Ready to Ditch Your 9-5 for Full-Time Land Investing? Start Here.

230: In this solo episode, I'll share my personal journey of building a land investing business while working a full-time job—and eventually quitting that job after finding financial freedom.

(Show Notes: REtipster.com/230)

If you're wondering whether it's still possible to start land investing part-time in 2025, or if you're feeling overwhelmed by the changing landscape of this business, I recorded this episode just for you.

I’ll walk you through the mindset shifts, daily habits, strategic decisions, and major mistakes that shaped my path. Plus, I’ll show you how the game has changed for land flippers, what you need to focus on now, and why mastering follow-up and sales skills is more important than ever.

You'll also hear how tools like Stride CRM and the Land Investing Masterclass can help you fast-track your journey and avoid common time-wasters.

Whether you want to stay part-time or go full-time, the freedom land investing offers is real—but only if you treat it like a business!

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Transcript

0:37

Hey everyone, how's it going? This is Seth Williams. You're listening to the REtipster podcast. And today I want to talk directly to the folks out there who are working full-time jobs and wondering, can I really invest in land while working a nine to five? Is it even possible to get traction doing this part-time? And if so, could I eventually leave my job and do land investing full-time someday? These are totally valid questions. I've heard them a hundred times from people just like you. And I've lived through this myself. The short answer is yes, you absolutely can do this while working a full-time job. But there are some things you need to understand. There are some hurdles you need to plan for and some habits you'll need to build to make it work. Let's get into it. I'm going to start with a little bit of context. When I got started in land investing, it was over 15 years ago now. I had a full-time job in the banking world. I wasn't trying to build an empire. I just wanted to make some extra money and maybe gain a little bit of freedom. I honestly didn't know how far land investing could take me or how much it would change my life. But I started small. I built the business in the evenings after work and on weekends during all the times when I could have been, you know, going out to lunch with friends or going to movies or playing video games, all that stuff. I didn't do any of that. I was pretty militant about isolating my time and spending it only on building my business. And I didn't go nuts with it. Like I still was able to live my life, but the bottom line is I just realized every single minute that I have of disposable time, if I don't put it into this business, it's going to be time that's somewhat wasted. Now, I don't mean to say that all time that you're not working is wasted, but when you have a very clear goal in mind to build freedom and possibly even leave your job someday. You really need to treat every free moment that you have like gold because it is gold. And if you squander it, then it's either going to take you a lot longer to get there or you might never get there is the reality of it. Over time, those little blocks of time added up and I got more confident with each deal I did. I made plenty of mistakes and I learned from them. And I also started a whole separate business called RE Tipster about five years after I got started in the land business, which was birthed out of my experience in land. But it was also a completely separate animal and an independent source of income. Eventually, I made enough money between both of these gigs to step away from my job. Each one individually, a land business and REtipster could have supported me all on their own, but I had the benefit of diversification, which made me even more comfortable with the decision. So another interesting thing about my story was when I finally decided to pull the plug and leave my job, I realized I actually could have done it far before I actually did, but I was just really nervous about it. And I had to be very, very, very comfortable before I would finally make that leap and move on. It's really crazy because I remember in the years leading up to when I finally quit my job, the idea of working for myself entirely and not relying on a nine to five job, it seemed like such a far off fantasy, like something that I really wasn't sure was even possible, but I sure wanted to find out. So I just kept plugging away at it because I didn't know what else to do. I knew that I found two things that were kind of working for me, the land business and RE Tips here, two very separate businesses. And they worked in very different ways, but they were both definitely working. Even though it took me a long time, you know, I just kept plugging away at it. And eventually I got to the point where I was more than comfortable leaving. Does everyone need to quit their job? And I think the answer to that is no. And that's frankly not even the goal for everyone. But for a lot of people, just knowing that it's possible, knowing that land investing can eventually replace a job is incredibly motivating. And I'm here to tell you that it's possible, but it does take work and it takes intent. Like you have to actually be going at this with the hope or the plan of doing that, not just kind of passively, you know, doing it on the side, not really trying for anything, but just, you know, seeing what's going to happen. You have to really want it and you have to be going after it with the plan of eventually getting there. A lot of this has to do with your mindset. And one of the first shifts that I had to make, and the same is true for anyone doing this on the side, is how you think about yourself and how you think about what you're doing here as a land investor. Most people think of their identity as whatever job they're working. You know, like maybe I'm an accountant or I'm a teacher or I'm a nurse. But if you want to build a land business, you've got to start thinking of yourself as a land investor. That's who you are now. Your job might pay the bills for now, but that's just your current source of funding. Land investing is your real business and your future. And when you start thinking this way, when you start telling people, hey, I invest in land, I'm a land investor, you'll be amazed at how much more serious you become about your goals. Opportunities will start to come your way as people start to know what you do and what you're into. And the conversations you have will start to change, your posture changes. And it's all because of that mindset shift. It really does matter. Now, let's talk about your full-time job and why, believe it or not, But it's actually a pretty huge advantage in the beginning. Your job gives you stability. It's