Land Deals Paid More Than Her Doctorate

243: In this episode, I sat down with Quynh and Tri Vu, a married couple who walked away from their six-figure careers, an IT engineer and a pharmacist, to go all-in on land investing.

(Show Notes: REtipster.com/243)

Their story is packed with insight. We cover how land deals paid more than Quinn's doctorate, how they left behind high-stress jobs for more time freedom, and how they quietly raised capital without even asking for it.

You’ll also learn how their “zero down” strategy led to 50 buyer defaults in one quarter, and why they still consider defaults a win. Plus, Tri shares the dopamine automation he built for their team that keeps everyone motivated with real-time updates.

We also explore whether you can actually run a successful land business with your spouse (without losing your mind).

Whether you're new to land or trying to scale, this one is a masterclass in systems, mindset, and people-first investing.

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Transcript

0:37

Hey, everybody. How's it going? This is Seth Williams. You're listening to the RE Tipster Podcast. This is episode 243. Today, I'm talking with Quinn and Tri Vu, a married couple that I met earlier this year at the Land Unconference. Quinn and Tri are from San Diego, and they've got a pretty cool story. Both of them were able to leave behind their stressful careers and transition into full-time land investing. And like a lot of us, they wanted more freedom and less chaos and a business that didn't eat up all of their family time. And in a fairly short time window, they've built a land business that brings in a really good income. They focused on consistent owner-financed land deals and a handful of other things. And in this conversation, we're going to dig into how they learned the business, how they built the team that they have, and the systems that they use to run everything day-to-day, and also how they raise capital when cash gets tight. You'll also learn how they balance the work between them as a couple and what they've learned about loan defaults and the mindset that helped them stay consistent long enough to build some real momentum in this business. So whether you're a brand new land investor or even if you've been at it for a while and need some inspiration to scale, this one's packed with a lot of insights from two people who have actually done it. So Quinn and Tri, welcome. How are you doing? Doing great. Thank you for having us. What a great intro. Thank you, Seth. Of course. So let's start from the very beginning. And I mean the very beginning. How did the two of you meet? How long have you been together? We met in high school. I was in ninth grade and I was in 10th grade. We met in Dallas, Texas. So we've been high school sweethearts. We went to like homecoming together, went to prom together. And even in college, we were lab partners in chemistry together. Wow. Wow. Man, that's crazy. I mean, do the two of you like change a lot over the course that you've known each other? I mean, ninth grade, like you're still a kid at that point, right? I guess we probably changed, but since we were together, like we just kind of got used to it. Changed together? Yeah. We just got used to our changes. Definitely. Yeah, totally. What did the two of you do before you got into land investing specifically? Had you done real estate before you discovered land or what was your prior career before this? So I was in IT. I got lucky and got into Dell way back when. And Quinn went to college and got a doctorate and she's a pharmacist. And we just rode that for 15, 20 years, pretty much until like two, three years ago, really. To answer your question regarding real estate, I want to say back in 2017. Tri actually got us started with investing in real estate. He was listening to some different podcasts, like Bigger Pockets and some other ones. And he really wanted to get involved in investing. So he started going to local, was it local meetups in San Diego? Just to meet other investors and learn about it. And shortly after that, we started buying Airbnbs. I found Airbnbs in San Diego for us, and then he hired a property manager, kind of got everything going. Your first Airbnb, when did that start? 2017. He locked our house, we're like, we're going to do this. And we didn't have enough saved for San Diego. property. And we didn't take out loans before we didn't know about e-locks. We just went to the first real estate meetup and, And we started looking at properties. And the guy was like, all right, let's put an offer out. And they wanted to see a proof of funds. And I was like, yeah, I'm going to go to the bank and get the T-Lock. And that's when we learned it takes some time to get prepped up and fill out the forms. And we got like a wad of cash and we bought the first Airbnb. And it was super fun. It was all of us with the kids. And her dad was in town. It was a 3-2 and a 2-1. It had an ADU that was a garage converted to ADU, another 2-1. And I think we furnished the whole house for like 6K. And it was super fun. I think the first one took like three weeks. I think three weeks to get up and running. And we had to get like AC. They didn't have ACs in the house. Parts of San Diego doesn't have it. Yeah. And it worked out well. We did that for like two, three months. And we still had some leftover HELOC money and we bought the next Airbnb and we're like, oh, this is great. This is amazing. And then we were going to do it again and again, but we ran out of money. We worked for another year and we bought another one out of state, long distance. We bought one or two more the next year. And we're like, all right, this is the plan. Just buy Airbnb every year or two. But we started doing short terms to like long term rentals. It was just kind of easier. And there were service providers that bought it, got a bad house, we halved it, stuck a tenant in, and we just bought it like kind of serviced, ready to go. Like a turnkey rental? Turnkey, yeah. It was like one of the advertisements at the back end of Bigger Pockets, and we just called the guy up. So we got stuff all over the place. I think the third property was in Mississippi, and then there's one in Chicago, a nice Class C, Class F maybe. That's when someone got shot. That was a good one. And then a Baltimore one. We went everywhere. We didn't really sell it properly. We just kind of picked a property that the numbers looked good. So in hindsight, we could have done it better. So how many of these short-term and long-term rentals do you have now? I think we're at 12, like 10 to 12. I always get the doors mixed up because some of them are like duplexes. We're starting to liquidate them now. Is that a pretty important part of your current portfolio or your income? Or like, is it more of a pain? Like you just said you want to liquidate them. Are you trying to get rid of these things because they're not worth it? or where is that at now? Everything skyrocketed in the last couple of years. And we found land like two years ago. And we were like, this is it. We had a year where like we had one or two squatters and then a tree fell on one of our cabins and then took out the roof, like a bunch of stuff. We had another rehab where like the lines were the old lines. And we got to take out all the plumbing, couple of bathrooms, like two units. It was just a lot while we were working our W-2. And we're like we got to get out so we started like trying to sell some of these things. But we had the depreciation and the cost seg, and we had to pay some of it back. And we're W2, so there's active versus passive losses. So we kind of learned the hard way about all the differences. And we did 180 to land, like, all right, we're just going to start liquidating it. But now we kind of realize you kind of have to have both. You got a land business with no depreciation. You need the real estate to kind of offset it with the depreciation. So there's like a balance. We're trying to figure that out. I mean, I agree. I think you do kind of need both. And a lot of people sort of miss one or the other. Like they just kind of go all in and kind of become obsessed with one of those two, but kind of miss the whole diversification kind of thing. But I'm curious if you were to start over and if you could redo this whole short-term, long-term rental thing so that you didn't have to want to sell them off like you're currently doing, what would you do differently? Like what would you go back and tell yourself? Yeah, don't do that or do this instead. I feel like we kind of got started with the short-term rentals because it was really cool. We picked all the popular touristy spots that we heard about on different podcasts and a lot of our friends were buying there. And we bought partly because of the hype. We wanted to be in those fun markets, which was cool during COVID when everyone was traveling remotely. However, now that people are traveling less, our numbers are not the same, right? Not the same as they were during COVID. So I think if we were to start over, I would want to make sure that, like, could we underwrite it even if it wasn't a short-term rental? We do it based off of long-term rental numbers. Maybe not the first year, especially if you're in a very popular market, but by, like, year three or four, if we wanted to just flip it to a long-term, can it cover everything? I think that would be part of it. And I think the other thing I didn't realize is the