Insight with Chris Van Vliet - Making Your Side Hustle Your MAIN Hustle - Travis King

Episode Date: February 16, 2023

Travis King is an entrepreneur who helps people achieve their dream of financial freedom with land flipping. After a number of years entrenched in the corporate world and with multiple side hustles failing to provide financial freedom, Travis discovered land flipping. The results would be life-changing: within 2 years he had built up passive income which enabled him to pursue this venture as his full time job, resulting in a seven-figure empire over the following decade. Unsurprisingly, it was from this pursuit that Travis found true purpose - helping others experience wild success through niche land flipping opportunities; now providing coaching programs and training courses so all can benefit! Travis joins Chris Van Vliet to talk about how to maximize your side hustle, what finding your passion looks like, how he discovered land flipping, what to look for in a great deal, the power of gratitude and much more! Visit Travis King's website at: http://travisking.com If you enjoyed this episode, could I ask you to please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcast/iTunes? It takes less than a minute and makes a huge difference in helping to spread the word about the show and also to convince some hard-to-get guests. For more information about CVV and INSIGHT go to: https://podcast.chrisvanvliet.com Follow CVV on social media:  Instagram: instagram.com/ChrisVanVliet Twitter: twitter.com/ChrisVanVliet Facebook: facebook.com/ChrisVanVliet YouTube: youtube.com/ChrisVanVliet TikTok: tiktok.com/@Chris.VanVliet Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

All systems are go. Ladies and gentlemen, Chris. All right, my friends, welcome back to another audio adventure on Insight. Yes, sir, I'm CVV, Chris Van Fleet. Hope all is well in your world. Thank you for joining us in this one. If you listen to the show a lot, you know, that something we talk about with different guests of all walks of life, actors, athletes, comedians, wrestlers. We talk about passion.

and waking up every day excited to get to go to work, not to have to go to work, to get to go to work. And I fully understand that maybe that can't be the case for everybody. But what if you could make a little extra money on the side doing something you enjoy with a side hustle? That's where today's guest, Travis King, comes into the picture. I mean, in a nutshell, he didn't like his corporate job. He didn't like being stuck in that rat race.

So he found a side hustle that eventually has become his, main hustle, his main job, and he wants to help other people do the same thing. So when you're done with this episode, go check out his website, Travis King.com, to find out even more information about him. But before we dive into this, Goofy Fernandez 200, you're awesome. Thank you for leaving this review on Apple Podcast. It says, Beast, Chris Van Fleet, Chris, Chris, Van Fleet, the mecha of interviews. Thank you so much for the kind words. And I, you know, you didn't say it, but I assumed you wrote it like the theme to the elite. Chris, Van Fleet, Chris, Chris, Chris, Van Fleet. So thank you for that. I'll keep reading one review

out on every single episode. It's my way to say, thank you for being on this journey with me. We're at like almost 2,600 reviews on Apple Podcasts, more than 1,100 ratings on Spotify. So you guys are awesome. Appreciate you. Let's dive into this. Please welcome Travis King. Travis, you're sure it's out of office. Is that what this says? Out of office, yep. So fitting. It's so fitting for a lot of what we're going to be talking about here today because, look, I think there's a lot of people who are in these jobs that are office jobs. And I feel like they see no end. And they're like, man, I wish there was something I could do

every day that I either liked or that was just kind of happening on the side and was making me money. And I think that you're the perfect person to talk to about this. Yeah, I have been there. And I have, you know, I think the office watching the show, the office, right? That was one of those things that got me by. So like, that's the irony there of like sitting at work, watching the office to get through the day at the office, right, at your desk. So, yeah, I would agree there's probably like a massive amount of listeners that are

either unfulfilled or unengaged at their current nine to five, right? Yeah, there's something about office culture that I just feel like, I don't know, And the office hits on it really well, but there's something that just makes it like, do I really have to go in today? It's so archaic and so antiquated. Like I used to laugh, like how I just felt like management's like metric for a good employee was like time spent at the desk. You know, like not output or not production, but like who gets your earliest and who stays the longest? Not anything to do with who produces the most, right? So, yeah, we could spend the whole episode like bashing like the, you know, the traditional nine to five.

But I think I also have a pretty strong bias from having to put in, you know, being in the workforce or the corporate world for a decade and a half, right? Prior to escaping. So, yeah, I've got a lot to say about that. Yeah, before you escaped, as you call it, what were you doing? Yeah. So I, you know, so I started college with little to no direction. So what do you do, right? When you have no direction out of high school, it's either military or it's college and,

you know, figure it out. I, you know, snuck in my four or five years of fun and a semester and a half of college, right? And still had, so I enjoyed all the social aspects of college, but had no clue where I was going, you know, with it, like as far as profession or degree. And really was like just impatient, you know, like just kind of wanted. to get out there and take on the world and start doing things, you know, not learning, right? If I had a lot of clarity on what I wanted to be, I think it would have felt different, right? But because of that, it just more felt like this like holding pattern of like, all right,

like I'm just here because I don't know what I want to do next. But it's such a weird thing, you know, you're 17 or 18 years old. And you're kind of tasked with answering the question, what do you want to be when you you go up? Like, what do you want to do with the rest of your life? And you're still in high school when you're picking your college major and you're applying for schools. And you're like, I don't know. Like this seemed interesting to me.