that regular paycheck and it's your launchpad. It funds your initial mail campaigns or your texting campaigns or cold calling, whatever it is you're doing with your initial outreach to fine land deals. I mean, it's really what enables you to do that. It covers your due diligence costs. It gives you breathing room to make decisions without having to panic. This was actually one of the reasons why it took me so long to quit my job is because I really valued that financial stability it gave me. On that note, I think it's also worth noting that just because you can quit your job doesn't mean you necessarily should. I mean, if you're somebody like me who values that stability, or maybe if you're just nervous about it, there's no rule out there saying if or when you have to quit. So just realize everybody's journey is a little bit different. And if you want to hang on to your job for a little bit longer than you need to, that's totally cool. Don't feel any shame about that. I mean, realize there are costs associated with that, but maybe those costs are worth it if it gives you peace of mind. So don't resent your job, but use it and treat it like the investor who's quietly bankrolling your land business in the background because that's basically what's going on here. All right. So how do you actually build this business with a full-time job, especially in 2025 when things are different and in some ways they're more challenging than they've ever been for land investors. This doesn't necessarily work the same way it did five or 10 years ago. And for that matter, some of the people who got into this business five or 10 years ago are now getting out of the business because it's changed so much. It's not because it's impossible, but it's frankly just difficult to change with the times. Some people frankly don't want to change or they just haven't figured out what they need to do to change to stay active and stay alive in this business. So they're leaving. I don't want to hide that fact from you. That's a real thing that's happening right now because of the increased competition, because margins are getting squeezed tighter and people just have to take different strategies now to make this work. And I think one of the biggest changes is people are finding that, you know, this once used to be strictly a data business. Like that was kind of the main core competency that you had to have was understanding where to find lists, how to filter lists, how to send the right offers with the right numbers to the right people. That's still true today, but it's not strictly a data game anymore. Now, sales and follow-up is huge. I mean, I think it's really the biggest differentiator I'm seeing out there between people who are staying in this game and doing really, really well at it versus people who are really struggling and or quitting and getting out of it is those who are willing to get really good at sales and get really good at follow-up, responding to people, building rapport, building trust, really taking that part of it seriously, thinking about the journey that their sellers are going through before they decide to say yes and sell their property. The people who are really becoming experts at that, those are the ones that are doing really well. That's just something to be aware of is that if you want to win in this day and age, you need to really get good at that. And if you're somebody who's terrified to pick up the phone, or if you're not willing to pick up the phone. Then I don't want to say you can't make it, but it probably is going to be way harder for you because the way this used to work was honestly, you could send people a mail, tell them to give you a call and they would just hear a, you know, one to two minute long voicemail greeting. Or maybe if you were really fancy, you would send them to an online call center and have a real human talk to them. But, you know, for the most part, a lot of land investors wouldn't even pick up the phone. And if they would respond to people, they would respond, you know, maybe a day or two or 10 days later, and they could still get deals that way because there weren't that many other land investors out there. But now that there are a lot of land investors out there and a lot of them have upped their game, either because they've realized they had to, or maybe they're coming from the household sailing business where household sailors are much more sophisticated and frankly, better at this than land investors are. It's one of those things where you need to be able to up your game as well. if you want to make it. Aside from that, it's also important to focus on the other core competencies that you have to have in this business. Things like understanding how to pick a market, how to understand what your buy box is, what you do and don't want to buy. If you are sending out direct mail, really understanding how to build an effective list and say the right things in your mail piece, picking up the phone and talking to them and being willing to hear their story, hear them out and make an offer that actually makes sense for that individual, not just based on numbers of Shiana's spreadsheet, but really understanding that seller's situation. When you send an official written purchase agreement to a seller, don't just assume they're going to sign the thing, follow up or better yet, schedule a time when you can walk through it with them on a phone call. So you can explain it, answer any questions and be there on the phone to make sure it gets done. By the way, small shameless plug for Stride CRM. Stride, if you haven't heard of it, stridecrm.co. This is a CRM built specifically for land investors that I co-created with Mike Baucom just earlier this year. One of the key features is it makes it extremely easy to generate and send purchase agreements for e-signature with one click. This is basically a replacement for DocuSign or PandaDoc. If you're not using an e-signature platform like this in the first place, that's like the first step toward making this a lot faster and easier. But even with that, it's still kind of a pain because you have to upload each individual document and map out the fields. With Stride, all the information about every person that you're buying a property from is already in your CRM and all the fields are mapped out on the purchase agreement template in the CRM. So once you have all of the property owner's information and the property info in there, it's literally one click and that document is sent and you can track to see if and when they've viewed the document, and if they've viewed it but haven't signed it, or if they haven't seen it at all. Stride will send automatic email reminders to that person every single day for a week until they sign the thing. This feature alone, along with many others that Stride offers, it makes things fast and easy that should be fast and