Brandon Cobb - From Land Deals to AI Agents: How to Scale Your Real Estate Business | Real Estate Educators Podcast with Kevin Amolsch

Description

Land development can be one of the most profitable—and risky—strategies in real estate. So how do you actually make money while managing long timelines, rising interest rates, and unpredictable markets?

In this episode of the Real Estate Educators Podcast, Kevin Amolsch sits down with Brandon Cobb to break down how he structures deals to generate cash flow at every stage of development.

Brandon shares his journey from medical device sales to building a $22M/year land development business, why most investors underestimate the importance of cash flow, and how to survive when deals don’t go as planned.

They also dive into AI agents and how they’re transforming real estate businesses—from automating operations to increasing revenue.

If you’re interested in land development, scaling your business, or leveraging AI, this episode is packed with actionable insights.

TIMESTAMPS

00:00 - Early failures and lessons learned
08:12 - Transitioning from flipping to new construction
13:18 - The three phases of development explained
19:20 - Why interest rates have slowed development
24:05 - The biggest risk in land deals (and how to mitigate it)
29:12 - Using deposits and private money to fund deals
34:40 - The reality of losses in real estate investing
40:15 - Automating marketing, bookkeeping, and content with AI

Connect with Brandon Cobb:
Mastermind & Training: LearnLandDevelopment.com

Investing Opportunities: HBGCapital.net

Explore land development strategies, AI implementation, and investment opportunities.

