Building Wealth through Land: A Conversation with Brent Bowers

Welcome back to the show.

Today we've got Brent Bowers, who is a land investor. And I know a little bit about land. Want to learn more. But before we get into that, Brent, welcome to the show, man. Why don't you tell us a little bit about you, man. Thanks for having me, Jon. Yeah, I'm a, I'm a father, Christian husband, land investor, business owner, serial entrepreneur. And, you know, I. A little bit about me is, you know, I've. I just wanted. Well, I quit in real estate back in 2008, 2009, I quit.

I. I joined the military. That went well for me for a while. And then I was like, oh, my God, I'm always gone. My third combat or I was preparing for my third combat deployment. I didn't actually have to go, but this time there was children involved. And I was like, I just can't keep leaving like this. And I wanted to be a professional real estate investor, that I could quit my job and live off my passive income.

The story I've been buying since 2004 and going to all these seminars, and here it is, 2016. I'm still. I've been practicing real estate since 2004. Why can't I quit my job? I have eight rentals, seven rentals, something like that at the time. And I was just like, what the heck? And then I discovered hopefully, what we'll talk a little bit about today. But, yeah, and it's. I'm still making mistakes, still studying, still learning, still practicing, but it's finally paying off.

Yeah, Well, I want to, I want to take it way back because I love, I love hearing people's stories and kind of, you know, there's a, usually a, a point, a fork in the road where someone, something happens to them, where they're like, I'm tired of my 9 to 5. I want to do something else with my life, so I want to get into that. So assuming you went to high school, graduated, what happened after? Barely. Yeah, so I graduated, I graduated high school. I grew up in a cattle town.

We had more cows than people. Our main producer of income in Okeechobee, Florida was cows. And, you know, I wanted to get the heck out of there. I wanted to do something. I wanted to be a real estate investor. You know, Donald Trump, reading his books in middle school type stuff, Art of the Deal. So you knew that early that you wanted to get in the real estate investing? Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, I have always been, I always liked business.

You know, I always wanted to get into sales and I was always entrepreneur. I started a lawn service, I think, when I was like 10, 10 years old, 12 years old, borrowing the neighbor's lawnmower, mowing other people's grass with it. So a lot of people have helped me through my journey. It's just so incredible how many people have helped me along the way. But I would say when I finally decided, when I finally had had enough was 2016, when my first son was born.

And I was like, I gotta figure out a way to buy back my time. Because if you're in the military, they own you. I'll just leave it at that. And if anybody listening to this has been in the military, they understand what I mean, you know, so it's like you're told where to be, what the. What to wear, how to look, and. And, you know, we'll release you when we release you. So I was tired of that. And my first marriage didn't last because of that. You know, as part of the problem there.

I'm on marriage number two now. Babies are, Are in the picture. And I'm just like, this is it. I've decided I'm going to do whatever it takes. And to decide is to basically cut off everything else. So I got up every morning at 4am and started learning my new. My new skill, which was land investing. I wouldn't even say learning, just taking action. Honestly, I would take action from 4 to 6am and then I go to work to the military from 6am to about 7pm and then we put the.

I show up and baby's already in bed, my wife's about to go to bed, and I go back to work. And I did that for couple years. So I finally figured out what the heck I was doing. And I'm not trying to, you know, discourage anybody because, gosh, if I would have known how hard I had to work, I might not have done it. But I don't want to discourage anybody because I didn't have a coach, nor could I have afforded a coach. I don't see that with everyone now.

But I've been going to seminars and learning all this stuff, and I'm like, where's the coach when I need him? When I. When this guy talks to me about a quit claim D, I don't even know what that is. I'm like googling this stuff. So. Yeah, well, it sounds like you got in in 2004. Is that right? That's when I graduated high school and I. Okay, I went to college to get a real estate license because I thought they would teach me how to do real estate.

No, that was just all the laws and the useless education that will never make me a single penny. Yep. So. So, yeah. So it sounds like you got real estate light. What. Where'd you do, where'd you go from there? Yeah, I got the real estate. Well, 2004, then 2005 happened. 2006, we had a couple hurricanes back to back and I ended up not taking my test for a while. So I forgot all that useless knowledge. I learned. Then I went back to try and take.

I had to take the test three times before we know it's 2007. Yeah. In the meantime, what were you doing? Yeah, I had my lawn service. I was doing pretty well with that. Actually. We were doing pretty darn well. I needed to hire another person. And then my dad came out and invested into the business. But here's the thing. I didn't want to be on a lawnmower for the rest of my life. You know, obviously we could have probably kept growing it, but that just wasn't in my vision. So I was doing that.

