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Show Summary
In this episode, Micah Johnson interviews Travis King, a seasoned land investor who shares his journey in real estate, focusing on land investing strategies, market adaptations, and the importance of seller financing. Travis discusses the challenges he faced during market shifts, the balance between cash flow and note equity, and the significance of having access to capital. He also emphasizes the value of coaching and building a community to help others succeed in land investing.
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Investor Fuel Show Transcript:
Travis King (00:00)
But that’s felt like a good counter to the market is when rates are high become the bank instead of the borrower.if we’re we’re selling the land with seller financing on payments, we’re the bank. So all of a sudden, we’re not we’re not arguing with people about a point here or there. You know, it’s like you charge in 10 to 12 percent interest and you’re still beating the bank on land anyway. Right. And banks don’t want to get stuck with land.
Micah Johnson (01:57)
Hey everyone, welcome back to the show. I’m your host, Micah Johnson. And today I’m joined by Travis King, who’s been making some serious moves in land real estate and land investing since 2013. I’m really pumped for today’s show. I’m excited about this. Travis, welcome in man. Glad to have you.Travis King (02:13)
Hey, thanks for having me, Micah. As you know, before we jumped on here, I could talk all day about land, so I’m happy to share the message and be the land evangelist for everybody.Micah Johnson (02:23)
that man, love that. So again, if you’re listening, I think you’re really going to take some value out of today’s episode. Travis is investing in land for quite some time. We’re going to dig deep on some strategies that folks don’t think about things to pay attention to some land cycles that are a little bit different than than the normal market cycle when it comes to a house. So let’s dive in on that. First off, for people who may not know yet, Travis, tell us a little bit about yourself, what your main focus is right now and the markets you operate in.Travis King (02:50)
Yeah, well, it’s all things land for us really, we try to stay in our lane in our niche with inside a land like I’ll share there’s there’s a lot of different avenues inside of land. But everything is centered around, you know, land is that asset class before anything’s built or anything goes vertical, right? It was all land at one point. And I just think there’s simplicity and beauty in that. And that’s kind of what attracted me to to it as I was buying houses, I had rentals andI’d kind of read the, you know, the purple Bible, you know, rich dad, poor dad in the early 2000s in my young twenties. And I, I didn’t study it. I read it and kind of used it as motivation. And I just jumped in at a time when everything you bought was going up like 2004, 2005, you couldn’t make a mistake. Everything was appreciating. So I thought I was a genius and then like, Oh, eight hit and it, it exposed me for what I was, which was a young, naive, ambitious, you know, investor. And
And there were some expensive lessons learned really expensive lessons to learn so when I kind of decided to I didn’t want to give up on real estate investing But I wanted to find an asset class where the mistakes weren’t as expensive expensive, right and Same thing the assets weren’t as expensive so I didn’t have to spend two hundred three hundred thousand dollars on a rental house and come up with that 25 % down and you know all those things so ⁓
I started looking at asset classes where you could, you could get in affordably, right? And get in cheaply, affordably and make a lot of small bets. And the big mistakes wouldn’t wipe you out, right? Or set you back too far. And that’s kind how I stumbled across, stumbled across land. And I started out like buying land and auction, cheap land and auctions, know, online auction sites, and then listening to them on eBay and flipping them there. and then later we learned, we learned about, ⁓
Micah Johnson (04:44)
There!Travis King (04:47)
you’re at the mercy of the auction schedule, if you’re gonna only get your profits from the auction. So he’s waiting for the next auction. So we learned about ⁓ off, know, marketing to off market owners, landowners, so using direct mail and in a way to kind of control our own lead flow and deal flow. And I felt like we got really good at that. And that’s where we found most our traction. And then we’ve kind of just, yeah, just tried to wash, rinse, repeat, and then.adapt along to the market along the way.
