Joe:   Have you ever wondered if it's possible to actually quit your job, escape your J -O -B by learning how to invest in vacant land? Well, today I'm interviewing a couple who did just that. They went from stressed out careers in healthcare and management to building a thriving land investing business, generating quite a bit of money in passive income. That's right. I'm going to be sitting down here with Quynh and Tri Vu from sunny San Diego, right? Where it's cold and 10 degrees and snowy here in St. Louis. But what makes their story fascinating isn't just their success, it's how they've built their entire business around a strategy that very few people even know about. And never people, a lot of people don't even realize that you could actually do owner financing with dirt, with vacant land. So this is what Quynh and Tri have done. They have sell all of their deals with owner financing. So this has created a huge streams of income that pay them every a month. So in just 18 months from when they've started, they've grown from their first deal to managing a team of 20 something virtual assistants that virtually run their entire business for them. And this gives them time to do what's most important to them, like raising their four kids, which is super awesome. So if you're interested in copying a strategy that you can do the same thing, where you can create streams of passive income cashflow from vacant land, this is an interview you do not want to miss. All right. So without further ado, let's dive right in. Okay. What's up? Joe McCall here, the Real Estate Investing Mastery Podcast. Got a great guest for you today. It's the first time I've ever done this where I have gone out and I found somebody who was doing a lot of land deals, and I reached out to them and I said, hey, can I get you on my podcast? And they're like, who are you? I was like, yeah, my name's Joe, blah, blah, blah. And so I love what these guys are doing. And we're going to be talking about how to do vacant land. And we're going to talk about specifically a couple of things here. Number one, how to get capital when you're in a cash crunch and you need money for deals. We're going to talk about how to get capital for your deals, but we're also going to talk about how Quynh and Tri are running their land business with a specific strategy of selling their land on owner finance. I love this strategy. Most folks that I know, that I work with, and even myself, we wholesale most of our deals. We just are in and out, but Quynh and Tri are really looking at building streams of wealth. I like to call it, right? Streams of cash flow. There's piles of cash and there's streams of cash. And Quynh and Tri have done a really good job of building a business that's them cash flow and we're gonna ask them a bunch of questions here and so but I want to introduce you guys to Quynh and Tri how are you guys.

Tri:   Hey what's up guys?

Quynh:  Hey, we're doing great. We're here in sunny San Diego.

Joe:   Is that where you live? That's where I'm from. I was born in LA and was raised in San Diego. I lived in the El Cajon area and I went to Grossmont High School. Do you know where that is?

Quynh:  Yes, we know exactly where that is.

Joe:   Beautiful area. I go there maybe once a year, visit my mom. I still have family out there. Yeah, good. Thanks for being on the podcast. Can you just talk briefly about how did you get into land investing? And you've been in real estate for a while, right?

Quynh:  Yeah, so I can go first. I was actually a pediatric clinical pharmacist for most of my career. I worked at the Children's Hospital and I really found myself working a lot of nights, evenings, weekends, holidays, before transitioning into real estate. Eventually, I kind of gradually moved away from direct patient care, moved into management, hospital administration at different hospitals locally and just kind of slowly started stepping away from healthcare in general. I'm just looking for more time freedom with our family. I had a good friend who was actually doing land investing, and she was in another mastermind of mine. And she told me she was like buying land from people, like buying it for a really good deal, and then she was just selling it. And I was like, what did you do when you sell it? And she told me like, that's it. She just found someone who's looking for that land. She didn't do anything to it. And I was like, oh my gosh. And then she told me she owner financed it to them. So then I was like, oh my gosh, you're really just a bang. You're a bank that just happens to sell land and I just really like the model so it kind of made me like want to be like her so that's how I got started.

Tri:   Yeah, and then Quynh brought me in and like, she was super excited about it. I was thinking this is the worst idea ever. It's so boring. We were doing Airbnbs and flips and long -term rentals. It's kind of slowly growing our real estate portfolio, but she had a friend doing it. I had a couple of friends doing it. And then we met the land community and then it was just kind of locked in. This is it. This is the best pupil. It's super easy. We had a slew of rental issues, like a tree fell in one house. We had eviction in a squatter, we had a shooting at another house in Baltimore. You name it, we had a couple rehabs all in the same likeone, two years and we were just kind of done with it. We needed something easier. We still had W -2s at the time too and we needed something more passive that we could scale and yeah, we just fell in love with it.

Quynh:  I mean, can you imagine just getting a text and saying, hey, what color roof do you want? I'm like, why do we need to pick a roof color? He's like, oh, cause a tree fell on it.

Joe:   So do you still own some Airbnbs right now? Don't you? Okay.

Quynh:  Yeah, yeah, we do.

Joe:   So what percent of your business is land? What percent right now is houses?

Quynh:  Well, it's not really, they're different businesses. So our number one focus right now is really our land investment company. And then we have property managers that they are actively managing our rental portfolios and then they report up to Tri.

Joe:   Cool. All right. Now, where did you learn the land business from? Did you buy a course or sign up for a program or mentoring, coaching? What did you, how'd you guys learn about it?

Quynh:  Yeah, so we signed up for a course that was like 12 weeks long and we were in classes twice a week and we had homework each week. So that was really helpful actually to go to class, be able to ask questions, to have homework and really learn about it. And then we actually didn't make a ton of progress when we're in that class setting. We really made a lot of progress when we signed up for like one on one coaching.

