Trust is The Ultimate Currency, Influence, and Exit Strategies ft. Cody Bjugan

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1:09Check out these shows in the best ever CRE Network. What is happening best ever Listers? This is Matt Faircloth and welcome to the best ever CRE show. I've got a great program coming up for you guys today and this is with a new friend of mine and we're going to talk about some interesting stuff. We're going to talk about things that are making us money in our business. Let's talk about things that carry on longer than we do and let's talk about why we do what we do, right? To break that down for us, I'm bringing in somebody that I've had a good conversation with offline, got to know briefly here and I'm going to introduce you guys to Cody Bugen. Cody, welcome to the best ever CRE show. How are you today? I'm great man. Good job on the last name pronunciation. That was good. It's not pronounced the way it's spelled. Do you get the complete butcher on that one like the bajugan sometimes? Yeah. All kinds of it. Wouldn't that be such a curse to be bajugan?

2:11You know, I'm so grateful it's Bugen, right? Yeah, it's easy. That's good. Yeah. Good stuff. Well, welcome to the best ever CRE show and I'm looking forward to jumping in with you. Best ever listeners. Cody, now we're talking about things offline and you were like, I was like, what makes you tech and like, what are you all about? You know, it's just a great way. You know, maybe not the best thing to introduce yourself to somebody to talk about, but I was like, you know, what are what are your passions? And he was like, you know what, Matt? My passions are three things and you name them out. So let's start. Why don't you name them all right now? The three things and then we'll unpack each one for the best ever listeners. That's good. Yeah. So I said, my team probably sent you guys a one sheet someone and the three main topics to ask you because we lost it. Okay. So the three main things that so land is what I do. Okay. So that's one of the three. It's actually the thing I like to least talk about, but it's what people want to talk about the most. Okay. We'll just a little bit on the show. Just a little bit.

3:11And then what's about all the land you want? And then I like to talk about legacy and kind of, you know, life and fulfillment and all that good stuff. And then I like to talk about my faith, right? So I'll tell you this real quick and then we'll go wherever you want. So like my online personal brand, right? And my companies and all this different stuff we do online. And everybody's focused on ROI. We'll turn on investment, right? Because you've got to spend a decent amount of money to build a brand. And everybody's ROI, ROI, ROI. And I'll share this with you is my response to my team or a new team member whenever they join my marketing department is that the only ROI I'm trying to create with my reach, okay, with my personal brand is ultimately relates to my faith filler that if one person becomes comes to know the Lord because of a seed I planted because of my faith.

4:13That's all the ROI I need. Here's how I learned that. That's what I've been doing for years. And then I was on a plane going and doing a mission trip with John Maxwell, okay? The all I know John Maxwell is he's probably the most well-known leadership author, mentor coach in the world, right? Written amazing books. Great guy. I'm one of the best people I've ever met in my life, right? And I'm on his private jet flying down in Guatemala. And he said Cody, my passion actually lies with my nonprofit called Equip, okay? And Equip is his faith-based nonprofit. And he said Cody, what I do is I bring people value, okay, I build relationship through my leadership training. He said, but my ultimate goal is to get them comfortable so that I can talk to him about my faith, right? That's kind of what land is for me, right? Is that I have an education company where I teach the land game, right?

5:16I have all this content out there about land. I teach land. I love people learning land through my experiences. But my ultimate goal is we can talk land all you want. But no matter what podcast or stage or wherever I'm at, I will always drop a seed. I will always plant a seed related to my faith. Does that make sense? It does. Tell me what that seed, what is that seed? Which of the most common seed that you plant? I mean, I've seen a lot of folks that, you know, and just truth be told, I don't put I don't, you know, put it out there as much. Maybe I'm just chicken shit about it. But I mean, I'm a believer as well. And I've seen guys that will do presentations or whatever and they'll like in the presentation man, they're putting scripture like they're straight up, you know, like, it's like, you know, like, hey, let's talk about this concept. And oh, by the way, you know, it just like it says in Philippians, you know, we're going to be right, right? Are you, is that the kind of seed you're talking about? Because that's like, no, no, no, no. You got to know the book really, really well to do that kind of thing, which I, which I own it, man, I'm a believer, but I don't know the book that well, but I can start, you