I'll chase after that. So what did you end up studying? Yeah. So I was actually studying physical therapy is what I was interested in and then pharmacy, right, pharmaceutical. And so as I'm, again, this is my first year, right? So it's not like I'm deep into this. But at the same time, as I said, the thought of like, I enjoyed learning about this stuff like the use and abuse of drugs and pharmacy and these things. But then when I like, when you look ahead and I thought

about the occupation itself, when you get out of college, I'm like, I'm at a Walgreens, it's like counting pills and, you know, like, you know, like, that sounds like a prison sentence, not a, you know, a job or an occupation. So as I look ahead, I'm like, what am I doing here? You know, the reality is I don't know. I mean, I don't have a path. So for me, at that time, I quit college and I entered a trade school where I could be in and out in less than a year, you know, and I could start working, you know, enter the workforce, making money, kind of adulting. At the time, I was eager to become an adult now with all that hindsight, right? Like I wish I had milked and delayed adulthood as long as possible, right?

So kids, if you're in college, stay there, six, seven years, right? They don't be in a hurry to get out. But I went through a trade school for, it would be very similar like being an electrician, you know, within the telecom world. And then I started traveling. So I grew up in Montana and as beautiful and as amazing as Montana is, like when people think of it, right, like as a young man kind of wanted to conquer the world,

there's not a ton of opportunity like job-wise, right? It's very rural. So for me, it was like getting out, leaving the state, you know what I mean? Like just like getting out of the state, we hadn't left the state much. So for me, I wanted to get out of small rural, Montana and go see, you know, Washington, California, you know, like Texas. Like I wanted to get out and see places, much bigger places that were different from where I grew up. So that was kind of what I started doing was started traveling to West, Western States as a contractor and working in

these larger cities, you know. Where did you fall into side hustles? And when did you realize, like, that there's some money that could be made here outside of my actual job? Well, the passion, like, was or the interest was always there, but the execution, right, is what I lacked. So very similar to how people would go to like a seminar and fill that motivation and raw, raw feeling and then leave it like that. It doesn't mean you're educated. It just means you're hyped, right? That was kind of me. I was interested in real estate and I started reading like Rich Dad Portat and some of these like very well-known or traditional books. But the problem was I didn't really study them, right? And I didn't execute them on like, they're fantastic books and have amazing concepts. But I used

them as more like they got me hyped up. And then I ran out there really naively as a young 20-something, right, with a high income and pretty good credit score and bought up as much properties I could, not knowing anything right about like how to vet the properties and what's a good property and what, where are we at in the market, you know? So it looked like a good strong start into like mid like 2004, 2005. And then, you know, I'm sure there's a lot of listeners can tell where the story's going, right? Like what happened, 2007? I think you're going to end up in 2008 here. Yeah. Well, what happened in 2008 is, even billionaires, right? Very intelligent guys lost

40, 50% of their net worth, right? Yeah, sure. You do the economy. So, so that's kind of what happened to me. I got bit early on with foreclosures and, you know, losing houses. And so I started really young, kind of, of trying to be that entrepreneur on the side, like with houses and house investing, but due to just like not seeing the, you know, the recession coming and then also just being young and naive, right, and not really studying things, just diving in. I got hit pretty hard. So that was like my first attempt at kind of being an entrepreneur side hustle and it didn't end well, right? So then we spent the next five, six years kind of licking my wounds and recovering and just

getting up going to work and that same routine and kind of going what's next and that's where you know fast forward five six years i i was still had that itch and at this time speaking of side hustles so i mean that's when people say side hustle like we've done everything and i say we like my wife and i and so we you know we've been on this journey together and we've done all these side hustles so we like we flipped cars we flipped campers we mystery shopped right at what that probably at our lowest point right looking back we're doing a mystery shop at like payless shoe store right not even like a nikey right or a pool kicks like pay less right so we're in the middle of a mystery shop and it's like what are we doing but we're just trying to make outside money and trying to do something outside of

work and then fortunately i stumbled across like land flipping as a side hustle or as kind of land as an asset class and that's really when we you know we grabbed that and it didn't have the very to entry like house investing did or multifamily, single family or multifamily where you've got have jobs of money for, you know, 20% down payments on three, four hundred thousand dollar houses. You could buy cheap property at auctions and it just had really low barrier to entries. And I kind of still had PTSD from the crash of housing. So I felt like starting small with something cheap where I wasn't betting the farm would be like a safe way to to try the side hustle again within real estate, you know.

