RE Tipster Talks Land Flipping - Seth Williams

Brandon Parker00:00Welcome to the Legends of Land show. Today, we have Seth Williams, the legend himself who created the Real Estate Tipster website and then grew it into a podcast, YouTube show, and blog. He's had a lot of success himself in the land and real estate business, and now he's passionate about giving back to the community and teaching as much as he can. Seth Williams, welcome to the show, my friend. How are you today? Hey, Brandon. Thanks for having me. It's great to be here. Absolutely. So, Seth, how would you describe your niche in real estate and land in general?

Brandon Parker00:33And then what can people learn from how you've approached your business?

Seth Williams00:36Yeah, sure. My niche is probably similar to a lot of people. I guess it's morphed a little bit over the past couple of years, but originally it was just straight up land flipping, sending out direct mail and finding properties discount and buying them and doing nothing to them and then turning around and listening for sale and selling them at a pretty decent markup. And that can look a whole lot of different ways depending on where you work and the sizes of properties you go after and whether you're planning to, I guess it's a different angle. If you plan to do something like subdivide it or develop it or change it in some way.

Seth Williams01:10But usually that's not what I do. I just buy the thing and sell the thing. And when I say it's morphed over the past couple of years, it's changed directions just in terms of me trying to find vacant lots with a more specific use, which is building a self storage facility or something along those lines. So, It's not necessarily required, but it can be helpful for a land flipper to develop some kind of sub niche or differentiation so that they don't have to do the exact same thing as everybody else.

Seth Williams01:41That's kind of what's changed and that's the angle I'm taking at this point.

Brandon Parker01:46So it sounds like you focused on simplicity a little bit. Can you explain maybe your initial buy box and what you were looking for before you transitioned into looking for property for gas storage?

Seth Williams01:59Yeah. So I guess when I first got started, it was just literally anything that was vacant land where I could establish a somewhat reliable market value for it. Because once I could do that, then I could make it a discounted offer based on that initial value that I thought it was worth. And the more confident I could be about that value, better, because if that's just a big question mark, then they don't really even know what to offer. So I would try to get ones that there were at least a few comps or something to base my assumption on and then make that discounted offer.

Seth Williams02:30Back in the day, my discounted offers were like 10 to 20% of market value. It's pretty hard to find those deals out there today. Not impossible. I actually found one like that earlier this year, but I wouldn't say that's like the norm that most people see. But in terms of just the buy box, it's really just anything that's a vacant lot where I can establish the market value and preferably it's worth a little bit more like north of 10 or $20. I try to stay away from the super ultra cheap deals these days because it's just a lot of work for less money. But yeah, it's just about acquiring those things and closing on them and reselling them.

Seth Williams03:04And there can be all kinds of weird quirks that come up along the way. Sometimes you might find out maybe it's not buildable for some reason, or maybe it's landlocked, or maybe there's some zoning issue or flood zone or on and on. And that's okay. But you just want to make sure you're aware of those things before you buy it so you can discount your offer even more if needed. I don't want to find out about these problems once I own it. That makes sense.

Brandon Parker03:25And so you're looking for things without and you don't need to make any improvements. You can find a comparable. So when you're picking, let's say, a county and you're looking for a county, how would you select and what's your criteria there? Yeah. Generally just looking for a big metropolitan area and then trying to find the counties surrounding that area.

Seth Williams03:46I'm not super rigid on that, but for example, I guess the one place I wouldn't start looking necessarily is in that metro area. For example, I live in Grand Rapids, Michigan and the county that Grand Rapids is in is Kent County. There's probably deals to be had in Kent County, but that's not the first place I would start. I would find the counties surrounding Grand Rapids or even a couple of counties out so that it's relatively close to that metropolitan area. And then it's also nice, though not required, but nice if that metropolitan area is actually growing.

Seth Williams04:17If it's a place where people want to be, where there's diverse, stable basis of employment and that kind of thing. So, yeah, that makes sense.

Brandon Parker04:26Yeah, absolutely. And do you any look specific type of land? Are you looking for rural recreation, for infill lots? You said that you look for things that you can price easily. How do you think about what a land looks like when you can price it easily?

Seth Williams04:44So again, things have shifted a little bit speaking to most of my history. Residential, yes. Recreational, yes. Agricultural, yes. Commercial and industrial, no. And the reason I say that is because it's a different type of property with a different pool of buyers, usually a much smaller pool of buyers. And there's also more stringent due diligence needed on commercial and industrial things like environmental reports and the ability to build and even soil compaction and this kind of stuff.