Micah Johnson (06:07)
And that’s really the part about real estate where this is, it’s not a fix it and forget it industry. It is something that it grows. It has to adjust as the market moves because there’s cycles to it. It’s not stagnant and it’s been cycling for a long time. That’s the guarantee is it’s going to do it. And about the time you think you got it figured out is when, hold on. No, there’s this shift coming that I’m to have to think about. Okay, what’s next? What do I do? How do I pivot in this?which is something you said y’all went through a little bit. Can you dive into that for us?
Travis King (06:41)
Yeah, well, I felt like we really had a good system down, you know, and it was it really was just a wash, rinse, repeat of ⁓ buying properties in our markets, were Arizona primary was our main market. But then as things were cranking up, we moved in Texas, Florida started in this and other states. ⁓ But when rates, you know, in 2022, mid 2022, when rates just started to skyrocket,some of these lots that builders were gobbling up, you know, they, pumped the brakes quick. mean, you know, I mean, they have, they have memories, right. And I think they had this flashback to the great recession. And, and so they weren’t given it a year or two of building spec homes to see what the market was doing. As soon as rates went up, you know, they kind of finished up the houses they had in the works and weren’t taking on new projects, at least a lot of the ones we were working with. So we saw a market correction come really fast. It came really fast.
And our business at that time was built on kind of a high volume of transactions, primarily at like 25K net profit was the majority. That would be like the medium. That’s the bulk of our flips. And then you’ve got some, you know, bigger six figure, like one off or once a quarter type of deals. But we were doing about 60 transactions a year, right? And when the market shifted on us, the, ⁓ our
Micah Johnson (08:02)
end.Travis King (08:07)
our buyer pool kind of dried up or at least shrunk, right? It’s shrunk. So that left us with some inventory. And at the time also, ⁓ I’ll kind of sneak this in along the way is after I became a full-time investor, I got in all these communities and was making friends and messaging people and helping new people out and kind of informally got into some coaching and consulting and not charging anybody anything, just helping people out that weren’t as far along as I was.Micah Johnson (08:30)
Gotcha.Travis King (08:36)
And that led to some joint venture opportunities and where I would, we would either put money together or I would fund their deal, you know, and then that led to a much bigger opportunity where we created a funding company. But through the funding company, I gained exposure to many, many States outside of my own markets, which I felt gave me a pretty good read, you know, on the macro instead of being in the three States I was flipping in, we were now funding in 29 States, right? So.Micah Johnson (09:02)
level.Travis King (09:03)
when the market kind of shifted as a funding company, we held inventory. As a land flipping company, we held our own inventory that was listed. And all of a sudden the day’s on market, right? We’re going up, you know, and we’re going, yikes. So for us, I think when things started to slow down, it took a while to figure that out. Hey, we’ve got to slow down acquisitions, sell the inventory, move what we have, and then see how we kind of pivot.a little bit to adapt to this new market. And a lot of our sales were cash sales on buildable lots, like in urban areas. And we, we’d always sold rural vacant land, but we kind of adjusted the business model to where there’s more focus on large rural vacant land and selling it with seller financing. That’s kind of allowed us to weather the storm of rates. Whereas if a lot of the land is being sourced to builders and the builders are slowing down.
Right? We kind of pivoted and rates were high. Well,
if we’re we’re selling the land with seller financing on payments, we’re the bank. So all of a sudden, we’re not we’re not arguing with people about a point here or there. You know, it’s like you charge in 10 to 12 percent interest and you’re still beating the bank on land anyway. Right. And banks don’t want to get stuck with land.
So it’s not that they won’t lend on it. They just generally have a pretty extreme down payment.
and a pretty high interest rate to make it worth their while if they get stuck with it. But what that does, that creates opportunity for you, right? As an investor, if you’re seller financing, because you can beat the bank at a rate that is a double digit interest rate. So we started originating a lot of seller finance notes with 10.9 % interest, creating a lot of monthly cashflow, 250 to 750 a month note payments.
So that was kind of our pivot. ⁓ It’s just, and we just kind of now we run both product lines like ⁓ buildable infill lots and then large rural vacant land usually subdivided and then sold with seller financing. But with the pendulum just swings with the market and rates and we’ll lean into one and ride the wave when it’s high and then we’ll back off and go the other direction.
