Jon Jasniak: Walking Away From Flips to Run $40M in Land Subdivisions

Brandon Parker00:00Jon Jasniak, welcome to Legends Land Show. Good to see you today. Thanks for having me, Brandon. Good to see you. Yeah. Absolutely. So when people picture land investing, generally, it's a standard model. You're calling or mailing, getting leads in, flipping, subdividing. Jaz Land does it differently. Tell me what Jaz Land actually does, like your overall business model.

Jon Jasniak00:24Yeah. So Jaz Land is just my land investing company. I've been doing it for, gosh, ten years now. And we do it a little different in this fact that I'm mostly transitioned to peer developing. So it's 100% subdividing. Don't do any flips really anymore unless it's just like a perfect deal where I'm gonna make some money and it's it's easy, which I think as we know, the flipping game is not as easy as it used to be. So we've kind of pivoted a 100% away from from that stuff, for the last few years now, and now it's just ripping these...

Jon Jasniak01:00You know, a lot of major subdivisions. So, you know, multi multimillion dollar projects, building roads, doing water, all that stuff, horizontal improvements.

Brandon Parker01:10Yeah. I was just talking to my business partner about this. It seems like every business starts to go upmarket. It's like you... There's the quick cash and flips on the downside as you get started. And then as you grow, it's just like more expensive deals. They take longer. They're more expensive. And I think that's, I mean, almost... It's it's almost universal as businesses grow. Just like bigger plays, bigger, longer term plays. How long have you... When did you decided to make that?

Brandon Parker01:41Was that like a conscious transition, or did you just start naturally picking up some subdivides? And... Because you started off with notes and things. Is that right? Yeah. I started off flipping back in early twenty seventeen, did a lot of the owner finance notes. I actually did my first subdivision back in 2017.

Jon Jasniak01:58It was kind of a a minor paper subdivision, call it out in Hudspeth County, Texas. And, you know, after that first subdivision, made a couple $100,000. And I I knew right then and there that that was the most scalable business model. I didn't do much flipping looking back on it after 2018. It was just something I I guess I kind of walked into by luck because I I had a a guy come back on a direct mail piece wanting to sell 534 acres out in West Texas.

Jon Jasniak02:30And so I kinda just looked into it, so to speak. But, you know, nowadays, most everybody is, like you said, graduating to bigger flips and or they're trying to get into the subdivide game. A lot of minor subdividing going on, a lot less of the major stuff just because of the complexities. So for me, I guess it was kinda luck and happenstance, but nowadays, everybody's talking about it. So everyone wants to be a land developer.

Brandon Parker02:51Yeah. What's the what's the barrier to entry for the major subdivides? How much harder... How much more time, talent does it take to get one of those done?

Jon Jasniak03:01Yeah, man. It's a it's a good question. I would say significantly more challenging. I used to think it was maybe relatively easy or simple, simple, but not easy, whatever the adage is. But, you know, as we're going along and doing these, you know, I got five of them going at once right now. It's, I've quickly found out that it is a lot more challenging than one would think, mostly with the regulations, the water, and the the roads.

Jon Jasniak03:33Kind of those three are the the top three in that game. And, yeah, there's... You know, I'm sure we'll talk about it, but the complexities are enormous, even outside of city limits, which, you know, we operate exclusively outside of city limits for the most part. So we're dealing with county regulations in in Texas, but, you know, state to state, it's kind of the same thing outside of city limits dealing with all these counties and what they require.

Brandon Parker03:56Yeah. I know. I've heard you say that Tennessee, Oklahoma, Alabama are easier, but you're in Texas. Why why did you stay in Texas, or why did you choose there?

Jon Jasniak04:05Man, I... That's a good question. People ask me that all the time. I mean, I'll... Simply because I love Texas. It's a great land market. The the regulations are reasonably favorable. But like you said, I mean, if you're looking for just, like, Plat exempt stuff and easy subdivisions, I think there are numerous other states that are better than than Texas from a development standpoint with their plat exemptions. Tennessee, Alabama, like you mentioned, being a couple. But, I mean, I went to school here at Texas Tech. I've lived here since I was 18, moving down from Michigan and kinda just love Texas.

Jon Jasniak04:39And so it's it can be important to have boots on ground on a lot of these projects. So it kinda just naturally gravitated towards towards Texas, and I think hyperfocus is extremely important. So here we are.

