with them, you've opened that door. And that's kind of what you're trying to get to as a phone call. And don't get me wrong. There are sellers that don't like talking on the phone and just want to communicate over email. And that's awesome. If I don't have to talk to anyone and I can make money, let's do it all the time. If I could just email sellers that are motivated for a living, we would be having this podcast at my lake house in West Palm Bay or whatever in West Palm Beach.

But when you're able to get somebody on the phone, there's just an extra element of building rapport if you've had this conversation with a person. You have the ability to build trust. We talked about trust earlier. How do I know you're not a scammer? Well, you don't. So, let me get to know you, whatever. Can you use certain tactics to then build rapport?

But I think there's an element of just meeting this seller where they are. And even as you think it through, we're talking about marketing holistically. But I think again, instead of thinking of the macro, let's look through the lens of the micro for a second. Each one of these sellers is an individual and your 24-year-old seller that just inherited a property in rural Kansas is going to be a different demographic than your 86-year-old seller named Betty that bought it to go live with her husband who's passed away and she lives in Massachusetts. Those are two very different seller demographics. And honestly, getting on the website is very difficult for Betty potentially. I'm not going to generalize, but generally speaking, the older folks maybe have a little bit more trouble with the tech. Whereas if you're already on the phone with older folks, they actually love talking. And so, you may have a 25-minute conversation that only three of those get somewhere.

But I would say the focus is less on how effective the marketing is and more on whether can you touch more people this way for marginally less cost and less investment? And an investment not even just being dollars, but actually acquiring information as well. I'm really big on information here because if it's a market that you know very well and it's big enough that you can send out mail and do text and do calls and it takes you less time to do due diligence and you already have a realtor on the back end and it's a very easy system that you've got flowing, ideally, you're getting a lot more deals out of it. Again, maybe not quite the answer we were looking for, but it's about the angles in the process.

Seth: Yeah. On the cold calling thing, did you have to make up your own script and give it to them? Is it just a list of questions or you have to literally spell out word-for-word, say this to these people. Because I know it almost kind of sounds like PATLive, but instead of accepting calls, they're making the calls.

Ajay: They're outbound instead of inbound. Right.

Seth: Is it pretty much the same thing with that one difference?

Ajay: I would say, yeah. It's pretty similar. Sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off there, Seth, but yeah, very similar. Honestly, again, I'm not saying this is perfect, but I just tweaked the script that the households’ sellers were using. I made it more effective to land. Again, it is a rock of mind this quarter to work on sales process and so copywriting and working through the actual verbiage we're using in our cold calling in those conversations is something I'll be working on for the next two and a half months.

Hopefully, I have better information for you later, but I'm a really big progress-over-perfection person. And so, I'm like, “Well, this works, let's get it out the door and see what happens. And oh, look at that. It's bringing me deals. Let's make it better now.” If I can just keep progressing in the right direction, I know I'm doing the right thing or at least I think I am. So yeah, I don't have any magic copywriting for you. I just tweaked what the wholesalers were using.

Seth: Gotcha. Awesome, man. Well, I guess maybe we'll try to wrap this up. Ajay, you've been very generous with your time. I appreciate everything you've shared. I've learned a ton just from talking to you here. If people want to find out more about you or get a hold of you in some way, you don't have to offer this up, but if they wanted to find out who is Ajay, that kind of thing, beyond what this podcast is all about, how would they do that? Do you have a website or something?

Ajay: Yeah. I actually just started an Instagram page recently. There's not a ton of content on there yet, but I am really responsive on it. So, you're welcome to just DM me. It's investingwithajay and I'm going to begin posting content about real estate, land, business, mindset, entrepreneurship, all that fun stuff. So hopefully by the time this airs, there's more on there, but it's a great way to get a hold of me. You're welcome to DM me and I'm happy to hop on a quick call and talk through that. If there's anybody out there that's a land wholesaler, you're welcome to hit me up and see if we can potentially work together.

Jaren: I am that friend, me too. If you're a wholesaler out there, I will buy it 50 cents on the dollar all day long.

Ajay: Jaren and I will be partnering on some deals if there's anyone.

Jaren: We are actually selling a property that we're partnered on right now.

Seth: Isn't that like a huge deal?

Jaren: Yeah. It's a good deal. It's not as good as it could've been. I think if we would've waited out, it could've been better, but it was a good deal.

Seth: This is one of those conversations where I wish we could go a lot longer. I feel like we could very easily, but this has already been a pretty long one. So Ajay, thanks a lot. I really appreciate it. And maybe we can do part two at some point. It sounds like there's plenty we could talk about. But in the meantime, I appreciate you sharing as much as you did right here. I appreciate it.

Ajay: Yeah. Thanks guys.

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

Today, I'm really excited because I get to talk to my good friend, Jon Farling. Jon and I, we go back. I think it was in 2019 when we first met, if I remember right. It was the first ever BiggerPockets conference in Nashville. And I didn't know Jon. I just showed up and I was looking for people. And Jon had sent out an announcement on the app saying, "Hey, everybody. There's a self-storage gathering over here." And like six or seven people showed up, including me and including Jon.

At the time I was just starting to learn about self-storage. I didn't know a whole lot about it, but I wanted to rub shoulders with anybody who was there. I got to toggle with Jon a little bit. And I think at the time, Jon, had you just bought one storage facility? Or did you have two at that point?

Jon: I think I had one. Yeah, one that I owned and then one I was under contract on.

Seth: Okay. Got you. These were not huge ones. How many units was each one?

Jon: First one was about 100 that I owned. And then one that I was in contract on was about 130. They're both around 12,000, 13,000 square feet. So yeah, not very big.

Seth: Got you. When I met Jon, the thing that struck me about him was that he was just a normal guy. Just a normal, everyday person working a job and he wanted to get into this business. He had a dream to go far with that and he was really doing it. He wasn't just learning about it and reading books. It's like he was actually making it happen. He just seems to have a lot of good practical knowledge, even in the early stages that he was in. And I was just picking his brain.

It was one of those interesting situations where I felt like I was getting more value just talking to him than if I was talking to some guru or course maker or something, just because he was just a real guy. I wasn't getting sold on something. I wasn't being told something that isn't true. I was just hearing the whole story from him.

So, Jon and I, we stayed in touch. We ended up forming a mastermind group together with a few other people. And I learned a ton of stuff from that. It was crazy how much I learned, which on one hand it's not surprising. I usually do learn a ton from mastermind groups. I still have pages and pages of notes from just talking to Jon, talking to the other guys that were in this group.

And fast forward a few years to now, and Jon, how many facilities do you have?

Jon: Own and operate eight myself, and then passively invest in two others.

Seth: And how many units is that?

Jon: About 1,200.

Seth: So, in the span of just a few years, he's gotten up to 1,200 units and you quit your job. And this was like a couple of years ago now when you quit your job?

Jon: Yeah, just about two years ago.

Seth: And I remember back when we first met, I don't want to put words in your mouth, Jon, but just from what I recall, it's not like you hated your life or anything, but like most people, you weren't super content with that life of just working your job. You wanted something more and you felt stuck and you wanted to get out. Is that accurate?

Jon: Yeah. This is being recorded. I didn't hate my job, but I wanted to definitely do more. I've always had an entrepreneurial spirit about myself. That actually fit in the job that I was in. But yeah, I wanted to go further. I had hit my ceiling there. I was there 11 years doing outside sales. I had hit my ceiling probably in year three. So yeah, I was ready. I started real estate investing in 2015 with a single-family rental. So, there's a lot of groundwork that was done before, one, I got self-storage, and two, I was able to even think about leaving my job.

I left my job in 2020. So, I had five years of trying to figure this thing out. How am I going to leave my job? Yeah, there's a lot of foundation work that a lot of people may not know about or realize. That's everyone's story, I'm sure. But yeah, there was a lot of foundation that had to be laid first.

Seth: Yeah. Maybe we should just go back to 2015 when you started it. So, you were doing, was it single-family or multi-family or the rental property thing as most people do, right?

Jon: Yeah. Actually, I was thinking about it this morning. Yeah, 2014 I was actually coaching basketball, and had to quit that lifestyle because our first child, our daughter was born, in March of 2014, and then the wheels start spinning. It's like, “Okay, how am I going to pay for her college education? How am I going to retire?” I remember all these thoughts.

Just doing the math and I'm like, “Well, one, I'm never going to retire if I keep this up, or I'll have to live off $30,000 a year.” And then going down the rabbit hole of how to pay for her education and that eventually led me to, “I need to do something else on the side.” And I've always had a bug for real estate. My parents were in it. They built spec homes as I was growing up. They had a few rentals here and there.

And looking back in 2014, I probably looked at no less than 20 houses, maybe 40. I wish I would've had enough sense to buy all of them, but at the time the rents didn't match up with what I would've been paying for them. But yeah, right now they're all triple the value easily.

