Chapter #2: The B.O.S.S. Play

Play number two, the boss play. You have to learn the rules of the game and then you have to play better than anyone else. Albert Einstein. That's the subject of this chapter, as we examine another play in the Land Investors Playbook. Play number two, the boss play, or what I also call the boss method, is our focus. It's only right that we begin with a discussion of fruit snacks. Yes, fruit snacks. And if you want, we can also talk about juice boxes and alphabet soup. Any of these food and drink products would be relevant to our discussion in this chapter. What makes the foods and drink relevant is that in each case, you probably no longer consume them. Now if you've got kids or you're a kid at heart, that's another story. But for most of us, as adults today, we're not gobbling up fruit snacks, sipping on a juice box, or making words in a bowl of alphabet soup. Why not? Simple. We're grown-ups now. In that role, we've probably adopted grown-up diets. The same can likely be said for other aspects of our lives too. The way we dress, the music we listen to, and the kinds of physical activities we engage in. These have all undoubtedly changed in ways unique to each of us as we've grown older. Growing up in the land investing sense is no different. When you first begin as a land investor, four, and then at the level play number one, the microflip level, you're comparable to a kid. In that position, you do kid things. As a parallel to how kids eat fruit snacks, you might as a land investing kid consume sugary motivational content that's not very filling. I.e. actionable or practical. With time, however, you make the shift to being a grown-up land investor. In this new role, you may trade the land investing fruit snacks for some meat and potatoes. This could entail, for example, joining a mastermind group so you could interact directly with other land investors rather than continuing to listen at a distance. Joining a mastermind isn't the only indication that you're becoming an adult in the land investing sense. Indeed, as you, and hopefully your bank account, grow up in the land niche, there are many other shifts you may find yourself making. Of these shifts, four highly important ones occur when you begin running play number two, the boss play. Never heard of it? That's because the boss play, aka the boss method, is an innovative method that I created and developed as our land business grew up. To help you remember these shifts, I've organized them into the acronym B-O-S-S boss. Over the course of this chapter, you'll be learning what each letter and boss stands for. And how collectively the letters come together is the basis for play number two, the boss play, the boss method. Let's begin seriously now, no more fruit snacks, with a look at the first letter and the boss method. The letter B is for bigger deals. This means targeting properties that have higher market values than those properties targeted in play number one, the microflip. All how play number one, which involved doing microflips, had us going after properties with a market value of approximately 40,000 or less. That 40k was our ceiling, the upper limit on market values. Now though in play number two, the boss play, our ceiling has been raised to about 400,000. What about the other end? Examinate our lower limit, the figure of floor on market values for play number two, the boss play. You're going to see that it rests at 40,000. So the range of market values for play number two, the boss play is therefore between 40,000 and 400,000. Okay, let's take a step back. We know what bigger deals look like for the boss play. Now we need to answer the question of why it matters. Why in other words, would you care about doing bigger deals? The answer in case it's not obvious is that bigger deals enable you to make more money. Earning more is particularly important at the beginning of your land investing career. This is because when your first beginning started, you'll have expenses like software memberships, list polling fees, postage for your campaigns and much more. It's therefore essential to get back in the black or financially with a profit as quickly as possible. Getting some healthy profits early on ensures that you get in the green, being able to afford you early expenses and avoiding the figure of breaker waves that trap many land flippers as they attempt to reach the ocean. Caught in the breaker waves, the other land flippers seem to be constantly pushed back to shore instead of setting sail. They run play number one, the micro flip, their whole career. In the process, they're always playing catch up. When some small funds come in, they catch up on expenses incurred and then either fail to get ahead or just barely get by. Play number two, the boss play will help push you past the breaker waves and get you out onto the ocean where you can actually get ahead. This occurs again since you're pocketing more money than at play number one, the micro flip level. Roughly speaking, you can expect to earn at least five figures on every deal in play number two. Exact amounts here, you know, on earnings for play number two, the boss play probably average between 10k and 50k minimum for a single deal. In addition, running play number two, the boss play may occasionally result in a deal where you can earn a six figure profit. Six figures in profit from just one deal? Yes, you heard that correctly. A single deal in play number two may, albeit infrequently, result in you earning upwards of $100,000. The only way to attain such profits, however, whether at six or even five figures is to make the shift from