But I've heard a lot of people doing those type of side hustles of flipping that you're talking about flipping a car or camper, flipping couches. That's a big thing on Craigslist or Offer Up. The thing about things like that is everybody needs a car, everybody needs a couch. When you're flipping land, who are you selling it to? Yeah. Well, now it's a lot different than when we started. When we started, it was like we would buy off of tax online tax auctions. So whenever somebody doesn't pay their property taxes for enough, years, three to five years. And not all states are the same, but in a lot of states, you know, they want to, they want to collect those property taxes, obviously, right? So they want to bring it back on the tax roll. So they have auctions and they have online options that it's not like the 80s and 90s where you need to go stand at the courthouse steps, right, and hold up your, like, you know, keep on your paddle and like a bid. Like you can just online and put your max bid and it's very similar to eBay, right? So that was our first flips. We're like, buying a property for $500 and then selling it for $2,500.

So this was all like we would buy on an auction and then we'd resell on eBay for $2,500. And then we bought one for like $600 and sold for $5,000. You can sell land on eBay? You sell land on eBay. I know it's insane. I've seen people selling land on the moon on eBay, but I didn't know you can sell land. It's incredible. Even for us, although at the time, like it's not change your life money.

know, $2,000, $5,000. At the same time, like the amount of man hours that went into it, you know, like five or ten hours and we're making $2,000 or $5,000, that's pretty good hourly rate. And it peaked my interest of like, okay, what if I did this 20, 40 or 50 times a year? You know what I mean? Like, this could be something. So although what we do now is a whole lot different, we buy higher value properties and we have agents where you sell them, you know, a lot more traditional.

So we target off-market vacant land so people who don't have their home or their land currently listed, right? So it's off-market. They're not looking to sell. We target all of these people, similar to like if you've ever got a postcard, like we buy ugly houses or, you know, Zillow, Open Door, Offer Pat. All this companies, like, we do that for land. That's all we do. And we try to buy it way under market value. A very, very small percentage of people respond to our campaigns.

and then very few except are low ball offers, right, which are 25 to 50%, you know. But they're just looking to get some money in their pocket. Yeah, they're typically, it's people that have owned for 10 or 20 years. Maybe they bought it and they're like, someday we'll build a cabin or someday we'll retire here. Yeah. And they just never got around to doing what they thought. You know what I mean? With it or they got older and now they're just paying property taxes.

So you're kind of identifying like don't wanters. And it's not like a house where people grew up in it. They've got the kids measurements and heights on the door jam. It's like they probably live in a different state. It's absentee owned vacant land. Right. So they're very like they're not emotionally attached to it like a house. So that's why for us there is opportunity. Right. And yeah, that's kind of in a nutshell like what we do or how we found land and what we're currently doing. And we just we just scaled it. Right. Like we started small and I didn't. draw a salary because there was all that overlap of working a job. So we just kept pushing profits back in and snowballing it. We started like honestly $4,500 of our own money. And we just snowballed that over the years. And after about between two and three years, we were bringing in enough consistently monthly that it exceeded my salary. Wow. At that point, we were able to kind of exit and go full time. It's no longer a side hustle, the full hustle. Yeah.

It seems like the barrier of entry is pretty low, which is, you know, that I think that's what's appealing to, you know, people that are listening to this because real estate, I think that everybody knows you can make some money in real estate, but, you know, you've got to put a lot of money down to get those places. With this, the barrier of entry is pretty low. Yeah, it's, the thing is, it's really like the, it's the boring, less sexy, like, underlooked asset class, right? So like, you turn on HD TV, you're watching flip in this house. People are picking out cabinets. They're remodeling homes, right? Yeah, that resonates with people.

They get excited about that. Like, but like, could you imagine like turn on your TV and like people are like, okay, so here's this dirt, right? Like, we've got a little hill over here. Like, here's where the driveway will be. You know what I mean? Like, it's just, it's not an attractive asset class. So because of that, it's kind of overlooked or dismissed. And then the reality is it, it's, it's, it's, It's a little more challenging to appraise or value because the, the assessed, like county assessed tax values, there's not always a correlation with market value. So it's not like houses where there's 10 different zestaments or 10 different places. You can see what a house is worth. So that's where the opportunity comes in is it's harder to value.