So, I did end up finding one. I bought basically one per year, starting 2015. The first one I did all the rehab myself, which was good and bad. I was grinding, learned a lot. But you can't scale a business that way either. And that proves too, because I did literally one per year and then finally, I decided I wanted to get into something bigger and eventually found storage and was able to scale from there.

Seth: When and why did you find storage? What was it about the storage business that enticed you to pursue that versus the rental property thing? I know my reasons, but what were your reasons?

Jon: I looked at everything. I tried finding multi-family, and this goes back to 2017-2018. I couldn't find anything that made sense. I tried doing a mail campaign with single-family. It just didn't work. I wasn't doing the right things obviously. I didn't have the right systems and processes. I looked at small businesses to buy, Subway franchises, everything. Eventually, I found a car wash down the street from where we lived and found out I could get an SBA loan, which, for that deal, I think I could have brought 10% as a down payment, which to me excited me, because I could get into a larger asset, make more of a cash flow, better return with less money in.

The deal ended up falling apart. However, after that I did a little bit more research on SBA and found out I could get into self-storage with an SBA loan, and then start digging through there. And then that actually led me to Mike Wagner, who taught me storage and a bunch of other things too. But yeah, that's kind of how I got there. I was just digging through SBA loans, seeing how they worked, what they cover, and storage was a great fit.

Seth: I know for a lot of people who are curious about the self-storage business, the numbers are a big thing in terms of like, what does it cost to buy one of these things? How much money can you make from them? What kind of down payment do you need? And just that whole financing thing. It sounds like you were coming from this world where you had rental properties. So, did you sell off a rental property and use that for your down payment? Is that how you handled it?

Jon: I've done all my deals by myself other than one personal loan that I had, which basically was for repairs for one of my deals. But yeah, my first deal, what did we do? I think we had cash, but I think we technically use our HELOC. Second deal, same type of thing. By the time those two were rolling I was like, “I see the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. It's time to get rolling here.” I started selling off my single-family rentals. Actually, I cashed out my 401(k) after I quit my 9-to-5. So yeah, I basically sold everything off and had some cash too, to be able to get in all these.

But yeah, the first two deals were using HELOC and leveraging that. We had some equity in our house. I was able to do that. It was the right timing. Things just lined up and were able to roll from there.

Seth: How did you find these first couple of deals?

Jon: Yeah. When I said I tried doing mail marketing campaigns for single-family and multi-family, it didn't work for me. It worked for me in storage, and the main reason why is because I went into these smaller towns and they had never received a letter before. So, I hit them at the right time in the right areas.

Now, only three years later, things have drastically changed. I get letters probably once a week at all my facilities. Whereas three years ago, those owners of the same facilities weren't getting any attention. So yeah, I was the only one. It was a good time.

Seth: Why do you think that changed? Is it just because it's so hard to find deals these days? I've noticed that in the land business too and I have some theories as to why, but in terms of self-storage, why is it that it was something that wasn't done and all of a sudden everybody's doing it?

Jon: COVID, good and bad. Yeah. More investors came in because of COVID. Just a ton of reasons. COVID is supposedly recession-resistant. The lean process is easier. So, when we couldn't evict tenants in houses or multi-family, I was still evicting people in storage.

Well, you think about all the assets that kind of failed too, right? Office isn't doing very well. Retail. So yeah, you just had more people coming into the space. Technology has changed storage a ton over the past five to seven years. There were people coming in slowly and then COVID just dumped a bunch of people. Good and bad. It dumped a bunch of renters too. More people are using storage now, but more people are buying and developing storage as well.

Seth: Yeah. Now, if I remember right, didn't I hear you say that you were just cold-calling people in your area, like just Googling self-storage facilities and calling them to see if they wanted to sell? Was that something you did a lot?

Jon: Yeah. I did some of that, mails worked for me better. I don't really know why. I haven't called for a while, but yeah, that first year to two years where I was really hunting for deals, mail really worked for me. I got my first two deals off 60 letters, which is almost unheard of. Actually, you could probably say three deals because I think my third deal was in that campaign, they just didn't get back to me till later.

Yeah, my response rate was great because I was the only one that was fishing in this pond, but I did make some calls. I think more people are calling now than I don't want to say more than letters, but yeah, more people are definitely calling now. I don't get it as much because I have a property management company answer my phone calls. But yeah, people are calling now. It's turned into any other asset trying to find deals.

Seth: Do you think that's going to go backward? Say if, I don't know, office space suddenly becomes hot again, whenever that day is coming, do you think people will stop caring about storage again? I don't know, any theories on that?

Jon: That's a good question. Well, I know some markets are already saturated, which is going to affect things. We'll see what this downturn recession, whatever does. There are people that are definitely in too tight of deals. So, we'll see what happens. Yeah, there are stats that say storage is the least defaulted asset, but you look at it too. People have been, even myself, even three years ago, we were buying these for dirt cheap. So, the default rate is going to be less because we're buying them for dirt cheap. Things have changed. That default rate is absolutely going to go up. Where? I have no idea. I try to buy right the best I can, even in today's market. But yeah, there are people that definitely overpaid and areas that are saturated. So, we'll see. But you also have technology changing a lot of things in storage. I run all my facilities with no one on site. So yeah, it's hard to say.

Seth: Yeah. A couple of different lines of questions. I'm just trying to figure out which way to go first. So, you mentioned the technology. Maybe let's just jump into that. What are you using to manage these things and how does that work?

Jon: This is the thing I couldn't wrap my head around, because I had no idea what Mike Wagner not helped me the most with, but showed me the path. Technically, I have a property management company and what they do is they have a call center. They answer all the phone calls, during hours.

Then I've got a website through them at each facility. So, if someone wants to rent a unit, they can technically do it at the fence, at my gate. So, they can pull to the gate. They can either call the phone number within five minutes they can get into their unit or they can go online on their phone, rent a unit online and have access immediately.

Seth: Are there instructions at the gate that tell them this? Or would they have to go to the website and figure it out from there?

Jon: Pretty simple. But yeah, I've got signs that say, "Sorry, we missed you, call us or visit our website." You go to the website, you just click rent online and it takes you through the process. So, it's super simple. Yeah. There are people that need help figuring it out. But yeah, it's super simple.

Seth: Yeah. Because what you're saying there makes perfect sense, but for some reason, I don't know why I've never connected the dots in my head that I could literally drive up to a facility and rent it at the gate. There's this idea in my head like, “Okay, I got to go home. I got to open up my computer. I got to go. Then I can come back.” I don't know. I wonder if you could put a QR code at the gate, "Scan this and rent now," something like that.

Jon: Yeah. Some facilities are doing that. And in terms of technology, I'm probably 12 months behind. But the newer facilities, the Reeds, the bigger players, yeah, they've got QR codes. Some of them you'll walk inside and they'll have a tablet that you can rent your unit on and then they'll have a video that shows you, one, how to rent it, where your unit's at, all that stuff. So yeah, technology has changed storage so much. Even before all this, kiosks were a big thing. I'd say for the past decade. There are still people that still believe in those, I think, but yeah, basically our smartphones have taken over that kiosk.

Seth: And with the kiosk thing, it's basically the same thing as your phone. There's just a machine there where you sign it up. Do you get a lock from those kiosks too? Or you got to handle that on your own.

Jon: That's a good question. I don't know. I've never run one.

Seth: Maybe they work in different ways.

Jon: I kind of came in when those were being phased out. So, I don't know. I really know nothing about kiosks.

Seth: Those things are kind of expensive I would imagine, right?

Jon: I want to say $10,000-ish, in that ballpark.

Seth: Yeah. It sounds about right. Got you. And Easy Storage Solutions. Is that what you're still using? That's this company that handles all this stuff?

Jon: Yep. Well, another thing is it's moved. A lot of reasons. Technology has moved so fast. New owners have come into the space and then other, I guess, legacy owners, they're all rushing too, they've all found out, “Hey, I don't need to take the phone call anymore. I can use a third party.” So that's also helped or hurt companies like ESS, because they've just been inundated with business.

So, what's happening is that it's hopefully getting worked out because I've had some growing pains with them. But you also have other property management companies come on board where now you have other options. Those options are, I think within a year or two years, we're going to have some pretty good options. Right now, I don't want to say there are not great options, but everyone's trying to figure it out, trying to dial things in.

Seth: Yeah. I had always heard about that, the dangers of a company growing too fast and I was always like, “What are you talking about? How is that a problem?” But when I was doing my MBA, a number of years back, I started to understand the problem. I think this is probably a perfect example of how if you don't have the systems in place to handle all the new business, you can't deliver and people are going to get mad at you and then your reputation goes into the tank. Yeah, it can be really tricky when all of a sudden demand spikes like that. I know with Easy Storage Solutions, one of the issues I've heard of is that they don't take calls on Sundays. Is that accurate?

Jon: They don't. To me, that's not a big deal.

Seth: People don't call on Sunday?

Jon: People do. Not everyone has their facility set up like this, but I get an email with the voicemail. So, if someone calls in, and I have an operations manager he'll check the emails. If someone calls in, he'll call them back, and if they want to rent a unit, we'll try to run it to him, or just tell them to go online and do it. And that's for after-hours too.

