Dirt Dynasty - How to Make 7 Figures Through Flipping Land w/ Cody Bjugan

Cody. Buin what's up? My brother.

Hey man. How

you doing? Doing good, buddy. Talk to me about getting outta your own way, man. What did that do for your

business? Yeah, so we just talked about that briefly, so we let's see 2022. I've been doing the same thing since 2002, as far as my business model. And really I really hadn't scaled, sure. I would maybe make great income per year seven figures per year. For a lot of years, doing one, two, maybe three deals a year. And but I just could never, I just never really scale. I never really was doing any type of serious volume. I never had anything more than a two, three person team. And just through a lot of soul searching and quite frankly eating as much humble pie as I can, continuing to learn how to find freedom through humility, because I have definitely concluded the more you're gonna get real with yourself. The more vulnerable you'll be with yourself, transparent, , authenticity, all these different, amazing words, but. The more, you get real with yourself and you quit doing smoke and mirrors. And you quit. And you're just real, the more peace and freedom I found in that. And so I just gotten to a point where I was getting so real with myself, that I was like, Hey, if my company is ever gonna get what it deserves. Okay. What it deserves this opportunity, this potential is out there. My company deserves it. And if I'm gonna allow my company to get what it deserves. I have to face the reality of that. I'm the one that has to get outta the way. I'm the one that's holding my company back. And so here's the real, I'm a visionary, I'm a type a personality. I'm a founder. I am not an executive. I am just in no way, shape or form. Good in that seat. And we've all heard the who, not the how and the right butt, the right seat, the EEO, all this stuff. And I knew it all, but I, it took me the longest time to really look at myself and that my butt was in the wrong seat. So since then I went on a search head hunter, big, long process interviewing process to land with the CEO that I hired in February of 21. So what would that be? Oh, not quite a year and a half ago. And straight up, it wasn't easy. It wasn't easy to hand over the reins of my business, but it's gotten easier and easier. I've actually hired a coach. That's teaching me how to be a good chairman, how to think and act like a chairman because a chairman acts a lot different than say a CEO does. So my business right now we have TW give you an idea. We. Like 20, I think we have 24 deals right now that we're doing across the country in our business model, which we can talk more about later. Versus, my average was doing one or two deals a year it's been amazing, but it never would've happened without me getting outta the way. Why do

visionaries make terrible executive. I saw that on your website.

Let's say this I live in a town called paradise valley, Arizona. It's right next to Scottsdale. Okay. My headquarters is in Dallas, Texas. And so that's where the CEO is in our whole team. Our team's I don't know, 10 times bigger than it's ever been, but let me put it to you this way. The best thing I can do for that company. Is to not go to that headquarters more than once every 45 days. And to only be in there for one day, it's just as a visionary, as a creative I cause chaos in there. I, you, no but I it's just, so it's just not it's. I don't, I'm not, that integration that implementer, that systematic thinking that one step at a time. And quite frankly, I'm not a good nurture, right? And I don't know if that's the way for all visionaries, but for me, I'm not a nurturer. I'm just I'm not the best one to build that culture in that headquarters. But if I'd say the biggest reason, a visionary is not good as a CEO and let me wrong. Some CEOs and some entities. Serve a visionary role, right? Like the CEO can be a visionary. Just depends on how the structure, your company's set up. I just tell you is that you could say, okay, Cody, you're the CEO and the guy that's in there running the company is the president. Instead I chose to say, he's the CEO and I'm the chairman. And that the, this I'm an elementary guy, man grew up in a small little town, got its first street light. When I was in high school meeting potatoe. No college education, like I'm I I think pretty simply, the reason I said that it's a CEO position and not a president position is because I didn't want the person to think that they weren't ultimately in charge is that if they were a president reporting to a CEO then they would feel like they have less responsibility, that ultimately the CEO's responsible for the company. And I didn't want. That pressure or that expectation on my shoulders. I wanted it on the guy in there running it. And and so that's why I'm strictly on the chairman's seat on the board. But did you

get that from, did you get that from your coaching or was that an inclination that you had to begin with? Cuz that's a pretty interesting perspective about the title. Oh,

