We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Justin Sliva. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Justin below.
Justin , looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Let’s jump to the end – what do you want to be remembered for?
Legacy is a funny thing, being it’s how we want to be remembered or the lasting impacts & achievements we have had. For me, it’s more personal. I know many people who chase the idea of changing the world in its entirety, but they forget the fact they can change the world for just one person. To me, helping change the reality or world for one person can start the movement or ripple that creates the change for many more. I’ve often said I have succeeded at this, if at my funeral someone tells my kids, “My life and my family life was better because of your Dad.” This comes in many ways- things like opportunities, help, knowledge or just listening in a tough time. All this starts with my personal creed, “Be who you needed.”
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
My name is Justin Sliva and I am a married Dad of 3, that plays Land Investor. Mid-April I’ll be celebrating 8 years as a full-time self-employed business owner. This is a far cry from what 22-year-old Justin thought he’d be doing. At the age of 22 (in 2004) I began working for a major railroad. As my dad said, ” You’ve made it!” They told me in the interview I could make all the money I wanted, just answer the phone. So, through my 20’s and into my 30’s I answered the phone. I was promoted to Engineer, got active in the Union, decided to pivot into Management and began moving around. We lived in 7 places in 8 years climbing the proverbial ladder. Fast forward to 2014 and another promotion with a subsequent move was being discussed, my wife put her foot down. The dream of climbing to the top of the ladder had hit a snag. Around the same time an opportunity to move to a smaller railroad on their executive team presented itself, so I jumped on it. After 20 months and 1 promotion there, I was let go. A typical Friday morning call to the carpet, and fired with no real reason given. This crushed my identity as I had come to know it. I had spent my entire adult life being a Railroader. It’s what I had planned on doing for the 33 years I’d need to retire with 2 pensions and completing the American Dream.
That Friday meeting left me uncertain of what to do next. I felt I was a high performer and the lack of reason really played on my mental state. I spent that Friday night wallowing in self-pity and what ifs, along with trying to decide what is next. It’s a very lonely feeling looking at your wife and kids, being jobless and car less (I’d sold my personal vehicle because a car was part of my compensation package). I thought I was a loser.
But…
I knew I was a high performer, I wasn’t scared of work and we had just started a new side hustle flipping raw land. It went from fun money to the family’s only source of income. For this side hustle, January of 2017, we had sent our first marketing campaign out and bought 21 properties ranging from 5 to 40 acres in rural west Texas. These contracts were coming in from mid-February through when I was let go that Friday in April. I had proof of concept and some seed money… I just had to do the work. I wasn’t scared of work.
This started the snowball to what we know life to be today. Currently, we still run our Land company, have a Fund for Accredited Investors, have a private money company and have a media company that is based off our Podcast which is over 520+ episodes. As an expert in the land investing space, I have had the opportunity to speak at events across the nation and hosted events internationally.
All this comes from finding opportunity in following my creed. Remember… “Be who you needed” in the previous question. We have built our businesses with that one core principle. Our land company helps solve problems and provides funds quickly for those needing to sell; fixing title problems from deaths on deeds to being land locked. We offer owner financing, which helps families wanting to own a piece of America with an easier barrier of entry. For the investor side, we were the first company to provide private funding / joint ventures based on the deal versus who you are. Then our podcast was to help provide education to investors and hopefully funnel them into our joint venture program. Then, my most current venture is our fund, Pasture Holdings, we have provided a way to create truly passive income for those investing with us. We use our tried and trued processes in land investing, giving accredited investors the opportunity to have their money working alongside ours.
Saying I am a Land Investor is really a downplay to what all verticals have been created from that Friday firing and that little side hustle, but at the end of the day, Land is the core of our business.
Can you talk to us about how you funded your business?
Funding a business is never a fun task. Creative financing is often thrown around as the easy button, but who really knows what the heck that is. Our business was originally to be a side hustle for my wife who was staying at home with our young kids and I put savings behind it to get started. The first marketing push went out and we bought 21 properties and then half of them were sold with owner financing. This is a blessing and a curse; it ate up almost all our original 25K we invested. With your seed money gone (it’s there on our Balance Sheet), how do you continue to grow? We had cash flow but not much to keep growing. I used a company that would give unsecured loans, I had used them before on cars that couldn’t be financed from a traditional bank, so I reached out and secured a loan. This allowed me to recapitalize our 25K and use the payments coming in to cover the debt payment and continue to grow. It was nice to see $1000 per month coming in from the arbitrage and having more than our original money back.