Joe:   Now, is it okay if I ask you the name? Unless you don't want, if you're gonna trap talk him, then let's not touch about who it is. Was it the Land Geek?

Quynh:  Yeah, so we signed up for the Land Geek. We went to the flight school. We went to flight school like about, I want to say 12 weeks. And it was really good. We learned a lot. And then afterwards we went in person to like a live bootcamp where we met a lot of students who were doing really well and where we wanted to be. And I think just meeting people in person and seeing. how much success people had in such a short amount of time really gave us confidence to move forward. And after that, so Tri and I, we went to that boot camp together, and then we signed up for one -on -one coaching for a year. And my gosh, like we literally did whatever they told us we did, we were like really good students. We like did our homework, turned it in, asked if we did it, like we were just wanted to make sure that we got the most out of that.

Joe:   Yeah, I really like Mark Podolsky, Scott Todd. Were you working with Scott Todd? They're great. I like them a lot. Maybe we're quote -unquote competitors, but if somebody were to ask me, should I get your program or Land Geeks? I'd be like, both. There's so much you can learn from different people. And one of the things that The Land Geek is really good about is the cash flow aspect of this, right? How to build long -term wealth with cash flow. Okay, so you started, was your intention going into land to sell as much as you could on owner financing for the monthly recurring revenue?

Quynh:  Honestly, when we first heard about it, there was such a big emphasis on your monthly recurring revenue and getting passive income. So we actually, that was 100 % like our focus at first, right, was just like selling these on owner financing, which we really liked because what we found out is some of these properties, people will make payments on it for a few months and then they'll get tired of it. They stop making payments and then we can actually remarket that same property at possibly even a new market value depending upon if the market has changed substantially from the original purchase and some of our properties we've sold like three or four times.

Joe:   That kind of freaks people out a little bit because they're thinking rental world with a tenant turnover. You got to go in and clean the property up, replace the carpet, repaint the walls. You've got this huge mortgage payment that you have nobody making you a rental payment for three or four months. And then you got to pay the property management company a one month's rent as a fee to find a new tenant. And they're like, oh my gosh, like how do you do that? So answer that question, would you?

Tri:   Defaults is the opposite in the land business like we love them it's like free money because like they pay down the property and if they default then you keep the property and the money they put down and make payments for I think we made I think we had 15 defaults last quarter like the numbers are really high like I think we had 50 defaults last year total.

Joe:   And by the way, too, our goal isn't to get a buyer that we hope defaults, right? We want them to buy the property, but it happens. And the default rate is higher for land than it is for houses, but because it's different. It's more, you're selling recreational land. It's not someplace that they have to live in. So you do get a higher default rate. But what percentage maybe would you think, approximate guess, of your notes that you control, do you have it default? It's probably around 25%. Yeah. That's pretty standard for the industry. And it also depends on the type of properties. And so I want to get into some questions about what's your sweet spot for what kind of land do you like to buy and sell on owner financing. But yeah, so when you are selling on owner financing, when you buy the property, you own the property, right? You have a title to the property. When you sell it, are you giving the deed to the buyer? Are you doing a land contract or something like that or an installment sale? Are you doing a lease option? I know people that do lease options on land too.

Quynh:  So we just do a purchase agreement with a promissory note and what that really means is we are allowing them to make low monthly payments for the property and once they have the property fully paid off. then we'll transfer the deed to them within 30 days. So it gives them a lot of flexibility because sometimes even when people have enough to pay it in full, they may not want to. They're still like kind of noodling. What are they gonna do with this land when they have it? So they're okay with making payments over time. And then, yeah, so that's part of it. It is a process. You have a relationship that you're establishing with the client for a couple of years. So if they're making payments, For some of our clients, we don't hear from them. All we do is see their payments. And then other people is, oh, my bank account is changing, my phone number is changing, my address is changing. So everyone's a little bit different, but since we are holding onto that responsibility, those are some of the things that we deal with from a maintenance standpoint.

Joe:   So I'm imagining you're using GeekPay to manage and control your payments. Is that what you guys are using?

Quynh:  Yeah, we have a loan portal right now and it manages all the notes and it's actually really nice because our clients love it. They can log in, they see exactly how much they owe. If they want to make an extra payment, they just push a button. It's super simple.

Joe:   We're using Geek Pay as well. There are other tools out there, but that's good. Okay. So do you mind, can I ask you guys approximately, you don't have to give me numbers. What's your approximate monthly cashflow from these land notes that you have? Is it? It's around 20k. That's phenomenal. That is congratulations. It's really good. And about how long did it take you to get there?

Quynh:  I would say about 18 months.

Tri:   A year and a half. Yeah. So the numbers for us, it was pretty cool. It was like last January. It was around 3k and then it hit 10k like April, May. Yeah. And then it just doubled the like November, December around 20.

Joe:   A round of applause. Big claps. That's amazing. So happy for you guys. I mean, that's life -changing, isn't it? You can use vacant land to get cash flow. People don't think about that. And are you doing anything to the land? Are you clearing it out? Are you adding roads, utilities, is subdividing entitlements.

