Jonathan Duong : High Value Land

Brandon Parker00:00This is Brandon Parker. Welcome to the Legends of Land Show where it's my job to deconstruct the tactics of elite land investors, how they think about their business and strategies that drive their success. My guest today is Jonathan Duong. Jonathan is the founder of the High Value Land Group that has over 12,000 members in Facebook. Probably all of us have seen it. His business is built on simplicity. He does... Sells direct to builders, and he has a really interesting business model that he's growing now. You can find him online in the Facebook group at High Value Land.

Brandon Parker00:35And in this conversation, we cover how he's grown his business, where he's transferring out of, some really interesting angles on selling direct to mom and pop builders and also national builders. So without further ado, please enjoy this wide ranging conversation

Jonathan Duong00:51from Jonathan Duong. The legends of land show show with Brandon Parker. Deconstruct the tactics of world class land investors and learn tools to build a 7 figure land business. Legends of Land Show is

Brandon Parker01:11Jonathan, welcome to the Legend of Land show. How you doing today, my friend? I'm blessed. I'm grateful. Thank you for having me really. Yep, absolutely. I found you because you put a lot of value back into the community. You got a killer Facebook group, high value land group. And I was like, want to talk to this dude and see what's going on. Yeah, that's how I found you and how we're here today. Maybe talk a little bit about your journey, how you got into land, how you got to where you're right now. Absolutely,

Jonathan Duong01:33man. Yeah, it started back in 2020. When I was transitioning between jobs, I went on the self help self development journey. I started reading different books and I just wanted to go ahead and choose a different path from what I was doing before, which was timeshare and then I did timeshare resales. I started reading the books that really opened up your mind for me. It was of course the Bible that enriched that poor dad that helped me along the journey and it just showed me so much that I was missing.

Jonathan Duong02:03So once I did that, I dug deep on YouTube, watching videos of how we can make money from home. That's what I wanted to get into, making money from my laptop. And I got into a couple of videos where I was watching about wholesaling land, wholesaling houses, things like that. I started to watch the videos and I got intrigued and I bought a little, actually I bought like a little mailer course when I first got started about sending mail to land owners and their concept was land flipping, actually buying the lot and then listing it and selling it.

Jonathan Duong02:35Yeah, I went that route and I sent some mailers out and then from there to getting my first deal was a good six, seven months, so it was a tough time and I wasn't working as well so there was no income coming in, so of course it was a stressful time but I understood that good things take time so at the time it's hard to see that but looking back at it I see how much of a blessing it was so that's what kind of led me into land and then started to learn that we don't have to just land flip, could wholesale deals and different marketing strategies.

Jonathan Duong03:08Yeah, I've been always intrigued to keep learning because I know there's so many other ways to do this business. What

Brandon Parker03:15are you up to now? How are you finding your deals? And what's your strategy?

Jonathan Duong03:19Yeah, right now I send text messages. That's my bread and butter. I also send mailers, blind offers, one page agreements that will just say, Hey, my name is Jonathan, I see you on land in this place. We can offer this amount. If you're interested, give me a call. So those are my two main marketing strategies. And my main exit strategies are wholesaling. I also land flip where I purchase the lot, and then listed on the MLS. And then yeah, those are my two strategies right now. How do you look at the difference between wholesaling and flipping a lot if you're gonna pay cash or if you're gonna try to double end it or double close?

Jonathan Duong03:55Yeah, that's a good question, man. So usually I was wholesaling when I first got started and just recently this year actually, I started to take down deals because I started to see that lots were selling more than what my builders were paying. We reverse engineer where we find our buyers and builders first, so we know what we're looking for and then we'll wholesale it to them and then basically there's no money out of pocket except what you spend for your marketing and softwares. But then I started to see that there was lots selling for $10.20, $30,000 more, so I tested it out a couple times where I would just take down the lot because I had some money sitting down and I was actually able to sell it for probably $2,030,000 dollars more than what the builders were paying.

Jonathan Duong04:33When I was doing this I got excited and I started buying all of them because you want to make more but then you get cash back. So you start to, you're able to cherry pick, okay, this one might sell a little bit more. Let me just wholesale this one. That's how it is. Okay. Talk

Brandon Parker04:47about that a little bit. How you have the buyers and builders lined up. Talk about what a deal looks like you find something how you target it. Absolutely.

