In my last post I shared the story of my life before I learned how to buy and sell land. I also told you about how I first learned about the raw land industry from an old high school buddy. So, how did I get from working a dead-end job to making over $500,000/year? Let’s pick up where we left off.
After talking with my high-school buddy, I decided to learn everything I could about real estate. It took great courage to step out of my comfort zone to start looking into something new but I knew I had to make a change. I spent many late nights investigating every aspect of real estate – I researched and read articles and content online, went to my local library and read many different books on the topic. Finally, I felt like it was time to take my first step! I can remember my first land auction in New Mexico – I was so nervous that my hands were sweating. My heart felt like it was going to beat right out of my chest! I had no idea what I was going to say to my wife because I was about to spend the last $3,000 we had been saving for car repairs! It took a huge leap of faith – and it turned out to be a very important leap of faith.
I remember when I came home from the land auction I proudly told my wife that I had acquired land. She responded in a frightened voice: “What do we do if you can’t sell it?” I said: “Well, the worst case scenario is that we own land! It’s not like it becomes obsolete, or spoils or is some product fad! It’s land and it lasts forever!” However, all went well. I had bought 9 lots of land at an average price of $100 per parcel. Within 30 days I sold them all at an average price of $900! I took the profit from the first auction – and went to a second auction in Arizona and ended up making over $90,217 in the next 3 months! That was my wife realized I had made a good decision by purchasing raw land!
And that was when I first felt the true value of working in the area of raw land. After making $90,000 in 3 months I now had the enough knowledge and confidence to keep going. I also knew that if I stuck with it I could do eventually do this full-time. I knew I could earn more money in months than I could at my dead-end, soul-sucking sales job for an entire year! However, at this point, though I was making money, I had really had no idea what I was doing! I set out to master this business in 18 months. I wanted to understand every detail of this undertaking so I could do this full time and quit my job forever. Before I could do that, however, I needed to be able to confidently look my wife in the eyes and guarantee 100% success.
It was rough in those early years because I made mistake after mistake. It seemed like I had to learn every step the hard way. However, I just kept working to overcome those mistakes by creating blueprints and systems I could depend on and refining the process. My overarching goal was to experience financial freedom so I wanted to learn how to make my money work for me and create a system that would run on auto-pilot.
Now the systems I put in place eleven years ago do just that – I work a few hours every day & then I spend time with my family. Meanwhile I am earning six figures with no more commute to work, no boss, and no more worrying about how I’m going to pay my bills. If I want to take one or two months off I can and I still do not have to worry about being able to pay my bills because now I have money coming in regardless of whether I am working or not.
Now I have the time in my schedule to work out because I make my own hours; I can go to all the kids’ activities, take my time, have lunch with them for as long as I want and work when I want to work. I so am blessed and I know it. Last year was the worst real estate market in recorded history since the Great Depression – in fact 2011 was a terrible year for real estate and the economy overall. However my land buying blueprint is still effective. I made exactly $454,516.18! Just think what you can do in this industry when times improve?
My high-school buddy gave me the knowledge that eventually allowed me to change my life. He helped me more than he will ever know and now I help other people learn to do what I do. They remove that paycheck to paycheck frustration from their lives just by learning to effectively buy and sell land. I hope my story has illustrated an important concept for you – anyone can experience financial freedom! Anyone can completely transform their lives the way that I did! If I did it, you can too!
Please contact me, Mark the Land Geek, directly to learn more about my hourly coaching and consulting services where you can learn everything from deal flow, marketing and due diligence and more so you can make an incredible full time or part time income buying and selling raw land. You can also contact me for a free 15-minute consultation. I have also created several land coaching programs to meet every budget from FREE at http://www.3fatallandbuyingmistakes.com/ to just $47 at http://www.artofthelandflip.com/ and we have other programs as well.
Contact Mark today: Phone: 1 (800) 428-3760 Email: [email protected]