Seth Williams05:16It starts to matter a lot more. The reason people buy commercial property generally is to build a commercial building out it. It just gets into a different realm that I didn't really want to spend as much time in. So, usually I was focusing more on the residential, recreational, that kind of stuff. But recently, when I'm trying to go after a self storage property, that's a different thing because it does need to be zoned commercial. So, if I have an actual intended use and if I plan to develop that thing or change it in some way that's going to move it in that direction, It's nice if it's just already zoned that way.

Seth Williams05:51The game kind of changes when you have a different end in mind. So, if you're doing what I'm trying to do, whether you're developing anything commercial, that commercial zoning is helpful to have. But otherwise, if you're not trying to go that direction, residential lots, there seems to be a whole lot more of them out there in terms of motivated sellers, people who own them and they're not using them and they're just a drain on their wallet and all that stuff. That usually falls more to the residential lot classification. There you go.

Seth Williams06:23Am I fully answering the question? I felt like there was something else in there you were asking about. Yeah, I'm just

Brandon Parker06:29riffing. So yeah, you nailed it. You had mentioned a little bit earlier that you used to be able to find deals 10% to 20% off. The market sounds like it's getting a little bit more efficient. Is that because there's more land flippers? Is that because there's more information on the internet? Why do you think that is?

Seth Williams06:44Yeah, it's probably all of the above. I think there's more land flippers out there now. I think people are seeing the value of land a lot more now than they used to. I think people have migrated a lot more out to rural areas more than in recent memory because of the pandemic and that kind of thing. The housing market is insane right now. It's very hard to find affordable housing anywhere. So, it's similar to when I decided to build a new storage facility. I never really set out to try to do that. I didn't want to. I wanted to buy existing one, but all I could ever find were people who wanted twice what their facilities were worth, just terrible deals.

Seth Williams07:20And all of a sudden, construction made sense. I think there's a similar thing going on with housing, even though it's still crazy expensive. Existing houses are also crazy expensive. People are considering that more now. I even know a lot of wholesalers who have left households to get into land because it's just easier from several different angles to find deals. You don't have to deal with people as much. Yeah, I think the one big drawback that land still has and probably always will have is that it's still a bit more difficult to pin a very precise value on land.

Seth Williams07:58And that kind of depends on the property. Sometimes vacant lots have plenty of comps and it's fairly obvious, but a lot of times in rural areas, a lot of vacant lots are literally one of a kind and you can't find any apples to apples comparisons, which kind of leaves you in this place where you have to guess around a little bit without absolute certainty of what that thing is worth. So, that's one drawback, but the other advantages usually, in my opinion, outweigh that.

Brandon Parker08:24What's your favorite way to contact and find leads for these types of properties?

Seth Williams08:31Probably my website because I don't have to do a whole lot of work and they come to me and it's free. The downside of that is I don't really get to choose where they come from or when they come in or if they come in at all. Part of that is because I'm focusing purely on organic, which is harder to control that kind of thing. But again, when it happens, it's just delivered in a very convenient format. I don't necessarily have to get on the phone with them. They've already answered all my questions in my sell your property submission form.

Seth Williams09:05So, I think I like that a lot. I just wish I could say, give me a lot more of these and give them to me from this specific place, which you probably can do if I were to get more into paid ads in some way, if I could figure that out, but I'm not currently doing that. And when you were doing cold outreach, which I'm sure you were at some point, what was your most effective method? Historically, was direct mail, but I do think direct mail has gotten a lot more competitive and response rates have gone down a lot and it's bringing people to this place understandably of like, how much is this going to cost me versus the number of deals that's going to get me?

Seth Williams09:41Like it used to be a much more obvious no brainer decision than it is now. I just think there's different economies of scale people have to think about now. Like I'm going to be spending $10 on a direct mail campaign. I can't only survive on a couple of deals that are going to make me a few thousand bucks. That's a wash or I'm going lose money, even if I do everything right and put all the work into it. So people are having to figure out, if I do this, I need to make sure every deal I get is not necessarily a home run, but it's got to make a fair amount of money to justify the cost.

Seth Williams10:13Either that or exploring some of these alternative marketing options, whether that be texting or ringless voicemail or cold calling or even some kind of online thing.

Brandon Parker10:24I saw an interesting episode you had on your podcast lately with a person who was doing TV commercials for land. Yeah. How was, how's his success been turning out with that?

Seth Williams10:37I talked with him. It was, I think it was April or something like that. We had that conversation and it seemed to be working well enough for him at the time. And I think the, I don't want speak on his behalf and maybe things have changed since then, but the way he was approaching it was he had like thirty second commercial that would air on local TV stations in his target market. And I believe he paid like $10 to develop the commercial and then around $5 a month to air that. And it was bringing in enough deals to justify the cost.