Quynh:  No, we are literally like not doing anything. Like whenever people call us and they're like, hey, does it have utilities? Does it have water? I was like, no, there's this land is only for people who want to live off grid. They do not want to live in a traditional subdivision. If you need electricity, water, all of that stuff, this might not be a good fit for you.

Joe:   Excellent. Okay, so one of the things I noticed when I was looking at your website was you had a lot of land that was cheaper land. You're selling them for $10 ,000, $15 ,000. Some of them, that's about… What's your sweet spot?

Tri:   Yeah, this was a great one. So, when we first started, we met a bunch of guys making like 3k a month, 10k a month, 20k a month. And we were like, yeah, this is exciting. And we kind of backtracked it. If we had 67 notes at 150 bucks, that's our 10k. We had to get the 10k a month as fast as possible. And we just did the math backwards. So, we started buying lots that were 300 bucks because we didn't trust the system until $300 lots in Arkansas. And then we kind inch up to $2 ,000 lots to $5 ,000 to $10 ,000. So most of our lots are like $200 to $10k. You're buying them? That's our vibe. So you're buying them from $10k? I don't think we've bought them from $10k yet.

Quynh:  So in 10k is on the high end, like we would, if we bought one parcel for 10k, that would be a lot for us. Our buy box is probably on the lower side, I would say between 1200 and maybe five to six thousand at the high end and we wouldn't buy a property unless we can probably sell for a minimum of 150.

Joe:   And so when you sell, so you're buying them, just so I'm clear, you're buying them around your sweet spot is maybe two to five grand. The most you'd pay is 10 grand. So and you're buying them at about 30, 40 cents on the dollar, would you say?

Quynh:  It depends. Sometimes less, sometimes more. It just kind of really depends on how desirable it is, if there's something wrong with it, if there's back taxes owed. So it really depends on the circumstance.

Joe:   So let's talk about an example deal. You're gonna sell this property for $10,000 on owner finance. Well, that's what you maybe use at 15,000. You're gonna sell it for $15,000 on owner financing. What are you buying that property for?

Quynh:  Well, our goal is to buy it for $0.25 on the dollar. That would be the perfect scenario.

Joe:   Maybe you pay 35 cents on the dollar. So if I get a calculator here real quick, well, I think these numbers will kind of help people get this picture in their mind. So you're gonna sell it for $15 ,000 on owner financing. You're gonna try to buy it for $3 ,800, right? That sounds about right. And so then when you're selling it for 15 ,000, you wanna shoot for a minimum of $150 a month payments. So what is your normal term? Is it five years, 10 years, 10 % interest? How do you come up with that?

Quynh:  We are usually trying to collect more upfront as like a down payment if possible, and we do look at the annual yield to make sure that we're getting a lot of our money back that first year, if possible.

Joe:   So you call that annual and then that's the return on the cash you put into the deal, right?

Quynh:  Yeah, that's the return on the cash that we put into the deal. And just as a general frame of reference, our deals are 60 to 96 months.

Joe:   Cool. 60 to 96 months. So you'll, you're trying to get the payment, if you want the payment down to be $152, $200 a month, you may need to make it a longer term period, right? So is there an interest rate you typically try to calculate, use?

Quynh:  We don't charge interest. We just like, cause the terms price is already a little bit higher than the cash price. So it kind of works out.

Joe:   So you could ever you do you use that in your advertising zero percent interest.

Quynh:  I mean, we mainly just market, we market like the cash price, which is like a discounted cash price for people. And if they want to pay for it in full, they definitely can, but I would say 98%, 95 % of our clients, they prefer the low monthly payments just for the flexibility.

Joe:   People buy on payments. And one of the things I've noticed when we advertise land is for every one call we get from a cash buyer, we'll get maybe five calls from an owner financing buyer. Do you find that about the same? It's higher, right?

Quynh:  Yeah, I rarely meet someone because people just sometimes I don't think they have a lot saved. I think that it's, or if they do have money saved, they just feel better not spending it all in one place.

Joe:   So what kind of down payment do you try to get, or do you typically get?

Quynh:  It's really, it varies, but I would say on average, it's a pretty low down payment. $200 down payment, 249 document fee. So I would say two to 500 down payment is what we typically do and.

Tri:   Yeah, promotions, too. Right now we're doing like $20 down. Yeah. We just want to make it easy for everybody to get in real estate. And we're pretty flexible. So we'll work with you. I think there's always a win -win situation. We'll work out something.

Quynh:  Yeah.

Tri:   Yeah, we sometimes don't make our numbers or lower yields just to help people out.

Joe:   So your goal isn't to sell these notes. Your goal is to keep them as long as you can, correct?

Quynh:  Well, yeah, we definitely try to keep it as long as we can, but there are, there have been some circumstances where we needed cash in a crunch. We're looking to buy some like larger deals, bulk properties, and we have sold some of our notes in order to get that cash a little bit sooner versus waiting the full 60 to 96 months.

Joe:   Yeah, so that's really good. We're going to talk about that in a minute because I want to ask you questions because you're buying a lot of properties where do you where does that money come from? And you also have an operation you have to run with marketing. So I want to ask you that because that's really important because sometimes the problem the biggest problem people have is not finding the deals, but it's finding the money to buy the deals. I want to ask you, how do you pick the good markets to do owner financing in?

