The REtipster Podcast | Land Investing & Real Estate Strategies

The Business Model That Survives Every Recession w/ Drew Haney and Mike Balcom

• Seth Williams • Episode 281

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281: What actually works in land investing when the market slows down?

(Show Notes: REtipster.com/281)

In this episode, I sit down with two of my good friends: Drew Haney of Rooster Capital and Mike Baucom, my business partner at Stride CRM. We had no formal agenda, but the conversation quickly turned into a candid look at the current land market, the strategies that still work, and what separates the land investors who survive from those who quit.

Drew shares insights from analyzing approximately 850 funded land deals. One of the biggest conclusions was surprisingly simple: boring, smaller land flips often produce the strongest returns. While the industry constantly promotes new real estate strategies—subdivides, entitlements, distressed property, and other value-add plays—some of the most successful land investors continue using the same basic systems they have refined for years

We also discuss why the land market no longer feels like the COVID-era boom, whether another real estate crash could be coming, and why transaction volume may matter more than rising land prices.

Mike, Drew, and I also get honest about entrepreneur mindset, inconsistent cash flow, failed marketing campaigns, diversification, shiny object syndrome, loneliness, AI, and the importance of building real relationships with other business owners.

This conversation is about more than land flipping. It is about staying in the game, improving your systems, and learning to appreciate the difficult seasons of entrepreneurship.

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SPEAKER_05

Hey everybody, what's going on? Seth Williams here, RE Tips Your Podcast. I have another unique opportunity here. Two of my good friends, Mike Baucom, business partner in Stride, Drew Haney, Rooster Capital, well-known land funder. They both decided to grace me with their presence. They are visiting me here at my home. And so we thought, hey, why not make a podcast episode out of this? We don't really know what we're gonna talk about. We're sort of winging it, but for the past day or so, we've been having lots of conversations, and they've all been fairly fascinating to me anyway. So hopefully you'll think they're pretty fascinating too as we dive into this. So, welcome guys.

SPEAKER_03

Thanks, Seth. We're excited to be here. We had a quite an adventure getting here.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah, should we talk about that quick? What you had to do just to I mean, it was supposed to be a fairly straightforward trip here, but things did not go well. Uh, we had some pretty terrible weather. Well, I guess Chicago had some terrible weather when Mike was trying to fly into. And uh you want to tell the rest of the story?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. I mean, originally the plan was fly to Chicago, meet Drew there, because he was making his way down the road to see you. I could ride with him for a while, and everything went out fine. About a 20-minute delay at the airport, and then we get to Chicago, and then we make a circle around it, and then a circle again, and a circle again, and they say there's really bad weather. And after about 45 minutes of circling, they said, Alright, we're gonna reroute you to Detroit. So it's like, Alright. We get to Detroit, we land, and they say, Yeah, we'll tell you in a second what the plan is. And we're waiting and waiting, and I feel so bad because now Drew is starting to drive to Detroit, very far from Chicago, just to then backtrack back here, and then they come on and saying, Okay, we're working to see if we can go back to Chicago, and apparently a tornado touchdown in Chicago, and that was causing a lot of issues, and Drew was stuck in the middle of that. How how were you feeling with that, by the way, Drew? What was your experience like waiting on me to land somewhere in the world?

SPEAKER_00

Because I had no idea where I was going at that point.

SPEAKER_03

It was fun. Yeah, how often in your life do you sit in a car with nothing to do? Just waiting. It was good. I was in Claude, I'm like, okay, there's a tornado. Do I stay in the car? There's tornado and lightning. With lightning, you go in the car. With the tornado, you're supposed to lay on the ground. So Claude said you should get out and risk getting struck by lightning because the tornado is more dangerous. But I stayed in the car because I didn't want to get wet. I risked my life just so I want to be wet. And then we drove all night up to Grand Rapids.

SPEAKER_00

I don't know if people Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, we're skipping a step.

SPEAKER_03

Oh, and then I went to a shady casino.

SPEAKER_00

That's not the step I was talking about. Okay. So I'm in Detroit, and then they come over, the loudspeaker, and say, Okay, we're gonna see if we can get you back to Chicago. And you can't get off the plane, and you're almost like held hostage there, just waiting in limbo, wondering. And I let Drew know, I'm like, hey Drew, I I don't really know if you should drive here or not. I don't know what the plan is.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And that's where you ended up at your shady casino.

SPEAKER_03

I was at a shady gas station next to a casino, and I could have gone into the casino, but I'm now late 30s and I don't like loud spaces. So I stayed at the gas station. Once you were flying back to Chicago, I this was in Indiana at this point. I decided to drive back to Chicago, then waited a couple more hours, I think. Oh yeah. And you waited a while. Then you landed, and then we drove all night to see Seth. And then by the time we got to the hotel, it was 5.20 in the morning. We know Seth is up early, so we're just like, hey, why don't we just stay up and hang hang out with Seth for breakfast? So we ate breakfast.

SPEAKER_02

And really what Drew's saying here is so they after keeping us on this plane for an hour and a half and then letting 12 more passengers get on, they decided to fly us back to Chicago. Yeah. Which should be like a 30-minute flight, which took an hour and a half because they had to reroute us to the upper peninsula to then come down just so we got to dodge the weather. So I was supposed to be see Drew at 7, I saw him at midnight.

SPEAKER_04

Yep.

SPEAKER_02

At 1 a.m. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

And then and you didn't sleep that whole night, and then you met me for breakfast at 6 30 a.m. here. And then you still didn't go to sleep. I don't know when you guys got to sleep, but we're a little loopy right now.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

I don't know about you, but like if I don't get to bed by like midnight on a normal night, like I start getting really weird. So I can't imagine what they were going through. But they weathered it fairly well, I thought.

SPEAKER_00

So no pun intended.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah. Didn't even catch that, but here we go. What do you want to talk about? What's on your mind? Who wants to start? Anybody? Normally I come prepared with questions for these things, but uh I'm truly winging it.

SPEAKER_03

We can talk about what I've learned since my last podcast with you. Okay. How long ago was that now? We filmed that in December.

unknown

Okay.

SPEAKER_03

And now it's June, so six months. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

What's happened in your life? You moved, right?

SPEAKER_03

You moved to your new house. We moved to a new house. I got a speeding ticket recently, so I switched to a slower car. So I'm a car guy, so switching cars is like a big deal. It's fun. I went from an autobahn, highway, fast car to now a slow off-roading car.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

So LA has all kinds of off-road trails nearby.

SPEAKER_05

So have you had enough experience with this new off-roading car to know which one you prefer? Like you prefer off-roading? Or do you like the BMW?

SPEAKER_03

You know what's funny? Is the same thrill you get going 150 miles an hour, you get that same thrill going two miles an hour over some bumps. It feels it feels dangerous. I don't know how to explain it. And then when you look at the video, you know, if your buddy's taking a video of you going through the bumpy part, it doesn't look very extreme when you're viewing the vehicle from the outside. But when you're in it, you're like, ah, might fall over.

SPEAKER_05

You know, you know, I used to work at a Land Rover dealership in college, and they had this little track in the front on purpose. That's like at a 45-degree angle and goes to the side. And we went over it one time, and I know what you mean. And that was like a controlled environment. No, still a thrill to it.

SPEAKER_03

Um, yeah. So that's new. I now host a Rooster Capital mastermind roughly every two months.

SPEAKER_00

Wait, what is Rooster Capital for those who don't know?