property manager and maintenance, they always get paid. Like whatever is left over is kind of like what the owner gets. So it's not a ton, even though, you know, we have several rentals. I think I only saw like the rainbows and sunshine. I didn't really look at like the rainy day scenarios. It's a really important lesson, though. I just made an offer on a self-storage facility yesterday after like trying with several others that kind of fell apart. But the issue that I kept encountering was kind of a similar thing where the facility owner had one that was like half empty and all kinds of problems with it, but they were. Quoting it in their mind as though it was full and prices were all maximized and as if everything's perfect. But the reality is like, that's not the situation here. And even if it was, I got to think, well, what if the market changes and things go down? Like I got to stress test the thing. It's important, first of all, for you as the buyer to understand that, but also it's not going to work if the seller doesn't also understand the reality of the situation or if they're not willing to come to the table on that. But it's a good thing to know from your experience. The other thing, too, that I didn't realize was the Airbnbs, the rentals we have in San Diego are actually the best because the season in which people travel is the longest. Whereas, you know, we may be in other markets where it's super hot part of the year or people only are traveling like maybe six months out of the year. That's like your full season. So just knowing that variation, it's kind of interesting. It sounds like you both had great careers, right? I mean, were they great? It sounds like something must not have been perfect if you wanted to get out of that and build this rental portfolio or then getting to land investing. So tell me, what were some of the pain points or problems in your professional lives that were pushing you to look for something different? I had a midlife crisis. That's essentially it. In 2017, I took a management job and I tanked. It was like fires after fires after fires. And I was just an engineer. And now you're supposed to learn leadership and management, reporting up and managing sideways, managing teams and doing all this project work outside. And I tanked. And then Quinn said to me, you got to find another job. So it was like six months of like working eight to 10 PM. Hours were rough and because we had data centers around the world and just fires after fires and i was kind of on like zombie mode and the pain i guess it was the dipping point and we're like that's it i don't care what we're doing we're going to make it work so it was like barely underwriting and we just like put offers on literally everything we saw it even passed the scratch sniff test like we saw some houses that were sideways like this is a good area and literally the walls were like crumbling down and we had contracts like what are you doing but yeah that was the pain for it for me and Quinn's always been supportive, She's had like high energy, high optimism, optimism on everything. So she's like, yeah, let's do it. So for me working in health care, like I first started out working at the hospital. So I was one of the newer people. So I worked night shift. I worked weekends, holidays because the hospital never closes. We're open every single day. So that was very, very chaotic. I actually didn't even know my schedule. Like every six weeks, my schedule would get released. And that's what I got. You get what you get. And if you want something different, you need to make friends and trade. Trade shifts with people and they'll trade with you if you have something better. But if you have something worse, good luck. No one's going to trade with you. And then also went into management. So I was like, oh, maybe I'll get a more stable schedule if I go into management. But what I learned is I'm just on call. I'm on call a lot. So even when I am off, I'm not really fully present because I'm afraid I'm going to get a call. We're going to run out of medication. Someone's going to call out sick. Like something's going to happen. It's almost like you're the property manager for the pharmacy in the hospital. So did that for a couple of years, took several different management positions. And we noticed that we just weren't a hundred percent fulfilled. We're just working a bunch of hours, definitely staying busy. And we just wanted something different, like more flexibility and freedom with our time, which we did not have. Even though I paid well, we weren't really living the life that we wanted? I think for me, it was the IT stuff. Everything was going overseas. We had a team in India we managed. I just kept on jumping jobs to prolong what I loved. I was doing storage. I just loved it, but everything was literally going overseas, managing teams overseas. And I kind of saw the writing on the wall at that point. I needed to pivot. I just didn't know what it looked like. My job was in jeopardy, basically. Being an entrepreneur was the scariest thing to me. betting on yourself using all your money using your 401k like to invest like that was like a foreign concept like, I think the pain of work was just like, all right, I got to do something different. And it was just 180. We got to the point where we were so busy with our rental stuff. Tri was like, OK, one of us needs to leave our job. I was like, well, it's going to be one of us. I want to go first. Yeah, no kidding. It sounds like, Tri, you kind of had this realization before Quinn. Or did you both realize in 2017, we didn't like it. We both went out and you're going to go first. Yeah, someone gave us good advice. It was like, don't leave your jobs both at the same time. Like switching from W2 to entrepreneur is already tough. And both you guys doing that job is going to be horrific. So one of us got to leave and Quinn was already in another job that she really was ready to move on. And that's what happened. I was a little bit reluctant about us investing in real estate, though. He had to be the one that dragged me along. I was in a position where I was trying to leave pharmacy, but it was very hard because I had spent so much time going to school for it. It was hard for me to just leave. So I actually went to part time for like maybe a year and a half before I actually was able to have the courage to like fully leave the pharmacy job. Yeah. Wow. So on that, replacing your incomes, I'm assuming you've got great health insurance, Quinn. I don't know if that's true or not, but moving away from those kind of careers, I mean, that does seem like a big leap, not just replacing the income, but just the perceived safety and all that. Maybe it's just to talk about when did you find land and what made you think, hey, that could be the thing that's going to make it happen. Or maybe it didn't start that way. Did it kind of start out as like a money-making hobby and eventually you realized, oh, hey, this could actually be a job replacement. Tell me about the sequence of how that happened. We didn't find land immediately. I was actually working as a real estate agent in San Diego while I was working my W2 job. So I felt like that was kind of like the bridge where I was selling a bunch of houses after I got my license. And I sold it to some of the people I worked with, some of the pharmacists and physicians and nurses, some of Tri's friends who are software engineers that needed houses or investment properties. So that allowed us to kind of have a bridge. So when I left pharmacy, I already kind of had income and I made more actually in real estate. So it was kind of like an easy decision to leave because real estate was going really well. And then some of my friends, I was in a female mastermind, a bunch of female entrepreneur CEOs talking about what they were doing. And I had a good friend who was in the land space. And she did the same thing. She had Airbnbs. She had commercial property, long term, short term, midterm rentals. And she said that her favorite actual business was the land business. And it was like the most passive. So I was just like very fascinated when she told me like how she got the land, how she sold the land. And I was like, I just want to do what you're doing. It sounds like you're a bank and you just happen to have land. And she's like, yeah, it's kind of like that. I saw the look in Quinn's eyes when she lit up and told me about it. I was like, I know she's going to go down this rabbit hole. And then you fast forward, she signs up for a coaching program. And then you fast forward again, we get a ticket to a conference. And I run into some other people doing land that I knew at that conference. And I was like, this is nuts. Like, there's too many signs. And I was just so at that point, like, this is it. I think this is a new thing. We were kind of getting tired of all the Airbnbs and all the headaches. Yeah. We just had a bunch of issues with squatters and repairs. And it wasn't like a passive thing or partial management, you know, a few hours a week thing. It was like, man, you got to talk to the insurance couple, follow the contractors, follow the property managers, like all day thing. I mean, Trae even had like people in case he had to have a security guard walk by the property. And he had like people who had dogs that would walk by the property, make sure the squatters don't come back. It was just like so much stuff that had to be coordinated. So what year was