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Transcription

Speaker #0
When we develop, everything is run through our construction company. We have our own license to do these projects, and so that general contracting company that we own, it makes a profit every time it completes a stage of that development. That frees up cash flow along the way. So when you introduce that free capital to the capital stack, all of a sudden the amount of equity that I need to raise… goes down a whole lot further. I attribute my success just to the ability to be able to stay alive and stay in the game. It's not whether or not you're going to get hit and fall down. If you think that you're going to go through your real estate career and not have some losses and not have some setbacks, good freaking luck.
Speaker #1
We were in negotiations. We're investing in real estate. They're winning. They're making money.
Speaker #0
What's up, everyone? Welcome to the Real Estate Educators Podcast, where we provide the education you can build on.
Speaker #2
I am your host, Kevin Amos. We are back and we're having so much fun with this podcast. We're helping real estate investors and real estate educators. Are you out there building a portfolio? Are you out there fixing and flipping? Or are you helping other investors, educating them? This is the podcast for you. I have another really great guest. I have no idea where this conversation is going to go based on what we were talking about before I hit record, but he's a land developer, $22 million. in land development deals every single year. He's helping other investors turn land into profitable communities. Welcome to the show, Mr. Brandon Cott.
Speaker #0
Thanks for being here. I'm excited to be here. I appreciate you having me.
Speaker #2
Yeah. And obviously we have to talk about land development because that's your jam, but I want to get into some AI stuff here because you were frankly blowing my mind right before I hit record. So I think that is something that our guests are interested in as well. A lot of my guests have podcasts and they're trying to reach real estate investors just like you and I are doing. So I'd love to get into some of that. But before that, I really want to get to know you and your story. So take me back. You wanted to get into real estate to get more control of your life. You gravitated towards land development. That's a hard niche to choose, man. And you're doing it. You're doing it with some success. So why real estate? Why land development? How'd you get started?
Speaker #0
Yeah, if you told me 10 years ago that we'd be inventing these new housing communities, I looked at you like you had 10 heads because I was doing medical sales, and that was my passion. I loved selling medical devices. That's what I wanted to do. That was my career job. Worked for years to break into that industry. I had a really good gig. I was selling sports medicine devices, so like shoulder products, knee products, and I loved what I did. I don't have some story where I worked in corporate for… decades and got sick and tired and had some dream. No, I'm an accidental entrepreneur because one day I woke up and I got a text from my boss and he said, hey, come meet me over at the Starbucks. And so I'm excited to go meet him after work that day. I was having a great day as a sales rep. And before I could get the words out of my mouth about how much money I'd made him that day, he fires me.
Speaker #2
Oh, damn.
Speaker #0
And just like that, my cozy corporate medical device sales crew was over.
Speaker #2
What happened? Like, why?
Speaker #0
He told me, Brandon, I don't think you're a fit for the organization, and I hope you learn something from that. So I was busting my butt. I had just gotten the Rookie of the Year Sales Award a few months ago. Sales weren't fantastic, but I had the rest of the year to go. So I was confused by that. I remember walking away shocked, trying to figure out what did I do wrong, That just kept going over and over and over in the beginning of my head. And I learned a valuable lesson, which is nobody's going to look out for your financial well-being but you. You can be as low as you want to a company, climb the corporate ladder, whatever. At the end of the day, you're just one merger and acquisition, one restructuring, one economic event away from losing your job. It's not if you're going to lose your job, it's when. So I learned that nobody was going to look out for my financial well-being but me that day. That led me to trying a couple of entrepreneur things. I started a course on how to break into medical device sales. That flopped. I started. an online motivational blog that flopped. And I thought, you know, I want to be the next Tony Robbins. I hold a big, big TR fan, love all his stuff. I bought all his products. I've kept him in business. I'm going to be the next TR. And you're not going to rely, you're not going to believe me, Kevin, but it turns out not many people want to take life coaching advice from a 26 year old.
Speaker #2
I wouldn't have known.
Speaker #0
So that business failed. But then I discovered this magic vehicle called real estate. and everything changed. At first, I did deals. I lost money. I did stupid stuff like selling all my retirement accounts and paying the penalties to buy my first investment property, not knowing I could have done a self-directed account. Every mistake. This is not financial advice. In fact, this is not to do financial advice. Don't do what Brandon did. But over the years. I did close to 200-plus transactions. I learned along the way. I built a business where I was flipping about 35 houses per year, started my own construction company, and graduated into doing new builds because the first new build I ever did, I made three times as much money as flipping house. And I was like, why am I flipping houses? I want to do new builds. And so we were doing 30-plus new builds per year, and we were going after these individual little lots, little info lots. Imagine a neighborhood. With pre-existing homes and roads, but maybe there's a house that needs to be torn down and rebuilt. So that's what we were doing. We said, why are we talking to these homeowners that own these little lots? Why don't we talk to landowners where we can build an entire year's worth of inventory on one plot of land? That seems to make the most sense. So that's what we started doing. That's what we started going after. And so we were developing some of these parcels when we got a knock on the door from one of these big builders. And they said, hey, we really like your land. We'd like to buy it. We told them, get lost. We're building the houses. Not interested. And then they came with a purchase agreement and said, hey, we really like it. We really want to buy it. And we looked at the purchase agreement. Partner and I looked at me. I looked at him. We looked at the purchase agreement, and we said, it's for sale. You can have it. And do you want the one across the street too? So that's how we got into doing land development for these big national home builders. So fast forward to today. We do all three phases of construction. So we build the houses, though I don't have any homes being built right now. That's on pause until interest rates come down. We do the first phase, which is entitlement. We get the land approved for development, and then we sell the approved land, the paper, no construction. And then we do phase two where we actually go in, grade the lots out, put the sewer, put the water, put the roads in, and we sell the ready-to-build lots.
Speaker #2
And is this all in Nashville?
Speaker #0
Yes. Mostly. We've got some stuff that's outside of Nashville with various partners, but most of it's in Nashville.
Speaker #2
Okay. I know that's a tough business. I know it's a very slow process, especially if you're doing all three phases and your exits are not until the very end. How have you found success with the slowness of that business?
Speaker #0
So the key is to flip cash flow along the way. You have to have cash flow. So. When we entitle a project, we're going to let's say we take it all the way through. When we entitle a project, we sell it to the entity that's going to develop it. So we capture that equity that was created during that process. When we develop, everything is run through our construction company. We have our own license to do these projects. And so that general contracting company that we own, it makes a profit every time it completes a stage of that development. That frees up cash flow along the way. When we sell the project, if we're bringing the buyer to the deal and we're the seller, we're kind of doing the job of a real estate agent. So instead of paying a real estate agent 6%, buyer's agent and seller's agent 3% apiece, we get to make 2% on the sale of every single one of those lots. We free up cash flow along the way there. Obviously, we profit at the end of it. And then if we're going to build the houses, it's the same thing. We free up money along the way. We can have various entities that purchase those lots from us, ourselves, free up equity along the way there. And then again, as we build the homes, we can make a little bit on the spread. We don't make a ton of money on the spread. It's just enough to keep the lights on, but that's the key. You've got to create cash flow throughout the life of the project.
Speaker #2
Okay. Are you finding it challenging right now, finding projects, finding your builders to sell to? Seems like it's... I'm not trying to be negative here, Brandon, but I'm in some development deals. I've developed land myself, and I know that there's challenges right now. You mentioned one of them, interest rates. So what are some of the challenges that you're seeing?
Speaker #0
Yeah, so I mean it's been tough the last few years. There's a reason we're not building any homes right now because of rates, absorption. I mean it's been a bloodbath quite frankly. Certain industries have gotten hit more than the other. I've got some buddies in the multifamily world, and man, what's been going on there has been really brutal. But these national builders, here's the thing, Kevin. They're publicly traded companies. They have to make stock price go up, and the only way to make the stock price go up is to buy more land and build more houses. They can't stop. They have a machine. And that machine has to keep going. That's one of the reasons why we like working with them. Now, they've come back and haven't been quite as aggressive on their expansion in their pricing. But if you're finding really good real estate deals with lots of equity, and again, that's why we go in and we create the equity through that entitlement process, I don't care. It's like buying the stock market. I don't know what the stock market's at. I don't know what the S&P 500's at. But if I can buy it at $2,500 every time, whether it's at $3,000 or $5,000, it doesn't really matter what the fluctuations do. I'm looking for deep discounted equity deals where we can force appreciate the value of the asset and structure the deals in a way where if that builder does try to retrade on us, we've mitigated the risk.
Speaker #2
Okay. Is that common, the retrade?
Speaker #0
You know? Um, towards the very end of the deal, it can happen. It just depends. Retrades are more common at the very beginning where you might contract or in their due diligence period. They're always going to come back with something, right? It's a negotiation. So yeah, the price that you contract on or the terms is probably going to change a little bit, but you've got to go do this dance and go back and forward and negotiate and this and that until you get something that is set in stone. They're going to retrade on you. They're going to do it before their earnest money goes hard, and that's typically 90 to 120 days during their due diligence period. So that's the section to watch out for.
Speaker #2
Are you seeing them participate at all in the land development, the horizontal development as we would call it?
Speaker #0
Just about all of them, aside from Ryan Holmes, have to do some sort of development because that's how they get the inventory. there's not enough developers like... us to go out and develop the lots for them. They have to do it internally because there's just not enough developers out there. They'd love to be able to just outsource all their land to someone else, develop it, and sell them finished, ready to build lots back. But that just doesn't exist. They don't want the land on their books. They work off an IRR. They want to get their money in and out as fast as possible. That's Wall Street. And a lot of people wonder, how the heck is Ron Holmes able to build these townhomes and sell them for $260,000, what are they making, 10%? Well, they're making 10% in a six-month period. So if they do that twice with the same amount of money, that's a 20% IRR. That's really good. So they want to get their money in and out as fast as possible. And you can do that when you're building the homes, much more difficult to do when you are doing the land development because that's weather dependent on a lot of things.
Speaker #2
Sweet. we learn a lot about doing what you're good at and staying in your lane. And that's how you really do, you know, make money and do profitable transactions. So what I'm hearing you say, Brandon, is you're not a national builder. You don't have, you can't work on that margin. Probably. I know you're saying it's a, it's a good margin, but what if it doesn't sell in six months? What if it's nine or 12 months, then all of a sudden, now you're really shrinking it and your, your carry is shrinking it even more. So your strategy. Sounds like a loss. It's a mitigating strategy is to not build the houses, really. I mean, unless it's a smaller infill type project. Am I understanding what you're telling me correctly?
Speaker #0
We'll build the houses if the opportunity is right. Maybe we're selling to a BTR fund. Maybe we want to do a stabilized BTR project, or maybe there's just some really good economics on the deal. For the large ones, 50, 100, 200 home developments, I'm not building homes on those. I'm just getting it approved and I'm passing it on to the national home builder at a profit.
Speaker #2
Okay. So you mentioned BTR and that's where I was going to go next. What are you seeing in that space? It was very popular for a while and now I'm just not hearing a lot.
Speaker #0
Yeah. Because interest rates completely desecrated the entire business model. We had so much stuff. We were getting ready to do BTR in 2022 and we dropped all of it. I just can't get anything to pencil. There's a corridor in Nashville. There's a loop where You're just enough close enough to be downtown where you're not having to pay an enormous premium on the land, but you're close enough to get that $1 per 80 rent per square foot that you need. If you go too far out, the rents compress, and you don't have that rental rate that you need to be able to get it. I mean it's a fine line. Thing is, is that nationals are paying more for the land for the same similar product type than a BTR fund is. So it just makes sense to develop and sell to them right now.
