0:00

Hey friends. Welcome back to the Old Fashioned On

0:02

Purpose podcast. So I get

0:04

a lot of questions that come to me through email

0:06

and social media and all the places. And

0:09

I always notice some interesting themes in those

0:11

questions. And one particular set

0:13

of questions that comes time and time again would

0:15

be, how do I find land

0:18

and how do I make money from

0:20

my land and, you know, it's.

0:22

It's always, sorry, Felix,

0:24

we can cut that out. When I get those questions,

0:27

I pause a little bit because even though

0:29

I've done that personally in my life, sometimes

0:31

I feel like I don't have the perfect formula or model

0:34

to hand to someone who's trying to

0:36

follow in our footsteps because, you know, our life's

0:38

a little different. We have a unique situation.

0:40

So I thought it was high time that I have someone

0:42

join me here on the podcast who. does

0:44

actually have a really compelling model and a really

0:46

neat story around these very questions.

0:49

So Jamie Friesen, welcome

0:51

to the podcast. I am so excited to chat

0:53

with you more today.

0:55

Yeah. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. And

0:57

I appreciate everything that you do for everybody

0:59

here.

1:00

Absolutely. So start us off. I'm

1:02

guessing people may have run into your content without

1:05

realizing it, but just kind of give us some background

1:07

and how you got into this world

1:09

and why you're so passionate about this.

1:12

Yeah. I mean, I think that I

1:14

wanted to do this probably

1:16

since about the age of 13, I kind of just saw

1:19

the way society was going and that there was a bit

1:21

of a broken system and that, you know, people. school,

1:25

then they go on and get into

1:27

debt going to college or university

1:30

and then to get a job they don't like to pay for a house

1:32

that they don't even really live in because they're

1:34

too busy working their job and all the rest.

1:36

So that kind of scared me at that

1:39

age. And I figured And then

1:41

later went through some mental health battles and stuff,

1:43

my brother and I both, and between

1:45

the two of us, we kind of, it was kind of our

1:47

Pandora's box into seeing a lot of the

1:49

more broken systems in society, from healthcare

1:52

to finance to food systems

1:54

to all sorts of stuff. So we figured

1:56

the best way to do it, if we're going to sit there and complain about

1:58

it, that we should probably go out and start from scratch

2:00

and try to build a better way of living. And,

2:04

that's what, that's what we did. And so we ended up during

2:06

COVID my business went bankrupt. So I

2:08

was in a very bad spot financially.

2:10

I didn't know how I was going to even put

2:12

food on the table in the next couple of weeks kind of

2:14

deal. And yeah, we ended up using

2:17

strategies that we'll talk about on this call to be

2:20

able to acquire, we acquired 160

2:22

acres in Rock Creek, British Columbia.

2:25

And we are we built that

2:27

into a homestead. We a retreat

2:29

center. We ran retreats and short

2:31

term rentals in the first years, and

2:34

we are building out a permaculture

2:36

farm with 35

2:38

plus ponds, a full pond network

2:40

for gravity feeding our orchards and

2:43

and our cattle, given our Unique climate

2:46

and whatnot are are we

2:48

don't have enough water on site from our well to

2:50

be able to Provide for all the cattle

2:52

that we would like so we need to basically

2:54

have quite a large earthworks project But

2:57

yeah, we want to be able to demonstrate that you can

2:59

do this in very hard places

3:01

as well, so yeah, that's that's kind

3:03

of us we were We were feet

3:06

on the ground for seven months with barren

3:08

land. There's nothing on it, no well, nothing

3:10

at all. And we went from, from nothing.

3:13

And seven months later, we were making about 30,

3:15

000 a month on the property.

3:17

Wait, hold on. Seven months, nothing to

3:20

making 30, 000 a month in

3:22

a seven month time span. I heard that right. Okay.

3:25

That's notable.

3:27

Yeah. Yeah. It was, yeah,

3:29

sorry, go ahead.

3:30

No, I just like, that's the dream that it's

3:33

almost, yeah, that people don't think it's possible. So

3:36

that's outstanding.

3:38

Yeah, so that was a mixture of short term

3:40

rentals hosting retreats or renting

3:42

out space for other people to host retreats

3:44

and and just letting folks like, you

3:46

know, rent some space. Like we had somebody come

3:49

up and they just want to get out

3:51

of the city and they wanted to have a small

3:53

wedding. So they came in and it was like,

3:55

they just paid 15, 000 for a weekend

3:57

to come camp out and just. There

3:59

you go. Which was, which was pretty pretty

4:02

reasonable compared to people paying

4:04

30, 000 for four hours at a golf course

4:07

for, for an event like that.

4:09

You were a deal. So,

4:12

yeah. Okay, so so many questions. First off,

4:16

you're, you're speaking to broken systems, which is

4:18

totally my language and the language of this audience. Like,

4:20

that's one of our favorite things to talk about is how do we... Get

4:23

out of those systems and repair those systems and make better

4:25

systems. So that's just hit the

4:27

nail on the head. I'm curious,

4:29

like this was a big leap. You were an entrepreneur. You had the really

4:31

successful businesses prior to COVID. Like,

4:33

did you have agricultural or

4:35

homesteading or self sufficiency experience before

4:37

you took this plunge or were you going in

4:40

cold Turkey?

4:41

Yeah. We had, we had, we had, like,

4:43

I've never grown anything in my life. As far

4:45

as like, yeah we actually we

4:47

had two permaculture. Consultants

4:49

living on site full time that maintained

4:51

and managed the entire garden and chickens

4:53

and all of that stuff. Basically whatever

4:55

we didn't know, we just outsourced and

4:58

we would use certain strategies such as hosting

5:00

workshops for being able to afford.

5:03

Like world renowned experts to come in and help us

5:05

with our projects. So we would, for example,

5:07

sell at a workshop that would pay

5:09

for the consultant to come and do a full design

5:12

or do a full workshop on our property and build out

5:14

whatever it was that we needed to be built out. So

5:16

they would come and spend like three to five days

5:18

with us prior to the workshop, and then

5:20

we, they would host the workshop on

5:23

like the Saturday, Sunday. And

5:25

the tickets cost for the workshop would

5:27

pay for them for the entire week.

5:29

Okay.

5:30

So that, that was like, that's just an example of like one

5:32

strategy that we would use to try,

5:34

basically learn really quickly because

5:36

we didn't, we we didn't want

5:38

to go like, for example, with

5:40

this kind of thing as, as I'm very

5:43

sure you know, you kind of need to be a little

5:45

bit good at a lot of things. So if

5:47

you were to try to go to you know,

5:49

get a degree in all of the hundred

5:51

things that you need, you would spend a dozen

5:53

lifetimes trying to gain

5:55

that knowledge. So we knew we needed to learn

5:57

really, really quickly. And that's one of the strategies

6:00

that we use to learn really fast and learn

6:02

from people who had that expert knowledge.

6:04

Well, we didn't have the money to pay people to

6:07

do it.

6:08

Yeah. That's an incredible way to create leverage.

6:10

That's brilliant. Because, I mean, these

6:12

skills are really lifetime skills for a lot

6:14

of people. And to be able to fast track like

6:16

that is, is outstanding.

6:19

Yeah, the, I mean, we did come in with some

6:21

construction experience, so like Shelby

6:23

and I both grew up in the construction industry and

6:25

he was in metal fabrication and I

6:27

was in, I kind of worked a little

6:29

bit everything. I was in electrical mainly,

6:31

but I grew up, you know, framing and,

6:34

you know, floor laying and like doing a little

6:36

bit of everything. So, you know, we were pretty

6:38

competent with our hands and tools to be able

6:40

to do that kind of stuff. Although we

6:42

have, we have now with our program

6:45

we have what are we at? I

6:47

think we're at 6, 000 customers,

6:50

6, 000 clients across 22

6:52

countries or more. And many of them

6:54

are basically the way that we

6:56

see it is you can strategize your way around anything.

6:58

Like if you don't want to build something, then

7:00

we have lots of suppliers that build

7:03

very cool, very unique. flat

7:05

pack structural options

7:07

that you can put in the back of a pickup truck and drive

7:09

into the bush. And you can set it up in two days with

7:11

instructions like an Ikea kit and

7:13

they're rot proof, they're mold proof, they're fireproof,

7:15

they're, and they're, they're quite nice.

7:18

So yeah, there's lots of, basically if you don't

7:20

know how to do something, there's always a way to strategize

7:22

around it. And a big part of what we help people

7:24

with is creating that strategy so

7:26

that people are able to. Do this

7:28

successfully and allocate their time and

7:31

their resources correctly, because

7:33

one wrong, one wrong decision

7:35

allocating your time and resources could

7:37

make you go bankrupt and not be able to do this.

7:40

I'm trying to get a, a, just a mental picture of

7:42

your land. Because I'm picturing, you know, in seven months you had

7:44

weddings there. It must, is it just like, super picturesque?