And everybody's occupied with houses and house investing. So Lens is kind of this like blue ocean, right, over here that people aren't interested in. because there's all the stigma from decades ago of like land is just this thing that sits that doesn't make money, right? But the reality is with the internet, you know, with the internet and visibility and reach now, it's not the same as it was, I think, in the 80s of like owning land. You know, it could be flipped just like you said, like a couch or like anything. Well, but land shows up on Zillow, which I think is really interesting. Yeah, and there's a number of platforms people don't realize dedicated just to land. Like there's lands of America.com, landwatch.com, right?

Like in Zillow, you can search land only. So yeah, I mean, these are Zillow, right? That's a huge platform, huge reach. So it's just a niche that people don't realize, you know, aren't aware of. So we were fortunate to come across it. And then when we did it, it was just like, okay, how can we like make this a system, right? How can we have like a repeatable, predictable revenue where this isn't like a one-off success? And then as we started like going after bigger deals, what we realized is that most people were doing this focusing on the small cheap stuff.

Because all of like the courses and gurus and like all the things being taught or shared like many courses about this were targeting like cheap small parcels. And after we started doing a high number of those, we realized like either like we kind of like hit our limit of how many we could handle transaction wise. So my wife and I were like, okay, to make more money, we either do more transactions or bigger transactions, right? So as we decided to start going after bigger transactions, now that we had more capital to work with, we realized that very few of these people were getting the same marketing that are the lower value properties you're getting. So, you know what I mean?

It was surprisingly, there was less competition at the higher values. and I assume because one, like the forces weren't steering people there. And two, a lot of people didn't have the capital, right? To buy a $200,000 property for $100,000, right? You'd need $100,000 cash, right? So that's the other reason that prevented it. So a lot of people. So yeah, as we just kind of like, like anybody does with anything,

like you have like these growing pains, right, and these scaling points. So you solve your own problems. And then eventually as we were doing this, I was in communities. I was in forums. So I would see beginners start up and they would post these beginner questions. And then I would answer them and I would help them. And then they would say, hey, could I jump on a call with you? And I just started helping people.

And then eventually they would, you know, we would help them like execute on marketing. And then they would get a deal. And then they would be like, hey, well, this is awesome. You know, I found this $120,000 property for $50,000. And I'm like, fantastic. You know, and they're like, well, I don't have $50,000. Would you be willing to partner with me on it and then we'll split profits? And it kind of like organically went from just being something I was doing, like paying it forward, helping people to where, you know, fast forward three, four years now.

And we have like an education training company. And then we co-founded and have a partner in this business where we fund other students and people's deals, right? Because that's kind of the limiting thing when people are starting to side hustle as capital, right? Sure. really like hamstrung by how much of your own money you have to work with, just like we were. And it took us years to kind of crack that nut and find outside money. So now that's something we do where we'll train people up. And then if they want a partner, we'll partner. They got a rich uncle, hey, you know, handle everything yourself, right? And just use our tactics.

But that's kind of where we're at today with it. But it's fast forward. It's a decade, right? Like nine or 10 years into this. Yeah. It's been a long journey. But 10 years ago, I was just a guy driving to work, listening to podcasts, you know, and like just really like just feeling like unfulfilled and unhappy and knowing I had a lot of potential, but like not knowing how to, you know what I mean, not knowing an avenue to take or what to do to escape that job. Because I was like, I'm in my mid 30s at this point and I'm like, man, I'm going to like, maybe there's nothing special about me. Maybe I'm going to have the same path as everybody else where it's like nine to five till I'm 65.

Right. So I empathize with that when I talk to people now because I can remember being there. I very much remember being there, you know, like going, what's next or how do I get out of this or like, you know what I mean? I'm not passionate about this. Like, this isn't in alignment with who I am, right? As a person or as an entrepreneur or my potential. So that's really where I resonate with people.

It's not just land. Land's just like the asset class or the avenue we took. Yeah. although I'm a land evangelist and I'm a land fanatic, it's more about like freeing people of their jobs or helping people achieve potential so that they can kind of live life on their terms. You know what I mean? And not be like,

it's just soul crushing to have to like, you get off work on Friday by Saturday. You're dreading Monday. Monday comes, right? Like, ironically, like, well, not ironically, but like I actually learned this this year that the most heart attacks occur on Mondays. and Monday mornings, right? And so it's so interesting, right?

Like everybody dreads Mondays, dreads meetings, and there's, like, evidence to support and show that that, like, it literally raises people's, like, heart rate, right? And blood pressure, like, Mondays do that. So I, like, I'm just very passionate about, like, helping people try to find something outside of work, like, find a community, find a group of like-minded entrepreneurs that allow them to kind of scratch that it. And then I also realize there's sometimes there's a need for a lot of overlap, you know, and that I try to not tell people like burn the ships, quit your job, start this.