just something it's just something I thought through. That's interesting. I don't I just don't want anything to do with run the day to day business. And I know if I'm the CEO, then I have some responsibility in the day to day business and I didn't want that responsibility. And the, and I'm so glad I didn't want it because it's allowed the company to bloom, right? For our company to grow, however you wanna look at it, 10, 15, 20 X in a year and a half, and the type of money that, Lord willing, we're gonna make it's because dude, I have no day to day role in there. I'm chaos. I'm super creative. I'm outside the box, the day to day operations of that team, of say 25 people or whatever it is we have right now in our business model, you can do a lot of volume with that few of people. But that first of all, they all wouldn't stick around. Two is they wouldn't feel nurtured. Three is, it's just they couldn't get into their flow. Do you, I don't know if you've there's, you understand like flow, like you get into flow, whatever your flow is. My team can't get into a flow with me around. Why do you think that is? It's because I'm always, what about this? What about this? What about this? What if we did this? What if we went over here, right? I'm not gonna say I'm chasing, I'm chasing shining objects all the time. Rowdy is my brain is chasing shining objects all the time, but the team is not exposed to it because I'm not in there with them. I'm constantly exploring new ideas. Like I got three or four more divisions. I wanna start in our company, but I've gotta keep that. If I'm in there running that day to day, they're all exposed to that. And it's just chaos because the average person's not, doesn't think like that. They're just trying to focus on the role they have within the company.

Okay. So that's it's really cool doing this show because I can see similarities over and over again, commonalities. Like I was just talking to you before, like our buddy Mattie, a Matt Aon. Hi, his episode's about while we're reporting this, his episode's about to be live. And he said the same thing. He said he had to get out of his own way to be able to let his business finally do what his business was meant to do. And he was the one that was holding it back. It's an interesting dichotomy, right? Because I feel the chaos is necessary. Like it's like a giant volcano from the ground of entrepreneurial spirit and just bullshit too to be able to, to be able to explode this business into existence, like a lot of force and friction. And then it goes from like the phrase that came to mind was going from chaos to corporate. And that's when you're bringing like the CEO of, and you let them. When do you

think every that's Hey, by the way, that's a great way to put it. That's that's

good. Hey, copyright, I'm getting better on the copyright. There you go, baby.

Let lemme say one more thing on that. Let me say one more thing on that is, is that there's your next book? When I made that choice, when I made that choice to get out of the way or to humble myself, my identity was the company and the company's identity was me. And I had to separate those two. The company had to have an identity on its own with, or without me and I had to be okay with that, that people can know who allied development is without knowing who Cody Buen is. Makes

sense. That makes a lot of sense. So let's, I've got, I'll put a pin in this question and I'll ask it right after, but let's use me as a case study. You hear about a business begin with the end of mind. Always begin with the end of mind, like what's the exit strategy, because a lot of companies like, obviously, yeah, we wanna be profitable. We wanna exit it to have truly horizontal income like you and I were discussing beforehand. For me, I started podcast. I'm like, oh, cool. Fun podcast. And I was like, hold on a second, wait a second. I'm in, GoBundance like this, isn't a podcast. This is a fricking media company. Like I could see it. I was like, this is the action academy, media action media. And so then I'm like, okay, cool. S Corp. And my gears start turning. And I already see like a forecast of where this goes in two to four years. Like just with the sheer momentum that it has right now. And I'm chaos. So you're speaking to me. Yeah. Yeah. So at what is that kind of, should you, I guess the question is how long do you let the chaos go? How long, how far do you need to be synonymous with your company before you can let it go?

Yeah. Good question. And I don't think it's a one size fits all.

I didn't expect that to.

So I'll tell you, I'll give you, I'll give you a little, this is Brian of

mine. Nobody else could do this is Brian Lubin, but fast forward, 10 years, Brian and Turner just made his Exodus from bigger pockets. Yeah. I'm already thinking about that 10 years

down the road. Yeah. Yeah, no, I get that. But my understanding is brand BR Brandon didn't own it. Like you own this, right? True. He was just, he was a talent. True. Very true. There's a difference. So a friend of mine has an event he does called scale and escape. So scale your business and escape your business. And I said to my buddy, that's his event. And I said, Hey, I'm gonna go start at an event. And instead of it being scale and escape like yours, I'm gonna call it escape. Then. He's like whatcha talking about I'm like, because I that's in order for my business to, in order for my business to scale, I have to escape first because it won't scale under me. And okay. Depending on your financial situation, your business model, your vision, this, that, and the other, I would argue one of the first hires I'd ever make in a company is the CEO. And then I would allow all the team, all the infrastructure, everything to be built under them, that I would just get the idea off the ground. Kind of get some basics, put together, bring in someone then to go optimize it, because I don't think I can scale until I do escape.

Okay. And then maybe this is a better way to put some teeth to the question, because this brings it a little bit down more to earth. The question that I had written now, which I pigeonholed into myself was at what point maybe a best practice at what point in your business is it time to bring that CEO in and make that. Is there a revenue number that you think is it? I don't know.