7:46

Is this like, I'm picturing just like, water trees.

7:48

I'm picturing just like, National

7:50

Park quality land? Or is this just more

7:53

average land?

7:54

I wish it's

7:56

I wouldn't say it's average, but I would say it

7:59

was undervalued. So that's

8:01

kind of what we went for, because we didn't have very much money.

8:03

So we Well, basically,

8:06

this kind of gets into how we

8:08

like we'll talk about in a moment, I suppose,

8:10

how the financial model that we use

8:12

to be able to attract what I call

8:14

a mortgage partner to come in. And basically,

8:17

they come in and help out with the down payment and

8:19

they take a portion of ownership in the property,

8:21

and then we're responsible for paying the mortgage

8:24

on the property. So they benefit

8:26

because they put in the upfront

8:28

money, but then they don't do anything.

8:31

They just sit there. And we've, we've 5x'ed

8:33

the value of the land since then. So

8:35

it's now worth about a million bucks. So they've

8:37

sat back and done nothing, and their value has gone

8:40

up by 5x. And that's why somebody

8:42

would be able to... That's why somebody would want

8:44

to help somebody get into property like this. But

8:46

even with that, we knew that if we

8:49

started with something a lot cheaper, it would just be a lot

8:51

easier to find somebody to help us. So

8:53

we started with property. It would cost 200,

8:55

000 bucks, which is some places that

8:57

might be more expensive, but in British Columbia here,

9:00

that's like very, very affordable because

9:02

most properties are in the millions. So very

9:04

expensive here. And it

9:06

was the reason it was cheap was because we're basically

9:09

on top of a mountain were double the elevation

9:11

of our nearby town. We're at 4500

9:13

feet. It is not traditional farmland

9:16

at all. The terrain is very crazy.

9:18

We have a full mountain on like a quarter

9:20

of it. So out of 160 acres, there's

9:23

probably. Probably 50

9:25

acres of that is literally just like the base

9:28

of this mountain that takes about 40 minutes

9:30

to climb. So it's a, it's like pretty

9:32

significant terrain and we're having, but

9:34

we, we kind of believe in trying to

9:36

see those. Most

9:38

people would walk into a situation like that and be like,

9:40

I don't want it. And they think that's a bad thing.

9:43

And we want. So we want to be able to

9:45

find strategies to flip that and

9:47

say, okay, what are the pros of this?

9:50

And the pros is that it's beautiful.

9:53

We're on top of a mountain. Your views are

9:55

incredible. You know people come and

9:57

they've come up and we've had multiple proposals

10:00

on top of our lookout point with just

10:02

like Mountains rolling mountains

10:04

for as far as you can see And people

10:06

wanting to come back every year for their anniversaries

10:08

after that and things like that But

10:11

yeah, it's also like our soil is dust.

10:13

We're in a desert alpine climate,

10:16

so it gets, you know, 51 degrees Celsius

10:18

in the summer and negative 30 degrees

10:21

Celsius in the winter with four feet

10:23

of snow. So it's a, it's a difficult

10:25

terrain to, to operate in.

10:27

And that's why it was so cheap, but

10:29

we were able to flip some of those things for people

10:32

to want to do it, to come out there and, and

10:34

whatnot. I don't think I'd overcomplicate

10:36

it. I honestly think that people just want to get out of the city.

10:38

That's like the main thing that we hear as to

10:40

like why people even want to come out

10:43

there is that to us,

10:45

it's normal. It's just like, whatever,

10:47

it's inconvenient. We're driving up this big

10:49

hill to get to our land, but for them,

10:52

it's an adventure. It's an amazing thing

10:54

just to get out of the city and just chill out and

10:56

just be in the, be in the trees and just like

10:58

that, that's all they want. That's all they, and more

11:01

people need more of that. So

11:03

another big reason why people come up is one of our strategies

11:06

that we use is called wow factor. So

11:09

there can be natural wow factors such as the

11:11

mountain for people to have a cool view

11:13

or you could have a river, a creek running through

11:15

your land. Those are all reasons people would want to

11:17

come to your property and, you know, buy

11:20

your produce and stay for a night if you

11:22

have, you know, stuff available or

11:24

like rent a field out back.

11:26

To have a wedding, like whatever, right? But

11:29

either can also be manmade ones. So one

11:31

of our biggest ones is actually a hydrotherapy

11:33

spa. It was a sauna. We

11:35

made, we actually built one. We, we found

11:37

a, a solid oak wine

11:39

barrel left over from an old winery

11:42

and we picked it up on Facebook marketplace

11:44

for a couple of grand and we turned it into

11:46

like a custom built sauna, a wood

11:48

fire sauna. And then we. Took

11:51

some like 300 troughs

11:53

and threw some water in it. And there's the ice bath.

11:56

And then we just had a fire pit and,

11:59

and people absolutely loved it. People

12:01

drove six hours from Vancouver

12:04

to come up for one or two nights. Just

12:06

because we had photos of this sauna

12:08

and they would get up and get to use it. And, and

12:11

yeah, it was a very that, that seems to be

12:13

like one of the best bangs

12:15

for your buck is, is to get a sauna

12:18

and hydrotherapy set up to attract people

12:20

in, but it could be anything. It could be hammocks

12:22

or nets up in the tree or even the dwelling

12:25

itself. Maybe you want to put a cool

12:27

tiny home or a shipping container home or a Hobbit

12:29

home, or like something that's unique, that's going to

12:31

attract people. Yeah.

12:35

sauna story. That's awesome. Okay.

12:38

So my, my, my wheels are turning. I'm

12:40

really, especially honing in on what you said about

12:42

the undervalued lands because

12:44

I have, when people ask me and I, I, this

12:46

is not my wheelhouse, like it is yours, but people ask

12:48

me all the time, like, how do I find land? And that's kind of usually where I

12:50

start with. And I say, you know, we bought ugly duckling

12:53

property way back in 2008. So

12:55

it was a little different. Homesteading wasn't cool. It

12:58

was like, fixer uppers weren't

13:00

cool. It was just like, Oh, y'all are crazy. Okay. But

13:02

like the ugly duckling land is what got us into

13:04

what we have now. But when I tell that

13:06

to people here in 2023, they're like, yeah, but

13:08

even the fixer upper, the, the, the crummy

13:11

land is super expensive right now. So

13:13

what would you say to someone who's desperate to

13:15

buy land? They want it so bad, but they're still finding

13:18

the not great stuff out of their price range.

13:20

Hmm.

13:23

way is like, you can go on something

13:25

like discountlots. com right now, and

13:28

anybody that works at McDonald's can afford

13:30

land. Like there's zero excuses. You can get land

13:32

for a dollar down and 300 a month.

13:34

And you know, when people try to tell me

13:36

that that's like, it's really

13:38

just the level of sacrifice that somebody might be willing

13:41

to make or not make right where, you know,

13:43

are you going to find the perfect property right next

13:45

door to you that you're like comfortable moving to?

13:47

No, probably not. But you can

13:49

find something that will work and

13:51

if you're willing to make the sacrifice when

13:54

we started this, we drove

13:56

for six hours through the mountains all the time.

13:58

We drove up and back every single week, running material

14:00

loads up here, just trying to make it work, right? We

14:03

have clients that fly across the country to do it.

14:05

I'm in Canada, so discount lots isn't the thing.

14:07

I don't have those kind of owner financing options

14:09

here. Although like there's ways to do

14:11

it yourself, which we'll talk about on this call, but in

14:14

the U S if you, you like, there's,

14:17

it's kind of a lot easier because of, because of

14:19

that, you have more, you have more financial options and discount

14:21

lots. com is pretty sweet. So,

14:24

you know, when people say that, I'm like, man,

14:26

like I go on there all the time and I'm like, okay, here's

14:28

a 10 acre lot, an hour and a half

14:30

outside of LA. And I'm

14:32

like, this is, this is great. Like you could do all sorts

14:34

of things. The zoning is perfect. You can run a business

14:36

on it. You can grow food, you can sell food, you can

14:39

do whatever you want. And people are like, Oh, well it's in

14:41

this little town and the town's beat up. And I'm

14:43

like, dude, it takes me two

14:45

hours to go get groceries in a shitty

14:47

little town. You're, you drive for

14:49

an hour and a half. You're in downtown LA. You can

14:51

get whatever you want. So like suck it up.

14:53

Like that's just a, that's just a part of it.