SPEAKER_03

Rooster Capital is currently a JV funding company. So you bring us the flip or the minor subdivide, and then we bring the money and we split the profits on the back end. Up until recently, up until about six months ago, I've I had only worked with about four operators, doing roughly 100 to 150 deals per year. And then now I'm open to the public. Rooster Capital is open to the public. Our team has grown. We now have four on the Rooster Capital team, so that's exciting. We've doubled in size. Yeah, we've done a lot of upgrades. I call it Rooster Capital 2.0. So some of those upgrades we've completely revamped our portal with Claud Code. So if you go to roostercapital.land, you'll see you can create an operator account, you can log in, you can submit deals. Once your deals are in the pipeline, you can start to see KPIs. Super fancy terminal. And now I host office hours. I'm super optimistic about the land market in general. And we've done a lot of deal analysis. So in my view, June of 2024 is really when the land market slowed down. The COVID market kind of ended. Now we're in this pre-COVID, slowish market.

SPEAKER_05

You mean post-COVID?

SPEAKER_03

Well, we're we're back in the 2018-2019 kind of slow speed, right? Nothing's wrong. The fundamentals are still fine, but I view this as a great time to refine your business model and dial in your systems when things are slow because when things get fast again, you'll make two to four times more for the same effort, right? So we've done a lot of deal analysis in Claude. I've probably spent over 20 hours analyzing our 850 deals. My COO, who's a scaling genius, he's spent a similar amount of time analyzing these deals separately from me. And then we also sent our deal track record to a trusted friend, and he also analyzed the deals. And we all kind of came up with similar conclusions. So one of those conclusions is at least from an IOR perspective, the super boring small flips work the best. When I say small flips, I mean a purchase price of zero to 70K. So what market rate of up to 140, market value. How many years is this going back? This is going back six years, but we parsed out the data to see separate numbers for the slow market. So June of 2024 up until now, so roughly two years of deal data. We also analyzed that separately to make sure that we don't we don't have juicy COVID returns skewing our judgment, right?

SPEAKER_05

I've heard people saying quite a bit, or just this sentiment that you need to have some kind of value add strategy in your stack of things that you do, like just doing straight flips, it's just harder to rely on only that. But that's most of what you do, right? Is just straight flips. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

So would you agree with that, or do you think that's just a misguided? I don't think that's true at all. I think I think we're listening to these gurus in 2021. So I started 2020. When I say gurus, it's not a derogatory term, it's just the the influences in our space, right? A lot of them get up and say, if you're still doing red ocean desert squares, you're a loser, and you should be doing five-figure blue ocean flips, right? That was 2021. And we're all like, Yeah, you make five times more for the same effort, yeah. And then 2022, some of the uh influencers get up and they say, You should be doing subdivides, value add, flips are dead, you know, and we're all like, Yeah, yeah, that makes way more sense. And then the next year it's like you should be doing entitlements. You're a loser if you're not doing entitlements, and then it's distressed, you know, 2024. It's like, oh, you should be doing distressed stuff. And at least for my top four operators, they're very private people, they keep their heads down and they just do what they're good at, and they've done five-figure flips their whole career. Every single one of those four have started in 2019 or earlier, and they just do the boring stuff, it consistently works, and they ignore all the noise out there. You know, they'll toss in a minor subdivision here and there, but for the most part, they're mostly doing flips. And a trend I've noticed, there's no, I get to ask this a lot, like, what's the secret, you know, marketing channel? Is it mailers or text or what's the best areas? Because I know I see a lot of deals across the country, right? There's no secret.

SPEAKER_05

Do you actually know how these come together? Like, do you get into the weuge of like, okay, this person sent this type of letter to this county and they filtered the list like this? That's not the deal that came together. I don't know about that. Yeah, you just kind of see the deal, right?

SPEAKER_03

I'm sure I believe there's edges, right? I'm sure there's little tactical things, you know, a way to do your mallur to where it's slightly more advantageous. But in general, there doesn't, there's no tr there's no secret sauce. There's no secret markets. These operators are doing deals all over the place. Two of them are concentrated in in Arizona specifically, which if you've been in the business long enough, you'd think, oh, Arizona's saturated, right? No, they're just they're doing 80% of their deals in one state and just getting really, really good at one state.

SPEAKER_05

You know, that whole thing. So, like there kind of is a secret sauce. Or I mean, there's clearly a way to not do it right, right?

SPEAKER_03

I mean, you can Which is change every three months, right?

SPEAKER_05

Maybe. I mean, uh I just know like I've definitely talked to plenty of people who have struggled uh sending things like blind offers where they don't filter the list that well. It's basically just doing like the shotgun blanket stuff that used to work really well in 2018 and before. So, like, yeah, that is not working today. If you can do it wrong, there must be a way to do it right. So, like, it may not feel like secret sauce to the people who figured it out, but like they kind of do have something. If they've got a system that they can repeatedly do and it works, it is secret sauce. I know.

SPEAKER_03

I think the secret sauce is they've built a very boring machine and they're just slowly tweaking it, making little tweaks here and there. Oh, the moth just died. A moth just flew in. They're just making t very minor adjustments.

SPEAKER_00

Now you know how we feel listening to you, Drew. Yeah, I just can't fit into the fire eye.

SPEAKER_03

They're making super tiny tweaks, and it's boring.

SPEAKER_05

So it doesn't feel special. Yeah, it kind of is though.

SPEAKER_03

Like I mean, how much of it is our ADHD? We we want that dopamine hit of trying something new.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

And in reality, the boring machines are what consistently work in most spheres of business, right? Landscaping companies, plumbing companies. They're just doing a very boring skill set and making small improvements.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah, I've had some conversations with some of my friends who are you know making the well over million per year range growth. But so anyway, they're doing pretty good. Like they've got a I would say their net is at least half a million a year. And I see that today, while at the same time knowing like a lot of people have quit this, like they're not doing it anymore, or they're like struggling to stay in the game. And when I talk to those people who are doing really well, it's like, I hope you realize like how special this is. Like, yeah, don't take it for granted. Uh, and I don't think they do, but at the same time, I feel like they don't realize that they are doing something right, and they should be really proud of that.

SPEAKER_03

And I think it's that they're doing the little things right. They're getting on the phone with leads within five minutes, or at least their team is. They're not changing their marketing strategy every three months. I mean, imagine sending three mallers. It's 10k per mallor, let's say, and the first three just bomb. I mean, you have to be crazy to send that fourth one. And you almost have to be so stubborn, just know that it works in the long run, and be able to see the the law of large numbers, right? Big sample size.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah, that's tough, man. I don't know if I could do that. Three campaigns, 10k each, and I'll bomb, and then do a fourth one. Like, I feel like I'd have to change something. But you're saying people will just not change anything and just trust that bigger numbers things will work out. Is that always wise, do you think? Or could that ever actually be insane? Like, yeah, don't do that.

SPEAKER_03

Well, I think you're making tweaks, right? You have to almost have faith in the business model at a very high level and almost just ignore the noise. Ignore ignore the f the minute feedback you're getting because it might not be actually useful feedback, right?

SPEAKER_02

I think a struggle that a lot of us have in this business. I think a lot of people got into this business during COVID times.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

And it life was so easy then. We're making deals hand over fist. Yeah. If I'm doing mail and I change to texting, I'm still getting deals. You know, I might have to make some tweaks, I might slow down my deal flow, but it's like 60 days later, I have deals coming in.

SPEAKER_03

Right.