Seth Williams11:09Definitely an interesting approach. It wasn't something I had heard a lot about prior to him. Actually, I interviewed another guy, his name is Jeremy. I haven't published this anywhere yet, but he was talking about doing a very similar thing in terms of creating the same kind of commercial. It looked very similar to what Larry's did. But the difference was he wasn't airing this on network television. It was more like people who watch Hulu or Peacock or these streaming TV services online.

Seth Williams11:42And the benefit with that is you can pinpoint, like, I want this person in this house to see my ad. I don't want to show this to everybody. I'm going only pick these people very similar to how you would run a Facebook ad campaign or very clearly defining who your audience is and only doing it to those people. It just seemed like a much more targeted way and ultimately a less expensive way to reach more specific people. The one big downside, maybe there's more than this, but the one downside I could see to that approach is that not everybody watches these TV streaming services, like the ones that actually show ads before you start planning stuff.

Seth Williams12:19Like I don't, for example. So if somebody was trying to target me that way, they couldn't get to me. But there's still a lot of people out there who conceivably do. And it seems like just a more next level way to hyper target people through a TV commercial.

Brandon Parker12:32That's interesting. And so do you think that they're actually targeting leads demographic of people who may own land.

Seth Williams12:41Yeah. So this guy I talked to, I know he was doing this for household selling and I believe he was doing it for land, if I remember. But it is not a widespread thing that a lot of people are doing right now. And also on that same level, say if you did get 20 people who are all trying to do the same thing, the fact that you're able to hyper target specific households based on their earnings and income and credit history and marital status and all this stuff, you could have a bunch of people doing the same thing and not hitting the same people necessarily,

Brandon Parker13:12depending on who you're trying to target. Yeah. That's interesting. Yeah. I've been seeing a little bit of the shift away from the mailers. That's still the standard, but I had a little bit of the same feeling as you. There's probably a cheaper way to do this. I have a call center in Belize that we've been calling outbound to counties and doing the cold calling approach. And so I'm always interested to hear what

Seth Williams13:33other angles people are taking. Yeah. Yeah. It was interesting in that conversation with him. I think he just mentioned in passing, like, yeah, we spend $30,000 a month on, on marketing tar. And just like $30,000 a month. Are you serious? That's crazy. And that was direct mail. That was radio ads. That was his TV ads, online ads, cold calls, all this stuff. Granted, this is a household selling operation that he's referring to that's spending that much. And the reality is that's what house wholesalers probably have to do because it's way more competitive than land is.

Seth Williams14:07And it's five or ten years ahead of where the land business is. There was once a time when house wholesalers strictly use direct mail because it worked. So it's one of those things where, and I've heard this said before, but land will always be a very different thing than houses. And it will probably always be less competitive. If you're curious about direct mail doesn't seem to be working. What else is there? Look at what household sailors are doing because they've had to evolve and they've figured out a lot of stuff that I don't know if we'll necessarily have to go that direction or if it'll get that crazy, but if you just need inspiration or ideas, you can check out what they're doing because they've figured it out by necessity ahead of us.

Seth Williams14:44In your business with land

Brandon Parker14:47and real estate specifically, what's some software that you can't live without?

Seth Williams14:52Yeah. It's the staples that a lot of people know about, like DataTree, having your direct mail house. I don't if that's software or not. I use Parley land ID formerly known as MAPer is helpful too, but actually like something that I've started using a lot lately, not just for land, but like a lot of life's problems is a chat GBT. There's tons of different ways to use that. Just endless applications. And I think a lot of people understandably are failing to see the opportunity because it's hard to just see every possible way you could use it, but it takes a little bit of creativity to understand how could I use this in my business?

Seth Williams15:30But I've just found it to be a huge time saver and just mental space saver. Whether you're trying to write a property description or sort a messy direct mail list or get general business advice, it can do all of these things better than you can do it. It's just a matter of understanding, Oh, maybe I should ask it this question. And if I don't get the answer I want, ask it again and ask it to keep refining the answer until you get the answer you need. It's And the early days of the internet.

Seth Williams16:00It took years for people to realize, Oh, we can advertise on the internet. We didn't realize we could do this. And now it's like, duh. So it's one of those things where I think years from now, people get on board and figure out what ChatGPT and similar chat bots can be used for. But there's tons of opportunity there.

Brandon Parker16:21And what do you think your most creative outside the box use for ChatGPT has been?

