The $10K/month mistake that made me $3 million in Real Estate

I bought a vacation home in the Rocky Mountains and nearly destroyed my family's financial future.

$10,000/month mortgage. My wife's job disappeared overnight. The COVID Airbnb boom dried up. We were overleveraged, underwater, and out of options — and I was staring down bankruptcy with a wedding on the line.

That rock bottom forced me to stop optimizing the wrong vehicle and start looking for what actually works.

In year one of land investing, we did $650K in profit. Year two: $1.9M. Year three: $3M+.

In this episode I break down the 5 lessons that experience burned into my brain permanently:

→ Don't buy an asset you can't survive losing
→ Check your identity at the door
→ Pick the right vehicle before you optimize the strategy
→ Active income first, passive income later
→ Boring wins

If you're grinding harder than your results deserve, this one's for you.

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Transcript

and she lets me know that her company that she was working for
goes under
so a significant portion of her income just vanishes like that
our wedding was on the line
our dream house in colorado was this huge anchor
and we were over leveraged
it was very simple so started thinking about all the excuses
in that moment
of that i was gonna tell my family to cancel our wedding
i thought bankruptcy was certain
i thought it was gonna happen absolutely
to make matters worse
this is kind of around the time that the covid travel boom ended
booking started to dry up even more
all the performance of the nightly rates that we took from air dna
were changing right
because the covid travel boom was propping them up artificially
this was rock bottom we were flying
i was flying
i wasn't able to spend time with my wife like i normally would
it was a level of difficulty that i wouldn't wish on my worst enemy
but i want you to leave understanding something
this moment as brutal as it sound
is the reason that i'm able to sit here and i'm say hey
i have this seven figure land investing company so
because when you're drowning
you stop worrying about what looks good
and you start looking for what actually works
so at this point i had to find some way of producing income
and because my wife was the one making money
we had rental properties we had this airbnb and
and deep down
i wanted to be the guy that could provide for your family
for those of you that are listening to this
that are guys it was kind of that feeling of like
alright man it's my time to be the hero right
it's my time to step up to the plate
i'm gonna be able to tell this story one day
and man i went all in right
i heard about land investing through instagram
and actually seth williams are tips for podcast
i flirted with it in that earlier that fall
i never went all in and i was like man
i'm gonna do this i'm gonna go freaking all in to this
and i'm gonna learn this because land
even then and now it's not a lot of people are talking about it now
you see a lot of miami gurus and things like that
talking about wholesaling to builders
but i saw this amazing blue ocean
i saw these opportunities
and so with thirty thousand dollars in the bank
a little bit extra more than that
i bought a course with the limited savings
and you know frankly
the course was like okay and there was a lot of outdated materials
but i committed i went all in and i lent
entered this the land flipping market
at one of the most competitive time in recent history
there's no funding there's no true mentor
no true safety net i built the plane on the way down
using my background in sales and acquisitions and operations
and in year one
we did over six hundred fifty thousand dollars in profit
i paid for a wedding i paid for a life
and i dug us out of the colossally stupid decision
of buying a vacation home in the remote rocky mountains of colorado
and here's what i realized
land had that every other real estate model i tried didn't
there are no tenants there are no termites
there's no water pressure issues
there's no snow plows no three thousand dollars a month utility bills
no late night calls about broken pipes
no airbnb rentals no holding costs
i mean limited holding cost
the margins are great as a result of this
our average profit per deal is about thirty seven thousand dollars
and you don't need to be leveraged to the gills like i was to do
i went from a multi million dollar liability
with a ten thousand a month payment
to flipping dirt with limited downside
year one we did six hundred fifty k
year two we did one point nine million dollars
and in year three we're pacing towards the
you know three million dollars in gross profit
it's the same skill set it's marketing
it's sales it's underwriting
with a completely different and optimized vehicle
now after reflecting on the success that we had in land
one of the things that i was actually
talking to a guy the other day about was hey
so i learned really valuable lessons
about going from the mistakes that i had in buying
so i learned some really valuable lessons making all these mistakes
it almost cost me my shirt right
the first lesson is do not buy an asset you can't survive losing
and maybe even a liability right
this one burned itself into my brain after this grand lake property
before you buy anything a house
a rental an airbnb
a piece of land ask yourself the question
if my income disappeared tomorrow
would i still be able to will i still be fine with airbnb