And then finally 2007, I finally passed that dad gum test. Bought the first rental property I came across. So I started, I just jumped head, like head first in. Then 2008 rolled around and it's like I had like the worst timing. The worst timing. I'm seeing all these people get out of the business. Then it got between my ears that I'm not going to make it either in this business. And then we had like break lease with my, with our apartment and they ruined my credit.

Then we moved in with my in laws and I was just like super humbled. I was like, I went from making all this money to I can't even afford rent or my electricity bill. So it's kind of a low time in my life, you know. And luckily my wife's at. My wife at the time's grandpa was like, hey, it doesn't have to be like this. You can go back to school, join the Air Force. So I did. I'm really, I'm really coachable, John. I went to the Air Force recruiter station, I think that next Monday.

And they didn't, they didn't want me. They didn't want me. Like they had too many people trying to come into the air Force. I said, go next door to the army, they'll take anybody. So I did. And I was in the army like two months, two and a half months later and basic training in October 2009 and deployed to Afghanistan November 2010 for a whole year. And it was an interesting journey, that's for sure. And you still had that one rental or. No, I did. I kept that rental until 2019.

Couple evictions later, I learned the hard ways of how not to. To do rental properties. I bought a couple more in 2013 when I got back from overseas. So, yeah, I was like, I'm gonna keep buying rentals. Like, this is the smartest thing I can do. And, you know, they were really just long term investments. Really long term. Forced savings accounts is what I call those. Yep. Well, listen, you got to start somewhere. And I mean, I, I had four single family rentals over the course of four years.

And after like year two, I'm like, yeah, I'm. I'm crushing it. Right. I had basically no passive income, but I knew that it was at least like what you said, a savings vehicle and it would help me out in retirement. And I was so much further just with those two. And then eventually four single family rentals. I was so much further along than most people my age in terms of retirement.

It wasn't helping me necessarily right in that moment, but it was a savings vehicle and, you know, definitely appreciate over time. But yeah, so you had one in seven and 07, bought another in 13. Then what happened from there? Yeah, bought another one, two more in 2013. Then we moved to Colorado Springs in 15, bought our other, our single family house we lived in. And then I used some of that equity from one of those rental properties and bought a triplex.

And then it was like I, I ran into a community called Wholesaling, Inc. Which I've got the honor today to be on their podcast. And I'm the host on the podcast on their land coach now. But I started, you know, haphazardly wholesaling some houses because I was like, I'm gonna, like, this is through my journey of like, okay, I'm. I'm gonna get back in the real estate here. And I'd wholesaled some houses back in 2013 as well. I did too, to help pay for classes.

And I would go and door knock people that are on notice of default list and like, they're about to lose the house and I get that thing under contract for what they owed and then I go and find a cash buyer. I did this twice, and it helped me pay for school. And, you know, I learned it through one of those seminars. It's crazy when you start taking action that this stuff actually works. But then, yeah, I was gung ho for the military until about 2016, when that baby was born.

And then fast forward, you know, about a year later, I. I'd only seen him play two or three months out of his life because I was in the field preparing for this to go back to Afghanistan. This is like, I can't keep doing this. And I was like the whole selling houses, I think I was spending more money on postcards than what I was actually making. And I heard a guy talking about vacant land investing, and I was like, when I heard that podcast, I was like, no one else is talking about this. No one.

This is 2016 timeframe. And I like the fact that no one's talking about this because I never knew you can make money with land. I thought you had to buy land and wait. Almost like my rentals, right? Wait 30 years and maybe the path of progress would move in on you and, you know, you're. You're rich. But I couldn't wait. I needed money today. And that guy that was on that podcast, it wasn't your buddy Seth Williams. He was like talking about making money overnight.

I was like, if half of what he says is true, this is my. This is what's going to get me out of the military. And I took action like that day. And sure enough, people were willing to sell me land for cheap, cheap prices. Now, this land was all garbage and not buildable, not accessible, landlocked. But I'd buy it for a couple hundred bucks to. My first one was $285. I sold it to a realtor for 5,000. I was hooked after that one. Yeah, I'd say so. It's definitely an interesting story. I mean, there.

There's a ton of things I'd like to pull out of that. But, you know, you talk. When we started diving into your story that you were working from 4am to 6am, you were basically trying to grind, learn. Sounds like probably sending out mailers. And then you had to go to your job from 6am to 7pm I don't mind is somewhat similar. Not same hours, but I don't think a lot of people, I guess, have the.