It's very much sometimes unless you have a lot of means, a lot of capital, there has to be overlap, right? But freeing people of jobs is like, that's my calling. That's my mission is like, how can I help people that if you're not curing cancer and you don't absolutely love what you're doing, if we're all honest with ourselves, a lot of us would, if we win the lottery, right? we're not going to get up and go to work the next day. You know what I mean?

It's because we're not passionate about what we're doing. So for someone who isn't that, you know, proverbial rat race, they're working the nine to five until they're 65. What can they do right now to just maybe start taking those steps towards what you're talking about? Yeah, well,

I have like, so what I did, I created a free challenge because when I started, everything was paid, right? Like everything was if I had questions or I emailed somebody, like, you got to buy the course,

right? So for me, I thought if I, ever get in a position of educating. I want to give people like without, because it took me several months, Chris, of like Googling and watching YouTube videos, like trying to get familiar with land. And then also like I was very skeptical and needed proof of concept, right? So it took me a long time, almost like a year of analysis paralysis of getting started. So I'm like, okay, if I ever do this education thing, like I want to give somebody a free, like kind of like an intro,

class. So I have, if you go to Travisking.com, I have a free challenge. It's a seven day, 100% free challenge. And it's kind of like through seven days, each session is like anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour where you're really getting oriented with the concept and the idea. And over the course of seven days, you have a feel for me. And you're also familiar with land without having to get out your wallet, right, and buy a course or anything. So that's probably the best like starting point, you know, for people. State Soccer Federation present the U.S. Soccer Podcast. My name is David Goss, and I'm joined by my co-host, Megan Klinemberg.

And now we're giving people an inside look at the World Cup. Time's ticking. I think you can feel the intensity. All the guys are wanting to really take their claimant, and they want to be on that World Cup roster. There's no doubt about it. Hosting the World Cup on the home soil comes with its pressures, but we're just really excited just as the people are.

The U.S. Soccer Podcast, presented by Henco. Follow and listen on your favorite platform. I love that your last name is king and you're like, you're the king of land flipping, right? I'm the, yeah, the land, right? That land guy or the land guy. You know, you're the land flipping king. It's your last name.

Man, when I, going back, like to tie in, like, so much of what you do and your guests and wrestling, like, I'm like, what goes back to being a kid, right? Like, I never wanted to be the land guy, right? It was like when I was a kid, and I thought I was going to be a professional kickball player or a professional dodgeball player, but once I realized about, you know,

fourth, fifth grade that you can't go pro. You don't want to post, right? It became this long-lining journey of like, well, okay, maybe I'll be in the MLB or NBA. And then turns out, you know, the NBA's not hurting for five foot, 10 slow white guys, right? So the NBA thing didn't work out.

So I think that's like the message to people, like some people have a, they know exactly what they want to be. Yeah. Right. some people do. I didn't have that. And that was for me why it was such a long, winding road. I just knew that the path everybody else was taking didn't feel like it was for me. And I kept having this nagging desire to do something outside of my job. Right. But I never had that like,

you know, I want to be a doctor when I grew up or a veterinarian or whatever. Right. Like, I might have ideas of being things, but it was like I wasn't really willing to lay out a path and put it in the work. you know what I'm saying? What you're really talking about here is arbitrage. And I think that that's exciting, right? Like buying the baseball card for a dollar, finding out it's worth $10, buying the concert tickets for face value at 100, knowing you can resell them for 500 and doing this at scale.

Well, you know, it's cool right now. Here's what's really funny. So I've got three boys, right? And that's a big part of this is not just like having a side hustle, but building a lifestyle business. you know so from the beginning the goal was like as i was traveling and having to go out of town for work it was like i don't want to fit family in around my job right it's like if i could design the perfect company or job or business it would be like it would fit in around my family right

around my marriage and around my kids and so that was a big part of like the urgency of making something work was like when i started to go out of town you know several years ago and it was like I would miss my wife. I would miss my boys. At the time we had two, we wanted to have another. And it was just like I felt like I was leaving my wife alone, right? Like doing all the heavy lifting. And I missed them all. And it was just like it was this job that was I felt like keeping me from that. Right. So like through arbitrage, you're right, the arbitrage of land flipping. It can be arbitrage with anything. The cool thing is fast forward to today. And this week, my boys, so I've got a 14 year old, a 12 year old and an 8 year old.

Okay. My boys, the older two, they've been buying this energy drink prime, right? They've been buying prime by the case. Yeah, Logan Paul's energy drink. Logan Paul's energy, they've been buying it for a buck 89 a bottle by the case and taking it to school and selling it for $5 to $7 a bottle. Okay. So like this is like on their own, right? It's really cool to see them like, you know, kind of be little entrepreneurs. And that arbitrage buy by the case, sell by the bottle, right?