But that’s felt like a good counter to the market is when rates are high become the bank instead of the borrower.
Micah Johnson (12:04)
Yeah, it makes sense. makes sense. Now your buyers for those, are you, is it other investors you’re selling to or those owned, like landowners that are doing those seller finance notes? How do you go about finding those buyers?Travis King (12:16)
Yeah, so we list everything with agents, almost everything with agents, even like a double closed deal, which is a tool in the tool belt. It’s not our business model, but even those we wouldn’t list ourselves. listed agents just because early on we listed a lot of stuff by ourselves and just handling those buyer leads from Facebook and Craigslist was not something I’d rather have a root canal than just talk to another Facebook lead writer Craigslist. Is this still available?Yes, it’s still available. The listing is still up, right? So no, everything’s with agents on the Dispo side. ⁓ Even if it sells with seller financing, you know, and we listed with seller financing, we’re going to have an agent listed for us. Sometimes it’s recreational. I’m in Phoenix area, so people might want to go up by Flagstaff when it’s 110 in the summer and it’s 20 degrees lower up. They might want to go up there, pull a camper on their recreational land. They might hope to build a cabin.
Micah Johnson (12:51)
Okay.Travis King (13:13)
Someday a second home, it’s really common, right? Up north, Northern Arizona. So some of it’s residential, some of it’s recreational, but that’s usually what that kind of avatar that buyer is, it’s buying on payments, ⁓ is not often they would be living on it right away. It’s kind of that they’ve got a someday plan or they’re using it recreationally.Micah Johnson (13:35)
Interesting. And those are high paying customers. You’re talking about an end user still at that point where you can get retail value out of what you’re doing. and man, that’s a solid customer to work with.Travis King (13:46)
Yeah, retail value,that’s just it, right? When anytime you sell something on terms, like, like when even us as investors, right, we can get our cash price or we can get our terms, you’re not going to get both and same with the buyer, they’re not going to get both, they can’t beat you up on the listing price, and then ask you to take payments. Generally, if you’re offering payments, you set the terms, right? So there’s not going to be if you list, especially if you list and promote and push seller financing, you’re not going to be doing price improvements or price cuts.
Micah Johnson (14:03)
Right.love that.
Travis King (14:15)
It’s just such a massive, massive buyer pool when you accept payments. But again, you’re not going to stack cash doing that. That’s more of like you’re just building some recurring dependable note income. So there’s got to be a balance early on. I had too heavy of a focus on seller financing. So we would buy these properties at 40%, 45 % of retail, whichMicah Johnson (14:30)
Right, some monthly recurring revenue. Right.Travis King (14:45)
even that might blow some people’s mind if they aren’t familiar, right? But we would buy it at that, but then I would take 20 % down when we resell it on payments. When you do that too many times, you end up with a nice monthly recurring, but broke, right? The bank accounts broke, but you got 500,000 in note equity, right? And that’s kind of where, that was that harmony, finding that harmony for us was a learning lesson for me. And that’s right where we’re at was just about.Micah Johnson (14:52)
Gotcha.Right, yeah, no cash.
Travis King (15:11)
I think 460,000 close to 500,000 in note equity that wasn’t liquid, right? We couldn’t get to it. And then we had like, I forget, we got up to about 14,000 a month at that time, recurring note income, you know, but it was the situation where, yeah, you’re getting 14 grand a month, but, and you got half a million in note equity, but there’s, there’s no, you don’t have six figures, you don’t have cash in the bank really. So nowadays we’re more intentional about kind ofMicah Johnson (15:18)
Right.Right, exactly.