Speaker #2
Yeah, BTR for the listener, build to rent. It was very popular. We're just not seeing a lot of it right now in Denver either.
Speaker #0
Yeah.
Speaker #2
Sounds like Nashville is the same. Okay, so one thing I've learned about the land development is financing it can be a little bit tricky, especially with banks tightening up with the… the global banking restrictions, liquidity requirements, the diversification requirements. Land sits on their books for a little while, Brandon. So what we're seeing is land is like, unless you bring in it free and clear, it's hard to get that development loan, at least from banks. But I know land deals are still getting done. So tell me a little bit about the way you structure your capital. on these deals?
Speaker #0
So if we're raising equity, sometimes we have some very high net worth clients that they can just give us all the money. If that's the case, we put them in first position. We do a debt deal. I'm not paying them bank rates. I'm paying them more, but I get the terms that I want. Interest accrues. They're paid out on the back end. I like that. Helps out with cash flow. They're getting healthy double digit returns. It's secured by a deal with lots of equity. So we do those types of deals. If we are going to raise equity in order to go get financing, I don't ever get financing from a bank. I'm always getting it from a private source where I can get the terms that I want. I bake in all the interest payments for close to twice the life of the loan just in case into that loan so they've got it and I don't have cash flow issues. And when I'm raising equity, typically what I'm seeing is lenders will lend at 65% loan to cost. they want to have you have some skin in the game there. I make up a lot of that difference in what I need versus what they're willing to lend via the deposit from the national builder. So I got a deal right now. We're selling it for $7.6 million. I have an $800,000 deposit from the builder. That's free money that they've released to me to go towards the development. That helps significantly the amount of money that I need to go and get. It helps my IRR because I'm not paying interest on it. It's free money to be used towards the development. So when you introduce that free capital to the capital stack, all of a sudden, the amount of equity that I need to raise goes down a whole lot further. And so capital stack looks like first position lenders in first position. And then you're going to have that national home builder. They're going to have a deed of trust in second position against that first. And then you've got the equity investors that invest on top of that.
Speaker #2
Okay, so. The nationals in Nashville will release the deposits. This is a non-refundable deposit. So that's your cash at that point. So that would be your equity contribution. But underneath that, you're saying that they will also contribute in a junior lien position, so loaning you money to do the development?
Speaker #0
So their deposit gets released to us to do the development, free money. I've had as high as 20% when things were blowing and going. And things got to like 5%, 6% a year and a half ago, and everyone was super scared. I'm like, I'm not doing deals with a 5% deposit get lost. So right now I'm seeing like 10% is kind of the going deposit rate right now. Obviously, the more you can get, the better. When we were getting 20% deposits, you might not need to raise any money because your lender was using that as equity and skin in the game from the buyer in order to say, I'm comfortable financing this.
Speaker #2
A lot of times, Brandon, I do see these builders, they want the deals, as you indicated. They will contribute. So maybe it's a purchase price. Let's keep a nice round numbers of $100,000 per finish lot, let's say. But they might release of that purchase price, not only a deposit, but part of that $100,000 for the development of that lot. I have seen that before. Have you seen that?
Speaker #0
We're just getting deposit releases. right now. Now, some of the things for larger developments that you want to do is like a true up where you're looking at the business plan for the development, AKA what products are they building and what is the exit price of those products? So as a developer, especially the bigger ones, you want to look at the feasibility of their business plan, just because they're nationals doesn't mean they don't make mistakes. And for larger developments where, you know, they've got a little bit of leverage because they're the only, you know, buyer in town. You might set up like a true-up agreement where any percentage over a certain amount, you get a cutoff. So that's something that is going to be huge where you can really blow it apart with your numbers as a developer. So you might be able to negotiate getting a 50-50 split for all of the profit over the sales the business plan sales price for the houses. So I've seen that, but I haven't seen them release. on top of the deposit portion of what they're going to buy the lots for. That just seems like it's another way of wording like a stronger deposit.
Speaker #2
Stronger deposit, sure. You could think of it that way. And I've also seen like a lot of builders want it they have a takedown schedule, right? So they'll say, okay, I'll take your first 10, 20 lots, whatever it is, and then you could use the money from the sale of those lots to work through your development in phases. So it's another way I've seen. Developers such as yourself get creative with this funding because it is a little bit tougher right now. This episode is brought to you by Pine Financial Group. Pine Financial is a private lender specializing in short-term rehab lending to real estate investors. Got a property that needs some love? We can help. We are able to offer funding solutions because we raise private money from individual investors. With more than 15 years of experience, Pine offers passive investors an alternative that provides stability. consistency, and security to your portfolio. If you like real estate but want to avoid the ups and downs and effort, a Pine Mortgage Fund could be a perfect fit for you. Accredited investors will experience an 8%
Speaker #1
preferred return and profit sharing. Diversify your portfolio out of Wall Street and into Main Street with a Pine Financial Group Fund. To get more information at pinefinancialgroup.com, that's pinefinancialgroup.com.
Speaker #2
All right, well, let's move on. I love what you're saying about all of the land development deals and all of your success. I want to get into this AI stuff a little bit because you're blowing my mind right before I hit record. And you asked me very direct. You said, Brandon said, are you building AI agents? And I'm like, well, I have somebody helping me with AI. He's like, no, are you building AI agents? I'm like, I don't really know what that means, Brandon. So, okay, you got me. All right. So why don't you back us up here? Tell us how you're implementing AI in your land development business or your real estate investing business for the listener.
Speaker #0
How am I not implementing it? People first need to understand what an AI agent is. Everybody's got it wrong. And if you're using Claude Cowork, you're behind. I know that's crazy because it just came out, but that's how fast AI is doing. And these are the types of conversations we're having in our mastermind community. Every week we meet and everybody… pulls their intel together and says, what's new? What have you found? What have you got? I have an AI agent that is designed to go and scrub all the latest AI use cases and tell me how to implement it in my business. It's trained on every single aspect of my business because it's been through all my emails, my calendar, seven years worth of marketing campaigns, all of my projects and my Slack channel the past seven years, everything. It knows more about me than I do. And when you've got something like that, it's able to give you real intelligence on how to improve things. So whereas you might have a Zapier integration with your QuickBooks for whatever reason, that Zapier integration might just it's just an automation. It's just feeding something based on if this happens, then do this. But it's not self-learning. And so I see AI agent as an automation that is self-learning. So I was telling you before, all of our podcasts are open. automated. It goes, it's got the folder with the intro audio on there with the ads. It stitches it together, cleans up the audio through a little podcast audio cleaner upper. I don't really know the name, the fancy name for it, but it makes the audio sound nice and clean. It uploads it to Buzz sprouts, it will go. Look at the 200-plus podcasts we've done and say, oh, Brandon likes his titles done this way with the person's name in it. Okay, we'll name it this. After it downloads the transcript and uses that as the reference point to create the description and the title, it'll timestamp the podcast for the various topics that we move into. You just moved into AI, so we'll have a little section. It'll be like here's where we start talking about AI. And then… it watches the release and when one goes live it finds the guest it finds their email and it sends them a thank you email with the links to the podcast i was paying a va to do that anything you're paying a va to do it'll do quickbooks you can go in any transaction that is recurring it'll it'll know that every time it'll self-learn easy you correct it if it mislabels something but it does what a bookkeeper does. I still have a bookkeeper. I pay him like... $200 a week just to keep everything going. But I had a controller I was paying $90,000 a year. I had a full-time bookkeeper I was paying $45,000 a year. I don't need them anymore. It literally does that. So you can have a bookkeeper agent. It'll text you every day. Hey, here's the transactions that I did and how I labeled them, and here's the ones I'm not sure about. Can you tell me what they are? Or they'll send them to your team, and your team can answer them. And you can have real-life, clean books done. It'll update the budgets. So the bookkeeper agent we built for my brother, he had a full-time person. He was paying $50,000 a year. He gets about 110 invoices a day or I'm sorry, a week. She would just take the invoices and put them into QuickBooks, create a bill, and update the budget. It did all of that, and now she's scared that she's going to lose her job. You can automate the bookkeeping. Anything that you think… is automatable. You can automate with AI except labor right now. I've got a chief of staff agent that controls all the other ones. I communicate with it via telegram and I will reach out to it when I want it to do something with like one of the subordinate agents. So there's a little chain of command and they literally just go and do the things. My marketing is automated, bookkeeping. I do a lot with content creation. I record a video. It sends it to all my social media channels. It adds the subtitles. It cleans it up. All of it. It customizes the post per that channel. So like my LinkedIn, it's trained on all my LinkedIn posts. And so same video, but customized to LinkedIn based on my voice in LinkedIn. Same thing for Instagram. Same thing for TikTok. I just record the video and it takes care of everything else, which is amazing because I was paying somebody to actually do that. So think of AI agents as an automation that self-learns over time. And I run all mine on my own server. I'm not going through Claude. I'm not doing any of that. I'm using Claude Code to write the Python script that builds the agent, and the agent lives on my digital server. which is just a computer in the cloud.
Speaker #2
Okay. You're clearly much smarter than me at this.
Speaker #0
And I'm not. I'm not a tech guy. I'm not a tech guy. I promise you, I'm not a tech guy. I just stay up. I was staying up very late figuring all this out. I bought every course that there is out there. I've watched all the video. I've just spent an enormous amount of time figuring this out because you're going to be here doing the same thing later this year. Because you're going to have to, or you're probably going to be out of business. That's where I see this going, because you can't compete with somebody that is doing the same thing as you, but using AI agents. Everybody's going to be using these things. It's only a matter of time. I was at a conference with like 150 real estate investors. Most of them are some of them have been in business longer than I've been alive. None of them were using AI agents. They were like, yeah, we're using Manist. Go and scrape some stuff for us. Or, hey, have you seen quad and you can connect your calendar into it and your email? Have you seen? I'm like, you guys are so far behind. It's crazy. But everyone's going to have to catch up really quick.
Speaker #2
OK, so I'm going to take you back. It was about six weeks ago and I was at this real estate event as well out in Minnesota. And in that event, Brandon, Claude came up like, I don't know, six or seven times. I'm still using chat. I like chat. It knows me. He knows my kids. I ask him a question. It's always, is this for Lexi? Is this for Maddie? Like, what are you asking? I was like, that's kind of cool. But Claude was coming up. And then I went to another real estate meeting here in Denver and they were talking about Claude. I'm like, oh shit, man, I got to get on Claude here. And I'm like, it was on my list. I have my list right here. It's on my list. I got to look at Claude to do a design for me for one of my industrial buildings because I have a tenant It's looking at, wants me to do a pre-design for her. so I'm looking at Claude to do that but I haven't looked at Claude yet I'm not even on Claude I just know it's out there and it's working really well for others and you're telling me
Speaker #0
I'm behind even that yeah let's see if we can't do something fun real quick while while we're on the call so I've got my phone up and I don't know if this is going to go on YouTube or not but I've got your email in here which is perfect I don't think that your phone number or is mentioned in this calendar invite. So I'm looking at the calendar invite. I see my phone number on here. If I had your phone number, we could do something even cooler, but let's do this. So how do I pronounce your last name? Kevin, I'm guessing is the correct way to do it, right? Kevin,
Speaker #2
you got it, Brandon. It's Amos.
Speaker #0