So it's really cool to see them, like, load up their backpacks before school to go push their prime, right? Product. So it just shows, though, like, you, the asset class or the item or the arbitrage, whatever you're doing, it doesn't really matter as long as it's legal, right? Like, it doesn't matter, but it's just like that desire, you know, of recognizing that opportunity and then capitalizing on it, you know? Yeah. I think it's difficult. any age, right? It's difficult because people always hear this advice of like, oh, just follow your passion, just do what you're passionate about. And what's hard about that is not everybody knows

what they're passionate about. What do you say to somebody who's trying to find their passion? I say like, so for me when I was in second grade, it was WWE. That was my passion. I love it. Who were your guys? Well, my guy was Hulk Hogan and then it was the ultimate warrior, right? It was, you know, Hulk Hogan, Ultimate Warrior, and my first playground, like, scrap came from WWE, right? So, like, I'm on the playground and I'm talking with my buddy and we're arguing kind of about like, he's like, yeah, the ultimate warrior is going to like be way better than Hulk Hogan, right?

This is like second grade or something. And I'm like, no way. Hulgun's like a legend. And then this other kid comes over and he's like, you guys know that wrestling's fake, right? And I'm like, what are you talking about? You know what I mean? But now looking back, he had all these older brothers. You know what I mean?

So he's like, yeah, that's all like fake. He's like, do you really think the refs are like that dumb or blind? And we're both like like like, I mean, this ended up in being like a scrap. Like, dude, like, you know, wash your mouth out. Like how dare you say that, right? Like this is blasphemy, right? So at second grade, I wanted to be a, you know, probably WWE wrestler. I come home and talk to my mom and grandma who we watch wrestling together.

And I'm like, is wrestling fake? Right. And then they're like, and I'm like, I just felt crushed. Right. So I'm like, they're going my dream. Well, I don't want to be a WWE anymore, right? If it's like scripted. And like I said, fast forward.

Then it was MLB. Then it was NBA. So like I didn't have anything that for me, I was passionate. You know what I mean? About. So I think you can't force something. You can't force something. What I realized later that I was passionate about was freedom, like in like autonomy,

meaning like time autonomy and money. Like I wanted to have enough disposable money to do anything I want at any time, like with my family, right? I want to take the kids to an NBA game, to the Pro Bowl. Like, you know what I mean? Like I just want to be able to take them to anything that sounds like a great idea and not have to operate from that cost mentality. Like so I think like financial freedom is one piece and then time freedom.

Like I want to be time rich. For me, that's what it started with was like more like, Not like I want to make all this money. It was like, I want to be time rich. You know what I mean? I want to be able to take my kids and see every one of their baseball games, their basketball games. I don't want to miss this stuff. I want to be present.

And I want to be a participant in this whole parenthood thing, right? Yeah. Like just a spectator who you hear from all these other people after their kids are raised. They're like, oh, I wish, you know, I wish I had been there, but I was traveling. So I was, you know, do a lot of introspection and kind of took self-inventory. and realize like, hey, there's some urgency here. I need to change things so that I can be present. But I never had that passion.

It wasn't even like when I found Landa's like, oh, I'm passionate about this. It's more like, this is the asset class or the avenue that can help me accomplish time freedom and financial freedom. You saw an opportunity. I can do the things I care about, right, like my own purpose, right? Like those things. So sometimes they do what you love and the money will follow. I feel like maybe the second business can be what you love. But let's get the financial freedom part taking care of first.

You know what I mean? Let's do something that profits enough that you have the flexibility to have all that time freedom. You know, so I can't tell somebody to find their passion because for me, I can't even say, although I'm passionate about it now because it changed our life, land. It's not that I'm in love with land, right? I just, the results that it bring in the life, it allows us to live, then all the students and all the people. people we've helped us accomplish that.

And then people can really do with that financial freedom, that money, and that time, they can do what they're passionate about. So as somebody who never had that thing they were passionate about, I could say, yeah, don't, don't force it. Don't, you know, don't think you have to choose something. But if you feel unfulfilled, man, that's probably like inner potential trying to like manifest itself, right? Somehow, it doesn't know how. Yeah. It doesn't know how, but it's there, right? So you don't have, but you got to pick something that's going to help you achieve your

goals, right? But, but yeah, I was that kid who never had that. I still, there's kids I look back and I can remember setting in the circle in second grade and, you know, the kids like, I want to be a veterinarian. I want to be a doctor. And I look now and some of those kids, they are literally like veterinarians and doctors. Wow. Right. From second grade. I didn't have that, right? Like I said, I'm like, I want to be Polkulgin, or I want to be like Jose Canseco. I was a big Oakland A's fan back then. Jose Canseco and Mark McGuire, the Bash Brothers. Bass Brothers, yeah.