Travis King (15:40)
on our dispos, how much seller financing we do and how much cash sales we do.Micah Johnson (15:45)
It makes sense, man, because you got to balance your buying power, right? Know exactly what it is you’re trying to do. Because you’re not just investing in real estate, you’re running a real estate investing business. And that’s something that, if you’re listening to this, I’ve noticed in my time in the industry, those are two different things. Especially when you’re doing it at that higher level, it’s not an accident that you get deals. It’s a machine that you built that churns them out.That is a very specific thing that you have to create to be successful like you’re being at the level that you’re being. It’s not a mystery how it works.
Travis King (17:02)
And it’s a different game when you have a stable W-2 job with a solid paycheck. And this is just a side hustle, something you’re doing on the side. It’s kind of gravy, right? It’s extra money. It’s a second income stream. But when you go full-time investor and you’re now cannibalizing those profits, know, owner paying yourself, you’re now buying your own health insurance, there’s just not a lot of room to make these big expensive mistakes or spend a year iterating or adjusting to the market. You gotta make quick corrections.Right? ⁓ so, so that’s really kind of for us, but that the beauty of those mistakes, it led us to go, okay, and well now we’re cash strapped. What do we do? And then I had to go out and find outside money, right? And if maybe if I had a better harmony early on, I wouldn’t have put myself in that position. So making those mistakes forced put me in a crisis where I go, yikes, I need right to go out and get outside capital to do more deals and start maybe doing bigger deals and more cash deals. ⁓ so that
And that for me was our biggest like early on, you know, game changer, guess you’d say was finding outside money for land and houses hard money is not I mean, that’s just so utilized and well known, right? But land is a little bit of a stigma with it. Not a lot of ⁓ private lenders, hard money lenders wanted to lend a land when I was asking, there was nobody doing it. You know,
Micah Johnson (18:15)
Right.Travis King (18:27)
Now there’s scores of companies that will fund specifically land deals because the industry’s matured a lot in the last 10 years. But early on I was reading books on how to raise money, how to build credibility kits and pitch decks and all these things. And man, it was a grind trying to convince people. I’d tell them I read them my resume, give them my transactions, and I would see their eyes light up. Then I would say that four letter word, land. And then they’re like, oh, I’m out.So it took us a while to find outside money, private money, but when I did, we started using that for all of our cash flips and we started focusing on bigger cash flips. And then we started self-funding the properties that we intended to resell with seller financing on payments. And that seemed to be a really good balance that we’ve been able to use that mix as we’ve scaled.
Micah Johnson (18:54)
Right.And that makes a lot of sense too.
And it’s right on time. So there was something you said in our pre-recording call. It was specifically about marketing, but it’s also about, it kind of goes hand in hand with what you’re talking about in your business where learn that first thing, get that first thing locked down, that thing you’re super good at. And then the market itself will bring you around the time to adjust that. Okay, so you got strapped for cash and like entrepreneurs do, we create all our own problems typically. If you zoom out far enough, like you’re setting, you don’t realize it, but you’re.
doing it in the future where you got to that point. All right, now I need other people’s money. But without all that pre-work, going out and getting somebody else’s money, now it becomes infinitely harder. You got to sell them on faith and not on the reality of, this is what works. But again, like you said, once you get that money and you hear all the time in real estate, make money with other people’s money, it is the game changer. When you get that access to capital,
now your plate can get bigger of, now I can look at these other deals much bigger than I was doing before. However, the timing of it lines up too, because without the previous experience, you get into some of those bigger deals, man, you without the prereq knowledge, you know, without the undergrad knowledge, those faster level courses will eat you up.
Travis King (20:27)
Yeah. Right.Yeah, and what I would say that it goes along this with that getting access to ⁓ a Capital partner or private lender, whatever you want to call them, right? ⁓ It’s it’s not just the the financial or transactional part of it It creates it’s a mindset shift and it also creates like a confidence when negotiating, right? So I would be wiggling in my seat when I when I kind of I would say I harpooned a whale, right? So I reached a guy that had he had 130 properties
you know, by accident at this time. wasn’t intentional. just, he had been buying at tax deed auctions. His dad taught it to him and he’d been doing that over the last three decades. And you know, this was early on in my career and we did, had nowhere near the money to buy all of them or even a third of them or anything, right? So, and I remember negotiating and I’m kind of, I’m, you I’m posturing because he’s like, well, you know, there’s about 30 I want to hang on to do, but the other hundred I would sell you, right?