SPEAKER_02

You know, where now, if you make those shifts, we have such a bigger lagging effect going on that it's harder for us. And then it makes us think, like, ah, why is this? But you talked about you feel like we're now more in like a pre-COVID time, yeah. Like how it was back in the day. I'm curious to know your thoughts. When are we gonna get back to that COVID time period? Yeah, you know, or what do you think the future holds in this space? Because you talked about right now hunkering down, you know, tweaking your systems and really dialing in, yeah, and not jumping all around too much, which is so easy for us to do as entrepreneurs. Like we all have the shiny object syndrome. It's probably why we got into this. That's why when, you know, 10K we lose that on a mail, or it's like, ah, mail doesn't work, mail's dead, you know, texting's dead, PBC's dead, something's dead. I should be doing messy, I should be doing subdivides.

SPEAKER_04

Right.

SPEAKER_05

I'm not really holding out hope that forever seeing another COVID time frame. Like that was such a weird, unique situation where the government injected so much money into the economy, like interest rates were so low. Like it was just it was a bizarre time in a way that made it really easy and profitable during that time. So, like, maybe it'll happen, but like I'm not I'm not thinking, hey, maybe next year. It's like it's just right. I don't expect that again. I do expect another crash at some point, like a 2009-ish, maybe not that hard, but something like that. I feel like that's coming, which is like the opposite of the COVID boom, like things are terrible, but that presents its own set of opportunities too.

SPEAKER_02

I read last month or the month before, we had the biggest surge in first-time home buyers.

SPEAKER_05

Oh, really?

SPEAKER_02

Wow in like three or four years. Yeah. That's great.

SPEAKER_05

Why? Is that because prices are coming down or something?

SPEAKER_02

Or I think prices are slightly coming down, but I think it's too. These people have just been waiting on interest rates to drop for so long. And I mean, like, it's it's the American dream.

SPEAKER_05

Something's gotta give, right?

SPEAKER_02

Own your home, yeah. And now and I think too, we're starting for a while, too. It's like, why would you rent? You should buy. And then interest rates went way up, and it's like, why would you buy financially? You're better off renting. And I think we're slowly starting to see that shift again.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

But I think that also depends on like what demographic you're in, what market are you in, what's going on there.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Because I know people that do Airbnb arbitrage now and they're crushing it. But I'd say probably 70, 80, 90% of the people that were doing Airbnb arbitrage, you know, got their butts handed to them. You know, when things went south, but that's where like consistency is key.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

But it's hard to see. Like if I go to the gym and I work out a month or two from now, I'll start to see a difference.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

If I send out mailers, I won't. If I send out a hundred thousand mailers, I might do a deal, buy for 20, sell for 50. But if I send out 101,000 mailers, I also might land a deal that's a buy for 20, sell for 200.

SPEAKER_04

Right.

SPEAKER_02

It's so hard in this game because you have these inconsistencies and we have these KPIs where we say, like, I want to make, you know, 20K a month, 15K, whatever these numbers may be. But when you actually look at it one month, you might make 50, 60, 80k, and then you might starve the next two or three months.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_02

Especially as you're going after like bigger deals.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

I would say.

SPEAKER_03

I think to answer your original question on the future of the land business, I personally believe that we don't care if land prices are going up or down. The only thing we care about is transaction volume. We just need sellers and buyers to make selling and buying decisions, right?

SPEAKER_05

Not the right numbers. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

Sure. But even in a depreciating market where you're buying slightly too high and your margins are getting squeezed, maybe we're in that time right now. Maybe that was 2024 and 2025. But even during that time, to me, that's okay because your margins are getting squeezed on the way down. You're you're making smaller spreads. But once we hit that trough, I think we're in it right now, and then it starts going up again, we're gonna see another expansion of your spreads, right? Because you're buying in, and then while you're holding it and trying to sell it, the value is going up. And so if you see the land business as a sideways curve that goes through a range, then the compressed spreads and the expanded spreads kind of equal out, right? So all we really care about is transaction volume. We just want more people selling and more people buying, right? Because we are technically middlemen. Realtors, title companies, mortgage brokers, anyone who serves a seller or buyer, we all are middlemen and we just want people to be buying and selling, right? So, where do I see transaction volume going? I have no idea. No idea. I do think if we had another 2008, it would be rough. It would be very rough for about a year for us because every single piece of inventory we're holding, you know, you're getting out at break even kind of thing, or choosing to hold it for two or three years. But once you're done with that rough year, you're you're buying back in at such a low. Cost basis that if you can if you can hang in there, then the fishing gets really, really good once we're in like a 2009, 2010, 2011 kind of trough, right? So I don't know. What I do know, what it felt like, and my bookkeeper Steve Hawkinson, he kind of supports this based on what he's seeing, is that during COVID times, maybe the top 80% of land flippers were profitable, right? Now it's the top 40%. So we lost half. But in my opinion, anyone I see that's leaving the land business, it's very, very clear to me what not what they've been doing wrong. It's not like they've been using the wrong mail or template, but it's almost always a mindset issue where when they're leaving the land business, if I know them well enough, I almost could have predicted it in hindsight. Where they just they don't have the mindset of an entrepreneur. You need to be a little bit crazy. You need to be a little bit crazy and a little bit stubborn. And you need to have that fire. I mean, you need to be calling these leads back immediately. If you're a solopreneur, you need to be. I used to answer my seller lead calls live and get yelled at. I used to put my my personal cell phone and my personal home address on these mailers because I wanted that edge, right? I wanted the blue text. You know, that was years ago, but I think you need that fire and you need that hustle. And I always go back to a donut shop, right? Donut shops, they're supposedly saturated, but there's one on every corner. They're selling white bread covered in sugar and really low quality coffee, and they're still in business, right? And all they need to do is keep their floor swept and smile as you walk in and say hello. And they're they're making a living. And so I think the whole market saturation concern is not legitimate. I think there's always going to be people who want fast liquidity, right? I've done it. I've I sold a $16,000 car for seven grand because I just didn't want it anymore. I wanted it gone. So I've been in a position where I was happy to sell at a discount to get this annoyance gone. There's always gonna be that. So I don't see the land business going anywhere, and we are we are looking to do massive growth within rooster capital in the next 12 months.

SPEAKER_02

I I'm curious, actually from both of you, how do you deal with mindset here? Because you talk about, you know, you have to almost be crazy to be an entrepreneur, you have to have the right mindset. But I mean, when you kick keep getting kicked in the face again and again, especially after you were just thriving these past couple of years, you know, and now I feel like the gurus in the space, the influence, the everything else, they're even like more well-known, more voiced right now. So I think it's easier to feel even further behind at times. Yeah. So what is your trick to keep going? Like, what am I supposed to do when I haven't had a sale in two months? And um, I keep calling sellers, they keep saying no. Like, why when am I even gonna pick up the phone and call this next guy? He's just gonna say no, they all say no. And I'm, I should just like shoot him a ranged offer or something, and then we're like, don't even bother. And I'm ask one of my team members to give him a call who's not a great acquisitions manager. Where does that come from? Or what do you tell that person who's just struggling right now and saying, you know, this is silly. This was just drop shipping, you know.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Back in 2005, I don't know when drop shipping was popular, but you know, maybe I should just go get a W-2 like the rest of the world.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah, I actually sort of what Drew was saying earlier about a mindset. I actually kind of get annoyed with that answer a lot because it feels like just a yeah, like a catch-all, like, yeah, just fix your mindset. It's just like, you know, yeah, but the technicalities do matter, like what you're doing does matter, but it does come back to mindset. And I think that's probably the you know, as you were alluding to, that's why people get out of it. It's because they got into it with a certain expectation that was kind of true years ago, and it's not anymore. It's not as easy as it used to be. And they're like, hey, I'm out. You know, I mean it's the same reason why divorces probably happen, you know, it's ultimately because of uh missed expectations. Yeah, like somebody expects something from the other person and they're not doing it anymore, so they check out. And I think it's Shakespeare who said uh expectation is the root of all heartache. So it's like just check your expectations. And I think I'm sure it probably differs depending on who the land investor is, but when you're looking at the cost of every lead who actually calls back, like if somebody responds to your direct mail, I mean it could be like a hundred bucks a person who's like calling you back. So it's like if you're paying that much for the privilege of somebody responding to whatever you're doing, it's like, are you really gonna let that go? Or are you gonna like seize that opportunity for everything it's worth? I just had a guy yesterday call back, and it's funny, he was almost cussing out my voice AI agent, but when he heard it was a female's voice, he's like, I'm not gonna say what I actually think. So he was being polite to him. But I listened to this recording and it's like, you know what? I'm gonna call this guy back. Like, even though he's clearly saying no, no, no, like, why not call him back? I paid a bit of money for this. So when it gets harder, you start realizing you're like, maybe it is worth answering the call live if it's actually worth that much for every person who's calling. Whereas I know when it when the deals came easier, like it was much easier to just ignore people. If they didn't meet me where I was at, it's like, all right, take a hike, you know? Yeah. Whereas now it's like, no, I have to do what I gotta do to make this work.