this when you decided, hey, let's start doing land? Oh, it was in 2022. Tell me how you got started. Like, did you just take a course and send mail the way most people did? Or what did that first year look like? The first year I signed up for the Land Geek with Mark Podosky and I did the flight school program. And at that time, I want to say it was like 12 week program. And we had like classes online where they gave us homework. We met virtually like online, like certain time, and then we could come to that class with questions that we had. So they kind of showed us how to like set up our business, how to send out mailers, how to like research areas, how to price properties, how to market it. And in that program, it was a lot of technology stuff that was a little bit hard for me. I could talk to people, but it was kind of hard for me to like set up some things. So we didn't really make a bunch of traction until Tri got involved. So like once we finished that program, we went to like this in-person conference and then we signed up for like one-on-one coaching. And that's when everything really took off was after like, you know, Tri had left his job. We were both doing the coaching program together. We started off with, you know, some small wins, very small sales. But it gave us a lot of momentum. And I remember waking up, I would check the mail, like the virtual mailbox. It'd be so exciting any time we got mail back. I was like, oh my gosh, it's working. They're accepting our offer. It was just so, so exciting. Every little part of the journey was exciting. That is an amazing feeling. I still remember the first acceptance I ever got. It's just like this mind-blowing moment where it's like, really? This isn't just like a made-up thing? Like it actually works? It's just cool to see the proof and see it in action. So like, were you doing blind offers or something? Or what kind of mail were you sending out? So when I was in initial training program, I didn't mail. I just bought like wholesale and land art because I was like a little bit nervous. Like, what if I price it wrong? But we priced it, I want to say like 25 cents on the dollar, 20 cents on the dollar. And like, they actually like wanted to sell it. Like the people who we had talked to, they didn't want that land anymore. Some of them had never even been there or they like inherited it and they're just been paying property taxes for something they didn't even want. So they ended up working out. What do these deals look like? Like how much are you paying to buy them? What do you end up selling them for? So the first couple of deals I remember, they kind of came back for, it was like a two acre property property. Somewhere between like $2,000 and maybe $2,200, we were able to, I think, sell those properties for like around $150 a month for 60 months. Like our prices were around that range, like $2,000-ish for some of those areas that we started mailing in. So when you say $150 a month, like what is the actual? $9,000.$9,000, okay. Is that $150 a month with any interest or any down payment required or what do the other terms look like? Our down payment was really small. It was like about the same as a monthly payment. And then we charged like a $250 document fee to kind of handle all the paperwork. We didn't do any interest. We had a cash price, which was a little bit lower. And then we had like an owner financing price that gave people more flexibility to pay over time. What is the difference? Like on a $9,000 property, if that's the seller finance price, what would the cash price be? The cash price might have been like around $7,500. When you advertise that kind of thing, are you trying to draw their attention to the monthly payment more so than the cash price or whatever? You just put both on there and they figure it out. We put both on there. And what we notice is a lot of times like people, their life is based off of a monthly basis. So they're like, oh, yeah, it's like about less than my car payment. I could do that. Like everything is like kind of framed in some sort of thing. Like they already paid off their car. They have some space, that kind of thing. And sometimes we do have some people who just buy it outright too. But for the most part, a lot of people like the fact that it's owner finance. They don't have to go through a bank. They don't have to do a credit check. They just need to be able to make their payments. So what does your default rate look like? Like how many of these deals don't end up paying all the way through? I love that. We did this like zero down thing last year and then the beginning of this year we probably had about 50 defaults the first quarter so like one to three a week but the first quarter was nuts and then we probably average about like one a week right now it kind of averages out to be around 25 30 percent other than that big spike we had from like zero down you think that spike was directly attributable to the zero percent down thing i think so i mean we never seen such a surge i mean everything was like falling out of the sky like so default isn't a bad thing i mean we get the property back they paid down a little bit we sold it like i remember the first year we didn't have that many sales so we didn't have any many defaults but i think we sold like one probably like three times in the first six months so like it was kind of like all right cool it's already paid off so it's kind of like free money at this point the down payment is very important if you care about people actually paying. These people that default, did they make any payments at all? Do you know about how long they had been paying before they decided to just get out of it? You know, it varies. Some people, they missed the first payment. And then other times people will pay over a year. And then they'll default. Or sometimes they pay six months and they default. It just really varies. Sometimes people walk away after two or three years. They're like, they're just tired of it. They don't even think twice. They just want to cancel. So everyone's situation is different. So when we do get a default back, a lot of times those properties are very desirable. They've sold very easily. So we're not really worried about it selling again. We already have all the marketing material for it. And we know what type of client would like this kind of property. Promotes his new book, talks about upselling. And Quinn did this cool thing. So like after the influx of defaults the first quarter, she went back to her existing buyers and she offered them a promo. If you put another payment down, we'll give you like X off or something. And she had a slew of clients that, you know, doubled down and paid down and it dropped the default rate. So like calling the existing buyers was like a really cool tactic that Quinn implemented. You could just resell to your existing buyers during the promotions versus, you know, just sending out to like random new people. Yeah, that kind of happened around tax refund season. So we knew kind of people were coming in with some money and sometimes they don't even know what they want to do with that money. Other people want to go on vacation. But some people were like, yeah, maybe I'll use, you know, a thousand or a couple hundred of my tax return money. To put towards the principle of the property. And it was kind of like an interesting way to get more revenue in that didn't cost us a lot. I mean, it cost us time and time from our team, but it was kind of cool because now we had clients that were a little bit more committed, right? Because they had put additional money towards the property. And, you know, we looked back actually recently because we did the same kind of thing six months later. And some of the people who paid extra last time, they already defaulted. So they paid extra and then so much has happened between now and then they let go of the property. How many different states is this happening in? 11. So our process is we would send them like a cancellation link. So they pay $75 to cancel their contract. We have a transaction coordinator that handles all of that. She stops the loan. She sends in the paperwork to sign. It just says that they relinquish the property, which is what they wanted. They're doing an early cancellation. that our transaction coordinator transfers it to the marketing team who helps with reposting the property and we'll let other clients that we know who may have been interested in that area that really wanted a property there that, they may have missed out on previously. So what websites have been most effective for you at getting properties sold? Like if you could only list on one website, what would that be for you? We like land.com and landflip, but we're excited about our new website. We do this thing where you get the down payment via Stripe and then you send out the documentation and you docusign and you put it in the loan portal. So the new site is going to take like 75% that and integrate it on the website. So you could take the money and DocuSign the contract on the website in not even five minutes. So we're super stoked about that. So that's where we're kind of heading. And then with all this AI stuff, which you're doing right now, Seth, we got a voice AI bot being baked out right now. We like these Google and meta ads, but the quality is really bad. Like those leads are just tire kickers. So if you had this bot, a sales assistant that could help clean all that up and filter out the noise