From Hospital CEO to Land Investor: How Mason McDonald Uncovers Gold Mine Deals

239: In this episode, I talk with Mason McDonald, a land investor, licensed realtor, and adventurer in the wild world of mining claims.

(Show Notes: REtipster.com/239)

Mason shares how becoming a realtor totally changed his land investing game, giving him the edge to make massive commissions, close unusual deals, and tap into a totally new stream of revenue that most land flippers overlook.

We also go deep on mining claims, how Mason bought a gold mine in Alaska for just $30K, and what it means to buy land you don’t technically own.

If you’ve ever wondered what becoming a licensed agent could do for your land business, or what the heck a “mining claim” actually is, this is a MUST LISTEN episode.

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Transcript

0:37

Hey, everybody, how's it going? Welcome to the REtipster podcast. This is Seth Williams, and this is episode 239. And in this episode, I'm talking with Mason McDonald. And I've actually been trying to get Mason to come on the show for many months now because he's got a couple of unique areas of expertise that I wanted to tap into for both your and my benefit. So first off, Mason is a land investor, but he's not just that. He's also a licensed realtor, which has played an important role in amplifying his effectiveness as a land investor. He's been able to do things that most normal land investors can't do. And some of these things I hadn't put much thought into until I heard him on a panel at a conference earlier this year. And as he was talking, I was just like, oh yeah, yeah, that's awesome. And I wanted to share some of those light bulb moments that I had with you. And also, perhaps more interestingly, Mason has gotten into buying and selling mining claims, which is something I haven't seen many other land investors do. And I don't actually even know much about how he did this or why he did this or why it's worth considering. But I know if Mason is doing it, there must be something to it and something worth considering. So we're going to learn all about that as well. Mason, how's it going? Welcome to the show. Seth, glad to be here. It's been a cool full circle moment. I've been an early listener of the show and it's an honor to get to be interviewed on it. Awesome, man. Thanks for listening and thanks for agreeing to do this with me. I'm looking forward to this. So since you've been listening to the show for a while, you probably know how I usually start these interviews. Why don't we start with your story of how and why you got into the land business? How did this all start for you? Yeah, I think like everyone, I listened to a lot of podcasts and was always interested in leaving the corporate world and building my own business and growing my own wealth. I was kind of exposed to real estate investing from an early age where I actually had the rich dad, poor dad scenario where my mom and stepdad, you know, Jewish mother. So my career choices were attorney or doctor and my stepdad is a hardware engineer where they don't really make those anymore. So very conservative by everything cash. Then I had my dad that was a commercial real estate investor that I saw him live a very different lifestyle and I saw what real estate could do. So it was always interested. Listened to all the podcasts, read Rich Dad, Poor Dad, read all the books. Knew everything, didn't take action for a long time. And as I grew in my career to eventually becoming the CEO of a hospital here in Colorado Springs, took a guy out to lunch to learn about a townhome syndication opportunity, Brent Bowers. And he was offering an 8% return on investment for a townhome syndication. And I thought that was way too low for a 27-year-old executive to invest in. And he told me about land flipping. And it was one of those moments, he wasn't trying to sell me on the course or anything, but told me how much he was making doing it. And I was like, show me your paycheck and I'll buy your course right now. And he showed me how much he was making. And so I took the course and I love you, Brent, but I thought it was the dumbest thing I'd ever taken. And then I sent my first batch of mailers. I think I sent 300 mailers, got a deal, and I'll shorten it, but got a deal, bought three lots in Pagosa Springs, Colorado for $43,000, sold them for $185,000, quit my job. Whoa. And yeah, I kind of dove right in. I've made every mistake on earth. I am a land investor that has lost money on deals. I will not lie and have learned a lot and grown a lot. And that's kind of allowed me to continue on this progression within land investing to become a broker and do weird, fun deals and keep getting better and better. But I'm still brand new at it. 250 deals and still learning. Wow. So a CEO at a hospital, let's talk about that quick. That sounds like a huge position in a job that maybe makes a lot of money. Am I wrong? Yeah. Pay was decent for sure, but so was the stress. I think a lot of people hear that I was a CEO of a hospital at a young age, 110 bed facility, about a hundred million dollar P&L that I oversaw. And I don't know if that says more about the industry that they let a child run a hospital than it does about me or my capabilities. But the pay was decent. My wife was also a software engineer making great pay too, which that's the real reason I was able to quit my job. It wasn't like time management or anything like that. I had a supportive spouse that made a lot of money too, but I was hypertensive stage two. I mean, which my blood pressure was like 175 over 110 on any given day and a pretty decently fit guy. And I slept one to two hours a night. It was horrible. And it was really profit over patients. I thought healthcare administration, I'd be able to help a lot more than I did. And it's a brutal industry where you are totally focused on EBITDA more than anything else. Yeah. I actually saw this interesting thing. I read it a while back. It was talking about why can't my doctor spend more time like talking to me and like diagnosing my problem and really like caring about me as a person. And it was talking about how like, that's not what they're incentivized based on. Like it's more about productivity. It's not about like you and how you're feeling. It's about, Hey, I got to get to the next person. And it was very telling. It was like, yeah, I guess that does make sense. Like if they're going to get penalized for doing that, I mean. Can you blame them? I don't know. Like just the system itself feels kind of broken. It's icky for sure. And I mean, it was my bonus. I could make up to 125% of my salary and bonus, all financial measures, very, very few incentives on the quality of care side of things. It's hard where you see the answer because I was so much an advocate of, Hey, if you take care of your staff and you take care of the facility, their patients are going to receive high quality care and then everything else flows from that. But it's like, hey, we need to make sure that we're hitting this particular margin all the time. Yeah, I know you want to reinvest back into the business or back into the people, pay them really well, treat them really well and everything like that. But you got to cut staff in order to make budget and you're bonused so heavily, it's hard not to fall prey to that mentality. And it's just sad because it's people's lives at stake. And I worked in behavioral health and that's very close to me personally, just with intimate family members experiencing a lot of challenges and traumas with that. But yeah, it's sad. And that's kind of really one of the motivators behind wanting to get into the real estate investing. Land is such a low barrier to entry. The fact that I could purchase three assets for $43,000 and turn around and resell them so quickly and so easily was really, really appealing to me because I thought about trying everything from apartments to small multifamily to RV parks and storage and everything in between and then land was easy and i like easy things because i am a very lazy person by my own standard yeah. Let's talk about your first year or so in the land business. I don't know if you mentioned what year you did get into this, but like what did that first year look like in terms of like, what kinds of deals did you go after versus how it works now? Because I know the land business has changed a lot. What would you say are some of the biggest changes between how you did things then versus now? Yeah, I think for one, I was a lot less focused back then where I kept doing everything right and then I would distract myself. And what I mean by that is I'd send a few hundred mailers and I'd get a deal where I bought for 10, sold for 25. And then I was like, well, what about texting? And what about cold calling? And what about all these other different marketing mediums that I could try? And then I would try them and then not get a deal for two months. And then I'd send a few thousand letters and I'd get five more deals. So my first year was really, I stayed within a few markets in Southern Colorado and just kind of, I knew street by street, every single parcel and every single neighborhood that I was targeting. I was always very focused on like the individual subdivision level. And I would do blind offers at the beginning. And I really was getting a deal like every 400 mailers or so. I don't get that many deals now. I will send 10,000 mailers and be happy if I get a deal or two. But yeah, it was just me. Didn't have any salespeople or anything like that. Had a pretty solid first year. That first win definitely made me think I was on top of the world of making six figures on my first flip. I thought every deal would be like that. I have one deal in my pipeline that's going to beat that in terms of like actual return and upside and everything like that. But yeah, it was a lot of rural infill is kind of what I call it, where it's not recreational land. People build homes on it, just direct mail and just me. It