And this would be a situation where I didn’t even know what it would have cost us, but it probably would have been, you know, over a million dollars. And a lot of these parcels were 20 to $40,000, right? But either way, it would have been well over a million dollars. And I didn’t have a million dollars sitting in the bank, right? But I’m negotiating. And I remember kind of squirming in my seat. And I thought, man, I’m glad this isn’t a video call because I’m sweating. You know, I’m like, I don’t, these are great properties. They fit my business model. They’re in my market. I know I can resell them, right? But I don’t have the money.
And just that that nervousness and almost a little bit of that imposter syndrome feeling that Boy when money was lined up and we had a blank checkbook. It just became about okay, ⁓ You know, let me pick through and tell you which ones meet our criteria, right and which ones I want to buy, right? Which ones we’re going to buy first and here’s our buying order And then here’s my budget but it’s you’re they’re not posturing and pretending You know, you’ve got the money behind you and that kind of allows you to negotiate with a confidence. That’s authentic and real
versus like posturing it and pretending, right?
Micah Johnson (22:30)
Right, exactly. Well, you hear a lot of folks saying, I used to say this myself, you you do your best work with, I do my best work with my back against the wall. Wait until you do it without your back against the wall. Get into that position you’re talking about, like you just said, where when you have the money behind you or whatever it is, the confidence that shows up, you are not the same person. You’re thinking differently. You’re thinking about the problem differently.Travis King (22:41)
YeahMicah Johnson (22:56)
You’re approaching it from a completely different vantage point than when you’re sitting there with your back thinking of all the things that can’t go wrong and how I need to do this and how I need to do that. And now you’re introducing so much more that can make the deal mess up than when you’re positioned correctly, where you can look at it like you said and say, you know what? All right, man, 100 of these, I’m going to buy them in a certain order and this is what’s going to happen. And this is what I think. And this, this, this, and this, what do you think? Now that person’s like, wow, okay.Travis King (23:20)
Yeah.Micah Johnson (23:26)
This is serious guy. These are real folks. This is, this is a real thing versus.Travis King (23:28)
Yeah. This is whatseparates you from the other people marketing. And the first time that I got asked for it, the guy’s like, why? Everything sounds fair. Sounds agreeable. We’re closing through title. There’s nothing fishy. It seems like about you. All I’d want to see next. So I know you’re not gonna waste my time as a proof of funds. And it was like a, you know, a 400 and some thousand dollar purchase. And I’m like, ⁓ I don’t have 400 K sitting. But it was the first time I’d ever been asked for a proof of funds.
Right? Well, that’ll never happen again, because I’ll have that lined up. Right? And, and with those things, that’s I generally borrow the quote or the phrase, you know, dig your well before you’re thirsty, you know, because there people will tell you this, and I’m guilty of repeating it until I got enough years experience behind me. I used to say, hey, find that, know, get the deal and the money will come type of thing. But sometimes it’s a real scramble to get that money. And then some of the money people got to do three or two wire transfers to get it to you. And
Micah Johnson (24:00)
in fact.Right.
Travis King (24:25)
So I tell you, I’m a fan of kind of having that lined up, you know, ahead of time versus just getting the deal on the line, you know, and then figuring things out.Micah Johnson (24:32)
Me too.Yeah, that’s like a young man’s upfront game, in my opinion. Like once you, there’s nothing like waking up with the money. From 2018 to 2020, I basically represented a hedge fund and woke up every day with a billion dollars to spend. I never felt more powerful in my life. To literally wake up each day, I got the money to spend. What house do you got? I would go to meet up groups with literally a piece of paper that says, I have a billion dollars to spend this house I’m looking for. What do you got?