Amos. Okay. So I've got my phone up here. I'm going to go into Telegram. You can see it's called Cortana, right? And it's telling me when all my videos and stuff are posted. By the way, that's my YouTube video that just got posted. It made the thumbnail and it uploaded everything. to YouTube, the school community. It did all of that. The intro video is stitched on everything. So let's go in. Hey, Cortana, can you send a calendar invite for this Friday, 7 a.m. to Kevin Olmash? I'm going to call with him right now. You should have his email. And send a Zoom link invite, color-coordinated green, and send him the Google Drive link with all the agent graphics you created. All right, so I'm going to send that to Cortana. It's going to take a little bit of a minute because it's got to communicate to my server to do it. All right. Give it a little minute there. I can drive. The biggest hack here is not that it's also doing the work of my VAs. But the mental bandwidth of having to keep up and manage everything goes away. Because normally, if I had someone that wanted to book a call or something, and I was driving or I was out at an event with my kids, I had to set a reminder. That's mental bandwidth that pulls me away from being in the present moment, and that's the challenge a lot of entrepreneurs face. One simple voice message to your AI agent takes care of it, and it's done. You don't have to worry about it. The amount of mental bandwidth that I have now is enormous. So that was just a calendar event, right? If I had your phone number, I could get it to text you the exact same thing right now. Maybe we'll do that little example next live after it books you and sends you the calendar invite with the link and stuff. But I just sent you a Google Drive link, and you should get it here in a minute. It says done. You see how it says, did you get it? I got it.
Speaker #1
But I'm showing the camera for you. Those of you listening in the car, I'm showing the phone in my email. I got it.
Speaker #0
And so, look, it told me that it sent it to you. So I don't have to wonder whether or not it actually happened. So that's one. Now, did it email you the file as well? It should say drive folder emailed to Kevin at pinefinancialgroup.com with all 12 AI graphics. Did you get something?
Speaker #1
I got a link in here, the graphics.
Speaker #0
Bingo. So I created graphics for some of the agents we built, not all of them, but that'll give you an idea of what some of the agents are doing in my business because I can't really explain it. You have to have a graphic really do it. And so I can get it to text you as well. I have recall.ai, which is the best AI that listens to your calls. Recall.ai listens to all of our project review meetings. And it's taking notes. When I say an address, it's matching that address to our Slack channel that we have for that project. It's recording all my notes. It creates the bullet points that I like for the update. It gives the next steps. It has reduced my meeting time on our weekly projects by 25% because 25% of the time is me sitting there typing the update and all the stuff that's happening. Right. Or my VA that was having to do it. I'm in between VAs and it was a perfect time to be between VAs. So that's really cool. I get all of our projects updated in real time on the call. It keeps us organized. That's really key when you're doing construction. You have to stay organized. But the biggest pain is having your PMs go in and update things and you update things. And by the way, if you get an important document sent via email and you can't remember what it was, like I had to go dig up an amendment that we signed. Nine months ago, I don't have to go find it anymore. I just tell AI to go find it. Hey, there's an email from Stanley, DreamFinders Homes. Go find the first, find a minute, upload it to Slack, email it to these people just like I did with you, and it'll find it and go do it. Now, here's the really cool do you want to hear something really cool?
Speaker #1
Yes, I do.
Speaker #0
This is the next level stuff. So I just made $25,000 today using AI. You want to hear how?
Speaker #1
I do.
Speaker #0
So, um, We've got a mastermind, and we teach land development. And we also teach AI in our mastermind because it's gotten so big, and this is so important to learn. Because I seriously if you're not doing this stuff, you're not going to be in business in a year. That's how I feel, and that's why I've embraced it. I had a call with a guy who was on the fence about joining, and I couldn't quite close him. Well, my sales coach agent, who's trained on Brian Tracy, Zig Ziglar, Grant Cardone and Alex Ramosi, those are kind of my OGs in the sales force. They rated my call a five out of 10 and they showed me exactly why they showed me exactly what I should have said to close him. And I go, you know what? Let me send him this text that the AI said that I should send. And I sent that text and guess what happened?
Speaker #1
I'm going to guess he joined the group.
Speaker #0
Joined the group. I don't know if you can see. That section right there. Oh, dude. Probably should have closed his name. But anyway, you can see the little paid button right there. I made $25,000 on something that I would not have normally made money on. So it's listening to our team's sales calls. It's giving them real-life feedback on this stuff. It's making them better. And I have an AI agent called Atlas. Atlas is the main brain. It listens to all my calls, all my emails, my Slack. everything stuff that would probably scare most people i don't care i'm embracing it you're not getting rid of this stuff. This is full-blown steam ahead and I'm going to be the guy. I will have a AI device here pretty soon that just walks around and listens to every single thing so that I can implement all my personal stuff too. And every Friday I get a report on how I'm doing as a leader, what I could have done better, the gaps that I'm missing, and how I should be making more money in my business. And it is the best coach and mentor I've ever had. and I've spent multiple six figures. on my coaching and mentoring. I'm a big fan of masterminds. I'm a big fan of coaching. I've paid lots of money for coaching and mentoring. And the intel that I get back every week from this is better than just about anything that I've paid for. Now, if I'm going into something new and I want to learn, that's huge, right? It's not going to be able to tell me that. But as far as the personalized coaching advice, where this is going is personalized AI for everybody. And that's what I'm using it for right now. I don't know anybody else that is yet, but this is the type of stuff that we're introducing in our mastermind program. We're building everybody's agents team out. We're training them to automate their business. It's never been easier to be a solopreneur or a small team. And all this is all good stuff. It is a very exciting time to be alive.
Speaker #1
You got me fired up here, Brandon. I got to tell you. I got to go learn more about this. There's no doubt about that. First, I am going to go try to figure out Claude because that's the obvious next step. And then I'm going to look at these AI agents. This is amazing. Let me ask you this question. I know we got to wrap up here and I want to go through my notes. I took a bunch of notes and I honestly, I got like transed by you talking. So I stopped taking notes there at the very end, but I think I absorbed that pretty well. So I'll go through all of my notes with you. But first... You mentioned masterminds. You mentioned the people around you that have helped you get to where you're going, where you wanted to go. And you've also mentioned this AI robot thing that listens to everything and gives you feedback. It sounds like they've both been pretty instrumental to your success. So maybe that's the answer to my question I just answered. But I want to know from you, what can you attribute your success to?
Speaker #0
You know, AI is very new, right? This has been a long journey. Not giving up, not dying. If you stay in the game long enough, if you figure out how to not throw in the towel when things get really tough. I didn't make any money for like two years from 2023 to 2025, literally no income coming in aside from some other aside from my construction business doing some other things. I'm talking about my real estate business. We didn't make any money for two years. That was really, really tough on me. When we got caught in the interest rate rise and we got caught holding a bunch of houses that we had built and the rates had doubled on us because construction loans are adjustable rate debt. You're not going to get fixed rate debt. My partner and I, luckily, we had the liquidity to support everything, but it was not fun watching seven figures disappear out of our bank account. That was not fun. So I attribute my success just to the ability to be able to stay alive and stay in the game. It's not whether or not you're going to. get hit and fall down. If you think that you're going to go through your real estate career and not have some losses and not have some setbacks, good freaking luck, right? Like even Warren Buffett had some losses some year, right? It's not whether or not you're going to just avoid all the challenges. It's how you react to them and what you do about it when those challenges present themselves.
Speaker #1
That's fantastic. I love that. All right. Let me go through my notes here real quick, Brandon, then I want to know exactly. About the mastermind group, I want you to tell me about that and how do we get a hold of you. So real quick, I'm going to try to go as fast as possible since we are a little bit behind here. No one is looking out for you but you. So you said even for your financial position. So no one's going to look out for your finances except for you. So get out there and do that. And that's what kind of got you into real estate. You told us about your experience as a medical sales and how that didn't go well. Cash flow is needed. So the way you structure your business is you have multiple entities, you sell projects to entities, you have other entities build it and do the construction. So you're creating fees. This is a very common way to do it. But cash flow is king up. That creates a stability you were talking about near the end. Private money is really where you go to it. It helps where banks aren't helping. So focus on private money and other creative ways like maybe non-refundable deposits. underwrite your buyer. Make sure you know who you're getting in bed with or who you're working with. AI, we got into AI right after that. AI should be self-learning. So it's not just like a memorized transaction in QuickBooks. You could just set that and it just goes, right? But it's not learning anything. So your suggestion is work with AI and AI agents that learn. AI is here to stay. So let's start embracing it, guys. I need to do that. No question about it. So whatever you think you can automate, you could use AI to do that. So whatever your mind can go to automate is really the limit. You said maybe not labor, but even that's coming. I know robots are right around the corner that clean houses and do laundry, right? Not giving up. So this is your final piece of advice. Don't give up. Stay in the game. There's a lot to staying in the game. One thing you did say was liquidity. You had the liquidity. So for the listener, make sure you have proper reserves when you're getting into these transactions because... You don't want one deal to take you out. It's okay to lose money here and there, but don't let it be enough to take you out of the game completely. So fantastic advice. How did I do on my notes?
Speaker #0
Dude, great, man. You killed it. I didn't even know you were taking them. I don't know if you learned to write while like not looking at your pen or something, but that's impressive.
Speaker #1
It's just when you say that, sometimes I was like, oh man, that's really good. I'm writing it down. I'm looking and I look up and I was like, I hope he didn't see me do that. But yeah, no, I really enjoyed the... the episode here, Brandon. Okay. Tell us about this mastermind group.
Speaker #0
Yeah. I mean, so when we were getting in development, we were looking for coaching. We were looking for mentorship. We're looking for a mastermind group and it didn't exist. Because of that, you know, I got a lot of scars on my back from trying to figure all this out myself. I don't recommend people do that. There just wasn't a community out there. So we created it. We got a lot of requests. A lot of people wanted to join. It was all word of mouth. And last year we launched, it's been a huge success. So. If you're a builder trying to scale the number of homes that you're wanting to build, we've got builders in the group. If you're a land flipper and you want to do some higher level land deals, it's a great fit for guys like you. If you're just a mature real estate operator and you've got some cashflow coming in and you want to do development, we've got some people in the group for that. So yeah, it's amazing. Every week we meet, we put our minds together. AI has become a centerfold conversation we created a separate weekly call just to go over the AI stuff I have guests come and speak about AI, development entitlement, you name it so it's really really cool I really enjoy it, it's like my people too you get to be with your community, your people if you want to learn more about that you can go to learnlanddevelopment.com, there's a video that talks about it if you like the idea of someone hand-holding you through your first deal you can get it And then if you want the free course on how to get started in land development, it's on that website too. So you can go to learnlanddevelopment.com, and you can grab that there. If you're an investor and you want to invest in these types of deals and you're like, hey, I don't want to learn land development, our private equity company, HBG Capital, can take care of you. Interested in having a conversation with you, you can go to hbgcapital.net forward slash waitlist. So it's pronounced Harry Bob Gary. That's HBG. HBGcapital.net forward slash wait list. You can watch our investment thesis video, book a call with us if you want. And then we've got a free gift. If you want our free e-book, 100 Questions Business Owners Ask Before Investing, you can just go to the HBGcapital.net. That's it. Nothing on the end of that. And then we've got our own podcast, Recession Resistant World State Radio. Find us there.
Speaker #1
So the call to action here, guys, is LearnLandDevelopment.com if you're interested in the mastermind. If you're interested in just investing with him or what was the other thing at HBG Capital that we would get? Oh, the free e-book you said, right? So HBGCapital.net. If you want the wait list, it's backslash wait list. Brandon, you have a lot going on. I was going to say you're super busy, but that might not be true because you have all these AI agents out there doing all your work for you. But either way, I really appreciate you coming on the show, man.
Speaker #0
Hey, I appreciate the opportunity. Thanks for having me.
Speaker #1
And to the listener, you have other podcasts you could be listening to, and you chose the Real Estate Educators Podcast. And for that, I am so incredibly grateful. Thank you so much. And with that, make this day a great one. I really hope you enjoyed this episode as much as I did. If you did, please be sure to follow and leave a five-star review. Oh yeah, and tell a friend.