there's so many variables with rental properties
obviously you have the person in there
in the property there are ways
obviously with multiple units
to make sure that you are covered with cash flow
but a lot of times people don't have the
the right quantity of expenses right
and so we don't have enough the
the quantity of cash for cap ex or other expenses
so if the answer is no you don't actually have enough cash
then you're over leveraged right
over leverage doesn't always necessarily mean
you have one form of income
it means that if something bad happens
you get wiped out right
i think naval ravikant said
you'll never invest in something that could take you to zero
lesson number two is check your identity at the door
i realized how much of my confidence
looking back was tied to flexing for other people
i never thought i was that guy
i actually kind of pride myself in not being that guy
but i end up being that guy
we wanted my wife and i
the mountain house because of what it said about us
not because of what it did for us
my wife and i still refer to it as the grand lake mistake
and it's burned a permanent reminder into our minds
never over leverage to buy a home or a lifestyle just to look good
wealth is not for show it's for freedom
and that's the nuance that we really learned uh
through this mistake lesson number three is
pick the right vehicle before you optimize the strategy
i spent years optimizing the wrong vehicle
better tenants better contractors
better systems for managing sixty
seventy eighty units of a hundred and twenty year old buildings
none of it mattered because the vehicle was wrong
and we had c class properties that were barely cash flowing
when i switched to land the same effort produced ten x the results
not because i got smarter
because the vehicle had better mechanics
it's like trying to swim up a stream against the current
versus with the current you know
we had no renovation risk with land
no tenant risk no long holding periods eating in the margins
you just find undervalued dirt
you improve it you buy it right
and you sell it lesson number four is active income first
passive income later
there's so many gurus on the internet that go after passive income
right everyone chases this passive income
before they've earned the right to it
they buy a rental property because someone told them to
someone said that hey
passive income is the path to freedom
they spend three years making three hundred a month after expenses
and then they have a water heater or a roof break
and they lose all of the time
energy and effort that they put into that
the active income the business that generates real cash flow
gives you big windfalls
that allows you to deploy into assets that compound
so it could be land flipping
i'm talking about land flipping an investor
cause that's my vehicle i feel very comfortable talking about it
we've done it successfully
and what you do with the profits
that's where wealth gets built
but first start with active income
for most of the people listening to this channel
active income is the best place to start
lesson number five is boring wins
people who build real wealth don't have the best strategy
they have the most boring strategy
executed longer than everyone else
now i didn't invent land flipping or land investing
i just showed up every day
i sent marketing i made offers
i closed deals i improved every time
and i documented everything so i could hire people to do it without me
no hacks no shortcuts
no secrets just following a pre built system
repeated and improved over time
it is not rocket science but people tend to overcomplicate it
they don't see the results as quickly as they want
or it's a little more boring than they thought
it's just consistent effort and they sabotage
he told me in november of twenty twenty two
when i was sitting in my living room with my wife
the night after she got laid off
staring at a ten thousand a month mortgage payment
i couldn't make my wife crying
three years later
i would be running a multi seven figure land company
with a team of fifteen it would have been really hard to believe you
that's the thing about hitting rock bottom
you start caring what looks impressive
and you start building what actually works
the grand lake mistake cost my wife and i years of stress
tens of thousands hundreds of thousands of dollars
and almost permanently
put us in a position that pretty much destroyed our financial future
but also gave me the one thing i needed
the urgency to find a better way
if you're watching this and you're stuck
whether it's with a bad investment
a bad business model maybe you're getting laid off through ai
or just a feeling that you're grinding harder than you should
for the results you're getting
take this from someone who's been there
the vehicle matters more than the effort
pick the right one and see your results explode
if you want to see how i actually run this business
the marketing the deal math
the team structure the frameworks
i break all of it down in the land letter
it's free i send tactical land investing breakdowns every friday
the link is in the description down below
if you want to plug in a community of operators
who are actually doing this at a high level
not just talking about the landman community
has over six hundred investors
and it's completely free that's also in the description
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hit subscribe
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we will see you next time