Brandon Parker04:51When you moved down from Michigan, did you move? Did you know you were going to Texas or were you looking at a bunch of other places like when you went to college? Texas or Oklahoma. For some reason, I figured out that I wanted to be a petroleum engineer

Jon Jasniak05:06and my family was like, well, you know, maybe you ought to go to where there's oil and where some of these schools have these these programs. And so I kinda always wanted to go away for school anyways. So it worked out. But, yeah, it was either Texas or Oklahoma. I'm glad I chose Texas, obviously.

Brandon Parker05:23Texas is such a... It's like its own country. Like, I've... Spending a little bit of time in Texas, you just start to get... There's, like, a draw to it. It does its own thing. And,

Jon Jasniak05:33especially for land investors, I think that there's a there's a big draw there. It's, like, it's a match personality wise, I think, for a lot of people. Yeah. And I feel like DFW is kind of the Dallas Fort Worth is kind of like the hub for land development. It seems like like most everyone is trying to do subdivisions or a large majority of them are seem to be located in DFW, at least a lot of the people that you see on social media. So I don't know. I just find that interesting.

Brandon Parker05:59Yeah. And you're you're West Texas. Right? I mean, I don't hear many people almost ever were in the areas that you're at. So let's say you've got your own giant swath of land that not a bunch of people are touching.

Jon Jasniak06:14Yeah. I live in Fort Worth, but, of course, spend a ton of time out in West Texas because it's like a second home to me. That's why I went school in Lubbock with Texas Tech, then I got Cornutus way out West. So we make the drive all the time, eight and a half hours from Fort Worth going through West Texas. Most of my subdivisions have, historically originated in West Texas, but now we've kind of pivoted and transitioned to work in in other other parts of Texas that are more populated, which is where a lot of these major subdivisions are coming into play with the complexity.

Jon Jasniak06:45But West Texas always be a second home to me, and we still do projects out there all the time.

Brandon Parker06:50Okay. So you've moved closer to to Dallas Fort Worth for these these major subdivides?

Jon Jasniak06:56Yeah. And not only there, but other parts of Texas. So, I mean, pretty much everywhere in Texas except the Panhandle. I'm not a huge fan of the Panhandle markets. That's like your Amarillo's, even Lubbock, kind of up towards the Northwest part of the state that they call the Panhandle towards Oklahoma. It's not a big fan of that that market right now. Course, there are people doing projects out there, but I just find it to be a slower moving market as opposed to East Texas or Central Texas or even West Texas.

Brandon Parker07:25What do you think of everything going down with Elon and Starbase and, I guess, that's Southern Southern Texas? You see any opportunity, anything interesting down there?

Jon Jasniak07:34Yeah. Definitely. Obviously, that's a huge economic driver for for Texas, Elon coming. It's not only Elon, though. You know, there's other companies that are moving to Texas because of no state income tax and more favorable economic and government policies. The one thing you gotta be careful, though, when you're developing Texas is if you get into the border region, there's actually separate development laws in Texas. The border the border counties have, like, their own separate regulations where they'll actually make you put in septic and or sewer before your plaque gets approved and water.

Jon Jasniak08:09So you're either upgrading water infrastructure or doing a public water system, which gets extremely expensive.

Brandon Parker08:17And there's there's some interesting things going on with water, mineral rights, I'm sure on most of your most of your developments. What's that look like?

Jon Jasniak08:28So minerals in Texas are completely separate estate from the surface. So if you're trying to get into minerals, you're kind of dealt with a completely separate title chain. A lot of that stuff has been fractionalized, of course, because in Texas, most people were smart enough to reserve their mineral rights on sale of their land now for decades. So you're dealing with someone who reserved them back in the 1950s, then they passed away, then their son passed away. And so it's fractionalized all down the chain. So usually when I do a subdivision or I'm buying a piece of land, I just assume that I'm not working with mineral rights at all.

Jon Jasniak09:02We don't even really concern ourselves with that. We tell the seller, hey, if you wanna reserve any or all minerals that you have, that's completely fine. I'm only interested in the the surface. Now water is a a whole separate discussion. Of course, we got a bunch of data centers popping up now in in Texas and, all over the place. And so they are consuming a ton of water. And so, you know, you got your counties and your states cracking down on that a bit, especially from the groundwater perspective.

Brandon Parker09:33If... Can someone go underground and then pipe over and pull water from underneath someone else's property, or does it have to be, like, some... What... What's what's that actually look like? Does that be touching their property somehow?

Jon Jasniak09:45Yeah. So you're getting into rule of capture with groundwater, and you are actually, to my knowledge, able to do that. The problem is you can't really go horizontally with a water well because they're usually so shallow, you know, call it three or 400 foot. So when you're trying to get horizontal, need to build a curve and or drill at an angle. And so it's very costly, and it's not really feasible at those shallow depths. And so if you wanted to go under someone's land like a horizontal oil well or something like that, I mean, theoretically could, but I don't think you could economically or even physically pull that off.