Description

In this episode of the Real Estate Educators Podcast, Kevin Amolsch sits down with Brandon Cobb to break down how he structures deals to generate cash flow at every stage of development.

They also dive into AI agents and how they’re transforming real estate businesses—from automating operations to increasing revenue.

If you’re interested in land development, scaling your business, or leveraging AI, this episode is packed with actionable insights.

TIMESTAMPS

Connect with Brandon Cobb:
Mastermind & Training: LearnLandDevelopment.com

Investing Opportunities: HBGCapital.net

Explore land development strategies, AI implementation, and investment opportunities.

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Transcription

Speaker #0
When we develop, everything is run through our construction company. We have our own license to do these projects, and so that general contracting company that we own, it makes a profit every time it completes a stage of that development. That frees up cash flow along the way. So when you introduce that free capital to the capital stack, all of a sudden the amount of equity that I need to raise… goes down a whole lot further. I attribute my success just to the ability to be able to stay alive and stay in the game. It's not whether or not you're going to get hit and fall down. If you think that you're going to go through your real estate career and not have some losses and not have some setbacks, good freaking luck.
Speaker #1
We were in negotiations. We're investing in real estate. They're winning. They're making money.
Speaker #0
What's up, everyone? Welcome to the Real Estate Educators Podcast, where we provide the education you can build on.
Speaker #2
I am your host, Kevin Amos. We are back and we're having so much fun with this podcast. We're helping real estate investors and real estate educators. Are you out there building a portfolio? Are you out there fixing and flipping? Or are you helping other investors, educating them? This is the podcast for you. I have another really great guest. I have no idea where this conversation is going to go based on what we were talking about before I hit record, but he's a land developer, $22 million. in land development deals every single year. He's helping other investors turn land into profitable communities. Welcome to the show, Mr. Brandon Cott.
Speaker #0
Thanks for being here. I'm excited to be here. I appreciate you having me.
Speaker #2
Yeah. And obviously we have to talk about land development because that's your jam, but I want to get into some AI stuff here because you were frankly blowing my mind right before I hit record. So I think that is something that our guests are interested in as well. A lot of my guests have podcasts and they're trying to reach real estate investors just like you and I are doing. So I'd love to get into some of that. But before that, I really want to get to know you and your story. So take me back. You wanted to get into real estate to get more control of your life. You gravitated towards land development. That's a hard niche to choose, man. And you're doing it. You're doing it with some success. So why real estate? Why land development? How'd you get started?
Speaker #0
Yeah, if you told me 10 years ago that we'd be inventing these new housing communities, I looked at you like you had 10 heads because I was doing medical sales, and that was my passion. I loved selling medical devices. That's what I wanted to do. That was my career job. Worked for years to break into that industry. I had a really good gig. I was selling sports medicine devices, so like shoulder products, knee products, and I loved what I did. I don't have some story where I worked in corporate for… decades and got sick and tired and had some dream. No, I'm an accidental entrepreneur because one day I woke up and I got a text from my boss and he said, hey, come meet me over at the Starbucks. And so I'm excited to go meet him after work that day. I was having a great day as a sales rep. And before I could get the words out of my mouth about how much money I'd made him that day, he fires me.
Speaker #2
Oh, damn.
Speaker #0
And just like that, my cozy corporate medical device sales crew was over.
Speaker #2
What happened? Like, why?
Speaker #0
He told me, Brandon, I don't think you're a fit for the organization, and I hope you learn something from that. So I was busting my butt. I had just gotten the Rookie of the Year Sales Award a few months ago. Sales weren't fantastic, but I had the rest of the year to go. So I was confused by that. I remember walking away shocked, trying to figure out what did I do wrong, That just kept going over and over and over in the beginning of my head. And I learned a valuable lesson, which is nobody's going to look out for your financial well-being but you. You can be as low as you want to a company, climb the corporate ladder, whatever. At the end of the day, you're just one merger and acquisition, one restructuring, one economic event away from losing your job. It's not if you're going to lose your job, it's when. So I learned that nobody was going to look out for my financial well-being but me that day. That led me to trying a couple of entrepreneur things. I started a course on how to break into medical device sales. That flopped. I started. an online motivational blog that flopped. And I thought, you know, I want to be the next Tony Robbins. I hold a big, big TR fan, love all his stuff. I bought all his products. I've kept him in business. I'm going to be the next TR. And you're not going to rely, you're not going to believe me, Kevin, but it turns out not many people want to take life coaching advice from a 26 year old.
Speaker #2
I wouldn't have known.
Speaker #0
So that business failed. But then I discovered this magic vehicle called real estate. and everything changed. At first, I did deals. I lost money. I did stupid stuff like selling all my retirement accounts and paying the penalties to buy my first investment property, not knowing I could have done a self-directed account. Every mistake. This is not financial advice. In fact, this is not to do financial advice. Don't do what Brandon did. But over the years. I did close to 200-plus transactions. I learned along the way. I built a business where I was flipping about 35 houses per year, started my own construction company, and graduated into doing new builds because the first new build I ever did, I made three times as much money as flipping house. And I was like, why am I flipping houses? I want to do new builds. And so we were doing 30-plus new builds per year, and we were going after these individual little lots, little info lots. Imagine a neighborhood. With pre-existing homes and roads, but maybe there's a house that needs to be torn down and rebuilt. So that's what we were doing. We said, why are we talking to these homeowners that own these little lots? Why don't we talk to landowners where we can build an entire year's worth of inventory on one plot of land? That seems to make the most sense. So that's what we started doing. That's what we started going after. And so we were developing some of these parcels when we got a knock on the door from one of these big builders. And they said, hey, we really like your land. We'd like to buy it. We told them, get lost. We're building the houses. Not interested. And then they came with a purchase agreement and said, hey, we really like it. We really want to buy it. And we looked at the purchase agreement. Partner and I looked at me. I looked at him. We looked at the purchase agreement, and we said, it's for sale. You can have it. And do you want the one across the street too? So that's how we got into doing land development for these big national home builders. So fast forward to today. We do all three phases of construction. So we build the houses, though I don't have any homes being built right now. That's on pause until interest rates come down. We do the first phase, which is entitlement. We get the land approved for development, and then we sell the approved land, the paper, no construction. And then we do phase two where we actually go in, grade the lots out, put the sewer, put the water, put the roads in, and we sell the ready-to-build lots.
Speaker #2
And is this all in Nashville?
Speaker #0
Yes. Mostly. We've got some stuff that's outside of Nashville with various partners, but most of it's in Nashville.
Speaker #2
Okay. I know that's a tough business. I know it's a very slow process, especially if you're doing all three phases and your exits are not until the very end. How have you found success with the slowness of that business?
Speaker #0
So the key is to flip cash flow along the way. You have to have cash flow. So. When we entitle a project, we're going to let's say we take it all the way through. When we entitle a project, we sell it to the entity that's going to develop it. So we capture that equity that was created during that process. When we develop, everything is run through our construction company. We have our own license to do these projects. And so that general contracting company that we own, it makes a profit every time it completes a stage of that development. That frees up cash flow along the way. When we sell the project, if we're bringing the buyer to the deal and we're the seller, we're kind of doing the job of a real estate agent. So instead of paying a real estate agent 6%, buyer's agent and seller's agent 3% apiece, we get to make 2% on the sale of every single one of those lots. We free up cash flow along the way there. Obviously, we profit at the end of it. And then if we're going to build the houses, it's the same thing. We free up money along the way. We can have various entities that purchase those lots from us, ourselves, free up equity along the way there. And then again, as we build the homes, we can make a little bit on the spread. We don't make a ton of money on the spread. It's just enough to keep the lights on, but that's the key. You've got to create cash flow throughout the life of the project.
Speaker #2
Okay. Are you finding it challenging right now, finding projects, finding your builders to sell to? Seems like it's... I'm not trying to be negative here, Brandon, but I'm in some development deals. I've developed land myself, and I know that there's challenges right now. You mentioned one of them, interest rates. So what are some of the challenges that you're seeing?
Speaker #0
Yeah, so I mean it's been tough the last few years. There's a reason we're not building any homes right now because of rates, absorption. I mean it's been a bloodbath quite frankly. Certain industries have gotten hit more than the other. I've got some buddies in the multifamily world, and man, what's been going on there has been really brutal. But these national builders, here's the thing, Kevin. They're publicly traded companies. They have to make stock price go up, and the only way to make the stock price go up is to buy more land and build more houses. They can't stop. They have a machine. And that machine has to keep going. That's one of the reasons why we like working with them. Now, they've come back and haven't been quite as aggressive on their expansion in their pricing. But if you're finding really good real estate deals with lots of equity, and again, that's why we go in and we create the equity through that entitlement process, I don't care. It's like buying the stock market. I don't know what the stock market's at. I don't know what the S&P 500's at. But if I can buy it at $2,500 every time, whether it's at $3,000 or $5,000, it doesn't really matter what the fluctuations do. I'm looking for deep discounted equity deals where we can force appreciate the value of the asset and structure the deals in a way where if that builder does try to retrade on us, we've mitigated the risk.