was a pretty simple business model. Things were good. And then I got the funny idea of I wanted to grow instead of staying comfortable at that three, 400 K a year range. And what year did you say you started this? I started end of 21. Yeah. Gotcha. So still brand new to the game. Yeah. Well, and you're a realtor as well, correct? I just became licensed this year. And why did you decide to do that? Well, I think anyone that's been in this business, what's the most common objection you get from these sellers? Well, I want this much money. It's like, okay, well, perfect. I can offer that to you by listing your property for you on market. I understand land. I've done this many transactions. I know what you're asking for. And we've always been honest and transparent with our sellers of, we think your land is worth this much money, but this is how much we can pay for it. What you are losing in price, you're making up for in speed and convenience. And that was our offer. And that's always been our offer. And it's still our offer. I'm picking up a portfolio of 17 lots that a land seller called me on. I sent him a postcard. It's this postcard right here for people on YouTube of, you know, tired of lowball offers on your land. Give us a call. We'll get you market price. And they said, what's market price for my land? I told them 800,000 and they said, okay, fantastic. And I also, but then I said, I'm an investor. If you guys just want to get it off your hands in like 30 or 45 days, I'll buy it from you for 219,000. And they said, can you do 328, you know, picking up another portfolio, but yeah, primary motivator was I've spent hundreds and hundreds of thousands on realtor commission selling my property where it feels like I'm doing all the work. I'm able to vertically integrate my business that way and add so much more deal flow because a majority of the leads that we've had in our system and continue to add to our system want market price for their land, which is totally fair. And then I'm able to add buyer clients. I've got a buyer client right now where we made significant eight figure offer on 41,000 acres out here, where the commission on that is upwards of half a million dollars for just being in the industry and networking like crazy. So it's been great. And one of the other drivers is I spend very little money to get these deals. My return on ad spend on post on just neutral postcards is, I don't know, like one to 30 right now. And I, I don't have to buy the asset to go make two or five or 50 or a hundred thousand dollar commission. I'm just brokering the deal, which is really great. Yeah, that's really fascinating. I mean, all the things you say here, it's just like, oh yeah, yeah, totally. Makes me wonder, like, is there any negative or downside to becoming a realtor? Like, is there anything about it where you're like, oh, bummer. I wish I wasn't a realtor right now. Or is it all upside? There is some downside. And the only thing that I've experienced so far is like just being beholden to some of the regulations, which I left healthcare because I'm like anti-regulatory, where my brokerage won't allow me to do contract for deed. And I do have some clients that sell on terms with contract for deed rather than no deed of trust. So that's added some complication. But you're saying your brokerage won't let you buy them contract for deed? No, they won't represent any part of the transaction for contract for deed. And why is that? Liability, but I'm with a pretty large brokerage. So we'll see, you know, that could change down the road. It's pretty common in the land space. And, you know, there's not many land agents out there. So competition isn't too fierce, but I mean, I think people are like, oh, you have to disclose everything. It's like, well, yeah, this little disclosure at the bottom saying, if your property is currently listed with an agent, this is not a solicitation to steal listings or something like that. And then on all the purchase and sale agreements, we just disclose that we're a broker, but on our original purchase and sale agreements that we used to use before we used the commission docs, It always said, our intent is to purchase this and immediately resell it for profit. I don't have any problem being extremely transparent or honest with what we're doing. So maybe that can be considered a negative. A lot of people don't like realtors, but we're seeing a tremendous amount of, you know, it pretty much goes straight to bottom line revenue from all the commission that we're able to generate through this. Yeah. Those disclosures, like we intend to purchase it and sell it for profit, or like we're not trying to steal a listing. Has there ever been an instance where you've like tangibly seen oh they saw that and it just killed the deal like because of that everything fall apart or is it not really something that's ever caused a problem i i can't say with certainty that it's never caused a problem because we do have leakage in the business where it's like everything is good everything is great we get the contract in front of them and then we never hear from them again so that happens could that be the cause of it maybe i don't know but no one's ever directly said anything of like oh you're an investor. No, we're at the very beginning, like in our first line of everything of we're investors. That's who we are. Most sellers are not our clients on the investor side of business. And that's what everyone experiences. And I don't try to make it that way. We either purchase land at an extreme discount or we list it for them. Or if we're in another state, I'm able to refer. Like I've got clients going to Wyoming right now. I found an on-market listing for them. I'm not a broker in Wyoming. I texted the agent, are you fine with a 25% referral fee if they close with you? And she said, absolutely. And so I'll make, I don't know, maybe nine grand just by having one phone call referring an agent to one of my clients in another state, which I've heard people say at conferences and on podcasts of how they refer business to realtors, and then they get a referral fee. That's illegal. You cannot do that if you're not licensed and being licensed allows me to do that. In what state are you licensed in? Colorado. Okay. So you must know a thing or two about how to find other good, reliable land agents, right? Or is it kind of the same for you as it is for all of us? We're like, you kind of look at what they've done and you hope they're good, but you never really know until you work with them. Yeah. I think there's three, well, call it four primary resources. First, of course, is word of mouth of just directly referring to someone else. The other one, the obvious one of just looking on land.com or Zillow or wherever and seeing which agents are actually transacting. REtipster has some resources too that I've used that has a portal or directory of land agents. And then RLI, which is the Realtors Land Institute, has a directory of all the ALCs, which is accredited land consultants. You have to have a certain number of transactions you've done and taken all this coursework, which I'm working towards my ALC designation now, that those people really, really know their stuff too. So those are kind of the four resources that I look for. But first, first one, obviously the word of mouth is the best referral you can get. Yeah. And when you say word of mouth, like, are you actively calling other people to ask if they know about this or like when somebody talks about somebody else, you just make a mental note of it. I think both of, you know, it's like, Hey, I know that this friend of mine, just the land investment community is pretty small in general. If I know someone that's operating in a certain market, let me call Dave or Clay or Dan or whomever and say, Hey, who's your realtor in this particular market? Or I post on Facebook or post in my school community or something like that. And we're able to get a referral pretty easily there. Okay. And so are you an accredited land consultant with RLI? And you just mentioned them in passing. No, not yet. I only became licensed three months ago. So I'm a brand new agent, you know, still figuring it out. I've hit double digit transactions and we've made good money, but yeah, still brand new. So it's going to take some time before I'm able to get that designation. Like I've started the coursework. By the way, you also mentioned the resources from RITipshire. So we have a list of land specialized real estate agents from around the country is a directory that I send people to all the time. It's basically just kind of one of these word of mouth directories. So if you are a land agent or if you've used one and had great experience with them, you can submit one to this list as well. You can find it on REtipster if you go to the navigation bar and if you click on directories, there's one called land agents and brokers. That's where you can find the ones that have been submitted and also like who submitted them, when they were submitted. So how old the information is, how to get ahold of them. I'll also link to this at retipster.com forward slash 239, which is the show notes for this episode. If you just want a quick link to get there. But so I am wondering Mason, I know it's only been a few months now, but when you look at like the pie chart of your income, how much of that income is coming from like commissions from listing properties on behalf of others versus your own land deals? I'd say right now, it's probably a third from commissions. We're bringing in about 15 to 20,000 in commissions a month right now. There's a few whales of this deal or that deal closes on the agent side, on the broker side, that obviously will disrupt it. And it's interesting timing for this podcast is like, I feel like I'm in this career transition right now, having become a broker recently where I really like the fact that I've created a cash flow generation machine on the broker side that is, I don't spend any money on it. I spend maybe a few