SPEAKER_02

I'm curious for you, Seth. You've been in this space for a long time. You have, I would say, and I might be a little biased on this because I am a business partner of yours too, but I think you have the best podcast out there. But yes. But it's also too, you've been podcasting consistently so long. Yeah. And I'm sure at times, you know, I'm sure you've seen seasons just in your business as a podcaster, where you're getting more views and less views and everything else in between. Yeah. How do you keep going? Because I feel like it's very similar for us in this situation. Like your business might be a little different in the podcast world, but it's still you have to have that consistency. But how do you have it?

SPEAKER_05

Yeah, we were talking about this yesterday. So I'm an Enneagram type six, which is a loyalist. And most of the people that I know, most of my entrepreneurial friends, are Enneagram type threes, which is the achiever. So they are visionaries, they're great at starting new things, they're good leaders. I'm not really those things. I can do them when I have to, but it's not my forte. My forte is when I figure out what I'm good at, I just put my head down and I just keep doing it. And I just keep doing it. And that's almost like my happy place, is when I figured something out and I can just keep doing it. And it's really my happy place when it works. And so for me, it's it's part of why Ari Tipster has lasted as long as it has, is because I figured out it's something I like and I'm good at it, and I just keep doing it. And so, as it, you know, as numbers dwindle, as people get out of the land business, as the internet changes, you know, as lame as this sounds, like it's what I know, and I I love it and I want to keep doing it. And this idea of like reinventing myself or starting something new, like I can definitely do it, and I have done it as I've had to, but that's not something I really enjoy. I don't find that exciting or fun. Whereas these guys, I think you kind of do find it exciting or fun. So that's like just a maybe a screw is loose in my head or my brain is just built a little bit different, but it's nothing heroic, it's just sort of what I enjoy doing, and I want to keep doing it as long as I can, and I'll I'll change whatever I have to within the confines of being able to keep doing what I love doing. So, and if the day comes that I just can't do it, then I'll figure something out. Uh yeah.

SPEAKER_02

What would have to be true for that day to come where you can't do it? Or is there anything that would happen where you think, like, okay, this isn't working anymore?

SPEAKER_05

Yeah, I mean, it kind of already has been happening over the past couple years. It's not like, you know, the hammer comes down one day and everything just has to change. It's more of like, okay, I see things changing on the horizon. I should probably plan for this. I should probably figure out other things that I can do, other ways I can contribute value, which is part of why, you know, stride exists, because that's something that I can still have value in. My self-step just said that's another thing. I mean, part of it is a itch I've always wanted to scratch and a business I've wanted to get into, but it's also like, you know, what if Ari tipsture doesn't last forever, you know? What if I get tired of it at some point? I don't want to just like suddenly wake up and have to totally figure it all out in one day. So it's kind of just seeing as the world starts changing, like start diversifying a little bit. Like if you send your grain across the sea in five different ships and one of them doesn't come back, it's like realize that's a possibility. So like don't put all your eggs in one basket. So yeah, that's kind of how I deal with it. And it's time will tell if that was smart or dumb, but it was interesting. Actually, uh this past week at the time of this recording, uh, I posted this video about this idea of moving on from land. Like, if you are good enough to succeed at land, you're probably good enough to succeed at a lot of other things too. Like this idea of not being a one-trick pony, but uh look at people like uh Arnold Schwarzenegger or Oprah Winfrey or uh Jessica Elder, all these people that uh you know that had massive success in one thing, but they didn't stop there. Like Arnold Schwarzenegger was a bodybuilder, then he got into acting, and he was huge in that, and then he became the governor. And it's this thing like nobody would have faulted him if he had just won Mr. Olympia seven times and said, Yep, I'm good, I'm done, I'm gonna retire. Like people would see he's a smashing success, but he didn't stop there, he just kept going. And I think it's a similar thing for land investors. Like, I I really don't think land well, I guess it depends on the person. If you love land, if that's all you ever want to do, awesome. Maybe you found your happy place, kind of like I found mine. But this idea of like, don't be afraid to try other things and use land as the springboard to bring you to something better. You don't have to keep doing this forever.

SPEAKER_03

So But aren't aren't we like contradicting our our own discussion 20 minutes ago where we say be consistent and don't deviate.

SPEAKER_05

I think for a season, yeah, but you don't have to do the same thing forever.

SPEAKER_03

One thing I struggle with is like how do you know the difference between shiny object and diversification?

SPEAKER_05

Yeah, that's a very great question.

SPEAKER_03

And the opportunity cost of having split attention, right? You run two things, well, you run a lot of things, but you have RTipster and Stride. You have your land business, which is a fully operating machine plus stride, right? I mean, do you guys feel like that comes at a pretty significant cost to the other one? Because I had my own land business plus my funding business, and I chose to I chose one, right? Because it was bugging me to I felt like I was B minus in both. I wanted to be A plus in just one.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

Do you guys feel like that and how do you deal with it?

SPEAKER_05

Yeah, I think there's absolutely a cost to it. I don't want to, you know, sugarcoat that. There is also a cost to choosing one thing, and then the world changes on you, and that one thing is no longer relevant, or maybe you don't have the skill set, or you're not willing to change your mindset to adapt to the new world. So I I think there's absolutely risks both ways. Uh I feel like there's ultimately less risk with diversification if you choose your things well and don't overcommit, spread yourself too thin. I think that's really the key. For me, I know there's kind of a hierarchy of things. It kind of depends on like what's paying the bills at the end of the day. But the first rung everything has to pass is like I have to enjoy this. Like, if if this is like pulling teeth, it doesn't belong on my priority list. And then there's like, I have to be competent at this, I have to be have some value to offer here, or I shouldn't be doing it. And then it's got to actually pay the bills. So, like, I've got this uh kids' podcast, Storyland Podcast, which is like massively popular, but it doesn't pay the bills. Uh, so that's like way at the bottom of the list. If I've got too much stuff going on, like that's not gonna happen. Not making episodes this month, you know. That's it's supposed to be a life-giving creative outlet that's for fun, but like if it doesn't check every box, then it's it's not a priority. The self-storage business I set up in such a way that it requires very, very little time for me. So luckily, that's not a huge time suck.