Tri:   We have a team of VA's that kind of scrub around the marketplaces, all the land sites, and they collect data every week, every month in different counties to see what people are selling, the number of properties sold, what size, and what terms. So if they're doing term deals or seller financing, how much other people are selling it for per month duration. So we kind of just look at everybody else, what everybody else is doing to see if there's a market.

Joe:   By the way, top secret. This is how I found you guys. I was doing a coaching call and I was teaching people how to do owner financing. I was like, just look to see what everybody's doing. And I went into a state, picked it random. I went into a county, picked it random and there you were. I want to ask you this because you were on one of the land .com websites and they are expensive, right? Like when I was using land .com, I don't anymore. We just list everything with a realtor because we're selling for cash. But I was getting 500 or 600 bucks a month with land .com. Were you around, are you around there somewhere?

Quynh:  Oh, no, we're paying way more than that. Like, I cannot even disclose how much we're paying. Well, it's the thousands. Let's just say that. Yeah, it's crazy. But you know what? It's totally worth it. Because honestly, the type of clients that we get from that website, they're very serious. Like, they're looking specifically for land. And it just helps out our sales team because we have a very motivated client. So it just makes things a little bit easier.

Joe:   I looked at it as you just do one deal in a year and it's going to pay for that, but it's a significant investment. One of the things I was saying was, hey, if you see somebody that's doing sponsored listings on land .com, they maybe know what they're doing. I'm a big believer of modeling success, seeing what good people are doing. Don't copy them, but model what they're doing. So have you found different ways that you advertise property? What are some of your favorite ways to find buyers?

Quynh:  I mean, we definitely like the land sites and sometimes people are nervous about what they're going to spend on marketing, but they should also be nervous about not being able to sell the property that they have acquired, right? There's that same level. So the land sites, like the land .com, landmoto, landflip, landsearch, like all of those landwatch, lotflip, farmflip, like we're on all the different possibilities from Facebook Marketplace.

Tri:   Inside Meta. Like we'll try everything. Okay. But we just kind of see what the market's like, what we see. Like sometimes we were like shiny object syndrome or someone mentioned something and would jump on it. We give it three months and see what happens. And we try to course correct, but sometimes we just give up and then we hear it again and we're like, all right, it's still, it works out there. We got to get back on there. We just gave up too soon. So I think that's one thing that we do well is we get, we take action on the shiny object syndrome for good or bad.

Joe:   That's why you guys are doing so well and so successful. I love that. Okay. By the way, has Mark Podolsky had you on his podcast yet?

Quynh:  Yes, he has.

Joe:   I was hoping I would be the first to get you guys on. By the way, shout out to Mark Podolsky again. He's got a great book called Dirt Flip or Dirt Rich. You guys should go get his book Dirt Rich and he's got part one and part two. Have you guys read part two yet?

Quynh:  Yeah, he gave us a copy and he actually signed it, so we feel really lucky.

Joe:   Well, when you talk to Mark, say hello to him for me, would you? Yeah. And Scott Todd too. I like Scott. It was, I interviewed Scott Todd long time ago and I think he had just quit his job maybe six to 12 months earlier and he quit his job because of the cashflow from land that he was getting. All right. So anyway, can we talk about how do you find these deals? And then I want to talk about how do you raise the money when you need money to buy the deals? How do you find them? Are you doing blind offers, generic neutral letters, postcards? What do you think about this? What do you think about this?

Tri:   We do a lot of mailers and then we network a lot. So the mailers are pretty generic. You can't tell what it is when you open up the envelope and they have the offer price in there. We have some type of decoration inside like snowflakes. to maybe catch their attention. I don't know. It works, but it seems to be okay. I see our code call, email, text us, type of deal. And then we network a lot with other investors and buy a lot of wholesale. And recently we've been doing a lot of JV deals, like partnerships with other people that they love buying. Everybody could buy, but they have a tough time marketing and selling. We can help. So we do JV too. That's awesome. Yeah. And are finding those JV opportunities in Facebook groups or where? A little bit of everything. Facebook groups, other masterminds, other WhatsApp groups. We working with good people and we'll figure out how to make it work just to be around good people. And yeah, it's not about the money. Money's great, but it's more about just being around great people. So we'll make it work.

Quynh:  Yeah, so like some of our friends, they're like, they may be in a situation where they're really high in inventory, their inventory is really high. And then we may be like low inventory, but we could help them sell.

Joe:   Nice. What percent of your deals come from mailers and what percent approximately come from people bringing you deals? I would think about 50 -70. So you're more of a buy and hold investor, right? And the people that are bringing you deals are more of the wholesalers, right? Is there, if you don't mind me asking, is there like an average wholesale fee or assignment that you pay them?

Quynh:  Oh no, I mean like usually when someone is selling us something wholesale, we know that they're making a percentage of it. So if we buy at like normally from our sellers direct like 25 % then we would buy from a wholesaler you know between 40 and 50 % and then it would give us some room if we needed to sell it. There's a lot of times where we just buy wholesale because it's faster.

Tri:   If our inventory is low, then we'll pay more. But if we're kind of stocked up for a while, then we'll offer what we can, closer towards the 25%.

Joe:   So now when you buy a property, how long does it take you to find a buyer for it?