hundred bucks a month on software and a thousand or 2000 a month on marketing. And the returns are outrageous as versus having to actually buy and close the land. I've never been a wholesaler. So it's like, you know, we always take down the land ourselves or with investor capital. So I really view it as the shift in the market has occurred, which a majority of the land deals that we have are sitting are because we're not offering owner financing terms on it. The stuff that we offer good owner financing terms, those deals move really quickly where I'm trying to transition from a land flipper to a land investor. Where the broker side of things is what generates the cash flow. And then I'm able to actually view my land as an investment for like a longer term hold as versus I'm trying to move it as quickly as I possibly can. So I don't have to go through that entrepreneurial roller coaster of cash flow of you feel really rich and then you feel really poor over and over and over and over again, because land is relatively illiquid. And I know a lot of people turn their deals in two weeks or three weeks. That's awesome for you. You are so much smarter and better than I am. I don't have that success except rarely, but I try to seek out tremendous upside on these deals. So it's kind of this pivoting moment for me of if I can make half a million a year as a broker and put that all into good land deals that I don't care if they sell on terms or sell for cash, it's a good evolution of the business in my mind. Yeah. I mean, do you ever feel like shifting to doing only agent work instead of investor work? I mean, it actually sounds pretty appealing, like less risk and less cost and possibly less time? I mean, would that ever make logical sense? I think it kind of does, but it's also the example I gave before of that portfolio deal we're buying, where you see how I'm able to kind of work from both ends of, hey, you want market price? We approach you as an investor. I can offer you market price as your broker. Hey, you just want to get rid of your land really quickly. You're not looking to deal with a year-long listing agreement. This is what I can offer you as an investor. So I think I'll always be purchasing investment opportunities, but being able to view it as an investment opportunity rather than I need this deal to close in six months in order to pay my bills or whatever. I'll never stop investing, but I do anticipate being able to grow the broker side of things to equal to or greater than levels. Yeah. I remember back in 2009, I think it was just as I was getting into real estate, I was driving through Grand Rapids and I saw this big billboard on the side of the highway from this realtor. And it said, your house sold in 30 days or I'll buy it. That's all it said. And I remember thinking like, man, that's a really powerful sales proposition. Like especially in that market at that time when it was so stinking hard to sell houses, I'd be like, heck yes. Like if I need a house sold, I'm calling that guy. But I didn't realize was that I'm sure he had some kind of agreement where like after this 30 days, if I buy it from you, I'm buying it from me at like half of market value, some huge discount, but still, he can say, I'll buy it if that thing doesn't sell, like guaranteed to move this inventory to. And that seems like an awesome thing that you could do as a land investor as well. And that's probably is what you do, right? Is that kind of how you frame it up? Yeah, absolutely. Well, you get to see their motivations and realtors are technically professionals. And so people come to you with advice when you're a realtor. And so you can be very transparent and honest of, hey, this is what stuff is moving for quickly. This is top dollar that I've seen. And this is what investors would buy it for right now. And whenever you're approaching a listing conversation with people like that, you're able to really figure out what their motivations are. And so as they begin to know and like and trust you, you can have that of like, hey, we can try and get market value. We can test it. If you're looking to just get it moved quickly, though, then would you be open to me making an offer to you? And so I think just being able to have all of these tools in your tool belt, which I wouldn't have gotten if I hadn't been a land flipper for years, makes it really appealing for people to work with me on the broker side of things, because I'm able to say I'm a landowner, too. I own hundreds of acres throughout the country, and I know what you're experiencing to a certain extent. But being able to figure out their motivations gives me the tools in the tool belt to decide, hey, here's how I'm going to navigate this conversation. And here's what I'm going to go. Always with my client's best interest at heart, because you do have and assume a fiduciary responsibility to them of, hey, if they want a hundred grand for their land and it's worth 60, I'm probably not going to take the listing because I know I'm not going to meet their needs or anything like that. I'm just going to tell them how it is. Yeah. I got to think having that experience you have as a land investor makes you a far more effective land agent. I mean, way more effective than a lot of agents who have never owned land or just, you know, it's not, they don't have that same perspective and work history of being in the trenches like you have been. So that's huge. Yeah, I think so. It's worked so far. We don't have too much data because I've, like I said, I've only been licensed for three months now, but I do anticipate it continuing to grow and it continuing to be appealing for a lot of people to be able to work with me. And I'm having fun too, which I like meeting people out at the land and playing in the dirt and we're just getting to build this client list. I'm extremely extroverted and it's the most fun I've had. Like I don't like sitting behind a computer and doing all the boring stuff. I like playing in the dirt and that's given me this opportunity. I feel like going into this space, so many people are focused on delegation and never working and all this stuff. Like I enjoy this side of business. Like I want to make as much money as I can so I can do what I really enjoy which is like playing golf and drinking good wine and having good meals and stuff like that but. For now, like this is the most fun I've had in business. And I think it's the outcome and the results of it are showing because I'm having so much fun. I feel like, you know, I'm a big fan of learning sales techniques and stuff. And in the book, Fanatical Prospecting, they talk about it of like sellers or buyers or whoever you're working with on the sales side of thing. They can tell when you're desperate. I don't need these listings. I have a fully functioning land flipping business that makes enough money for us to live very comfortably. I don't need these listings, so I'm never going to come across as desperate as versus I've made more in the first three months as a broker than most house agents make in a year, which I'm not saying that to brag or anything like that. I'm just saying it because no one else wants this market. Most people aren't going to work for a $2,000 commission check at the end of the day. And I will. I treat my $2,000 commission clients the same way I treat my million dollar commission clients. And I think it translates in the work I'm doing. Yeah, totally. Now, how has your marketing approach changed as a result of being a realtor? I know you showed that postcard where you're leading with, hey, tired of getting lowball offers on your land. I mean, that is a very different approach than most land flippers would take, at least one that I know. So it almost makes me wonder, is your approach to look for land listing opportunities first? And if those don't work out, then you make the offer to buy? Or are you trying to make the offer to buy first and then you go with the realtor route if that doesn't work out? With the pivot being recent, I think the fact that from 1,200 letter campaign was the first postcard campaign. So I spent, what is that? 700 bucks on it or something like that. I got a listing that made me 15 grand. That was a two week turnaround from contact to close on after listing. I've got probably five or six more listings that we're nurturing. They're not quite ready to sell this year, but they'll sell probably next year. And then I'm buying the 17 lot portfolio, which is about a $400,000, $450,000 spread on it. So I'm kind of, at least in Colorado, obviously in the other States I do business. And those are the very investor focused. My next round of mailers is it's all from ballpoint marketing, all handwritten letters, just saying, Hey Seth, would you be interested in selling your land to a client of mine? And that's all it says, but it looks like your grandma sent it and everything. So we'll see how that goes. But right now, I mean, assuming this portfolio deal goes the way that we anticipate it on a $700 spend. I will make whatever half a million or so. And I haven't seen returns like that ever from the postcards by any stretch of my imagination. So, and then obviously, yeah, I'm cheeky of like all the bad land flippers out there, the people that are sending me those really crappy blind offers where you're offering me one 10th or 500% of what my land is worth. It plays off it. So the more competition there is in the land flipping space, the more that everyone else is marketing for me because it's a unique postcard. It's different than what everyone else is getting. And realtors are not market land agents are not marketing to people in this capacity. So I think it makes me stand out just a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. You mentioned ballpoint marketing. They got some really cool, unique stuff. Ari tipster actually has an affiliate link to them. If you ever want to check them out, Ari tipster.com forward slash ballpoint. That's awesome, man. That's really cool. So you must have some tricks