Brandon Parker10:23Okay. I'm always always got angles in my head. I'm running. You can tell. If someone could figure that out, that's... That would be a

Jon Jasniak10:32multibillion dollar industry right there.

Brandon Parker10:36Interesting. What's the what's the biggest hurdle you've hit in biggest lesson you've learned lately with major subdivides?

Jon Jasniak10:44Man, the the regulations first and foremost with the the counties going through the planning process and a lot of stuff to do with with infrastructure upgrades, water and roads. You know, dialing in road costs, does the road need to be paved? Does it need to be stabilized with some sort of lime treatment underneath the the pavement? You know, how deep is your water? Can you upgrade water infrastructure? You know, we're doing one right now where it's a $400,000 water infrastructure upgrade.

Jon Jasniak11:16And then, you know, dealing with with well drillers with well water. I mean, it's just left and right. Like, we're we're doing a a study right now on groundwater, and it's it's gonna cost us 70 g's just for that 70 k and then, you know, trying to line up the drillers, get the permits, dial in everyone's schedules. I mean, it's... That's why major subdivisions are a lot more complicated than you would think. It's like it's not something where you could just call someone up and be like, hey. Can you go do this? Because it's just... There's a lot more complexity that goes into it than than that.

Brandon Parker11:48So what's that look like if... You know, because people are both... They're both. They'll they'll be, like, kind of shot... They'll shy away from major subdivisions because it'll be like, that's too big of a a nut to crack. I don't wanna even get into that. And then some people are just like, I'm gonna do major subdivisions, and there's like, I'm just gonna start doing it. Like, what's the day to day actually look like if someone did wanna break into it? Like, what's what's the type of personality that gets that type of thing done? Like, how much knowledge do you need, or how much can you learn on the fly?

Brandon Parker12:22Like, talk about someone that's going from their going into their first major subdivide.

Jon Jasniak12:28Well, I'm always learning. Every single day, something's popping up. So it's not something that you can, I get asked all the time? Like, is there a checklist or, like, a a step by step? That is impossible because every county is different. The amount of situations that you're gonna run into are just limitless. So you gotta be able to learn quick. You gotta be very detail oriented. Like, you know, this morning, I literally drove to a property, marked a couple of water well locations, got the GPS pins for the groundwater district, came back, was firing off emails, you know, and how we're on the podcast here.

Jon Jasniak13:03But, you know, lining up and making sure all of these details are accounted for. You need to be extremely detail oriented, be able to learn quickly. This is not something that can be just like checklist and repeatable process, which is a great barrier to entry, because, you know, most people are just gonna wanna do a checklist or fire up AI or have some, you know, VA or whatever, like, handle all this stuff. Like, there's there's no way. Like, I went and marked two water well locations. One of them was too close to the property line. You gotta be 50 foot from the property line.

Jon Jasniak13:35Groundwater Conservation District hits me up yesterday like, hey. You know, I had messed it up. I don't know what I was thinking. They're like, you're only 14 foot from the property line here. So I was like, okay. Shoot. Woke up early this morning, drove back out. It's like, you know, hour away or whatever. Go mark a new water well location. Make sure they're spaced apart appropriately, get it back to the groundwater district. So we're waiting on our permits to be approved so we can get the well drillers out there. Then it's, you know, getting with the well driller. Hey. Where are we at on the schedule? Because I need to loop them and the engineer together to make sure that we have everything we need, for the study.

Jon Jasniak14:08So, like, there's all these moving parts going on at once, and it's just not something you can checklist or just toss off to a VA, which most people that, you know, they're not able to handle that. They want more of the flipping lifestyle business, which, know, is fine. But the... This is not not gonna be for them.

Brandon Parker14:26Yeah. It's never it's never just some giant system that you have put in place, and now it's just running smooth, repeatable. It's the... It is... Everyone's its own problem, its own solution, its own learning experience, it sounds like.

Jon Jasniak14:40Yeah.

Brandon Parker14:41So Definitely. What's your team look like? Because you've worked with a bunch of engineers, all types of different people. Do they become a team that you work with repeatedly, or you kind of have a core team that you re... Then you rebuild parts of it? How's that how's that work?

Jon Jasniak14:58Yeah. So from the team perspective, I got myself and two full time employees, ops manager and and sales manager. And then we have kind of all these, contractors and auxiliary people, whether it's your engineers, your your civil people, your well drillers. And so when you step into that space, most of its regional specific. So you're not going to have a well driller that's drilling in West Texas, who's also going to be drilling in Houston. So that's kind of a huge benefit to focusing on a, an area, call it three to five counties in the subdivision space because you can kind of build that team of trusted contractors, surveyors, well drillers, road guys.