Speaker #2
Okay. Is that common, the retrade?
Speaker #0
You know? Um, towards the very end of the deal, it can happen. It just depends. Retrades are more common at the very beginning where you might contract or in their due diligence period. They're always going to come back with something, right? It's a negotiation. So yeah, the price that you contract on or the terms is probably going to change a little bit, but you've got to go do this dance and go back and forward and negotiate and this and that until you get something that is set in stone. They're going to retrade on you. They're going to do it before their earnest money goes hard, and that's typically 90 to 120 days during their due diligence period. So that's the section to watch out for.
Speaker #2
Are you seeing them participate at all in the land development, the horizontal development as we would call it?
Speaker #0
Just about all of them, aside from Ryan Holmes, have to do some sort of development because that's how they get the inventory. there's not enough developers like... us to go out and develop the lots for them. They have to do it internally because there's just not enough developers out there. They'd love to be able to just outsource all their land to someone else, develop it, and sell them finished, ready to build lots back. But that just doesn't exist. They don't want the land on their books. They work off an IRR. They want to get their money in and out as fast as possible. That's Wall Street. And a lot of people wonder, how the heck is Ron Holmes able to build these townhomes and sell them for $260,000, what are they making, 10%? Well, they're making 10% in a six-month period. So if they do that twice with the same amount of money, that's a 20% IRR. That's really good. So they want to get their money in and out as fast as possible. And you can do that when you're building the homes, much more difficult to do when you are doing the land development because that's weather dependent on a lot of things.
Speaker #2
Sweet. we learn a lot about doing what you're good at and staying in your lane. And that's how you really do, you know, make money and do profitable transactions. So what I'm hearing you say, Brandon, is you're not a national builder. You don't have, you can't work on that margin. Probably. I know you're saying it's a, it's a good margin, but what if it doesn't sell in six months? What if it's nine or 12 months, then all of a sudden, now you're really shrinking it and your, your carry is shrinking it even more. So your strategy. Sounds like a loss. It's a mitigating strategy is to not build the houses, really. I mean, unless it's a smaller infill type project. Am I understanding what you're telling me correctly?
Speaker #0
We'll build the houses if the opportunity is right. Maybe we're selling to a BTR fund. Maybe we want to do a stabilized BTR project, or maybe there's just some really good economics on the deal. For the large ones, 50, 100, 200 home developments, I'm not building homes on those. I'm just getting it approved and I'm passing it on to the national home builder at a profit.
Speaker #2
Okay. So you mentioned BTR and that's where I was going to go next. What are you seeing in that space? It was very popular for a while and now I'm just not hearing a lot.
Speaker #0
Yeah. Because interest rates completely desecrated the entire business model. We had so much stuff. We were getting ready to do BTR in 2022 and we dropped all of it. I just can't get anything to pencil. There's a corridor in Nashville. There's a loop where You're just enough close enough to be downtown where you're not having to pay an enormous premium on the land, but you're close enough to get that $1 per 80 rent per square foot that you need. If you go too far out, the rents compress, and you don't have that rental rate that you need to be able to get it. I mean it's a fine line. Thing is, is that nationals are paying more for the land for the same similar product type than a BTR fund is. So it just makes sense to develop and sell to them right now.
Speaker #2
Yeah, BTR for the listener, build to rent. It was very popular. We're just not seeing a lot of it right now in Denver either.
Speaker #0
Yeah.
Speaker #2
Sounds like Nashville is the same. Okay, so one thing I've learned about the land development is financing it can be a little bit tricky, especially with banks tightening up with the… the global banking restrictions, liquidity requirements, the diversification requirements. Land sits on their books for a little while, Brandon. So what we're seeing is land is like, unless you bring in it free and clear, it's hard to get that development loan, at least from banks. But I know land deals are still getting done. So tell me a little bit about the way you structure your capital. on these deals?
Speaker #0
So if we're raising equity, sometimes we have some very high net worth clients that they can just give us all the money. If that's the case, we put them in first position. We do a debt deal. I'm not paying them bank rates. I'm paying them more, but I get the terms that I want. Interest accrues. They're paid out on the back end. I like that. Helps out with cash flow. They're getting healthy double digit returns. It's secured by a deal with lots of equity. So we do those types of deals. If we are going to raise equity in order to go get financing, I don't ever get financing from a bank. I'm always getting it from a private source where I can get the terms that I want. I bake in all the interest payments for close to twice the life of the loan just in case into that loan so they've got it and I don't have cash flow issues. And when I'm raising equity, typically what I'm seeing is lenders will lend at 65% loan to cost. they want to have you have some skin in the game there. I make up a lot of that difference in what I need versus what they're willing to lend via the deposit from the national builder. So I got a deal right now. We're selling it for $7.6 million. I have an $800,000 deposit from the builder. That's free money that they've released to me to go towards the development. That helps significantly the amount of money that I need to go and get. It helps my IRR because I'm not paying interest on it. It's free money to be used towards the development. So when you introduce that free capital to the capital stack, all of a sudden, the amount of equity that I need to raise goes down a whole lot further. And so capital stack looks like first position lenders in first position. And then you're going to have that national home builder. They're going to have a deed of trust in second position against that first. And then you've got the equity investors that invest on top of that.
Speaker #2
Okay, so. The nationals in Nashville will release the deposits. This is a non-refundable deposit. So that's your cash at that point. So that would be your equity contribution. But underneath that, you're saying that they will also contribute in a junior lien position, so loaning you money to do the development?
Speaker #0
So their deposit gets released to us to do the development, free money. I've had as high as 20% when things were blowing and going. And things got to like 5%, 6% a year and a half ago, and everyone was super scared. I'm like, I'm not doing deals with a 5% deposit get lost. So right now I'm seeing like 10% is kind of the going deposit rate right now. Obviously, the more you can get, the better. When we were getting 20% deposits, you might not need to raise any money because your lender was using that as equity and skin in the game from the buyer in order to say, I'm comfortable financing this.
Speaker #2
A lot of times, Brandon, I do see these builders, they want the deals, as you indicated. They will contribute. So maybe it's a purchase price. Let's keep a nice round numbers of $100,000 per finish lot, let's say. But they might release of that purchase price, not only a deposit, but part of that $100,000 for the development of that lot. I have seen that before. Have you seen that?
Speaker #0
We're just getting deposit releases. right now. Now, some of the things for larger developments that you want to do is like a true up where you're looking at the business plan for the development, AKA what products are they building and what is the exit price of those products? So as a developer, especially the bigger ones, you want to look at the feasibility of their business plan, just because they're nationals doesn't mean they don't make mistakes. And for larger developments where, you know, they've got a little bit of leverage because they're the only, you know, buyer in town. You might set up like a true-up agreement where any percentage over a certain amount, you get a cutoff. So that's something that is going to be huge where you can really blow it apart with your numbers as a developer. So you might be able to negotiate getting a 50-50 split for all of the profit over the sales the business plan sales price for the houses. So I've seen that, but I haven't seen them release. on top of the deposit portion of what they're going to buy the lots for. That just seems like it's another way of wording like a stronger deposit.
Speaker #2
Stronger deposit, sure. You could think of it that way. And I've also seen like a lot of builders want it they have a takedown schedule, right? So they'll say, okay, I'll take your first 10, 20 lots, whatever it is, and then you could use the money from the sale of those lots to work through your development in phases. So it's another way I've seen. Developers such as yourself get creative with this funding because it is a little bit tougher right now. This episode is brought to you by Pine Financial Group. Pine Financial is a private lender specializing in short-term rehab lending to real estate investors. Got a property that needs some love? We can help. We are able to offer funding solutions because we raise private money from individual investors. With more than 15 years of experience, Pine offers passive investors an alternative that provides stability. consistency, and security to your portfolio. If you like real estate but want to avoid the ups and downs and effort, a Pine Mortgage Fund could be a perfect fit for you. Accredited investors will experience an 8%
Speaker #1
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Speaker #2
All right, well, let's move on. I love what you're saying about all of the land development deals and all of your success. I want to get into this AI stuff a little bit because you're blowing my mind right before I hit record. And you asked me very direct. You said, Brandon said, are you building AI agents? And I'm like, well, I have somebody helping me with AI. He's like, no, are you building AI agents? I'm like, I don't really know what that means, Brandon. So, okay, you got me. All right. So why don't you back us up here? Tell us how you're implementing AI in your land development business or your real estate investing business for the listener.
Speaker #0