SPEAKER_03

To answer your original question, I feel like you as an entrepreneur to make yourself bulletproof, you need to be okay going back to zero. Once you stop expecting this up into the right trajectory, once you stop expecting that and you are emotionally okay with starting over, if whatever I'm doing doesn't work and everything crashes and burns, you know, if you are emotionally okay starting over and you believe in yourself that hey, I can open a donut shop if I want and be just fine, right? Once I I feel like for me, once I made that decision, I am okay starting over, I just feel like you ignore all the noise. And you ignore you ignore a lot of noise, a lot of little waves that hit the ship, right?

SPEAKER_06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

I don't know, but that could just also be the ostrich method, maybe just burying your head in the sand. It's hard to know the difference.

SPEAKER_02

I I think what it comes down to, I mean it's interesting because like Seth, you're talking about diversifying. And then I think too, like Charlie Munger, a famous quote of his is put all your eggs in one basket and watch it very closely. You know, and he's like, and for anyone listening to this who doesn't know who Charlie Munger is, he was Warren Buffett's partner with everything they've done. So unfortunately, he passed away last year. I think he was in his 90s when he passed, you know, but multi-billionaire, great guy, and just best friends with Warren Buffett. Um, he just kept a little quieter than Warren did. But what's so fascinating with that, I was talking to Josiah Ronko, uh, a good mutual friend of ours. And this was probably about a year, year and a half ago, and we were talking about the land business. And he's like, Are you worried it's getting like too saturated? Like too many operators in the space. Like it's interesting because now operators are leaving, and we're like, huh, you know, there's not enough lambules before we're like, there's too many other competition here. Like there's always something to complain about. And I told him, What I think is great about what we do is we're learning business fundamentals. You know, we're learning how to do things so we can start from zero. Like, yeah, Storyland is crushing it right now on the podcast charts. You know, where if you would have tried to start Storyland when you started RETST, I don't think either one may be successful, and both would be such a struggle. You know, if you would have asked me three or four years ago to start stride recue, both of my land business and stride would fail miserably. Or now at this point, my land business is pretty well functioning, and I'm fortunate enough that I've been able to hire a COO, Julian, who's just phenomenal, and he's running that day-to-day. So now I do spend probably like 80% of my time on the stride side of things, you know, and that's nice and that's there. But I think it's hard. I don't think you can shine the object when you're still building the first one. I think you have to put your head in the sand, you have to do the ostrich technique to begin with. Yeah, and I hope it as that grows and as you just get better at business and life in general. Like I think about this is probably a horrible example, you know, but like driving, you know, when you first learn to drive, like there's so much to focus on. You know, now you see people driving, you know, and they're like texting on their phone, changing the station, talking to their friends, you know, putting makeup on.

SPEAKER_05

You almost get somewhere without even knowing how you got there. Yeah, that's that's a great analogy. I never thought about that. That's true.

SPEAKER_02

There's so many things we do in life, and we just we get very good at it over time. So now it's not like this takes my focus anymore.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Because it's natural. I mean, yesterday we were talking too. I said something to you, and you said, Don't criss boss me. And why do you say I'm like, ah, would it be crazy if we went here? And I didn't even notice I said it. It's just such a habit for me to talk that way now, where before I would have to focus on those things to get better at it. So I think as you stay consistent, you get better at these, and then over time you can start venturing into other things. But if you do it all at once, it's gonna fail.

SPEAKER_03

That is very encouraging because I feel like in any business model, 60% of it, I just made up that percentage, but 60% of it is like entrepreneurial general skills. The other 40% is that niche specific knowledge, and so the guys who come in to land from other business models, Klay's a great example, they pick it up very fast. In six months, they're off to the races, right? Versus for me, land was my first entrepreneurial endeavor. You know, it took a took a bit, took a year or two. So if you're if you're listening to this or watching this and it just feels hard, just know, hey, you're learning transferable skill sets for the rest of your life, really. I mean, you're lit learning negotiation, leadership, accounting, how to handle massive risk. I think Mike, I I know you're on the market currently for a spouse, but so if you're listening to this and you know someone, I know but at least for Seth and I, and Mike, I know you've dated before a lot of times, at least for me, I feel like my spouse cannot relate to my stress. And she I also don't want to tell her, I don't want her to have to bear that burden that's mine. And often entrepreneurship is a very, very lonely road, and that's in any field. It's not just land. So if you're learning how to deal with that now, hopefully in a healthy way, through sauna, prayer, getting enough sleep, exercise, right? That's gonna transfer to other niches wherever you're gonna be at in 20 years, which is encouraging.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah, you know that loneliness thing. So I don't know if this like totally fixes it, but it really does help to have other friends in the business, especially when it's kind of a market thing. Like it's not just me doing dumb stuff that's here in my business, but like yeah, external factors are affecting all of us. Right. It is it's like therapy to be able to call somebody and be like, dude, this is just not going well. Like um, and just being real about it. And inevitably, that person will respond and be like, Yeah, no, I know what you're talking about. Like, things aren't going well for me either. And and even if they don't, they can at least like empathize with you and be like, I've been there, like I totally get it. Yeah, and it's like it's like medicine for the soul. So if you're working alone in the land business and you truly don't have friends in this, like you should totally come to an event, you know, or somehow connect in the RE tips or Facebook group, or reach out to somebody and become friends because it's it's hugely helpful.

SPEAKER_02

A couple of things there, too, I would say that I think is a big advantage that I've been fortunate enough to have is having friends that are entrepreneurs in different spaces as well. Yeah. Because I think that's also nice because A, you learn different ways of doing things that other people in our space may not be doing at all. But B, I think it's just if you're an entrepreneur, your world is different. Like you eat last. You know, leaders eat last. Yeah. And you're the last one to get paid and everything else. I I was talking to my best friend Roland, and he owns a cybersecurity company. You know, that's what he does. So he's an entrepreneur, went out on his own a few years ago. And we were working out together, and we were just complaining about life in general, running businesses and everything going on. And we had a had a couple issues recently with stride and some staffing things there, you know, and I was complaining to him about what was going on and how it's just hard to find people like you can depend on and rely upon.

SPEAKER_06

Right.

SPEAKER_02

And then he's talking to me about one of his clients has a warehouse where about 200 people work in there, and uh the um internet stopped working there. There was like a Cloudflare outage, and then things had to get fixed on the back end, and I'm talking to him, and he's telling me, he's like, Yeah, 200 people are at this office and they cannot work.

SPEAKER_04

Oh man.

SPEAKER_02

Like, and you know, my client, like, he's losing revenue every second. These certain people aren't working. Right. And like they're at an office, like they drove there.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02

You know, like that's just a regular Monday and they can't work. And he's on a call with one of his vendors, and then someone from Cloudflare, and there's like a director of ops, director of this, director of that, and he's sucking all these people that are employees, W 2 people, very high up in the food train.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

But he's also then telling them how to fix this issue too. And it's like, no, like they're they're the creators of this product. He should not have been to be doing this, you know, and they're like, Oh, well, we should first restart it. There's going to be 45 minutes of downtime. He's like, okay, before we do that, why don't we try fixing this first and then restart it? Like, oh, or procedures first just to restart it. He's like, okay, would it be crazy to do this?