I don't know the answer to that. I can only answer that for myself. Okay. How about for you? As close to day one as possible. That's honestly how I feel but don't wait 20 years. No man. And that's what I did. Several people in my network that are around me, and they see what's happened in my career, my businesses over the last two years, let's say. And they said, Cody, you know what? The first 20 years of your career was just practice. And it was like, I never, I was just practicing the whole time. I was never really, even in the game. Sure. We made some decent money or whatever, but until so I would argue based upon, I don't believe in regrets. I don't spend time in any type of victim mentality, but and I'm not gonna say I haven't before. Cause I have, but the, for me. Is to try to take my vision, my ideas, my connections, but have someone in there to run that operation as soon as I could day one, literally. And I'm, but here's the deal. And I run into this with go bros and nothing against them. Like I, I love GoBundance, but is that guys aren't will, they're willing to invest in real estate, but they're not willing to invest in their business, meaning that , I'm willing to lose money for a while on a business. Because of what I know we're gonna go build or my vision. And so like my online education company vest, it owed me, mid six figures is what it owed to me before it started really turning a profit. And most guys weren't, won't invest that half a million, six, 700 grand into a business. You see what I'm saying? No, absolutely. So I can bring in some ballers, some guys to really help run that business, build that business. I, I, as soon as I could to day one, cuz I'm willing to make that investment to allow the vision to be accomplished because the vision won't be accomplished. If I'm in the day to day, it just won't.

Okay. I love where this is going and I have one more question before we can re rewind back to 2002 and your upbringing and what brought you into your specific asset class that you're in? Damn man. Let's, let's go ahead and hit on it. Let's go ahead and hit on it ego. So we're talking ego here. This is your identity. This is your ego. That's wrapped up in your

business. Yeah.

This decision, wasn't an operational decision. This is a decision of who am I outside of my business? How did you get through that?

So my faith is a big part of who I am, foundation, who I am. And I'm ABL, I'm a believer in Jesus and the Lord. The Lord has put me through some interesting life experiences, some different trials and tribulations. And through that process, I had a choice to either come out the other side stronger or to come out the other side with a victim mentality, and be a little bitch and never get up and play again. And and. I saw that happen to my father, where he got whooped on and he could never pull the trigger again. And so whenever I have the chance to go through a whooping and pull the trigger again, I do, because I'm not gonna sit around feeling sorry for myself. And, but there is a time in my life where I did that for a couple of years, by the way. And we can talk about that later if we get there. But so through those trials and tribulations, there's been a lot of humility that came through that. So to give you an idea, when I was 27, I was worth, eight figures, damn it. And pretty decent eight figure,

gosh, start over

again, Cody. No, but hear me out. I was, but let's be clear. So in 2006, let's say I was worth 20 million in 2007. I was worth like, like probably 2 million. Sure. I lost nitrogen my net worth in the downturn. But but the reason I'm sharing that story with you is back then, I was, I had a huge freaking ego, right? Like I had the mansion, I had the nice cars I had. All the nicest clothes and blah, blah, blah. And it was all ego driven, empty smoking mirrors, just complete bullshit. And I'm so thankful. I learned a lot more losing that 90% of my net worth than I ever did making it. And wow. You take that. So that's a humbling, you have an opportunity to really humble yourself through that, that make sense. Sure. Absolutely. And then I can stack in two or three, four other life experiences, they have just continued to just humble me. And and I feel like, do I still have some more humbling to do? Absolutely. I do. But do I feel like the Lord is building a warrior in me based upon the life experiences I've been through and he's preparing me for something special. Absolutely. But big part of humility too, is I have another, I have a t-shirt I wear that says believe action, faith on it. And And, you gotta so believe action faith is that we can, I can go spiritual with that, which is whatever, but let you know, which is awesome, but that's not the point of this. This conversation is so take Brian, you and your business for whatever you want to go do or whatever. First you gotta believe in it, right? You gotta believe in your vision. Mm. You gotta believe in yourself. You gotta believe you believe well. And then, but the problem is some people We'll go right from believe to faith or others will go from believe to action, but never go to faith is that you need all three. So let me tell you this. So like you, one pet peeves I have sometimes with religious people is they skip the action part is they believe, and they have faith. And there was the type of people that I don't do anything it was meant to

be. It'll be

like, whatever we're supposed to help it'll happen. That's horses shit. That's horses, shit. Give the Lord something to work with, man. Like he, he, you give him, take some action, give him something to do some amazing things with. Is that, how do you expect him to ever grow a garden? Unless you freaking, you owe the kids, it's a and you take care of the garden. So I think some people go from believe to faith, but then I think a lot of times people, especially in the business world and entrepreneurs and as they'll go to believe, and then they'll take all this action. They'll do all this work, but they never allow faith to happen. And what I mean by is until you realize you're not in control of everything. You will never have peace in your life. I truly believe 100% with all of my life, have all, everything in me is that and I heard this in 2016 and it changed my life. Is that due to I'll hone my field. But at the end of the day, the vegetation's not up to me. Is that you're not in control of everything. And until you start giving up control, you will never have peace in your life. It is not possible for you to have peace in your life if you're trying to control everything. And man, so here again, this is a long-winded answer to your humble humility question, but it's all part of the humility process. Was that

ever gonna be a short answer to that?