and then booked appointments that's being baked out right now using the same tool you're using with your tool so pretty stoked about that that's awesome this bot that you're using is this like a voice ai bot that handles phone calls or is it like a chat like text base or is it both both so the conversational bot could do the texting and emailing i think that's been around and it's pretty nice like it's pretty baked out like it's ready to go production ready the voice ones were hit or miss depending who programs it and which app you use the main players the go high level the retail and i think it's pronounced vapey those seem to be the top players but you could integrate it all and then we had a conversation with a buddy yesterday and he's human but he sounded like a bot for some reason so it's like it goes both ways right the bot could seem more human than the human we're using all of that and we're kind of playing with it right now but Ours will be a voice bot. Like, I think most of our guys that buy are like 40-year-olds and up. They just want to live off-grid or do recreational stuff. They want to talk to people. I forget who I was talking to about this the other day, but they said they're using a voice AI bot in their business. And they had somebody who called back and was like really nasty to the bot, like yelling at it and stuff. And then they hung up. And then that same person called back to apologize to the bot. And they knew it was a bot. It wasn't any mystery who they were talking to. I don't know. If somebody would go to that extent of like calling back to say sorry to a bot, I mean, it just tells you something about the human psyche and like it doesn't necessarily mess anything up just because you're not talking to a human, at least not when the bot is as good as it is. It's getting more and more realistic. Usually when you program the bots, you're going to reference somebody, use this person's tonality and these type of questions. Kaylin's amazing. Use Kaylin-like questions or her tonality. She has so much energy, you just gravitate towards her. So, I mean, it's technically like a mini version of you guys. Now, when you said this bot is going to be cleaning up the leads that come in. Help me understand, what is it cleaning up? Is this like leads from paid ads that you put on the internet and those people are responding somehow? And then this bot is like qualifying whether they're an actual lead or what do I have wrong about that? Yeah, so the way I envision the funnel is like you have an ad and it says click if you're interested. You have a landing page, send me your name, number, email. If you want to call back and hear more about it. And then the bot will call them back. That's the ultimate goal. There's no scheduling. Right now, I got right below it. So like, here, here's our number. Call us. And the real human... Inbound calls to the AI bot. And then the AI bot will ask the questions. I think that stuff has been a way underutilized, mainly because people don't really realize it's there or maybe they don't believe what it can do. But like, it's just a matter of time, I think, before everybody's using that. It's amazing what it can do with very little input or involvement needed from a human to do a great job, frankly. So I'm curious when you said the different websites that you use to sell properties on, you said land.com, landflip, is that what you said? Do you ever use Facebook Marketplace or is that not really a useful tool for you? We haven't cracked the code. I mean, we got like 700, 800 leads from Facebook Marketplace. We haven't cracked the code on how to close those deals. And maybe you don't nurture them enough or we don't have the right sales reps to close them. But we even tried the AI portion of the Marketplace. So we're getting leads. We haven't figured out how to convert them yet. We have gotten a small number of sales on Facebook. And we have a lot of friends that actually have had success on Facebook Marketplace. We just haven't been able to figure it out. We've only been able to get really motivated leads so far on paid platforms. I don't know about the one that you use, but with Stride in the conversation AI agent, you can hook it up to Facebook or Instagram. Like it can handle conversations right there. So, I mean, I realize it's a huge waste of time in many cases, but like, who cares if your AI agent's handling it? You don't have to be there. That's a great idea. You're using the native AI built in and you could connect it somehow to a Facebook marketplace and it does all the texting within that chat window within the messenger. Yeah. So I believe that it works with a business Facebook page. So like they would have to start the conversation there and handle it on that platform i haven't tried it with facebook marketplace but i should i'm not sure honestly i gotta explore that i know it works with an instagram profile or even like whatsapp it can work with that the point is just to send them to the place where that ai agent is and start the conversation there and then it can go back and forth and you know if they're just gonna ghost the agent okay fine but at least i'm not using my time and energy to think through that the agent could just handle it for me i love that Yeah, all the meta business suite, which is Instagram, Facebook. Literally all those are probably in the meta. And then the bot talks there. Yeah, I was thinking getting off the platform, but it'd be easier to keep them on the platform. It's only one container. Another. You know, good use cases, having like the chat widget on your website, like in the lower right corner, when somebody lands there, it's like a little chat thing that pops up. I mean, it's meant to natively integrate with a website that is on stride, but you can also take the code and put it on literally any other website anywhere, whether it's WordPress or Wix or Carrot or whatever it is, just grab the code and put it there. And it's using the AI bot that you trained in stride. It's going to have the conversation based on what you natively trained it to do. But yeah, it's really cool. And even if the conversations go nowhere, it's trained to actually gather their names, emails, phone numbers. So you can like build a buyer's list in the background, even if it doesn't go anywhere, at least you're still collecting a list of possible buyers in the future. That's a great idea. It sounds like if I'm hearing you right, your properties always sell pretty fast. Is that right? Do they ever not sell? Like, do they ever have a property where you're offering seller financing? You know, it's a seemingly good property, but it just sits there and nobody wants the thing. And when that happens, why does that happen, do you think? I think we definitely have some seasonality to some of the properties that we have. Some properties that are near the mountains, we have some that are in Florida by the sunshine. So seasons really do affect it. Like there are certain times of the year, like we have land in Arizona. So when it's crazy, crazy hot, you know, we're not going to sell as much in Arizona. As soon as that temperature starts to cool down, all the Arizona people are starting to buy again. So we don't really look at it in so much time frame like how many days just because we know it really depends on when we acquired the property and that seasonality. But everything eventually sells. We're not like really worried about it. So like what's the longest you've had a property sit on the market? I mean, we've had some properties that have been on the market for years. More than a year. But sometimes it's because there might be something that's not as desirable about it. Maybe it doesn't have direct road access, or maybe it's in a flood zone, something like that. So it's not that big of a deal. Because eventually, I think someone will buy it because we price it in a way that makes sense. But we're not worried about anything not moving. What is your deal volume in a year or a month? Just to get an idea for how many properties you to go through? Yeah, it got kind of high. I think like 23, we had like one or two sales a month and it went to seven and then 10 sales. I think we bought a hundred properties that first year. And then last year, I think we only bought a hundred last year, but we sold like 200 the first year's inventory as well. And then this year, a couple of months ago, we sold about 250 properties and we buy at least another 200. What percentage of these properties are you selling with owner financing versus just cash? We did like 99%. Like we'd be lucky to get a cash sale. We didn't think about cash sales to be honest to recently. And it was this year someone challenged us, why don't you just put more ads out there that have only cash sale? And that's what we did. So retail cash sales, probably like 10, 15, which is like- A lot for us. Yeah, we probably had like two last year or something. Am i correct in thinking that capital constraints are a problem like if you're buying all these properties selling them with order financing you don't get all your cash back right away, is that a struggle and how do you deal with that like where do you get the money that you need to keep buying stuff we were just financing everything ourselves for a while who would get all the money back in two years and then everything else was just profit and then yeah you're right we hit a wall but we had a lot of friends like what are you doing guys this is cool and