How am I not implementing it? People first need to understand what an AI agent is. Everybody's got it wrong. And if you're using Claude Cowork, you're behind. I know that's crazy because it just came out, but that's how fast AI is doing. And these are the types of conversations we're having in our mastermind community. Every week we meet and everybody… pulls their intel together and says, what's new? What have you found? What have you got? I have an AI agent that is designed to go and scrub all the latest AI use cases and tell me how to implement it in my business. It's trained on every single aspect of my business because it's been through all my emails, my calendar, seven years worth of marketing campaigns, all of my projects and my Slack channel the past seven years, everything. It knows more about me than I do. And when you've got something like that, it's able to give you real intelligence on how to improve things. So whereas you might have a Zapier integration with your QuickBooks for whatever reason, that Zapier integration might just it's just an automation. It's just feeding something based on if this happens, then do this. But it's not self-learning. And so I see AI agent as an automation that is self-learning. So I was telling you before, all of our podcasts are open. automated. It goes, it's got the folder with the intro audio on there with the ads. It stitches it together, cleans up the audio through a little podcast audio cleaner upper. I don't really know the name, the fancy name for it, but it makes the audio sound nice and clean. It uploads it to Buzz sprouts, it will go. Look at the 200-plus podcasts we've done and say, oh, Brandon likes his titles done this way with the person's name in it. Okay, we'll name it this. After it downloads the transcript and uses that as the reference point to create the description and the title, it'll timestamp the podcast for the various topics that we move into. You just moved into AI, so we'll have a little section. It'll be like here's where we start talking about AI. And then… it watches the release and when one goes live it finds the guest it finds their email and it sends them a thank you email with the links to the podcast i was paying a va to do that anything you're paying a va to do it'll do quickbooks you can go in any transaction that is recurring it'll it'll know that every time it'll self-learn easy you correct it if it mislabels something but it does what a bookkeeper does. I still have a bookkeeper. I pay him like... $200 a week just to keep everything going. But I had a controller I was paying $90,000 a year. I had a full-time bookkeeper I was paying $45,000 a year. I don't need them anymore. It literally does that. So you can have a bookkeeper agent. It'll text you every day. Hey, here's the transactions that I did and how I labeled them, and here's the ones I'm not sure about. Can you tell me what they are? Or they'll send them to your team, and your team can answer them. And you can have real-life, clean books done. It'll update the budgets. So the bookkeeper agent we built for my brother, he had a full-time person. He was paying $50,000 a year. He gets about 110 invoices a day or I'm sorry, a week. She would just take the invoices and put them into QuickBooks, create a bill, and update the budget. It did all of that, and now she's scared that she's going to lose her job. You can automate the bookkeeping. Anything that you think… is automatable. You can automate with AI except labor right now. I've got a chief of staff agent that controls all the other ones. I communicate with it via telegram and I will reach out to it when I want it to do something with like one of the subordinate agents. So there's a little chain of command and they literally just go and do the things. My marketing is automated, bookkeeping. I do a lot with content creation. I record a video. It sends it to all my social media channels. It adds the subtitles. It cleans it up. All of it. It customizes the post per that channel. So like my LinkedIn, it's trained on all my LinkedIn posts. And so same video, but customized to LinkedIn based on my voice in LinkedIn. Same thing for Instagram. Same thing for TikTok. I just record the video and it takes care of everything else, which is amazing because I was paying somebody to actually do that. So think of AI agents as an automation that self-learns over time. And I run all mine on my own server. I'm not going through Claude. I'm not doing any of that. I'm using Claude Code to write the Python script that builds the agent, and the agent lives on my digital server. which is just a computer in the cloud.
Speaker #2
Okay. You're clearly much smarter than me at this.
Speaker #0
And I'm not. I'm not a tech guy. I'm not a tech guy. I promise you, I'm not a tech guy. I just stay up. I was staying up very late figuring all this out. I bought every course that there is out there. I've watched all the video. I've just spent an enormous amount of time figuring this out because you're going to be here doing the same thing later this year. Because you're going to have to, or you're probably going to be out of business. That's where I see this going, because you can't compete with somebody that is doing the same thing as you, but using AI agents. Everybody's going to be using these things. It's only a matter of time. I was at a conference with like 150 real estate investors. Most of them are some of them have been in business longer than I've been alive. None of them were using AI agents. They were like, yeah, we're using Manist. Go and scrape some stuff for us. Or, hey, have you seen quad and you can connect your calendar into it and your email? Have you seen? I'm like, you guys are so far behind. It's crazy. But everyone's going to have to catch up really quick.
Speaker #2
OK, so I'm going to take you back. It was about six weeks ago and I was at this real estate event as well out in Minnesota. And in that event, Brandon, Claude came up like, I don't know, six or seven times. I'm still using chat. I like chat. It knows me. He knows my kids. I ask him a question. It's always, is this for Lexi? Is this for Maddie? Like, what are you asking? I was like, that's kind of cool. But Claude was coming up. And then I went to another real estate meeting here in Denver and they were talking about Claude. I'm like, oh shit, man, I got to get on Claude here. And I'm like, it was on my list. I have my list right here. It's on my list. I got to look at Claude to do a design for me for one of my industrial buildings because I have a tenant It's looking at, wants me to do a pre-design for her. so I'm looking at Claude to do that but I haven't looked at Claude yet I'm not even on Claude I just know it's out there and it's working really well for others and you're telling me
Speaker #0
I'm behind even that yeah let's see if we can't do something fun real quick while while we're on the call so I've got my phone up and I don't know if this is going to go on YouTube or not but I've got your email in here which is perfect I don't think that your phone number or is mentioned in this calendar invite. So I'm looking at the calendar invite. I see my phone number on here. If I had your phone number, we could do something even cooler, but let's do this. So how do I pronounce your last name? Kevin, I'm guessing is the correct way to do it, right? Kevin,
Speaker #2
you got it, Brandon. It's Amos.
Speaker #0
Amos. Okay. So I've got my phone up here. I'm going to go into Telegram. You can see it's called Cortana, right? And it's telling me when all my videos and stuff are posted. By the way, that's my YouTube video that just got posted. It made the thumbnail and it uploaded everything. to YouTube, the school community. It did all of that. The intro video is stitched on everything. So let's go in. Hey, Cortana, can you send a calendar invite for this Friday, 7 a.m. to Kevin Olmash? I'm going to call with him right now. You should have his email. And send a Zoom link invite, color-coordinated green, and send him the Google Drive link with all the agent graphics you created. All right, so I'm going to send that to Cortana. It's going to take a little bit of a minute because it's got to communicate to my server to do it. All right. Give it a little minute there. I can drive. The biggest hack here is not that it's also doing the work of my VAs. But the mental bandwidth of having to keep up and manage everything goes away. Because normally, if I had someone that wanted to book a call or something, and I was driving or I was out at an event with my kids, I had to set a reminder. That's mental bandwidth that pulls me away from being in the present moment, and that's the challenge a lot of entrepreneurs face. One simple voice message to your AI agent takes care of it, and it's done. You don't have to worry about it. The amount of mental bandwidth that I have now is enormous. So that was just a calendar event, right? If I had your phone number, I could get it to text you the exact same thing right now. Maybe we'll do that little example next live after it books you and sends you the calendar invite with the link and stuff. But I just sent you a Google Drive link, and you should get it here in a minute. It says done. You see how it says, did you get it? I got it.
Speaker #1
But I'm showing the camera for you. Those of you listening in the car, I'm showing the phone in my email. I got it.
Speaker #0
And so, look, it told me that it sent it to you. So I don't have to wonder whether or not it actually happened. So that's one. Now, did it email you the file as well? It should say drive folder emailed to Kevin at pinefinancialgroup.com with all 12 AI graphics. Did you get something?
Speaker #1
I got a link in here, the graphics.
Speaker #0
Bingo. So I created graphics for some of the agents we built, not all of them, but that'll give you an idea of what some of the agents are doing in my business because I can't really explain it. You have to have a graphic really do it. And so I can get it to text you as well. I have recall.ai, which is the best AI that listens to your calls. Recall.ai listens to all of our project review meetings. And it's taking notes. When I say an address, it's matching that address to our Slack channel that we have for that project. It's recording all my notes. It creates the bullet points that I like for the update. It gives the next steps. It has reduced my meeting time on our weekly projects by 25% because 25% of the time is me sitting there typing the update and all the stuff that's happening. Right. Or my VA that was having to do it. I'm in between VAs and it was a perfect time to be between VAs. So that's really cool. I get all of our projects updated in real time on the call. It keeps us organized. That's really key when you're doing construction. You have to stay organized. But the biggest pain is having your PMs go in and update things and you update things. And by the way, if you get an important document sent via email and you can't remember what it was, like I had to go dig up an amendment that we signed. Nine months ago, I don't have to go find it anymore. I just tell AI to go find it. Hey, there's an email from Stanley, DreamFinders Homes. Go find the first, find a minute, upload it to Slack, email it to these people just like I did with you, and it'll find it and go do it. Now, here's the really cool do you want to hear something really cool?
Speaker #1
Yes, I do.
Speaker #0
This is the next level stuff. So I just made $25,000 today using AI. You want to hear how?
Speaker #1
I do.
Speaker #0