play number one, the micro flip, to play number two, the boss play. One way in which you make the shift, as we've just seen, is by doing bigger deals. That's our B in boss. The abbreviation for remembering the fundamentals of play number two. Coming back up on boss, the next letter in is O. The letter O is for offer more. Offer more? If there were ever a case where looks could be deceiving, it's got to be here with this phrase. Despite being only two words, the phrase offer more packs a considerable punch. The phrase means multiple things, each of which is vital to your success in executing on our second land investing play, the boss play. First among its meaning, offer more? Our O in boss relates to volume. This bite-sized phrase is encouraging you to make more offers to property owners. Realistically, you'll likely be sending out $4,000 plus offers per deal. Your offers in turn should also be for a higher percentage of market value. That's another meaning of the phrase offer more. You need to offer more money to those owners whose properties you wish to acquire. Offering more in this way with financial amounts can be a challenge for land investors. Before you struggle with it, if you haven't already, here's some advice. My advice is to stop thinking about ROI when doing land deals. For those not familiar, ROI stands for return on investment. And most investment wisdom, or what passes for it, presents ROI as the be all and end all. The way investors often speak of ROI, it's as though it's the only unit of measurement they know of how to determine how successful their land flip was. To be fair, there are many, many cases with investing where ROI should reign supreme. Nonetheless, there's one case where ROI definitely should not. Be the metric or unit of measurements you use to gauge if your flip was a success. That would be in land investing with play number two, the boss play. And play number two, you shift away from ROI. With the shift, you're no longer looking to get a spectacular seemingly unreal return on your investment. An example of such a return would be buying a piece of land for $500 and selling it for $3,000. Resulting in a whopping 500% ROI, but only a profit of $2,500. At the play number one, the micro flip level, the return in this example is incredible. You were also able to purchase the property in this example for 16% of market value. A huge distance. count in terms of percentage, get given some thought and you may see a problem. The problem is that it's not scalable. To see why, imagine adding a few extra zeros to that $3,000 property in the earlier example. With the extra zeros, imagine you're now trying to buy a property that is worth $300,000 for 16% of its value, which would be a $48,000 offer and then you're going to sell it for $300,000. How likely do you think it is that you could pull this off, especially if the property you're targeting is in a hot or desirable and fast-moving market. I'll answer for you if you haven't figured it out yet. You're not very likely to buy this $300,000 property for 16% of its value. If you do pull off this Hail Mary of a Play, the main point I'm trying to drive home is that it isn't repeatable or a scalable one. It's not a play in the playbook. It's an exception to the rule. Thus, if you want to scale in the sense of targeting higher value properties and making more money from them on a consistent basis, then your expectations on ROI are going to have to change. Echoing the metaphor from the start of this chapter around growing up, you could say that your ROI expectations need to grow up too, achieving a kind of maturity as you progress in your land investing career. The mature view of ROI in the boss play is to put in the background and focus primarily on the margin or net profit, which is the outcome. With this new focus, the percentage of market value that we offer will increase. Percentage-wise, you can expect in play number two to offer between 40% and 60% of full market value as opposed to 15% to 35% and play number one the microflip. Let's revisit the aforementioned $300,000 property now that you're up to speed. What if you were able to come to an agreement with a seller on a price of $150,000 purchase price, which would be a 50% offer price, and after all agent commissions, closing costs, perhaps a survey, some lot clearing fees, and let's even throw in a price cut. You then walk away with $90,000 net profit. If we look at the ROI of $150,000 investment and we're netting a profit of $90,000, then you're only looking at 60% ROI. When measured up against that 500% ROI example in play number one, where we invested $500 and we resold it for $25,000, then in ROI of 60% doesn't sound too impressive, but ask yourself what you would rather have, $2000 in your pocket, with a 500% ROI you can beat your chest up out, or $90,000 net in the bank account with a 60% ROI. That example really illustrates the mindset of the boss play, or at least the desired outcome of running this play. Your adjustment here on percentage of market value also reflects another grown-up. That would be the seller. They too have come of age in the boss play. Ages supposed to bring wisdom, and this definitely rings true with the sellers you'll be dealing with in the boss play. The sellers aren't as likely to have been born yesterday or be clueless when it comes to their properties. To the contrary, the sellers in play number two, the boss play often have a clear picture of what their properties are worth. Moreover, such sellers may not necessarily be in a hurry to sell their properties, as would typically be the case with play number one, the microflip