like i can't help. I'll show them every day. I'll pull up my laptop. Let me show you. Let me tell you about land. And then we go off on a tangent. And a lot of friends have invested with us in the last year. My friend's a fund manager and he wanted to give me this big lump sum of money. I was like, I don't know if I can buy that much land. So we kind of have both problems. Like sometimes we run out because we just keep it simple. And then we have like a big bucket of money waiting to be deployed, but we don't really want to go to that level at this point because we can't spend enough. So when you have these outside investors, friends or family or whoever, what are they expecting back from you in return for giving you their money? Yeah, that's a good question. So we have like different types of partnerships with people like just traditionally, if we were to do like some type of a prom note, you know, we might pay people like 10 percent back. And sometimes it's interest only. Other times it may be amortized and we pay back over a period of a couple of years. We've had other like joint venture partnerships as well. We've sold some notes occasionally, like we'll sell off some of our loan portfolio so we can get capital faster. And we've been buying properties in bulk. Like we like to buy land businesses. Like if someone is trying to sell off a large portion of their portfolio because maybe they want to be in a different state, different county, different area, then we'll try to buy a bunch of those. And sometimes we'll buy notes from people, too. Buy their existing loan portfolio if they're either leaving the land business or maybe they just want to transition their focus to something else. So those are times where we might need a little bit more capital. When we first started, I was a little bit nervous about getting investors, but it seems like it's pretty easy to get money as long as you have a good deal. So if you have a good deal, you're willing to give a good return. Money is literally everywhere. I think you're right. But this funding quandary is an issue for a lot of people. Their thought is, okay, I got to go use a land funder because banks aren't going to give me the money I need or a hard money lender. I'm going to be paying off the nose for that. But I mean, it sounds like for you, maybe just your willingness and ability to just talk about it and be excited about it. I mean, the people in your sphere of influence almost kind of like self-selected and said, hey, I want to do it without you even asking them. Right. I mean, we've had people like reach out to us, you know, from LinkedIn, just our friends. And some of them were telling us that they had their money like in a cd and when they heard like how much we would give as a return they were happy to even get out of their cd early or their high yield savings account which only pays like three to five percent so it ended up working out like if we are going to pay money to someone we'd much rather pay it to a friend of ours someone we know versus paying that money to a bank. What is the risk for them? Like, do you somehow guarantee their money back? Or like, do they get collateral on the property? Or is it just kind of unsecured? Like, yeah, we just trust you. It's a variety of different things. Like, you know, definitely tied to the business. We personally guarantee the notes as well. So we haven't had any issues paying anything back. So people trust in us and we want to do a really good job for them. You guys use a loan servicing company or loan servicing software? Like, how do you... Keep all of these notes organized and in one place. Here's a variety. We're using GeekPay and Terra Notes. Yeah. Is there a reason you use both at the same time? Do you want to answer? Yeah, it actually gives us some flexibility because we've bought notes from different investors. And sometimes they have notes in GeekPay already. And then sometimes they have notes in Terra Notes. So it's kind of nice. The transfer process is pretty simple. So just having both platforms, it gives us some flexibility when we're acquiring notes. That's kind of nice. One platform is like a lot easier, I think, on the client side. It's really easy for them to like set up and register. And then the other one, it's a lot easier on the owner side. Like from a bookkeeping standpoint, every single transaction is itemized. So we try to have both so we can have the flexibility in terms of acquiring notes. but one is like a little bit easier for our customer experience. The land market has changed a lot over the past 12 months. 2025 has been a challenging year for a lot of us out there. Has it been hard for you or with the types of properties you're selling and the seller financing, has it just kind of been smooth sailing this year? I think we've probably acquired more property this year than any other year. And we wouldn't acquire it if we didn't have confidence in like the business and the industry. Some of our friends have struggled during this year just because, you know, there's been a lot of changes economically, politically. I think things have been going okay for us. We're still growing, probably not as fast as last year, though. Our conversion rates on some of the land platforms... Have been lower. And I think part of it is because some of the leads that we've been getting, some of them are not actually leads. They're to solicit us to buy something else or to sell something to us, which is kind of like a different issue. But we're still buying property. And I really think that sometimes when you see other people that are buying a little bit less, it's kind of like an opportunity to like there's less competition when it comes to buying. And some of those properties, we have to buy this season. Even if it doesn't sell this season, it's because we're going to need it for next season. Now, going back to your marketing process, how are you marketing right now to find properties to buy? I've heard you talk about. Online ads, you do direct mail. Let's go through all the stuff you're doing and what's currently working right now for you. We've done a lot of tax, date auctions, mailers, and wholesalers. So those are the three main ones. We tried RVMs a little bit. We cold called prior and it seems to be like the mailers and then the tax auctions. And then last place is the wholesalers. We still like wholesaling because we need inventory and there's always a wholesaler out there. And when you say wholesalers, do you mean other land investors or house investors that have land that they don't know what to do with? Other investors that are also in the land business. Okay. And they just have a lot of inventory or that's their model. They just want to buy really low and sell a little bit higher and there's still enough margin for us. The other way we get a lot of land is through buying other businesses. And let's talk about that as well. What do you mean when you say that? You mean like you're buying somebody else's LLC that happens to own a lot of land or like they're just getting a bunch of stuff to you at one time? Or is this people who are like getting out of the business where they just have a portfolio they can't sell and you're willing to buy it? It's a combination. Sometimes they are wanting to get out of that particular state and they want to do bigger deals, subdivides or going to another area. We're already in that area. So sometimes we'll buy like a bunch of notes from them, we'll buy like their existing loans and will buy their inventory as well because they want to kind of be done with it. So that's another way where we're able to buy in bulk and they're just kind of happy. They just want to be done. They just want closure. Sometimes we have other people that are leaving the land business. Like it's a lot more work than they anticipated and they just want to go back to whatever they were doing before and they just want it to be super simple. So we tell them like, hey, our team will take care of all the paperwork for you. Literally all you have to do is go get it signed. That's also been a way where we've been able to help people who are trying to make a transition. How many of these land wholesalers have you worked with? Probably 10 or 20. That's a lot. Yeah. I can see somebody coming across like a one-off random opportunity where you just happen to know a guy who's trying to unload a bunch of stuff. But it sounds like you have some kind of repeatable, sustainable way to keep finding these people if it keeps happening, right? Right. So like, how do you find these land flippers that are like, hey, we want to take our stuff. Do you advertise for that specifically or something? Or how does that work? I don't think we advertise. People always like mention our names. Like, hey, you should talk to Try and Quinn. That's the majority of them. And then I guess we're just super friendly, too. And I have a lot of friends in the land business. I mean, you know, a ton of people, too, in the land business. And it just kind of happens organically. We really value relationships and people. And, you know, I think it's also kind of cool, too, because we like knowing where everyone is working, because if we run out of inventory, if our mailers are not coming back quickly, we want to know who we can go to. Right. So that organically allows us to kind of know, like, who's selling where in case we need more property. And then it's kind of like even if everyone is doing well in the counties and