SPEAKER_03

And just like hearing his preference. He did another Chris Boss thing.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, you're right. And I'm sure he actually didn't say that either. Yeah, because he's not a Chris Boss guy.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, he just said, why don't we do it this way? You know, or I don't know what he would say. But anyway, he's doing that. And here I'm thinking, like, I'm agitated about like, unfortunately, we had a staff member leave us because she got an amazing opportunity, and we're so happy and so blessed for her. And it's phenomenal the opportunity she's been given. And she's moving on into a great part of her life that'll help her future, but then find that replacement, like, I'm complaining about this. And then here he is complaining about, you know, his client has 200 employees that cannot be working.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

You know, and just kind of shows you like it's not that big of a deal. A lot of these things, or we can just it can easily feel like the sky is following. Yeah. A good friend of mine recently talked about dumpster fires. Um, this is Brian Lupin, so shout out to him too. He runs a great um small group called Action Academy that's really for entrepreneurs and out there. And I heard him talking about this recently, and he said there's gonna be fires going on constantly. Most fires are dumpster fires, they're going on outside, yeah, they're contained, and they really don't matter that much. You know, yeah. My business coach talks about this too, like new level, new devil. You know, as you move up in business in life, no matter what you're at, you have something else you're facing, something else you're struggling with. And it becomes so hard, but I I I hate to break it to everyone listening to this, you're always gonna have struggles no matter what. You know, whether this is your first time making five thousand dollars this month on a land deal, you know, or you're making half a million dollars this month on a deal, like there's struggles somewhere because we get comfortable with it, and then whether our income inflation happens, you know, or lifestyle inflation, I should say, you start spending more, or you have something going on in your personal life or your business life. I think we always have issues, and it's just understanding that and knowing like that's okay. Yeah, like let's work through it, you know, and put a smile on your face because like you're learning, and the next season of your life when you have another issue, another struggle, it should be easier, ideally. And I'm like, you've been through this now. I mean, I think about the land space. I think I had a huge advantage in the land space because when I started five, six years ago, it wasn't super common for people to have VAs. Um, I started with a program that's much smaller now, but a standard guru program a lot of us went through way back in the day. And a month into it, like I had three VAs working for me. Who were like, how do you even find a VA? Like it was unheard of back then. But the first time I heard a VA was when I was 19 years old.

SPEAKER_03

So you're used to it.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. Yeah. For me, building this up too.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

And I think too, that's why it's so important to keep going to learn to make those small tweaks. But it's also too like when we finally hit the bottom of that as it starts to go up, those who've really tweaked those things and gotten good at this business, I totally agree with you. It'll be a four, eight, 10x return that they start seeing. And then they're flying off. I mean, I talked to so many people four or five years ago, like, ah, you know, I wish I would have, you know, tripled my mail back then, yeah, or my text or anything else. Yeah. You know, but I wouldn't be surprised too if we're saying that five years from now. Yeah. Like, hey, I wish it wouldn't do any more here, because like we're so bust to be in this space.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. Uh why did I play it safe? You know, it's been therapy for me. I told you guys this yesterday, I think, is watching I don't watch a lot of movies, but watching entrepreneurship type movies, like at the Blackberry movie or the McDonald's, the one about McDonald's or Facebook or the Big Shorts. And seeing their extreme frustration, and it's like you can relate to them, and they're doing it at a higher level, right? And they're risking everything, right? In the BlackBerry movie, the sharky outside business partner they bring in, he mortgaged his house just to pay payroll, right? A reverse mortgage. I don't know how that works. Yeah, yeah. But and then you think, oh, am I playing it too safe? At least in America, what's really the worst case scenario? Do you move in with your in-laws? You're still gonna eat three meals a day, and you feel like a loser for two years.

SPEAKER_05

Did that end up working out well for him, mortgaging his house to pay payroll? How did the story go? Well, so Blackberry.

SPEAKER_03

I know, it's like, was that a swarm room? Okay, but Blackberry did this, right? So it it, you know, it didn't have a fairy tale ending, but just seeing their extreme frustration and seeing the internal conflict they had between those founders. I just think it's good for us to realize that things are very, very messy and that's okay. Right? We we see these people on podcasts and that everything looks polished. You do a good job of showing behind the curtain and hey, this is not polished, life is messy. But a lot of influencers in our space and other spaces, they make it look easy. And you you doom scroll, and you feel like you're behind on AI, and you should be doing this, and then I'm getting marriage advice. I should be doing this in my marriage, and you just feel like you're constantly behind. And in reality, we all have pretty messy lives, and especially on social media, you're only seeing the best 10% that somebody presents to you, and so you just always feel behind, and that's that's not what reality is, and that's why it's important to find a group, find a mastermind, doesn't have to be in the land space, find a group of guys and and gals that you can run with, and you can become this cohort of high performers where you're still transacting, both in terms of deals and also in terms of little emotional nuggets. You're transacting for decades. That's the that's the vision I have at least.

SPEAKER_05

I prefer to find masterminds where everybody else in the group is behind me so I can feel better by comparison. Seems like the healthiest setup for me.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. For you, that's easy.

SPEAKER_00

You're right.

SPEAKER_05

You're right.

SPEAKER_02

I I totally agree with you, Drew. I think just having a tribe is so important. Yeah. And it's easy to just get caught up in social media. I think it's easier now for us to isolate ourselves than ever before in history.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, yeah, it's true.

SPEAKER_02

You know, and it's also too, if we're feeling bad now, it's like, oh, I can go talk to my best friend Claude, you know, Chat GPT, somewhere there. And it's like that's not the same. I mean, I'm fortunate too. Like my best friend, his wife, and some other friends of ours too. Like, every Saturday we'll get together in the morning and we usually just go on like a five-mile walk and we just chat and we just talk about life. And we'll we're having the discussion very similar to like what we're having now. Yeah. Like it's weird because now, like, we're on camera recording the podcast. But honestly, we've been having conversations like this in the last 48 hours. You know, and it's it's beautiful, and it's just so great to just get away. Like, anybody listening, like, go outside right now, take your socks and shoes off. Hopefully, you're not listening to this in winter time up north. No, like go put your feet on the ground, you know, put your feet in the grass, and like just realize like the world is beautiful, life is beautiful, and really like how blessed are we to have these struggles.

SPEAKER_05

Do you guys think AI has made the isolation problem worse? Maybe it depends on the person and how much they use AI, but I feel like it's I don't know. I don't know if I feel more isolated per se, but I can think of many times over the past year where I've like had a question that I would have asked a human.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

And now it's like, what's the point of doing that? AI knows better. I'll ask AI. So it just makes me wonder like if that's happening with me, it must be happening with other people too.

SPEAKER_03

Um also, you know, if if you're a faith-based entrepreneur, the questions we used to pray about, now we just go to AI. Interesting. I thought about that. And so AI has become our God in a way, because if you're approaching God trying to find an answer, sometimes it takes a while.

SPEAKER_05

Or it doesn't come through at all. Versus AI, it tells you right away. And it's designed to make you happy.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah, man.

SPEAKER_03

And we know that we are seeing a spike, a massive spike in in-person events, right? Run clubs, hiking meetups, and people are craving because now I don't trust videos I see.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

I don't know if it's AI or not. I saw a bear holding uh AR-15. You know, I know that's oh that's real. That's real. But you see some some cute girl walking on a hiking trail doing her talking head stuff with her white things, what AirPod things? The white cord, anyways. You now that could be AI. You don't know. Uh there's no way to know.

SPEAKER_02

It's crazy. Like everybody listening to this right now thinks like we're actually human beings. That was just their AI they're listening to.

unknown

No.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, and so people are trusting what they see on social media less and less, and they will they crave, we crave human in interaction. We need it, right?

SPEAKER_01

And yeah, biologically, we need it so much.

SPEAKER_03

So if you are running a business model right now and you're like, oh, my my SaaS mode is gone, right? Well, build a moat with a community, right? Where people are coming to your software to interact with each other, I believe human connection is the new moat. And so if you can somehow weave that into your business model. So, for example, with Rooster Capital, we don't just fund deals, we host in-person events that are either free or super cheap. And my operators come to my house, my wife cooks for them, and we hang out for a few days. Okay, it's invite-only, but my operators love these events because we get to connect face to face and there's a community piece involved, right? And then the group chat stays, you know, group chat stays active for months because these I these guys are connecting. I even had two operators that are now doing a self-storage deal together because they met at my event, right? Yeah. So they're building friendships, and I think it's that's super important. At least for me, that's probably the been the biggest reason for my own relative success in this niche is I show up to events and I connect with people.