Probably not, but no, faith allows humility too. Cause I'm not trying to control everything. I think some of the most egotistical driven people are think that they can control all the outcomes and you just, you can't.

Oh, okay. I love that. And that kind of hits back on how David Osborne does his goals, right? Where he's I'm my goal is not to lose this amount of weight. My goal is to be in the gym this many days. you control that, like you don't control, we don't go outcome driven. And I'll say one more thing before we make our pivot. And that is to the audience that's listening. I am not going anywhere. People. I just wanted you to know that real quick. I wanted to preface that, but I will say this. If you take anything away from this show, Whenever you start a business. The reason that we have Cody on here, and he's an expert in land and land development, and I could have taken him on land immediately. Like every other MF and podcast that he's been on. There's the hundred land podcast with Cody Dugin, but we talked about business. So when you start something, you have to have the end in mind, and it is exactly what he's saying. If you don't take these precautions and you're not proactive in your vision planning for your company, you will become a slave to it. All of a sudden 10 years down the road, and then you just bought yourself another freaking job. So soapbox removed Cody. What's your obsession with land, man? How'd you get into land

that's good. They, and to touch on your thing real quick, as far as the vision you're right. Like just you guys, when you go buy a real estate deal, you're known your exit is before you buy it, right? Like always you might have two or three different, right? A business is no D. You should know okay. So land, what's my deal of land. I stumbled into it. There were some inspirations that were around me growing up that helped me get there. But to give you an idea, my grandfather was the largest kind of land developer, vertical home builder up in the Pacific Northwest where I grew up he passed away when I was 15. Like I have his clock here from the HBA when he was the president, the home builders association and a picture of him speaking and whatnot. And and so I, I always had that kind of the back of my mind that him has used him as inspiration. He was by far the most successful individual. Let's be clear. You can go make all the money in the world, but unless your wife loves you, your kids love you. You have a you're in good shape and blah, blah. All these different pillars. You're not successful. You don't true success. Let me just say he was, had the most financial success in our family. And then, my father he was a very small home builder. But never, he would never would've scaled because he was a control freak. He tried to control everything. Didn't trust. And so he literally would, I'm exaggerating, but you'd have to drive every nail himself. And so he could never scale. Uh And and, but what happened is he got spanked in the early eighties and then never pulled the trigger again. And I mentioned that earlier in the show and I saw that. And and but they're here again. I was around it, right when I was younger, he never went and started being a home builder again, but he, he did remodels and he did, he'd build decks for people. And so I was just always around real estate. I'd go out and frame with my dad when I was young. But then what happened is. I was gonna head off to college and not sure what I was gonna do. I was just gonna head off to college, but the, I got my high school girl from pregnant. And and so instead of heading off to college, I went into the flooring union. And so doing floors encounters and and I did that just because they, you qualified for health insurance after three months. And so sure. So I qualified for health insurance, so I could pay for my baby. And one thing led to another. I was just in that flooring industry for about five years, did some really cool stuff. I was super driven, hungry, motivated, did some great stuff, but ended up a lot of the builders and land developers for my clients. And so when I'd capped out in that industry, the next step was to either open my own store or go do something different. I decided to make the leap of faith one, it was in my blood. And then two is that a big name guy in town approached me and saw potential or whatever it may be and asked me if I'd be his business partner. And that really helped, cause making that first leap of faith, that first jump from w two to self-employed is a tough jump. And him offering to, for us to partner together made that jump easier. Straight up, no question. That partnership only made it a couple of years. Because remember when you're going into partnerships, make sure you do your due diligence, no different than a real estate deal. And he was a big name guy. I was super flattered, so I just jumped right in with him without even doing much due diligence. Still love and care about the guy today, but back then we were not equally yolked. And so if you're not equally yolked, you're probably not gonna make a good partnership. And we killed it. We did amazing things financially, but but just, it was not a good partnership. So it was all those combination of things, that, that took me into. So because him and I were a land development, home building business. And and I did home. I've done that last 20 years basically, but I've constantly revamped the business model. To eliminate a lot of the risk. And and we can talk about that more later if y'all want, but that's how I ended up in dirt. There was no, oh, I wanna be in land that just a lot of different things brought me there.

Awesome. And something that you just said that I think was cuz after this kind of statement, this little segue here, I want to just go straight up into this because this is such an interesting like asset class that nobody really talks about. And like you're making like six, seven figures per deal here. So it's fricking Luc. But something that you just said there you were in land, you were in development since basically you were born this is something that you were always around, but then you went into flooring, which was like nothing to what you were doing, but what you did in flooring was you spent five years being the best at flooring. And I feel like that's a step that a lot of people are missing in this journey. You said the believe action, faith. A lot of people are missing that step in their W2. The reason I can do this successful podcast, the reason I'm here with you, the reason I've got the connections to do this and to go fricking move to Greece in less than a month, three weeks who's counting is because I was the best at my sales job. Like put the time in to be really freaking good. And I got economically rewarded for that. Then I was able to move on from there, cuz I was the best. And I was able to think about other things at that point, but you have to earn the right and you did that, which then got one of your clients who is the big name to say, Hey, come partner with me. Yeah. That's huge people miss that man. Cause there are one foot in's the door, one foot out the other.