But yeah, as far as growing too fast, they ran into the same issues most businesses during COVID, which was people. Their call center was fine. And without COVID, even with the same growth, my guess is they would've handled it better. But yeah, it was a people problem. They just didn't have enough people answering the phones, couldn't hire fast enough. And the quality that they were hiring was not very good. So same problems as any other business that's been trying to grow.

Seth: Is there like an alternative to them, like another company that does basically the same thing?

Jon: Yeah. And that's the thing, that's where things are getting better. I don't know if there's any company that has a software and call center that you can get together, but you can use their software and use a different call center. You can use other software and use whatever call center. They are great for, if you own one or two facilities. They're great. Their software is super easy to understand. You can plug anyone into it and within half an hour understand everything on the software.

I haven't changed just because for that reason. It's just super simple and having had enough pain point to change, but there's more advanced software I could change too. Better call centers I could change too, just haven't done it yet.

Seth: Yeah. It's like the blessing and the curse of having any company or software or whatever that does so much. It's such an easy, obvious solution when it's working well. When it doesn't work well, it's like, uh-oh, all of a sudden, it's a huge problem.

Jon: Yeah, well, they were… Yeah, and I don't want to…

Seth: Yeah. I'm not trying to single them out. Just in general, like anything in life when you rely too much on a single thing, there's some danger in that.

Jon: Yeah. Well, they were bought out by a large company too, which changed some things, I think. They're no longer the mom-and-pop company, which they were when I started with them. So that changed.

Seth: Yeah. I think you're right though. Just given where things are going, there has to be an improvement there. I don't know how it couldn't happen. Since the demand is there for that kind of service, whether it's with them or other companies doing better, whatever, but I'm sure it'll only get better from here.

Maybe we just look at that first deal, because I know that's always a big first step, the first deal in any new business. So, what were the numbers on that thing? How much did it cost? How much money did it make? How much cash did you have to come to the table with? Just walk us through that.

Jon: Yeah. And I'll kind of take you back even further. So, all four of my rental properties basically cash flow about the same, which was between $250, $300 a month. And each one I probably had between we'll call it $25,000 and $40,000 into each one of them. So, my returns weren't all that great. Obviously, I wasn't growing fast enough.

When I found my first deal the owner wanted $375,000 for 12,000 square feet. And at the time, obviously, if you go further down the road, you learn more, but I just figured the same rental rates as what he was doing, the same sales, technically somewhat the same expenses and then I included my property management, ESS. I included their fees in there. And I knew I was going to cash flow at least $1,000 a month.

To me that was like hitting the lottery. I'm like, “Okay, I'm going from $250, $300 a month for each single-family rental. Now I can get into one asset for about the same amount of money.” So, with the SBA loan, I brought 15% down, which I think was roughly $50,000. So roughly around the same amount of money and I'm making almost three times as much per month. I'm like, “This is a no-brainer. Why would I not do this?”

And then once I got into it, I realized, “Oh, wow, I can make a lot more than that.” But yeah, that's the real numbers. I bought it for $375,000. Actually, my second deal numbers were almost identical.

Seth: Well, when you say the SBA loan, was this a 504 or 7(a) loan?

Jon: I always get them confused. And I just did one this year too.

Seth: Yeah. The 504 loan is where there's a bank loan and then an SBA loan. So, you got two separate loan payments. The 7(a) is where there's just one bank loan that's guaranteed by SBA.

Jon: Yeah. My first two deals were 504. My one this year was 7(a). So yeah, I had two bank loans. I've since refi-d both those loans, cash-out. But yeah, real numbers, sales for my first deal from the previous owner were about $50,000 a year.

Seth: We're talking about the first storage facility right now?

Jon: Yeah. For the first deal. Sales were $50,000 a year. Revenue was $50,000. I'm now at $90,000 to $95,000 a year. So, I've almost doubled that.

Seth: And how did that happen?

Jon: What's that?

Seth: Yeah. Did you add units or raise the rent or what caused that change?

Jon: I've added units, but that's only been two months ago. So that doesn't even include those units. Just raising rate, it's called rate management. But yeah, it's crazy how over time, the rates just increase. I also included or added setup fees. When someone rents a unit, late fees, auction fees, you get money from auctions, just all these little fees. I added six parking spots. All these little things just start adding up.

For example, I want to, say, for 10 by 10, when I took over, they were renting those for around $55 a month. I think I'm $90 to $95 a month. So yeah, you raise rates with existing customers and then really raise rates with street rates, and then over time the existing customers start to move out, you put people in with street rates and the revenue just keeps stacking.

Seth: Yeah. When you're looking at a new deal, I guess either back then or today, because I know this is a very common thing where you'll find these smaller mom-and-pop facilities that aren't really managed that well, they're not advertised well. The rates don't make sense. So, what are some low-hanging fruit opportunities that you're always looking for in terms of here's how I can make this thing worth more immediately by just flicking the pen and changing this here or there. What are some examples of what you would be looking for?

Jon: Rental rates. That's the main thing. What's their rental rates compared to the market? What's crazy is even that first deal, there's a REIT in town, which is a Real Estate Investment Trust. So, a large storage owner in that small town, my rates at times are higher than theirs. And their facility is obviously better than mine. I've got weeds grown that are hard to control. And it's almost leaving the city, going out to the country. And then you have this, we'll call it B-plus facility, that's asphalt, drive up. I don't want to say more secure, but it looks more secure than mine, someone on site. And yeah, there are times where I'm charging more for my units than they are, which is crazy.

So, if I get one- or two-unit sizes available, I'll really jack more rates. Because at some point someone's going to come by and say, “I need a unit. I'll pay whatever. Give me that unit.” That happens. So that's how over time these rates just keep increasing. And then if I have five units of one size become available, I'll drop my rates a little bit till it fills up. It's like the airlines, you're constantly moving rates based on demand.

Seth: I mean, just looking at these numbers, it looks like demand has gone up and up and up. I mean, it must be if rates are going up and up. What is making that happen and what would make demand go down? What would make rates go down? Does that ever happen? And if so, what causes that? Just a recession or something?

Jon: We'll find out. I haven't been in that long enough. Well, there are a lot of things going on. There are a lot of things going on. One, there are more people now than two years, three years ago that are using storage. One reason, people are moving. More people are moving right now and we'll see what happens with the housing market. Will more people be moving? Probably not as many. So that's one reason.

But then you may have a recession where people will downsize and need to store stuff. People are also buying more stuff right now. I don't know, I don't have exact stats, but people are buying more stuff now than ever. I think that's only going to increase with time. So, will we ever go back down to 2019, 2015 numbers of people using storage? I don't know. I think it's going to just keep increasing. It's going to come back down a little bit, obviously, it can't just keep increasing, but yeah, I think over time it'll just keep increasing as we, as people, just collect more junk.

Seth: Yeah. That whole issue of this being a recession resistant business, I've heard the rationale because even if people lose their jobs and lose their homes, they still got to store their stuff somewhere, that kind of thing. Which I get that to some point, but I look at states like Michigan. It's always been either a boom or a bust state for the most part. Either people are coming here in droves or they're leaving here in droves, for one reason or another, usually the auto industry.

But I don't know. I know I was actually closing SBA loans for my job back in like 2011, 2012, 2013. We did 504 loans for a handful of storage facilities and I saw the prices go way up just in my time there. I quit that job in early 2016. So, that was before all the growth that you saw.

I know values definitely do go up and down. It's not just a static thing and it is risk-free, but it just makes you wonder, what's the ugly side of this that we haven't seen yet? How could a person get burned? It sounds like, if you were to try to hit the reset button and do everything you've done so far, but starting right now, not back in 2018 or 2019, or whenever you started with the self-storage stuff, what would be harder about it now? Were the prices super advantageous? Were the rates better, like less competition? Just try to compare and contrast the two time periods.

Jon: Yeah. A lot of things. I'm in these smaller markets. For the most part, the population is under 70,000 in all my markets. No one was looking for storage facilities to buy in those markets, and or building. Well, that's the other thing. That's going to increase rental rates and saturation. These bigger markets, without a doubt, are areas that are going to be oversaturated.

Yeah, it is hard. I don't want to say it's harder. You're paying more now, but rental rates have also gone up because you've got more competent owners in a lot of these areas. So as time goes on, we're buying out Jim, Bob, and his cousin who were running their storage facility, but answering their phone once a week, didn't really care if they were making all the collections, would collect payments in cash.

Now you have more sophisticated owners that are buying these and have systems in place. So that also increases rental rates. Now, obviously, there's a ceiling, especially in these smaller towns, people are only going to pay so much. And in towns that I'm in, I'm still one of two or three sophisticated owners in town. So, I'm in the top 8% or eighth of the ownership in that town. But yeah, most of them are still running how they were 10 years ago, which is not the correct way. Yeah, I don't know if that explains everything.