Seth Williams16:26Yeah, good question. Honestly, anytime there is a perplexing thing that I'm just stuck on, I don't know how to respond to someone or I don't know what the next step should be that I should take, or I'm just stuck with something that's like, I don't want to do this. Like, this is going be hard for me to figure this out. There is a high chance ChadGPT can do something to assist with that. Maybe not like filling all the blanks, but at least some of the blanks. Trying to think of it. And this is going sound impotent, maybe not, but just asking it for business advice, like being very clear saying, I run this kind of a business and I'm dealing with this issue right now.

Seth Williams17:05Can you give me some ideas on how to solve this problem? And that's it. It'll give you tons of ideas. Maybe you've thought of some of them before, maybe not, but the beauty is when it lists out eight or 10 ideas you could pursue, you could say, okay, I like idea number six that you just gave me. Can you give me a step by step game plan on how I would actually implement that? And it'll do it. And once it gives you that step by step game plan, say if there's one of those steps you don't fully understand, you could say, explain to me how I would execute this part of that game plan.

Seth Williams17:36Like, where would I go? What should I do? It goes on and on. Anything you have questions about or unclear about, just ask it. Or if you don't like something that it told you, tell it that. Say, I don't like what you told me here. Can you give me an alternative? And a lot of people don't realize they can keep going and going. You don't have to just take what it tells you. If something doesn't quite line up, just tell it. You're talking to a genius person who knows everything and it will give you some pretty good feedback.

Brandon Parker18:04I think that's great. And it's also a little bit probably prompting yourself with helping yourself brainstorm a bit. I heard Naval say that he uses Twitter as a way to clarify his thoughts because you have to keep it short and concise and have some impact and meaning. So he has this big, large thought. And by the time he refines it to put it online, Twitter forces that revision. ChatGPT can have that same effect if you're gonna... This is the business idea. You set the framework. You're forced to set the framework and the mental structure for yourself as you explain it at ChatGPT.

Brandon Parker18:38Yeah, that's a great tip. That's really interesting. If you could put one statement onto the Internet, a message that everyone would see, say you put it on Twitter and everyone on Twitter would see it, what would you say? It's funny that

Seth Williams18:53it's hard for me to think of what I would say because I've been doing this for like twelve years. I don't know why it's hard to come up with like one concise, one sentence thing to say about it. It would probably be something to the effect of assuming I'm talking to people who don't know anything about land investing or why it's useful or important, it would be something like the right vacant land investment purchased at the right price can be a hands off low cost, low overhead asset that offers multiple ways to generate income. Something like that. Just try to condense all of the compelling reasons or at least most of them into one short statement.

Seth Williams19:27Something like that.

Brandon Parker19:29I like that. What's the most worthwhile investment you've ever made, whether in land or maybe in yourself?

Seth Williams19:36Yeah. I think anything that goes into improving my communication is a very worthwhile investment. That can be so many different things. That might be what we're doing right here, just having a conversation. Or that might be going to some conference and stepping out of my comfort zone to meet strangers and get to know people. Or it might be reading a book about how to communicate better or even listening to a podcast or hosting a podcast. All these things force you to get a little bit better, even like making YouTube videos and that kind of thing.

Seth Williams20:08Especially when I used to edit my own YouTube videos, I still do from time to time, but I would have this thing where I have a message I'm trying to deliver. So I'm going say that message now in front of this video. And then when I have to go back and edit it and I see how many things I have to trim out of that to make it actually concise and clear and not confusing and to the point and not boring, like all these things, It's a really good way to self examine and understand all the ways that you're not saying something very well. Think just investing in communication is huge.

Seth Williams20:40It has so much to do with your success in life. I've heard Ramit Sethi, I don't know if you know who he is, but I heard him say success in life is directly proportionate to the number of awkward conversations you're willing to have. That's another big thing is being able to have difficult, awkward conversations instead of running from them or instead of doing them poorly. That is a huge deal. There's a lot of milestone events with high stakes conversations that can really make your life take a turn for the better or worse.

Seth Williams21:16Knowing how to have those conversations and not being afraid of them, like confidently going forward and then having the conversation in such a way that both you and the other person will walk away feeling better about it. Nobody's feelings are hurt. It was handled with care intact. That is an incredible superpower to be able to do that. And, I've spent a lot of time trying to figure that out. And I think I've gotten a little bit better at it over the years. I don't know if I'll ever be an expert or fearless about that kind of thing, but it comes back to communication.

Seth Williams21:46Just your ability to get the right points across in a way that can be accepted and digested by the other person is a huge asset.

Brandon Parker21:56I found the same thing, editing my own YouTube videos and things like that. Just forcing myself to be more concise because I'd see the output on the back end. It's just so much fluff and a lot of how I speak. You mentioned you're still a little bit nervous when having these tough conversations. How has that changed since you started addressing this and growing this part of yourself till now? Are you still the same amount of nervous? Or is it like you get over it like door knocking?