6:20know, citing scripture with folks. So what kind of seed do you put out there to help people get to know a bit of what makes you take a little bit, let your face. Yeah, that's a good question. One of the things that comes natural for me is the ability to build trust. Yeah. Okay. It's easy for me to build trust with people. And I don't even have to try, but if we were to unpack that, okay, more than likely, it's because I'm naturally authentic. I'm naturally transparent. I'm vulnerable, right? I talk in a third grade language. Here's what I'll tell you. Trust is the most powerful tool out there. I don't care if you want to talk about marketing or sales or I don't care what, trust is powerful. Okay. Here's the thing. It's not a specific, because I read the Bible every morning. But it's not, I don't get into scripture. I'm just trying, when I say plant a seed, and if say you watch me on stage or you consume

7:24my brand online or you listen to a podcast and you're like, you know what? There's something different about that guy. I think I can trust that guy. Okay. I want to make sure, though, before you're done listening to me, I share with you that I'm a lover of Jesus and that I've been born again and that I believe you died on the cross and he rose the third day. Because oh, maybe that's what's different about him, right? Because here's what I can tell you. If it wasn't for my faith, I probably wouldn't build a build trust the way I do. Secondly, if there was any specific topic that you're calling a seed, when I say it's biblical, some people are seed planters, other people are harvesters. Okay. John Maxwell is amazing at harvesting people, meaning leading them to the Lord, bringing them to salvation. He's a harvester. I'm more called the plant the seed and maybe just get you to start thinking about faith,

8:28thinking about Jesus. But for me, the problem, and I, the work that's turned into a faith conversation, but people that aren't believers in Jesus, a lot of them, is because they see it as religion instead of relationship. I don't call myself religious at all. Okay. I just have a relationship with Jesus. Okay. And so it's all about relationship, not religion. But the problem is most people don't even entertain the idea of Jesus because of all the religious people out there that they see as hypocrites. Right? They're this way, they try to cast this image, but on the inside or the actions they take is complete hypocrisy. Right? And here's why. I started a book probably 20 years ago, math that I never finished. And it was called the checklist Christian. And it was about all these religious people that check all these religious boxes.

9:31Okay. But at the end of the day, it creates hypocrisy because the relationship is a checklist because it's religion. It's not relationship. Here's what I believe, math. Get right with the Lord internally and let the exterior take care of itself. Quick, focus on checking the boxes and get a relationship with the Lord. Let's go step further, Matt. Matt, maybe you have a spouse, a partner, a wife. I don't know what you have, right? Doesn't matter. But here's the deal. On earth, Matt, if you want to have a good relationship with somebody, what do you have to do? Well, you got to be intentional about that relationship. You got to be disciplined about that relationship. You got to put time into that relationship. Well, I can tell you this. I have put, I've known the Lord since I was eight. I'm 48 today. So that's 40 years. Okay? In the last six years now, well, it's been longer than that. Seven years, eight years. I've been trying to figure out how can I be intentional and disciplined about building

10:32a relationship with the Lord? Because having a relationship with the Lord is no different than having a relationship with you here on earth. If you want a good relationship, you better put some time and energy and discipline and intentionality into it. Does that make sense? So you know, at the end of the day, forget all the religious and all the hypocrisy. At the end of the day, man, if it wasn't for my faith, I have no clue where I'd be. Yeah. It goes to say for a lot of folks, you know, that are believers that like at the end of the day, like, they wouldn't be where they, they don't know where they would be, right? It's such a part of their core element. That's right. That's right. Yeah. That's right. All right. So that's the faith part, right? I can tell you very passionate about it, right? Yes. So, this is a real estate show. So my job is done, Matt. I planted the seed, which was my number one goal. There we go. You did it. You did it. I got you. We can talk real estate. Let's talk real estate.