Jon Jasniak15:39You know, my road builder in Central Texas is not the same guy using West Texas. So I kind of have like a a geo, a team per different geo area, if that makes sense. And, you know, we're basically working two or three areas for the most part nowadays. So I basically, I guess you could say almost got two or three different networks or groups of people that kinda handle each area.

Brandon Parker16:05And how important are those those pieces of the team? If someone goes in and they get... I mean, can you get pieces of that team that are noticeably better than others? Or is it road builder or road builder wherever you go?

Jon Jasniak16:20Definitely not the same wherever you go. You know, each each area or each geology is gonna have, you know, good road builders and bad road builders. I'll give you an example. We're doing a turn lane in a major subdivision. Are doing Texas Department of Transportation hit us with a turn lane going into the subdivision. So we need to expand the TxDOT right away and add a turn lane on both sides. I sent that out for for bidding.

Jon Jasniak16:51It was my first time ever doing anything like this. One guy came in at, like, a 170,000, and I got, like, three or four other bids that were up at, like, 400 to 500,000. I'm like, okay. Why is this one guy such an outlier? And I start talking to people who are a bid higher. And they're like, dude, there's more than 170,000 just in materials. So that guy either has never done a job like that before, doesn't know what he's talking about, is incompetent, misbidded. I mean, I don't know what what happened, but you're... You know, whether it's well drillers, road guys, surveyors, I mean, they're...

Jon Jasniak17:24You're gonna run into that all the time. People don't know what they're doing. Surveyors who, you know, answer email once a week versus someone who can get back to you same day. If you got a commissioner court deadline coming up and you need something in by tomorrow, you need a surveyor who can get you something by tomorrow, not someone who's gonna reply to an email next week. So extremely important to build that that team of people who are competent and can help you out in a timely manner. I'm willing to overpay for that, for sure. I think a lot of our stuff we we overpay for, whether it's a $70,000 water study or 50 k, planning and surveying as opposed to, you know, I could probably do it for half, but if I can get an email back next day, that's extremely valuable.

Brandon Parker18:07And I'm sure these these surveyors, road builders, etcetera, they probably same from their end. There's professional people like you they work with, and there's probably people that are kind of, you know, not organized or nightmares to work with also. So they probably are happy when they find someone like you that teams up, pays fast, and gets the job done. So that's that's kinda probably gonna go ways. Problem is is a lot of people are trying to get into this space, whether it's minor or major subdivisions, and they're like, you know, Joe Schmo, Flipper, who now wants to buy a million dollar piece of land.

Brandon Parker18:38And so they're, you know, they're calling up all these surveyors.

Jon Jasniak18:41They don't know what they're talking about. They haven't done the project before. They can't pay on time. And so they have a credibility issue, which mostly stems from an experience issue. You know, as a beginner, that's something that you're gonna struggle with and go through and you're gonna have to figure that out. But at the end of the day, you can imagine, you know, a road contractor gets called up by dozen people a week saying, hey. What's the price per foot of a paved road? Or, you know, what's what's asphalt versus a chip seal? And so they're they're almost dealing with a bunch of tire kickers like how we do on the sales side of our land, but they're the developer tire kickers that are trying to, you know, waste their time.

Jon Jasniak19:16Mhmm.

Brandon Parker19:18Have you ever thought of going, into the the actual development, like buildings and doing more that way, or you like the land aspect?

Jon Jasniak19:30Never have really. I like the land aspect. I've looked into the mobile home stuff a little bit. I just think there's so much scale and opportunity left for for what we're doing. If I was gonna do anything, I would try to get more vertically integrated with either my own water well, drilling rig or maybe some of my own, construction equipment, you know, whether it's a dozer, paving machine, road grader, that type of stuff to to really, save costs and work with speed from the development side.

Jon Jasniak20:03But, you know, who knows? Maybe one day we will go vertical if we really start blowing things up. But right now, I'm just hyper focused on the horizontal improvements.

Brandon Parker20:12Yeah. And that makes sense. You have a lot of room to run just getting all your... You know, if you got enough scale, getting your own crews and things like that. So... Yeah. Interesting. So what's a what's a a normal day look like for you? Say, like, 8AM to six. What are you what are you actually doing during your day? What's a look like?