Seth Williams22:24Yeah. I think it depends on who the person is and what the issue is. Some things are more like a matter of business. It's just something that has to be done. Other things are more personal in nature. This could affect my personal relationship. Some things are both. But yeah, I think back to crucial or awkward conversations that people have had with me when they did it well and just how much that helped me. For example, say at one of my jobs early in my career when I was doing something poorly and I either didn't realize it or I didn't think it was a big deal.

Seth Williams23:03And then somebody took the time to actually explain in a nice way, in a way that didn't alienate me from them. Like Seth, this isn't quite up to the standard. This is where it needs to be. And you're right here. Here's how I think you can get to this point. And looking at how the other part of that equation is the receiver needs to be able to accept that and own their problems and work getting better. But a big part of that has to do with the deliverer of that message and being able to get it across in such a way that it doesn't put the other person on the defensive and that kind of thing.

Seth Williams23:38But just knowing what a big deal it was for me to be able to hear that stuff, and it had permanent lasting impact on my life, being able to understand that I wasn't measuring up in some way and why it was important and their belief that I could get better and that I did get better. And if I'm not willing to do that with other people, I'm robbing them of an opportunity to improve themselves. They could be way better as a result of my interaction with them. But if I'm not willing to do that or if I'm not willing to take the time and care into delivering the message in a way they can receive it, it's a huge disservice to them.

Seth Williams24:10And in the meantime, it's a disservice to me too, because I have to suffer with their poor performance or whatever the problem is that they're bringing into my life. It's kind what a good analogy is. Taking out the trash, I feel like that's not quite right. But if I don't deal with the problems that are at my front doorstep, it's not the right answer. It's going to screw everything up and make life miserable. So, just put on your big boy pants and figure out how to deal with it. Eat the frog.

Brandon Parker24:36What's something in land or real estate investment advice that you hear often that you think is bad advice that's just out there floating around?

Seth Williams24:47Yeah, there's a lot of that stuff. But I do think some of that is dependent on which real estate investing strategy is being talked about. And a lot of this advice gets thrown around and said in a very definitive, conclusive way as though it's true for everyone in every situation, every niche. And it's not. And I think that stuff gets said a lot because maybe it sells well or something. I think people like to hear simple, clear cut, confident answers from people and whether or not that's correct is not necessarily the issue.

Seth Williams25:27People just are comforted by this kind of sweeping statements about stuff. For example, the one that I hear a lot in the land business is just send more mail. And I think the reason I hear people say send more mail is because it's three words and it's easy to say that kind of thing. It's not that's not true, but that's not the whole story. If you don't have the right list, if you're not saying the right thing, if you don't have the right follow-up, then send more mail is going to shoot yourself in the foot, waste tons of money and not get the results from it.

Seth Williams25:57I think it can be harmful is the right word, but to just say stuff because it fits on a bumper sticker and it's easy to remember and then expect people to do that without actually having the full story and understanding how to execute it and implement it right, that's a disservice. So I try to not say anything unless I'm actually going to give a full explanation of how to do all of it so that send more mail is actually true because you know what to do when you send more mail. The reason I would say it's a bad recommendation or bad advice isn't because it's wrong, but it's because it's not complete advice.

Seth Williams26:35It's not that helpful unless people really know what to do. And especially a lot of beginners out there who really don't know any better will take that advice because they hear people saying it so much because it's so easy and

Brandon Parker26:46canned and that kind of stuff. I like that answer. I can riff off that a little bit. I just read Alex Rormozi's new 100,000,000 Dollar Leads book and he has a partner. He says, do better, do more, do different when it comes to marketing. And so how that applies to land is you start with doing better, refining your counties, refining the areas that you're looking at until you're getting some sort of response rate, then do more, then you send more mail. And then after you exhaust that by doing more as much as you can, and that starts to peter out, then you do different, then you switch counties.

Brandon Parker27:20I think that's the rest of that picture as opposed to just saying send more mail. You need the rest of those steps there to make it effective. Like that idea. What's a common mistake that you see beginners make in land investing that experts never make?

Seth Williams27:37Yeah. Good question. There's a lot of mistakes. Maybe it's different for every beginner depending on where they're coming from and what their background and expertise is. Say somebody like Callan Faulkner, for example, who had a previous career in automations and CRM, I think. Think that's what I've heard her say. So somebody like that is probably not going to make a mistake in figuring out the right CRM and how to automate stuff. But there's other things that they don't have experience in and it's very easy to make mistakes there. So it depends on where they're coming from. It's a good question.

Seth Williams28:10I don't know. Are there common mistakes that you have in mind that you see people make?

