Why Trust, Transparency, and Land Data Matter in Real Estate Investing

Carter Malloy (00:00)
Trust, that’s it. One word, right? There is no relationship if there is no trust. So let’s talk about how you get those things, right? One of the most effective things in trust is vulnerability. It’s showing the person you’re speaking to. That could be a potential customer, an existing customer, a partner, an employee, your boss. If you get yourself aware, you should know you got some weaknesses.

Quentin (00:00)
Hoo!

Carter Malloy (00:27)
And it is perfectly okay to share those. In fact, it is quite important to share those and to let the other person know how best you may be able to work together.

Q Edmonds (02:09)
Hello everyone. Welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I am your host Q Edmonds and I’m excited to be here today. I’m excited about my guests. I’m excited about what we’re going to dive into. And listen, very simply, this gentleman, he provides land data. He help people that want to build on land. More importantly, he help people make money. And so yeah, yup. Yeah. Y’all heard that, right? So yes, your antenna should be up, right?

And so I am so excited for us to get to talk to and learn from Mr. Carter Malloy. Mr. Carter, how you doing today,

Carter Malloy (02:48)
Great, Q, thanks for having me on.

Q Edmonds (02:49)
man, so happy to have you here, sir. Again, like I said, I’m excited about what we’re going to talk about. And so listen, I’m the type, I like to dive right in, right? So I would love for you to tell the people, what’s your main focus these days? If you don’t mind, give us a little bit of an origin story, kind of how you got to where you are, and then tell them what part of the world you’re in. People seem to love to know where people are geographically. So what you’re up to, your origin story, and where you are. Mr. Carter, sir, you have the floor.

Carter Malloy (03:19)
Thank you. Our company, acres.com, is located here in Fayetteville, Arkansas. we are, put simply, we are focused on land data. So we provide a really easy to use platform for whether it’s individual investors, all the way up to the largest data center companies, the largest home builders, the largest retailers that we all count as customers. We help them to go find land to invest in, whether they are.

building, they’re lending against that land, they’re helping to broker that land. We provide all the underlying data to understand and value land with confidence.

You asked about origin story as well. I forgot there. We got here, our last business was a land investing company. So we were out investing hundreds of millions of dollars into land and we kept running into this problem of data. And we built acres to solve our own need, began commercializing that and that’s how we got here today.

Quentin (04:16)
Thank you,

Thank you for taking us through the journey. I thank you for letting us know where you are and what you do. And so listen, Mr. Carter, I make a statement. Most podcasts I say that destiny has no wasted moments. Right. Meaning no matter what we go through in life,

momentum is building to the people that we are today. And sometimes we reflect back at the journey and we can follow the steps, kind of how we got to where we are now. So Mr. Carter, I would love to know, sir, what have you learned throughout the journey? As you’ve been building acres, what are some of the things that you learned? Have you learned discipline, resilience? Like what are some of the things you learned and it has been revealed to you?

Carter Malloy (05:03)
There’s plenty of lessons along the way to say the least. I think the most important thing that I’ve learned is the importance of ultimately of self-reflection, right? Self-awareness. I stole this quote, it’s not my own, but self-awareness is the only sustainable competitive advantage.

Quentin (05:28)
Well, now I’m stealing that from you, Self-awareness is the only competitive advantage. ⁓

Carter Malloy (05:30)
Thank

Quentin (06:23)
I love that. know, I often say, and I stole this from somebody too, but I often say there’s a difference in leadership between being self-aware and being self-confident, right? Self-confident people, they are aware of themselves, aware of their superpower, but it’s at the detriment of everybody else. So when they’re self-confident, they know their superpower. Sometimes they know their weaknesses, but still they just act like they don’t have weaknesses and they just go out and just…

just like the shine, egotistical. But self-aware people, are aware at the compliment of everybody around them. So they want to make sure the culture and the ecosystem thrives, even when they have a superpower or if they have a weakness, finding somebody that can compliment their weakness. And so I love self-aware as the only competitive advantage. That is brilliant because I think self-aware people, they make the whole ecosystem, the whole culture, everything around them better.