11:32Let's talk a little bit of real estate shop. I got you, right? So, so best of a list or again, it's, I want to just bring it all back around. You know, there is a why there is a thing that makes us that makes us tech. And that's why I wanted to allow Cody to kind of give you guys a glimpse into what, what he's all about. And maybe that's a seed that gets planted in one of you guys now. But at the end of the day, there is, there are things that are behind the actions that we take, right? That are behind the things that we do. It could be faith, could be family, could be all the things, you know, I mean, Cory's, you know, core is legacy and faith, right? Let's talk about the land side of it, right? Land legacy faith. Those are your big three buckets, big things that we can hop into, right? Yep. On the land side, your company does land deals, right? You're taking land, bring it to its highest invest used on paper and then selling that off. How did you get into something like that? 1997 got my high school girl from pregnant. Got married right out of high school, didn't go to college like I originally planned, went

12:35into the flooring union so that I could qualify for health insurance to pay for my baby boy that was on the way. And so I got into the trades right out of high school. And I ended up doing some great things in the trades quickly just because I was young and hungry and driven and all that. And I got to a point where it was time to pivot. I either needed to quit building someone else's company and go open my own because I was an entrepreneur at heart or I needed to do something different, okay? And so I decided to, instead of be a trade that was working for a home builder, I made the leap of faith at the age of 24, 23, to go be a home builder myself. And so once I became a home builder, I then quickly realized the key was controlling the land. So then I quickly started learning the land game through trial and air because there was no education company back then like my company today called Bestrite that teaches all this stuff.

13:36So I just learned a lot through trial and air. But at the end of the day, I've now been in the land game 24 years and it's, it's, it's, did you stop the home building? I when did you, I think you have, when did you stop building those stick frame houses just lean all the way into land? So I, I quit doing land and homes during the great recession. So I can do both of them simultaneously. And then on the other side of the great recession like 2011, I got into both again. I was home building and land. And then around 2000, I don't know, maybe it was 2018 or something like that. 17, somewhere in there, gave up the home building and I was like, I just need to go all in on the land game. So and I was just up in the Pacific Northwest for Oregon, Washington and Idaho. And then in 2020, 2019, I decided to start teaching it with Bestrite. And then in 2020, I decided to take my company national.

14:40So we went from three states to now we're across the entire country. How did you, how do you swing that? Like how does one go from doing work and, and don't answer that because I got it because I'm going to tease our best server and listers here. How does one go from doing deals in three states to doing deals nationally? That's like, what is that? I'm not too quick with the math. I guess that's what like a 15 X to your business, right? Don't answer that question because best server listeners, for those of you guys that want to scale, Cory's going to blow it, Cody's going to blow your mind, right? But not yet because we're going to have a quick word from our sponsors. So the after we get to work from our sponsors, he's going to unpack. How do we scale to that level? That's intriguing. And then we're going to get into all kinds of stuff, including legacy that Cody's going to tell us all about. Stay tuned, Best River Lister will be right back. One thing I've noticed over the past years that almost everyone says they're using AI, but when you actually look at how it's being used across a company, it's usually just a handful of people who have really embraced it. Everyone else falls back into the same old workflow.

15:41That's why superhuman go caught my attention. The problem isn't that people don't want to use AI. It's that most AI tools expect you to stop what you're doing, open another tab, start from scratch, and explain the context every single time. Superhuman go flips that around. It's an AI chat that's already up to speed right there when you need it, and it works inside the tools and websites you already use without switching apps or losing your place. It's from the makers of Grammarly and whether someone on your team is drafting an email, summarizing a long thread, or getting ready for a meeting, the help is already there. That's what really drives adoption. When AI works where your team already works, people naturally use it. It's friction, more consistency, and more time spent on the work that actually moves the business forward. If you want to see what that looks like for your team, check it out. Find out more at superhuman.com. Hey guys, if you're an active commercial real estate investor, especially a GP or a fund