sellers. Remember, in play number one, we talk about sellers being unsophisticated. Well, they're all grown up here and you can expect to be dealing with a more sophisticated seller with their finger on the pulse of the market. With the above factors in mind, your percentage of market value when making offers will need to be higher on average than in the previous play, play number one, the microflip. Higher offers in turn mean you're moving from take it or leave it approach with the cheaper stuff to adopt more of a give and take attitude on pricing. With this change, letters of interest commonly also referred to as neutral letters become a more viable option. That's because a letter of interest allows you breathing room to negotiate and increase or decrease your offer based on information you receive or discover about the seller's situation and about the property like post contact. What this means for you is that you don't have to hit the bull's eye perfectly nailing the offer price on your first attempt. Instead, you can feel the buyer out, build some rapport and perhaps get boots on the ground, maybe have a specialized land agent do a drive by and offer an opinion of value to help you better understand the properties value. The seller themselves may also be able to help you and understand in their property. They could for instance tell you about the local market and the unique situation of their own property within it. Wait, the seller would help you? Correct. And it's understandable that this might surprise you. It seems contrary to the adversarial relationship that is supposed to exist between you, the investor and the seller. In theory, you and the seller should be opponents or at least in some kind of competition with one another to get the better end of the deal, especially on pricing. That view could maybe work in plain number one, the microflip, since you had to take it or leave it attitude there. But the same view won't fly in plain number two, the boss play or any of the plays that follow it. The boss play in those after are about collaboration with the seller. I'm not saying every seller is going to be a pleasure to work with or some selfless saint. You're still going to have sellers who are grouches, you may or may not choose to deal with. But you'll at least be on a level where the seller is more likely to be helpful and want a constructive relationship with you. One more point on the seller and the second land investing play, the boss play, is that they may not necessarily be an individual. Often your sellers in the second play will be LLCs or corporations. These groups may have planned a build on the property, which would explain how they know so much about it. Having decided not to build, such sellers would have plenty of information about their property and be able to pass that information on to you, perhaps a completed survey of their property. Sellers aren't the only ones who will be providing you with information and helping you in general. Alongside sellers, you'll be receiving help from real estate agents. This ties into another of the letters in our boss framework, the letter S. S is for stop. Stop the do it yourself madness. Stop the DIY. DIY stands for do it yourself. It means doing it whatever task need to be done in your land investing business yourself without any assistance from others. Following a DIY approach, for instance, you'd attempt to figure out the pricing for a market yourself. Never mind real estate agents who have boots on the ground knowledge of a market from actually working there. Know you, the one who doesn't work or live in the market, could figure out pricing all by yourself. You could use X free web app coupled with Y and Z comps and some clever Google searching. Sounds like a great approach doesn't it? No, of course not. On the contrary, when you give it some thought, the approach just mentioned probably sounds laughable or naive. Maybe even a little arrogant is though that person, not you or me of course, thinks there's somehow superior to boots on the ground real estate agents. The bottom line is that DIY is not for land investors running the boss play or any of the plays following it. As we've said real estate agents enter the picture when you quit with the DIY for play number two. By quitting DIY, I mean that you stop creating and posting for sale by owner listings and you stop refreshing said listings on platforms like Craigslist and Facebook. Plus you absolutely stop taking calls from buyer leads aka tire kickers. This DIY nonsense is a trap that so many flippers find themselves in and it's only because that's the method they learned and the framework they were presented with assuming their come up was through an online course on land flipping. Knowing this, it's time for some unlearning as we stop listing and stop selling properties ourselves. Our land business is so much more enjoyable. to run after we smarten up and make the commitment to stop the DIY madness. Getting back to agents. You should get opinions of market prices from at least two of them. Ideally, the agents you consult here will be specialized land agents. Land agents are preferable to normal agents because of their specialization and focusing primarily on just doing land deals. Getting an agent's opinion allows you to see how your own opinion of pricing for a property or market compares to the opinions of actual professionals. It's like how you'd get a few contractor quotes before choosing someone to remodel your kitchen or bathroom. You're seeking actual data that will either confirm or reject your view or assumption of pricing. You'll often hear me reference