Yeah, that's really good. Yeah. That's freaking huge, man. I mean they. The Lord's not gonna reward laziness.

Let's just be straight. No, sir. No,

you need to take responsibility for yourself and your actions and by the way, I didn't realize you were moving to grease in two or three weeks. That sounds absolutely awesome, dude. Where you been. See, I told you hide under a rock, I

guess could have been friends for the last two years. Cody we could have been friends. You missed out on all this friendship, man. Me and Mike have been golfing. Me and Mike are all the golfing. Everyone golfing everyone, but you bud everyone, but oh, that's funny. So yeah.

Yeah, that just means why I'm gonna be in Greece next year. So that means I'll just come see you in Greece. There

we go. I'm traveling that the plan is for a year, so we'll see I'm gonna reevaluate in six months, but yeah, I'm gonna. Wow. I quit my job outta corporate America in March. Now I'm two months, two and a half. On my own doing the podcast full time. And now I'm yeah, I'm gonna go travel so, wow. Good. Free. Yeah. Yeah. Little hang and lose, man. Appreciate it. Now let's get some land. I wanna buy some land now, Cody. Let's go. Yeah. So why land? So first off, I guess maybe let's talk about your portfolio of land and, so if we can establish some credibility for somebody that has no idea who Cody BGAN is let's talk about what you do with land, and then let's talk about how land deals are structured and why should people care?

Okay. So obviously land deals is a very broad term, right? Sure. And our business model. Shifted and changed through learning things the hard way and or opportunity in the marketplace. So 99% of people out there don't know anything about raw land that has development potential. I'm one of them, no clue. Okay. And so are all your buddies? Yep. They just don't understand it. Okay. Real estate agents don't understand it and it's not their fault because no one's teaching. Because I learned this business, over the now 20 years in 2019, when I started focusing on P purpose impact fulfillment is if I would go teach the specialized experience I have, or knowledge I have, I could be a part of impacting other people's lives, being a part of their journey, being a part of their legacy. So that's what made me start my education company. That's. Almost three years ago, or actually just now three years ago and we're doing, it's amazing things are happening and you go Google it and you'll see some crazy stuff. But the the people see land development is extremely risky, right? And takes a ton of capital and a ton of. And just the barrier of entry's just too high, right? Just you can't come play in this field, this industry it's and I get it. And you're right. Land development is a ton of risk. And it does take a ton of capital and ton of debt. I w that's how I lost 90% of my net worth and oh 7 0 8 was because I was in the middle of doing these deals. And then the market tank, which obviously was a major. Great recession a Swan event.

Yeah.

But it wiped me out. And so over the years, and by the way, there'll be a time that comes when I do. What I'm about to share with you? I don't actually do the land development, the construction itself anymore. Okay. I don't build the homes anymore. I used to do all of it. Okay. Is, and, but there will be a time that comes when I probably will land do the construction again, and I will build the houses again. It's just right now, I don't need to in this cycle and the, where it is because the home builders of America, they will buy my projects. Prior to the shovel actually going in the ground. Okay. And they will do the, all the construction just to have the lots to build homes on, but here's my basic model. Okay. Very basic model. One, we go out and we prospect. So I don't, nothing else matters without deal flow in real estate. If you don't have deal flow, nothing else matters. And I will argue this Tom blue in the face that everybody needs to learn how to do off market prospecting. Is that off all your deal flow is from real estate agents or whoever. Don't think that you're the only person that one of it's on the RMLS or the MLS everybody's seeing. Or it's an off market deal, bullshit that you're on the list of a hundred people that they send the deal to. So it's, I wouldn't call that off market. Even it's a pocket listing. They haven't actually put it in the system. You're not, don't think you're the only guy they're calling, but so one is we do off market prospecting so that we know how to control. We control our own deal flow. And then two. There's people out there that teach land, but it's more how to go tie up rural land and wholesale it, or flip it and make whatever 10 grand, 20 grand, 30 grand, 50, whatever it is like. But we specialize in only prospecting off market, raw land that has the development potential. And I can't say that enough. Okay. That has the development potential. We are in the value add business. Related to land. Cause what we will do is we will go up and we'll tie up that raw land and we will take it through what's called entitlements or the develop, the approval process or the, preliminary, plat, whatever you wanna. It's basically the jurisdictional or governmental approval process and we will get it approved. Okay. And then we tie it up in a pretty little bow and we delivered over to our clients all approved, ready to go build. Okay. The thing is that process that I just talked about? One is we never close on the land without the development approvals in place? Okay. Cause if I'm gonna go pay development values for land, I gotta make sure the approvals are in place. First. If I'm gonna pay for a diamond, I gotta make sure it's a diamond. And so then what we do, and then with our buyers, we do double closings or simultaneous closings. So they close with us at the same time. We're closing with the seller and we make our scrape out of the middle. Okay. Next is the capital we put into a deal to get it through that approval process. Is literally about one 10th, the amount of capital that if I was to go and actually develop the land and then sell the finished loss to say a home builder. So sure. I cut out my capital requirement by one by 90%. Okay. Two is, I don't take on any debt, cuz usually the debt will be about three times the total capital in the deal. So I'm avoiding all that. Plus 90% of the capital needed to actually do the construction portion. Okay. Here's where it gets even better. And I'm sorry I'm wrapping here, but no, that's fine. You're like, okay. So let's just say my average, let's say my average deal. Let's just use easy numbers. Let's just say my average deal. I have 300 grand cash in it. Okay. To get it approved. The other thing I do is I pre-sell my deals to my buyers. Way up front in the process and usually their earnest money. If it's not equal to my total cash I'll have in the deal, it might be as much as three to four X, my total cash in the deal. So what happens if the market tanks okay. As long as I don't default, as long as I still go get that thing approved me and my investors are at least gonna break even. If not if or potentially even hit a three X multiple. Because we have that non-refundable earnest money from our buyers. Does that make sense?