Jonathan Duong04:54So from the beginning, what we do is we start with the market research when we want to see that there's demand going on. How we do that is we'll jump on something like zillow.com will use free resources, regsaid and realtor.com. We'll go ahead and we'll look at the land that has been sold in the last thirty days, especially in Florida because stuff is always moving so quick. And then once we do that, we'll cross reference that data with the data of new construction being built. So not only do we see land is being sold, but new construction is being built. Once we see that, we'll go ahead and check the supply, see how many lots are active, and if we feel like there's supply needed in this market, then we'll go ahead and choose that market.

Jonathan Duong05:32So that was step one. Step two is to find our end buyers, our buyers and builders. How do we do this? We use free tools like Zillow as well and we use things like PropWire or PropStream where you can look at the cash sales in the last thirty days and see who's actually buying in these markets. We'll reach out to them, hey my name is Jonathan, I see that you're buying land in this city, just wanted to see if you're looking for more lots. They're either gonna say no, not at this time or yes, what do you have? So once we're able to do that we're having the conversation of hey we don't have anything right now but just wanted to see what your criteria is and we send you the lots that they're in your certain buy box right.

Jonathan Duong06:09So we're just trying to collect data from these buyers and builders get their criteria so we know exactly what we're looking for. So in a specific market, what's maybe four or five solid builders where we have the criteria, and then we're reverse engineering, we got the buyers and builders, then it turns into the marketing business when we get into sending text messages, sending mailers and trying to get things under contract. Once we get them under contract, we pitch it to the buyers, hopefully everything works out, they'll do their due diligence, then we'll basically wholesale it to the building.

Brandon Parker06:40And so you're basically manually building a buyer's list of builders. How often are they buying when you bring them something that you said you would? Usually if it fits their criteria, they'll say for example, hey, Brandon, we're paying $50,000

Jonathan Duong06:56for a 10,000 square foot lot and these are infill lots. So there's a house, a vacant lot and a house. So we already know in certain markets that go pretty good to go. Every market has obstacles to overcome it, especially in Florida, whether it's utilities on-site or endangered species or like wetlands for example, but they'll do their due diligence once we have the agreements in place. But usually if it fits their criteria, they're good to go, they do their due diligence and they may close within forty five to sixty days for the bigger builders.

Brandon Parker07:26Okay, so they're buying price, so you know what you're going to sell it for and to who. So then you're just going out and hammering that small niche. All right, chilling it. That's cool. That's actually backwards from how most people do it, not backwards in a bad way. It's just like you're doing it from the other end around, which is pretty clever. I like that. What type of opportunity is there? How much volume is there? How many

Jonathan Duong07:49deals can people do a month with that type of strategy? These bigger buyers, there is national builders that you're able to work, it may be harder to get in touch with them. But once you have that contact, and you build that relationship, you close a couple of deals with them. They'll send you an email, they'll be like, hey Brandon, we need 50 locks this month, we're paying $50,000 per lock in this area. So you are okay, now it's time to get marketing to try to find some opportunities to bring them. Smaller mom and pop builders that don't do too much volume may buy a couple lots a month, but from my experience, they usually pay a little bit more than what national builders pay, but there's so much volume to be done.

Jonathan Duong08:26There's markets where you might make 3,000 to $5,000 on a wholesale deal, but you might be able to close 10 to 12 deals a month. And then there's markets where you can make $50,000 on one deal. Encourage people to do both, to have your volume going on, you're consistently closing deals, but also have these markets where the spreads are bigger and you're able to make a bigger assignment fee. Because in these smaller markets, for example, the lots might be selling for around maybe 20,000. But there's only so much you can make in the middle when the lots are selling when they're selling for thousand, you might be able to make a bigger assignment fee.