Travis King (24:52)
IMicah Johnson (25:05)
And the kind of power that gives you, you’re just, you’re not worried anymore. You’re not, there’s no like survival mode involved. You now become the thing that people want. wait a second, hold on. You got all that, you can do all that. You’re this real thing. Okay, here’s what I got. Here’s where I am. But however, that I wanted to zoom back on this before we finish out is that did require learning how to do a lot to be able to represent that kind of money, right? So there’s education involved. It’s not.Travis King (25:31)
⁓ yeah.Micah Johnson (25:35)
it doesn’t just come with, right? So if you’re listening out there, watching in, you build yourself to these points. You Travis, you said you didn’t come out with private money. You had to learn a whole different lesson before you even thought, oh man, I need to go get this and then build that way into it. So you said that you’re a coach, you do some work in that regard. Tell us a little bit about that and what are some main lessons for folks that you wouldn’t mind saying before we head out for the day?Travis King (25:59)
Yeah, well, what I’d say is the prize that people don’t talk about along these entrepreneurial journeys and whether we call ourselves, certainly know Elon Musk, right? But at the same time, I’m not trapped in a cubicle like some of the guys that still are at previous companies I worked for, right? So I’m living life on my terms and I’m happy. what I would say, initially you’re focused on either maybe becoming a full-time investor or achieving some financial goal. But like the prize is like along the hero’s journey, right?the the all the challenges that you have to overcome along the way the growth that comes with that how uncomfortable I was talking to these like you said these hedge fund that white collar guys with all this money, you know ⁓ And i’m just flipping dirt right, you know here i’m this blue collar guy flipping dirt It’s my side hustle and i’m trying to get talk these guys into you know Sharing their institutional type money with me these family office people, you know so each all of these things are having those seller negotiation calls, they’re all like
Micah Johnson (26:30)
Mmm.Travis King (26:59)
They’re uncomfortable and that’s growth, right? That is growth. And so that’s really the truth of it is you continue to do this stuff. I was scared the first phone call I ever took. mean, scared. was like introverted project manager slash engineer hiding behind my big monitor, right? And, doing my CAD work and stuff. And then once I started having to talk to sellers and here we are, you know, 12 years later, over 10,000, right? Easily seller calls, buyer calls later. It’s not even a thought of picking up the phone.But at one time, just that first call, I was scared to talk. So there’s a lot of growth that happens along the way. But yeah, you either just stay comfortable and eventually your model, the market will change, the economy will change, and your model will break apart. Or you seek to adapt, right? And with that, make some tweaks and changes that will put you in uncomfortable positions. But that’s kind of why, like I say, after I…
I started answering questions in forums, I was in communities and helping other people. ⁓ It was just seeing people that were struggling with the exact same questions you had maybe months or years ago and going, man, I could answer this in 10 minutes or in a paragraph or a quick loom video and help them out and save them months of headache. And that kind of created organically ⁓ joint venture opportunities and then coaching opportunities.
And then I later learned like, you can’t just run all this stuff out of an LLC. I guess you got to like have separate entities, right? Like I’m learning business along the way. I’m just a part-time real estate investor flipping dirt, but you know, I’m learning business along the way and you know, our CPA and it’s like, hey, you really, these need to be separate entities. If you’re going to fund the deals and joint venture, if you’re going to like coach and train, this needs to be siloed and separate from your land flipping company. So this adjacent opportunity presented itself.
and we started companies and not a paid dime of advertising. We grew our education business to over seven figures. that was, I mean, that was, again, never spent anything. had just completely word of mouth doing group coaching, one-on-one coaching. And we had a year where we hit seven figures and I was just, it blew my mind, right? Because it was all.