14:55

Right. And, and it does, it's not a forever

14:58

thing. Right. Like, it's not like you have to be

15:00

there forever, but if you went there

15:02

and you proved the model and you started

15:04

doing it and you established that credibility that,

15:06

and you increase the land value. Either

15:09

you increase the land value and have enough income

15:11

from it that you can then sell it and

15:13

go move and buy the big property of your

15:15

dreams that you really want. And you can level

15:17

up like that or you establish the credibility

15:19

and you get a mortgage partner or investor to go in

15:21

on you with the next project so that you can get what

15:23

you want. So it's just like, and

15:26

if you want to live that lifestyle, then the goal is

15:28

to also make peace with your journey, right? Like

15:30

if you're out there and you're doing it and that's the lifestyle you're dreaming

15:32

of doing, then like, why are you complaining?

15:34

You get out there and learn how to be happy with it.

15:37

Yeah, good advice, I think, for anything in life,

15:39

right? We all want the easy path. That's what people

15:41

are looking for. But I know everything good in our life

15:43

has come with another measure of sacrifice and it's

15:45

easy to look back now and it looks like a romantic

15:48

story to people, I think, of, you know,

15:50

happily ever after. And I'm like, no, no. When we were in

15:52

the trenches, like it, it was a slog, but

15:54

I'm so glad we did it because it's, it gave us the ability

15:56

to have what we have now. Hey friend, I'm interrupting

15:59

this episode for just a second to give a shout out

16:01

to our sponsor, Genuine Beef.

16:03

Now, this is actually my beef company,

16:05

the one that my husband and I started a

16:07

number of years ago to bring our grass finished

16:10

Wyoming beef straight to your doorstep. And

16:12

I know that whenever we start to shift into

16:14

this fall and winter season, I get

16:17

the very primal urge to

16:19

stock up on food. And I know many of you

16:21

feel that same way. So we have put together

16:23

a freezer filler special to help you do

16:25

just you're going to get four of

16:27

our most popular beef roasts,

16:30

the ones that are great for crock pots and

16:32

those cozy winter meals, as well

16:34

as three pounds of our 90

16:36

10 ground beef. We're going to put it all in

16:38

a bundle and give it to you for 15 percent

16:41

off. off while supplies last.

16:43

Now we can ship this to anywhere in

16:46

the continental US. We do second

16:48

day air. We put a lot of dry ice in there, so it'll get

16:50

to your doorstep safe and sound. And

16:52

if you want to grab a box or two

16:54

or three, head on over to the prairiehomestead.

16:57

com slash freezer to

16:59

grab your bundle. And I'll go ahead and drop that link

17:01

in the show notes too. Now back

17:03

to our episode. so

17:06

I think that's such a great point about just

17:08

having to be willing to sacrifice and do what no one

17:10

else is willing to do. I think we all too often

17:12

just want that easy path. It's just human

17:15

nature. And I know looking back at my own story.

17:17

The best things I have now were a result

17:19

of taking that unbeaten path,

17:22

doing the thing that was harder. There

17:24

was an element of suffering and sacrifice during the

17:26

time, but like now we can look back at it

17:28

fondly. So it just, it works.

17:30

You just have to be willing to put in the sweat and

17:32

the blood and the tears sometimes.

17:34

Yeah. And I agree with the,

17:36

I mean, the memories are very fond for sure.

17:38

Like it's, it's a journey. It's like, you know, really

17:41

cool stories to be able to, you know, tell

17:43

your kids one day kind of thing. And yeah,

17:46

also bonds you with your tribe

17:48

and the people that are helping you. And it didn't,

17:50

it doesn't really last that long, at least not, at

17:52

least not for us. And like, you know, we're

17:54

here to try to help people not make

17:56

the mistakes that we did. But even when we did make

17:59

a bunch of mistakes, you know,

18:01

the hardship was really only for probably

18:04

the first couple of years, like two

18:06

and a half years kind of thing. And

18:08

it's pretty comfortable now.

18:11

Yeah, yeah, that's a great point. It

18:13

doesn't last forever. Even though it might feel like

18:15

at the beginning, it's actually a pretty short

18:18

window of time in the long run. Yeah.

18:21

Okay. So that was the big, one of the big

18:23

elephants in the room is how do you find lands?

18:25

And then let's take it to the other angle.

18:28

Someone has a piece of land in mind,

18:30

but they're trying to figure out how to come with the fu come up

18:32

with the finances to make it happen.

18:35

What advice would you give to them?

18:37

Yeah. On the financial side. So, I mean, first

18:40

I think on like the land finding side, the

18:42

way that we look at it and help clients

18:45

is I think there's like the how to find land

18:47

and then there's how to assess it to make sure that

18:49

it's like actually the right land for you

18:51

and is going to work for your needs. So

18:54

first off, I always tell people like, if

18:56

you don't have a plan, then you're not even

18:58

ready to begin looking for land. You

19:00

need to create a bit of a plan first, because

19:02

if you don't know what you're doing on it, then you

19:04

don't have any way to know

19:06

if that property is actually right for you. Like if

19:08

you want to go out there and you buy land and then all of a

19:10

sudden, two years later, you, you, you decide

19:13

I want 400 head of cattle. Well,

19:15

your well might not be good enough for that,

19:18

or if you decide that you want, you know, to

19:20

grow a certain type of thing and you're like, well, your

19:22

climate and your son and like, everything

19:24

might not be right for that. So

19:27

you need to know what you're going to do with it,

19:29

or even like land zoning is another really big

19:31

one. You want to go out there and like live with multiple

19:33

families like a lot of our clients do kind of

19:35

thing and like have a multi generational thing. Well, if

19:38

you want to build a certain amount of structures, you

19:40

pick the land wrong. The wrong

19:42

land zoning, then you just don't

19:44

get to do that. So you have to have that

19:46

plan in place and know what you want to do before you

19:48

even begin kind of going through the process.

19:50

But generally we have a bit of a funnel

19:53

system for finding the location

19:55

of a property. So first we started

19:57

a really high level. So very broad questions

19:59

like, you know things that

20:02

you might want to grow because if you want to grow avocados,

20:04

then you're probably not going to be coming to Canada. And

20:07

then the other thing, so that would be like

20:09

climate. And the other thing might be like even

20:11

political climate is, is one, like

20:13

if you have certain, you know, beliefs

20:15

or, or whatever that you align with, well, that

20:17

might gravitate you towards different areas

20:20

of a country, even different areas of the world.

20:22

So that's going to like help you select a more

20:24

general region. And then once

20:26

you get into that, then you'd want

20:28

to start looking at proximity

20:31

to local towns and

20:34

cities. So for us, we

20:36

would prefer to be within two hours

20:38

of a large city, large

20:40

city being something that you can

20:42

essentially. How to get anything

20:44

that you need from so like if you

20:47

need specialty car or specialty

20:49

machine parts or something like that, you know,

20:51

a machine breaks down and you're gonna if you have

20:53

to drive eight hours to get a part and

20:55

then you get back and you use it, you realize it's the wrong

20:58

part and then you have to go, you know, like it just

21:00

that really sucks. And then within 30

21:02

minutes of a small town, preferably that you're able

21:04

to get food and fuel at a

21:06

bonus would be like a building materials store

21:09

kind of deal. So that's, that's usually what we're

21:11

going for. Thank you. Because and that's kind of makes

21:13

a little bit easier because you can actually go on a map and just draw

21:15

a circle around the larger

21:18

populated areas and then smaller

21:20

circles around the other things and just kind of like see

21:22

where they overlap. And then you start to see where you

21:24

might be able to find stuff that's available

21:27

the next. I would then get into land zoning. Where

21:30

you would like find the right land zoning for you,

21:32

and you can actually look that up on government maps.

21:34

It's mandatory that the

21:37

that the government provides these maps, so you can

21:39

either go on their websites and

21:41

if you can't find it on their website and their footer, then

21:43

you can email them and they have

21:45

to send them to you. So those are, you can,

21:48

some of them are more user friendly than others.

21:50

But some of them are quite easy and actually

21:52

have a list of land zoning and when you know, which

21:54

land zoning you want, you can just toggle it

21:56

on and it'll highlight it on the map and you can

21:58

just see exactly where that land zoning is. So

22:00

we actually just built a product because it can get a little

22:03

time consuming when you're going like county by county.

22:05

Like it can take some time. So we

22:07

actually just put together a product in the last

22:09

couple of months. We had somebody working full time

22:12

to basically list and map out. All

22:14

of the no zoning and unrestricted land zoning

22:17

in the, in all of North America. So

22:19

that people can, it's, it's the ultimate

22:21

zoning that you can do anything you want. You can build a thousand

22:23

homes on it. You can have anybody living there. You can

22:26

put, you can run a business without a business license

22:28

and like all sorts of, you know, amazing things

22:30

for somebody who's looking for that freedom oriented

22:33

lifestyle. So yeah, that's the land zoning

22:35

that we have. And one of the benefits

22:37

of why we wanted the property in the first place,

22:40

um, and then you would go into like an assessment

22:42

list, which, you know, would start

22:44

with just a bunch of different things to look

22:46

at, like, what's the well look like? What's

22:49

the gallons per minute on the well? Can you drill

22:51

a well? What is if you can't drill a well? Then

22:53

you should go talk to your you should get a water

22:55

map so you can look at your neighbor's wells from the local

22:58

county. You should also go to

23:00

the local well drillers and they should be able to tell you what

23:02

gallons per minute that, because they

23:04

probably remember drilling your neighbor's wells. And

23:06

they should be able to tell you a bit about water quality and a little bit

23:08

about the depth of the wells and a little bit about.