Brandon Parker09:04What do you think the sweet spot is for price range types of properties,

Jonathan Duong09:10where they're still easy to buy, but you got a good margin? I always say when I do my market research, and I'm looking for lots sold in the last thirty days, I probably put a minimum sales price of around 60,000 where we'd be able to make anything. But then again, I know good friends of mine that got into it, they jumped into markets where lots are selling for 20, but they're doing so much volume that you're able to make the same amount. It just depends on what you would like. Do you want to close 10 deals and make 50,000?

Jonathan Duong09:40Or do you want to close one deal and make 50,000? I say do both.

Brandon Parker09:44You're just like high level picking counties and you're like, I'm gonna look for infill lots above $60. And then I'm gonna go find builders. How do you do that initial research? I guess maybe if you're just in Florida, you might just know every county. How do you think about that initial research? Like where to go? Yeah, so even if we were gonna jump into a whole

Jonathan Duong10:03different state, I would definitely start with the free tools like zillow.com. I'll go ahead and I'll look at the lots sold in the last thirty, sixty, ninety days and see the trends going on. That way we can know that there's demand there. And then I'll switch up the filters and then see if there's no construction being built. And then we're able to dive deeper once we are like, okay, this might be a decent market. Let's dig a little deeper into these markets. I use Zillow every day. That's one of the tools I use every day. Redfinrealtor.com all these free tools where you're able to just cross reference all the data and put it together to find these markets where builders are currently in and they need land.

Jonathan Duong10:41That's how I find the markets I want to jump into.

Brandon Parker10:43And I'm not familiar with the new construction data or where to find that in Zillow. What's that look like? How are you doing that? Yeah, absolutely. On zillow.com,

Jonathan Duong10:52there's different filters. So for example, you could go to zillow.com and then you'll go to for sale and then you can pick the property type and you can pick single family homes and then when it comes to more options, they have a year built filter. But year built twenty twenty four and you'll see all the new construction. Yeah, like, then you can reverse engineer and look at builders that already sold houses that were built in 2024. They hungry, they probably want some more flats, So their houses are just sitting on the market, so that's where we created them.

Jonathan Duong11:24And then some markets, have the builder's name right there where it says this house is being built by this company. So you can just go ahead, copy that, put it into Google, look up the number, search it, and then call them up, make that introduction and see if you could be of service.

Brandon Parker11:40And are you looking for national homebuilders? You're looking for like regional mom and pop or do care? What gets you excited when you see Oh, that's a builder? Yeah, I personally everybody

Jonathan Duong11:50has their own preference. But I like working with mom and pop builders. Why? Because I like to build that relationship with them. I could actually call the builder on the phone and I'm speaking with the owner of the company and we can actually sit down and have lunch. When I'm calling to these national builders, I'm speaking to, they have a land acquisitions department for each, like a couple areas that they're in, so if I wanted to go to a certain market, I'll call a corporate office who handles acquisitions for this area and then they'll say, hey, you can email this person or call this person, But essentially, you don't have that you have that relationship with them.

Jonathan Duong12:27But it's not like, you know, who the owner of the company is, because it's such a big company, photographer, Horton, Miranda homes, these big companies that aren't just in one state, all around The United States.

Brandon Parker12:39And so the relationship you build there could be fleeting to some extent, like you're going to be in some Liberty County, Florida or something, but then if you switch somewhere else, then you've got to build a new relationship with a new person from a new department or is there a way to get in where you're the guy for and they can just bounce between the different places? That's a great question. From my experience, when you're actually providing value to them and you're bringing them opportunities,

Jonathan Duong13:05they usually let you know, hey, we're actually gonna go into this market, you have that first step in there, or you can contact them and say, hey, I have lots in this market, do you have a contact for that? And then you guys do business together, they'll give you the context, you can have that relationship with them. But then that's a good thought too because mom and pop builders, they're not national, so when you do build that relationship with them, it's just in their specific market, like their backyard where they can drive to the lots and things of that nature. So it's like a double A store.

Jonathan Duong13:37That's why I do a little bit of both. Anybody that wants to buy land, I'm interested in building relationships with them. Yeah, I look at it. Yeah. How high a volume can mom and pops do? I'm guessing they could get fairly big. But what's like that small midsize market look like? Some of the mother pop builders I've worked with, they started buying maybe two or three lives. Now they're buying maybe 10 to 15 and now they're like whatever you got I want it. It's like slowly building up but it's a pleasure to see because you could start to see them building up but also you're building up too.