I’ve done over 2,500 one-on-one zoom coaching calls, you know today so it’s just helping people one-on-one one at a time and Getting them results and obviously that leads to a lot of word-of-mouth, you know referrals So so I help people I help somebody they get some traction I’m usually the first person they think of if they want to partner on a deal Landvoss funding comm is our site where like if somebody wants to submit a deal We’ll partner with them on that land deal
⁓ TravisKing.com is like our education, right? And that’s really where we help people that are new to land. ⁓ And then if they need help with the funding or ⁓ don’t have their own money or their wife won’t let them spend the money, we’ll help fund the deal ⁓ as well. And then along the way, we also, all these are things we had to solve our own problems, right? We had to learn, had to get training. We had to find outside money, right? So we’re just solving the same problems for people that we solve for ourselves.
And then one of those was a CRM. We also have like a land flipping, a specific CRM that is kind of built off of our automations and our follow-up and everything. So it’s four separate entities and that might sound really impressive from the outside, but I’ll tell you they’re all boutiques, small companies by design because the goal is to be time rich. I’m going on 20 years married, got four boys and they’re active in sports and I want to be at every game.
Micah Johnson (30:24)
that’s powerful.Travis King (30:47)
So we’ve had to, anything, temper ambitions along the way to keep the company’s micro, keep the company’s boutique so they don’t get away from us and overtake my life. it’s kind of a balance of staying a size that we feel good about and staying profitable ⁓ and having to say no to a lot of opportunities. when first you’re wondering if anything will go right, and then when it starts going right,the goalposts start to move and you have to actually like go, okay, what am I after here? You I don’t wanna create a new job for myself or have a board telling me what to do because I took too much money or something, right? So yeah, it’s a balancing act. know, after you find traction, momentum, some success, then there becomes those new challenges. And really that’s where we’re at now is trying to help people that are along the same journey, but maybe not where we are. And maybe I can help accelerate.
They can get to where I am much faster. Right. And that’s, that’s really the goal. And the byproduct is we ended up with like a community of a bunch of like like-minded people that that are, all, you know, dealing in dirt in one way or another. Um, we’ve, we went from flipping dirt as, know, we discovered opportunity and subdividing. So we got into subdivides. I accidentally mailed to that guy, like I said, that had 130 properties.
And then I later realized, I can actually search and intentionally pull lists of people that own only portfolio owners. Right? So we kind of discovered some of these strategies along the way. We flipped some waterfront lots and did really well. So then we started marketing to just waterfront lots. So there’s kind of some neat tips and tricks along the way that, that make us a little different was what we’re teaching and helping people with. And then a traditional like big, big guru or, you know, education company.
Micah Johnson (32:21)
Okay.And you’re coming about it, honestly, your version of coaching is my favorite version, where it came by way of it was a byproduct of something else that lines up with your personality where you like the desire for somebody that to leave the door open behind them, right, where you went through all these doors that you had to learn, and you’ve left them open, you’ve created literal businesses to help people walk through those same doors that you had to figure out how to open up.
those in my opinion lead to the best coaches. Those are the folks where it wasn’t about, it was actually about sharing a message, right? We all like to make money and that’s fine. And I don’t have a dog in that fight necessarily. However, I have seen plenty of times where the guru is just better at selling coaching than doing real estate. And.
Travis King (33:28)
And theymaybe don’t stay active in the market. So as the market changes, they’re teaching what worked years ago and it’s not effective now, or like is marketing laws change, you know, and they might not be current. So yeah, that’s why I really like when, and I had somebody point this out to me, not that I thought of it, but by design, but somebody said, hey, I really like that you fund students’ deals because you’re incentivized to help them.
Micah Johnson (33:33)
Exactly.Exactly.