I don't know what you call it, whether it's being blind or dumb or the motivation, whatever it is, I don't think most people have that. So why do you think you had had that? And it sounds like maybe your first kid had played a part in that, but you could have went out and found a job. So why do you think you did that? Yeah. Yeah. I think it's because I always wanted to be something Great, someone great.

And I had always, you know, I, I didn't want like making 40, 200amonth with the military was meeting our needs. We weren't doing without anything. But I knew there was so much more that we can do. And like when I left the military in 2018, I had 90 days of leaves that I, I, I didn't save it. It just accumulated because I got 30 days a year. Awesome, right? We get 30 days of leave off a year. That's better than most jobs, right?

Well, I never had the opportunity to use that leave, so I ended up selling it back to the military. But it, that was no way to live. Like I was, honestly, I felt like institutionalized. Like I was, you know, I didn't really have a life. I was being told what to do. And here's this entrepreneur rebel. My, my whole childhood life being told what to do. And it was fine for all time. And I got over it. I got sick of it.

I had these younger people in the military, sometimes my same age as my boss, and, and sometimes they're just, they're unhappy with their lives. So they're just complete jerks to me. I'm like, you know what, screw this. Like I'm in charge here. And then, so I had a huge why? And honestly, I was afraid that my current wife was going to leave like the first one did because I was always gone. So what a life to have. Like she's now raising two babies by herself. She didn't sign up for that.

So that was the huge why. So, you know, it healed for a while. Yeah. What, what do you think was in you that made you know that you were, I guess, meant for more? Well, I think it's because my parents worked really hard growing up. They both worked full time jobs and I watched my mom work really hard and then come home and cook dinner every night for us, us kids. And then I watched my dad build multiple businesses, not one, but two businesses for other people. And he has no retirement.

His retirement is, thank God he knows how to do land deals now, you know, so it's just, I saw that and we, me and my sister and my mom and dad, they're still together today, thank God. You know, we grew up in 900 square foot house, three bedroom, one bath. You know, we didn't know that we were, I wouldn't even, I don't want to say poor, but we didn't know that we were, we were lower class at that time. And honestly, if you're born in America, you're absolutely Rich.

So thank God I was blessed enough to be born in America. But you know, I just wanted to, I, I didn't wanna, I didn't want to be restrained by finances. When I was 40 years old, which I turned 40 this year. So. Yeah, yeah, it's, it's always interesting to me that the people that make it out of the so called rat race, right, to kind of land on their own feet and do their own thing. It's, it's interesting to me what, what got them there, what qualities. I love digging into that.

So there's always a story behind it, right? It's, there's, there's always something there. So, so yeah, it sounds like 16 you got in the land investing. What happened from there. Yeah, so I Talked about that first deal I bought for 285, sold it for 5,000. The second one I did like a week later. And how many mailers are you sending out at this point? Yeah, at this point I sent out 687 postcards that said, hey, my name is Brent, I'd like to buy your land at 123 Main street or most time.

I didn't even have an address. It was like in El Paso County, Colorado. I, I started in Fort Carson. So I, I gotta. So let me finish reading what the postcard said. If you're interested in all cash fair price offer, call me or text me. God bless you. If anybody wants to copy that, I still use that today. In addition with a couple other things, they can go to thelandsharks.com forward/postcard and use it, use that. It's nothing crazy.

We call it the tribe postcard for the Wholesaling Inc. But it's just black and white and handwritten. It looks handwritten anyways. But that got my phone ringing and what list was I mailing? I was mailing people on the county held tax lien list. What does that mean? Which was a mistake by the way. I didn't mean to do that. I just made a bunch of mistakes. I just moved forward. But I called Cindy at the treasurer's office. Basically every county wants you to pay your taxes.

You got to pay your county your property taxes because that's how they pay the firefighters and all these other stuff in the county. Well, this was the list of where no one had purchased the, the back taxes or paid the back taxes. So they wanted me to do that. I didn't have money to do that. So I mailed these people and they're like about to lose the land anyway. So they don't care. It was a very small list. It was only 687 people. And I got that list.

They, like, faxed it to me, and I got the schedule numbers, and I found the girl in the Philippines. I paid $5 an hour, and she, like, put it in the assessor's website. So arduous. Like, there's way easier ways to invest in land than the way I was learning or making, just moving forward with it. But that second land deal, this is the best one I've ever done because I bought it for 500 bucks.