Quynh:  I would say three to six months conservatively.

Joe:   Three to six months to find an owner financing buyer. Okay.

Quynh:  Yeah, it's not the drop of a hat. It takes some time, I think, for enough people to see the marketing that we have and for the right person to really, you know, follow them.

Joe:   And why do you think that is it because well, yeah, why do you think that is why does it take so long?

Quynh:  You know, it might even have to do with, like, the clients that we're working with, like, in the price point that we're in. You know, sometimes people feel a little bit nervous about mind land on mind. Like, they don't know who we are. Sometimes they want to make sure that, you know, we're reaching out consistently for a few months before they decide to work with us. and then some other times people on the first call, they're like, they're ready. So each person is a little bit different, but you know, in other people, they may be able to sell their stuff quicker, but we've just noticed it's been pretty consistent for us like three to six months is what we would expect.

Joe:   All right. Do you think have you ever do you ever try to sell your land on the MLS with a realtor or a flat fee broker or something like that?

Quynh:  I'm actually a licensed real estate agent here in San Diego, and I haven't. I haven't, and part of it is because we find plenty of clients when we, at the price point that we're in, we find plenty of clients directly on the land sites where we don't have to like hire someone and pay like an extra fee for it. But if we had some larger properties, we would definitely consider hiring a real the agent to do all of that marketing for us.

Joe:   I have a client who uses bandit signs to sell a lot of his deals, so he'll go to Thumbtack. And we've done this before, we'll go to Thumbtack, find somebody local that will go put out signs in the neighborhood. Vacant land for sale, two acres, only 200 bucks a month. And that actually works. It actually works really well, something to think about. Ugly handwritten bandit signs. Wow, crazy. You know what else is funny when I was doing a lot of houses, and I've never done this, but I have another friend who does, and this worked the best. He said, there's two signs. One of them was a house for sale, three slash two, I'll take anything, and phone number and desperate or something desperate, I'll take anything, phone number, phone rings off the hook. Another one he would do would be three slash two motivated, come sleep with me, phone number and he would get a ton of calls. But he had to set it up with a voicemail that would explain, all right, yeah. So thanks for calling about my three bedroom, two bath house on this street in this area. It's a fixer upper. And if you're interested, it's $40 ,000, leave your name and number and I'll text you the details. butanyway something like that if you if you're if you're kind of got a dirty mind it has come up. All right, anyway, okay. So you're getting deals from direct mail, from networking. I love networking, being involved with communities, and I tell my community, join as many other communities as you can as well, right? Go out there and find, if you can get into them, because you're gonna find people that'll bring you deals that will need money, the private lenders and things like that. So that's awesome, I love that you're doing that. Let's talk about like, how do you get the capital for your deals? You know, you're buying these things for $3 ,000, $5 ,000. You know, you buy 12 of them at $5 ,000, that's $60 ,000. Not everybody's got that in an IRA or in the bank account. You know, when your capital is being used to acquire deals, how do you find more?

Quynh:  You know what? It's actually way easier to get capital than we thought. I'm glad you said that. Tell us why. I feel like because there's just so much abundance out there. Like when we, when people hear about some of the deals that we're doing, they're like, oh my gosh, that makes so much sense, like what you're doing. So we've have had friends and family, they're like, what are you guys doing? Like they want to hear about it. And then if there's opportunities that come up where they can possibly invest with us. That's an opportunity, but we've just, it's so weird. Cause as soon as we're like, okay, let's just buy all this land for some reason, something happens, but we just have an influx of capital. Nice.

Joe:   Nice. So crazy. And your friends and family, but also I'm imagining you can borrow money from people in the land investing community too, right?

Quynh:  Oh yeah, we've done deals with people within the community. Sometimes we have friends that, you know, they're in the land space, but they may be tired of the county or the state that they're in and they want to like go somewhere else. So we'll buy their entire inventory in that area that they're trying to leave. And that's probably been some of the best deals that we've had where it was like a mutual win -win. Like they're looking to do like maybe bigger deals in other states. And we're like, okay, we're good with these small deals. We kind of like this area. So we'll just take on whatever they don't want.

Joe:   There's a lot of that out there too. So when you, you know, let's say you got somebody that's got a portfolio of 20 properties. They want a hundred grand for the 20 properties, five grand each or something like that. If you don't have that capital right now, what do you do? You just call friends and family. Hey, do you got some money?

Tri:   Yeah. That's exactly it. We've got a few people that are super interested and they're just ready to go whenever we have a deal that we need to partner up with. And other guys are in new counties that we're not in, they're just waiting for us. All right. This is a good market trial. I like what you're doing. Do it over here with me. Let's go this way. And yeah. So we have the systems and the processes to do it. And I think the money is just sitting there for us to jump on it. We're just kind of slow rolling into these new markets. Kind of like what you said. You just have a lot of people. You just got to put it out there. I want to do more deals. Who wants to partner up? And they'll come.

Quynh:  The other thing too that our coach had told us, which we were a little bit hesitant to do to get capital, so we were looking for capital in a crunch, like it's a scenario where we're trying to buy a bunch of land all at once. weactually have the capability of just selling off some of our loans. So if we sell off some of our loans, instead of waiting, you know, 60 months for people to pay off, we're going to get a huge influx of capital all at once. And we've just done that on occasion. And now we're kind of in a position where we're actively buying notes too. So it's kind of nice that we can sell some of our notes. So that way we stay in good contact with people who are looking to fund that type of deal. But then we're also actively looking to buy other people's notes.