23:11

The bedrock, which equates to

23:13

how expensive the well drilling might be.

23:15

And yeah, so you're going to want to go through a

23:17

bunch of different things on there, like terrain,

23:20

south facing for sun, like, you

23:22

know, soil tests. I personally

23:24

like to have a permaculture designer come out and

23:26

assess the property for water

23:28

catchment and all sorts of different things they can

23:31

tell you. All sorts of stuff

23:33

that like when I walk around with

23:35

we've had probably eight different permaculture designers

23:38

working on our project so far, I learned

23:40

so much. They look at the land in a totally

23:42

different way than the average person does.

23:44

And you probably learned so, so much. So

23:46

definitely valuable to pay 1500

23:49

bucks and have somebody come out and

23:51

Do a assessment of the property with you.

23:53

So you know what you're getting into before you make

23:55

potentially one of the largest buying decisions in your

23:57

life. So yeah, there's more

23:59

to the land assessment stuff. So

24:02

when you finally find something

24:04

that is you know, what is suitable

24:06

for what you're trying to do, then we get

24:08

into how to Raise the funds

24:10

to do that. So we have a couple of different methods.

24:13

And the first one is

24:15

like find cheap land that you can afford.

24:18

Just straight up. The second one

24:20

is the BERS is, is like basically

24:22

a rural version of the BERS method.

24:24

So the BERS method stands for

24:27

buy, renovate, rent,

24:29

refinance. And that

24:31

is a very common real estate investing

24:34

method. In suburban real

24:36

estate and city related real estate,

24:38

but we didn't see people really applying that to

24:40

rural land, even though the numbers

24:42

work out a lot better. So I'll explain

24:45

what the average relationship is with

24:47

the Burr's method, the Burr's method,

24:49

people go into a city

24:52

or suburban area and they'll buy

24:54

a house. For let's say 500,

24:56

000 bucks and

24:58

the investor person will put

25:00

all the money down for the entire down payment,

25:03

which is usually around 15 percent

25:05

something like that, and they will

25:08

co sign for the mortgage. So they were essentially

25:10

by the house. They get 50 percent

25:12

ownership of it. And then the manager.

25:14

which in this case would be us.

25:17

We would also take 50

25:19

percent ownership of it. And we would

25:21

be the ones that would manage the renovation

25:24

of it, manage putting a renter in it,

25:26

aka generating income off of it.

25:28

And then they wait like 10,

25:31

20 years for the market to go up. And

25:33

also for the value to go up from a little bit from the renovations.

25:36

And then they refinance it, take

25:38

the money out of the mortgage and then buy another

25:41

one and they keep doing that over and over again. So

25:43

we looked at that model and we tried to

25:45

just simply apply it to rural land. Which

25:48

actually makes a lot more sense from both sides,

25:50

because why would, why would an investor do

25:52

that with you? Why would a mortgage partner come in

25:54

and basically buy land for you and give

25:56

you ownership of it? Well, one

25:59

is because you're paying most of the mortgage. They're

26:01

just putting the down payment down up front. And then

26:03

over the next 30 years, you're paying the majority

26:05

of the mortgage. So that in and of itself

26:08

makes sense, but they're doing it also

26:10

for cashflow and equity. So

26:12

those two things When you compare

26:14

rural land to suburban

26:16

properties, they are way better

26:19

in both of those areas. So,

26:21

let's say, let's talk cash flow first. If

26:23

you go and buy

26:25

a suburban property, you either just

26:27

rent out the house, or maybe you have

26:29

a house and a suite in the basement or something,

26:32

so you get two renters in it. Well,

26:34

we have 160 acres, I could put a thousand

26:36

renters out here. The only reason you can't on

26:39

a suburban property is because you run out of space and

26:41

you're also not really supposed to be like, it's not like

26:43

you can grow enough carrots in your backyard to make a

26:45

profit, you know, whereas like I would hear

26:48

you could do anything. You could do dozens of different types of

26:50

farming. You could have goats or have

26:52

honey or, you know, like whatever,

26:55

like meat birds, like. Layers,

26:57

like whatever you like cattle, like, like

27:00

whatever you want, you could do like all

27:02

sorts of things. You can do land tours.

27:04

You can do Airbnb and short term rentals.

27:06

You can do storage. People just store their

27:08

stuff because they don't have anywhere else to put it. Like there's,

27:11

there's a million and one different things that you can do

27:13

out here that you simply can't do on

27:15

a suburban property. So your,

27:17

your cashflow capability, your cashflow

27:19

potential to make money on the land is massively

27:22

higher than suburban property. And

27:24

the second is equity. So We

27:27

actually know some people that flip rural land.

27:30

So what they do is they go in and they buy barren

27:32

land that has nothing on it. No well, anything.

27:34

And they pay like 20 grand to drill a

27:36

well. And they know how to do their research

27:39

to know if they're going to hit water or not, or

27:41

be like relatively sure you

27:43

can never be absolutely certain, but they're like.

27:45

Pretty sure they're going to hit water.

27:48

So they'll pay the 20 grand, they'll drill the well,

27:50

no pump in it, no pump house, literally

27:53

just a hole in the ground with a pipe in it and a cap

27:55

on it. That's it. And then they sell it for

27:57

a hundred thousand dollars more. So

27:59

that's a 5x return because

28:02

they just, they put 20k in and

28:04

that 20k made it worth 100, 000 more.

28:06

So that's five times what the investment

28:08

is well, what the money is that they put into

28:10

it. Whereas if you, if

28:13

you go into a suburban house and

28:15

you flip a suburban house they

28:18

pretty, what they're doing is they're taking

28:20

something from an eight

28:22

to a 10, right? They're taking a rundown

28:24

house and they're putting paint on it

28:26

and they're changing some you know, faucets

28:29

and like some cosmetics and they're, they're making

28:31

it nicer. So they're

28:33

not addressing any human needs. They're

28:35

usually just addressing human wants. They're just

28:38

making it nicer. So it's bringing

28:40

it from an eight to a 10. Whereas with rural

28:42

land, when you're starting with a barren piece of property,

28:44

you're taking it from a zero to an eight. So

28:47

you have way more points of value

28:49

to offer because right now there's

28:52

no, you can't, it's unusable. So

28:54

you're, you're, you're turning it into something

28:56

that is usable and you're getting

28:58

the water, you're getting the power, you're getting the

29:00

dwellings and structures so that it's

29:02

actually usable piece of property. So

29:04

because of that, if you go,

29:07

invest 1

29:09

into a renovation on a suburban place, you

29:11

probably get about 1. 30, 1. 50

29:14

out, whereas we get,

29:16

if you invest, you know, 1, we

29:19

probably get 5 out based

29:21

on that example with the well, so

29:23

you just get, you get a higher investment return

29:25

on the money that you actually invest into the infrastructure

29:28

on a barren piece of property than you do compared

29:30

to a suburban piece of property. So with

29:33

those two metrics, The Burr's

29:35

method of investing actually is

29:37

easier to get people more interested

29:40

in rural land than it is For

29:43

them to go buy a house in the city, which hundreds

29:45

of thousands of people do every

29:47

single day So if you if they're doing

29:49

that then you can definitely get somebody to help you

29:51

out with rural land And it's also a little

29:54

easier because I think it's just this dream right

29:56

like everybody Everybody would love to be able

29:58

to say that they have this cabin property that they can go,

30:00

you know, take their kids to or whatever, right?

30:02

And just escape to sometimes. And even,

30:05

and especially if they don't even like, if

30:07

they don't have to do the work and you're the one out there

30:09

doing the work and taking care of it and stuff,

30:11

like that's pretty sweet. That's a sweet deal.

30:13

So yeah. So that's, that's the other method.

30:16

And the third method is owner financing,

30:19

which is essentially what discount lots

30:21

does. But discount lots, for example,

30:24

they don't have all the land, right?

30:26

They only have a small like a,

30:30

what's it called? A category, a small catalog

30:32

of properties for you to choose from. But

30:34

you can actually go out and do it yourself. So

30:36

what you can do is you can use a software like PropStream.