Brandon Parker28:15Really. I don't think I have the authority to be speaking on I'm like the one making mistakes at this point.

Seth Williams28:22Actually, I think I just thought of one. So, in a person's follow-up sequence, I think, depends on where they're coming from, depending on what their unique skills and abilities are. But I have come across several people who there's something broken in their follow-up sequence. So like they'll get the list, they'll send out the mail or they'll do whatever their initial marketing push is. They're doing it all right. But then when people respond, something falls apart. It could be something as simple as the website submission form is broken.

Seth Williams28:57So people are going to the website, filling everything out, they submit it and it never comes through to them, to the land investor because it's broken. Literally doesn't work. And then they wonder, why is nobody using my website? It's because your website is broken. Have you actually gone through this stuff to make sure it works? Have you tested it out yourself? And that's one of many examples. It could be like we're sending people to a voicemail greeting and something is broken there. Or maybe we're saying the wrong stuff. Maybe we're not saying enough, but we're sending people to a call center and they're dropping the ball in some way.

Seth Williams29:30Or maybe we're only sending it to us and we're not picking up the phone or people are doing something and we're not getting back to them. Or even you get to the point of developing a warm lead. You have the first conversation, they're interested in selling. They want an offer and you don't send an offer. Just like all this stuff, it's just as important as the initial marketing you send out because it's all going to break if you don't get all the way to the finish line and get a deal done. So I guess just examining your follow-up sequence and making sure are leads getting through? And if they do, what next?

Seth Williams30:01Is every loop getting closed or are things falling apart along the way?

Brandon Parker30:06Yeah, I think that's a good answer. That ties in a little bit with this concept I've been toying with about speed of response. So I've had brick and mortar business service business as a real estate agent. And one thing that really sets people apart is just respond time. Someone If calls you and you don't answer how quick you call back, how quick you answer an email, you're talking about the follow-up sequence. There's something broken in there and you don't get back to them for two days when you could have got back to them immediately. I think a lot falls through the cracks in those types of things.

Brandon Parker30:37Like doing the simple things really well is something I think that's easy to overlook because hopping into land business, like you said, there's 20 tools you're going to line up for this follow-up sequence and you just slam them all in there. But are they perfect? You're probably better off with three that are done really well than 20, this beautiful automation that has gaps in it. I like that thought. What would you say kind of new advice for someone who is new into the land business advice they should run with?

Brandon Parker31:12Here's some things to get you started and here's some things to avoid.

Seth Williams31:16I would say for most people who are new in the land business, there's different ways to define new. Maybe you've been reading about it for two years, but you haven't done your first campaign yet. Or maybe you literally just heard about this today and you're going to send out your first campaign today. So there's that. But I would say for most people, when you're trying to figure something out for the first time, find an established way that it is working for people, which for most people, if you take a course of some kind, they're to lay it out in there. And I would say, just do what that course says. Just go through the process.

Seth Williams31:47Don't pretend that you're going to bring it on the wheel or have some genius new insight because that will come later. I would say first, just prove the concept to yourself. Just do it the way that you're being shown to do it. But pretty soon after you get that first deal and you've proven that it works, start thinking about how you can be more unique. Once you have seen it work, have some kind of baseline to go by. But after that, start thinking of how could I contact these people differently? Or what could I say that's different? Or how could I offer some incentive that nobody else is offering?

Seth Williams32:20Or how could I do something different with the property to make it worth more or thereby enable me to make higher offers or something? Because the sooner you do that, it's going to carve out that niche within the niche of the land business. And I think it'll start to make it easier for you once you really know who you are as a land investor. Then you can focus on staying in that lane and not messing around with it. If your specialty is subdividing stuff, then focus on that. Don't try to also develop properties or also assign contracts.

Seth Williams32:53It's good to know how to do that stuff. You have a tool in your toolbox if the situation arises, but to try to pursue all these different things at the same time, it muddies the waters. But if you can figure out, this is what I'm really good at, maybe assigning contracts is it. It just allows you to identify yourself in an increasingly growing industry where a lot of people are trying to do the same beginner level thing that everybody else is doing.

Brandon Parker33:19You mentioned finding a roadmap to follow. Do you have any suggestions on top courses you recommend, top influencers, websites, places to point someone if they were going to go one place and get a step by step guide of flipping their first 10 pieces of property?

Seth Williams33:36You talk about how to start or how to do the next level intermediate advanced stuff? Let's

Brandon Parker33:43say they've flipped two or three pieces of property so they know how it works, but they're looking to get their buy box, get a system, find themselves, find their niche in the industry.