Joe:   That's really cool because sometimes we're just in different places at different times. And if your capital is all tied up, but you've got a bunch of great performing notes, you could sell some of them, get some more capital, buy some more deals, grow your cash flow. I love that. And I always say too, it's important to dig your well before you're thirsty. It's important to be talking to people about what you do. You're not always soliciting money from people, right? You're talking about what you do. And everybody says, well, what do you do? And you can say something like, well, I invest in land. I take, we work with private investors and we buy land deals and we give safe, consistent, they can't use safe. You know, we give predictable returns on their money and so then they just leave it at that. And people might ask you, how does that work? You flip land? Yeah. So let me ask you then, what are, in general terms, what are some of the terms that you pay to a private investor who might lend you some money? Let's say you've got somebody who's got a hundred grand. They want to lend the money for deals. you know, what are some terms you pay them?

Quynh:  Well, you know, that's a really good question. And it really depends on how the partnership is structured and how much capital they're providing us with and what the returns are. So there are some people who they want money, but they want it back really, really quick. And you know what? We might not be able to take on that type of investor because, you know, as you can see, like it takes us three to six months sometimes in order to sell our property. So we're more looking for an investor who is open to like a three to five year term and we're super flexible on our sides for some of our clients. They want monthly, they want monthly payments. And we're able to do that where other larger, larger deals, you may not see your money for, you have to wait till the end of the five years or the end of the three years, or maybe even only once a year payment. So we can structure in a way where they can get like monthly payments. We've done everything from like interest only payments. We've done amortized loans. We've done joint ventures, but we typically don't do like joint venture partnerships with people unless they've done some type of like, you know, promissory note or debt, debt arrangement with us so we know what it's like to work with them.

Joe:   Yeah. Okay. So what that means is, well, when somebody lends you money on a deal, they send it to the title company. I'm assuming they don't send it to you necessarily. So it gets secured by a real deal. Is that right?

Quynh:  It depends on the situation. There's some like promissory notes that it's just like we have like kind of a simple contract that we do with our partners and there's no like date of trust involved. In most of the time that's kind of like with like friends and family. So it really just depends on what people need in order to feel secure. But we work with different types of investors and, you know, sometimes, you know, the interest rates are, you know, like around 10%, sometimes it can be higher, but it really, what it really depends on is like the terms, like how long that's going to be and how much capital they have to invest.

Joe:   That's really good. When I was first getting started in real estate, I was so desperate to get money, I started offering really generous interest rates, like 15%. And the problem became where, oh, that's just too good to be true. There must be a catch. What's the catch? This must be a scam. And when I made it, brought it down to more 8 % to 12 % or 10%, it was much easier. But I tell people too, like, if you've got a good deal, the money will come. And because we're buying these properties at such good discounts, Me, my rule of thumb is I never borrow more than 50 % of the value of the land. My private investors are really well protected, right? Worst case, you default, they get the property back, they get all their money back after they sell it, plus more, and they make, you know, so instead of collecting a hundred bucks from me, they just take over the note and they're collecting 200 bucks, something like that, right? So it's like, there is a, we just got to make sure we're private investors are well protected. Would you agree though, when you find a good deal, the money always comes? Thank you for watching.

Quynh:  Yeah, it just, it kind of happens. Like if you know that you want to get the deal, the universe just makes everything happen. Like we're just like, hey, we're gonna move forward with this as if everything is gonna work. And like things just line up.

Joe:   Yeah, that's so good. That's why I love being in communities and networking and masterminds and groups like that. Because you can always put something out there. Hey, I got a deal. I need some help. Does anybody want to partner with me on this deal? Or does anybody know Yeah.

Quynh:  Yeah, and try has done that like he'll tell people like if you have a good deal, make sure you like call me I want to be on the list. I want to hear about the deal

Tri:   I have a high curiosity level and sometimes it's not about the money, it's just about like the deal. What are you looking at? What are you looking at? Is it new? And you just don't report that way because you're genuinely interested in the person on top of it.

Joe:   So how do you guys work together? You know, like, you're strong at one thing, the other, you know, Quynh, you're strong at something else. How do you figure out, like, who does what?

Tri:   Quynh is good at everything. You try to split it up at first, it was like, I do the acquisitions, she does the sales. And we got in trouble, we were like, I don't know about this, I don't want to call them or I don't know about the docs on this, but I'll call them. So it flipped and now she does like a lot of the front end stuff and I do the back. So I do a lot of hiring, the systems, tech stack, looking for deals. And then she's bubbly, she's lovable, like we're on the phone and people melt early. No one could say I can't say no to her. So, you know, you guys have no chance.