So, Travis, what was your best land flip and what was your worst one? And what's the biggest lesson you took of the two? Yeah, one of our worst ones was surprising. Like it had paved road access, looked like a great, you know, great property right off the paved road, paved road in a meadow. What state was this in? This was early on. There was cows like pastured on it when we looked at it.

But I was like earlier and kind of didn't know all my due diligence to do. What I didn't realize is it was in a flood zone. And what state was this in? This was in Yavapai County in Arizona, the state of Arizona, northern Arizona. in Yavapai County. And it was in a flood zone. And I didn't know it was in a flood zone because I didn't know to look for flood zones, right?

So I fortunately, we just bought it so stupid cheap that we were able to bail on it. I think we made $100 or something, right? So we didn't lose money on it. But it sat for like nine months. And I'd have people go out there and they're like, it's covered in water, right? And then they would text me a picture.

And then I realized what happened. It was in a flood zone, right? But I didn't know because I was just getting started. I didn't have the education that told me to look at. There are softwares you can use now that we use to check if it's in wetlands or a flood zone. So like those are some of the kind of landmines or gotchas, you know, that can happen. And then like some of the better or best deals, subdividing, I would say, like we buy properties. And then we don't put in like roads or sidewalks or power.

We don't develop. Like we literally just split it up, right? So it's not unheard of like one of the deals we just partnered with the student on. We, it was worth 108. We partnered with him. He bought it for 50. We put up the capital. Bought it for 50.

And then we subdivided it into five. It was a 14 acre property. We subdivided into five. Just by that act of subdividers splitting parcels, it forces appreciation. Like it literally adds value, you know, because a smaller, lot is worth more per square foot or per acre than a larger law. So we added $12,000 of appreciation with a $12,000 subdivide. We paid a surveyor, right? They go out there, they survey it. Like we paid a land consultant that filed the paperwork. So we didn't do much other than draw some

lines on the map of how we wanted it. Right. And we partnered with a student on this. And we forced 122,000 of appreciation. And it was a situation. It was already buy for 50 was already worth 1008, but then it was worth 230 after we subdivided it. Wow. So it was buy for 50, put 12 grand into it. Then it was worth 230. So those type of deals like are very realistic, you know, like our student, he had the money, but he's like didn't want to tie up his money.

So he said, hey, let's partner on this, right? So we do those. And then something that's real exciting that I like to do, we love to do like lakeside lot flips. We like to find like waterfront properties like in Florida. right and some you know they just make for great drone videos and pictures and you know so waterfront flips are pretty consistent we could have like six figures per flip wow looking a um a waterfront property by bringing in you know some cleaning up the lot a little bit having it cleared

getting drone videos you know some great pictures um and yeah so those are probably the there's guys that do this like with massive texas ranches like so there's arbitrage up to the you can do this at the $2 or $3 million level, we don't, right? Because we're operating within our own capital and because I don't like risk, right? So we, but the reality is the arbitrage is available at, you know, $100,000 or $1,000 lots up to $2 or $3 million properties, depending what your capital or means are, your comfort with risk, right? Right. So if someone wants to learn more about this, is Travisking.com the best place to go check this out? Yeah, Travisking.com is a great place to go. kind of the hub from there. They can check out like our free challenge or a course that we have.

We have an informational webinar, you know, that's probably the best spot. I think what's so exciting about this is whether it's land flipping or it's couch, cars, whatever, I think there's a lot of people that are excited about the idea of like, even if it was just like 50 bucks, a hundred bucks, like having that extra money on the side that's yours is exciting. That's what it started for us. It was kind of like Disneyland money. we in the reality is sometimes your goals and your thinking is limited by your current means so even like our goals early on were very small because i was a small thing like you know what i mean i didn't have a lot of capital to think with so to speak right and now that you realize what's

available it's more about like yeah what you know what what are your goals right it's really like what somebody's goals are but you can take it as far as you want and it can become a seven figure empire or you could just go, okay, I just want to build like a second income on the side. That's the beauty of this niche is I think there's the flexibility to take it wherever you want. For us, it started with kind of like you're saying, like, hey, let's vacation money, right? And kind of that side money. So, but yeah, you can really, people can take it wherever they want. But it's, I believe it's kind of the holy grail, you know, of side hustle.

So since I can't be, you know, I can't be that Sergeant Slaughter. Hope Hogan. I can't be that wrestler right when I wanted to grow up. Like, I guess I'll settle for the landflipper. I don't think it makes for as good of an intro, you know, song to the ring, but it's worked for us, right? The repo man was a character, so maybe the landflipper could be a character. Yeah, like a character. Yeah. I still remember actually when I was in, when I was 12, my dad took me to a wrestling match. And it was, this was like 90, I want to say 92. Okay. And my dad took me to Sergeant Slaughter. Sergeant Slaughter was there and

Hacks saw Jim Duggan, you know. And I still remember like meeting him as like a 12 year old kid like this monster of a man, you know, these guys you'd watch on TV. So yeah, I've always enjoyed that. So I thought it's so cool with your show and your guests and stuff, right? Like there's just, it's just really neat. Everybody has their own story. Right.