And it was landlocked land, not accessible, surrounded by state park, right next to NORAD in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Just walk west of. Of Fort Carson, where I literally drove every day to work. And I put it on Craigslist. Craigslist at that time. And I said, I want $500 down, $400 a month. I don't know where I came up with that, honestly. And I just wanted to get $5,000 out of it. I had this 5,000 for, like, the first four deals.

I think I got 5,000 for each because I only made, like, 4,200amonth. So I was like, if I can double my income, I'm rich. I felt rich. And sure enough, someone bought it for me. The next day, I got my money back out of that land deal. So I was profitable immediately. Well, not quite. 30 days later, I was profitable. 400 bucks.

And I did what's called a land contract, a contract for D. Basically, if the guy paid me 400amonth for the next 11 months or so, he paid me a total of $5,000, and I would transfer the deed to him. Well, that one changed my life.

That was my paradigm shift, as Stephen Covey talks about, because I remember talking to my wife, Emily, I was like, gosh, if we do this 10 more times, we're financially free. All of our bills are covered. Like, because that was paying my truck payment, I was like, now we can get the water payment paid. Now we can get the gas bill and then the diaper bill and then the. Eventually our mortgage, and I can leave the army. It took me about 18 months. 18 months, and we were at nine grand a month.

Nine grand a month. And that was net payments coming in. So I pretty much, in essence, almost doubled my income with just my land. And I didn't live off that money. I just kept reinvesting it, reinvesting it in the land. And then the IRS came knocking. But that's another podcast, so, yeah, same when you're A land investor, you don't have a lot of money for tax or you don't have a lot of tax shelters. That's why I love, like, things like industrial buildings or what you're into, storage units.

Because we can depreciate that stuff and it appreciates for us. We get a huge tax benefit for depreciating it. And then someone else's money pays for our mortgage. So it's mortgage pay down and then cash flow. Like so many amazing things you can do with that seed money. Yep. So I got a couple questions. One, where did you get that list? The original list where you said it was a wrong list.

And then two, I don't know that I've heard of land investing, where you're doing land contracts, basically seller financing. Yeah, I want to know where you heard about that. And yeah, so both those. Well, I'd already taken a lot of those real estate investing seminars. And let's go to the first question. Where'd I get that list? I was thinking I was already mailing the tax delinquent list for houses, for wholesaling houses. Okay. And I was like, well, what stops me from doing the land?

So that night I was like, get me all the land ones. So that list came from the county treasurer's office. So some states call it a treasurer, some states call it the tax collector. Like Florida's tax collector call Colorado's treasurer. Same thing. Doesn't matter. It's. They're collecting the taxes for the vacant land, the houses, all the real estate, all the parcels of real estate. So you can call them up and say, hey, I want your tax delinquent list.

Now, a lot of these counties are starting to charge for this stuff. So there's other places out there you can pull these lists, like the landsharks list dot com. You probably have a list provider you use. But I don't go to the county anymore and get their tax delinquent list. It's too much work. It takes forever. You can do it. There's faster ways of doing it now, but that's where I got that list. And then how did I find out was seller financing. You know, my parents financed everything.

So I figured, like, how do you create a buyer's pool of people that will pay you monthly for this land? And that was on the second deal because really, I didn't think anybody would buy it unless I offered them the ability to make me monthly payments. So it came from, honestly, a scarcity mindset on myself. However, that's turned into thousands and Thousands of dollars a month collected. And I've now changed it up a little bit because I used to do zero percent interest.

That's a long story how I got into actually charging interest. But now we do what the banks do. There's a reason why the banks are the biggest, prettiest buildings in every city in every state is because I allow people to pay me over 30 years at 12% interest for land. So like 75 of the payments I collect is like interest. Yeah. So it's almost like having a rental, collecting that monthly rent, but I never have to fix anything. Yep. That's awesome.

So you start it sound like you started off at five years, right? Now you're at 30. Yeah, yeah. And not all of them go 30, let me tell you. Yeah. Like the longest I've ever had anybody pay me was seven years. They either get a construction loan and they build on it and the bank pays me off or they sell it because the market went up, or they lose it or they stop paying me. I've had people die. I've had people go to prison. So we take the land back. We also will modify their loan.

Like I'm a human, Like I'm not some bank. I want on a second. I can get another land deal today. I don't. It's easier to get a land deal than it is to sell the land in most cases. Yeah, yeah, no, I can see that. Yeah, that's interesting. I was going to ask you, other than someone trying to build on it, build a house on it, what else will obviously build anything. What else are people buying these land deals for? Yeah, any and all reasons.