Seth Williams33:53Yeah. There's some qualifying that has to go on there. Like you have to understand what is my budget? Do I have a $100,000, $500,000 $1,000 Like how much money do I have to work with? Because that's going to educate you on what should your marketing method be in these early days as you're getting started. And then also what kinds of deals can you take down on your own, if any, or do you need to go start getting funding from other people? That kind of thing. Or maybe you've got tons of cash and you just don't want to work the business. You've done a few deals and you know it works, but you don't want to do it yourself that could then educate you on, okay, maybe I should be a land funder so that I don't have to do this stuff, but I can still make money that way.

Seth Williams34:31So there's a lot of potential answers to that depending on who you are and your situation. Guess I can't say over the past year or so, past two years actually, I've been working on putting together this updated, not updated, a new course for this exact thing, like getting to this next level. It's called the Land Elite Masterclass. It's not even out there yet, but it will be soon. But it talks about exactly what you're talking about. How do you figure out who am I and how do I say if I want to be a funder?

Seth Williams35:02That's my thing. How can I learn more about that? Or say if I want to differentiate myself with a different way of finding motivated sellers in the first place, I don't want to do direct mail. How do I do these other things? Explains all about that. Not just how to do it, but who can then take you even further. I do a lot of interviews with these people who are specialists in these different areas and they explain exactly how it works. But if you want to work with those people further, you can do that. So, for example, just to give you an actual answer here. So say if you wanted to learn text marketing, Callan Faulkner is a great person to work with.

Seth Williams35:33We did a short course together, but she's also got much more detailed handholding consulting on that kind of thing. If you wanted to rezone properties, Mike Marshall is a great guy for that kind of thing. If you wanted to get more into seller financing in some way, whether you're buying or selling notes or just selling more properties with seller financing, Eric Schiraga is probably the smartest guy I know about seller financing in the land business.

Brandon Parker35:58And the list goes on and on. There are tons of people like that. And you have a bit of a hub for that information on real estate tips or website. Is that right? Is that the best place to find those resources?

Seth Williams36:08Yep. So I've interviewed a lot of these people on the Ari tipster podcast, but that's actually one of the huge benefits that I'm finding I have at this point in my career as a blogger and educator is that a lot of these people like come knocking on my door. I don't have to look for them. Like they see who I am in this space and I can decipher from myself like, okay, who do I think is actually smart and who just has a thing they're trying to sell right now? And I can sift through a lot of this stuff and figure out like, okay, this person's a genius. The world needs to hear from them.

Seth Williams36:40And then I interview them and try to pull as much information out of them as I can for free and share it with the world. It's not so much about what I know anymore. It's about who I know and what they know.

Brandon Parker36:50Yeah. That's the website that you have and the ecosystem around it is extremely valuable. It's where I've done a ton of my knowledge and gotten Yeah. So what do you think the kind of most innovative thing that you do that's a little bit different from the standard at this point? And it sounds like you can answer that a little bit right there with the inbound, but yeah, go ahead. Yeah. Do you mean as a content creator or as a land investor or something else? I think just holistically around your business, like what pops up for when you think about your whole ecosystem that's different from what you in general?

Seth Williams37:31Yeah. If you're referring to Ari Tipster, for example, I it's this whole idea of I just, I looked back to when I got started, I didn't have a lot of money and I had a whole lot of questions and I was just desperate for somebody to give me a clear answer. And sometimes those answers were findable, but other times I would get like 10 different answers that would all conflict with each other. My head was just spinning, trying to find truth in like, what do I actually do? Who can I really trust? And sometimes I'd pay a couple of grand for a course that was just garbage.

Seth Williams38:02It left more questions than I had when I started and it just really frustrated me. So my goal with every piece of content I make is to make it better than anything out there that's paid, but it's free. And honestly, it's worked really well. It doesn't seem like it would, but it's weird. I might not make money by charging something to get that information right then and there, but it comes back around in different ways. And sometimes that happens a week later, a month later, years later. But just in general, it also helps that I'm a terrible salesperson and I don't like to demand money from people.

Seth Williams38:36So, it's easy for me to just curate really good content and ask good questions and actually give full answers and then not charge anything for it. That kind of fits my personality really well. And that kind of thing takes a long time to start with because understandably, it takes a long time to develop a reputation and get people to realize that there's something here, there's something worth paying for. But after years of doing it, it's turned into this self perpetuating cycle of different monetization opportunities. It's really fun too, because I remember how confusing it was when I started.

Seth Williams39:08And even today, there's stuff that I get confused about and I want to get that stuff answered, not just for me, but for anybody who's dealing with that. And it's fun for me to sift through that and figure out what is the right answer, or at least what is one of the right answers so people can struggle less with that.