So I absolutely love that. I would love to know, you I know as growing businesses, sometimes adversity, it shows its head. And so how does adversity look in your world and what are some things that you’ve done to overcome adversity?

Carter Malloy (07:37)
At the end of the day, ⁓ to overcome adversity, we faced a lot of it in this business, to say the least. And the thing that I find tends to overcome it is time and really hard work. Right? There is no amount of intelligence that you can have or hire to solve that at of the day, like grit, determination, I think some word you used earlier, like…

I think this is a Winston Churchill quote I’m stealing and it is, if you find yourself going through hell, keep going. ⁓ And that’s it, you gotta keep pushing.

Quentin (08:14)
boy.

Yeah, yeah. man. Time and hard work. You absolutely right. Now, I don’t know if this is church or I used to know who this quote was, but it says success is born from one failure to the next without losing momentum. so like, you know, like I love when you said time and hard work. Like one of my mentors, they told me that it’s a Quentin consistency beats intensity anyway. Consistency beats intensity any day.

Carter Malloy (08:30)
Right.

Quentin (08:46)
So when you talk about time and hard work, that’s just a mode of being consistent, putting in the hard work. Time, like just, you’re going to have to just continue to do the same thing over and over. And that’s what’s going to help you kind of get over, like you said, some of the adversity that we’re all going to face. It may look different, but it’s still adversity. And so we’re all going to face it. So I appreciate that thoughtful answer, Mr. Carter. What’s next for Acres, sir? Like, what are you looking to solve a scale next? What’s the next real goal?

Carter Malloy (09:17)
The thing that we’re most excited about and the big goals we have internally are all centered around AI, which I can imagine is no surprise to hear a technology company speak to the overspoken about topic there is in the world right now. But the reality is, is we work, our customers, they tend to have workflows, they tend to use a lot of data. And those are the types of things that AI can solve really well.

So we have rolled out a number of iterations of AI of customer facing. Our biggest one yet, it’s called Acres Intelligence, is rolling out beginning next week. And this is a, think of it as a teammate for anyone in the world of land. So you come on our platform and it helps you to go solve your problems, helps you to find the next investment land, build market dashboards, do evaluations, so on and so forth. But the idea is very simple, which is…

There’s lots of cute, interesting toyish AI out there. It’s only worth spending time on if it saves you time. And that is the thing we’re most interested in is helping our customers save time and make money.

Quentin (10:15)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I love it, man. I love it. I want to ask you this question because we talk about ⁓ hard work. We talked about self-awareness and how self-awareness can really help the communities that we in. So I want to get your perspective on the word relationship. When you hear the word relationship, what rings true to you specifically within business? just sometimes all relationships can kind of help us sometimes in business. So just when you hear the word relationship, what comes to mind for you, Mr. Carter?

Carter Malloy (11:24)
Trust, that’s it. One word, right? There is no relationship if there is no trust. So let’s talk about how you get those things, right? One of the most effective things in trust is vulnerability. It’s showing the person you’re speaking to. That could be a potential customer, an existing customer, a partner, an employee, your boss. If you get yourself aware, you should know you got some weaknesses.

Quentin (11:25)
Hoo!

Carter Malloy (11:51)
And it is perfectly okay to share those. In fact, it is quite important to share those and to let the other person know how best you may be able to work together.

So at the end of the day, to me, and I hope to most people when they root at this issue,

Relationships are built on trust, which is ⁓ really built on the idea of just being freaking honest, like just the rack with people, you know? And there’s key differentiation here. There is kindness and there’s being nice, right? Kindness is being honest to somebody, even if it’s uncomfortable. Being nice is being willing to BS somebody to be nice to their face. The latter is not okay in my book. The former is what it’s all about.

Like that means that sometimes it’s uncomfortable, but you know what, like that discomfort, that friction, that builds trust. That is what a relationship is all about.

Quentin (12:51)
Can you see what you’re saying is really, I really like what you’re saying. Can you see this smile? It’s like, I love it. Cause you’re hitting on some key words that I always talk about here. Trust, vulnerability, oneness, kindness. man, I’m itch.