Jon Jasniak20:33So, you know, in the mornings, answering emails, checking in on everything, check my bank accounts every day. You know, it's hard to make money if you don't know what you have and if you you don't keep an eye on it and our focus. So checking bank accounts, making sure everyone's paid, checking any urgent emails in the morning. I like to work out every day. I try to do that early afternoon. So, you know, after lunch, try and hit the gym. Usually check-in with my team. We operate on WhatsApp. All my all my teams, my corn nudist team, my land team.

Jon Jasniak21:05So, you know, checking in with them on WhatsApp, like, you know, this morning morning hitting on my guys saying, hey. Let's have a meeting. After I get off the podcast with Brandon, let's talk about this new subdivision. We're closing tomorrow, getting sales going for that. So I try to meet with them once a week. Then I got the Cornutis team, which I got an ops manager out to there. I talked to certainly over WhatsApp every single day, but, over the phone too. So mornings kinda just handling, any urgent things, anything, any fires that need to be put out, checking in with, you know, if the surveyor engineer, making sure, you know, hey.

Jon Jasniak21:41Where are we at on on this development? Where are we at on water wells, etcetera? Probably hit the gym early afternoon, sometimes in the evening, then find myself in the afternoon doing more, like, monotonous work. Like, you know, maybe I'll be making notices for people who miss payments, doing some accounting, still do a lot of that myself. That's... My next hire is probably a... An admin or transactional coordinator, but, thankfully, I've been able to handle all that by myself up to this point. So afternoons is is usually that, you know, paperwork, spreadsheets, looking at deals every single day.

Jon Jasniak22:17Most everything I do with exception of Land AI, which I'm sure we'll talk about is is buying on market. So, you know, looking for deals every single day. Land.com, realtor.com. Spend fifteen to thirty minutes in there kinda looking at deals, napkin underwriting them, calling up realtors, seeing what's going on.

Brandon Parker22:37Yeah. Yeah. Just making the business run. I can see... I mean, just, you've got a lot going on. And, yeah, you mentioned, Land AI. I know that you... I heard Seth's podcast, and you you heard about... You told him you heard about Land AI on that podcast. You've been doing inbound for nine years. So what made you finally try outbound?

Jon Jasniak23:00Well, we're trying to scale, trying to get more, deal flow, and, there's only so much stuff on the on the MLS. And although I do see a ton of opportunity out there still, I just never really been a fan of direct mail. Certainly not cold calling or texting because then I gotta handle all the leads. I don't want an acquisitions manager or anything like that. So when I found y'all at Land AI, I said, you know, hey. This makes sense even if we get one deal per year. You know, if I'm gonna make it a million or $2,000,000 at least on a deal, I can certainly afford to hire Brandon and and do some, you know, outbound outreach.

Jon Jasniak23:40And, you know, we we had success with it. We got our first deal under contract about two weeks ago now. We have, water well locations marked, ready to drill, do a groundwater study, and I I think it's gonna be a home run. The only thing that would stop it is if we don't find groundwater, and there's well reports, a half mile away that are showing twenty and thirty gallons per minute. So hard to believe we don't find water. Anything's possible, but at this point, I would call that project a 95% go.

Brandon Parker24:11Big time. Yeah. Walk me through that deal. The... Like, how the what what ended up happening when the lead came in? What did it look like? And... Yeah.

Jon Jasniak24:22Yeah. So for those who aren't in... Familiar with the Land AI system, obviously, you get a CRM set up. Inbound... Leads come in and, you know, Maya, your AI agent, compiles all the notes. So this lead came in. I knew exactly where it was at, pulled it up on the map. I immediately started, you know, before I even called the seller. Okay. What does the groundwater look like? What does the road look like? What does the county regulations look like? Everything kinda checked out. So I gave the guy a call. Turns out it's a 90 year old guy, who's owned this land for, I don't know, forty or fifty years at least, still lives out on the land.

Jon Jasniak24:58His nephew, lives next door. They each own 40 acres. And so, you know, I call him up and we're kind of just talking, you know, normal life stuff. It wasn't even really business and, you know, hey, what... What's going on with the land? How long you lived there, etcetera. And, he kind of just said, you know, we, it's about that time for me to sell. I'm getting to that age where I can't really be out here anymore. And I need to go spend time with family. And so we came to an agreement on price, 10,000 an acre for 80 acres.

Jon Jasniak25:28It'll be $800,000 purchase price. Got them on a ninety day option. I explained to him, you know, look, Duane, we need to go in. We need to drill test wells. We need to do, you know, predevelopment meeting with the county. We're gonna develop it, all this different stuff. And they were they were fine with it. They agreed. Both him and his nephew, each signed a contract, 40 acres each. It'll be $800,000 purchase price at 10,000 per acre. I'll probably have to put, 400,000 into it. So I'll probably be all in at 15 k an acre, and we're gonna develop it to two acre lots.