Like I, I, some of the first couple parcels I bought was in Costia, Colorado, really cheap county in Colorado. And I messed up and I bought a non buildable parcel. It was like just shy of a few square feet shy of one acre. Well, the county will not let you put a septic system out there if you don't have at least one acre because you need enough space to separate your well and your septic. And so I was like, well, crap, what do I have a parking lot now?

So I, I put it on craigslist and Facebook sold it on like a couple hundred dollars a month to a truck driver that just wanted to own a piece of land and the area that he went through every month and he would park his truck and sleep out there and then like truck drivers for a while. Then it's funny, I bought a bunch of land out in Arizona. We bought 123 parcels in Arizona. And I would have like college students buy it that have RVs and they just want to off grid land, no restrictions.

Now I've gotten a more expensive land where people are building on it and developing it. So you name it all kinds of different. Interesting. Where do you find your buyers? All over the place. So yeah, because you were doing Craigslist obviously. Obviously before. But yeah, we've sold land on ebay. I love Facebook Marketplace. I love land sales specialist real estate agents. I try and be omnipresent.

A lot of times the neighbors will buy this land from us because I've never met a landowner that didn't want to own the piece of land next door to them. So they're always looking to expand. What did I, what did I leave off? Signs. Signs work incredibly well for land. There was, I was in an area where they were in a building boom and I was like who in the world's building all these houses? Like a lot of Latinos out there were, were like building these houses.

So we started putting signs out in Spanish. Own this land for 350amonth. And sold. They actually paid cash. They didn't need my 350amonth. It's amazing. Like there's so many ways to find it. All's them in is a marketing business. Yeah. When I find out like one of our land sharks is having a hard time selling their land, I'm like, are you offering seller financing? How much are you asking? Sometimes they're asking too much. Where are you getting?

Like are they, are you getting eyeballs on this land? Like where are you advertising? Really? It's all about marketing. Do you have a nice video explaining the land photos, drone photos, ground photos, ground videos. Like sometimes we just get lazy selling stuff. Yeah, that's interesting. So obviously you've grown and your coach and we'll get into that too. But you've grown and I'm sure you had to build a team at some point. What, what did the growth look like?

Yeah, so I've have expanded and contrasted multiple times. At one time we had roughly, I think 11, 11 team members. Right now my business today I do less land deals. I'm trying to only do like one a month. It doesn't always work out that way. But it's really just, it's me and my office manager right now. Everyone else are independent contractors. So my team is really small with my land side now my coaching side. I got some, I got some help as well, you know, video editors and whatnot.

But I really focus on What I do best and have other people help me out with the rest. At the end of the day, my team's super small. Like I don't like, I don't have a huge team. Yeah. Why only one deal a month now? Because I'm, I'm, I'm. It's, it's a way to restrain me to do bigger deals, to do the good deals, the good deals only because I like and I, I try. Some people like when they're just getting into this, they're like they got the guy, I got to do the deal.

Itis. So they're like, ah, the numbers are tight but I'm still going to try it. And it's like forcing a square peg into a round hole. I want like, I want all green lights, you know, I don't want to, I turn, I turn away more deals than what we do. Because here's the thing, you could spend a lot of time trying to make, you know, 5,000 bucks on, on a subpar deal or you could spend a little time to make $100,000. So I want the guaranteed deals. You know, I want to be conservative.

I want to go, if I go into this blindfolded, I want to still be able to make money on it. So that one deal a month is like one way of just

making more profit with less volume. Because at one time we were selling nine parcels a week. That was ridiculous. That's, we're making more now with doing less. You know what did they say that 10x is easier than 2x? That's awesome. That's awesome. So what's your marketing look like now compared to then? Because obviously you're doing less deals. Are you doing the same amount of marketing or smarter marketing? Smarter, more laser vision focused market.

At one time we were spending 30 grand a month in marketing. Wow. And you know, you do, you go two months without making a profit on that. You're, you're big trouble. Now I, I keep it real simple. I like to send 50 offers a day, 50 land offer letters a day. So where we send a purchase agreement directly to the landowner. So what we do is let me back up a little bit. We'll go and find demand. We'll find a market where land selling and then we'll micro that down to a neighborhood or community.

Then we'll price it out. Then we'll use our, our software. Well first we'll pull the list from the land sharks list of, of landowners in that area. Then we'll use our software to blast out these offer letters every single day, 50 a day. And then they come back signed in my inbox. And now it's time to, okay, let's look at the sign ones. Let's just do the due diligence. Sometimes we mess up on our numbers. It happens, happens all the time. And sometimes we got to go back and renegotiate.