30:39

There's other ones out there, but PropStream is

30:41

just a good example and a common example,

30:44

and it shows you all this crazy real estate

30:46

data. So it'll show you who bought a property,

30:48

how long they owned it, what they bought it for, what the mortgage

30:50

was, and it'll calculate whether or not they have a

30:52

mortgage anymore. So then you

30:54

can use that to find, you can narrow it down and

30:56

be like, okay, I'm going to look at. Properties

30:59

that have no mortgage on them at all. And

31:01

what you can do is you can then send a piece of mail

31:03

to that person. And sometimes

31:06

they actually get your, their email and phone number and

31:08

all sorts of stuff. So you could send

31:10

a piece of the mail's more, the most common

31:12

way of contacting them. You can send some mail

31:14

and you can basically say, write, write it, just

31:16

write it like a passionate letter of like,

31:19

here's what I want to do and why I want to do

31:21

it. Because these people, often

31:23

you find somebody who's in

31:25

a situation where they bought this land. 60

31:27

years ago for pennies on the dollar, they bought

31:29

it for like 20, 000. And now

31:32

it's worth like 500, 000. And

31:34

their kids don't want it. Their kids are living in the city.

31:37

Then you have black rock coming around trying to buy

31:39

up all these properties. And you know,

31:41

they don't want it to go to some conglomerate. They just want

31:43

a family to come and do something good with it.

31:45

They want somebody who actually cares and gives a shit

31:47

about the world and about the community.

31:50

So you find somebody like that. And

31:52

you, you do that by volume, you send out, not,

31:55

not 30 letters. You send out 300

31:57

letters, you send out a thousand letters if you have

31:59

to. And then you get replies back.

32:01

You get people calling you back and they say, yeah, I'd be

32:03

down. I'd be down to, to to do an owner

32:05

financing deal. And what that means is that there's no banks

32:07

involved. It means that you can negotiate.

32:10

A much lower down payment and oftentimes

32:12

no doubt or I should say sometimes no down

32:15

payment at all where you can basically

32:17

get in and you can do like a rent to own

32:19

where you just get in and you start paying a couple

32:21

grand a month and you get to live

32:23

on this property and build it out. And

32:26

the cool thing about that is then we help you cash

32:28

flow the property and generate income on it so

32:30

that the income on the land actually pays for the land.

32:33

Yeah that was a brilliant segue to my next question.

32:35

But before I get into that part, I, is

32:37

PropStream a U. S. based website

32:39

or a Canadian or both?

32:42

It is US based. I am

32:44

actually unsure if they do Canadian

32:46

stuff, but, uh, there's another

32:49

site. If, if somebody just Googled PropStream

32:51

alternatives in Canada, there's some

32:54

stuff that comes up. One of them, one of them has the word

32:56

red in it, like red line or something.

32:58

I don't know. It's red something. And that's,

33:00

that's like a Canadian alternative.

33:02

Okay. Awesome. Yeah. I think most

33:04

of my, my listeners are U. S., but I

33:06

do have a good number of Canadians. So I

33:08

just want to double check. So, okay. I love those

33:11

three options. And

33:13

that makes so much sense about the

33:16

flipping, sometimes being more lucrative

33:18

in the rural places than suburbia,

33:20

which I'd never thought of it like that, but it's super logical.

33:23

So I love that idea of how you

33:25

were talking of going from eight to 10 versus

33:27

zero to eight. It's a huge difference. So

33:29

that's a huge, huge paradigm shift for me

33:31

just to think of it in that way.

33:33

Sometimes you can stack those things too,

33:35

right? Like if you go and you find a good owner financing

33:38

deal and then you also find somebody interested

33:40

in coming up with a bit of money and helping you, you

33:42

know, be a partner in that then it's, it makes

33:44

it even better of a deal because you come to them

33:46

and say, Hey, look, I got a really good deal on this property

33:49

from somebody. Do you want to come in on it with me? You

33:51

know, we, we have an example of a client, FJ,

33:54

he's in Pennsylvania. He

33:56

started going out and he looked at dozens and dozens

33:58

and dozens of property. He looked at almost every property

34:01

in like his entire, I think it was either

34:03

his entire County. Like he was driving all over the place.

34:05

For 18 months, he almost gave up. Finally

34:08

he finds this one property that he thought wasn't

34:10

going to be the one, which is funny. Cause I actually

34:12

hear that quite a lot. Everyone just like doesn't

34:15

look at this one property. And then they finally do.

34:17

And they're like, This is it. And

34:19

he got in touch with the landowner,

34:21

which is really important. We always try

34:23

to get in touch with the landowner and encourage our clients

34:25

to because Things

34:28

like this happen. And what happened was

34:30

he just started talking and he told his

34:32

story. He told his story to the previous

34:35

owner. And it was just like what

34:37

his vision was for what he wanted to do with it.

34:39

She loved it so much. She reduced

34:41

the price by 400, 000.

34:44

Down, it was, I think it was like 1. 1 million down

34:46

to like 000 and

34:48

also gave them 200, 000

34:52

worth of heavy equipment, including a

34:54

bulldozer, a truck, a tractor, like

34:56

all sorts of stuff, ready to go full tool

34:58

shed already outfitted. So if you went

35:00

to somebody and said, Hey, look, I got

35:02

this really good deal. You want to go in on this

35:04

with me and use the Burs and layer the Burs

35:06

method on top of that to be able to get some help

35:08

into it, it makes it a better deal for everybody.

35:11

So. Telling your vision, telling your story

35:13

and connecting with people. Human to human is

35:15

a really big part of it. We see it all the time.

35:18

Like our clients always have really amazing,

35:20

cool stories and you never know who's out

35:22

there. You just got to start moving and start talking to people.

35:24

Yeah, taking that action. That's the key.

35:27

That's a cool story. So you, you alluded

35:29

a little bit to this idea of being able to bring

35:32

in cashflow from a property.

35:34

I know that's the dream for many of those in my audience,

35:37

many homesteaders. I see most of

35:39

my crew, their initial thought

35:41

is I'm going to get the homestead and I'm going to be

35:43

able to quit my nine to five from selling soap

35:45

and eggs. And I usually will

35:47

tell them, I love your drive,

35:49

but I don't think it's going to work like you think it's going

35:51

to work. So can you speak a little to that? I know

35:53

you have some really creative, you've already kind of hinted

35:55

at some of them, creative, unique ways to think

35:57

of making your land profitable, but maybe not

36:00

necessarily in the soap and egg realm.

36:02

Yeah. So we have I mean, I want

36:04

to go over a couple of different models here because there's some really cool

36:06

things that our clients are doing right now. Some

36:09

big things that would let you

36:11

retire for the rest of your life and

36:13

never work again. And then some like

36:15

more ongoing things that you can just continue

36:17

running. And a

36:20

big part of this, I'm going to go over two things.

36:22

First, we have a

36:24

saying, we just say treat it like a business. And

36:27

we don't say that from like a corporate

36:29

perspective of like, you know, hate

36:32

your job. No, you're not building

36:34

a job. You're building something. We, we

36:36

want to work with things that are highly automatable

36:38

so that we can automate them or near like

36:41

nearly automate them. It's never truly

36:43

automated. You still have to put a little bit of effort

36:45

in. But for example, we have some glamping

36:47

tents up. And after we built

36:49

them and rented them for a few months, we

36:51

then had live work exchange folks come in

36:54

and manage them for us. And

36:56

now we have, we have paid staff on

36:58

site that manage them for us. I haven't

37:00

touched those in, in like two and a half years.

37:03

Since we, since like, and we've only been, we're

37:05

going in on year, like three and a half.

37:08

So I touch them for like the first year. And after that, I haven't,

37:10

I haven't touched them at all. And they've just been

37:12

doing their thing. So

37:14

like, it's, it's, it's relatively very

37:16

automated, but sure. I've had to like do

37:18

a bit of management you know, probably an hour and a half,

37:21

two hours of management with the staff on site

37:23

a week. Which is pretty low for, you

37:25

know, what we're able to make with that. And

37:27

like order a mattress here and there, like, just

37:29

like, you know, random, random things. So that's what

37:31

I mean by like, I try to make it like

37:33

nearly automated. So we,

37:36

when we say treat it like a business, we really just

37:38

mean take it seriously. Because

37:40

a lot of people come into this like a fairy

37:43

tale fantasy, right? And we're just like,

37:45

if you don't plan, then you might

37:47

get completely screwed. Like

37:49

you have to treat this seriously

37:51

and like actually make decisions

37:54

appropriately and have systems for your decision

37:56

making process and go get advisors

37:59

that you can learn from before

38:01

you start. Like get them now,

38:03

start building a team now so that

38:05

you know who to talk to when something goes wrong.

38:08

Yeah, like there's, so what that starts

38:10

with is for one, getting

38:12

the plan out of your head onto paper so

38:15

that you can organize your thoughts. Because

38:17

if you can't organize your thoughts, then how are you

38:19

ever going to communicate your thoughts to anybody else?