Jon Jasniak26:02I think we'll be able to exit that at 35 to 40,000 an acre. So I expect to probably make at least a 1,000,000.5 on that deal. It's an absolutely beautiful piece of land. I was telling my guys it might be the nicest one we've actually ever bought. It's got a couple ponds on it, trees, very green in a great area, road frontage along, the long side. I mean, it's just a sweet piece of land.

Brandon Parker26:31Love it. Love it. That was, it's interesting you say it was a 90 year old guy because that was one of my biggest... When I first started playing with conversational AI stuff, I was just had this picture in my head of, like, an old farmer, and, like, are old farmers gonna talk to this thing? And it turns out that, like, they're chatty, and they they get on the phone with with AI, and they just... You know? I'm curious to listen to that call and hear how he talked with her and, you know, how much he... How... What what information he gave her.

Brandon Parker27:02But, you... Did you see the transcript on that? What did it look like?

Jon Jasniak27:06I did. I can't remember what it looked like, but I think, I think it was fine. It was just general back and forth. And one thing that I found interesting is that he actually said that he had, like, a stack of offers on the property from people mailing him and everything that he didn't even open. And he said, the timing was just right here. You guys called me. I didn't even open my other offers. I think this is a fair price, what we negotiated, and I wanna do business with you guys. And so that just goes to show you that sometimes it's just timing.

Jon Jasniak27:39Like, that's why you need to be following up with with leads, have them in a nurture sequence. It's not practical for me to make the calls or text myself. So what? That's why I hired you. So, you know, sometimes it just comes down to timing.

Brandon Parker27:53Yeah. A 100%. That's common. Like most land investors at this point or most people who own land have gotten like a text message and they probably got a couple of mailers. A lot of the property has been hit. There's not... Especially in like the decent areas, it's not an unknown anymore. So people know that there's someone that'll buy their land. It's just a matter of who's that person who is there at the right time and kind of steps them down the road, makes it as easy as possible, removes all those barriers.

Jon Jasniak28:23Yeah. Which is why I like the on market stuff too, honestly, because those people are gonna sell. It's just all the matter of price point and, you know, if the project works for for me and I can get them to agree to terms. Huge on market guy. I'm happy that we're able to supplement it with with y'all. So with those with those two going, hopefully, we can, you know, continue to scale this thing and do more deals. I think we will. Yeah.

Brandon Parker28:48Exactly. When you... How many deals can you handle? Like, is it something where you're just looking for as many developments as possible? Or do you hit like a point where you kind of stop looking on market and you're... And, you know, I'm gonna do these five developments before I look again. What's that look like?

Jon Jasniak29:08So, you know, in the past, it used to be one or two at a time because I just was capital constrained. But now, you know, because of my social media and everything I've done in the industry, I've had a way easier time raising capital, finding partners. So, you know, we're at five right now. I don't feel like I'm tapped out. I think I can get to 10. That's kind of the goal is to have 10 of these going, through 2026. You know, some will sell out, of course, like the turn lane we're about to kick off on. You know, if this LandAI deal, you know, closes on closing date, it'll be...

Jon Jasniak29:43You know, that one will be done in four or five months. So those will roll off as 2026, gets to the to the later half of the year. But, you know, I think I think I could handle with my team, especially if I handle... Or if I hire, like, an admin person or a transactional coordinator, I think we can handle 10 at a time. And so, you know, that's 40 or $50,000,000 in in revenue on on the land side and everything I do is... The goal is a two x exit. So, you know, that'll be, call it, 20,000,000 in in profit. I I don't know if we'll hit that this year, but I think that's certainly doable next year.

Jon Jasniak30:19You know, as projects grow, as they get bigger, of course, you know, 10 projects instead of 40,000,000, maybe it'll be 70 to 100,000,000 because they're just bigger projects. But, you know, I think I think 10 is doable in a relatively small team.

Brandon Parker30:33Yeah. And what's your what's your big goal? Like, where... If you look five years from now, like, what what what are you trying to do?

Jon Jasniak30:41I would like to do, I I always told myself I'd like to have a $100,000,000 land operation. So that that is the goal, and it's a little tricky when you're kind of valuing a a real estate business. Right? Because you have, I guess, your inventory for me, my notes receivable, and, I guess, projects under under contract. And you're always selling, and you're always trying to find more land to replace it. So, you know, if we could do 50 plus million in revenue per year, that would be great.