Quynh:  I would say like, I have a very, very, very limited skill set and it's just like talking to people. Like anything beyond that, like I could barely fill out the form for the podcast. Like there's too much information, but like Tri. He's so good at like hiring talent, recruiting talent. He's great at automation. So like if we had to fill out like a contract for every sale, I would be like exhausted. but he's made it so I just push a button and everything gets filled out magically and it shows up in my inbox and I just have to sign. So he works with like developers, like he, whatever happens, he'll like make it so much easier and there's no way we would be able to like do the volume that we do without someone who is able to like run a team. He's so good about leading our team puddles. So we have like a huddle every day and we have people from, you know, Peru, Argentina, the Philippines, like they're all over and they help us with a lot of the things that we see behind the scenes like all those land .com ads like we didn't make those like our team is making that we have like professional photographers so I feel like I do just a really tiny part of the business and then try to make sure everything like works.

Joe:   You guys are awesome. I'm sure you never get into fights, right?

Tri:   We had some new rules recently and it was no talking about land before 8 or after 8 p .m. Like, you know, it has to be just nothing only between those hours. No land talk in the bedroom. That's the problem. Like, I got a great idea. I'm like, nope, the bedroom, I'll turn it off. And then the other good advice we've gotten that we've used is it's two yeses or it's a no. So we both have to agree on a decision or if one of us is like, I don't know about that, then it's a no. And a lot of times you're laid back. So it's usually yes for almost everything. But if we feel negative about it, then we either work through it or we just, that's super wrong. Do you have kids? Do you mind if I ask? Well, you have four kids. I have four kids and dogs and two cats and then this is big news you want to share the news?

Quynh:  Okay, my cat might be having babies.

Joe:   I thought you were going to say you were having a baby, but how old are your kids?

Quynh:  Okay. So our oldest is 23 and he actually works full -time in our land business too. He does sales acquisition for us. He graduated last year from UCSD and he's been, he's been such a huge part of our business. Like he's grown so much with us. And then we have an 18 -year -old, like senior in high school, 16 -year -old, junior, and then a 14 -year -old in 8th grade.

Joe:   Same ages as mine. Two boys, 21 and 19, and they did a bunch of land deals with me. They don't do it anymore. They just do not want to be behind a computer. So one is studying to be a chiropractor, the other one is studying to be an electrician. We'll see how long that lasts, like when they might want to get back into owning their own business. And then two girls, 16 and 13 years old. What a crazy, wow.

Quynh:  Very similar. So four kids, too.

Joe:   But we have three dogs, no cats. What's with these pets? Why do we, why do people that have a lot of kids have to have a lot of pets? Doesn't make any sense, but.

Quynh:  Makes complete sense.

Joe:   It does? Okay, real quick, I want to ask you, you guys have been real gracious with your type. What are some of the software and tools that you use? Do you have a CRM that you like? Did you build your own?

Tri:   We're from San Diego and that's where ClickUp started. And we look because of that like maybe there's better ones like Asana and Trello and all that stuff but there's all automation hookups to like Make and Zapier to Follow -Up Boss, use Follow -Up Boss. So use Follow -Up Boss then ClickUp. Yeah and then Make, Zapier, OG Pass we still use for the mailers and then yeah those are main ones.

Joe:   Quick plug for Freedom Soft. That's the one I use and you can do all of that in just one platform. I'm not selling that anymore here. I like all those tools and I used to be really into that kind of stuff and that's another whole story. But I love that you're setting up, I often say this, there's three keys to success in this business, marketing, automation and delegation. And marketing is, you know, we're not in the real estate investing business, we're in the marketing business, right? It's all about marketing. And then automation is setting up systems to do the stuff for you in spite of you. So it doesn't get forgotten, right? But sometimes whatever you can't automate, you need to delegate. And sometimes the best system is a virtual assistant, right? To get a VA to do those kinds of tasks for you. And if you can figure those three things out, which is one of the reasons why I think you guys are so successful, is you figured out the marketing, you've got the right systems and you've got a right team that implements this stuff for you. And that's a secret sauce. Would you agree with that? Did I kind of get it right there?

Quynh:  Yeah, I mean, I think like the biggest part is like the team and like, I has been so good about bringing our team together. And they're so cute. They're all they all join the call together. And when one person says something they all like, like they do those little emojis that happened during the meeting, like support each other.

Joe:   How many VAs do you have?

Tri:   Yeah, we did the count recently, like yesterday, and I think we're on 20.

Joe:   Full -time or just part -time contracts?

Tri:   Yeah, some full -times, some part -time.

Joe:   Wow good for you. Okay, so we talked about how to get capital when you're in a crunch, and I know we kind of just talked about that briefly, but anything else you want to touch on about that, how to get capital that you need for your deals.

Quynh:  I mean, so the things that we talked about was, you know, possibly selling notes if needed, you know, reaching out to private investors that have wanted to work with us, you know, for loans, lines of credits, you know, working with a line of credit. There's a lot of different things that there's a lot more levers than you may think you have access to, but you don't really know until you find that deal. That deal will make you find everything to make it happen.

Tri:   Yeah. And I would say like, like don't underestimate the power of momentum. You got a good deal. You want the retail sale, the cash sale, but sometimes wholesaling just to get the ball moving and then you wholesale again, you get more money, a little bit money more, you know, it starts stacking up and just doing the small stuff counts. It really counts. You like, you're like hitting yourself down yourself for like not doing the bigger bad, bad ones, but you know, just keep the ball moving and it kind of stacks up. So, opportunities will come if you just keep on moving and then same thing with the money and the investors, right? You just keep on moving.