this practice as triangulation or triangulating the value. This is also, by the way, the point where the blind offer model of sending out large countywide campaigns with a predetermined price per acre begins to fall apart. Just to clarify or recap what a blind offer is, I'm referencing sending a direct mail marketing campaign and more specifically mailing unsolisted purchase agreements with an actual offer price to all off-market landowners on your marketing list without contacting the seller or researching the property first. Sending blind offers can be incredibly effective if your paper targeting small areas. Subdivisions, for example, with properties that are light kind and light sized. Sending out blind offers with a blanket offer price percentage becomes way less effective when targeting boss properties at the county level. The reason is that there is just too much coefficient of variation, which is just a fancy way of saying variance and values of one property to the next. The price per acre or price per square foot in the middle of a metropolitan area is much different than the price per acre or price per square foot on the very outer edge of the same county, which may be more rural and 30 to 60 minutes from the metro area. Does that make sense? I hope so because it's a very expensive lesson to learn on your own. I know far too many land investors, present party included, who found this out after spending tens of thousands of dollars trying to make blind offers work when targeting higher value properties at the county level. This is like trying to use a fork to eat your breakfast cereal, right? Nothing against forks, they're great when you're eating pasta, but not so much for shoveling Cheerios into your mouth. Now my point is each utensil or in this case, each mail piece should be used situationally. Let me say that again because that's important. My point is each utensil or in this case, each mail piece should be used situationally. We've alluded to that idea earlier and it's worth mentioning again now. And play number two, the boss play, there's no need to send blind offers and hope you've hit the price perfectly. You can send a letter of interest or even a postcard expressing interest instead and delay the discussion on that exact price until you get motivated sellers to respond to you. Then when the sellers identify themselves, you can leverage the opinions of actual agents to ensure you're offering the correct exact amounts for each seller's property. As an analogy, illustrating the change that's taken place, imagine trying to drive hundreds of miles to a destination without a map and using only road signs. That's what we're essentially doing with blind offers. In contrast, letters of interest are like using an app like Google Maps to make the trip. Now assuming the navigation app is even semi-decent and doesn't tell you to drive off a bridge or take a shortcut over a mountain pass on a logging road, then you have a far better chance of reaching your destination by leveraging navigation. Agents enable you to send letters of interest or postcards expressing interest by providing the necessary intelligence on pricing. Relying on them is therefore one way of following the first S and boss and ending the DIY insanity. Another way you can stop DIY would be through using title companies on both sides of the transaction. When you do, you'll have a title company or attorney depending on the state, handle closings for you on both the buying and selling sides and a given deal. For clarification, some states require you to close using an attorney instead of a title company. Speaking of selling, that's another area where real estate agents will be helping you. Agents re-entered the picture with sales because they'll be the ones listing your properties and bringing you prospective buyers. I have personally spoken to thousands of potential buyers and I would rather have a root canal than talk to another buyer lead. This is another reason I'm so grateful to have and be able to leverage good land agents. Following the anti-DIY thread, it's only natural that with the boss play, you'll also stop doing another thing, funding your own deals. Indeed, play number two, the boss play is the time to stop self-funding. This point is so important that it deserves a separate letter in the boss abbreviation. S, the last S of the abbreviation, is for stop self-funding. Why shouldn't you self-fund those deals you're doing in play number two? To answer the question, I'd recommend looking at the values of the properties you're targeting in this second play. When targeting property worth, say, $200,000, you'd likely be offering approximately $100,000. Assuming in this example that it takes you four to six months or more for the property to sell, which is not unreasonable given that price tag, and the buyer then wants to do their own due diligence too, you could be looking at a total turnaround time of six to nine months. From time you lay out the $100K until the time your original investment has returned to you, along with the profits from the deal. The question then is whether you can afford to have a $100K tied up and unavailable for investment in other deals for a half year or more at a time. Even before that, the true question, especially if you're new to land investing, is whether you have a $100K to do that deal in the first place. Many investors, particularly those early on in their land careers, don't personally have that kind of money laying around. Notice that word "personally". It makes all the difference here. Personally, a land investor may not be able to wire the $100K for a