Seth: It sounds like, I don't know if this was a conscious choice or just how it worked out for you, but this choice to pursue facilities that were pretty rural and just places that might not be the average person's first idea of where to start looking, it sounds like that's been sort of beneficial, right?

Jon: 100%. I owe that all to Mike Wagner. By the way, shout out to Storage Rebellion. It’s his company.

Seth: Yeah. I'll link to him in the show notes. We've interviewed him a couple of times on the podcast as well. I actually did a consulting call with him this past year though. He's a great guy.

Jon: Oh, nice. Yeah, he's awesome. When I found storage and was like, “Okay, let's try this out”, I bought a list and tried to do a marketing campaign. I live in Columbus, Ohio. I tried to do a marketing campaign in Columbus, Ohio. Guess what? No one called me, no one cared. Then Michael's like, “Well, I buy all my facilities in small towns, rural towns, whatever. So why don't you try that?”

I was kind of reluctant at first, but I was like, “Yeah, it makes sense.” In my mind, I'm still kind of thinking residential rentals. I'm not going to get appreciation and all this other stuff. But you're buying a business. It's not appreciating the same way. It's appreciating the way a business does. I'm not going to get a four cap where I'm buying. But yeah, that changed everything for me, going in these smaller towns. And again, no one else was looking in these small towns. No one else wanted to invest in these small towns.

Seth: Yeah. And you just mentioned four cap. I know that cap rates and that kind of thing is something, some people, depending on which niche of real estate you're in, that's very familiar and for other people, they're like, "What? What is that? And why does it matter?"

Cap rates. If I understand it right, a high cap rate basically means your return is pretty good. But maybe there's more risk associated with that deal. Like a competitor could show up right next to you because it's more rural and that kind of thing. Whereas a low cap rate, the return isn't as good, but there's also, I guess, more certainty to the deal. Maybe competitors can't show up just at the drop of a hat. I don't know, what is your assessment of cap rates and how important they are and why they matter? That kind of thing.

Jon: To me, they matter when I sell. When I buy, I don't even look at it. And a cap rate is basically your return on your money if you pay cash for the entire deal. And it's changing because interest rates are changing. But the areas where I'm at, I could probably sell at best six and a half cap, six and a half to seven and a half cap price, somewhere in there.

Yeah, I don't look at cap rates going in. I may take a look if I'm bored. I don't judge what I'm buying off a cap rate at all. Actually, a deal I bought this year, I probably technically bought it, at their numbers, I probably bought it around a four cap, four to five cap and it's in a smaller town. But I knew there's value-add there to where I can go in day one, and I did, go on day one and raise rental rates. So, to me, it wasn't a four-cap. I was buying it at, whatever, probably a 10-cap because I was raising rates day one.

Seth: Yeah. And in terms of knowing that you can do that, that's just a matter of looking at occupancy rates and rental rates of the competitors in the area.

Jon: Yes.

Seth: Is that what it boils down to?

Jon: Knowing the market, knowing the competitors. Yeah. Well, and I was talking to somebody the other day about this. And everyone's got their own strategy, I don't want to say there's no right or wrong. Now that I've learned, I'll usually find whoever's highest in the market, which is probably a REIT. And then you've got your next class underneath that, called B class. I try to follow their rates. So, if someone's running the 10 by 10 for $75 and the REIT is at $105, I'm going to come in day one, raise my rates to 75. And then you still have people that are still charging $50, $60, but I'll go to that kind of second-tier rate. That's where I'm going to put my current customer's rates at. And then my street rates are going to be higher than that. Probably close to the REITs.

Seth: Do you order feasibility studies for all these things before you buy them or ever?

Jon: I haven't. No. I think that's more important when you're developing or doing a conversion, in my opinion. Because I'm buying technically cash-flowing facilities, it's cash-flowing for me for day one. Someone built that facility for a reason, unless there's a bunch of development in the area, I'm not worried about that.

Seth: Yeah. And for those who don't know what a feasibility study is, I bought one or paid for one about a year ago and it’s $7,000. But they basically go in with all their tools and technology and look at the local market, figure out how much storage is there. What's the price of everybody's units, what's the occupancy rate? And I don't even really know how they know occupancy rates other than just calling them and asking them “What's your occupancy rate?” If a person doesn't want to tell you that, do you just guess at that point?

And also, what they did with mine in a way was they put together a cost assessment of what it would cost to build what I'm trying to do, which is just an educated guess. But it really just gives you a third-party assessment of, “Is this a smart move or not? Is this a good or bad market for you to try to do this in? Or maybe if you're planning this, maybe you should consider this instead, because there's no climate-controlled storage yet, just cold storage. So maybe you should go this other direction.”

But like Jon was saying, when you're building something from the ground up or adding a bunch of units that aren't there yet, it's kind of a speculation move. You don't know that. So that's why it's important to really look at this. Whereas if it's an existing one, you already have proof that it's working or how well it's working based on the current rent roll.

In terms of competition, I know we've talked a little bit about this with the REITs and that kind of thing. Has that ever been an issue or a concern for you? Are you ever worried that it will be? Because I know competition is one of those big things. It's one of the very few things that storage owners really don't have control over. I can't control if somebody is going to build a huge thing right next to me and that will definitely affect me if they do. So, is that ever a concern in your mind or do you not lose sleep over that?

Jon: Yeah. And I know why you're asking this question, because we talked about it before the call. But no, the deal that I bought this year, it's actually in my hometown where I grew up. I already own a facility in town. The deal that I bought this year were two facilities. So now I've got three facilities in the same town, different areas of town, which to me is beneficial. I was super nervous. I'm still a little concerned because I have, I think it's two owners that don't know what they're doing and just building storage because they're like, “Oh, storage is cool. I'm just going to keep building.”

Seth: Oh, no. Yeah, that's scary.

Jon: Yeah. Fortunately, one guy is on the other part of town where, I don't want to say he's not competition because I could pull some renters from there. But yeah, he's kind of in a different part of town. The other guy is a competitor of mine. Doesn't know what he's doing. Again, neither one of them. I won't say they don't know what they're doing. They're just shooting from the hip. They're not doing feasibility studies. I guarantee it. They don't do rate management. They don't do anything that you see that sophisticated storage owners do.

So yeah, I am a little nervous. I have to work a little bit harder in that town to rent my units. For the most part, I'm still okay. But we'll see over time if demand drops what's going to happen. Yeah, we'll see.

Seth: Yeah. On that whole issue, has low occupancy ever been a problem for you or even if it hasn't, but if it becomes a problem in the future, what levers do you have to pull to fix that? Is it basically advertising, lowering rent? The first month is free rent or anything like that? How do you resolve the occupancy problem? Especially if there's a huge competitor near you?

Jon: Yeah. Price wars. Yeah, right now I do have a special actually in that town, half off first month. Actually, the one guy that just built a ton of units in there, I guess he's doing, what was it? I think it's half off for six months. I don't know why he jumped to that. That kind of explains to you, he doesn't really know what he's doing. But yeah, price wars. You can go into probably any big city, especially areas that are saturated and just look at what those storage owners are doing. $1 first month, half off for the first three months, whatever. Yeah, you just run specials, you start dropping your rates.

Occupancy is the biggest thing because especially the big REITs, they just want to get you in there. Because guess what? Month two, month three, whenever your special ends, your rates are going up. So, you just paid $75 for that unit for month one. However, now it's $125 month two. That's what they do. I don't know if they do it that quick, but yeah, they raise your rates all the time. They just want to get you in there.

Seth: Yeah.

Jon: Because they know you're going to stay. It's a sticky business. Most people probably that rent storage probably say, “Yeah, I just need it for a month.” 20 years later now they've got three units. It's just what happens. It's sad. But it happens.

Seth: Yeah. What are the most effective ways to trick people? Like that first month is free. I've heard somebody say, they raise their rent $5 every month. So, it doesn't ever really feel like anything, but $5 month after month after month. I don't know. Is that a legitimate strategy people use?

Jon: I haven't heard that, but yeah, especially if they're set up on recurring payments. We all have some type of recurring payment, right? $5, we're not going to cancel anything for the most part. I'm sure there are people that do that. Yeah. I don't know. I usually raise rates. It depends on occupancy, but I usually do it maybe two to three times a year.

Seth: Yeah. I know when we were talking a few weeks ago, something that struck me was deferred maintenance and how much it's not actually a huge problem apparently. At least compared to multi-family residential properties. So, if you have a facility that's kind of run down, maybe it doesn't look that good. How important is it for you to get on that? Like paint the whole place, put new doors on. Does that really matter? Does that give you the ability to raise rent or is it smarter to be just like, “It's not a huge problem. It still works. It's just a storage room, who cares?” I guess, does the market respond much to that either way, or do people not really care? They just want a dry place to store things.