up your sleeve on how to quickly and effectively get properties sold, right? Like, are you doing something different than the average land investor is to make these things sell? Or is it kind of the same process? It's just that you're able to take advantage of more opportunities, even when you don't own the property. Yeah. I mean, here's what the land investor would want their agent to do. So I get really high quality pictures and video on it when it makes sense to certain properties. I'm taking pictures on my phone because they'll sell like that. But I get really high quality pictures and videos and I send direct mail where, look, this property has been listed in your neighborhood if you want to buy. So it just gets more eyeballs on it. And then very effective pricing of, I don't want to work with the person that wants $200,000 for their land that's worth 60. Your land is worth 60 if you want to sell it quickly. This is what we need to price it at. So I think knowing pricing really well, and that only comes from knowing your market and also thinking like an investor, which that's something I always have to kind of course correct of like, okay, like they might not care if it takes 90 or 180 days to sell. I want to move it quickly because that's how I operate. And that's kind of the bias that I have going into the situation. So whenever I have that initial conversation to understand their motivation, we have that discussion. But for people that want to move it quickly, that's what we do. Great marketing. You know, I posted on Facebook marketplace too. Most of our deals closed through Facebook marketplace and I send direct mail for my listings. Yeah. Doing Facebook marketplace. Is that something that a lot of other agents won't even bother to do because there's a less conventional way to list land? I think probably. I know some agents have listed properties on Facebook marketplace for me, but in general, and I mean, that's another reason I became licensed was I was listing all of my own properties on Facebook marketplace. I would find the buyer and then I would give them to my agent where I'm like, I feel like I just paid you for what I just did. And that was very frustrating for me. So yeah, I don't think most agents do. And if you are an agent and you're listening to this, you should have. I get 10 to 40 messages a day on Facebook Marketplace for my listings. Most people are tire kickers and we've created copy and paste messages. I've made a really cool sales website for all the land that I'm listing as well as land that I'm just advertising for because I drive for dollars. I see really crappy signs of land for sale by owner or land for sale by these land agents that never are out there. And then I advertise their properties for them on Facebook Marketplace or on my land sales website, which is just coloradolandonline.com. Then I just represent buyers on the buy side for them and everyone's happy. It's kind of almost like co-listing instead of representing the sellers. My best interest is the buyers. Yeah. And are you getting like a six or 10% commission on these properties that you sell? Anywhere from two and a half to 4% typically. Okay. Is that another selling point? The fact that you, or I guess, is that a lower commission? Because we're talking about half of the commission, right? Yeah. Half of the commission. It depends. You know, I've like my Alaska deal that I'm sure we'll talk about. I'm paying 20% commission to my agents. But, you know, for me right now, I'm still brand new. So I don't feel like I'm attempting to go for the higher commission amounts. And it does add up. Obviously, if I could charge 5% commission on my side, 10% total commission to get the deal done, that would be helpful. But until I hit, you know, I've got an idea in my mind of how much I want to make before I start saying, hey, you're paying for the luxury commission amount. I'm too new to feel like I deserve that. Just a couple more questions on this. This is going a little longer than I planned now, but this is just fascinating stuff. You're doing a really good job explaining it. So sorry, we're going so long. But I am wondering on the agent side of your business. When you talk about like responding to 40 Facebook messages a day and like getting really good property photos and all this stuff, like that all sounds very time consuming. How much time does it take you to do your agent work versus your land investor work? And do you have like a team or something that helps cut down on this workload for you? You know, I've got a sales manager in the land business. My wife works in kind of the back end, doing the marketing, maintaining certain stuff in both sides of things. And then I have a full-time administrative or not quite full-time, but nearly full-time transaction coordinator and administrative assistant that maintains a lot of the communication with buyers and sellers and fills out all the contracts and paperwork and everything like that. So I'm continuously improving. Like I do work a lot, but I'm really trying to get to the point where the work I'm doing is the stuff I enjoy, which is meeting land buyers and land sellers on property. I want to justify being able to buy some fun toys. I want a Polaris side-by-side, and I want to do enough deals so where I can justify buying a Polaris side-by-side for these ranch showings that I do that I can tow in my truck and just have fun. So in terms of time split, I'd say I'm spending about 50-50, I would say, between both businesses. Pretty even split right now. Okay. Well, I guess one other question. So when you talk about going out and visiting people on their property, how do you think So how big of a market area can you cover in Colorado? Is it like just the surrounding counties or at what point is like a property is too far? I can't service that well. I'm going to refer it to somebody else. Yeah, I'm really trying to stay within like an hour and a half drive of my house, which is I live in North Colorado Springs. And, you know, I've got this cool 3D topographical map of the state. The problem with Colorado is, oh, that's only 100 miles away. But you have to go through all these mountains and everything like that. And it ends up taking five hours. So it depends on the buy side of things, I'll represent anywhere in the state. On the sell side of things, unless it's like a friend or something like that, I'm most likely just staying within about 90 minutes of my house. So El Paso County, Elbert County, Douglas County, Teller County, and I don't really care to go to Pueblo. I know people love Pueblo and make money in Pueblo. And is that because you're not able to physically stand on the property or because you don't understand those other markets or something? A few reasons. We've got all these local MLSs and I only subscribe to the Pikes Peak MLS, which is right here in Colorado Springs and the surrounding areas. And I don't want to. I have invested all over the country in properties I will never visit or states I never care to visit. And that doesn't bother me as much as I don't think I would be able to serve my clients as well as a local could. Like I still believe in the local model of business of I don't know a place street by street. It's hard for me to say, yeah, I'm the best person to do the job here at work with this person. And then I can get a referral fee of 25%, which I did no work for besides making a phone call. So it's easy to be able to, once again, capitalize on another thing that you're not able to, if you're not licensed. Yeah. When we're talking about like drone pictures and that kind of thing, is there somebody on the team of your brokerage that can get that stuff for you? Or do you have to like go out of your way to find a drone pilot to go out there and get that stuff? So in the market that I'm in, I've got a drone guy, Grayson Houston with Old Glory Media. His work is incredible. He does mostly stuff with house agents, but really, really high quality pictures and drone photos. I think a lot of land agents and land investors forget that you need ground photos of the land. You're not going to live a thousand feet in the air. So while the land looks really cool and the pictures look really cool with drone photos, you need stuff at eye level. And that's really hard to capture beautifully if you're not a professional photographer. Or, I mean, you see it. We've got, you know, the nice brand new iPhone. You go take a picture of land. You're like, that's not what it looked like. It looks like crap. And then you see a professional photographer do those ground level photos and it looks incredible. So yeah, I've got one person I go to that does all my photography and videography, at least in the front range. Yeah, I actually have found that kind of surprising, maybe not totally, but in this new age of drone photography being so readily available. I've talked to a lot of investors that like the drone footage is everything. Like almost to the point where like, that's all that matters. We're like, back when I started in land, there were no drones. So like the, on the property, eye level photography, that was it. And it did just fine. In fact, sometimes it did even better because like you can really capture what's going on on the property. I think sometimes people lose that. Like they kind of get caught up in the drone thing. Not that it's not important, but it's like, there is more to it than just that. Yeah. Well, it's, it's more aesthetically pleasing and it makes you feel cool whenever you got all these cool flyby shots of the land. And I think while that's an important part of the marketing, that's going to draw more eyeballs and more eyeballs is always crucial. But to the person that's actually going to buy the land they want to see what it looks like of okay what would the build site be if it's you know an infill lot or something like that what's the topography of you know if we sell to a cattle rancher and there's big flood channels through it it's not going to work well for them but that might work well for someone that wants a little bit of changing topography on the land so it's you need to capture it all and it doesn't take much extra time to do it but if you have a good photographer and videographer that understands that And you're able to go back and be like, dude, what is this? You did not capture any of what I would capture of it. Like you can see Pike's Peak right there. Why is Pike's Peak not captured in any of the footage that you have? But Grayson takes my ideas and makes them 1 million times better because I don't have an eye for it. I like closing deals. I don't like thinking about the aesthetics of it, but I've kind of created this formula or template for him and he does a great job with it. Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome, man. Cool. Well, let's switch gears here to the mining claim conversation. I feel like this could be like two separate podcast episodes. So this was like actually the real original reason I wanted to talk to you because you've dealt with a few different instances where you are buying and selling mining claims. So tell me, what does that mean when we say mining claim? So, and this is specific to two states, Colorado and Alaska. Don't listen to my advice for anything. Like if you're trying to do oil and gas or anything like that, I don't know anything about that. But these were all accident deals where in Cripple Creek, Colorado, which is a big mining town, I had contacted a seller that inherited a large portfolio of mining claims from her brother. And that's kind of what had me get started. The way it works with property ownership is there are surface rights, which is what most of us deal with. There are mineral rights, which is what's below the ground. and there are air rights, which is above the ground. I have not dealt with air rights, but I know I was meeting a developer yesterday that's dealing with air rights because there's like an airway that goes above their land. But mineral rights typically in a lot of states, they've been severed from the property. So you're able to sever these rights and you can buy one or either. And this portfolio of mining claims that I had happened to have unsevered mineral rights, meaning that both the surface and minerals conveyed with the land, which I didn't know what I was doing at all for the first couple of deals. I didn't buy the entire portfolio from her, but I bought two, made about 20 grand and a couple of days on it. I don't even know what they're mining for out there, but it's just an additional kind of tool that we've learned of. Hey, in certain areas where a lot of land investors won't touch these deals, I've started to figure out, hey, in this particular market, I'm going to look for surface plus mineral rights and be able to set the market a little bit. And that is what led me to buying a 440 acre gold mine in Alaska, which is just a weird, funky deal that we were able to purchase through this initial experience that we have. Yeah. So when you talk about seeking out these properties where the mineral rights are still there, so how do you even find those deals? Like, is there some efficient, systematic way to say, hey, show me only the properties where the mineral rights are still there? I have not found an efficient way to do it. I wish I wish I had like greater insight to give you, Seth. But like in in certain areas in specific to Colorado, Silverton, Cripple Creek specifically, that's what a majority of the land is. And like you can look at it and you can see partially why they created subdivision laws in the states back in the 70s, because these this land is cut up like in a nonsensical way. Where, I mean, it looks like a crazy puzzle piece, but you're able to, with any good title search, you're going to be able to see if the water rights and the mineral rights are still there, which water rights are huge in Colorado. So whenever working with a broker on another large deal, they just discovered an additional 7,000 acre feet of water rights that are going to be conveyed with the property, which changes the dynamic of the deal. The title search should be able to tell you whether or not the minerals are still there. Or there's actually separate, you know, within the assessor site and the GIS and everything like that, there's a separate tab for minerals in some of these areas that you're able to see, okay, this is the deed for the mineral rights. This is the deed for the surface rights. You can see there's two different owners right there as versus there's similar owners. So it's very location by location specific of how it kind of works. And then there's other places and other states where it's very, very different from what I've experienced in Colorado, which is Alaska. If anybody is even remotely interested in this whole mineral rights, mining claim conversation, how it works, like how you find if they're still attached to the property or if they've been severed, I implore you, you have to check out my conversation with Vernon Henry. He used to work as a landman in the oil and gas industry. He explained everything you ever need to know and more about how this works. It's retipster.com forward slash 227 is where you can find that. I'll include a link to that in the show notes for this episode. Again, which is retipster.com forward slash 239. So it sounds like through the title search process, that's how you sort of inadvertently found, oh, look, mineral rights are still there. Did you have to find a separate landman to do that mineral rights search? Or did the title company just kind of happen to stumble across it? They referred me to this guy that like has been doing it for like 60 years. So there's not too much time left, but it's like the title company outsourced to someone that's kind of similar to a land man with these Colorado minerals and everything like that. And he was able to kind of explain to me, hey, here's kind of how this process works and everything like that. Because usually you're going to get them conveyed with you if they have not or conveyed with the land, if it has not been severed. But for us, we didn't dive that deep. We just got these deals that fell into our lap. We were able to buy them so cheap and then turn around and resell them for more than double. Once again, it's another tool we have in our tool belt. It's something that we're not trying to become like the mineral people because it's just not where our expertise lies at this point. Eventually, as we grow, it'd be nice to have a sector of the business that focuses entirely and exclusively on minerals because I know there is so much opportunity there. But I valued these deals as a surface this rates deal. Which allowed it to just be a plus for me. And once again, it goes back to being very transparent with these sellers of like, dude, I don't know. I don't know much about mineral rights, so I can only value it from a surface rights perspective. This is what it's worth to me from a surface rights perspective. I know the minerals probably mean something to you, but I can't pay more. And so that's allowed us to get those deals in that capacity, which I haven't done that much. Don't think I'm an expert in minerals or anything like that, just because I've done a handful of deals. I don't know what I'm doing. Oh, you are an expert. And I think that way. And when Mason and I are saying the word landman, just to understand what that means, that's like a certified professional who specializes in doing title searches specifically for the purpose of understanding if the mineral rights are still there or not. And if so, like what portion is still there attached to the property? And you can actually find these people. If you go to landman.org, you can find like people all over the country that do this. And Vernon Henry actually is a landman. So he did this professionally. Anyway, I just thought I'd mention that. On that 17-lot portfolio we're buying, we're buying that deal from land men. That's what they do. They buy these properties at tax lien sales. They let them season for the amount of time that it takes until they are able to do the quiet title action, quickly and do the property to themselves. They sever the mineral rights because they own oil and gas companies and they're just selling us the surface rights. So they don't really care about the surface. They just wanted the minerals. And that works great for us because we don't really care about the minerals. And I mean, some of this land is like infill lots in suburban neighborhoods. So it's not like a pipeline is getting drilled right there or anything like that. And it's one of those things where it's listen to Seth and go back and listen to that other episode with Vernon because there's opportunity here. If you can find these landmen that they go seek out mineral rights and they don't care about the surface, there's another opportunity to do deals. And anecdotally, it's working well for us right now. So in these mineral rights or mining claims, by the way, mining claims and mineral rights, is that synonymous? Is it the same thing? Not necessarily. So in Alaska, we're purchasing three mining claims at 160 acres each. I think that's what they are. Whatever 440 divided by three is. Now I'm like, is my math off? Whatever. But we bought 440 acres, which is three mining claims in Alaska. And. We're essentially renting the land from the state of Alaska. We have the ability to go out there and do mining operations. And I mean, there's creek diversions that we've done, you know, or well, historically had been done on the property and you're able to get permits to build cabins and stuff like that. But we're just renting the land from the state. So if I don't pay my rental payment, which is coming up next month, I could lose it. And then someone else could come in and buy it as versus the like mineral rights is something you actually own, which is what we're kind of more so talking about in Colorado. We're just borrowing them in Alaska. Okay. Gotcha. So the ones that you're borrowing