deal. But what if they were able to turn to others for help? What if they could to paraphrase the line of a Beatles song, get by with a little help from their friends? The result would be a scenario in which the investor joins with another person or entity who then provides the money for the deal. Then after the property sold, the land investor and the deal funder, or capital partner, split the profits. Deal funding, or the act of partnering with others to have them help fund your land deals, is another way to describe what you're doing here. It's what you pursue when you implement the last S in boss and you stop self-funding. Now, surprisingly, deal funding isn't just about the money. And I don't mean that in an altruistic sense. None of that do it for the love or it's how you play the game nonsense. Now, deal funding isn't just about the money, from the standpoint that it's also a way of protecting yourself. By partnering with deal funders, you're actually getting a second set of eyes. To ensure your own two eyes don't miss anything major when reviewing the deals in the acquisition. The second set of eyes and not just a handful of cash is the difference between smart money and dumb money. Let me say that again because it's important. A second set of eyes and not just a handful of cash is the difference between smart money and dumb money. There's nothing like having a fund or a capital partner who knows what landmines to look out for and can prevent you from making a bad acquisition. However, a good smart money capital partner will even go so far as to present options for maximizing profits on the property and potentially introduce exit strategies you aren't aware of. Apart from protection, deal funding also gives a viable means of reducing your land business expenses. This is because the cost of purchasing land or lots. is by far the biggest expense for anyone with a land investing business. As proof of this premise, think about a property you might acquire. In plain number one, the microflip you might be paying $500 for it. Or in plain number two, the boss play perhaps you're paying $150,000 for the land. Now consider the runner up. That expense common in the land investing business which ranks in second place. The runner up expense is almost always your outbound marketing costs. The collective cost of sending offers out through such a means as traditional direct mail and various messaging platforms and apps. I.e. cold calling, text messaging. Depending on whether you're a side hustler or a serious land investor sending out offers, your runner up marketing expenses might come to $5,000 if you're a land flipping side hustler and they might come to $50,000 if you're a land boss. That $5K matters of course, but still there's a clear difference between spending $5K versus $50K. And that difference is why a deal funding is so desirable. With deal funding your runner up expense becomes the dominant one. To do bigger boss deals, you must send more letters per deal. Although the return on ad spend is still incredible, the total expense is much greater than when you're running play number one, the microflip targeting cheap properties and securing a single acquisition with less marketing spend. Remember play number one, the microflip was really about ROI return on investment. But play number two is about row as return on ad spend and margin or net profit. Even if your marketing spend is more than $5K, an exemplar amount for side hustlers by the way, the cost to send offers is still unlikely to burden you and limit what you're able to accomplish. Or at least it won't do so to the same extent as acquisition costs of properties would. You'll be free to put it in another way, free to send out offers and look at deals. Then when you find a deal and a good one at that, someone else will fund it for you. This is a great position to be in because when you stop limiting your earnings to your bank balance and you stop limiting how many deals or how big a deal you can do by how long you must wait to reinvest your own money, well everything changes. You can start to target and acquire higher value properties and start to capture more equity on each deal. When you start to leverage other people's money to obtain these properties, then you're only limited by how many deals you can find. I know all this because I'm living proof. At one point in our own business, we had close to $500,000 in equity from seller finance notes, providing 14,000 plus in monthly recurring note income, aka terms income. At the same time however, we were still unable to scale because we had to let that 14,000 per month stack up for months to purchase a higher value property and do a bigger deal. Everything changed when we shifted our business model and strategy from self-funding a high number of smaller deals and exclusively focusing on seller financing to do bigger deals and leveraging other people's money. That shift caused our land business to experience explosive growth almost overnight and will provide a surge of capital that would change everything for us. Mindset included. With deal funding, particularly early on, the business had rocket fuel. Deal funding enabled me to grow our land business far faster than what have been possible where we self-funding our own deals. Now given how extraordinarily ordinary my story is, I'm confident that you can enjoy the same hockey stick growth in your own business through deal funding and leveraging capital partners. Trust me, there is a certain swagger or confidence in your tonality when you know you have vast amounts of capital behind you versus scrambling to secure a 401k loan to take