easy. And these are things that could easily chew up hours of your time and truly cause you to lose deals if you're not doing them. It just handles it for you. If you're interested in something like that, be sure to check out stridecrm.co. That's S-T-R-I-D-E-C-R-M.co, where you can learn more about that. You don't have to be a tech wizard or some high-level negotiator to make this work. You just have to be consistent and you have to understand the new rules of the game where phone calls do matter and follow-up does matter. And if you're not doing these things, the land investors who are doing it are going to easily outpace you. So it's just a matter of upping your game so that you can stay in the game. The people who are still succeeding today and the people who will continue to succeed next year and the year after that are those who understand how to pick better markets, how to write better mail pieces, how to follow up with sellers, how to build efficient systems, which is exactly what Stride can help you do, by the way, and focus on quality over quantity. You don't need to be loud. you don't need to be flashy you just need to be effective and you can absolutely be effective while you're working a full-time job if you just understand the process and commit to the process. Now, let's touch quickly on scaling. Let's say you're working your full-time job. You've gotten into the land business. Maybe you have a few deals under your belt and the profits are starting to stack up. And it's pretty cool. You're seeing it work in real life. That's when you can start reinvesting into things that are going to save you even more time. Talking about things like finding and hiring an awesome virtual assistant, maybe getting a phone answering service, maybe getting a virtual assistant who answers the phone for you. You could use a tool like Stride CRM to manage your leads and automate your process and save you a ton of time and also a ton of money on other subscriptions that you can cancel once you're in Stride. And with a tool like Stride, you can use the existing automations that we built and are giving you with the CRM. And you can also build out a lot of new ones as you think of ways that you can automate your business. Eventually, you can absolutely buy your time back, not just with using the right tools, but also with making a lot more money that you wouldn't otherwise make. But don't worry about that too early. First, just focus on proving the model, getting a few deals done, and then learning how to repeat that process. And the cool thing is, I remember this very clearly back when I got started. The first time I went through this process, it was so slow and sluggish. I mean, it was really that first whole year. I felt like I was just taking so much time to get anything done and get anywhere. I realized after the fact, that's actually pretty normal. The first time you're doing anything, you're just trying to figure out what's going on, get your bearings, you know, just trying to understand the process. But the second time I went through it, it got so much faster. The third time it was even faster than that. And eventually I almost might say it becomes easy. It's possibly monotonous, but the challenge of the confusion and just not knowing what to do next definitely goes away as you've been through it and you realize, okay, I just have to do this next and then this will happen and then this next and then this will happen. Trust me. It's pretty awesome once you start to see it work. And once you've got something that works, you can decide how far you want to take it. Some people stay part-time forever. That's totally fine. I've been part-time in my land business for years and I have no shame in that. Others choose to build this into a full-time gig and that's totally cool too. That's the beauty of the land business is it can really be whatever you want it to be, depending on how much time and money and effort you want to put into it. It's your life and land investing gives you options. Here's my challenge to you. If you're working a full-time job and wondering if you can do this, my challenge to you is to start now. Not next month, not next year. Do it now. Don't try to build the perfect system. You can do that eventually, but if you wait until you have that perfect system figured out before you make a move, you're probably never going to get started. So start now. If you're not sure where or how to start, you may already know this, But in case you don't, I've got an extremely detailed A to Z course on everything you need to know about how to start and run a super profitable land business. It's called the Land Investing Masterclass. You can find more about that at landinvestingmasterclass.com. There are hundreds of people who have built thriving land businesses and quit their jobs as a direct result of going through that course. The value of the information you'll find there is easily worth 100 times more than what the course costs. And by the way, I keep this course as updated as possible. I'm in it revisiting the content once every month or so, adding new videos. Taking out old stuff, updating the information that I think needs to be updated because make no mistake, this business has changed and it will continue to change. So this is not some course I made 10 years ago and forgot about it. This is a living, moving, breathing body of work that is highly relevant today, right now in this market. If you ever feel stuck, remember, I've been there and a lot of other people in the REtipster community have been there too. You are not alone. You're not crazy for trying something new. You're actually pretty darn smart for seeing what's possible and choosing to bet on yourself. I think you should give yourself a pat on the back because you're taking a shot at something and it takes courage to take a shot at something, even when you don't know what's going to happen on the other side. And it takes courage to take shots at things. So thanks for listening. If you want more resources to help you take the next step, go check out retipster.com. Go check out the RETipster forum, the RETipster Facebook group. I'll include links to all those things in the show notes for this episode. The RETipster community is thousands of land investors strong, and you'll find it's a very giving community where people are more than happy to share what is or isn't working for them, which is actually kind of unique to the land business. A lot of other real estate niches are not like that. People are not so giving or willing to share, but land investors are awesome. And I'm sure you'll find it too, if you hang out in our community. Again, check out retipster.com and there's a ton of free content. I've been putting it out there for years. There's lots of tools and guides I've put together that can help you out. And until next time, keep going. You've got this.