16:43manager, you already know the market has changed. Capital is harder to raise, deals aren't penciling the same, and lenders are a lot less forgiving. That is why Joe and I built the best ever-inner circle. It's a private group of experienced operators, people raising millions, managing portfolios, and solving these problems in real time. Inside, we're sharing what's exactly going on right now. How people are raising capital through RIAs, finding deals done directly with lenders, and navigating challenges like floating rate debt and capital gaps. We've got members with billions of assets under management. And others who have raised tens of millions in the past year. This program is not for beginners. It's for people who are already in the game and want to stay ahead of it. If that's you, go to bestevercr.com forward slash inner circle to learn more about joining us. Alright, best of luck. We're back now. I teased you guys a little bit. We wanted to hear about how to 15X your company Cody decided to just, you know, it didn't

17:47sign it was on a whim. It's like a strategic plan that you made this decision to yourself. But I'm going to exit out of three just not just to work in three states. I'm going to go national on a land acquisition and turnaround basis. And dare I say when I say land, you're taking land, you're getting it entitled and improved air quote, right? To the point where a big builder like my guests, like, you know, big names we've all heard, like DR Horton told brothers, those guys, that's who you're dealing with on the back. And they're buying these parcels from you and they're building their, you know, homes that families were going to enjoy on that parcel land because you've gotten it shovel ready for them. That's, that's, that's the process, right? Yeah, we go source off market land that has development potential. We get it approved for development, which is called entitlements. And then once it's entitled, we exit to one of the, the America's home builders without doing any construction without taking on any debt. Well, yeah. And so and then they go and do all the construction, right?

18:48They put in all the streets and all that and then they go build the homes. That's right. Yeah. How did you go to, to, you know, national, like, let's go there and then and best of listeners, we can, I can poke in a few different directions with Cody here about, about like things like, you know, how we're funding the, how he's funding all these things and what, what he said, a good parcel of land. I didn't, I didn't miss that. I'm writing that down because now I want to know what a bad parcel land looks like, right? I got to know what the other one is. But tell me real quick, let's talk about scalability. Three states to 50 states. What changes? How do you do that? Well, I felt like I heard a word from the Lord in 2010 said Cody, the biggest problem with your business is you and that you need to get out of the way. Okay. And, and so what does that mean? Okay. Let's unpack that a little bit. What do you mean I'm the biggest problem? Right? One is the business's identity was me and my identity was the business is that I needed

19:49the business to have a brand and a leadership team in place besides everybody seeing Cody. Because I was basically Cody with support. Right? So one was I had to get out of the way as far as controlling everything. Okay? I had to build a team. Two, before any of that even matters is I had to get over my own insecurity or imposter syndrome that I wasn't good enough to have a company like that. Right? That I had to give, here's the way I say it, give yourself permission. Right? I had to give, I had to get in a mental place of giving myself permission to even think like that. But I long go execute something. That's easy said though Cody, right? Like that's, I mean, because we're all in our own ways, man. I'm, you know, I'm my biggest fan and my worst critic. All me, you know, and it depends on which of the chattering monkeys in my head I want

20:50to listen to, right? The voice that you said is the Lord's voice book to you. We all have that, right? Yes. We all hear that voice is all there. But on the other side of the shoulder is whatever voice you want to call it, whatever name you want to give that voice. That voice is saying something like in, in so many words, that voice is saying, no, you can't. You're not good enough. Of course, you're not big enough. But you got to choose which one you're going to listen to. Right. Right, right, right. You know, so I'm going to listen to. Right. So I, I opened the gate to give myself permission. Okay. Okay. To go do it. Okay. Okay. Next, I will tell you this too, around that same time I had relocated from Portland, Oregon to Scottsdale, Arizona. Okay. I'm not suggesting this. But I think also what helped me was that I changed my environment. Okay. Is that I was born and raised in Portland, Oregon. And so I changed my environment. I changed my circle. I changed my influences.