Jonathan Duong14:11You guys are both helping each other grow. So those are the best relationships. If you can meet somebody that's a builder and they're hungry to start building houses and you could be at service and bring them land and they're just getting to this point where they're like, first I just need five lots, now I need everything. What do you have? So it's amazing to see the growth. Yeah,

Brandon Parker14:32that's actually one of my favorite parts about my business. Work with land investors. Like, when I just catch on with like, just a savage and they see them start and then they start just getting bigger and just running alongside them. That's that's the best for sure. Absolutely. That's cool.

Jonathan Duong14:47Is there a is there like a middle market? I see that the mom and pops went to the nationals. Is there like people that are not national homebuilders, but they're doing like serious volume in certain regions? Also wholesale land to land companies because we get the lots at a price where even if we were to wholesale it to somebody else, they still have the margin to buy it and then flip it on the market, for example. So I see land acquisitions company that just buy land and they don't even build so they might buy so many amount of lots and then once they have a package of 30 lots they might go ahead and then sell all those lots to a builder.

Jonathan Duong15:24But yeah, usually mom and pop builders, they can range from buying just one or two lots a month to buying 20 to 30 lots a month. But national builders may say, hey, need 50, I need 100 lots this quarter, whatever it might be. So it definitely varies. And everybody has different exit strategies where some people just buy to flip. Like I reached out to somebody yesterday. Said, hey, are you buying land in this area? They're like, I just flip land. So then I wanted to get wasn't going to work with their business strategy, but then they referred me to a builder.

Jonathan Duong15:55So I was like, Okay, perfect. So I'm able to reach out to them and try to also go into them.

Brandon Parker16:00Unknown That makes sense. You mentioned packaging land together. Is that a lot of times what the national homebuilders are looking for is I want to buy 30 at once. Don't want to deal with bunch of transactions or are they often buying one offs? Yeah,

Jonathan Duong16:14have different departments. Some departments work, they call it like scattered lots or infill lots, they'll buy one infill lot or so. And then they have different departments where they want acres because they either want people that do the entitlements and sell it to them or they'll do it themselves. The National Builders, they have so many extra strategies, so many different departments that handle different things, but there's a department that says, Hey, we need some infill lots, hey, I'd like five plus acres or so on and so forth.

Jonathan Duong16:45So I haven't gotten to the land entitlement yet where I'm actually getting land on a contract and titling it and then selling it to the builder. But that's something I'm looking forward to doing to learning as well.

Brandon Parker16:55Do you see yourself continuing to grow in the land and entitlement and working with builders space? Are you more drawn to the flipping and the subdividing yourself type space? What do you think your next kind of area is going to be to dive into?

Jonathan Duong17:12I would say I enjoy learning in that with the infill lots. I've been doing it for a couple years now. And of course, there's more to learn, but I feel like there's not much else. There's a mark, right? There's only so much you can do when you're doing it for a lot so I still want to have that running where we're able to close a couple deals a month but I still want to learn different action strategies in the land business. There's so many things. You mentioned one that I've been thinking about too, like land notes. There's so many different exit strategies instead of just wholesaling land that I just want to learn about different exit strategies and possibilities that have to do with land.

Jonathan Duong17:48So right now we're doing the FLS, but I always want to get into entitlements or just different extra energies in general when it comes to land. Anything that got to do with land, I'm definitely interested for sure. Yeah,

Brandon Parker18:01it's interesting to think about that next level on land. Like people have so many different strategies, see people who become funders and see people who become big subdividers or developers entitlements, it's always, it seems like there's always some sort of next level after the infill lots or after the flipping or wholesaling. Yeah. What I would say with that also is that a lot of people

Jonathan Duong18:23get into that because it's the lowest barrier to entry when it comes monetary wise and intelligence wise. All you gotta do, let's not make it any harder than it is. You do your market research, you find a builder, he says, Hey, Jonathan, I'm paying $50,000 Our job is to get anything under that. That's all wholesaling is, so don't make it any more complicated than it is, right? And then monetary wise, you're able to do this probably maybe $304,100 dollars a month. You could do it for free, but it's going to be so much of your time.