Jon: It's all about market demand. That's the basis. It's all about market demand. If there's a ton of demand and no units available, it doesn't matter what your facility looks like for the most part. You can get full, you can keep raising your rates, whatever. If doors don't work, that's a problem. You're going to have to fix that. Actually, I was at one of my facilities yesterday and I'm just looking around and I'm like, the colors are ugly. I'd love to paint it, but I just had an auction. So technically I'm not full, but my guess is in a month I will be full again. And not having to do anything like that. I do put more stone down. I try to make it look the best I can, but I was looking around and I'm like there are tons of corners that are bent, damaged, folded.

And this facility is ugly. It's brown trim, yellow walls, and then the doors are white and everything's faded. The latches are rusted and we're replacing the latches as people move out. But it's crazy. And this facility actually has interior walls that are wood, OSB. Very interesting.

Yeah, there's a ton of demand. Demand is the whole thing.

Seth: How much is it if you wanted to repaint that? How many thousands of dollars would that be?

Jon: One of my good friends owns a painting company. However, he lives three hours away. I think he did give me a quote for that facility. Everything, but the doors and that's 30,000 square feet. I think he was around $15,000 maybe, which to me, I want to do it. He just didn't have time. He did paint my second facility. It was all block. It needed it just because paint was crumbling off. It's actually a concrete block. I need to seal the concrete block. So, he did paint that one and it looks a lot better. But yeah, as far as renting, as long as there's market demand, it doesn't matter. Like you said, it needs to be safe and dry. That's the biggest thing.

Seth: When we talk about the management of these things, I know something that you have done, correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe what you've done is you've hired boots on the ground for each individual facility. A person who checks in, like, is there, I don't know how often they're there, how long they're there, but basically a person to keep the place tidy. If any issues come up, they can take care of them. They can clean out units. Is that accurate? Is that how you're handling it?

Jon: Pretty much. Yeah. Boots on the ground. Most of my guys are retired, semi-retired. Some of them are still working. Their main duties are, when someone moves out, they need to go get the unit rent ready. So, sweep it out, spray the springs. And then we put a combination lock on the unit. They pick up small trash around the facility and then anything on top of that, I'll pay them extra. If I need them to empty a unit, because someone left a bunch of junk behind, I'll pay them extra for that.

But yeah, two main things are getting units rent-ready. Letting us know if they find another unit that was emptied that we didn't know about, the person didn't call in. And then picking up small trash. Then I'll use vendors to mow, take care of snow, fix any maintenance issues, stuff like that. My boots, they have a pretty simple job. It’s to keep an eye on the place. And I try to overpay them for that so that they take some type of ownership in the place.

Seth: And what does that look like? How much do you have to pay them for this?

Jon: For the smaller facilities where I have lower turnover, they're there maybe once a week, like quick in and out, just picking up little trash. They're getting around $100-ish, $150 a month. Some of the guys I've gone to more of an hourly rate because it's higher turnover, and it makes more sense for both of us to do that. So yeah, it's probably anywhere between $150 and $350.

Seth: Say when they're cleaning out a unit, can they just keep whatever they find? Is that part of their compensation or do they have to just chuck it into the garbage or how does that work?

Jon: If it's an abandoned unit, yeah, they can take it because it's abandoned, we can throw it away. If it's an auction unit, they don't even see it. Right now, I'm actually doing the auctions myself. But yeah, if it's abandoned, yeah. It's technically trash and more likely it truly is trash and they don't want anything in it.

Seth: With this auction process, how does that work? How much money do you make on those? Is there a website you do this through? Walk us through that process.

Jon: There's a few websites, storageauctions.com is the one that I use. Every state has its own lean laws that you have to follow. For me, in Ohio, I believe it's 60 days. And then you can start the auction process. I usually wait until I have a decent amount of units. We'll call it double digits basically. And then I'll do an auction. I don't want to do an auction for two units. It's just not worth my time or anyone's time.

Yeah, I'll usually wait till double digits. I have to send out a certified letter. I think I got to give them a month from the time I send a certified letter, give them a month to pay. If they don't pay, cut their lock, put it on the auction website, auction it off. It's pretty simple. We call them, we text them, we email them, we try to get ahold of them the best we can for them to pay. Most people that start going down that road, they are never going to pay. Yeah. And as far as banking, I don't make much. I've had one unit go for a significant amount. Everything else is like $20, maybe $80, here and there.

Seth: Oh, really?

Jon: Yeah. So not much. When I started, actually one of my boots on the ground is an auctioneer and I had him doing in-person auctions and was making, I don't want to say a decent amount, probably making at least three times what I make now. But it was such a hassle and you'd have like 50, 60 people show up at the facility. It was too much. But yeah, in-person auctions, I was making a lot more money. Just wasn't worth the hassle.

Seth: Has anything of significant value ever been found in one of those abandoned units? Like bars of gold or anything like that?

Jon: I wouldn't know. About the only store I have, I thought it was an auction unit. I went to cut the lock, open up the door, and there was like a 1980s Jaguar car in there.

Seth: Oh, nice.

Jon: And I was like, “Oh, I don't want to auction this off.” Long story short, I was able to track down who the owner was. He had another unit. He didn't realize he had two units. He was an older gentleman. He was paying for one, wasn't paying for this one. So, he caught up on payments. Everything was fine. But yeah, that one would've been… Auctioning vehicles is a whole different animal.

Seth: And that was just you being a nice guy, right? You had every legal right to just take that car if you wanted to?

Jon: To auction it off I would've to go through the process and would've found him eventually.

Seth: Oh, I see. Got you.

Jon: Yeah. I found him before I basically went through the entire auction process. I thought it was an abandoned unit. So, when I was cutting the lock, I didn't think anyone was even renting it.

Seth: With the locks? So, do people bring their own locks or do you provide locks for them?

Jon: Yeah, for my facility I have people bring their own locks. Yes.

Seth: Okay. But earlier you were saying, when they clean out an abandoned unit, you have your boots on the ground put a combination lock on there when it's cleaned out. So, when the new tenant comes, they just take that off and put theirs on it? How does that work?

Jon: Correct. Yeah. They're basically chintzy combination locks that I have found over time to be useful because we're locking vacant units. My first deal, I had squatters. People living in my units. I would go there to open up a unit because there's no lock on it and there's someone sleeping in there. I was kind of tired of that. Now yeah, it's a real simple combination lock just to lock those. Unfortunately, some people do continue using that lock. That's on them. I'd rather them not because then I have to buy more locks, but yeah, we recommend everyone bring their own lock. And we put those just on vacant units.

Seth: Do you make people sign up for renter's insurance or something or at least give them the option to?

Jon: The option. A lot of people are trending towards forcing it. I haven't done it yet. Something I probably need to do, I just haven't yet.

Seth: And forcing it why? Just because they can make more money from it or is there a liability on the owner in some way if they don't get the insurance and something bad happens?

Jon: Talk to your attorney, but there's basically no liability for the most part, as long as your lease is in place for the storage owner. But yeah, tenant protection helps the tenant, protects the tenant, and owners also make a cut of it. So, it's another value-add piece that if you're making even a dollar per unit, you're forcing people to sign up, you're making money. Now you're making people sign up, you're making more than that. More than likely. Or if they're not signing up, they have to provide proof of renter's insurance, some type of insurance that covers them.

Seth: How much is that for them to get renter's insurance?

Jon: Renter's insurance, I'm not sure. For TPP, tenant protection, it varies. I want to say between… I think it starts at $6 or $8 up to like $20-ish, I think. Somewhere in there.

Seth: On that note about people living in the units, do you have security cameras at all these facilities currently? Can you see if that were to start happening, you would know and you could stop it?

Jon: I do have security cameras at all of them. When I started, I watched them way too much. I almost watched them like a sitcom.

Seth: Yeah. I could see myself doing that.

Jon: Yeah, I don't anymore. I'll get on if I need to check on something. I don't say it's easy to find someone living there, but for the most part, you find out pretty quickly. Boots will tell us. Yeah, there's a bunch of different ways to find out if someone's living there. You just find out.

Seth: What kind of security camera system are you using? Do you like it?

Jon: I've got three different kinds. I've got a really good installer that I met at my first facility and he travels. He travels the nation. So, if you need him, anyone else needs them, let me know. He's really good. Right now, the latest ones he installed are Lorex that you can just buy at Costco. But I've installed Swann, Reolink. I think mainly of those three.

Seth: Which of those three do you love the most and least?

Jon: I had issue with Swann cameras. For the most part, the DVRs, the apps are relatively the same, but the Swann cameras seem to take on water more and I've had issues with that. Reolink, knock on wood, that was my first facility that I installed, Reolink. I've had no issues with those cameras. Even the Lorex, I think I've had a couple take on a little bit of water. Yeah, they're all relatively similar but Swann, and I don't even know if Swann is really making any more. I know their customer service is awful. I tried getting the camera swapped out under warranty and couldn't get ahold of anybody.

Seth: I have the Nest Cam thing for my house. Is it a similar thing where like there's an app, it records events that happen like if there's movement or something, you can watch a history of it. It stores it in the cloud. Is that what Reolink and these others do?

Jon: Yes. But you don't have to pay for it. So, you're paying upfront for the cameras and DVR system. But you're not paying a monthly subscription.