So, um, We've got a mastermind, and we teach land development. And we also teach AI in our mastermind because it's gotten so big, and this is so important to learn. Because I seriously if you're not doing this stuff, you're not going to be in business in a year. That's how I feel, and that's why I've embraced it. I had a call with a guy who was on the fence about joining, and I couldn't quite close him. Well, my sales coach agent, who's trained on Brian Tracy, Zig Ziglar, Grant Cardone and Alex Ramosi, those are kind of my OGs in the sales force. They rated my call a five out of 10 and they showed me exactly why they showed me exactly what I should have said to close him. And I go, you know what? Let me send him this text that the AI said that I should send. And I sent that text and guess what happened?
Speaker #1
I'm going to guess he joined the group.
Speaker #0
Joined the group. I don't know if you can see. That section right there. Oh, dude. Probably should have closed his name. But anyway, you can see the little paid button right there. I made $25,000 on something that I would not have normally made money on. So it's listening to our team's sales calls. It's giving them real-life feedback on this stuff. It's making them better. And I have an AI agent called Atlas. Atlas is the main brain. It listens to all my calls, all my emails, my Slack. everything stuff that would probably scare most people i don't care i'm embracing it you're not getting rid of this stuff. This is full-blown steam ahead and I'm going to be the guy. I will have a AI device here pretty soon that just walks around and listens to every single thing so that I can implement all my personal stuff too. And every Friday I get a report on how I'm doing as a leader, what I could have done better, the gaps that I'm missing, and how I should be making more money in my business. And it is the best coach and mentor I've ever had. and I've spent multiple six figures. on my coaching and mentoring. I'm a big fan of masterminds. I'm a big fan of coaching. I've paid lots of money for coaching and mentoring. And the intel that I get back every week from this is better than just about anything that I've paid for. Now, if I'm going into something new and I want to learn, that's huge, right? It's not going to be able to tell me that. But as far as the personalized coaching advice, where this is going is personalized AI for everybody. And that's what I'm using it for right now. I don't know anybody else that is yet, but this is the type of stuff that we're introducing in our mastermind program. We're building everybody's agents team out. We're training them to automate their business. It's never been easier to be a solopreneur or a small team. And all this is all good stuff. It is a very exciting time to be alive.
Speaker #1
You got me fired up here, Brandon. I got to tell you. I got to go learn more about this. There's no doubt about that. First, I am going to go try to figure out Claude because that's the obvious next step. And then I'm going to look at these AI agents. This is amazing. Let me ask you this question. I know we got to wrap up here and I want to go through my notes. I took a bunch of notes and I honestly, I got like transed by you talking. So I stopped taking notes there at the very end, but I think I absorbed that pretty well. So I'll go through all of my notes with you. But first... You mentioned masterminds. You mentioned the people around you that have helped you get to where you're going, where you wanted to go. And you've also mentioned this AI robot thing that listens to everything and gives you feedback. It sounds like they've both been pretty instrumental to your success. So maybe that's the answer to my question I just answered. But I want to know from you, what can you attribute your success to?
Speaker #0
You know, AI is very new, right? This has been a long journey. Not giving up, not dying. If you stay in the game long enough, if you figure out how to not throw in the towel when things get really tough. I didn't make any money for like two years from 2023 to 2025, literally no income coming in aside from some other aside from my construction business doing some other things. I'm talking about my real estate business. We didn't make any money for two years. That was really, really tough on me. When we got caught in the interest rate rise and we got caught holding a bunch of houses that we had built and the rates had doubled on us because construction loans are adjustable rate debt. You're not going to get fixed rate debt. My partner and I, luckily, we had the liquidity to support everything, but it was not fun watching seven figures disappear out of our bank account. That was not fun. So I attribute my success just to the ability to be able to stay alive and stay in the game. It's not whether or not you're going to. get hit and fall down. If you think that you're going to go through your real estate career and not have some losses and not have some setbacks, good freaking luck, right? Like even Warren Buffett had some losses some year, right? It's not whether or not you're going to just avoid all the challenges. It's how you react to them and what you do about it when those challenges present themselves.
Speaker #1
That's fantastic. I love that. All right. Let me go through my notes here real quick, Brandon, then I want to know exactly. About the mastermind group, I want you to tell me about that and how do we get a hold of you. So real quick, I'm going to try to go as fast as possible since we are a little bit behind here. No one is looking out for you but you. So you said even for your financial position. So no one's going to look out for your finances except for you. So get out there and do that. And that's what kind of got you into real estate. You told us about your experience as a medical sales and how that didn't go well. Cash flow is needed. So the way you structure your business is you have multiple entities, you sell projects to entities, you have other entities build it and do the construction. So you're creating fees. This is a very common way to do it. But cash flow is king up. That creates a stability you were talking about near the end. Private money is really where you go to it. It helps where banks aren't helping. So focus on private money and other creative ways like maybe non-refundable deposits. underwrite your buyer. Make sure you know who you're getting in bed with or who you're working with. AI, we got into AI right after that. AI should be self-learning. So it's not just like a memorized transaction in QuickBooks. You could just set that and it just goes, right? But it's not learning anything. So your suggestion is work with AI and AI agents that learn. AI is here to stay. So let's start embracing it, guys. I need to do that. No question about it. So whatever you think you can automate, you could use AI to do that. So whatever your mind can go to automate is really the limit. You said maybe not labor, but even that's coming. I know robots are right around the corner that clean houses and do laundry, right? Not giving up. So this is your final piece of advice. Don't give up. Stay in the game. There's a lot to staying in the game. One thing you did say was liquidity. You had the liquidity. So for the listener, make sure you have proper reserves when you're getting into these transactions because... You don't want one deal to take you out. It's okay to lose money here and there, but don't let it be enough to take you out of the game completely. So fantastic advice. How did I do on my notes?
Speaker #0
Dude, great, man. You killed it. I didn't even know you were taking them. I don't know if you learned to write while like not looking at your pen or something, but that's impressive.
Speaker #1
It's just when you say that, sometimes I was like, oh man, that's really good. I'm writing it down. I'm looking and I look up and I was like, I hope he didn't see me do that. But yeah, no, I really enjoyed the... the episode here, Brandon. Okay. Tell us about this mastermind group.
Speaker #0
Yeah. I mean, so when we were getting in development, we were looking for coaching. We were looking for mentorship. We're looking for a mastermind group and it didn't exist. Because of that, you know, I got a lot of scars on my back from trying to figure all this out myself. I don't recommend people do that. There just wasn't a community out there. So we created it. We got a lot of requests. A lot of people wanted to join. It was all word of mouth. And last year we launched, it's been a huge success. So. If you're a builder trying to scale the number of homes that you're wanting to build, we've got builders in the group. If you're a land flipper and you want to do some higher level land deals, it's a great fit for guys like you. If you're just a mature real estate operator and you've got some cashflow coming in and you want to do development, we've got some people in the group for that. So yeah, it's amazing. Every week we meet, we put our minds together. AI has become a centerfold conversation we created a separate weekly call just to go over the AI stuff I have guests come and speak about AI, development entitlement, you name it so it's really really cool I really enjoy it, it's like my people too you get to be with your community, your people if you want to learn more about that you can go to learnlanddevelopment.com, there's a video that talks about it if you like the idea of someone hand-holding you through your first deal you can get it And then if you want the free course on how to get started in land development, it's on that website too. So you can go to learnlanddevelopment.com, and you can grab that there. If you're an investor and you want to invest in these types of deals and you're like, hey, I don't want to learn land development, our private equity company, HBG Capital, can take care of you. Interested in having a conversation with you, you can go to hbgcapital.net forward slash waitlist. So it's pronounced Harry Bob Gary. That's HBG. HBGcapital.net forward slash wait list. You can watch our investment thesis video, book a call with us if you want. And then we've got a free gift. If you want our free e-book, 100 Questions Business Owners Ask Before Investing, you can just go to the HBGcapital.net. That's it. Nothing on the end of that. And then we've got our own podcast, Recession Resistant World State Radio. Find us there.
Speaker #1
So the call to action here, guys, is LearnLandDevelopment.com if you're interested in the mastermind. If you're interested in just investing with him or what was the other thing at HBG Capital that we would get? Oh, the free e-book you said, right? So HBGCapital.net. If you want the wait list, it's backslash wait list. Brandon, you have a lot going on. I was going to say you're super busy, but that might not be true because you have all these AI agents out there doing all your work for you. But either way, I really appreciate you coming on the show, man.
Speaker #0
Hey, I appreciate the opportunity. Thanks for having me.
Speaker #1
And to the listener, you have other podcasts you could be listening to, and you chose the Real Estate Educators Podcast. And for that, I am so incredibly grateful. Thank you so much. And with that, make this day a great one. I really hope you enjoyed this episode as much as I did. If you did, please be sure to follow and leave a five-star review. Oh yeah, and tell a friend.

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