down a deal that is out of your league. Within our land boss community we have a list and links to capital partners who will fund your deals. We also provide a link on the books companion website, the land investor's playbook. I'm happy to guide you toward finding a suitable funding option. One of those options might, in all transparency, be the deal funding company we co-own and operate. I think I can get vulnerable with you for a minute though and share that I don't have a hundred million bucks in the bank and I can't afford to fund the deals of everyone who buys this book. So I think that you can trust me and I tell you that this S in the boss method does not stand for self-serving and this chapter is not intended to generate leads for our funding company. I share the power of leveraging other people's money with you because this single shift or lever completely changed our business, our lives and really my mindset forever. I'm happy to now be able to fund other people's deals as well as still do our own deals. Should you get involved in our community, you will also be pleasantly surprised to find that I encourage and promote our community members to establish joint ventures and do deals together. Although it may not be on your radar yet, you may only be looking at funding as a solution to your current problem. It will also be an opportunity for you to become someone else's solution to their problem as you become a more seasoned pro and stuff your war chest full of cash. Ultimately it's your decision and yours alone. On how if at all you proceed with deal funding but I can tell you that moving away from awareness of deal funding to taking action and utilizing it was a complete game changer for us. From the boss method you'll recall that two of the letters both S's were about things to stop doing. Moving in the other direction let's look at five things to definitely do in play number two as you're becoming a boss land investor. Do's for play number two. Kicking off this list of do's here's the first one. Number one, do follow up. Sign up is about tracking down within reason every single seller lead that comes back. Those leads could range from a missed call to a text message to a voicemail and even in the best cases a signed purchase agreement. Regardless of what form a lead takes, however you'll reach back out to the seller attempting to establish contact with them and advance the deal towards a successful closing. Meaning in this case is a scenario in which you're able to acquire the seller's property, assuming the property passes your due diligence and then flip it for a profit. Number two, do more due diligence on each property you're considering acquiring. This next do make sense given the fact that you're dealing with bigger deals in play number two. As the deals grow up it's only right that your due diligence should follow suit and come of age two. So grown up due diligence will have you examining things like slope, topography, wetlands, property setbacks, easements, leans, wells and so on. These considerations will then provide a picture for you of what your exit strategy would be if you're acquiring the property. Plus just as importantly, you'll have a better sense of those issues if any that might prevent the property from being successfully flipped following the acquisition. Number three, do look into the highest and best use of the property. For each property that you come across in the boss play, what is the property's highest and best use? That's the question you're asking in this do the third one on our list. Framing the third do in different terms, you want to determine what ways a given piece of land could be put to use so as to derive the greatest financial benefit possible. Could a property for example be subdivided? If so then this property's best use might actually be as two different properties, each of which you could flip or a profit. Apart from subdividing there are plenty of other highest and best uses that might apply, depending on the specific property we're talking about. Number four, the fourth do. Do try to get full market value and maximize your profit. Depending on your background as a land investor, you may have been taught to sell properties for less than market value and cash out fast. While this approach certainly has its merits, it's less desirable when you're running play number two. The reason is that play number two, you're not churning through cheap properties. And place of churn, you're spending considerably more time and money on each deal. Accordingly, it's only right that your profits should rise to reflect these changes. And the way to do so is through trying to get full market value on each deal. The only caveat to this is if you find yourself in a buyer's market or a balanced market. In those cases, you want to be more willing to entertain offers that are within 5 to 10% of your list price, while also being more willing to negotiate a little more. During a seller's market, you can command full market value. Heck, you can even list at 110% of market value, then entertain offers that are 10% less than your list price. The key here is identifying what kind of market you're currently in at the time of your flip. 5. The 5th Do Do lists with an established, qualified land agent. This do, the last one on our list, comes straight out of the boss method. In the boss method, the third letter S stands for Stop DIY. When you quit with the DIY, no longer trying to do everything yourself in your land deals. You accept that there are other people who can help you to complete the deals. Real estate agents are among these other people. And