So out of those two or three signed deals, we might do to one of those deals and it'll be like a home run because you could probably do all three of them. Sometimes we can do all three and sometimes we will. But by trying to do too much in this business, you miss out on some of the, some of the benefits. You know, I'm sitting on some land that we run into some issues on and rather than letting that take my whole focus, I'm still focusing on the profitable stuff.

And we'll get to the, to the land one day later because things change sometimes. We bought a piece of land one time with $157,000 IRS tax lien on it. This is my beginning. So thank God I didn't record that deed, put it in my name. I sold it for $16,000 the first time and we couldn't sell it because that tax link. So I was like, well, let's just wait, we'll come to it later.

I finally found the coach that helped me figure it out and I sold it for $35,000 the second time and I bought this land for a couple hundred bucks. Wow, that's crazy. How much land are you? Do you ever. Well, two questions. How much land do you typically sit on? Like you just can't sell? And then also, have you built or done anything with land? Have you owned the land yourself as opposed to transferring it? Yes. So I have accumulated quite a few parcels.

But when I, my first couple years into this, I, I had a rule of thumb. If I don't sell it in 30 days, that means I'm asking too much for it and I'm just gonna like drop the price like a bag or bag of bricks are attached to it. Now things are a little different. I've got enough passive income coming in and we've taken some back. Here's the thing, people will stop paying. A lot of times people will stop paying if we don't collect a big enough down payment.

Anytime I've collected 5,000 or more as a down payment, those people have always kept paying or sold it or got construction loan. But there's a lot of the cheaper parcels under, under 20 and $25,000 that I've taken back. So I try not to be sitting on too much inventory because you always have to pay the, the county taxes. It's liability because it's just sitting there. But I love building on this land. So I'll partner with builders now we've got this new program in the land sharks.

I've teamed up with some, some professionals. They've. They placed 45 brand new mobile homes on their land. So tell them how to find the land and they're building on the stuff. So they're now teaching our land sharks how to build mobile homes on these. So I've been getting excited about that.

I've done a few of those in the past and they've been wildly profitable because it's all, I don't know, I'm attracted to building, you know, every, I always, one day I want to be a builder, one day I want to be a builder but it's hard to build so I just put a brand new mobile home on it. But yeah, we built some stick built houses and it's, that's fun. But I only picked the, you know, the few out to do that.

We have a couple acres in Colorado Springs where hopefully we're going to partner with a steel home builder where they're going to build steel homes on it. And then I've had some onesie twosie lots where the developer, well, one of them had power lines over it. So we had to like it was a weird lot. I couldn't sell it. I was like this is a no brainer. Should have sold for $38,000. We bought it for like 16 and it wouldn't sell.

And it's because accounting kept turning everyone away because the, the, the power lines and I never walked the land. My acquisition manager never walked the land. So we found out about this and then we got an offer from a builder. He's like you, you give me the land, I'll build on it and I'll pay you after we, we sell it. So we gave him one year to do it and it worked out.

We sold the land to him and thank God we were o. Sometimes you got to be a little bit willing to partner and, and, and pivot a little bit because where we thought would be a no brainer it turned out to be a little bit more complicated than I thought. Sounds like there's a lot of opportunity for different types of exit strategies, right? You can partner, you can, there's just, you just have more options. Right. As opposed to any other asset class. If you buy a self Storage facility.

It is what it is, right? A rental house for the most part is what it is. Some commercial, you know, you can kind of pivot and do something different, but land, you just, you have a ton of options. So many options. That's why I think there's so much opportunity in this business. And I hate to. I feel like I'm just sharing all my, my failures and my setbacks. But like I bought another four acres one time. I won't say what county is because it's. They're aggravating me half to death.

But like it was a no brainer. We bought it for 25, 000 a lot and it should have sold for 58,000 a lot. Well, come to find out, everyone else is on dirt roads in that area and that one specific neighborhood they want me to provide the asphalt for to be able to build the houses. And no one checked with the county about that. We just bought it because the numbers look great. And my fault because I didn't follow my due diligence checklist which I provide to everyone.

Go to the landsharks.com dd Is it buildable? No one called the county. So we make, we make, we make our own rules and sometimes we break them and we pay dearly for that. But I found a loophole. We could put a barn on it. We could put a barn on that four acres. And I tested the market with this barn on the four acres and we put it on Facebook. We like superimposed the barn on our land and. Or photoshopped it, I guess a better word to say. And we had like 48 questions in two days.