Jonathan Duong18:54You can go ahead and get software that make it a little bit easier, whether you're sending text messages and just skip tracing lists, and getting into the business that way. But once you get in there, what I would say is don't get stuck on that, make sure you're learning and growing, but realize that there's different exit strategies, because if we're only offering a cash offer, and they say no, and we don't have any other extra strategies, the people that are getting creative, that have different solutions are going to be able to get the deal done. How

Brandon Parker19:24far do you think you can take the infill lots working with builders? I mean, there's also the idea of not expanding too much into different things, but just going way harder on what you're doing. What's that look like at a really big scale you think? Yeah, everybody has their own goals, right? Some people want to build

Jonathan Duong19:42a big team and have a maybe a call center or 10 or 12 people on their team where everybody's generating leads and have these overhead and whatever it might be. But me personally, the reason I got into this certain niche that I got into was I was able to travel and I'm able to do business from anywhere from a Wi Fi connection. That was always from the beginning, like to a niche where if I got to travel, if my family's here or something happens here, bring my laptop and I'm still able to work. So that's why I got into the niche that I'm in and we have a team of three and I'm okay with it.

Jonathan Duong20:16We're doing okay. Of course, we can grow and scale and hire more VAs or our teammates and stuff like that, but it just depends on people's goals. People do well, people have a big team and they might grow into do multiple seven figures and stuff like that. They just might have a more expensive overhead and they might be tied down to one spot depending on how you do it. But everybody has different goals up in the, you know, 10,000,000,000 limitless for the

Brandon Parker20:43land business for sure. So you went to school at Worcester State up in what Connecticut or Maine or somewhere up deep? What's that

Jonathan Duong20:52all not? Yeah, I'm from Worcester, Massachusetts. I was born and raised in Worcester, Massachusetts. When I graduated high school at 17, 18, I moved out. I came to Florida for vacation with my family, but I loved it so much. I was like, I want to stay. And then I ended up going to Valencia, which is like a community college out here in Orlando, Florida. I did that for a year or so, and then I went back to Massachusetts. I was gonna start there, but we went for a little bit. And then I've been back and forth from Massachusetts so long that college has been in and out.

Jonathan Duong21:27I never really completed much when it comes to college. Too busy doing the the real business game. So that's cool. They're not teaching land wholesaling and in college or how. And I took a lot of things that he but teaches though and some people go, I say if you're going to college, you're doing something that you actually enjoy doing and you love doing, go for it. But when it comes to freedom and real life skills is I don't see much people that went to college and actually use their degree or things of that nature. But like I said, everybody has their own journey.

Jonathan Duong21:58Just speaking from of my thoughts. Yeah, for sure. Since you lived up in Massachusetts in the North, what's the land game like up there? I've come across dozens of land investors, and I haven't seen any that are flipping land in Maine or Massachusetts. Why is that? The market out there is very different in terms of what you have to look out for. And then there's not too many builders or developers from what I see, or they just might have a different exit strategy. I was up there for like a month, last month, and I actually got some people from the high value lady group together.

Jonathan Duong22:32I was just like, hey, if you guys are free, I got this location, just come up and let's just talk. Let's just mastermind bounce some ideas off each other. So there's people that drove our way towards Boston to come and we sat down, we spoke about it, we spoke about the market out here in Worcester and who's flipping land. There are some people flipping land out there. What I noticed is that there's not much in the field lots, like most of the parcel out there are acres and then there's so many things to look out for when it comes to maybe slopes or septics and things like that.

Jonathan Duong23:05And then also, it's a lot of three deckers and multi family, so there's not much single family being built there. There is a market because land is very expensive but if you look at the sales in the last thirty days in Worcester it might be 10. If you look at sales in the last thirty days in Orlando it might be like 500. Yeah where you're able to pick okay I can jump into this market it might be harder to get a deal. But if you do get a good deal, you're probably going to make a great spread. So it's the same. The same thought is like having a volume market where you're doing little deals, but multiple deals and then doing larger deals, even though it might take a lot.