When it turned into a full-time job, I looked at every penny we had, where it was and what the risk would be if it was lost. I put 6 months of our living expenses back and everything else went to work (minus equity in our house or 401k at that time). On the next marketing campaign, we hit our top end of money available again because of deals. It was a good problem to have. We then got the opportunity to buy the biggest deal of our journey thus far. We had 130-acre property under contract and not the 48K plus legal fees we needed. Call it divine intervention or maybe just recognizing an opportunity, my first railroad offered to sell me my management pension to clear it off their books. The timing was impeccable, their pension offer came in a week after the contract was signed. The pension was 78K and after taxes it opened up 55k. Turning this 55k pension into a145K property sale. Which put us up to about 350K of cash to invest with and a little over $1700 a month in cash flow.
In summary we had to use savings, an unsecured loan, cash in a pension, but most of all believe in ourselves and went all in on something we had proof worked. The money used to acquire the properties was just that, used only to acquire assets for less than they were worth. Our cash flow covered operating costs. When we segmented it as such, we knew every dollar we put to work would bring us back 2.5 to 3, so this lit the proverbial fire…how many one’s can you turn to three! Creative Financing, maybe, but we just wanted to survive and keep moving forward. My goal was to earn another 5k to get another month of bills ahead. Let’s be real, we all just want to know our needs are covered.
Can you share one of your favorite marketing or sales stories?
One of my favorite stories from when we really got going. I was sending out marketing and getting deals sent back. We were buying and selling, keeping all our money at work on what we knew to be solid base hits. I had this big package come across my desk. I called the lead, got the story and she wanted to sell it to me. It was 1800 acres. It was also a million dollars. I am like how the heck am I going to fund this. So, I am talking to a friend who said I know a guy who knows a guy that funds real estate deals. I get them to set up a meeting. It was with a family office local to me. I knew of the family but had no interaction with them. Technically, we were neighbors, and they were the developers of my neighborhood. I walk into the meeting dressed in pressed dress shirt, shorts and boat shoes. The guy looks at me up and down and says, “Did you really show up to a meeting asking for a million dollars in shorts?” Without missing a beat, I asked if my shorts would change the validity of the deal and while his company may have a dress code for his employees, I was the owner of my company and would dress according to our company’s dress code, unless the invitation stipulated a certain dress. I then say something along the lines of, you live 6 houses down from me and I did 45 deals in the last 3 months, and you didn’t even know who I am. Think about the power that brings when the biggest REI company in the area has a guy doing multiple deals next door and it’s not even on their radar. Later, I told him I was going 1 year without wearing pants, it was my corporate protest, but probably not the best thing to lead with.
At that point, he laughed and went alright, let’s do this. I present the deal. He understands the numbers, likes the deal, asks if I am willing to go all in with all my cash, home equity, and 401K, I said I couldn’t go that deep into it because I needed to keep the business running while this project went through the sales cycle and honestly, I needed to keep some sense of safety. He taught me something very important with that, you better be willing to go all in. At that moment, his dad, the Founder of the company walked in and said let me hear about this deal. I gave him the same pitch, he said, “let’s write him a check”, the son stops him and says, “We don’t know him.” He said something like he had the balls to walk in here in shorts and tell you he owned his company, he’s a guy we want to do business with. I did NOT get the million dollars. He declined because he didn’t know the market in Oklahoma, it was out of their wheel house. Then he said the way you are getting leads is very impressive, can you do single family homes or multifamily properties. Me: YES! Not knowing a thing about either. My thoughts: It can’t be hard, just change the asset in my marketing and adjust the blind offer pricing. He drew a square on a map and said, “I want to shop everything here.” Over the next 4 months we bought 9 SFRs and 5 Multifamily properties. We are still friends, and I consider them as mentors to me even today. I liken my journey to his father’s journey 20 years prior to mine and building it to a point his son, an attorney by trade, has taken and exploded their business.
This interaction / meeting was pivotal because it showed me and confirmed many things, be ready to go all in, fixing problems can be valuable, know your niche, own who you are, and say YES when trying to get your foot in the door. You may not get the million-dollar loan but you can win in other ways.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://landmule.com
- Instagram: @J_J_Sliva
- Facebook: Justin Sliva
- Linkedin: Justin Sliva