Two or three days. Wow. I think it was up for three days. And most of the questions, is it going to have electricity and is it going to have water? Is it built yet? And so I, I'll take that as people are interested in something like that. So we're putting the barn on it right now. Oh, that's cool. I can sell it. Yeah, no, it's. Yeah, you have. I do my best to stay away from shiny object syndrome, but. Oh gosh. Yeah, this is really intriguing.

It's, it's really interesting because you just have so many options. Had a question that escaped me, but mobile homes, that's really interesting because from what I've heard, and I'm not in mobile home space, but from what I've heard, you can't build them anymore. The mobile home parks mainly because counties, states, whatever, won't let you do it. But it sounds like you're doing it at times. Right. Not mobile home parks. We're placing a brand new mobile home on a parcel of land.

Oh, gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. Just one. Yeah. And now we, we open up our buyers list like for like the guys that are, are helping us with this. Robert, Chris. Like they are 50 below the median home selling price in their area and they're, they're able to get it financed through VA fha. So by them putting that brand new mobile home, they're literally opening the doors of opportunity to so many more buyers that couldn't have afforded to buy it in the first place.

Yeah. So. And sometimes you could buy five acres in like subdivided into four buildable lots or five buildable lots. So now you're, you're technically almost making a mobile home park. You do it one, one at a time because yeah, people are like not in my backyard, but these brand new mobile homes, I mean they're beautiful. They got drywall. There's not that panel board, none of that crap. They smell great. Yep. That's awesome, man. That's cool. I know what I was going to ask.

Obviously you're doing a lot, probably most of this virtually. I'm assuming there's probably issues. Obviously it sounds like you've got a checklist, but it's probably hard because you can't walk the property. And you're probably going to learn a lot just being able to walk a property. So I guess within. Without diving too far into that. How do you do that virtually? Yeah, when people are getting started, I recommend them trying, you know, be within about a three hour driving radius. Radius.

Because when I used to struggle to sell a parcel of land when I was just getting started, all I had to do was just go walk it and I could come up with a plan or it was interesting because other. Land investors I've talked to, it sounds like they do it nationwide and they're picking up cheap and just flipping them and they're. They're not within three hours. Yeah, well, that's, this is when I was getting started. I'm no longer within three hours myself because.

Okay, so much opportunity all over the place. Like I've never, I've driven through Texas twice and I've done like eight land deals in Texas. So most of these areas, I don't even know what part of Texas they're in because you find the right land sales specialist, real estate agent. How do you find that person? Go on Redfin and see who's selling the land in that area. Call all of them and I want the 50, I want the blowout price. I want the getter done now price like I want.

Like Mr. Ms. Realtor, if you had a hard money loan on this thing, what would you list it for? To sell it tomorrow type thing. And you got to walk it like that's important. Like go walk it. Like do you see like 55 gallon drums of, I don't know, hazardous waste on this, which hardly ever. Like this land has never been built on. So I'm not buying old like convenience store locations, none of that stuff. Because I want to make sure the land's clean too. It's cool man. That's really cool.

So yeah, obviously people can learn more by going to your website, landsharks.com but you've got a coaching program, kind of give us a brief outline what that looks like. Yeah, maybe because I might be your next student here. Yeah, I can't coach a ton of people. Same thing with the one land deal a month. I don't take on a lot of, a lot of people because it's, it's a lot of work. Go to thelandsharks.com if you want to find out more. But basically I'll sum it up.

I lay out my entire land business step by step in, in video format with instruction. Like, here's what we do today. Because I don't believe people need a lot of education. I've talked to so many people that I've been, I've been in education mode or I've been studying, I've been blah, blah, blah. And most of the time they'll tell me like they've been doing this for two or three years. I'm like, what is stopping you? Well, I feel like I need to learn a little bit more.

And like if, if anybody has heard my story, I just take action. Like, have I paid for those mistakes? Yes. But I take action fast as I possibly can. We make a lot of mistakes quick. And you learn from those mistakes. And that's the boy, do you learn? Best way to learn. Yeah, boy, do you learn. But there's. I heard it in church yesterday, the why I'm sorry. The smart person falls in the hole and figures out a way to get out. That's me.

The wise person pays a Sherpa and they'll never fall in that hole in the first place. So that's what I'm trying to provide people is if I can help you eliminate most of the holes that I've fallen in. And it still happens. I talked to you about the barn, like Honestly, sometimes I just get a little too arrogant and just over rambunctious. So I'd rather fund my land sharks communities deals today because they're actually, they're willing to go through the whole checklist and I feel safer that way.