21:51And so I think that change just to be frank related to me helped me pivot and giving myself permission because I had new peers and I had exposed to a whole new much bigger market of Phoenix. And so that helped. I want to say two more things on this topic or as many as you want actually. Secondly, everything I did was my own money and friends and family money. Hmm. Another thing I never had given myself permission or felt that I was worthy or capable was to go open a fund. You got to understand people that have never opened a fund before. That sounds very intimidating to go open a fund and go raise capital and have hundreds of investors. So big part of what allowed us to scale like that is making ourselves have more resources, which was opening a fund and raising capital. Right. And then, and then lastly, I'm going to say this.

22:52It hasn't been a cakewalk. Oh, that's not. Is is that see what we're doing in our industry has really never been done before. See, we have a headquarters in Scottsdale, Arizona. And that's the only office we have in the whole country. Right. And so we are doing deals across the entire country from one office. Okay. And so what happens is that's called innovation. Right. And so when you try to scale and innovate at the same time, it is very challenging, very, very challenging. Okay. Okay. So this is the first day six years later. But I have a clear vision and a clear calling and until that changes, I'm going to continue to grow and scale this company.

23:59No matter how hard it is. Does that make sense? Yeah. It does. It does. Are you, like, there's a term out there and this is a good term, right? Santa, you've got an education platform as well, right? you've scaled into all these different states. The one way you can do it is that you are like the mentor, the guide, the navigator, right? And also the funder too, it sounds like, right? And you've got these folks that have learned how to read off of your script, learned how to practice your best practices. The term that I'm gonna use here is a student army, right? Meaning like these are folks that have learned from me and that are now out there as my folks that are out there that are finding deals, you know, knowing what good deals bad deals are because I taught them what that is. And then when they find a deal, they know they're covered because Cody's got their back. And he's gonna double check the deal they found. And if it's a screaming hot deal, you're gonna swoop in and you're gonna help them fund. Is that how you were able to scale?

25:01It's almost like, but duplicating yourself. And that's what the Lord told you during your own way. So okay, let me make 50 Codies and put them in 50 states, you know? Is that a nice question? So some truth to that, okay? Here's what I tell you. It's an art and history. It's a good way. That term gets used in a negative connotation. But I think it's actually a good thing. Is it a way of public, it's duplicating the best things of ourselves and teaching it to others on how to do what we do, right? So be clear. So I'll lay this out for you as quick as I can. Started the education company in 19, heard the word to scale in 20. I started the education company. Lord is my witness for what my personal slogan is, Piff, not paid and full. Piff, purpose, impact, fulfillment. Go serve a purpose that has a positive impact and through that positive impact, you'll find fulfillment. I don't think truth fulfillment is possible without you having a positive impact in the world somehow.

26:01And what we're all, I hate the word happy to be frank. We aren't searching for happiness. The word happiness is a joke. It's temporary, it's a joke. Well, we're all searching for a fulfillment, whether we know it or not, okay? And starting that education company, that's what it did for me. It's it brought me fulfillment. Love it, okay? And so what happened is, so then I should have all these students and they keep saying Cody, we want a partner with you. We want a partner with you. I'm like, no, you can't partner with me because I started this company for fulfillment. I'm just showing you how to do the deals. Go do your own deals, right? But they wouldn't stop for finally I'm like, okay, fine. I'll open a partnership program. Yeah, okay? I'll do this if you'll leave me alone. I'll go do this for you, okay? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I never wanted to rob. I never wanted to rob from the foundation of why I started the education company. And it wasn't for self-serving reasons, okay? It was to impact other people's lives.

27:02And so I'm just very careful with the partnership program and how I talk about it because that is not why I started the company. But yes, today have I done deals with students and have students made life-changing money that they never thought they'd make in their lives. Yes, that's absolutely true. But the main reason we have scaled is yes, we have students all over the country. That is not the main way we've scaled. The main way we've scaled is our industry is very old school, like extremely old school, okay? We are heavy tech, okay? We are tech companies. We use all kinds of software. And I can, and I'll have like one of the big names, one of the big name builders you just said, I'll bring them a deal and I don't know, Florida or Texas or whatever. Caroline is where, and they'll say Cody, how did you get this deal? This deal is in my backyard. And I'll say to be frank, it's just because we're better at technology than you. And we are way better at marketing than you.