Brandon Parker23:42I guess the bigger picture of the thought is probably there's just a lot of that's already developed up there. I mean, people have been up there since forever, and developing building houses and stuff. It's probably not just as wide open like Florida's got so much open space and people moving down there. It's yeah, it's hot right now. Of the market research you talk about what's other creative ways that you find deals and do stuff in Florida? Yeah, absolutely. Relationships,

Jonathan Duong24:11just letting people know what you do. And then also when you're building your builders list, you can let people know, you could post it by, hey, my building needs 50 lots, I can't find 50 lots by myself. So if anybody has land in this area, you can joint venture partner up. And then, yeah, it's just letting people know that you flip land. If you're good at marketing, could partner with people that have builders or if you're good at founding builders, you can partner with people that are good with acquisitions, and they come together close deals that way as well.

Jonathan Duong24:42And then just any articles you see about like businesses being built or let's say Amazon facilities being built and you see that there's going to be demand there, you can start to do your research that way, reverse engineer that way so you can try to get your foot in the door. But yeah, you just got to get creative and stuff. Same thing with the marketing. I always try to let people know to have... When we check for mail, we have the consumer lens on. So we just look at what we're seeing what we have. But once you own a business, you start to see things in a different way, especially when you're the one sending mail.

Jonathan Duong25:15So you start to look at the mail pieces like why did I open this one? This one looks good. It might be fine. Then you start to use that in your own business. So just having that producer mindset and getting creative and understanding that

Brandon Parker25:26there's so many different ways to do things. Just be open to it. You're talking a little bit about your team, like if you're text messaging, let's say, what's your team look like as far as leads coming in handling those leads all the way through close and dispo?

Jonathan Duong25:40Great question, brother. Yes. So we got three people on our team. I have a VA that is answering text messages, usually eight hours a day, and I have an acquisition manager that qualifies any good leads and sends the contracts out to lock up the deal. And then I handle this. Oh, I handle building relationships with buyers, picking the markets, and getting the deal sold at the highest price possible. Yeah, just a team of three. And then when I send the mailers out the phone calls that come in, I actually handle those calls myself. I pick up the phone calls. If it's a good lead, I'll dig deeper into it or I send it to the acquisitions manager to check it out if I'm busy on my end, but small team of three.

Jonathan Duong26:18I like it. I don't know if I'm gonna add more VAs, but I'm just liking the flow of things right now. So it's been a blessing.

Brandon Parker26:27How'd you find your acquisitions manager? If they're, they're closing deals for you, sounds like, are you underwriting them or they decided on price too? No.

Jonathan Duong26:36The acquisitions manager understands they have the builder's criteria, they know what the builders are paying. So it's like they're able to get the lot under that price, then it's usually good to go. We always come across different markets where there's different challenges, and then we'll come together and talk about, hey, this market, go ahead and pull up the wetlands matter. There's so much wetlands out here, make sure it's out of those markets or flood zones or make sure these utilities, for example, when it comes to other stuff like endangered species in Florida, that's a big thing, there might be a certain tortoise burrows on the land, those are protected.

Jonathan Duong27:11So you have to to safely remove them and bring them to a turtle sanctuary, which costs like $8,000 per turtle. Yeah. The builders will tell you, I do not want nothing to do with that lot. Yeah, it just depends on the obstacles and stuff. Maybe the acquisition manager knows running back with the builder to pay, what to look out for, what they can offer, sending out contracts.

Brandon Parker27:33I need to get in the turtle transportation game, sounds like.

Jonathan Duong27:39The world for a turtle is crazy, bro. They're all business, right? Unknown That's funny. Where'd you find your acquisitions manager? How'd you come across them? Unknown I say they've been in the business with me since the beginning with their do admin work, and they understood the business and now handled the deal. It's actually somebody that I know personally. Yeah. Okay.

Brandon Parker28:03Yeah. That's what I tend to find. It's like that position when they're pricing property is a diamond in the rough. It's like, people are always looking for how to do that and where to, but a lot of times it comes down to being someone that you trust or that you have a prior relationship with. How do you incentivize them? Are they, do you do any percentage of deals closed or anything like that to have them incentivized to negotiate the last couple thousand bucks? Or how do you think about that? Yeah, absolutely. So when it comes to the VA, you get paid $5

Jonathan Duong28:33an hour plus they make $75 to $100 per closed deal for them. Acquisitions manager makes 10% of any of the closed deals. Yeah, that's how we do it the payment. Awesome.