states that they're in there's going to be different times where they're going to need more inventory or they're going to want to sell more inventory so just having that connection sometimes like we have too much inventory we have to sell some wholesale and then other times like we need to buy wholesale so just kind of like knowing even if everyone's business is doing well we just have different times in the year where we need to get more so just having that connection is kind of nice and then if people know we're buying a lot of inventory it's just easier for them to say like oh well let's just go to try and quen they can just like have one stop and it's super simple. You know what Seth there's something we picked up over the years it was like, you have to first learn what you're doing like you read a book or something and then you got to actually do it you just can't learn and do nothing with it so after you do it but the last part was you got to share it you got to give it away and we try to share it with our kids and our community and that's just an easy way to connect with people just give it away just tell them everything. And sometimes it may come back in a deal or sometimes it doesn't. We really didn't think that far ahead, but it seems to be like the magic playbook where you just learn to share. Everybody skips the sharing part. You just got to share the, you know, teach it. They don't keep it, don't hoard it. It's kind of that abundant mindset and it kind of circles back unintentionally. I don't know if you're intentionally trying to network with people or if it just kind of happens because you're nice people and you like talking about land and that kind of thing. But I know for some people, they're introverts that kind of just want to be left alone, function as an island kind of thing. It's a struggle to get out there and talk with people. I say this from experience because that was me for a long time. I don't know if you can even do this because it seems like this just happens automatically. You don't even try. You just get connected with people that have money and opportunity. It just works out for you. But if you were to actually like sit down and teach somebody, this is how you network. This is how you find people that bring you opportunity. What do you do? Like, are you going to networking events? Or like, I know, Tra, you said you were in a mastermind. Do you just like make sure you mention land at least once in every conversation you have with everybody? Or like, how could a person who is terrible at this get better at it so that opportunities start falling in their lap like they do with you guys? My buddy says this thing. He's like, I don't have all the answers. But I got great questions. It starts with curiosity. Like I genuinely want to know more about you. And I'm kind of like you. Like I could be super introverted. You have so much going on, Seth. And if I don't ask you the right questions, you're just too humble. And I know if I ask you the right questions, you'll share it all. You'll tell me everything. And I think that's a fun game. So I had this acronym, F-O-R-M, Family, Occupation, Recreation, Motivation. I just go through that with people. And then something sparks. like oh let me dig a little deeper and just this is a fun conversation afterwards where i'm just learning i kind of go i start asking too many questions and then quinn has like this master skill of talking with people she doesn't realize her superpower like she could go deep or surface level but it's all organic and we've been trying to dissect quinn and make a bot out of her and it's super confusing we don't know how she does it like she sells so much land and everybody loves her like she's the ultimate ai bot if you could do it but i think it starts with curiosity like you gotta genuinely want to know more about them than you want to brag about yourself i mean would you say that between the two of you are you both equally responsible for everybody knowing that you do this and bring you opportunity or like is that more your role quinn is to be the one that talks about this stuff because from what i know of both of you and talking with you both, you kind of both seem equally willing to talk about it and motivated and socially presentable and all this stuff. It's not like you're a total introvert trying, you just don't talk to people. It's like, no, you're both doing the same kind of thing. We... Are both pretty outgoing. Try is really good about staying in contact with people over a long period of time. And he loves to coordinate stuff. He loves to like, be there and just make sure everyone is having a good time and getting a lot of value. In terms of me, like, I'm like an extreme extrovert. Like during COVID, it was really hard for me because I need to talk to people. And ironically, I think most of the friends that I attract are introverts. Most of my friends and my family. We just really want to make a strong connection. Like some people learn through reading a book or like watching a video. I think Tri and I learn from people. Like we learn from our friends. We learn from doing. And, you know, when we transition into the land business, we really wanted to get to know everyone and, you know, how everyone's doing and is successful. And I think when we are meeting people we're trying to learn and like absorb as much as we can because we're still pretty new like we've only been doing this a couple years so we're coming from the mindset we'd love to provide value like how can we provide value to them we leave with like how can we help you even when we buy land from a wholesaler we'll ask them like can we write you a nice review. Right. So we're just trying to figure out like how we can support everyone as we do business with them. And we've lost deals, lost money on deals just to help others out, like may lose a deal here and there, but maybe it'll come back later on. And sometimes we don't look at the numbers. It's more about the people and like, hey, we can make a bigger deal over here. But what's more important? Yeah, I like that idea that can we write you a nice review? Just something like that where it just shows that like you care about them, like you actually want to make the life better. And it's not a lazy way of saying, so what can I do for you? It's like, no, here's an actual tangible thing I would like to do for you. I've already thought of the idea. Just say yes and it's done. It's very uncommon that I get that from anybody. It's pretty simple. And then sometimes like we're their first review. They're like, oh my gosh, I need a place to put the review. They were so excited. Yeah, that's a great idea. Now, I am curious, working as a husband and wife, what's that like? Do you divide roles pretty well so that you don't get in each other's business? Are there any things that like you both share the responsibility or what's it like working together like that? It has its ups and downs. That's surprising. We try to break it up initially. Like she does the sales. I do the acquisitions and I was struggling negotiating the deals and talking to people about money. And she struggled with the admin paperwork and the systems and stuff. So it kind of evolved and she does the front end and I do the back end. That seems to be working well. When you say front end, do you mean like customer facing, whereas you do like just the internal operations admin stuff? Yeah, like she's really good with the sales and the marketing. And then I'll do like the back end with the team, the admin, the tech. And just kind of get the ball rolling. That's probably the bulk of it. And then the personality. So we don't have a big team, but we tried the level 10 meeting and we were facilitating. Ideally, you have a bunch of managers and then it's a high level meeting. You go to KPIs and IDS it with your managers and then it trickles down and then they have tasks. But it was just us doing everything. So it was getting kind of emotional. We had a friend that's a facilitator come in and it's like, try, you can't facilitate anymore. You got to be a participant, not the participant and facilitator. And that took a lot of stress off of the calls. So it's kind of evolved throughout the years on how we could best communicate without getting triggered. I get triggered a lot or various things for no reason. So we're working through that. There's a lot of things that, you know, we compliment each other. Like try is very good at like building a team. He's good at hiring, recruiting, retaining good talent, and building the culture of our business. We have a daily huddle with our team. And Troy's really good about making sure people share not just business wins, professional wins, but also personal wins. If their uncle is in town or their nephew is visiting or they're about to pop the question, Troy's going to know. If they get pregnant, Troy's going to know. I don't have so many pregnant people on our team. And I'm just teasing one or two of them. And then next to you, they all had babies. We had like four babies on our team this year or something before Prego, ladies. So yeah, he's really good at getting people who are shy to open up and share. And I think that that's really helped us grow a lot as a business. I think I overthink things. And it would take me forever to make the decision to hire someone that it would just take forever. where it tries like, okay, we'll hire them and we'll find out pretty quickly here if they're going to be a