Brandon Parker39:25Yeah. You've really positioned yourself in a way where you've given enough for free at this point where people come to you and ask to buy stuff or with monetization as opposed to you having to go out there. So that is definitely a beautiful long game. And, yeah, you've given a lot of information. So that's great. Thanks. What's an unusual habit or an absurd thing that you love?

Seth Williams39:51Absurd thing that I love. I know. Like in business or just like in general?

Brandon Parker39:57Either. Anything that pops to mind. Unusual habit. That's good question. Something you have an unusual interest in.

Seth Williams40:07Yeah, maybe might be unusual to some people. Maybe they just don't realize this, but I have a kid's story podcast that I started a couple of years ago that it's literally just me making up stories in my head and I read them off and I have different voices and we add sound effects and music to it. And it's a very immersive audio theater experience. And it's actually similar to how Ari Tipster started. Like it was just this crazy idea and a dream. And I didn't know if it was dumb or not.

Seth Williams40:38It was just like, I'm going try this. It's going to be embarrassing. So I'm just going to do it. And in the beginning with REtipster and with the Story Land podcast, that's what it's called, Nobody paid attention. Nobody cared. All of a sudden Story Land is getting almost 30,000 downloads a week. And it's been like in the top 100 podcasts for kids and family for the past month now. And it's blowing up and it blows my mind because this is literally just me dreaming up ideas in my spare time.

Seth Williams41:11Their stories are, I think fun, but there's usually not like a moral to it necessarily. It's just a fun seven to ten minute story. And I've watched kids as they listen to these things and they are captivated by it. It's crazy. At the end of the story, they're asking me, Is this real? Is this an actual place that you're talking about? It's really convincing. And it's fun because I get to go back into my childhood and remember what captivated my imagination? What did I find really entertaining? What were the books that really left an impression on me and use that to channel new ideas and make that a thing?

Seth Williams41:47So, yeah, that's an unusual thing about me.

Brandon Parker41:50Yeah. Wow. That's a really fun, creative endeavor. That is so cool. You've got a great radio voice too, by the way. Don't know if Yeah, heard that that's cool. So yeah, I'm just blown away by that. Do you think that your creativity there plays into your business life?

Seth Williams42:11I think so. One of those things like back when I started REtipster, my history with writing was not good. I did terrible. I almost flunked out of college because I was so bad at writing papers and that kind of thing. But something clicked when the writing was about something I care about and something I had history with and when there was a real purpose and a mission behind it. And I don't know that my writing suddenly got great, but I just cared more. And when you care more, it comes through. There must be some kind of creative gene.

Seth Williams42:44And I must be because my left brain is very small. I'm very bad at math and technical black and white thinking. It's more of what is fun and interesting and colorful. I love music, all that stuff. So yeah, there must be something in the right side of my brain that makes it all work and makes it unique and interesting.

Brandon Parker43:02Do you think there's something about land that grabs people and pulls them into the niche? It seems like a lot of people I've met, they actually love land. It's for something about the physical aspect of it. It resonates with people. For me, when I felt like I finally found land, felt like I'd been searching for this. This is what I've been searching for a decade. I found it all in. Do you see that often?

Seth Williams43:29Yeah, I think so. I think there is something about that. Maybe not everybody, but certainly some people and even myself. I think there's something satisfying about being able to say that you own land somewhere. It's almost like in the same way that a lot of people who buy land, what they're really buying is just a dream. This dream of, Hey, I'm going go. It's just a cool idea. And so I think there's something to that as well. Other people though, it's more of just seeing the numbers of the margins are huge. Like the competition is lower. It's not non existent, but it's not as bad as some other things are.

Seth Williams44:00And they're more attracted to that. Maybe it's a mix of things. But for me, I think it was, I had a history of trying to figure out how to flip houses and do rental properties and all this stuff. And it was hard. I couldn't figure it out. There were a lot of components to it, a lot of things, opportunities to mess things up and lose money. And when I saw that a lot of those problems just weren't there with land, I thought, Oh, this is nice. This is something I can actually achieve. And I did. So, that's what did it for me. Was the simpler nature of it. There's definitely

Brandon Parker44:31beauty in the simplicity of land. Get rid of all those extra contingencies and inspections and unknown things hidden in the walls. I appreciate your time today. Do you have any final thoughts for people listening to the Legends of the Land podcast here? If ever want to chat it up or talk about whatever, feel free to reach out to me. Retipster.com

Seth Williams44:52or if you just search anywhere on any social media, anything for retipster, you'll find where I'm at on those places. And yeah, I'd love to talk to you. That's the show for today. Seth Williams, the man, the legend behind REtipster.

Brandon Parker45:05Have a good day, Thanks.