Okay. Yes,

damn. And I can't remember the, it's been a long time since like we haven't made seven figures on a deal. But another time when we first started doing this, we were just doing 2, 3, 4, lot deals, this tiny little deals. And you can start out as big or small as you want. Today we're doing at least, our average. We really don't look at many deals that are less than a hundred lots now, but it's very lucrative extremely

lucrative. Would you say it's the same thing as multi where it's like people say buying a 12 unit buying a 200 unit's about the same amount of work? Yes.

Yes. Okay. So 100%,

two, two questions here. So first off I understand how financing and how capital allocation works in real estate with land. It's my understanding that you just buy the land cash.

Is that correct? So remember don't how does your financing work? We don't close until approvals remember, and okay. I use my buyers. Could my buyer's gonna close with me the same time I close with the seller. It's called a double closing or a simultaneous. So I actually use my buyer's money to pay my seller and then I make my scrape out of the middle. So you're no money here, so just my capital to get it approved.

And what's that? What

percentages are we looking at? That's what I was saying. Let's just say let's just call it. Let's just call it 300 grand. But remember my buyer's earnest, money's probably 300. A million bucks. And so my downside risk doesn't exist because I have that non-refundable earnest money from my buyer. And so that in that 300, take that 300. And so over at vest, our education company, we teach all this stuff and okay, cool. That answer Cody, I don't have 300 grand. One go do a smaller deal then or two. Go do friends and family go bring on a financial partner or if you want, and I'll only do this with people that have been through my course, but because otherwise people to start wasting my team's time, just throwing over a bunch of shit to us that doesn't work and they waste their time and my time or my team's time. But for students that go to our course, they always have the option of they can just tee the deal up. And I shouldn't say the word just it's valuable. They tee the deal. They turn it over to my team. We'll negotiate the contract with the seller. We'll capitalize the whole thing. We will sell it and then we'll cut the, cut them in on the profits. And so like I just handed a student, a check for a few weeks ago for 610 grand for Tina deal up for me, so that's, so that's how it works, man. Okay.

So for two questions here. So development, potential de define that for someone like me and the vast majority of people that are listening. We're like, okay, we see land, we see it sometimes pop up, like whenever we're driving by yeah. We can figure out who owns the land. What are we looking for to have it? Have I guess what's your buy box? What are you looking for?

So I'll give you a, I'll give you, yeah, I'll give you some quick nuggets. Sure. The end of the day, it's not something that I could just teach on this podcast. And so I'll just drop a pitch right now, for vest, right? Go to best, cody, go to best, and take the course. But I'll give you, I'll come. I'll give you a couple basics.

