Digital Social Hour
The $5M Secret to Flipping 'Junk' Land | Shawn Kaplan DSH #953
Thu, 05 Dec 2024 16:00:00 -0000
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Discover the $5M secret to flipping 'junk' land with Shawn Kaplan! 🏞️💰 In this eye-opening episode of Digital Social Hour, Sean Kelly dives deep into the world of real estate development and personal growth. 🚀 Shawn Kaplan reveals how he turns unwanted land into million-dollar opportunities, sharing his journey from childhood trauma to entrepreneurial success. 💪 Learn about the power of mentorship, overcoming adversity, and the importance of self-love in business and life. This episode is packed with valuable insights on: • Finding lucrative opportunities in 'junk' land 🗺️ • Overcoming childhood trauma and building resilience 🌟 • The impact of generational trauma on success 🧬 • Breaking negative cycles and creating positive change 🔄 Don't miss out on this powerful conversation that might just change your perspective on real estate and personal development! 🎧 Tune in now and join the conversation. Watch now and subscribe for more insider secrets from successful entrepreneurs and thought leaders. Hit that subscribe button and stay tuned for more eye-opening stories on the Digital Social Hour with Sean Kelly! 🔔 #financialeducation #wholesalerealestate #longdistanceinvesting #moneyavoidance #realestaterookie #wholesalerealestate #landflippingmastery-travisking #wholesaleland #landflipper #realestatewholesaling CHAPTERS: 00:00 - Intro 00:18 - Shawn Kaplan 05:00 - BetterHelp 06:38 - Nashville Growth 13:17 - Impact of Dad's Death 15:04 - Overcoming Bullying 16:00 - Overcoming Circumstances 17:14 - Childhood Bullying 21:55 - College Party Phase 23:14 - Mortgage Industry Challenges 23:50 - Trauma and Decision Making 27:50 - Trauma and Relationships 29:50 - Understanding Anger 33:05 - MDMA and Brain Reprogramming 33:58 - Ownership and Giving 37:20 - Jealousy and Comparison 41:05 - Trauma's Effect on Success 44:10 - Breaking Generational Curses 45:54 - Personal Impact 47:45 - Advice for Young People 49:07 - Outro APPLY TO BE ON THE PODCAST: https://www.digitalsocialhour.com/application BUSINESS INQUIRIES/SPONSORS: [email protected] GUEST: Shawn Kaplan https://www.instagram.com/theshawnkaplan/ https://www.youtube.com/@TheShawnKaplan SPONSORS: BetterHelp: https://www.betterhelp.com/DSH LISTEN ON: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/digital-social-hour/id1676846015 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5Jn7LXarRlI8Hc0GtTn759 Sean Kelly Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmikekelly/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is the $5M secret to flipping junk land?
All right, guys, here with Sean Kaplan in Nashville, Tennessee, your hometown, right? Yeah, hometown, baby. Never been to L.A. We were talking just now. That's pretty crazy. Never been to L.A. Got to go check it out, I guess. You know, I don't know after hearing some of the stories. You must really like it here if you're not leaving often.
I love Nashville. You know, I was originally from New England, lived in New York and Vermont, but Nashville is super cool. Great people, tons of charisma and character here. I really love the fact that people just are not pretentious. It's a great town and there's a lot of opportunity. Absolutely. What opportunities have you been pursuing lately?
You know, well, I've gotten into real estate land development. I'm on my second piece of property. I found that's pretty lucrative, especially with the rural nature of Tennessee. It's not as lucrative as it was 10 years ago when I started, but there's still opportunity. Yeah. So you're buying land? I get Facebook ads for that all the time. Land flipping. I'm sure you get those too.
Or they're selling the lots at the lake that nobody wants for $14. I like to buy junk land. I like to buy land that somebody else won't buy because there's an issue. I had a mentor 20 years ago and he's like, you make your money on the dirt. He's like, if you can find a piece of land that's got an issue, every problem is solvable. He goes, that's where you'll make your money.
You can make millions of dollars just by doing that. That's interesting because some people would see that as more risk. It is risky, and there's heavy carrying costs because if you finance it, for example, you're making that payment, and it can be like one piece of land I have is five years. It's been five years to get through city council and get fixed. Actually, the final meeting is tonight.