Brandon Parker28:48Yeah, that's a slick setup. I've heard a lot of setups, the VA and then the acquisitions and then the owner doing dispo, haven't heard a lot of, but you got a cool setup that's a little bit different because you're selling directly to the home builders like that. So that's killer, man. It's simple. I love simplicity. Like I'm all about the simpler the better. Awesome.

Jonathan Duong29:09I understand.

Brandon Parker29:10That's killer. You talked about so you can travel and do your business from your computer. Are you mainly traveling up to Connecticut area and back to Florida? Are you like going like Bali Surf route? What are you up to? Man,

Jonathan Duong29:24I'm trying to go there. No, yeah, we've been on a couple of vacations, some cruises, been out to Mexico and different places. I try to travel once in a while, but yeah, anywhere we go, I bring my laptop. If I gotta get some tasks done or make some phone calls, definitely able to do it. We like to do some traveling. Keep the team small. My VA is from The Philippines and she's been with us for over a year now. So maybe someone will go visit her too and close some deals together in person. Yeah, I feel you. I got dang, we're close to we're way over 20 now, but we got a lot of people in The Philippines.

Brandon Parker29:59And I think that I'm going to make my way out there and do a little go see the team because The Philippines I heard is beautiful. That's totally on my radar. Totally on my radar, especially because it's crazy to work with people for a year, like you said, for a year online and you maybe see them every day video chats and stuff like that, but you never meet them in person. Think I'm actually really looking forward to that.

Jonathan Duong30:22It's on the radar. Let's talk a little bit about your Facebook group and how that started and how it's going and what the value add is there. For sure. Yeah, we started it in October of last year of twenty twenty three. I just started it just to document my journey and to meet like minded people so we can bounce ideas off each other and add value to each other. And then people started inviting other people. I would just post about what I do. I have a little YouTube channel called High Value Conversations and I post the videos that I make on YouTube on there as well.

Jonathan Duong30:54It's just basically just what we went over, but just like in a more detailed way. I try to just give value for free because I just believe helping others helps you. But then over the years, it's been growing exponentially. I think we're around like 11,000 members now, people helping each other and posting deals, to help each other get deals sold. But like I said, what I do miss though is the small community where it's like a certain amount of people adding value to each other, bouncing ideas off each other and just trying to see each other grow.

Jonathan Duong31:26We're still able to do that, but how big has got it? You just lose everything and then messages get flooded. Me personally, I try to stay off social media because it's more of a distraction than anything, but I'm trying to get better with replying to people and things of that nature. The group has been a blessing. It's definitely been a blessing. What's the coolest thing that's happened because of that group? The connections, the people I've met, the relationships I've built, closed some deals with some of the people in their joint ventures, making money together.

Jonathan Duong31:58Just what's amazing is when I get messages, when I do go through my messages and somebody says, hey, I watched your YouTube videos from the Facebook group and I closed my first deal. And that feels amazing. And that's why I try to do things just out of love. I try to do things out of love. I don't charge for the YouTube videos. There's people that have courses and I might do it in the future to get deeper in it. But for now, I'm just like, is what I do. If you guys need help, post it in the group. And we're all here to help each other.

Brandon Parker32:28And your YouTube channel, you're just talking through the deals you do? Are you laying out like a roadmap of how you do it or what type of content you make in? Yeah, so on high value conversation,

Jonathan Duong32:39the first couple of videos is how do I get started wholesaling land. I'll dig deep onto the market research, all the filters that we talked about. I'm on the loom so you can see what I'm doing, how I dig my markets, finding buyers, doing marketing, finding sellers, then if I close a certain deal, I'll bring the backstory of how I got the deal, how I got the deal sold,

Brandon Parker33:00how much we made, things of that nature. Just documenting the journey as well over there. Okay, I see. That's killer. That's a great resource, especially if someone listens to this podcast and they want to get some angles on that. That's cool. So it's a great spot to go. We have a cool thing we do where we pass a question from the last guest to the next guest. And so your question is coming from Eddie Speed. Eddie Speed did land notes for forty years and just crushes with land notes. And actually, you talked about maybe being interested in those.