good fit or not. You know the icky guy, the four circles? What do you get at? What do you love doing? What can make you money? And what does everybody need? And now you can put that in chat and then you build it out. And then you can talk about like where the intersection of those four things at. And I kind of unintentionally try to figure that out with the team. Like, what do they love doing in that? What are they actually good at? And then you try to just lean into that passion. So they're excited. They'll stay up late doing it. They wake up early doing it. Life is easier. I almost wonder if you could structure a job interview based on that. The Ikigai. Like, just ask the questions so that I will get the answers to each of these four circles and can figure out exactly where this person belongs type thing. Whether it's your existing team or a new person, just to figure out, like, do you actually fit in this role or should you go somewhere else? It's a great idea. And how many people are on your team? What would you say? Like 10 full time, maybe? We have a bunch of contractors. We were up to 25 with a bunch of contractors and part timers. And after the unconference basically we're like man there's some guys clearing seven figures doing long wolf style i was locked in the room with them for like three days from not even 30 yet i was like okay we could do better so we've been fully scaling down and what staff we really need and which ones are nice to have so we're probably down to like five core people and a bunch of contractors probably like five to seven core people i mean it sounds like a big reduction and staff. Am I remembering right? Try that when you were at Dell, you actually didn't enjoy the management role. Am I remembering that right? And like, if so, what makes this work so well, if you didn't like it back then? Yeah. So I did Dell for like eight years and NTT for eight years. Dell was good, but I was just an engineer. I was kind of leave me alone. I would just do my thing and no projects. And then NTT was half and half. I went to management. It was a complete flip. Like I didn't like sales people because I thought they were like the dark side of the evil people and then it finally hit me that man you can't stick engineers in front of clients you gotta get sales people to like show them what the problem is and connect them with the solutions it was like a big light bulb like you literally need sales people, and it was either management or sales i went the management route and man just helping people do more faster quicker on time it was man i should have been doing this the whole time i didn't know i like loved people so much i thought it was like a super introvert so i'm kind of like flipping over I don't know if it was because I just grew up basically, but we unintentionally built the same business model based on the last company I worked at where I had like people overseas in different time zones. And I managed a team of over 30 people and kind of like unintentionally did the same thing. And then we realized we don't want to do emails and WebEx all day. So we're trying to figure that out. Kaylin was amazing. She said, what if you could just keep the same people, but you could 3x it was like. Word? You could do that? All right. It got me super excited. We took a course like three or four months ago, the last batch. You're talking about Callan Faulkner, right? Oh, yeah. Sorry. Okay. Gotcha. Yeah. It was amazing. Yeah. I'm taking that right now, actually. It starts an hour after we end this recording. So I'm excited to learn that stuff as well. Yeah. She just really challenges you in different areas. Yeah. What if you could just keep the same staff, but three extra output? Tell me some examples of how you're pulling that off. Is there some like magic automation you put in place that just like fixes that or like lets people 3x their output or how is that working for you? You know, one of the things that I think Callan talks about in her class, she says everyone wants to jump to automation, even if we don't have our process fully baked out. So we actually use her class and we've created some like repeatable prompts. We've created some projects in Claude that the team is able to like leverage and kind of make better listings, make better ads. And I think we're still in the phase of we need to iterate on that prompt 20 to 30 times before it makes sense for us to automate it. Otherwise, we're just automating something that's not fully optimized. So she was telling us once we get to the point where we don't feel like we need to make any more modifications to that prompt then we should start looking at automate otherwise we're going to be like automating stuff that we don't really really want which i was like let's just automate everything and not do anything like the sales is important for us and we weren't spending enough time with sales like if you have a sales problem. And you want more sales how much time are you spending on improving that we're telling people would sell more like call them back more call them quicker and that was like the wrong approach. So we have one custom chat that qas the transcripts and gives suggestions, then we'll role play them out and sales is not like do a b c in this order it's kind of like a fluid thing so i have to build the reps in and it's art versus exact science maybe i got it wrong but that's the philosophy we're taking so we started doing more like sales calls role playing calls listen to live calls we'll listen to every sales call and review it as a team and like what takeaway did you do what one-liner can you use what did you know is how she built rapport and quinn's like the ultimate sales machine so like we have like two years of like amazing transcripts that we give the onboarding so those reps will go through this checklist and part of it is like listen to quinn but even then it's like now we have ai like hey who's the best objections and how to answer it so like that buck he ways it and gives it a better like real life scenario versus someone else's scenario like we want to use quinn's voice as a main example and that's their tonality we want to approach and then the brand guardian thing like she showed us how to make this guardian that takes our voice like what is our mission statement? Who are the people like we're trying to help? What are the types of problems that our clients face and how can we solve those problems? Like it's kind of nice. I feel like she saved us a lot of time because we put all of that into like a project and each time we need to. Get it to help us make some type of content, whether it's email content, blog, or social media content ideas, we're not starting from scratch, right? Like it knows who we are. It knows the type of things that we would say in the past. And I feel like it's kind of given us like a stronger foundation. And that in itself has saved so much time because if we're always having to feed it information, then it kind of defeats the purpose of saving us time. So do you have any automations in place? Yeah, we have automations for like our contracts, like which, you know, TriCreated. If we get a sale, like the whole team gets notified through an automation that TriMade using like Zapier. And then the team fills out a couple of fields and then the DocuSign just shows up in our inbox. So we just have to sign. So there's been automations on that side. He also gets automation, like more so like notifications. If we get a payment made or if we get a new lead, we get an automation that tells like the team, like, hey, this person just reached out to us. And then there's an automation that will just send them a message so they know that we recognize they just inquired and someone from our team will be reaching out to them. So there's automations in that part of our business. Dopamine. I heard this great analogy and we were kind of doing it intentionally. So you go to these conferences, you get hyped up and then you come back. You're ready to start and implement all the stuff. And then what do you do? You do the same thing you used to do. And then you forget about it. And then three months later, you go to another conference and you're like, I should have done that. You feel bad. So my friend was like an AA and they do like meetings every day. Some people go meetings once a week, but it's kind of like the conference. You get a high and it lasts a certain amount of time and it drops. So you need reminders to get that dopamine hit again, the serotonin hit. And sometimes you might need it once a week. Sometimes you might need it once a day, maybe three times a day. People are getting texts every time we get a deposit. Hey, you just got paid and it would be like a little dopamine hit. That was a fun little automation, just getting paid and just seeing the system work. Unintentionally, we kind of did a bunch of these little dopamine hits. Yeah, that's a great idea. I should set some of those things up. I need more dopamine hits in my life. You can automate me. I'll call you. Which I did you. Yeah, there you go. And that's interesting what you were saying. I guess for both of you, try how you came from this engineer background where you just kind of wanted to be left alone want to do your thing. But then you ended up becoming this manager who's actually like really good with people. It makes you wonder for people who can succeed on the engineering domain, but then also in a sales or management domain, are they kind