Seth: This DVR system…

Jon: Yeah. It's recording.

Seth: Got you. The DVR system, do you have to store that somewhere or is it stored in some cloud somewhere?

Jon: It's in the cloud somewhere. Yes.

Seth: Okay. Got you.

Jon: Cameras are nice to have an extra eye on your property, and it is good for security, but there's not… How do I word this? I've had break-ins and the cameras don't really help. I can kind of see, “Oh, this is how they broke in” and then kind of correct the issue so it doesn't going forward. But other than that, you're not going to see someone's face on the cameras. At best, maybe you'll get a license plate. But otherwise, yeah, they've got a hoodie on and you can't see anything. You can see what units they go to. But they're nice to have. I like them, I'll always put them in, but they're not a necessity.

Seth: Got you. Sounds like you've had a couple of crazy stories with people living in their units and people breaking in. Any other bizarre stories that the average person wouldn't believe or anything like that?

Jon: You name it.

Seth: Really?

Jon: You name it. I've had everything.

Seth: What's some crazy stuff that's happened? Because I think a lot of people think of self-storage as a drama-free business. But it sounds like maybe that's not the case.

Jon: You have to get kind of callous to it. And I will say Reynolds helped me a little bit just with kind of getting to be callous to dumb things people do. I bought my first facility in June of 2019, somewhere in there. We went on vacation a month later. Fortunately, I had my boots on the ground, my local person already in place. But while I was on vacation for that week, I had three or four break-ins. Our boots found two people living in units and drug paraphernalia all over the facility. I thought that was like the worst thing in the world. How is it ever going to get worse than that? Well, this year, I, unfortunately, had a long story, but I had someone take their life in one of my units.

Seth: Are you serious? Oh my gosh.

Jon: Yeah. It can't really get worse than that, but that was, yeah, that's obviously awful. That's as bad as it's going to get.

Seth: Did you have to discover that or your boots on the ground did?

Jon: The sheriff called me and they kind of knew what was going on, I believe. They wanted access to the facility, so I gave them access and I was watching the cameras. More cops showed up, not a lot was happening and then the ambulance showed up and kind of figured everything out from there.

Seth: Oh, man. That does sound horrible. I can't imagine it getting worse than that.

Jon: That's about as bad.

Seth: I mean, maybe it can. That's horrible.

Jon: You see everything, that's obviously super rare, but as far as people live in units, it happens. People break in, it happens. Drugs happen, especially if you have an undated facility and it's dark and people realize that and they'd go by one facility, that's what people would do. It was a dark facility, not gated. And people would go to the back of the facility and sell drugs or do drugs and or all that stuff.

Seth: You said that was not gated.

Jon: It was not at the time. Yes.

Seth: Does the gate and the fence, does that solve many problems or is it just like a perception of security when it's not actually that secure?

Jon: It definitely does. In fact, when I have a gate go down, I have many panic attacks. Because it's like, I need that gate working now. During the day, not so much, But at night, yeah, definitely. Obviously, people can still get in, they can hop the fence, they can cut the fence and I've had that. I've had someone literally cut down the post, I don't know what they're called, but then cut the fence. Just the links that attach to the post, peel back the fence and roll side by side out. So, people will get in if they want to get in. But the gate definitely deters the majority of stuff.

Seth: I've heard that, there's actually a guy, one of my neighbours, he does commercial property management for a company that handles it. Anyway, he was telling me that gates are the number one biggest maintenance issue all the time when they exist. Just because they go down and everybody is stuck. So, what causes a gate to go down and how do you get it fixed? Could that really screw things up for days on end possibly? Or what does that look like?

Jon: Great question. I don't know. I need to find out from my gate company why my gate keeps going down.

Seth: Is it like snow or something or it just breaks by itself?

Jon: Snow can, ice can. There are so many reasons. You can get condensation on the reflector and or the photo light that shoots the beam across the reflector. Sometimes you just need to reset the breakers to reset the software. I don't know if it's software, whatever, reset the mechanical system and then it'll work. But yeah, snow and ice are a big thing. Especially if you have freezing rain, it'll get all over that chain and you literally need to melt the ice off the chain.

Seth: Like with a hair dryer or something? How do you melt that off?

Jon: Anything. Or wait a few days. You're up in Michigan. So, you get worse weather than I do, but yeah, this last winter we had at least two or three… Well, no, maybe all the gates at one point were frozen shut. Now, during that time, as long as it warms up within a day or two, you're not going to have anyone go out there anyways. And that's what I was banking on, the sun to come out, melt the ice and it'll work.

Seth: Yeah. And I guess that was my other question was like, how big of a problem is it if all of a sudden nobody can get in or out? Is it the end of the world or is it like, “Ah, that's inconvenient, but whatever, we'll be fine?” Is that usually how people treat it?

Jon: Mostly, it's just inconvenient. In my mind, it's the end of the world, but it's just inconvenient. Because yeah, people too will complain to complain. And also, I kind of hope that they get, “Well, give me half off for the month then since your gate's not working.” We'll get that which will work with people. But yeah, I think it's more of that. There are very few people, unless you're running a business out of that storage facility, there are very few people that need in there right now.

Seth: Yeah. Because I remember one time, I was helping my brother move and I had to drive like hours to get to the place where his stuff was stored and the gate was busted and it was a huge problem because I'm not coming back here, this needs to work now or you're up a creek. I was replaying that scenario in my head. It actually is a huge problem if it's broken, but it sounds like most of the time it's probably not a huge issue.

Jon: Yeah. Most of the time it's not. And I don't want to say all of them, most of them have a safety feature that if it's stuck closed, you can push it open.

Seth: Oh, I got you. Unless it's frozen.

Jon: You still can, you just have put some muscle behind it.

Seth: If you are Arnold Schwarzenegger or something like that.

Jon: Right. Yeah.

Seth: I know you've definitely gone through a journey, anybody who starts something like this, their first facility, first time dealing with all these different issues that can come up versus somebody who's been sort of callous to it and they've been in it for several years and they've kind of seen a lot of what's going to happen. So, when you go back to your first year, what was the hardest part of the business in that first year? And then fast forward to now, today, what are the hardest things about the business with your current situation and your current mindset?

Jon: Yeah. To tie both those together is when I started, I didn't have systems and processes. I did, but I was the business plus the property management and the software, but any issue that came up, I had to either take care of it or delegate it.

Now I have systems. So, for example, when I was on vacation, when I had all those break-ins, all those issues, fortunately, my boots were there. However, I didn't know how to take care of the situation. I didn't know the system to take care of it. Neither did he, so I couldn't delegate that to him. So, I had to take care of the issues when I got back. And that's when I found out, “Okay, let's lock these vacant units.”

So, over time I've gotten these systems and processes in place. I now have an operations manager that takes care of it, he delegates everything, the boots on the ground. He communicates with them. He deals with emails from the property management company. I'm kind of overseeing all that. So yeah, systems and processes, taking yourself out of the business is huge. And you can't scale if you don't do that.

Seth: Yeah. How many units did you need before you could justify hiring this guy to basically replace you?

Jon: Everyone's got a different answer.

Seth: I know. I'm just thinking, like your situation, when were you like, “Okay, now it makes sense to do that?”

Jon: Here's the thing. Over time, my rates keep going up. My income also keeps going up. So, it's more based on that than units. But yeah, I could have on my fifth facility. I hired someone technically when I got my sixth facility. And that was about six months after I got my fifth facility. And it's a part-time gig. The way I run everything, it's not full-time. It’s part-time. My current guys may be doing 10 to 15 hours a month, maybe. Technically, he's kind of on call dealing with emails, but he's got his own business. He's able to take care of both at the same time.

Seth: How much do you have to pay that guy?

Jon: It varies. Since I've taken on new facilities, he's around $1,500 a month. For his time, he's making good money. I'm also giving him more work, and then I pay him hourly for that extra work. I'm trying to have him grow with the company too, to put some things in place there with that.

Seth: Yeah. And to manage him, what does that involve? Just kind of standing over his shoulder at various times to be like, “Is he doing what he's supposed to be doing?” How much do you still have to communicate with your individual boots on the ground if he's supposed to be doing that?

Jon: My operations manager is awesome. He was our first mastermind. I've known him for a while. He's younger, he's mid-20s. But we have similar personalities and he's going to find a way to get it done. That's what I found. I had an assistant technically last year for eight to 10 months. She was a great person, did great work, but as far as figuring things out, I had to answer a bunch of questions. With my current person, when he took over, I may have answered one question in the first two weeks.

Seth: Wow, man. How do you find a person like that?

Jon: It was more seamless. He's going to figure it out. If he can't figure it out or doesn't want to completely screw something up, he'll reach out to me, but it's still rare. He figures things out. That's the biggest thing. And I think that's also missing in this world today. Just people being resourceful, just do it, just go figure it out. Don't ask me. I have faith in you, do it. Even if you mess up, we'll figure it out.