SPEAKER_05

I'll also mention re tipster inner circle.com. If you're looking for more of a curated experience with me and Neil Clements, you can always check that out too. But the point is like do something connect with someone somehow. Yeah. Because it goes a long way. I don't think he really replaced that with AI or social media or whatever the thing is.

SPEAKER_03

You know what's funny is when I started the land business in 2020, we created our own little mastermind from our initial education cohort. So we were in a course, and five of us got together and said, let's keep meeting.

SPEAKER_05

That's how my first one worked too.

SPEAKER_03

We met for five and a half years, we just stopped meeting. And my motivation selfishly for creating that group was because there was Buck Rizby was in the group. And at the time in 2020, my thought was, because Buck was way ahead of me at the time. My thought was selfishly, I'm gonna get really close to Buck so that if I screw everything up, at least I can work for Buck. That was my motivation. At least plan B, I I'm somebody else's employee. And that's not the end of the world, right? I mean, we could move to a cheaper part of the country and live off of a of a of a salary that's you know a fraction of what a business owner makes. But for me at the time, that was my psychological safe unit. And it's you know, we met for five and a half years, it was great. You know, and the group changes, people branch off and try different stuff, and you know, out of the five of us, maybe two or three of us are still in land full-time. Find a group, guys, find a way to connect with people, and if you don't have one, then create one.

SPEAKER_05

So we were talking yesterday. Would you rather be like super successful with all the money you need and bored? Or would you rather be struggling financially and stressed but excited and reinventing yourself? What were your answers to those questions?

SPEAKER_02

I think life is all about the pursuit. There's some saying out there about you know, when you listen to music, you don't just hear the cymbals clash at the end. Like that's not the point of it. If so, like all songs would be a second long and you just hear the end of it. It's just going through the journey. Yeah, which I think is what's great, and it's also what sucks. You know, like climbing the mountain sucks, and it's hard. And there's times where you're thinking, like, why did I do this? And I just want to go back to base camp. I just want to give up, I want to quit. But then once you hit the top, you see the view, it's like this is amazing.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

But then I think it's also important to realize this is amazing, that there's other views in the world too. I'd rather have the struggle. Yeah. And I think money's meaningless without a reason to wake up in the morning.

SPEAKER_03

I went through a season in 2024 where everything was easy. I don't really have an incentive to grow rooster capital. I had two or three operators doing a hundred something deals a year together. And I hit this funk where I was making good money and I was like, what's the point of life? You know, life got easy, right? I'm in a grind season now, so I don't feel that currently, but I feel like I've had the opportunity to taste what it's like to be the bored rich guy. And I can tell you from personal experience, it's way more fun to be the scrappy guy with no backup plan because I miss those days. You know, I I had a W-2, I was a company commander in the Army Reserve, and I was running my land business. You know, I had two and a half full-time jobs basically. I missed those days of being on seller lead calls at 11 p.m. I missed those scrappy days where there was so much uncertainty, and I would much rather be stressed than bored. We talked about this extensively yesterday.

SPEAKER_05

The only like experience I've ever had with what I thought was depression is when I things were going really well and the business was easy. Like it's just I wouldn't even call it boredom, but it was just yeah, when there's not this drive or like this uh urgency to get to the next level, you're just kind of coasting. I don't think we were meant for that, you know. We were meant to build something and not just like rest on our laurels. And that's not to say I enjoy being stressed and struggling, but there is something kind of sweet about that, about um being in the pursuit.

SPEAKER_03

So being in the fight, yeah, not on the stands, right? Being the gladiator metaphor is not the best metaphor because they were slaves. But being in the arena fighting is much more fun than being in the stands and not experiencing it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

You know, the thing about that that confuses myself, I don't know how you guys feel about it, but like if you were asking me like, what's your goal? I would tell you my goal is to get to X amount of revenue and profit and have this lifestyle and get this thing. But like the reality is if I got there and didn't have a plan for what's next, I would get in a weird depressed funk again. Yeah. So it's like, it's my goal to get in a weird depressed funk. It's like, I don't know, it's weird. It's like if I actually got there, right, everything becomes meaningless. So but I don't want to like continuously struggle either. So I mean, they maybe the objective is like always have the next goal in mind, like figure out when you get there, what's next. Like, don't just have a finish line where okay, I'm done.

SPEAKER_02

I totally agree with you. The caveat I would put on this for everyone out there, like my personal thoughts on this, it doesn't have to be financial. Yeah. And I think we as entrepreneurs, you know, and as Americans, like it's just that's very much that like capitalist mentality that go out, hustle, earn money. Like, there's nothing wrong with becoming a great cook. There's nothing wrong with, you know, building a tree house for your kiddos.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Like there's so many beautiful things out there in the world. I mean, we talked about this a bit yesterday too, where I almost feel like other countries do better than America in terms of like happiness for the people, because here too, it's like you almost always feel like you're behind.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

In a way where these other countries, you know, they'll take a two-hour lunch break and you'll go to someone's house for lunch, even when they're working their regular W-2s, and they have a home cooked meal together, and they have that like brotherhood. You know, they build that rapport and they're with each other in social where we can isolate ourselves, you know, and it's also like there's you're never gonna hit the top of the mountain, no matter what. You know, it's always higher. Like unfortunately, I don't think any of us, I sure hope you do, Seth, especially with Stride, but unfortunately, I don't think any of us are gonna be beating, you know, Elon Musk anytime soon, or Jeff Bezos, you know, or Zuckerberg, or like really just like the titans of the world.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

I know, but I think it's also important, like stop and smell the roses, enjoy the joy of life. I know it's like I know we were talking to Ajay recently, and he said, the problems you are having now, you know, is a blessing you prayed for years ago. Yeah, how blessed are you to have these problems now? Yeah, and I'm and it's like we were talking the other day, you know, you were discussing like when you're in your early 20s, it's like if I could just make a hundred K a year, I'd be happy. I like I'd be set for I'd be so happy just to make that every single year.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

You know, but as you move up, you know, the goalpost keeps moving.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

But it's also too like there's nothing wrong with send off the field for a minute to watch the other people play. Yeah, you know, and enjoy where you've gotten to and realize like there's there's a lot more to life than just the grind and entrepreneurship. You can have the grind and just discovering who you are as a human being. Yeah, you know, seeing the world, seeing I know we've talked about this a bit too. Like we feel like we're struggling, and you know, pain is pain no matter what you're going through. Emotions are emotions. So when you feel like you're struggling, like this is the worst. But if you go to like a third world country and you see people there, it's like you've you've never struggled, you know?

SPEAKER_06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Like, have you been sleeping on the streets? Have you not known where your next meal is coming from? Have you been suppressed by government? You know, have you truly been homeless? Like, I think it's easy for us to play these head games with us, especially because we see these other people out there who are crushing it, you know, or crushing it so we think.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

You know, but it's like, yeah, communicate with each other, you know, create that brotherhood, that sisterhood, that whatever you need to create your family, create your tribe, you know, and enjoy the world, enjoy the earth. Go out and hike, you know, and build because like how fun is it? What a blessing is it? What a blessing to like have these stressors, yeah, have these issues, you know, to be in the pursuits. Don't let it get the better of you. Yeah, realize like life is still beautiful. So if you have the opportunity just to be listening to this podcast, you're doing better than 99% of the world right now. You know, you're not in war. You know, hopefully you don't have a life-threatening disease you're fighting with right now. You know, like you have the luxury to take time out of your day to listen to this podcast. How many people don't? You know, and like that's a blessing, and I think it's easy for us to take that for granted. Yeah, especially when we have, you know, a deal following apart, a lawsuit threatening, you know, bankrupt, like so many different things that can come up that just are stressors constantly. Yeah. But no, life is always stressful. You will always have stressors no matter what, whether you're at the top or you're at the bottom or any else in between. So enjoy the ride. Like, this is our shop.