of like superhuman because they're able to do really well at two things that use kind of like the opposite spectrum of your brain? And it's almost kind of weird that the career path even looks like that. Like if you're great at engineering, why wouldn't you just stay in engineering and like keep doing that kind of stuff, left brain work, instead of like managing salespeople. That seems like the worst thing in the world to do to somebody who is an engineer. Me and Quinn were actually on the wrong bus this whole time. I mean, she has a doctorate. She checks every doctor's order to like the microgram or milligram for all these, you know, pharmaceutical drugs. And she should have been in marketing sales this whole time. So like you have to kind of do stuff for your business that you may not like, you may not want to do, but you're going to have to do it because it's what the business dictates and you have a startup. But like you got to know, like eventually you got to delegate it because that's not where you should be. And we're still transitioning to like the CEO mindset. We're both definitely visionaries, but we got to get in the weed of things. I think at one point we kind of over-abdicated and kind of circling back like, all right, time to roll up our sleeves again and get this going. So it's not a complete 180, but the awareness is definitely there where like, all right, I know I'm good at this. I know I love this. And versus, all right, I don't like this. I hate doing this, but I have to. So there's got to be a good balance. It was like, you can't have a balanced job, but you're always going to be balancing the job. Quinn, since you're so good at sales, I don't know how much you can self-diagnose and even know this. But when you think of these successful conversations you have with people on the phone, where you get the desired outcome, like the deal is closed, success. Do you think this is because you know how to overcome certain objections like you know what to say to certain problems or is it more just like your positive charming demeanor like you're just a pleasant person to talk to in general and that is what fights 80 of the battle for you i think what a lot of people go into when they're meeting with me they're about to make some type of decision right they have a problem and they're about to make some type of decision and you know sometimes they feel nervous. So I think a lot of people, what they're looking for is someone they can trust. They're looking for someone that they know like, hey, I'm going to make a decision with this person. If I need to reverse my decision, what does that look like? And that could be in terms of like a refund policy or it could even be from like an investor standpoint. So I think when I meet with people, I just want to make them feel good. I want them to know like they can trust us for our family business. They can count on us. And we want them to feel like. We are going to show up even after we've closed. So like when people call us afterwards, like they're looking for their property or something like that, you know, someone from our team is going to get back to them very quickly to get their questions answered. But my goal is just like, you know, building trust. And in the career that I had before this is very, very detail oriented, very much like spreadsheet, something like that. And I didn't realize how much anxiety that actually brought me until I stopped doing it. Like, I used to have to have a giant double monitor in order to do my work. And then once I transitioned into like real estate, I actually got rid of the monitors and I even downsized my laptop to a smaller laptop. So that way I can make sure that I'm not assigned work that requires a spreadsheet because it would not make any sense. I'm like literally the least efficient person to be doing that. I need to talk to someone in order to create any type of impact. I'm wondering with what Trey said about you guys being on the wrong buses in terms of like your career path. So when you had to like really get into the details and make sure the doctor's milligram count was right and all this stuff, was that hard for you since you're more of a people person you know what i realize is sales is a big part of your entire life yeah it's very true and i have to wake people up in the middle of the night to tell them that what they prescribe might be wrong but you don't lead with that you lead so they can just answer yes and you have to say hey did you intend to write this instead. Yes. All they have to do is call back and say yes, and they're done. But if I call them and say, hey, what did you mean by this? That's a conversation and they're tired. They don't want all of that. So just knowing how can I provide the value that I need to move forward? Everything is sales though. You have to convince them to make the right decision. You have to convince them that you're not going to take up a lot of their time. I feel like regardless of what career you're in, you're convincing someone of something. You just don't realize that you're doing sales. I don't know if this is even related to what you're saying here, but I'll just mention it because the thought popped into my mind. But my daughter is taking acting lessons right now for like theater and that kind of thing. She's just interested in it. And I didn't realize this until like later in life, like mid thirties, how important it is to be able to act, like just to be able to be a thespian, like put on a show. And maybe it's because of my natural personality, because I'm naturally not a high energy person. I just kind of mumble and, you know, put my head down and that kind of thing. That's my natural state. So like being able to like put on a facade and like be who you need to be in that situation, even if you're not feeling like it, put on a show, be the actor you need to be in that moment. I don't know. I think that kind of acting theater stuff is undervalued. Some people see it as just like a fun hobby or something, but it's like, No, like you look at some of the best attorneys out there, like litigation attorneys that win court cases like a lot of them have. A history in theater. They were really good at that. It'd get in front of a stage and compelling people to think a certain way. I think that's really important. Just being able to like connect with people who have different types of communication styles and energy. It's like, you know, going into the office, sometimes I know someone is very introverted and they don't want to chit chat with me. I just need a wave and I just see the relief that they know I'm going to keep walking. Seth, what you said was so good. Like sometimes we have a problem holding space for others, but like you took it to another level, like what type of space do you want us to hold for the other person? Do you want us just to listen? Do you want us to kind of be friendlier? Do you need a hug or do you just need more security towards the deal? Or sometimes you're so insecure, like you're not even at the plate yet. You haven't stepped up to the plate and you You just need the fundamentals to kind of work yourself up there. You got to play these different hats. So I'm really going to think about that because what are the different hats that you need to wear? To think that way at all shows a lot of emotional intelligence. Because a lot of people, like their brain isn't even going there. They're just thinking like, this is how I feel. This is what I need. This is what I want from this interaction. Boom. But to even think like, okay, how do I serve this person where they're at? If they don't want to talk to me, just don't waste their time. Just keep moving. Like, how do I fit with what they already are instead of making them have to like do somersaults to meet me where I'm at? It's a great thing to think about. That's the question. Like, how can I serve you? Like, literally, you could just ask them. As we were training this AI bot, I'm thinking of like... That's what the bot needs, right? Like the EQ, not the IQ. And how can I best serve you? And what are the best questions to get that out of that person? Because sometimes they just don't know what they don't know. They just know what they see. But what if they don't know it? They don't have the voice, the vocabulary on what they need to get to the next deal or whatever. That was very insightful. Yeah, yeah, likewise. Quinn and Trey, it's been awesome talking with you. I only got through like half of my questions before. We could talk for a much longer time, but it's already been a while. So you should probably wrap this up. But if people want to reach out to you or connect with you or bring you their massive portfolio of land that they don't want anymore, what is the best way that they can get ahold of you guys? They can either give us a call. They can look us up. We're on securelandco.com. If you go to Instagram, you can find us on securelandco. If you go to YouTube, you can find us on securelandco. Definitely search us up. Or they can just email us, info at securelandco.com. That's the best way to reach out to us. If we're not there, someone from our team will definitely answer and get us the message. Awesome. And I will have links to all that stuff in the show notes for this episode, retipster.com forward slash 243. Thank you again, Quinn and Tri for being here. It's been awesome to talk to you again. And to all the listeners out there, we'll talk to you again in the next episode.