Seth: Yeah. The only thing that should be standing in your way is gravity and law enforcement. Otherwise just do what you got to do to get it done.

Jon: Right. Yes. And it's hard to find those people.

Seth: In my own experience, kind of just being self-critical on that. I think one thing I've learned is that the person standing in my shoes or in your shoes in this case kind of has a role to play in that too, in terms of empowering them to do it. Say, if they do something and your response is, "Oh, you should have talked to me about that." Then guess what? They're going to ask you about it next time. They're going to make it a lot harder. So, if the person at the top is a micromanager, they're going to make it much harder for themselves and for that person to get the job done. It probably has a lot to do with the tone that the person at the top sets and the expectations.

Jon: And how you train them. With my first person, I did not do a great job training. I thought I covered most bases. I didn't cover everything and I needed to cover everything times 10. I didn't. With this person, I knew going in what questions and issues he may have. So, I covered that. I basically gave him a small training manual, but more or less a FAQ page. If this happens, do this.

Seth: You just have a quick auto reply that just says “Figure it out” and that's your reply to every question.

Jon: Yeah. Right. Basically.

Seth: No, those are really good insights. So, how many hours per week do you have to work now? How busy is your typical week? It sounds like this is pretty hands-off for you, right?

Jon: Do I have to work? Technically I could put one person. I could hire my CPA and say, take care of my QuickBooks and I'm out. I enjoy what I do. Every day is different and I'm trying to get in some other areas too. I remember talking to Mike Wagner, first one or two times I talked to him was I enjoy rental real estate. However, it's almost too passive. I enjoy running a business too. So, that's what I like about storage. It's both. It's real estate and it's also a small business. I enjoy keeping my hands on things, dealing with rental rates, rate management. I enjoy all that stuff. So, I still have my hand on things, but yeah, if I wanted to, I could go away for a month and nothing would change.

Seth: And just to recap, I don't even know if we talked about, when was it that you bought your first facility? What month and year was it?

Jon: June of 2019.

Seth: Okay. And we are in July of 2022. Was that three years? Yeah. Dude, so, in three years you went from basically nothing in storage to a full-blown legitimate business that you are not stuck in the day-to-day of. You don't have to get into specific numbers, but when you look back, when you were just working your job, when that was your main income and whatever dollars and cents were coming up from your rental properties, versus your financial situation today, how does that compare? How much better off are you now versus then?

Jon: I can't compare. I can't even compare. And I made pretty good money at my 9-to-5. Yeah, I really can't compare. I've even gone through a big cash-out refinance that we bought our house and the house that we can probably call our dream home. Yeah, I've been very fortunate. Timing was right. A lot of things lined up. But yeah, I can't even compare income compared to what I made before. And the freedom. The freedom is the biggest thing. And I'm sure you can speak to this. To me, the income is great, but the income is for the freedom.

Seth: Yeah. Are you making like three times more, five times, 10 times?

Jon: I've done a big cash-out refi, which changed things a little bit. Because then my monthly expenses went up for my new loans. It's over three times as much. Yeah, maybe four.

Seth: When you say cash-out refi, you mean for one of your facilities you basically refinanced and pulled much cash out?

Jon: I did that for five of them.

Seth: Five of them. Okay.

Jon: I went pretty hard at this. I sold everything off basically and used all my bolts in my chambers for the most part. I was equity rich and cash poor. I had to do something. I've gone about a little bit different than some other people. Some people syndicate private money, I've used all my money. So that changed things. I needed to pull some cash out for a rainy day and yeah, not to be so cash poor. So yeah, I did a refinance, pulled cash out of five facilities.

Seth: And was that for what purpose? Buy more facilities or just to get your equity out of your properties and have the cash? What are you doing with the cash?

Jon: All that. I bought a house in cash. The down payment for the deal I bought this year. And yeah, hopefully to buy more deals too.

Seth: What does this do for your tax situation? Do you have to pay a lot in taxes or do you write a bunch off at appreciation with all these facilities?

Jon: Yeah, a lot of depreciation. The cash out refi was tax-free money. All the money that I took out from that was tax-free. Yeah, depreciation is great. I could go further with it and do a cost seg. I haven't done that yet. Because at some point you're going to pay it anyway. I'm okay with where I'm at right now with the tax bill. Well, relatively okay. Never okay paying taxes, but yeah, relatively.

Seth: But you're not paying zero taxes, right? You still have to pay some income tax. Got you.

Jon: Yeah. Yeah. And I hear real estate investors all the time say “You shouldn't be paying any taxes.” Well, you're coming from a multifamily where you're not getting the returns that I'm getting. You're not making the same amount of money, and I'm not saying in an egotistical way, but it's completely different. You may be making, what is it? I think the general rule of thumb is $100 a door if you're buying an apartment. Well, the returns, I can't even compare the returns with storage. So maybe I'm making 10 times that in storage. Of course, I want to pay some taxes on that, unless I do the cost seg. If I did the cost seg, then yeah, I wouldn't have to pay taxes right now.

Seth: Got you. What is your plan at this point? Do you want to buy more facilities or do you want to just kind of coast and get into some other business altogether? I don't know, what do you see your one or three- or five-year plan looking like?

Jon: I definitely don't want to coast. I've struggled with this. Because you hear some other people talk about “Well, you get to a certain point, you don't have to worry about income. You don't have to worry about finances and you can just enjoy life and spend 100% time with your family.” I love my family. I want to spend as much time as possible, but also for me to be a better person and to be better for them, I need to also fulfill myself by growing my business, helping people. I enjoy helping people. I enjoy talking about this stuff.

So yeah, I just want to keep growing personally, professionally. It's hard to sit still and just do nothing. I've done that. I tried it because I was listening to the other people kind of, and I'm like, no, this is horrible. So, yeah. I just want to keep growing, whether it's in storage. I still look at small businesses. Yeah, I just want to keep growing.

Seth: Yeah, I know what you mean. I've experienced this probably not quite the same as you, but this idea, what sort of informed or motivated me to make certain business decisions years ago, was to get to this place where it's like, “Okay, I'm comfortable. I'm secure, the money is there. I'm all warm and cozy. This is what I dreamed of.” But you get there and it's like, “Well, this doesn't really fulfill me.” I guess it takes care of my needs, so to speak, but this isn't everything. I'm not actually happy about this. There's got to be more than just getting to a place and then just sitting there. Because it's like, “Hey, where is my purpose now? I want to feel like I'm growing, like I'm doing something, like I matter still. I'm still relevant.”

So, I can totally relate to that. Not that I've gotten to a place where I'm just sitting around, but I don't know, it's kind of just this realization that what you think you want, may not necessarily be exactly what you want. It's just not that simple.

Jon: I completely agree. Actually, myself and a buddy had this talk yesterday, and there's a group out there that I think a lot of people misconstrue. And I'm not going to name the group. We kind of have this idea of we're going to get to a certain spot and now we can kind of coast. Maybe I'll buy a deal every once in a while, once every three years. In my opinion, you've got to find, and everyone's different. We all want to get here for a reason and more likely, it's probably a big reason, it's because of family. We want to have the freedom to spend time with our family. But where's that equilibrium? How much time do you really want to be with your family and give them your all too? For me, it changes day-to-day.

Some days I can only work an hour and be good with my family the rest of the day. Some days I need 6, 8, 10 hours’ worth of work to be able to plug in my family 100%. Every day is different. But yeah, I think we can't just stop, especially anybody that's kind of… “make it” is the wrong word, but accomplish your goal to get to somewhere. You're a producer. You need to keep producing, you need to keep making this world, this place, a better place to live. That's my whole thing. I don't like the fact that there are people out there that are like, “No, I'm comfortable now. I'm good. I'm just going to retire and do nothing. I'm 27.” No, you're a producer. You need to get out there and you need to keep producing and make this place better.

Seth: Yeah. I know people like that in my life whose goal is to do nothing. They cannot wait until they can just sit around and play video games and watch TV all day. And just like that idea, it depresses me just to know that that's somebody's existence. That's really your highest and best use? That is what you aspire? It’s to just sit and do nothing? It drives me crazy, but I don't know.

Jon: And they'll never get there. They'll never get there. Because those people don't have that drive to get there. The people that have the drive are the ones that make it and they may get confused for a little bit and be like, “Okay, I'm retired.” But eventually, they're going to get either depressed or tired. Something. Something is going to kick them in the face and say, “No, I need to keep going here.”

Seth: Yeah. I know when Tim Ferriss's “The 4-Hour Workweek” book that I read a decade ago, that was one big thing he talked about, is how this idea of just retirement in general, doesn't work. And he gives a few reasons. But one of them was that, just this idea that if you're somebody who can make enough money in your working life to get there, the reason you are able to do that well is because you were driven and you wanted to accomplish things. And by the time you get there, it's a paradox. It's like, that's not what you even want to do. So, why would that be your goal? You'll be so bored you'll want to stick bicycle spokes in your eyes, I think is how he worded it. Yeah. It's all making sense.