38:22

And then, you know, then the next step is doing

38:24

exactly that is communicating your vision to somebody

38:26

else, because you're going to need help. You're always

38:28

going to need help, whether you need help with the money or not,

38:30

you're going to need help physically, you're going to need help to

38:33

attract, you know, other people to be a part of

38:35

this, unless you literally want to go build a cabin

38:37

and just sit in the forest by yourself, like then

38:39

you can totally do that. But yeah,

38:42

so one would be

38:44

taken seriously. And the next thing is

38:47

that we, like. Stepping

38:49

off of that is we use

38:51

a tool called cost benefit analysis,

38:53

and that's what we use to decide

38:56

on what we're going to do first. And

38:58

I say that specifically because it's not

39:00

what you're going to do. It's what

39:02

you're going to do first. And I

39:04

mean that you can do anything that you

39:07

want. You can sell soap, you can

39:09

sell eggs, but what

39:11

you do first matters. Because if you

39:13

start by selling soap. You

39:15

might never really get anywhere else,

39:17

and you might go bankrupt. So,

39:19

let's maybe sell what's best first.

39:22

And then we'll sell soap down

39:24

in the future when it makes more sense to do that.

39:27

So you know, for example, what that looks

39:29

like is in one column, you

39:31

would basically take a spreadsheet out or a sheet of

39:33

paper. And in the first column, you would write down

39:35

all of your ideas. So you want

39:37

to have eggs. You want to. Your

39:39

soap. You want to host the odd retreat.

39:42

You want to do some glamping rentals, put

39:44

up some glamping tents and rent those

39:46

out. You want to rent some space. If

39:48

you're doing that, you may as well rent some space out

39:50

for other people to host retreats because now you have the

39:52

infrastructure to do it. Maybe you want to.

39:54

Rent out some long term spots on your land for

39:56

people to park a tiny home and come

39:58

and have affordable housing. Maybe you want

40:00

to, you know, have honeybees. Maybe

40:03

you want to raise rabbits. Maybe you want like

40:05

you have cattle, like the farming

40:07

side, there's like dozens and dozens of things.

40:09

So like there's lots there. We have people with all

40:11

sorts of plans and ideas coming in.

40:14

So you list all of those out and

40:16

then in the next column, you, you list

40:18

the cost, just a general cost.

40:20

How much is it going to cost me to get this up and going?

40:23

not a

40:24

And then in the next column, you write down

40:26

how much money is this going to make me every

40:28

month or every year.

40:30

stipend that we use

40:31

And then you run a, you basically just run a ratio

40:33

on those two numbers, the input versus

40:36

the output. And you just start to

40:38

see like, if I, if I want

40:40

to build a farm, it's going to cost me a million

40:42

dollars to build this farm. And I'm going

40:44

to make 200 grand a year. Or

40:47

it's going to cost me 200 grand to

40:49

build some glamping rentals. And

40:52

it's going to make me 200 grand a year. So

40:55

which one, you know,

40:57

with farming, it's going to take you five years to

40:59

get paid back with glamping. It's going

41:01

to take you one. So there's your ratio.

41:04

There's your decision. You go with the one that

41:06

makes more money faster, and

41:08

then you can reinvest that money. Into

41:10

your farm because the other thing is not a lot of people

41:12

have a million dollars to build out the farm, right?

41:15

So if you do what is the

41:18

lowest cost first? It's the most effective

41:20

use of your funds and then you're able to reallocate

41:23

that faster and actually build

41:25

up more so maybe the first one is Glamping.

41:28

And then the second one is hosting some

41:30

retreats. And then the third one

41:32

is, you know, renting out space

41:34

for storage or some other events or something like

41:37

that. Now you have three forms of cash

41:39

flow and you're going to invest all of those into

41:42

having cattle. And then into having

41:44

like laying hens and then into having,

41:46

you know, what, whatever else it might be. And

41:49

it starts to compound because you go from

41:51

just one form of revenue to two to three,

41:53

and then it gets you to four or five, six, seven way

41:56

faster than anybody else. And, you

41:58

know, an example that I often use is that I

42:00

live rurally, I drive by neighbors. I drive by people

42:03

all the time, people that have been doing this for 30 years.

42:05

And they're, they're still, they're still at the very

42:07

beginning. They're, they're still

42:10

doing everything themselves and

42:12

it looks really hard. They're building everything.

42:14

They're managing all of their own animals. They're managing

42:17

all of the stuff that they're growing. They're doing

42:19

all the hay. They're like, they're out there just

42:21

like having a really rough go. They're doing all their own firewood.

42:24

It's a full time job. It's a, it's a, it

42:26

really is a full time job. And

42:29

we're up here and I can, I'm only in

42:31

year three. And we can come and go as we

42:33

please. We got our firewood ready,

42:35

you know, we got income coming in, we

42:37

got brand new tiny homes, we're not living

42:39

in a half torn down cabin, you know,

42:41

like things are comfortable,

42:43

and they're cruising along, and

42:45

that's the only reason for that is because

42:48

we use this cost benefit analysis

42:50

to be able to strategize what we do first.

42:52

And we're gonna do it all, and we're working on

42:54

doing it all, and we're You know, we have full time

42:57

permaculture consultant on site that works

42:59

with us to build out the farm. We

43:01

have heavy machinery. We're digging, we're digging a man

43:03

made lake right now. We're doing 35

43:06

ponds. Like we got big projects

43:08

going on. So not only has. Has

43:11

that allowed us to be more comfortable? But it's allowed

43:13

us to really shoot for that big grand

43:15

dream and that big vision that we really

43:17

want to hit

43:19

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

43:21

And one, another piece of that I think, cause I, I

43:23

think about that a lot with. especially

43:26

in the homestead world, kind of what you described

43:28

where there's people who've been doing it for 30 years, but they're still

43:31

managing all themselves. They're still struggling. It's

43:33

still a slog every day. I think,

43:35

I don't know if you see

43:37

it in your clients, but I see it in my audience. I think that

43:39

sometimes we as homesteaders, we put a badge

43:42

of honor. It's like, I'm going to DIY to

43:44

the death. And it's like, there's almost this

43:46

pride in like, my chores took four

43:48

hours. And I do it twice a day. And

43:51

when I see that, I'm like, I think we can create

43:53

leverage. So you're not like living in your

43:55

barn, doing chores your whole life. So, cause I want,

43:57

I want to see people be able to progress. Like you were talking

43:59

about, like we get this level figured out and then

44:01

we get to do the next thing and the next thing. But what

44:03

advice would you have to someone who's struggling with letting

44:06

go, with outsourcing, with I think

44:08

sometimes people keep their mindset, keeps them into that. Like

44:10

I kind of got to be the martyr of the barnyard.

44:12

Do you have any thoughts on that?

44:14

Yeah, I mean, I think there's I see

44:16

and the people that I talk to is a lot of fear

44:19

of getting help because

44:21

of just the horror stories that exist

44:23

when trying to get help and just

44:25

the lack of familiarity or experience

44:27

with running an effective

44:30

and enjoyable team. You know, for

44:32

every horror story that you hear, like the human

44:34

mind is just biased to negativity, right?

44:37

But for, but for every like negative experience,

44:39

there's, there's positive ones as well.

44:41

Like, I love my team. It's, it's like,

44:43

it feels like a very communal, it feels

44:45

like family up there. We all enjoy

44:47

it. Our team comes to us and says, when

44:49

I started working with you guys, I wanted

44:52

to do this on my own. My five year plan was to

44:54

go buy land next door and do it and do it on

44:56

my own. And they're like, now that I've been

44:58

here for a year, they're like, I don't ever want to leave.

45:00

I want to, I want to do this with you guys

45:02

because it's better together. Like

45:04

doing it together is just better for everybody

45:06

involved. So it's, it's a really

45:08

good experiences, enjoyable experience, and

45:10

it's an easier, easier time. But

45:13

people just need to learn the systems

45:15

on figuring out exactly how to do that.

45:17

So for us, we had a couple of phases

45:20

and the first phase was

45:22

live work exchange because we couldn't pay anybody.

45:24

We hadn't, we didn't have enough income at the time to

45:27

actually, to actually pay people. So

45:29

the live work exchange was a mandatory phase

45:31

because we needed the help very badly. But

45:35

if once you can get out of that phase,

45:38

I would much rather pay people because it's a

45:40

much easier relationship and you get better work

45:42

and you get full time work and all of that stuff.

45:44

So but live work exchange. Was

45:47

very easy to get and

45:49

basically we just you have to have like

45:52

a real hiring process a real Application

45:54

process for people and our application

45:57

process. I'm pretty proud of we have a lot

45:59

of really good people on our team We're pretty happy

46:01

with them. So With that, what we

46:03

do is we basically use

46:05

a Google form. It's free. Anybody can

46:07

do it in like five minutes. And

46:09

we ask two types of questions. The

46:11

first type of question is alignment questions.

46:14

And the second type of question is problem solving questions.