Travis King (33:55)
become successful because then they’re likely to work with you and partner on the deal versus just hawking courses, right? Which I also think is kind of like things are even changing in the education space. We’re having more success teaching like live workshop style and saying, hey, get out your laptop, do it with me versus buy my self-paced course and only 20 % of people actually complete it and take action, right? So I’m finding even that industry is changing a little bit where people want done with you.Micah Johnson (34:20)
Right.Travis King (34:26)
more than self-paced courses. So yeah, you’ve got to adapt. You’ve got to adapt with everything.Micah Johnson (34:26)
Right.Right. That’s the way I am. I got questions. Anytime I’ve done a
self-paced chord, I’m just sitting there thinking, man, I need to ask a question right now. Cause what you have to say next, I’m stuck. I’m going to think about where I’m at now. I’m not going to pay attention anymore. And it’s like, I’m pumped for that. Which is…
Travis King (34:42)
Yep.And I tell people, think
we missed the boat on that, that guru information education thing anyway, but when I got into it, because you used to be able to create an evergreen course, it could live for five or 10 years, but these software companies, now they move at such a fast pace with interface changes, the dropdowns, the features, you know what I mean? Like you record your course in six months, like the screen might look totally different when they log into it and go, wait a minute, you know? So it’s tough. ⁓ So that’s why I actually like.
Micah Johnson (35:12)
Exactly.Travis King (35:15)
We’re able to teach live on today’s market, on today’s tools, if we do things like in a group and workshop environment. So ⁓ it’s more interactive too. It’s not me talking at people. It’s like you say, fielding questions and occasionally you’ll encounter one you haven’t and it forces even me to like maybe learn a lot in a state that I’m not in or something. yeah, teaching people, there’s a difference between doing something and teaching it. Teaching it forces you to understand it thoroughly.Whereas just doing it, we can kind of overlook or skip steps, right?
Micah Johnson (35:48)
Right, because you just know it. Like you get so familiar with it, you just know it. Then when you have to lay it out step by step, man, it shows you, wait a second, okay, I need to think about this part again. Okay, I could go on this forever, Travis, man. I’ve really enjoyed our conversation. I’m a big land fan anyway. So I’ve been sitting here taking notes and learning. For those that are listening in that are interested in learning more about your course or following along with you, what’s the best way for them to find you?Travis King (36:12)
Yeah, well, go to travisking.com forward slash free. I can, like I say, I ⁓ wrote a book. It’s hard copy. It’s also audio. I’m going to give it to, I’m going to give you the audio version for free anyway, if somebody goes there. You can get familiar with some of these strategies I talk about, like the kind of the micro flip. You know, I walk you through the chapters, which is kind of our journey as we evolved along the way from these smaller micro flips to these bigger, what I call boss flips, these big.cash flips to subdividing to portfolios. I kind of share my, it’s called the land investors playbook and I share my favorite plays and strategies. So you have to go to travisking.com forward slash free though. They’ll get the book for free. That’ll put them on the email list. We’ll, we’ll let them register for a free land flipping workshop. ⁓ They can attend the workshop again. It’s not there’s, there’s going to be no like huge upsells, right? I’ll show you the softwares I use. I’ll encourage you to sign them up.
You can get as far as you want to get with free training. There’s always opportunity to do like group coaching. That’s what a lot of people start with. Sometimes that makes more sense than diving into like high ticket one-on-one coaching. So a lot of people start with group coaching, but we’ve got so much like free stuff to get oriented before you have to worry about getting your credit card out that don’t even have that be a thought, you know, just, just take advantage of the free audio book. I’ve got a podcast too.
start immersing yourself in the land and if it’s something that resonates, know, we’re certainly current in today’s market because like I said, we’re, since we’re funding deals outside of our own markets, that gives us kind of an unfair advantage where we have a nationwide on the market, not just within our areas.
Micah Johnson (38:00)
of that, man. Well, thanks for giving that away for everybody listening and watching. Check the show notes. We’ll make sure that we have that link for you. TravisKing.com forward slash free. So go check that out. Take advantage of those resources from somebody that’s actually doing it. I couldn’t agree more with that. Learning from folks who are still day to day doing the business. Travis, man, thanks for being here. Thanks for sharing all that knowledge with us. I appreciate your time today. For those out there again, if you got value out of today’s episode, please like this episode, share it with someone else you think you get value.And as always, please don’t forget to subscribe to our podcast. We appreciate every single one of you that follows along with us. That’s all for today. We’ll see you on the next one. Thanks for joining us.
Travis King (38:40)
Thanks, Micah.