in Alaska, you're, you mean like a lease, right? Yeah, essentially. Okay. And so you're making money by selling the remaining time on that lease to somebody else? Yeah. You can own it in perpetuity if you continue to pay the annual rental payments. And that's what they call it is rental payments to the state. So as long as you're paying the rental payments, I own the claims, which the claim is essentially a lease from the state of Alaska. So I could theoretically own this forever and go mine out there forever if I pay my annual payments, which is a few grand a year for all of them. I mean, it kind of just sounds like property taxes, right? I can own this property forever if I continue to pay the property taxes. That's how I understand it. Yeah. Okay. When we say mining claim, are we talking like gold specifically? We're like, what is it people are trying to mine? Yeah, this is gold. So it's from that same family. The brother had started to go out there. He went out there for a few years. He pulled about a hundred ounces a year off just him and, His brother-in-law go out there for fun in the summer and a hundred ounces of gold in today's market. Gold's trading at about 3,400 an ounce. And that's like 340 grand, which is not bad for a summer going, having fun, you know, hunting, fishing and playing in Alaska and doing some mining. So, and it, what's nice too, is it came with like a facility set up for it. F-150, a Polaris side-by-side, an excavator, a wash plant, generator, fuel storage, three cabins, full infrastructure, ready to go for a mine. And we bought it for $30,000. Oh, man. I mean, a truck is probably worth more than that. Yeah. So yeah, I mean, that's the type of asymmetric bet that I like to make. Yeah, no kidding. Where I could go sell off all the equipment on Craigslist and double or triple my money. So we've got it listed for right around $700,000 right now. We did have a buyer, but they flew out there in their helicopter and it was just too small of an operation for them. So, you know, it'll probably sit for a little bit, but we've gotten offers. We get inquiry every few days and we're just waiting for the right buyer to show up at the table. But for me paying 30 grand for it, I don't really care. If we sell it for 10 times what I acquired it for, which is less than half of listing price, I'm walking away with a decent chunk of change in my pocket. And how did you find this thing? Like, were you looking for just a land deal? But in the process, you found out that the mining claim was there? So this was the same sister that I did those other mining claim deals with. Her brother also owned this mine in Alaska. And they were trying to sell it, but they weren't really telling anyone where it was because they didn't want people going out there and mining or using the stuff or anything. And they enjoyed working with me on the ones in Cripple Creek, and they really wanted me to buy the Alaska one. But just like the ones in Cripple Creek, I didn't really know what I was doing. And I told them that. I said, look, I can't buy this. It's so beyond anything I can fathom. It's in Nome, Alaska. You can walk to Russia in the winter. I mean, it's in the middle of nowhere. And I told them I would have to pay nothing for it. And they told me, well, what's nothing? And I said, 20 to 30 grand. And they said, okay, well, we can make 30 grand work. And they were just ready to be done with it. So bought it for 30 grand, put it up for 750 on the market. I'm paying 20% commission to my agent on it. And I'll have to make annual payments. But the fact that there's a history of gold production on the mining claims, it'll make it appealing to the right buyer and will it sell for 700 grand? Probably not. But most likely it sells for five or 600,000 and it's a good deal for us all day. And what you're selling is the mining claim and the land underneath it? The state of Alaska owns the land. So I'm selling the three claims, which it's essentially like a lease is kind of how I how I understand it. So they will then take over the rental payments. They have the right to go out there and mine and do whatever they want, as long as it's within the bounds of what is allowed for mining claims. So typically you can't build like crazy permanent structures on it, but yeah, I mean, it's you buy the right to go mine that land. And if you keep up with it, you can kind of mine it forever. Yeah. Have you visited this property? Like, have you been there in person? No, I'm tempted to. But my agent was out there last week or attempted to get to the property on one of the days. And he could not because... Grizzly bears had set up an encampment like on the road leading to the mining claims and they did not have big enough guns to go visit the property that day and i enjoy hunting you know small game i'm i'm not interested in getting attacked by a grizzly bear uh in in no malasco uh and becoming a statistic so there is the adventurous part of me that would love to go out there but it's known as known as a weird place i think there's like three motels in town, And like I said, you, I mean, on the Bering Strait, like you can walk to Russia essentially in the winter. It's way, way out there. And for me, that's just too far of a trek. I'm going to Portugal like in two weeks and that's my kind of travel. Yeah. I actually had a high school classmate who moved to Nome, Alaska. And I remember looking it up on Google Earth. It is in the middle of nowhere. I don't think there's even a road to it. If I remember right, like you have to fly there or you can't get there. I think there's like four or 5,000 people total in the town and is the kind of place they can very easily make a horror movie about because it's just a very unique location. Oh, yeah. Dark all winter. It's a strange place, but, you know, the people that are out there, they're they're living, I guess. And if they want to buy a gold mine, you know, check it out. It's listed with Fay ranches. It'll be a cool deal whenever it goes full cycle, but I'm not too stressed about it. Yeah so the have you like i don't know how much you know about how they actually get the gold out of the ground is it just like an excavator and they just dig a hole until they find something that looks interesting or is there like a proper mine shaft where they go underground and that kind of thing i think you might have hit it i i think they just dig with an excavator and then they have it like go through the wash plant to you know sift it out but i have no idea to be honest and that's what people tell me of you know at that conference we were at they're like why don't you go out there and go mine it yourself. I'm like, I panned for gold at Rocky Mountain National Park when I was like six on a guided expedition. I don't know anything about mining. I don't care to learn anything about mining. So I don't know. I'm sure there's a way to do it. Yeah. Well, on this whole thing, if you encounter a situation where you're buying specifically a mining claim and not the land that the claim is on, but just that claim or the mineral rights for that matter, you know, I know you said you made an offer of $30,000, which seems like a no-brainer given just the equipment that's there. That's easily worth way more than that. So that I understand. But if that equipment was not there, how would you appraise the value of this mining claim? Like how do you come up with a basis to make a discounted offer based on that? What I've encountered in the space, like working to try and find a buyer for it is there's some study that you can do just like with wells for water, which a lot of people that listen to the show might be more familiar with, like where you can dig a test. Well, you can do studies on the land to determine how much gold there is in the dirt in certain spots that will then allow you to create a valuation for the land. Part of the problem was that process for at least this property was going to cost anywhere from like 40 to $80,000 for me to do that study. And I'm a little bit of like, once again, of the value to me is like, okay, well, I could sell off the stuff or I could just do an insane sale and still be able to sell it for three or four times what I paid for it. I didn't want to put more money into it. I'm gambling on it. I don't want going to start sinking more and more and more into it. And then it turns out there's not much there. But I think the fact that there was historic, consistent production gave me a decent amount of hope. And my broker who deals in gold mines, this is his smallest listing. He's got $150 million gold mine for sale out there. But there are geological studies that you can do that will determine what minerals are in the ground and how much there is per cubic yard or something like that. There's some metric they use. Yeah. Do you know, is that essentially a geotechnical investigation, or is there a different name for what this study is? There is, and there's some form to where it's like this weird Canadian like form that people keep asking me, like, do you have this like TI 43 101? I can't remember the name of it where they say, Hey, if, and that's a whole other rabbit hole, you can go down where someone's, they essentially trade mineral interest, uh, like on the market of like, Hey, this mine has a geological study that's been completed that shows this much and then like you're trading potential interest on the market on this like a natural resource market that is like the stock exchange and stuff like that so i mean there's a ton of ways to make money in it but for me once again i'm i'm a simple person i'm going the simple route this is the easiest path that i can figure out without spending more money on it yeah. So like your ideal buyer for this thing, it's basically a hobbyist, like not a serious company that needs to make a return, but just like, yeah, wouldn't that be fun to go dig around for gold? Like, is that kind of your ideal buyers? A thousand percent, a thousand percent. It's too small for the institutional