Joe:   I love that. Momentum is so important, right? It's like there was a train stopped on the tracks and you put a two -by -four on the tracks and you turn that fire up that engine and you start to go, it will not move with that little two -by -four. But if that train has momentum and it's moving and you put that two -by -four on the track, it'll obliterate it, move right over it, right? So there's that real principle of momentum of getting, being consistent with the marketing, the making the offers, and you will build that momentum slowly over time. And then pretty soon it comes to something where it's just hard to stop. and you've got a team of 20 -something VAs, right, and you've got, you're looking for more deals because, and you're looking to lend money on deals or borrow money from deals and it comes, it just happens. I love your story. So like, you know, you see a lot of people in the community, in the land geek community and in other communities that are struggling, just like you were successful. Unfortunately, it's, you're kind of the exception, right? Most, a lot of people struggle with getting started because of lack of, because of fear, because of lack of faith or belief that the system actually works. A lot of people are afraid of making mistakes. They're afraid of success. But like, what's some advice would you give to people who are just getting started and, you know, want to leap or leapfrog into and have success quicker than most people? Does that make sense?

Quynh:  Yeah, I would say I think making mistakes is actually the right way to go because that's really what an expert is, is someone who's made the most mistakes in a given area. So like, you know, whether or not I feel like you every mistake is like a lesson learned and it's just so powerful to just like kind of go through it. Like, I don't know, I feel like I'm kind of hard headed. Like I need to experience what I did wrong to know not to do it again. If tells me not to do it, I might not listen. Like I have to sometimes just go through it to really know what that feels like. And the other thing too that I think has really helped us is what Chai was saying. Like it doesn't have to be a big deal. Like just be really smaller. Just get on base. It's not a home run. Just give our team the experience they need so they can practice doing sales contracts. So they can practice buying property. Like all these little things. is to give our team more experience. And I feel like I'm good with that type of gross, like incremental versus like.

Tri:   Yeah, another way to put it is like you want like this certain number and passive, but really you should be focused on what's the day -to -day, week -to -week look like. Let me just do my research, let me just send the mailers out, let me just return these calls, right? Just focus on the little stuff and it stacks up. And the other thing is you don't have to suffer alone. So like Quynh's superpower is her kindness, like she's super nice to everybody. And for me, it's like community, I love family, collaboration, community, curiosity, and you don't have to suffer alone. Like you could do it together. Like, dude, I don't know. Like I called so many people today about marketplace. I don't, like I'm struggling with Facebook marketplace. I want to help me. And a bunch of people call me back and like, let's get on the phone. I'll help you. And like, you know, so put it out there. Like it starts with vulnerability. You share where you're not good at. And people will like gravitate towards you. Like, all right, he's not, he's a normal guy. Like he does things well, he does things bad. And you don't have to suffer alone. Just, just put it out there. And you know, people want to help.

Joe:   That's such great advice. How can people get a hold of you? Where can they go? You know, there's maybe people that got a portfolio of notes they would love to sell to you. Maybe they've got some deals they want to bring to you and you can partner with them on. How can people reach you?

Quynh:  So they can find us, you know, on Instagram we're Secure Land Co and every Friday Tri has been posting something funny about land. So if they just need a good laugh, they can just go onto our Instagram and find us on there. So Secure Land Co, you could also find us on our YouTube channel. And then we have a website, SecureLandco .com, but if you need anything, feel free to reach out to either one of us at, you know, through our about page or info at SecureLandco. That's our email. Or they can just find us, Google us, we'll come up.

Joe:   Love it. SecureLandCo .com

Quynh:  Yeah. Dot com.

Joe:   I like it a lot. Do you have the domain, by the way, secureland .co?

Quynh:  I think we might have that, I'm not sure. I know that we have a couple of variations of it. The reason why we wanted SecureLandCo, I love that the logo reminds me of a national park.

Joe:   I like that logo a lot, yeah.

Quynh:  And I wanted it to look really old, like vintage. Like it's been around for a long time, like land. So that's kind of like the thought behind that kind of badge shape.

Joe:   That's really cool. Well, you guys have been awesome. And I really do hope everybody listening to this, if you've got some land notes you want to sell, if you've got some money you want to invest with Quynh and Tri, that you reach out to them, contact them. They're just a really nice, friendly couple. I was nervous about, you know, sending, contacting you, you know, like, are they going to know who I am? Are they going to think that I'm weird wanting to interview them about their business? And you guys have been super gracious, very nice. Thank you so much. And big shout out to the Mark Podolsky and the LandGeek community. They're great. They have a great podcast. Get Mark's book Dirt Rich, part one and part two. I highly recommend them. I've had Mark and Scott Todd on my podcast several times. Been a few years. I should reach out to them. You know, Mark Podolsky inspired me. Right below my feet right now is a walking treadmill. Does he still do call on a walking treadmill?

Quynh:  Sometimes, yeah.

Joe:   So like, yeah, I would be on it too. Mark will do his podcast while he's walking, but you see his head bobbing around, you know, so I don't do that, but yeah, super good guys over there. And thank you guys so much for being on my podcast. I really appreciate you.

Quynh:  Oh, thank you for having us. This was a lot of fun.

Joe:   Quynh and Tri Vu, appreciate you guys and we'll see you later. Bye bye everybody. Take care.