28:04See, the problem with you guys is you wait for your phone to ring. You wait for people to bring you deals, okay? We make other people's phones ring. We have full-time cold callers. We do direct mail. We do all these things where we just, we're better at marketing than them. And so most of our deals come through technology and marketing. Love it, love it. And through technology and marketing and like you said, conveying yourself, duplicating yourself with others and everything like that. Those are your secrets to scale. Give me like one of the technology hacks that you guys, you don't have to give me your whole playbook, right? But like give me one of the favorite things like to talk about on the tech side. Just give us a little bit of a little bit of your script on that on ways you're able to leverage tech these days. There's no magic sauce. I don't have a magic bullet. I don't have some trick. I just utilize technology that's out there that the industry doesn't, right? So like the install stuff, like you know,

29:07anybody that does off-market prospecting, I'm not doing anything that they don't do. Yeah. It's just no one hardly does it in my space. Like everybody in their moms, everybody in their moms, a household sailor or an apartment syndicator, right? Yeah. How many guys do you know that do what I do? Handful. That's a done if you know any. Maybe on one hand, I can count them. You know, yeah. So you're saying like DR Horton, right? I used that name earlier, right? So, DR Horton, you're right. As I think about it, right? They're not like surfing public records and sending out yellow letters, right? They're just like, you know, if you want to sell your land, you've heard of me. So you'll call me or the broker from Krishman and Wakefield has my phone. Or he'll call me, right? So they're big enough that they can fold their arms and wait for their phone to ring in that. But you're looking to start like on the guerrilla marketing scale. I mean, and this is another ad is that I like and this is a positive thing. There's always room at the bottom, right? You don't have to be a multi-billion dollar company to make deals work. And so you can start at the more,

30:09call like more micro level on finding deals. Yeah. Lessons for best. Here's what I say. So we're in control of our own deal flow, right? Because we're not sitting around waiting for people to call us. Is it it's much easier to scale a business? It's much harder to scale your business if you're not in control of your own deal flow, okay? Now, once you get to the D.R. Horton size, you're so big like your phone rings all the time because your D.R. Horton. Well, you know, you know, how the D.R. Horton controls their deal flow by by just saying no. And now I got to work good for this quarter. Yeah. I'll put that in the flow for next quarter. I've dealt with a few builders on the multi-family side. And I mean, that's how they roll. It's like, oh no, we just, you know, they know they've got enough input coming in that they can just say, yeah, you know, we're good. You know, yeah, but for your side, you're controlling your deal flow. How, like how is that control? What I mean because everything we do, everything we do is off-market sourcing, okay? And so I'm doing the direct mail.

31:10I'm, we have, you know, four, three or four full-time cold callers. And so the way I control my deal flow is because I'm creating my own leads. Yeah. Right. Yeah, yeah. No, right. You're like, you're saying, okay, that parcel land, that, and this leads me to my next question. Like, let's just say, for example, I, maybe this might, this might be not the right example. Let's just say 15 acres is like a sweet spot in the market that you're in. Like, okay, that 15 acre parcel right there, that's a, I'm, I'm, I'm quoting now a good land deal, right? And so I'm not going to pursue it. I'm going to, this, the owner of that land is not ready for what's coming. I'm going to be pounding their phones. I'm going to be sending them letters. I'm going to be bravering them into submission until they work at a deal with me, right? What is a good land deal and what is a bad land deal? Like, what, what are you, what, what are your yes and no boxes for a deal when you see it? Yeah, good question. So let's talk. So what, I'm going to answer that related specifically to my model, right?