46:17

And alignment questions are just simple things like,

46:19

you know, if you could recommend three books to,

46:22

that you think everybody in the world should read, what

46:24

would those be? And you know, just

46:26

a few little things like that, where you start to like,

46:28

just see what they're like, like personality wise,

46:30

or like, you know, asking about their upbringing, what was your

46:32

upbringing like, you know, just whatever that

46:35

kind of stuff. Like you can really see what someone's interested

46:37

in. And if you would like to hang out with that person

46:40

on a regular basis that's pretty much all

46:42

that's for now. The really important part

46:44

is the problem solving side. Now there's

46:46

two sides of this. I'll give a direct example. This

46:48

is a real example from our property. So.

46:51

We want to use the

46:53

application. To get people

46:55

to think through real life

46:58

scenarios on our property to see what they would actually

47:00

do before they ever even show up on site

47:02

or even know where we live. So

47:04

uh, one question on

47:06

ours for a general caretaker on the property

47:09

was, okay, there's

47:11

a big tree that's

47:14

dead. And it's, it's a hazard

47:16

to people cause it could fall over at any time. So

47:19

we need to take it down, lay out the

47:21

steps for exactly what you would do

47:23

and, and why you would do that. And

47:25

then you get all sorts of different answers where you get

47:27

one person's like. I take the chain. So

47:30

I go cut it down. Another person

47:32

says I would get a chain

47:34

or a rope and I would bring

47:37

the machine over and I would pull it to one

47:39

side to make sure it's going to fall safely to one

47:41

side. And then I'm going to, you know, take

47:43

it down. And then I'm going to buck it up

47:45

and I'm going to make, I'm going to

47:47

mill some of it and we can use that

47:49

lumber. And then I'm going to chop

47:51

some of it up for you know, firewood

47:54

for the larger stoves. And then I'm also going to chop

47:56

some of the limbs up for firewood for the mini stoves

47:58

in the tiny homes. And then everything else

48:00

I'm going to put, I'm going to turn into mulch, or we're going to turn

48:02

that into compost. So who has better

48:04

experience between those two examples? Like it's,

48:06

it's a, it's abundantly obvious

48:08

who has more experience in that and just who

48:11

can think through things more. And

48:13

that's just the beginning. So that's step one of problem solving.

48:15

Step two is we don't hire

48:17

people who we have to hold their hand. We

48:20

hire people who can problem solve on

48:22

their own and create systems behind

48:24

them. So the next one with

48:26

the next question is now that

48:29

you've done that in your head,

48:31

you've now you've taken this tree down in your head. Now

48:34

pretend that we had a live work exchange

48:36

person living on site and they were working

48:38

under you and you needed to

48:40

train them to do this task. create

48:43

a training system in a step

48:45

by step list to train this person

48:48

or tell us what your training system would

48:50

look like. And then

48:52

they basically build a training system

48:55

for the next person. And what that,

48:57

what that forces them to do is it forces

48:59

them to think through their own actions. It

49:01

forces them to actually create a system out

49:03

of it that they can communicate to somebody

49:06

else, which means that they're an effective communicator.

49:08

It means they can lead others and it means

49:10

they can create a system behind them so

49:12

that if they ever leave, Then you

49:14

have all this system. You have a training there.

49:17

You're basically having somebody create your own

49:19

internal training so that the next time we hire

49:21

a caretaker. Well, we just give

49:23

them this training before they even show up. And now there's,

49:25

they're trained on all the things that we do on our property.

49:28

So that's, that's an example of

49:31

a simple application process. That

49:33

that, that we've done. And a big thing

49:35

we have is people say, how do you find people?

49:38

Finding people is easy. It's how do you find

49:40

the right people? How do you filter those people

49:42

out? If you want to find people, what

49:44

we did is we went on Facebook marketplace. And

49:47

we posted up a photo of a trailer just

49:49

on our lot. And we said, this could

49:51

be you. You come live here.

49:53

You bring your own house, because we don't, we can't afford

49:55

to pay for houses for people yet. You bring your

49:57

own house and you

50:00

basically live for free. And

50:02

and you get to, you just work

50:04

for a few hours a day kind of thing. And

50:07

that was our LiveWorker exchange program. And

50:09

when we did that, we got like 600

50:11

applicants in like three weeks. I had to take

50:14

the post down because I was getting like super overwhelmed

50:16

by everybody messaging me. So there's

50:18

a really easy way to go get a bunch of free applicants

50:20

without having to advertise for a job posting

50:22

or anything. People love it. And we

50:24

had lots of like qualified people.

50:27

Yeah, we had people that had ran like full provincial

50:29

parks and campgrounds for like 35

50:31

years with like crazy outback

50:33

experience and stuff and like professional

50:36

red seal tradesmen, like people, like actually

50:39

skilled people.

50:41

That's incredible. I love what I see so much.

50:43

I think it's from your entrepreneurial experience before

50:45

you started this. You're bringing some of those business systems

50:47

into this world, which is often sorely

50:49

lacking, but it's, I think it's why you've been so successful

50:52

because it makes a big difference and it can

50:54

be so simple and obvious, you know, like hire

50:56

people who don't need their handheld, but sometimes in

50:58

these other worlds, people who aren't used

51:00

to that business atmosphere, it's, it's a revelation.

51:03

I know it was for me when we started, you know, a decade

51:05

ago, so. It's, it's good stuff, it's simple,

51:07

but it's not always obvious when

51:09

we're in this, coming into this for the first time.

51:12

Yeah, another really good one. Just like a couple

51:14

tips for people. One is,

51:16

we never use residential rental agreements. We

51:18

always use commercial lease agreements. Residential

51:20

rental agreements can they're kind of scary

51:23

a little bit. People are often scared of having

51:25

people on their land because they think they'll never leave.

51:27

And it's because residential rental agreements

51:30

actually give the renter more rights than

51:32

you have to your own land. Whereas

51:35

commercial lease agreements, you can kindly and respectfully

51:37

ask that person to leave at any time

51:39

for whatever reason. So that's

51:42

why we do that. And then another

51:44

one is a, is a, how we manage

51:46

people after they're hired is really big. The

51:49

system that we use is called EOS. The book

51:51

is called, What the Heck is EOS? It's

51:53

called the Entrepreneurial Operating System.

51:56

And it lays out everything for you

51:58

and everything for your staff. So the book

52:00

in and of itself is a little training book.

52:02

It's about this big. It's just a little book. And

52:05

when you have somebody join you, the first

52:07

thing you do is you order one of these books and you give

52:09

it to them. And they read it and the book

52:11

trains them. So you don't have to, the

52:13

book tells them exactly how to communicate

52:16

with you and why it's better to do it

52:18

like that. And all sorts of stuff. It's,

52:20

it's really, really, really, really good. And that's

52:22

how we manage our team in a couple hours

52:24

a week. We do a one and a half hour

52:26

meeting on every, every Monday morning.

52:29

So everybody knows what they're doing for the week. And

52:31

we do like. 10 minute huddles every

52:33

morning. So everybody knows what they're doing for the day.

52:36

And eventually you can level out of that

52:38

and have a team leader that's running those daily meetings.

52:41

And it covers things like, what

52:43

do you go over in the meeting? It covers things like,

52:45

what do people do when they have a problem? They

52:48

just ping your cell phone. They just call you or

52:50

they yell at you or they come and knock on your door.

52:52

So you're constantly just getting pissed off and getting negative,

52:54

shitty news all the time from your staff that are just

52:56

like, it's stupid. So with,

52:59

with EOS, there's something called an issues

53:01

list. So you never talk to me about

53:03

an issue, unless it's urgent, unless

53:05

it's absolutely urgent, like the farm's going to burn down

53:08

right now, or somebody died, or somebody

53:10

got seriously injured. Like, basically,

53:13

if you have an issue, you put it on the issues

53:15

list, and then you shut up about it, and

53:17

then we talk about it on Monday, and

53:19

every Monday, then we calmly

53:21

and concisely go over

53:23

the issues in the issues list, and,

53:26

and everything, every issue you put.

53:28

Needs to come with three possible

53:30

solutions. If you don't put

53:33

a solution in there, we will not

53:35

cover the issue and you're fired. That's,

53:38

I really like that.

53:40

because, because everybody just, basically

53:43

we have like a zero complaint rule. There's

53:45

no, no complaining allowed ever. And

53:47

if you bring us an issue without a solution,

53:50

it counts as a complaint. So you

53:52

have to think about a solution first and

53:54

oftentimes when the people actually get in that

53:56

mindset, they've already solved it

53:59

Yep, yep. I

54:01

like that we have a, in addition to everything

54:03

else we do, we have a small restaurant

54:05

that is a long story, but

54:07

Oh, that's super

54:08

yeah, it's cool and crazy, but

54:11

this week, especially, we've been just having lots of staff

54:13

stuff happening and I'm just like, I'm like,

54:16

I need to get this book, like yesterday, because I

54:18

think that some of this would be helpful just with not

54:20

pinging my cell phone every time. small.