Cool, man. Well, this has been fascinating. Thanks a lot for doing this. At the end of a lot of our shows, I like to ask three final questions. So, I will ask them now. Question number one, what is your biggest fear?

Jon: Biggest fear. That's a good question. You didn't prep me for these.

Seth: Yeah. And it's interesting because I don't want to speak for you, but given just how much your life has changed over the past three years, maybe this has changed a bit. Maybe your fears today are different than what they were three years ago. But as of now, what would you say your biggest fear is?

Jon: Actually, this is an easy answer now that I somewhat thought about. Something happening to my kids, to my family. That's my biggest fear. Everything else I think you can figure out, but yeah, something happening to my kids. Biggest fear.

Seth: I get that when I'm watching movies or something and something bad happens to a child. Back before I had kids, it didn't affect me that much, but it really disturbs me when I see that kind of stuff. It's interesting.

Jon: You can't watch… Liam, what's his name? Liam Neeson. You can't watch his movies anymore. Taken.

Seth: Yeah, exactly. My kids are currently five and almost eight. Whenever I see a kid in that age range or younger that I've experienced, that's when it really hits home. But yeah, like in the Taken movie, for example, when my kids are teenagers, I'm sure that'll hit home even more. So yeah, I hear you.

What would you say you are most proud of? And this doesn't have to be business, but it could be.

Jon: Most proud of. Well, I'm going to cheat and use my family for every answer here. I'm most proud of my family. That's an easy answer. Secondly, would be to kind of pat myself on the back a little bit, just figuring things out with storage, with everything. It's been a crazy ride and it's been so short so far, but yeah, I'm proud of what I've done and where I've come. A ton of people and you're one of them that have helped me get here. Yeah, it's crazy.

Seth: When you look at what you've been through here, there are a lot of people who want to get where you're at or someplace similar to that, but that's kind of where it stops. They want it, but they won't actually do anything or they don't know how to do it. But when you look at your experience, how much of it would you say is like luck and timing and that kind of thing versus, “No, I actually really busted my butt to get here. I worked really hard and that's why it happened?” What would you say is the mix of luck versus effort on your part?

Jon: Luck and timing will find you if you're putting the work in. I was putting the work in. Like I said, I've kind of fast-forwarded from 2015 to 2020, but I was grinding. I rehabbed the entire house by myself and it took me four or five months. At lunchtime every day I'd be over there, on weekends. So yeah, it's just grinding.

Seth: Interestingly though, I hear you, but that rehab is not really what played such a pivotal role in this. Maybe as a first step to get some equity, but that's not really what moved the needle. When you say grinding, I guess maybe when we start in 2019 going into the storage world, what did grinding look like? How many hours a week was that or how stressful was the work?

Jon: The grinding looked different. That was more physical and a good way to start, but then it transitioned into focus. And really learning where I want to go, how I was going to get there, and also surrounding myself with the right people too, the bigger mindset. And things start to just line up. But yeah, when I say grinding, when I was basically hunting for my deals, my storage deals, I had a plan and I had goals. Goals were probably the biggest thing that got me, and still get me to where I'm going.

But every night, for about two hours a night, once the kids got to bed, I would work out for a half hour. I would then work on either my mailer list, my marketing list, or write letters to these storage facilities. So, those two hours a night I was working out and then hour and a half, I would work on my business to try to grow it. And I was religious about it. Just hammered it and kept grinding.

Seth: Yeah. Actually, one more tangential question about that mailing thing I was going to ask you earlier, but I forgot. Your list, for example, when you said you mailed out to 60 people. Were you using some data service for this or were you just literally hunting and pecking for storage facilities on Google Maps? How did you compile this list of people?

Jon: Google Maps. Because if you think about, especially the towns that I was looking in, there are not that many storage facilities. Maybe between 6 and 20. So that's pretty easy to find. Then I just looked up the owner's address and mailed the address. Owner's address.

Seth: And you looked that up? How would you do that? Was that a data service or just the township website or something?

Jon: I use the county auditor's website, which I think most counties in America have and will give you that information. But I know that people are smarter than me that know how to pull that stuff easier, phone numbers, all that stuff. But yeah, that's how I did it.

Seth: Yeah. That's interesting. Because I know a lot of people, at least from the land investing world, they just see a data service as the answer to everything. But there are a lot of times those facilities don't show up, like the zoning isn't right. Or even when you Google “storage facility on Google Maps”, sometimes a lot of them won't show up there either. These people literally do not advertise. It's like their goal is to not be found. So, sometimes they're hiding.

Jon: They are. Yeah. I would even almost drive Google Maps to try to find buildings that look like storage and then look it up and see if it was or not. Because yeah, most of them did not have a Google listing. You couldn't find them on Google. But yeah, in these smaller towns, it's pretty easy to spot the storage buildings.

Seth: Okay. Final question. And it sounds like maybe you're figuring out this answer right now, but the question is, well, we'll see. Suppose you got $100 million dollars wired to your bank account and you're not allowed to stay on your current career path. So, no more storage facilities, no more real estate, but you can do anything else you want to do for the rest of your life, what would you do?

Jon: I'm probably donating a lot of that. Some type of service business, which I've been looking at. Maybe even some type of coaching too, which I'm kind of getting into as well. So yeah, I don't know. I'd chase whatever shiny object that would pop up that day.

Seth: Yeah. When you say service business, what is an example of that?

Jon: Like HVAC, electrician, something like that. And I'm somewhat interested in that. We'll see. I also don't want to lose my freedom, so it has to be the right fit.

Seth: Yeah. There's a company near me, it's a very well-known landscaping and lawn mowing service. If anybody thinks of it, it's like the most well-known brand in West Michigan. And I know a couple of people that work for that company and they were telling me that this guy, it's actually just like a hobby for him. It's like not even a serious business. He just didn't know what else to do so he started this company and it's huge. Like the biggest one. His actual business is a real estate developer. But I don't know, just when I heard you said that, it made me think. Maybe one of these guys who are just like, “I'm bored, I'll start a business, it's going to blow up and be huge. And I'll just make that my little pet project.” Some people are gifted like that and maybe they just get lucky or land on the right thing.

Jon: I think there are more people that are trying through educators and communicators like you. I think there are more people trying to find assets and not a ton of people are looking at businesses as assets. I think that's kind of a big wave that's coming. We'll see. And that's another reason why I've been looking, I kind of want to hit the next wave before everyone else does.

Seth: Yeah. I know we had talked about that a little bit in our mastermind was one of the people in the group was trying to find ways to just squeeze more cash flow out of the facilities he owned. And that was when it occurred to me, I know for a lot of people real estate, it's not necessarily a huge money maker. It's just a place to park cash, get some tax write-offs, make some cash flow, but if you're just going to buy single-family rentals and that's it, it's going to take you a long time to get to where you want to go with that, unless you get super lucky and write a huge appreciation wave.

But if you want a money machine, that's what an active business is, whatever that happens to be. But self-storage, it's a weird hybrid of the two because it is a business, but it's also kind of a sort of passive-ish real estate, depending on how you manage it. So, I don't know. It's just interesting how you'll probably make more than the average real estate investment, but it's also not as much money as you could make if it was serious… Well, I don't mean to say not serious, but a business that exists to create products and just make as much money as possible. So, it's just an interesting kind of hybrid between the two.

Jon: Yeah, yeah. No, it is. Well, yeah, there's some retail in there. You don't need storage. Not everyone needs storage. And that's what concerns me about storage too. Not everyone needs it. You need a house, you need somewhere to live, you don't need storage. So yeah, that's a concern of mine.

Seth: Yeah, man. It'll be interesting to see where the business goes and it sounds like wherever it goes, you've had a good three-year ride so far. So, I'm excited to see where it goes for you.

Jon: I have. I appreciate that.

Seth: If people, you don't have to do this, but if people want to reach out to you or I don't know, learn more about you or whatever, is there anything you want to share like a website or connect with you somehow? Totally optional.

Jon: I'm late to the game, but I'm working on that stuff, but you can find me on Facebook, Jon Farling. It’s pretty easy to find. Probably the only one. Yeah, hit me up on Facebook, I’d love to chat. But yeah, I'm working on that whole funnel, I guess.

Seth: If you do end up, I don't know, making some website or something for coaching or whatever, let me know what it is and I can retroactively go back to the show notes for this episode and add that in there.

Jon: Awesome.

Seth: So, this is going to be episode 138. If you guys want to go to the show notes, it's retipster.com/138. You'll find links to a lot of different things we talked about in this conversation. And if Jon ever gets his act together with his website or whatever, I'll be sure to go back and throw that in there too. But in the meantime, thanks a lot, Jon. It was great to talk to you again and hear about your journey. Yeah, I can't wait to see how things pan out for you.

Jon: Yeah. Thanks for the opportunity and thank you for doing this podcast. You're obviously helping people nationwide, so it's an awesome thing.

Seth: Yeah. Awesome. Absolutely. Thanks, man. Talk to you soon.

Jon: Thank you.