Yeah. Some people you feel more ordinary than extraordinary. But at the same time, like there's just a. different path for for everybody. So it's kind of cool when they all like converge, right? And we're all able to sync up and share our, share our own paths. And Travis, I think that your story is really interesting. What you're doing now is it's incredible. So congratulations on everything that you've built here. And it's been, it's been a great conversation. Look, I end every conversation talking about gratitude because that's such an important part of my life. So what are three things in your life,

Travis that you're grateful for right now. You know, I'm grateful one for my, my wife, my marriage. So, you know, it's Valentine's Day, right? Today when we're recording this, you know, and we're going on, you know, 17 years here, right? And so I'm grateful for my marriage, my relationship, but also, so we've, my wife's helped me from the start with our businesses, right? So it brings another level of like, just to the relationship, you know,

of the trust you place in each other, the dependency you place in each other of running a business or companies together, right? It obviously like introduces new challenges, right? So I just have a different level of respect for my wife than just our marriage because we're running our business together, right? And then all I've put on her and how she's risen kind of to the challenge and, and keeps me on point and on track, right?

So I think one, marriage and then two, like family like the kids, just absolute blessing. you know, for me to kind of go from like probably young, egotistical, you know, vain, 20-something to like getting married and having kids where it really like you kind of become the frame instead of the picture. And it's a role I'm super comfortable. And I just love like, you know, my boys and our kids. And it's just so exciting to now like to go to their sporting events and to just see them

grow up and, you know, their own character develop and these things. So I'm super blessed and grateful that they're, one, they're healthy. And that, two, just that they're thriving and they're becoming their own people, right? And they have their own ambitions, right? And they're going out like we talked about. They're hustling too. Right. So it's really good to just to be in this place, right?

Because I never like life rewind 20 years or whatever, you know. I'm just thrilled to be where we're at in life. But it's again, it's like a life we've architected and built, right? So I'm incredibly grateful, but it wasn't by accident. You know, like the companies we have and the time we have to be with the kids and the family was from that early days of pain. All right. It happened to build something that would allow us to do that. So yeah, definitely my wife, the kids.

And then last thing is I think the cool thing is as I help people, I started out training and just helping people very organic one by one. We didn't build a website. We didn't try to sell any courses. I just help people. And as I would get people results, that would lead to referrals, right? And then it would lead to joint venturing and partnering. And it very organically over the last two or three years, like it has built, you know what I mean?

It's really grown with no paid ads, nothing, right? To this point, everything has been organic, you know? And so we have like this whole community of people now that are, you know, that are land and land investors and entrepreneurs that it all just started out, just staying authentic and not, you know, not saying, okay, I'm going to launch a course or go on stage or be a guru. It's like, I'm just going to be me and we're going to help people one at a time. And I've done over a thousand one-on-one Zoom calls in the last two years, like fired up the computer and one-on-one like this, right? Like help people.

Yeah. It's really fun. I feel really blessed and I'm really thankful for the community that we've built. Because as I help people one-on-one, one at a time, the community over the years has become a byproduct, like a podcast. positive byproduct of that, not something I thought of developing or building a community, just helping enough people, right? With time, they'd refer others. So I'm really thankful for that right now, too, because instead of just feeling like you're selling courses or selling education, like you're actually building relationships and people stick around in our part

of your community, you know, instead of just buying a course and you never hear from them, right? So yeah, community is probably the last thing. And that's this year what we're focusing on it is helping, you know, helping people within the community. I love that. Three great things. And if people want to find out more, like we said, it's Travisking.com. And Travis, thank you so much. Absolutely.

I appreciate you, Chris. What a blast, man. Thank you. All right. Thank you so much for checking out this episode. Of course, thank you to Travis King as well for being with us. Go check out his website, Travis King.com. Get on that side hustle.

Then you can make that side hustle, the hustle hustle. I know you've got it in you. Ralph Waldo Emerson always has such amazing words. I think I've shared more quotes from him than anybody else on the podcast. And here's another one for you. You cannot do kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late. Be great. Be grateful.

We will see you on the next one for some more insight. Jim Rome takes on sports. Why? Because I have a job to do. With rapid fire takes. So I don't want to hear from you lava pigs on this notion today. No idea what you're talking about. You're complaining more than you like to breathe air. It's like you get up in the morning only to complain and cry and moan on social media

about things that you don't even understand. He's the spitfire of sports smack. Take advantage of it, but get up in here. The Jim Rome Show podcast. What's your beef? Follow and listen on your favorite platform. You've been warned.