Brandon Parker33:30I would listen to that Eddie Speed podcast because he's a G. He had some cool angles on it. And there's a lot of stuff going on in the land notes these days that he has opinions on. He's got what he says is the right way to do it. He's worth listening to it. Eddie asked you, how does what you do add value to the world?

Jonathan Duong33:50Unknown That's a great question. So as you can see by the group, value land group, high value conversations, I've always went in that mindset how I can be of service to others and how I can add value. For example, going back to what we spoke about earlier is the people that actually take the time to watch the videos that we posted for free and actually take action and actually out of love reach out to me and say, Hey, I'm not sure if you'll even read this, but I just wanted to let you know I watch your videos, your free content, I was able to close my first deal.

Jonathan Duong34:22It helped so much. I'm able to do this and this for my family and I definitely wanna expand and things like that. The knowledge is free, and it's just putting the knowledge together for people to actually take action. And so I feel that's my way of adding value, but of course, I like to take people back to what I feel is the truth is God is always going to be in first place and you should always remember that God is most important in your life. So I try to always let people know whatever I do is not by my own strengths, just I'll glory to God always.

Brandon Parker34:56Awesome. I was going to circle back to your initial comment that you were looking, you read two books and then got started getting into the business, Rich Dad Poor Dad and the Bible. What were like maybe a couple of core lessons that you took that you were like, okay, I'm going this direction from those books?

Jonathan Duong35:11Yeah, in the Bible, of course, that's something I try to read every day is most important to me. But you start to learn things that are good for your life that also translate into business. For example, being slow to speak, slow to get angry, but quick to listen because when we talk, we are already speaking about what we know, but when we listen, we're learning right. So things like that, but just understanding what's most important to you. And then of course, Rich Dad Poor Dad, it just it just changes your whole mindset about assets versus liabilities, how to grow when it comes to financially and just how to do things in a way where you weren't taught in traditional school and college and stuff like that.

Jonathan Duong35:55So it's just the truth of the Bible and then the lessons enriched at Pornet definitely helped me to where it just changed my mindset overall. I want to get around people that are actually doing the thing that I want to do. Robert Kiyosaki calls those real teachers, right? Because we were talking about it. Some people go to school to learn business from a business professor that never owned a business. So he calls those fake teachers. So I like to learn from people that are actually doing the things that I wanna learn.

Brandon Parker36:21Yeah, 100%. I'm so on board with that. I mean, that's one of the main purposes of my podcast. I just like swoop up people that look like they know stuff I want to know. And I just ask them much questions. It's the best thing. It's the ultimate hack. What's my next interview is going to be with actually I don't remember who it is, but we got one coming up. Let's pass a question on from Jonathan to the next guest. Would you say or ask?

Jonathan Duong36:50I would ask how can you be more at service to those around?

Brandon Parker36:56Love it. And the question I ask every guest towards the end of the show is if you could post one message, it would go on Twitter. Whole world would see it. So it's gotta be concise. What would you say you post on Twitter for everyone to see? I would say Jesus is Lord.

Jonathan Duong37:16And anything that is meant to be will be so don't stress too much. I like it. You got a good vibe, cool business and a good community you've built, Jonathan, so it's been a pleasure to meet you. Where can people find you and any final thoughts for the people listening? Yeah, you can contact me on Instagram. It's the Larry J. Wholesome, W H O L S O M E. You can join the land Facebook group, High Value Land Group, and then subscribe to the YouTube channel, High Value Conversations.

Jonathan Duong37:50And I would leave it with, if you guys want to join the land business or you guys want to start a land business, it's more than possible. There's so many great resources out this. Brandon Parker got a great podcast where he's bringing out people and him himself has knowledge, and we're just putting the knowledge out there for you. It's just about taking action, taking the first step, and then failing forward.

Brandon Parker38:14Big time. Alright. Jonathan, great to have you on the show, and, until next time, my friends. Have a good day. Thank you, man. The Legends of Land show.