54:24

That's, that's key. So I'm going to go get that book. That's an

54:26

excellent recommendation. But yeah, good

54:28

for any team, whether you're a restaurant team, a homestead team,

54:30

a farm team. I think that's great advice.

54:33

Yeah, and and honestly Like

54:35

our feedback from our team is huge

54:37

because everybody felt really unorganized before

54:40

So it's not only for you, it's like, it's literally

54:42

for everybody. Like everybody feels so

54:44

much better and so much more organized because when

54:46

they don't know what to do, you frustrate

54:49

your staff, you frustrate your team. And everybody's

54:51

running around getting pissed off at each other and nobody knows

54:53

why. And it's like, you know, so with

54:56

this, it's like, everybody loves it. And

54:58

people really enjoy the working environment. And

55:00

then it becomes fun. Like that's, that, that's

55:02

the difference between having like a stressful

55:04

team and like actually having fun with your

55:06

job and with your day to day.

55:08

Yes. I think, yeah, that piece of, like you said,

55:11

it's amazing when they just don't, when the staff doesn't

55:13

know. Just the simplest thing they don't know can

55:15

throw everyone into a tizzy. I've learned that the hard way. It's,

55:18

it's fascinating human nature. So yeah, good,

55:20

good skills to learn. I think people's skills are

55:22

always good to learn, but they're hard to

55:25

grasp sometimes.

55:26

Yeah,

55:27

So I just realized we're rolling up

55:29

on time. I know you have a lot going on, so I want to be respectful

55:32

of this amazing hour you've allotted us.

55:34

I think my, my question, just to wrap

55:36

this up, I feel like we could go for a whole nother hour cause you

55:38

are a wealth of knowledge. I love how your brain works.

55:41

I love the systems and how you move through

55:43

what you do. And we're going to talk about in just

55:45

a second about how people can continue to

55:47

connect with all your incredible frameworks

55:49

and systems and content. But just

55:52

to put a, a nice little bow on

55:54

it, what do you think is the biggest mistake,

55:56

the number one biggest mistake that people make

55:59

when they're coming into buying land, finding land,

56:02

making income from land, what do you see as like the pitfall

56:05

that just gets people time and time again?

56:07

not making a plan. If people

56:10

talk about it, but they don't know what to do.

56:13

So I'll just give everybody the first step right now.

56:15

You, you make a plan. The first step is

56:17

you make a plan because if it's vague

56:19

for you and you don't know what that next step is,

56:22

then you won't take it. And then you'll never

56:24

live the lifestyle that you want and it'll forever

56:26

live in the back of your head as a dream. So

56:29

take that and put it down on paper. And

56:31

what that looks like, the three elements of that

56:33

is a pitch deck, financial projections, and

56:35

a business plan. The business plan, I actually

56:38

don't really give a shit about. You could just do the pitch and financials

56:40

the pitch day between the two, like. A

56:42

business plan is basically a summary of

56:45

a pitch deck and your financial projections. And

56:49

now I know that sounds businessy,

56:51

but like, I, I tried to think this

56:53

through, like I'm a hippie at heart. I

56:55

just happened to like, have have

56:57

had business experience. And not really

56:59

corporate. It's always just been my my own thing.

57:01

But I've tried to look for other tools

57:04

and I can't find them. So why

57:06

reinvent the wheel? These are tools that

57:08

people have been using to organize information,

57:11

and that's all I'm doing with them. So

57:13

and we offer a business plan package

57:15

where this where it's our exact business

57:17

plan that we used to get funded

57:20

to get the land to execute our vision

57:22

with all the real numbers from our actual

57:24

project in it. And it's all pre

57:26

filled out. So you can just make tweaks

57:28

and edit it and like punch your own numbers in and stuff.

57:31

So people want that. We have that available, but

57:33

yeah, I mean, essentially when you do that and

57:36

you start running that, the financials is

57:38

really like, what are the costs going to be?

57:40

And when are you going to spend that money? And when

57:42

are you going to do the things that you say you're going to do?

57:45

And the, and the pitch is like the communication

57:47

side. The pitch is kind of like, what

57:49

do you want it to visually look like? It's kind of like a

57:51

vision board, but also with a little

57:53

bit more detail in it. What do you want it to look

57:56

like? What do you want to do with it? And

57:58

that vision is key because it helps you start

58:00

to tell your story because a lot of people

58:03

like don't really know exactly what to say to others.

58:05

But when you do that, you'll get in the habit

58:07

of curating your story in a way

58:09

that makes sense, not just to you, but to other

58:11

people. And that's when it, that's

58:13

when all the magic starts happening. Because when you communicate

58:16

that other people are understanding you, other

58:18

people want to help you, and then you start to

58:20

build a team and actually start to move forward. So

58:22

I would say biggest mistake for that I

58:24

see people make is just simply. Not

58:26

getting their thoughts down on paper.

58:29

I agree. Yep. So, moral

58:31

of the story, y'all. Make a plan. Put it

58:33

on paper. Simple, but

58:35

important. Okay. I like it. That's a good action

58:37

item for people to take away. So how

58:40

can people get more of

58:42

the amazing systems that you have created?

58:45

Cause you have a lot. I was looking through your

58:47

stack of offerings before

58:49

we got on the call and it's impressive what you've created. So kind

58:51

of give us a bird's eye view and where can people enter

58:53

into that? Cause there's a lot there.

58:56

Yeah, yeah, so we have like our flagship program,

58:58

which includes pretty much everything.

59:01

Like it's it's everything from, you know, building

59:03

your plan, to yeah, finding

59:05

land, to assessing the property, to

59:07

raising the funds to buy it, to generating income

59:10

on it. To designing it once

59:12

you're on it to structural stuff

59:14

and infrastructure and how to save money on

59:16

solar power and structures and all

59:18

the rest. Machinery equipment like

59:21

food growth, like all sorts of stuff. So

59:24

everything's in that and That's

59:26

that program right now is 397 with,

59:29

we do offer payment plans as low as like 77

59:32

where, and if you can't afford that, let us know, like, we're

59:34

just here to help people out. And then we

59:36

do have a VIP group as well. If you wanted

59:38

like more like to actually talk to me,

59:40

you can talk to me twice a month on that. It's

59:42

relatively affordable as well. I think it's like somewhere

59:45

around like 67 a month or like 600

59:47

a year or something like that. So yeah,

59:50

those are, those are the options for the main course, but I

59:52

really think a good starting point for people, if

59:54

they don't want to, you know, spend that

59:56

much is we have a book, we call it our

59:58

strategy handbook. And we,

1:00:00

we built that to talk about

1:00:02

a lot of the strategy we talked about on this call today,

1:00:04

but there's, there's more. So I think there's about 50 chapters

1:00:07

in that. It's a small, quick read. And

1:00:10

it's there to basically get

1:00:12

you inspired and get your, get

1:00:14

your brain turning. Get your ideas flowing

1:00:17

to make you realize that this is possible

1:00:19

for you and give you options on how

1:00:21

this is possible and how you can actually take action

1:00:23

to get there. And that book, we have a free

1:00:26

plus shipping offers so you can get digital

1:00:28

copy or you can get a physical copy shipped to your door.

1:00:31

And that's a great way to just kind of get introduced to,

1:00:33

to what we do and how we can help you out.

1:00:35

Awesome. And we're going to have that link down in the show notes

1:00:37

for you guys to grab that

1:00:39

strategy book and that will help you connect

1:00:41

with Jamie and their incredible.

1:00:45

Cause you guys have gone above and beyond.

1:00:47

I actually have seen, I think I've seen your

1:00:49

ads for, for a long time. And then

1:00:51

when I had one of your team members reach out, I'm like,

1:00:53

Oh, you're those guys cause you're, you're marketing

1:00:56

is brilliant and it's relatable

1:00:58

and authentic. And so I instantly knew who you were. So

1:01:00

well done. I appreciate a good marketing

1:01:03

campaign.

1:01:04

Thank you. I appreciate that. Yeah, we

1:01:07

yeah, you're not just marketing fluff either. You're marketing

1:01:09

something that's substantial and real. And that's, I think

1:01:11

what makes it so good.

1:01:13

thank you. I appreciate that. Yeah. Yeah. I

1:01:15

love your stuff. Thank you for hosting Today

1:01:18

and for everything that you're providing for everybody

1:01:21

Absolutely. Yeah. My pleasure. Well, thank

1:01:23

you again for joining me and sharing so much of your brilliance.

1:01:25

And I can't wait for my audience to connect with you

1:01:27

more throughout your various content paths.

1:01:30

So yeah. Thank you again for being here

1:01:32

and y'all we'll catch up with you on the

1:01:34

next episode of the old fashioned on purpose podcast.

1:01:37

beautiful