finding the right one, I.e. an established, qualified, land-focused agent, is bound to save you considerable time and effort. Don'ts for play number two. The first don't. Don't neglect to prioritize communication. While following up is important, it's equally essential to prioritize clear and transparent communication with all involved parties. Misunderstandings or assumptions can lead to significant problems down the line, jeopardizing a potential deal. Always ensure clarity in terms of expectations, timelines, and details. Number two, the second don't. Don't cut corners on due diligence. Though it might be tempting to move quickly or skip steps, particularly if you fill you're on to a great deal, always resist the urge. Missing out on vital details, be it legal implications, land characteristics, or hidden leans can turn a promising investment into a financial nightmare. Always take the time required to ensure you have all the facts. Number three, the third don't. Don't let emotions drive your decisions. I'm going to say that again because this is an important one. The third don't is don't let your emotions drive your decisions. Land investing requires a calculated approach. Falling in love with a property or letting personal feelings interfere can lead to overpaying or making unsound decisions. Ensure that every step you take is backed by research and objective analysis. Number four, the fourth don't. Don't forget the importance of market research. Your success isn't just tied to the value of the land but also the surrounding market dynamics. Overlooking market trends, ignoring competition, or failing to understand the local demographic can all lead to missed opportunities or misprice properties. Always stay updated on local market conditions and adjust your strategies accordingly. The fifth and last don't. Number five, don't hesitate to walk away from a bad deal. No matter how much time or resources you've invested in a potential deal, if the numbers don't add up or if there are insurmountable issues, be prepared to walk away. Holding on to a bad investment or trying to force a deal can often lead to greater losses in the long run. Remember, land investing is as much about knowing what to avoid as it is about taking action. By keeping these don'ts in mind, you'll be better equipped to navigate the complexities of the land market and increase your chances of success. In the last due above, we spoke of saving time and effort. Another way of doing that is through providing you the reader of this book with summaries wherever possible. Summaries allow you to gain key insights while avoiding the time and energy that might normally be required in learning such insights. This was the rationale behind the executive summary of play number one, the microflip, and the previous chapter. For the boss play, I'd like to now provide you with a similar executive summary. Like its predecessor, this one will also be a recap on the play from this chapter and the essentials for taking action on it. Executive summary of play number two, the boss play. The executive summary itself is once again organized around five critical areas. Mindset, skill set, capital, connections, and tools. Mindset. What sort of mindset is required in order to succeed with our second land investing play, the boss play. The right mindset will have you viewing yourself as more than a single loan investor. You'll move from that single army of one mentality to see yourself as a commander. You, the land commander, will have an entire army behind you. A formidable fighting force made up of real estate agents, title company reps, and others, in and around your deals. Skill set. When executing the boss play, the ideal skill set consists of the following. A strong communication skills. You'll rely on real estate agents with the boss play in order to get their opinions of value on properties and assessments of how quickly they the land agents would be able to flip specific pieces of land. Recognizing this reliance, you must be good at communicating with the agents so as to gain the necessary information. Well strong communication skills are important. They're not something you either have or you don't. To the contrary, these skills are often developed over time. I for one am not a born communicator. It's taken me years to arrive at a point where I would describe my communication skills as being strong. If you're also not a born communicator, there are plenty of things you can do to strengthen your communication skills. You could turn, for example, the classic books on the subject like Dale Carnegie's, How to Win Friends and Influence People, or Wolf of Wall Street, Jordan Belford's Straight Line Persuasion Training Program. Or you may wish to just simply learn by doing, improving your communication skills through direct experience with land investing or other work you're engaged in. Let me say this, mastery comes through frequency. Meaning at first you're terrible at the thing, then you do the thing lots more times and you get better. And then you continue doing the thing until you're not bad at all. In fact, you might even become good at it along the way. This was the approach I took. But in hindsight, I believe you can shorten the learning curve and accelerate your success by drawing from the distilled wisdom of the aforementioned authors and experts. B) an eye for promising and emerging markets. Can you identify promising and even emerging markets for doing lucrative land deals? Such markets may have fast turnover times, where properties seemingly fly off the shelf upon being listed. In addition, worthwhile markets will likely have