people. I mean, the institutional people are trading in the billions and trillions, literally like with like the way the natural resource industry is working right now. And just the price per gold, where I see these large transactions that are occurring, where I have three mining claims. These people are doing thousands of mining claims. And so it's not a pricing issue. It's just finding that ideal buyer, which there's people out there. I think if I had acquired this pre-COVID, I feel like we would have sold it for $2 million without a question of people. The market dynamics were a lot different than they are now. But I think the price of gold makes it still attractive for the right person of some rich guy or gal from Texas or California that wants to go on their great Alaskan adventure. So I think listing it in the middle of summer, we listed it July. Mid early July is challenging where if we don't sell it this summer, my guess is we won't sell it until the spring. So people can get ready and prepare for the operations because look on a globe where Nome is. It's cold there most of the time. It is way, way, way north and so people are only mining out there for three or four months yeah these other mining claims that you did successfully sell where did you advertise these things like where did you find the buyer facebook marketplace maybe facebook wait facebook. In my conversation with Vernon Henry, I don't know if these websites would be relevant. I think they're meant more for like oil and gas, but there are specific websites meant for mineral rights, not land. It's like usmineralexchange.com, energydomain.com, energynet.com. I don't know if there's a place for this kind of thing that would fit in there, but if you're looking for more like specific buyers for that exact kind of thing, maybe there's some section of those websites that would make sense. Yeah. I wrote it down. I'll check it out and see. You know, I paid a $25,000 retainer to my agent that I'm paying 20% commission on. So if they're not listed there and they should be, we'll make sure to get them listed there for me to just putz around and figure it out. Because to me, the upside on this deal is so high that I don't mind working to find a buyer on it. It's just finding the right one. And if you're listening to this and you want to go make a bunch of money mining gold, you know, give me a call. Yeah. Well, it makes you wonder, like, just in the normal course of running a land flipping business. Do you think it ever makes sense to go out of your way as a land flipper to always sever the rights if they're there and sell off the mineral rights or the mining claim separately from the surface rights just to double your money in some areas where there might be gold? Is that complicated? What would that look like? I think once again, it's going to be so state by state. You're not going to be able to do that in Alaska where the Department of Natural Resources is manage it, but there is something to like these land men that I'm buying this, this portfolio from once we close this deal, I'm going to have conversations with them of like, Hey, like, you know, I buy land all the time and I don't care about the mineral rights. And most people don't really care about the mineral rights. You could probably find a landman or a company that does mineral rights severance or severance. I don't know if that translates the same way, but that severance the mineral rights that you could create an exchange. It's the same thing with water. I know some big water deals that have been done where a lot less water selling for many, many tens of millions of dollars than I've come across in the dealings that I've done. So there's a way to do it, but there are experts that I would recommend consulting with like a landman or a water broker that you can figure out. Does it make more sense to sever and sell off to a town or a city? Or does it make sense to convey as is? It's the same question of with minor subdivisions of does it make sense to do a minor subdivision because you think you can get it for more or is the land more valuable as is, you know, as a 200 acre farm compared to 540 acre lots. And so I think evaluate it and create a system that works for you. And, but don't be afraid of leaving money on the table. Like if you can make, if you can double or triple your money doing a simple deal, that's a fantastic return. I think our brain gets broken in the land space. Like if my stock portfolio is doing high single digit, low double digit every year, I'm ecstatic. So, you know, it's just to each, each person, what their investment thesis is. Do you know the history of this Alaska property or even the other, the Colorado on the other ones. Like, why did these mining claims come into existence? Like what made these landmen think, hey, this is worth doing? Is it just because like, yeah, it's Alaska. There's gold all over the place. Let's try it. Like, is it just that? Or was it some of the clue that made them say, hey, we should go out of our way to try to get it on this property? I don't know, honestly. I mean, I think that's how Alaska generates a decent amount of revenue every year. Because I mean. What else is anyone going to do with these properties that are truly in the middle of nowhere? But they can chop it up and then lease it out where you pay a few grand a year. So I don't know what the revenue statistics are for Alaska specifically. And then Colorado, I mean, that's people came out here for during the gold rush. And over the next century, these parcels got split up in really, really bizarre ways, which led to a lot of the subdivision regulations that came out in the early seventies to make it so where you can't just do this. And so, you know, there's weird property lines, but I wish I knew the history of it, but I, you know, I can speculate all day of probably because weird miners from their late 1800s came up with some strange ideas. Yeah. The Colorado one that you did successfully sell, were they both in Colorado? The other two? Yeah. So the people that bought it, do you have any insight into like their logical thought process of why it was worth it to them? Because it sounds like just dreamers, right? I mean, it's just, yeah, I don't know, but here's a cool idea. Is that kind of how they think of it? I think that's how a lot of people were thinking about it that I advertised to, but the people that actually closed, they were neighbors. They owned a neighboring land. And I don't know exactly what their plan is, but there is an opportunity there, which I guess the one thing that we hadn't talked about, there's some huge transactions that occur in the mining industry. I can't remember the company that bought it, but the Victor Cripple Creek gold mine that was owned by Newman Mining Corporation, which I think they're out of Australia, just sold recently for, I think, a pretty large sum, very close with land that abutted the properties that I did out in Colorado, where so many of these mining claims are owned by individual people. And so you could theoretically, one by one, go acquire them and then do an assemblage of those and then sell them to a large mining corporation. That is an option, too, for people that are familiar with doing assemblages. So because once again, like it becomes interesting to these groups, especially if they own all the surrounding land of, yeah, I'd like to take these 400 acres of surface and mineral rights and then add them to the portfolio for decent amount of money. That's where it becomes really valuable. And assemblage is like the opposite of subdividing, correct? Yep, exactly. You probably already said this, I'm just forgetting, but when you say assemblage, so the Colorado deal, that was the surface and the mineral rights on that one? They were for both of those, yeah. Okay, gotcha. Cool, man. What else should I be asking you about this that I might have missed? I don't know. I wish I had more insights to provide on the mineral stuff. And it's one of those things where I've made a good amount of money doing it, but I have done so few that I'm not considered an expert. but I'd encourage people that are in the land investing space that maybe the market cycle has been hard on you. Consider becoming an agent. If you're interested in becoming an agent, reach out to me. I'd love to have this conversation with you guys because it's been huge for our business. I think there's so many limiting beliefs on it of everyone says, well, what about disclosures? I hope today that I was able to prove that it's just not a big deal. We're able to make a lot of extra money. We're able to capitalize on a tremendous amount of deals in our pipeline. I haven't even begun to go through my whole CRM with, I don't even know how many dead leads we have that we said dead lead once market price. I mean, thousands sitting in our CRM that we're going to be able to revitalize in the coming months and years. So I just encourage you guys to consider it. If you've been in the land flipping space for a while, you probably have more knowledge than most land agents. And I think long-term with the broker side of things, I'd love to disrupt the industry by actually having great land agents out there for people to work with on these smaller deals that the huge land agents won't touch and the residential people are useless on. Yeah. Well, I'll tell you, talking to you has made me consider it more than I think I ever have before. And I don't even know why. Like, I know plenty of investors who are also agents, but I don't know. You just, the things you mentioned, they just kind of sparked a new light bulb in me that I... I don't know if I missed it before or what, but you have a very compelling case for it. When you mentioned these deals that, you know, Dead Deals wants full market value, how many of those can you actually sell? Because a lot of times the reason they don't sell is because they want market value, which is too high in the eyes of a lot of buyers out there. So like, what would you say is a