SPEAKER_03

And if you don't have stressors, because I've been through seasons where there's no stressors and then you're bored, I and it's worse. It's worse. So be grateful for your problems, maybe.

SPEAKER_05

You know, I heard this thing the other day from this book I'm reading. So, Warren Buffett, he's got like all the money in the world, he's 94 years old. Would you switch places with him right now?

SPEAKER_03

No, no, yeah.

SPEAKER_05

I mean, nobody in the right mind would, because life's almost done. It's like, what's all the money in the world if you got no time?

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

So that should be very telling if you are even remotely young, my age and younger, 50 or younger, 60 or younger. It's like you've got time, you've got time wealth, and that can be worth a heck of a lot more than all the money in the world. Yeah, so there's that to think about too. Love it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

You want to make some plugs?

SPEAKER_05

Yeah, go ahead. What do you want to plug?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, really quick, Drew. So if I have like a $10 million deal, I can just bring it to you. You'll get me funded, and I'll be good to go. Or what what's going on with Rooster Capital 2.0 right now?

SPEAKER_03

Right now we are focusing on funding land flips. Let's say sub 250K purchase price. Minor subdivision. If you have entitlement deals, I'll look at them. I'll give you my two cents low chance that it'll work out. But I I like underwriting them. Same thing with major subdivides as well. I know you guys I'd like to talk about some of my events coming up. I think you guys do have an Ari Tipster event coming up.

SPEAKER_05

We do. It's sold out though. But uh we do have another one we're planning in April 2027. It's a ways out, but check it out. RETIPSTREINRCL.com is where list details will be if you want to look into that. Talk about Stride.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

StrideCRM.kill, best CRM of all time for land investors. Seriously, it can do just about anything for probably a lower price than whatever you're currently using if you're using anything else. Tons of new developments that happen all the time. We've got a new uh MCP API connection that uh it's kind of mind-blowing if you're using cloud code or anything like that. You can basically uh uh access and do anything in your CRM without even logging in. Um you can connect it to other softwares. We've got a voice AI agent that can answer your phone calls for you. You can handle direct mail project management. So uh if you have any interest in that, check out stridecrm.co. Shoot us an email, support at stridecrm.co if you got any questions about it, happy to do a demo with you. Anything else we should mention about that?

SPEAKER_02

No, we think it's a great product, there are real people behind it, and we're very fortunate that we've been able to implement it with the changes in the world right now. You know, we released mail not too long ago, so you can mail from the platform, you do almost anything you want to, and it's nice that it does have that API connection because as we get more and more and more into the AI age, most people want to change things around or automate things that we may have mild limitations in in the platform, you can now do that. I mean, I now use it too just to you know submit this to my COO every morning. Like, how many calls did my team make? How many appointments did they book? What is their conversion rate? You know, what time did they make those calls? Were they early for their appointments they had scheduled for acquisition manager? Were they late? You know, what am I noticing? What are pattern recognitions? And these are all things that like Claude's doing. It's like we almost have another employee now that's able to tie into this. Well, because it's weird too, because I hear you talk about it, like you don't even have to log into the CRM, which is true, but you still need the CRM that will connect to the back end of your phone system through the mouse or to send contracts. But I think it's great as you level up as a operator and you have more team members. It's also easier to like oversee them as well, you know, and you could run almost everything through Quad if you wanted to. You know, you still but have to go to your phone or you know, at least online to make those phone calls. Yeah. Yeah. Actually, I guess you could automate the contract sending too.

SPEAKER_03

And you use it for your own land business, which I know has been really helpful for you as well.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. Yeah. Selfishly, I loved it. I mean that's how Seth and I ended up creating this too. I felt like there wasn't any phenomenal products out there just for the land niche. There's some good ones out there, but some of them weren't made directly for land investors. You know, but using something like Salesforce, follow-up boss, podio, like that's not made for your niche. You know, there's a few out there are, but they have their limitations here and there. And I feel like stride is able to bypass almost any limitation you may be having. Well, there's still some caveats too. Like, don't get wrong, you should not be mass SMSing in Stride. You could, in theory. You've had some people do it. You know, but it's like you probably will get shut down on your phone number side. Yeah. You know, keep that in mind. You'll still want to use a service out there for your mass outbound texting.

SPEAKER_05

On the texting and cold calling front, stride skip is also something worth checking out, strideskip.co. It's the cheapest skip tracing you'll find just about anywhere. And that's if you're not even using Stride. You don't have to be a Stride CRM user to use stride skip.co. But if you are, you get an additional 40% discount. So if skip tracing is something you have an ongoing need for, definitely check that out too.

SPEAKER_02

And we have Ask AI in that platform now. So anytime too, if you have any issues, ask AI. Like it's right there in the browser, ready to go, and it understands how your CRM is built. And if you make changes to your own CRM, it will see those changes. I think you made a video on this too as well. So check out that video. Ask AI forward slash RET. I I have no idea what the link is. Um, that's Seth's department all day long.

SPEAKER_05

I'll throw a link in the show notes. Check it out.

SPEAKER_02

But yeah, it's just nice having that there too. So now if you have an issue with your CRM, you're not having to wait on a support agent to help you, andor going to chat GBT or Claude or something trying to explain the issue. Like, here's an AI that understands how your system is built. And if you change your system, you know, you have to explain that to the support team, like what workflows you've built to what's going on. Yeah, this AI can understand a lot of that. It can find out where is John Smith in your system, you know, when's the last time you talked to him just right away. Yeah. Oh go for it, Drew. All you, man.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, and then plugs for Rooster Capital. If you want to hang out with myself and Rooster Capital as a whole, you can go to roostercapital.land. That's where you will submit deals. And there is an events button you can click. Any event that is a rooster capital event, it's invite only. You can request to attend that. That is mostly for operators that are doing deals currently with Rooster Capital, or if you have the intentions of doing a lot of volume with us. Also, I will be at Azie's event, which is landscaling summit.com. I'm sure we'll have promo codes Tribe Mike, Drew, or Seth as a promo code. I'll talk with Aji after this and get some live promo codes going. Also, I am co-hosting an event in Bali with Sumner Healy from Leah and Land Insights. And the website for that is Bali Landmastermind.com. And that one is starting in late January. That is our second annual Bali Land Mastermind. So feel free to join us there as well. Cool. Sounds good. That's right. We will be here.

SPEAKER_02

Well, hopefully. I will say I was planning to join you last year too.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. He's got some issues with storms. Thunderstorms have been blocking his flights, getting to Drew. So second time in a row that we've had some flight complications due to thunderstorms with Mike's airplane. So prayers for his uh his bad luck there.

SPEAKER_02

You just gotta be consistent, you know. Just gotta keep trying, keep going eventually. You know, we'll get together like we did here.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Oh, awesome. Cool. Well, Seth.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah, thanks everybody for joining us. Thanks to Mike and Drew for coming out here, brave on the weather and making this happen. And we'll talk to you next time. See you guys. See everyone.

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Seth Williams

Host