a buyer pool with enough capital to buy the kind of properties you're acquiring in flipping. C) do diligence mastery. Do diligence mastery is about knowing what to look for when you're doing due diligence? Among those things to look for a few of the key ones are wetlands, setbacks, and general buildability concerns. The due diligence master, aka you, will be well versed on what these items entail. And how to assess their significance or lack thereof in each deal. D) negotiation skills. Remember what we said earlier about the boss play being a give and take? This was a critical difference between the boss play and its predecessor, play number one, the microflip with its attitude of take it or leave it. Since the boss play is about give and take, it's vital for you to be able to communicate and negotiate with sellers. Hence the reason for developing negotiation skills. As with communication, negotiation skills aren't something that most of us, me included, are born with. These skills are gained instead through time and practice, especially in the day-to-day efforts of running a land business. I have read a lot of books and have completed training programs on negotiation. Based on what you are doing. My subjective opinion, the two best that can be applied to land are the following. Jordan Belfords, Way of the Wolf, Straight Line Selling. Master the Art of Persuasion, Influence, and Success. And Roger Dawson's book, Secrets of Power Negotiating, Inside Secrets from a Master Negotiator. While these resources are timeless classics that will never age, I also strongly encourage you to visit our website's resources page for these and additional recommendations at thelandinvestorsplaybook.com. Capital. Part three of this executive summary is about capital. We can keep it brief here since capital was already touched on and the deal funding discussion in this chapter. That was back in the S for stop self-funding. If you need a refresher, I'd recommend giving it a quick rereading. An easy way to ensure you are never caught scrambling for funds at the last minute to get a deal closed is to brand the following mantra into your mind. Dig your well before your thirsty. Connections. For this part of the summary on connections, I'm reminded of an earlier point in our discussion. This was the point back in mindset when we said you were no longer an army of one. You'd become a land commander instead. To be in that new role as a land commander, you'll need connections to others. As analogies go, this is comparable to recruiting people for your fighting force. The people you'll recruit are your connections. As a land investor executing the boss play, those specific connections will include the following people. First, county government officials who handle land use, planning, developing and zoning. Next, engineers and others at engineering firms. After that, land use consultants who determine what you can and cannot do with the property. In addition to that, you're going to need surveyors, you're going to need photographers, traditional ones and those that do drone photography. You're also going to need real estate attorneys, depending on your needs and the state or states that you're operating in. After that, you'll need title agents as connections. And then lastly, you'll need specialized land agents as your connections. Tools. When assembling your fighting force, those people whom you'll rely on for success with plan number two, make sure to also focus on the right equipment. Otherwise, it'll be as though your crack team, i.e., a team of elite operatives, is relying on equipment that's cracked in the literal sense. The right equipment for you and those on your team include the following. First, all of the multiple listing services for MLS platforms in order to pull comps and engage in market research. As of this writing in 2023, those platforms consist of zillow.com, rilter.com, zome.com, landsearch.com, redfin.com, and potentially one of the co-star platforms, land.com, or landwatch.com. You'll also need a data source to use and pull in property records. In addition to that, you'll need a skip tracing service. Potentially a cold calling service. Also potentially an SMS service for text messaging. You'll definitely need a mail house. As far as software goes, you'll need land ID, which is also formally known as MAPRIGHT, or an equivalent tool. This is a tool that you use to view wetland layers, land use codes, FEMA and flood zone layers, slope, and other features during due diligence. As stated before, customer relationship management, CRM software, and a follow-up system are also critical for capturing and converting leads. For a list of the most current tech and tool stack, please visit thelandinvestorsplaybook.com. Got it? That's everything for the boss play, aka the boss method. With the executive summary and the discussion proceeding it, I hope you feel confident now in running the second play of the land investors playbook. This play in the playbook will help you move out of that red ocean that you were fishing in on play number one, the microflip, and get you started fishing in a big blue ocean of opportunity with play number two. Welcome to Blue Ocean Land Investing. There are, of course, four more plays for us to cover. So after you've taken a moment to collect your thoughts on play number two, let's keep going. Our next chapter will cover play number three in the land investors playbook. With the third play, we'll be branching out in an entirely new direction. In terms of what direction is exactly, I won't spoil it now. Instead, join me on the following page where we'll dig into depth.