success rate? If you get them under contract for six months or 12 months or however long it is, what percentage of the time can you truly list it at full market value, put together the best possible listing and you actually sell the thing. We'll see. I haven't had anything that's not sold yet, but I think there's a difference between true market value and just another universe or different reality market value. When you're able to actually see the data and have the conversations too of like, look, Seth, you're 200 acres. I know you want half a million. The only way that you could get half a million is if you go through a major subdivision process and you deal with the Metro district and you do this, this, this, this, and this, and you're going to spend 200 grand over the next few years, then we could get you half a million. We could get you 400 grand if we split it into these exempt subdivisions, or we could get you this much as is, but it might take a year or two to sell. So you tell me what you want. And being able to have those logical conversations of, yeah, you could get this much, but you have to do this, I think can potentially bring people back to reality. And it's the same conversations we have on the investor side of things of where'd you get that number from? and kind of figure it out. And I know a lot of agents right now, at least on the residential side, they're scared to take listings because listings are taking a really long time to sell. They spend a bunch of money on marketing. They put together the first perfect package like you're talking about. And then they get fired six months later because their property won't sell because seller expectations are misaligned with what the market is. So I think being able to work with the right seller, even if you're listing is the same thing on the investor as it is on the investor side of. If their expectation is not what reality is, they might not be the right person to work with. Yeah. Well, when you say that the seller's expectations are misaligned with the market and. This whole issue of coming up with a objective or at least reliable market value for a property and whether or not it will sell an X number of days, all this stuff. I'm sure you probably get calls all the time from land investors like this who want to know that. Like, what's this thing worth? What would it sell for in six months or whatever the question is? How do you come up with a reliable number on that? Like, are you doing anything different than whatever land flipping educator says? What is that process to truly understand as accurately as possible? What is this thing worth? Yeah. I feel like the data sources are pretty similar of I pull a comp report from the MLS. Shoot, I still use priced for comp reports, especially on the really rural stuff. And then most county assessor websites, you're able to actually go and look at sales data where one of my clients this weekend did an event out east. They sold about 40 properties in a day. And I mean, they spent a ton of money on marketing and advertising it like ranch liquidation event in Colorado and got a hundred appointments set and sold out all the property out there. And the funny thing about it is none of that's going to show up on the MLS or like a price report or a comp report or anything like that. It's only going to show up on the assessor website of recent neighborhood sales. So you have to be looking at the assessor website to show what the last sale price actually is because so many land transactions actually occur off market and that data is not always captured. That's a huge insight right there. Just understanding the limits of the MLS. And even when you do look at the MLS, like sometimes there's errors in there too. Like if a property is sold with owner financing, like it's not necessarily going to tell you that if you're looking at Zillow or if the realtor puts the wrong sold price in there because they're too lazy to update it from the listing price. I mean, it's not going to show you that either. There's just a lot of nuance there, and it does seem like you're getting a much more accurate picture looking at the assessor. That's a great point. Yeah. I mean, 40 properties just sold in an area where I think if you looked on the assessor's. Five have sold in the last, or sorry, like if you look on Zillow or something like that and try to see what sold in the last year, like maybe five have sold, but they just sold 40 and none of those are going to show up. That's well, wow. That like, it's a game changer right there. When you understand that stuff is happening, this event you're talking about, is this like an auction or something or what is this event that they set up? Like if I want to set up an event, how do I do this and sell 40 properties? Yeah. I mean, spend a hundred thousand on marketing step one, but, they ran radio ads. They ran a ton of Facebook and Instagram ads saying ranch liquidation event, appointment only, starting at this price. They were not offering seller financing. They had a bank there being able to write land loans at the table. They had a big tent set up. They had 20 salespeople out there that would drive the appointments to the land that's available. Everyone had walkie-talkies saying, oh, parcel 30 just sold. Really cool to see. And ranch salespeople have been doing events like this for decades. But that was my first time going to a ranch liquidation. So it's not an auction. It's just like a really well-organized, well-marketed sales event that they did two some odd million in a day. Were these properties selling at discounts, like less than market value? Nope. Wow. Seriously? Man. Yeah. No, I mean, I've got listings right up the street that haven't sold yet. And I'm like, I mean, that's a way to do it. And the thing is like, you need to be able to spend the marketing on it to be able to function like that. And you have to have a team and everything. It's really cool. I love being on the buy side, representing these clients to acquire large ranges and do projects like this, but it's a lot. It's a lot for what they do. But if you think about the people that do a subdivision or a minor subdivision, if you sold all your lots in one day. Yeah, you could take the profits from two of the 30 and have that just go right into the marketing for the event. You just have to be well-capitalized enough to afford it. So the buyers that show up to these things, like, are they motivated by this idea that. These are kind of off-market listings. Like I can't find these on the MLS. It's a unique opportunity. I mean, they must not be motivated by a discount because that's not what they're going to get. So like, why would they even show up to this? Good marketing. Like I'm hammering the point of good marketing. So when is the good marketing? Like what is good about it? Like what are they saying to get the people to show up? Well, I think they frame it well of ranch liquidation event is what they're calling some of this that gets people, you know, I get the ads for them too. Like I got on their list, you know, before they became my clients, because I was like, Oh, ranch liquidation. That sounds cool. And then you see of, Hey, I can buy these 35, 40 acre lots close to Colorado Springs for 60 grand, which is market price for them. But it feels like you're getting a really good discount because you've been primed beforehand because you're going to this liquidation event where they're selling off all of them. And then you show up and there's the, you know, that kind of dopamine rush that you have whenever you're in a crowd of people and all these, you know, they've got the tent, they've got the salespeople and everyone's running around. And it's really exciting of like, Hey, if you want to buy it, it's today or never. And so it creates a sense of scarcity that makes it so where that like, you're not going to get another opportunity like this. And I think at that price point of that, they ranged in price from like 50 to 120, depending on access and well and all sorts of stuff like that. It's a great product, first and foremost, too. But it's exciting. And being able to make a decision like that, people still want that dream of being a land owner in the United States. And so I think it's very different if you're like ranch liquidation event and it's a bunch of desert squares in the middle of the Mojave Desert or something like that as versus like nice landowners. Ag exempt land in Colorado within an hour of Colorado Springs. Yeah. Wow. So that's a big takeaway is use the word liquidation as many times as possible. And that'll somehow work my head. Yeah, honestly, I mean, it's, uh, it was really cool to see. Like it made me, you know, for some of my listings, try and think about how, how can I execute this with a smaller team? You need an event planner, you need, you know, social media marketing. You need everything, but there's a reason my clients have done over a billion in sales doing what we do. Yeah. It's amazing. Mason, thanks so much for doing this. It was a fascinating conversation. I really appreciate all of the insights you shared. If people want to reach out to you, get ahold of you in some way, what's the best way to do that? LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Mason McDonald, Mason R. McDonald on Instagram. You can check out my website, coloradolandacquisitionservices.com or my sales website, coloradolandonline.com. I've got a podcast, The Big Picture Blueprint. Seth was on our show. I can't remember which episode because I'm not as talented as he is, but Seth has been on our show. Whatever that was. Yeah, right. But we've had a ton of land investors and a ton of interesting people on our podcast, The Big Picture Blueprint. Awesome. I will link up to all that stuff in the show notes. Again, retipster.com forward slash 239, the Instagram, LinkedIn, coloradolandonline.com, all that stuff. So be sure to check that out. Mason, thanks again. It's great to talk to you and all the listeners. We will talk to you next time.