Fair. Okay. Very

fair. Thank you. My friend. See, we're like, okay. Take us. We're doing deals that are a hundred, lots to 500 lots. Okay. Sure. Is that we it's been proven over and over again. And this is just my model. Okay. I have plenty of students that are selling to local home builders and doing great, but I sell all my deals to basically publics or nationally national companies publicly traded companies. Sure. And so when we're going into a different market, there's gotta be at least three of those guys in that market for us to even be interested. Okay. But two is, let's get beyond that. Let's just take your local market. Whatever you're in is don't. Don't guess if there's, if you were to go do land deals with my model in your local market, don't guess if there's a market or not. Okay. Is that one thing we're heavy on in today is our business development department. We go out and we contact all the builders in that market. And we survey them. We basically interview them for an hour asking them a ton of questions and the way we do it is, Hey, we're here to bring you value. We're here to serve you. So let's talk through all these different things. And what we're doing is we're gathering data to, to see one, if we even like that market. And then two to get to know that client, to see if there's even opportunity for us to do business with 'em. And three is they tell us where they want to go, where they want be because they see us as deal flow for them. And so they let us know where they want to be, where they're at, where they want to go, all these different things. And so we can establish the markets that we wanna play in. Okay. But. Land that's developable. How do you know it's developable? I can't tell you how often friends or family they drive by some piece of property. It's a dirt. Yeah. This is, it's oh, that's such a great piece. That would be such a great piece for development. And it's Here's five basic things that you can take into consideration to know if something's developable. There we go. And I'm saying I'm not saying five acre, lots out in the middle of BFE, right? Yeah. Where you're gonna put in septic. I'm talking about. A normal subdivision like that we do, or the public home builders do, but one is where are the, what zoning. Okay. Is that every jurisdiction has zoning and then they have comprehensive plans of property around them. And if it's annexed and what they would want to zone it. Okay. So one is the zoning, what's it zoned? Is it zoned for development? And if it is zone for development or if they're willing to zone it for development, what kind of development? Do they want it to be retail? Do they want it to be residential? Do they want it to Beto whatever industrial. Okay. Two is utilities. Where are the public utilities? Okay. Where is the big, water? Where's the water at public water. Where's the sewer sanitary sewer at is that you need public utilities. Okay. Three is be aware of topography, right? So is the land flat? Is it down sloping up sloping, whatever it may be, cuz sometimes you might have. Zoning, you might have utilities, but the properties topography is in a way that it makes its development potential very limited. Okay. So just topography next is is is overlays, right? So here again, you might see. A piece of property that it looks great, but what you don't realize is there's some environmental overlay on it, or there's a steep slope overlay on it. So that kills its development. Did I just list five? How many you talk about zoning? I can't count what do say zoning utilities.

Zoning utilities the overlay. The terrain, the topography.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. At the five. But oh no. The fifth one. And I would put this at number, way up there, but it's definitely one you have to have is public access is that you might see have a great piece. It might be zone for development. There might even be utilities there. It's got great topography. It's got no overlay. But it's landlocked, right? Is there's gotta be public access public, of aways of how are you gonna get to the piece? So that's the fifth one is access. How are you gonna access the piece?

Awesome. So who would get a lot of value from your course? What is your, who are you speaking to? Who are you talking to for the course and what can they expect to get?

Yeah, so a lot of house also the best off market prospecting. companies or individuals in the country hands down are like house wholesalers. They know how to prospect off market like the best of them. So we're how a lot of them are. A lot of house wholesalers are going into our model because they already have the off market prospecting model mastered. Okay. It's just a different asset class. So we're seeing that happening a lot, but we're also seeing guys that are already real estate professionals, because here's the deal. I have how do I say this in the most cons appropriate way possible is me knowing land and development. I have an advantage over guys that don't, that makes sense. Okay. Remember this, every piece of real estate you've ever bought or gonna buy or wanna buy it all started with the. Okay. Dirt controls the deals. Remember that whoever controls the dirt controls, the deal is that, and so we're seeing a lot of real estate professionals are saying yeah, shit. It only makes sense that I would understand the basics of how this stuff works. Even if you decide to not go do my model, if you do my model great. But even if you don't at least understand the components of how this stuff works, because it is gonna give you an advantage when you're trying to be a real estate professional.

Okay. And then do you have any success stories you can maybe share from students? Obviously the $675,000 check?

Yeah. Yeah. There's numerous on our website over at vest, right? Dot com. There's tons of them. Yeah, I just mentioned that one. I, I wrote him a check for 610 grand couple weeks ago. We got a student right now that, I'm just hearing you a big flash number, board willing. He's got 13 deals under contract right now and is projected to make, I can't remember what the number was. It was like 32 million or something over the next 12 months. But that hasn't happened yet. We got another student recently put 300 grand into a couple deals made like got us 300 back plus made. I think 690 700,000 on their money. Just all kinds of another guy recently, he just flipped his contract. Didn't I think he put in no money made a hundred grand just flipping his contract, but here's the deal, cuz you have a lot of passive investors that listen to your show. I'm assuming the hor whole GoBundance horizontal income, which. By the way a lot of you guys are calling your income horizontal and it's not, but that's a different topic. No. Is is I think you need two business models, one that generates capital. Sure. And another one for cash flow is that if all your business model is cash flow, passive, right. Residual mailbox money. You it's awesome. And I love it. And it's, we all should have a passive game, right? A, a mailbox, money, cash flow, residual. We all should have that. But imagine how much quicker you could build that side of your career. If you had another model that generated a shit ton of capital. Yep. So that's where I think, our model, we really like it is yes, it's ordinary income, but it generates a bunch of capital to where then you can go build this side of your life or your career at a much faster pace.