But yeah, the money loves speed. And I think that, you know, you just got to go out there and take action, Take action quickly. Don't be in education mode. I mean this is a great podcast. You probably have tons of great guests on here, just providing millions of dollars of value. But you got to go out and put the, put, put the action to work. So that's, that's the course. Give them the steps. And then I do weekly calls twice a week and then I, you know, give people my cell phone number.

You, you're doing a deal, you need to call me as well as I have an assistant coach that he's an absolutely incredible, absolutely incredible. So people are doing deals in the first 90 days, getting paid on them.

So I think that's what it's all about. There's too many online courses out there. I don't want to be an online course. So yours is more, it sounds like you've got some, some videos and then more, some virtual calls and some one on one too. So it's more. They have more access to you than kind of what you said, online courses. Absolutely, yeah. Because I, I bought these, I paid $12,000.

I'm not gonna say who the, the main guru is, but I got all these freaking videos that were hours long and I'm just like, I haven't even gotten through one third of this course. I haven't gotten a result. I joined three months ago and I'm just like, just tell me what to do. Yeah, shut up and show me exactly what to do. Yep. 100. 100. I like that you, you glossed over it. But you said something that's so true and that's money love speed.

Which is so true because I mean I'm sure both of us, we talk to people all the time that have been educating for, I mean even if it's like a year, it's like some point you just got to take action. So yeah, I'm, I love that quote, money loves speed. I don't think enough people, you know, I don't think that really hit, hits them that hard. Yeah, I'm a closer. Like I wanna like if I can get the deal on the first call and like let's do it like because I'm, I'm terrible at follow up.

It's like my wife, when I met her, I was like, let's go on a date tomorrow. Married her six months later. There you go. You know, it's, I don't know, like I don't think we have a lot of time, you know, to waste type thing. Like I got a nine year old son. Like he was just born. What the heck happened? Yep. So. Yep. No, I love it. Love it. Cool. Well, this is an awesome story, man. I'm, I'm definitely intrigued and I've known about land investing but never really dove into it, so this is awesome.

I do have a few questions before we go here and before I forget. Thank you for your service. Obviously you, you know, you sacrifice quite a bit and it's definitely for our country, so we appreciate that. What's one thing that you're better at than everybody else? Kind of yourself? Oh my God. I don't know if I'm good at very much. Honestly. I think the longer I realize I'm ah, I don't know. That's such a hard question. I think. Okay, here it is and I'll bring this up.

After listening to people talk, I usually can pick this out for them and sometimes pick it up better than they can. You probably are right. I'll tell you what. One thing I'm better at than most is I know I'm not good at much. So I, I find the experts, like I'm willing to take a step back and, and let the expert do their thing because at the end of the day I just want to talk to people. That's it. You know, and that goes back to money. Love speed. Right? You can only be fast if you delegate.

Yeah, I do what I do best and let other people help me out with pretty much almost everything else. My dad's old boss, one of my dad's old bosses said I surround myself with people that are smarter than me. Yep, yep. 100. Love it. It's awesome. What's, what's next for you? You know, I'm enjoying life right now. We, we're building a passive income. I'd like to buy a mobile home park this year. Racing. I just got into four wheeler racing.

I'm doing my fourth rate or third, third race this weekend, so really just enjoying it. Boating season just came back into play with us. I just went out this weekend so I want to keep helping people, you know, and I'm, and I'll tell you what's next is I'm just trying to walk a little closer with the Lord, you know. Really just get, get to know Jesus and you know, I've been a, I'm gonna do air quotes here. I've been a so called Christian for my whole life, so I'm taking that to the next level.

Getting up early with, with the Lord and just like Jesus did, he would get up early and go and study his Bible and I don't know if he studied his Bible, but he would, he would talk to God early. So, you know, that's kind of something I've been working on. It's awesome man. That's awesome, awesome, awesome story. Awesome stuff. Obviously people, people can find you@landsharks.com where else can people reach out to you if they, if they need to, or is that the best?

Thelandsharks.com that's probably the easiest. You can just go on the website, schedule, call. You know, I'm all over social media. Brent L. Bowers. And yes, the L stands for land. Hit me up, check me out my YouTube out or Instagram or TikTok. I pretty much try and do a video every day. It's awesome, man. Awesome. Well, again, appreciate you for, for coming on and we'll see you guys next time.

Thanks for following subscribing and Lee listening to this episode of The Do More podcast hosted by Jon Farling. To learn more or ask questions, go to l4investing.com.