Carter Malloy (12:55)
No.

Yeah, be a human being,

know? it’s actually, it just requires a little bit of work and a little bit of thoughtfulness and you can be great to your fellow humans. Most of the time, we’re all going to make mistakes. We’re going to do stupid stuff. You must see that and apologize for it when you do.

Quentin (13:20)
Yeah, yeah. Oh man, I love it. So quick, quick story. When I was dating my wife, trying to win her affection, right? We were sitting there, my wife’s a counselor. And so, you know, naturally, you know, she called into things, conversations. And at the time I was really submerging myself in Brene Brown. I’m not sure if you heard of Brene Brown, love Brene Brown. She’s a thought leader. And I said this statement to my wife.

quoting Brene Brown. Brene Brown says, clear is kind. Unclear is unkind. So the more that you talked about kindness, being clear, being honest within conversation and actions, the kindest thing we can do is to be clear. And I’m going to throw more on that to build on what you said and to be honest, to be vulnerable, to be clear about these things. That’s the kindest thing you can do to somebody is to be crystal clear. That way there’s no ambiguity.

ambiguity, there we go, I just love it. And trust, vulnerability, brings in the real human factor of the conversation. That way it’s not just going from transactional, but it’s literally going to relatable, how we can really relate to each other. And so I love so many of the different things you said, Mr. Carter, I appreciate you, Let me ask you this. Is there any topic that I have not brought up?

that you would like to talk about? Or is there any words of inspiration, motivation, education? Let’s just say if you came in here with something on your mind that you wanted the audience to know, I kind of just want to open up the floor. That way you can land that message.

Carter Malloy (15:44)
No, ⁓ we talked about this theme of trust and it’s called a sidebar of that theme or highly related is the word transparency. And that is what we as a business attempt to bring to markets. We work every day hard at it. like in our mission statement is bringing transparency for America’s ⁓ biggest asset, is land. And so we are steadfast on that.

on that journey to bring forth more and more data to help people make decisions. But I think that that theme of transparency really resonates across industry, across relationships as well, which is the more information we have to act upon, the more accurate we’re all going to be, the more trust we’re going to have. ultimately, markets and relationships both function better with transparency.

Quentin (16:41)
I think so. think you hit on like every keyword that I normally hit on here on a podcast. man, I appreciate you. I appreciate you so much, Mr. Carter. Hey, listen, if someone wanted to reach out to you, connect with you, collaborate with you, learn more about what you’re doing, how can they get in contact with you,

Carter Malloy (16:44)
Yeah.

Of our website is easy to remember, acres.com, A-C-R-E-S dot com. Of course on LinkedIn as well, but I’d love to visit with anyone.

Quentin (17:08)
Man, Mr. Carter, sir, I greatly appreciate you, man. I want to say three things to you sincerely. So first, thank you for your time, because you could have been doing anything in the world, but you gave us your time. And I personally think time is our most precious commodity. So thank you, man. Thank you so much for your time. And I promise you, these are the things that I normally say right here. So I want to thank you for your story. I want to thank you for the gift of your vulnerability.

your honesty, your transparency. I believe stories have a way of planting seeds in people. You may not see the growth, but the seed is there and that seed can grow at any given time. It can be two weeks from now, five months from now. It could be five years from now, but the seed is there. And so I really believe you came on and planted some seeds that can really help course correct some people’s lives. thank you. And corrects the people businesses. So thank you so much for your story.

Lastly, man, thank you for your mindset, the way you think and bringing that mindset to this platform. Mr. Carter, I greatly appreciate you coming on today.

Carter Malloy (18:14)
It’s incredibly kind of you. Thank you, Q. Great to hang out with you.

Quentin (18:16)
Absolutely. Listen, y’all heard Mr. Carter. Y’all know he reinforced so many different things that we talk about here on the show. So please connect with him. His information is in the show notes. Get in contact with him. Definitely make sure you are subscribed here because I promise you we’re going to continue to bring up amazing people just like Mr. Carter. So sir, I say thank you again. And everyone else, listen, y’all have a fantastic day.