So I agree with that. I definitely agree with that. Right now, In the stage that I'm in, like we're in the hunt, right? Like I wanna be a capital machine. Like I wanna be producing a lot of capital. I'm hungry, I'm hunting. That's what I want. Yep. I don't wanna sit on the couch, like wanna go. Yep. So I love that man. And I will say for people listening, a hundred percent would vouch for Cody. And like a lot of people that come on here, like some people are maybe like, oh, he didn't give me, he didn't give you the details that I was looking for. And I would say, when, when you're the best of what you do. I'm sorry this is what happens. Like you, you gotta pay to play or seek to serve. I learned that from G Barbro, from

Jake and Jean. No, I've had a few people. I've had a few people say to me, Cody, cuz I am focused on impact. Cause by the way I don't even like the word happy just so you know the word happy is temporary. The word fulfillment is much more powerful and impactful, much more meaningful than happy. So what we are all searching for is fulfillment. Whether we know it or not, okay, mark, my words, we're all searching for fulfillment, whether we like it or not, or whether we know it or not, and fulfillment is not possible in my opinion, unless you're having impact. Unless you're throwing down the rope, unless you're making difference, unless you're right. Living a purposely driven life. So that's why Piff came from purpose impact fulfillment. But they, I don't even know why I started rapping on that. Oh. Oh. So people say to me Cody, you're so focused on impact. Why don't you just give away your course? Cause you're right. Pay to play. Give away my course, so that it sits on your damn shelf and collects dust. If you're not paying to play, you're not gonna take the shit serious. Yeah. And yeah, I, unless you're willing to like, make an investment into your future and your career into your life, into your legacy. I, I'm not interested in spending time with you just to be Frank. If you're not even willing to invest in yourself, why the hell am I gonna invest in. Ooh,

that's a good one dude. And it's even with the free eBooks and stuff I finally, like I've been kicking the can down the road, but I finally finished my little, I did a free ebook, which is like from w two to world traveler, like the steps and the framework that I use to be able to be like, okay, cool, screw you corporate I'm out. And it's a framework. and good God, dude, it took hours even to make that free. And then so yeah, it took hours of my time, but how many years of experience did it take to make that right? And how many hours of interaction and conversation learning, all that stuff that's for free. Dear God, I get it now brother, but to put a bow in it where can people find you man, invest right.com at

warehouse? Yeah, let's go to invest right.com go to Cody. bgan.com my screen name. So either one you can get to all of our education. We have some free books, eBooks, booklets reports. You can get great bunch of great free content videos. But yeah, with us, You can can learn from us, you can partner with us, you can invest with us. We have a fund. And I'm not here to pitch anything specific, but just, go check out vest, right.com or Cody buin.com and just let it lead you where it shall.

Perfect. And then last question. What is one thing about your life or your business that you're very proud about that most people don't know about? You.

Geez. I should have. I that's the most people don't know about me. I know that's the hard part. Wow. That most people don't know about me, I've been so focused on my personal brand lately and being vulnerable and transparent. I'm trying to make sure people know everything about me. Sure. But I'll just tell you don't know. That's a, it's something that I'm proud of, but it's something that just was put on my heart to share. I just got off the phone before this podcast interview with a gentleman that I'm looking at hiring to help me Go bigger, give myself empower. I talk to people all the time about empowering yourself, giving yourself permission, right? Like limiting beliefs. And a lot of people wouldn't think that I might have that. And I do, and I just hired a coach. That's gonna help me with that. And so that's just something I just popped in my head that I don't talk a lot about, but I'm working through my limiting beliefs, just like anybody else is, and everybody else is Don't know, that's just what popped in my head. Not, I guess I'm proud of it. You know why I'm proud. I'm sitting here telling you about it. Yeah, of course. You're

proud of it. Say what your chest Cody say what your chest. I was like, I'm empowered, baby. Yeah. Oh brother. I love it, man. Very good answer. Very good answer. I appreciate you as always my friend man, hell, have a conversation, especially this being our first conversation. I don't know how, but it this ended up being it live and in color folks for all of you. Find ladies and gentlemen, so go visit Cody's website, go visit and best ride.com. If you're interested in land and making $600,000 checks, go put your money where your mouth is, run it. There's a million ways to make a million dollars go. Find

one of them. Yep. Thanks for having me, buddy.

Thanks for coming on. This is Ben, Brian and Cody with the action academy podcast signing off.