Jon Jasniak31:11I think, I think that would it's just hard to value and put a $100,000,000 valuation on it, but that that is the goal. So I'm, you know, I'm sure as I grow and I'll start holding more of those notes as well so the note portfolio will will grow, and we'll look into bank financing on on the portfolio and all that stuff. We're not not quite there yet, but I guess to to answer it, a $100,000,000 land business is is the goal. I think we can do that in... Within three years.

Brandon Parker31:40Have you always thought big and

Jon Jasniak31:44outside the box like this? Like, when you were in Michigan thinking about where to go to college, were you thinking big like this at that time too, or did this kinda grow on you? I I feel like it grew on me, man. I I definitely never envisioned myself that that I would be here. You know, I found out about land on a podcast like like this one. Bought a couple courses and then started flipping land. So, you know, that that sort of thinking, I guess, probably started a couple years ago when we when we really got into, you know, raising money, doing these bigger projects and these major subdivisions.

Jon Jasniak32:17But, you know, certainly never really thought that I would be here. I was more of a lifestyle business guy like most most people. Hey. I can flip land and make a few $100,000 a year and, you know, have the freedom and do whatever I want. And then, as I got into it, I I don't know. I just gravitated towards going bigger and thinking bigger. I was I was the guy like most people are who... You know, I'm gonna do a minor subdivide. I don't wanna build a road. I don't wanna figure any of this out. I don't wanna do anything with water. You know? Can I just buy land, break it up into four lots, and and sell it?

Jon Jasniak32:48And I never thought I'd be here building roads, doing water studies, all this all this stuff, honestly.

Brandon Parker32:55What you're doing is is always interesting me... To me, developers or people who build buildings, because you're putting in things where when you drive past it, it'll be there. Like, you're building infrastructure that people are gonna use that you see, like, on a daily basis. That's Yeah. Putting something physical into the world like that is is cool. It's different from working on a computer or flipping land or, you know, it's like you do these things, but there's not a physical output as much.

Jon Jasniak33:24Definitely. And all the subdivisions are named Jazz Something like Oh, are they? Jazz Meadows. This new one will be Jazz Oaks, Jazz Farms is going on right now. So they're all Jazz Something. That's that's that's really cool. And being in clerk's office for eternity.

Brandon Parker33:41Yeah. Did did you have a chance to name Cora Nudis? Or was that did that come with a name? That came with the name that's been around.

Jon Jasniak33:53There's multiple different dates. They say established 1929, probably before that. I looked into renaming it just jazz, j a z, and there's really no process for renaming a town in Texas. I had my attorney look into it. With all the history and everything of it, we just decided to keep it Cornudas because that's what people know it as. It's named after the Cornudas Mountains directly to the north of the property. Yeah, we just decided to roll with it. Okay.

Brandon Parker34:22What's the most interesting thing you've done there with just having a town? Did you become the mayor or something? What do you do there? Yeah. Tech... Technically, the mayor.

Jon Jasniak34:34It's unincorporated, so we don't have any, you know, elections or in, like, city council or any governmental entities. Man, the coolest thing has probably just been all of the crazy work we've done, whether it's, like, replace the roof on the cafe, redo the entire kitchen, refinish the motel, and then finally opening it up and seeing it generate, what I believe to be the most revenue in in history for for that property.

Jon Jasniak35:04Like, I can't remember the last time we had a weekday less than a thousand bucks. We used to get 5 or $600 on a on a Wednesday and think that we were crushing it. You know, yesterday was Wednesday, and we did $1,300 out there. So, you know, it's becoming profitable, which is great. We just had a event, a car show in Crawfish Boyle a couple weeks ago. It was the, I think, the biggest event in Cornuda's history. It had to have been, at least revenue wise. At least it was for me, and I can't see it being done bigger in the in the past.

Jon Jasniak35:37So it's just seeing it all come to life and all the crazy jobs, whether it's digging up a septic line full of crap and replacing it or plumbing, concrete, you name it. It's intriguing to me. I mean, my mind goes so many places with things you might do if you owned a town that's that's that's... You know, the previous the previous owner left a safe on my back porch out there. I stay in a four bed, three bath, double wide out there.

Jon Jasniak36:09Pretty nice little house. And he left this safe. And it would have been a couple years ago when we were taking out trailer loads of, trash to the dump. We just throw this safe in the trash. We're like, oh, there's nothing there. We're kinda shaking. It didn't really sound like anything. We're about take it to the dump. And my dad was there. He's like, no. No. Let's let's cut into it. Let's cut into it. So we get the grinding wheel and we're cutting into this and we open it. There was, $2,500 in the And so, you know, it's just so many crazy things like that that have happened on that property. It's just endless.