32:10Because there's other, oh yeah, models out there, right? Is, so we call it LDP, land with development potential. Well, what is considered development potential? Okay. I'm going to give you five high level things, very high level, the create development potential. Okay. Here we go. Ready? Write them down best overlisters. Let's go. Okay. Number one, what's it zone or what can it be rezone to? Zoning. I need it to be zoned or I can rezone it for the development that I want to do. Two, is utilities. Is that we're not out there doing wells and septic tanks and all that. Is that I need public utilities, like public sanitary sewer, public water. And so is public utilities at the property or near the property? Hmm. Three, public access is that I need that the public has got to be able to get to the property. So is there a public road, a public right away

33:11that's that's at the property? Because I can't develop it if people can't get to it. Is it up to be a highway or just like a secondary road? No, I can be a local street. Any type of public right away, right? It's got to be got to be paved. You've got yeah, it's not a dirt road to Cody's deal. I got it right. Okay. Okay, cool. Number four is be aware of what are called overlays. Is that it might be zoned, it might have utilities and might have access, but once you go pull up the overlay maps, maybe the whole thing's a wetland or maybe the whole thing's environmentally protected or whatever. And so you've got to be aware of what's called overlays. I was going to see if you're going to bring up the wetland thing because where I used to do business in New Jersey, like half the whole freaking state is wetland. You know, you got to be careful of overlays. Man, yeah, yeah. Okay. And don't be wrong, I don't know overlays. We develop, we get projects approved all the time that have like wetlands or something on it.

34:12I don't care. As long as I'm only paying for the portion of the property that's usable. Okay. But let me give a best over lizard example, right? So you've got a 10 acre parcel. This overlay shows that one acre of that 10 acres is wet and cannot be built on without a complete, literally, probably an act of Congress, right? So so you're not going to go messing with that one acre. You'll, you're just going to price it and value it based on the nine that is buildable, the nine acres that's left. Okay, got it. That's right. All right. And then number five is you've got to understand topography. Which is the slope of the land. Okay. Let me tell you this. Flat land, it's the cheapest to develop and the lots are worth the most amount of money because people like to have their backyards, they want their lot, their homes on to be usable. Yeah. So just be careful of topography because like some property might be down sloping to where you can't even develop it because you can't make gravity sanitary sewer work, right?

35:15Or it might be up sloping and so you can develop it, but the cost to develop it because of the topography are so high that the properties work nothing. So, you know, so the other is five really high level things related to development potential. Okay. And then lastly, those are just like development potential criteria is we do and we teach our students that you can do deals anywhere in the country and you don't have to do deals only in your backyard. You don't have to do deals in your backyard at all. Take us, we're in Scottsdale and we don't have one project in Arizona right now. Okay. Is now you have an advantage, I'd say in your backyard because you know your backyard better than anybody else. But go where the demand is, okay? So like for us, if you bring me a deal out in Timbuk 2 out in some tertiary market, I'm not interested. Because yeah. Because there's no demand. Right. And so like my average project at my company ally development, our average project is over 200 lots, okay?

36:18And so that's too big of a project for most local home builders. And so all of my project sell to nationals, okay? And so like I won't even entertain looking at a piece of property unless there's at least three of the top 50 home builders, at least three within three miles of the property. I think that like with the overarching theme that I'm hearing you say is that, I mean this, maybe this is so obvious that I shouldn't even say it. But what the heck, when you're looking at a land deal, you gotta think about what the clean exit is gonna look like. The light, the most likely exit is DR Horton gonna come by this thing. And is DR Horton gonna like it? Because it's in a good school system and because it's good pride, you know, hey, there's a Walmart right down the road or it's proximity to shopping and jobs. And you know, it's not, you know, 13 miles off the highway. You know, it's, you can get around like what I, even like bottom line, if somebody built a housing project on this parcel land, what I wanna live there.

37:20And with somebody wanna live there, you know, it's about like kind of fast forwarding to the end game, no? Yeah, I mean, I've said my whole career, always know your exit before you enter. Oh, I always know your exit before you enter. I like it, I like it. One thing I've noticed over the past years that almost everyone says they're using AI, but when you actually look at how it's being used across a company, it's usually just a handful of people who have really embraced it. Everyone else falls back into the same old workflow. That's why superhuman go caught my attention. The problem isn't that people don't want to use AI. It's that most AI tools expect you to stop what you're doing, open another tab, start from scratch, and explain the context every single time. Superhuman go flips that around. It's an AI chat that's already up to speed right there when you need it, and it works inside the tools and websites you already use without switching apps or losing your place. It's from the makers of Grammarly

38:21and whether someone on your team is drafting an email, summarizing a long thread, or getting ready for a meeting, the help is already there. That's what really drives adoption. When AI works where your team already works, people naturally use it. Less friction, more consistency, and more time spent on the work that actually moves the business forward. If you want to see what that looks like for your team, check it out. Find out more at superhuman.com. Hey guys, if you're an active commercial real estate investor, especially a GP or a fund manager, you already know the market has changed. Capital is harder to raise, deals aren't penciling the same, and lenders are a lot less forgiving. That is why Joe and I built the best ever-inner circle. It's a private group of experienced operators, people raising millions, managing portfolios, and solving these problems in real time. Inside, we're sharing what's exactly going on right now. How people are raising capital through RIAs,

39:22finding deals done directly with lenders, and navigating challenges like floating rate debt and capital gaps. We've got members with billions of assets under management, and others who have raised tens of millions in the past year. This program is not for beginners. It's for people who are already in the game and want to stay ahead of it. If that's you, go to bestevercr.com, forward slash, inner circle to learn more about joining us. Well, you've given us some real good exposure to the land game. I'm glad I let you let it rip in the beginning there about your faith and everything like that, but it really makes you tick. Because I really am curious about what makes people tick, and it's okay to go there on the show a bit best-ever listers in that. And I hope you guys got some good nuggets here from a man Cody talking about the five things that make a great land deal great. And that, and that's like, you know, put that on a tattoo, right? Always know your exit before your enter, right? Like always know how you're going to get out of the deal before you even say yes on the deal.

40:23Codabuyogan, man, I love the dirt dog, by the way. Like that's your nickname, right? How do folks get a hold of you? Get a hold of the dirt dog, Cody Bugen. So let's do this, okay? Let's talk about my fund. We talked about my education company. So I'm gonna give you two quick links, okay? If you want to learn more about investing in my model, okay, as an incredible investor, go to alliedlandfund.com slash CRE, okay? If you want to learn more about my business model and potentially become a student of ours, go to my education company, where you can learn how to do exactly what I do, which is vestright, V-E-S-T-R-I-G-H-T, vestright.com slash CRE. Go to either one of those links and we'll get you plugged right in. Love it, love it. Okay, best of all, let's check out Cody. Cody, I really love that you wear your faith on your sleeve like that, man. You have, I'm sure, transform a lot of people's lives by having the courage to talk about what you stand for. At the end of the day in life, best of all, let's do this.

41:24Why would you not put out what you stand for in life? So what some people get turned off? You know what, that's okay. Either gonna push it away or you're gonna draw it to you. When you talk about things that you care about in life, you know? And so I commend you Cody for having the courage to put out there things that you believe in and for joining us today on the Best ever CRE show. Best ever listeners. If you enjoyed this program, please do me a favor personally and like this program if you're on, if you have, by the way, a quick little plug. If y'all are watching this thing on YouTube, I need you guys to do me a huge favor and subscribe to our YouTube channel because we've got a, a, a, bludgeoning huge YouTube channel going here, subscribe to it, become one of the thousands and thousands of people that are getting their education on YouTube. More and more people are watching podcasts on YouTube now. So like this on YouTube if that's where you're watching it. Until I see you guys here on the Best ever CRE show again, with me and my man Cody and with everybody else, have yourself a best ever day. Did you know that mosquitoes have killed almost half of all people who have ever lived? Today, people are fighting back

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