Brandon Parker36:39Yeah, I bet. What's it like just on a random day like today? How many people live there and is there any little bit of commerce kind of just humming? Or what's that what's that look like?

Jon Jasniak36:53So I guess you could say two people live there full time. It's one of my chef... One of my cooks and my ops manager kind of kinda live there. But other than that, I mean, it's just, you know, short term rentals and not a day to day like today. It's a Thursday, so, we probably don't have too many people staying in the RV park, the motel. There might be a couple. I think there's a couple construction guys out there. But there's people stopping in the cafe. They're traveling along the highway. They're stopping in. A lot of snacks, drinks, and, getting burgers. And, you know, the cafe is is open.

Jon Jasniak37:25Kitchen's working today. So burgers, sandwiches, you know, hand cut fries, Philly cheesesteaks, stuff like that that we're serving out there than the gift shop, which is actually the best performer out there. We got a giant kind of gift shop with a bunch of random southwestern themed stuff. So people stopping in, grabbing a $20 gift from the shop and probably getting a burger then continuing on their way.

Brandon Parker37:51That's that's killer. Very cool. I... I'll, I have to stop in there someday. What's your what's your biggest event you've got going on in, 2026 out there?

Jon Jasniak38:01Man, we have this big biker barbecue coming up in a couple weeks. We're doing 500 pounds of briskets, 125 racks of ribs. We'll have a couple, couple smokers going, and then we'll have two other events. We'll have a salsa festival in July, then our chili cook off, which is the most famous event historically, in September. I think September 19 is the date where, people cook the cook a chili. They compete the best chili is gonna win. I don't know, probably a free piece of land or a couple thousand bucks.

Jon Jasniak38:33So that's historically the biggest event, but yeah, you're you're welcome out there anytime. When I'm out there, if you wanna come hang out, shoot some guns, eat some barbecue, whatever you want.

Brandon Parker38:45I love it. Love it. The... Generally, one of the final questions I ask people is if you could post something on on Twitter, everyone in the world could see it. So something short and poppy. What would you say to the world?

Jon Jasniak39:02Land is the new American dream. Owning land to me is is the new American dream, whether it's an acre, 10 acres, 40 acres, outside of city limits, little to no restrictions, Texas, Tennessee, Arkansas, all these places are great for that, where you can go out, you can drill yourself your own water well, you have water for life, you can have livestock, you can shoot guns, you can have a little shop in the back, you don't have to worry about the county or government messing with you. That's what I would say. Land is the new American dream.

Brandon Parker39:34That's fantastic. When I was just at Jerry Norton's ranch, got it's called... Or Farm, 10 or 10 Talents Farm in Tennessee. He bought a killer 40 acres. They've got a pond. They've got all the farm animals. They've got all the buildings. Yeah. Bunch of land investors are out there shooting guns, but that was the that was the vibe of that event was just this idea of getting a homestead, getting people around you with homesteads that, you know, that you wanna live near and having that that freedom and and building.

Brandon Parker40:13Yeah.

Jon Jasniak40:14That's it. That that's it in a nutshell right there, man. Learn how to operate a skid steer, go work a shovel, learn how to fix stuff, and then, you know, see your homestead and animals and everything come to life and just, you know, have a spot away from the city. If you wanna stay in the city, that's cool, but have a spot where you can go out there at least part of the time and and get away.

Brandon Parker40:34Yeah. It's a beautiful thing. I think that we're like, you know, we're going towards this hyper technological AI, just everything is this big unknown, but it's very... You know, robots and space, and so it's insane. You know? And then I I see it going almost like there's a split. It's gonna be hyper technology, but then also I feel like a lot of people are gonna gravitate back towards just pure human. Get barefoot and walk around on your farm and eat your own food.

Brandon Parker41:07It almost facilitates us being able to do that. All this technology, all these things can start running themselves and we can go back to being like, let's go work with our hands and be outside and get physical.

Jon Jasniak41:22Yes, sir. A 100% agree. When people zig, you zag. When they start going one way, go back to the land. 100%.

Brandon Parker41:30Well, it was great to chat with you today, John. You're a legend. It's always it's always good to talk to you and hear what you're up to. Thanks for coming on the show today. Where can people find you online?

Jon Jasniak41:40I don't I don't know if I'm a legend yet, but I appreciate the the kind words, and and thanks again for for having me. But at john jasniak anywhere on any social media, YouTube, Instagram, johnjasniak.com. Yeah. Always looking at deals, answering questions, trying to give out some free free knowledge and free game. Happy to connect.

Brandon Parker41:59Yeah. Alright, John. Good to see you. Thanks, Brandon.