Wow. Congrats, man. Five years, though. You've got to have some balls to be able to withstand that.
Yeah, we went to an auction at a lunch break with my buddy, who's my partner on it. And he's like, you want to go to this land auction? I was like, sure, whatever. And so we go and there wasn't a lot of people there and nobody started bidding. So they brought the bid price down and being a competitive guy, I was like, all right. So next thing I raised my hand and I realized we're in it.
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Chapter 2: How did childhood trauma impact entrepreneurial success?
And we bought this piece of land for $430,000. 37 acres right near downtown. And, um, we ended up finding out that it was unbuildable lot 15 minutes after we, we, we won the auction. So you couldn't build on it at all. I freaked out. And then I was like, I just remember hearing Steven tell me my mentor, like, Hey, everything's fixable. And, uh, we went through the steps. We'll go there tonight.
We'll get it approved. We'll be able to build on it. And that 37 acres, we'll probably market it for four to 5 million. Holy crap. So 10 X. Yeah. Well, 10 X. So why was it not buildable at the time?
It was a stupid easement where I own the access road. We bought the land in the access road, but they had given an easement to two other properties on either side of it. And there's a weird rule where like if you put more than three units or three properties on this piece of land in this county, Williamson County, that the road to it has to be 52 feet and we're only 32 feet. Wow.
So we found out that like four or five feet of the front of the property near the road touches the city limits. So we said, well, we'll just call the city and see if they'll annex it into the city. And that was our loophole that we got figured out. That's cool. So why did you lean more towards land than actual houses?
Um, I've done houses too. Um, uh, but I started with my first house zero down. My mentor said, live in it for two years because after two years, you don't have to pay any taxes up to 250,000 on a gain on real estate. And he said, then you turn it into a rental if you want. So I buy a house, low down payment, turn it into a rental, buy a house, low down payment, turn it into a rental.
And I did that about 10 times over the last 20 years. I made a lot of money doing that.
but it gets to the point like we don't want to move out of our house yeah you know so get comfortable yeah i mean the last house probably like similar vegas we doubled we bought for 750 sold it for 1.5 million wow three years and then i put that 1.5 million into a house set on 20 acres and now that's worth about almost 5 million damn you could get 20 acres out here for one five
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Chapter 3: What are the challenges in the mortgage industry?
Well, that was a couple of about eight years ago. I bought that. Okay. Wow. No, but that, that land eight years ago, 20 acres. I bought that for 340,000. Holy crap. Yeah. Yeah. So I wonder if you just held the whole time, if you would have made more.
Probably, but by putting the house on it. And I also built the house during the supply chain crisis. So while I was building this house, the values were going up like crazy. Everyone was bidding their faces off on real estate. So it was just pushing my value up. So I got two million bucks between the land and the house and it's worth five million now. Nice.
And so that's really where you can capitalize and make your money. Like right now is the time to buy a house because if these rates go down, everybody else is going to be bidding and it's going to drive your price on your asset that you already own way, way, way, way up. Right. But everybody waits for everybody else to do something. You got to do it when everybody else is not doing it.
That's true. Yeah. So for people watching this, they need maybe an upcoming city like Nashville to do this. Yeah. Or just get out. Like I'm out in Nolensville. It's a Williamson County address.
This episode is brought to you by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com slash DSH and get on your way becoming your best self. My fiance, Ariel, plays a big role in my mental health, helping me realize my true potential. Everyone's trying their best around you, so take time to appreciate someone close to you.
I've tried therapy in the past and it helped me go through some tough times. When I was in college dealing with mental health, I was on prescription medication. I actually had agoraphobia when I was in college and therapy helped me figure out some answers to how to fix that problem. For two months, I couldn't even leave my house or I would have a full on panic attack.
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You got Davidson, Williamson, Rutherford, Maury County, Wilson County. All those counties that are touching Nashville, they're exploding. So if you can get your hands on something at a reasonable price, but what most people do, especially a lot of people coming from out west, they see Williamson County, which is highly attractive. That's where a lot of the country music, medical industry moves.
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Chapter 4: How can mentorship change your life?
and we ran them out of town they literally ran them out of town because like you don't go to starbucks and see keith urban nicole kidman and harass them they're sitting there having coffee leave them alone whole foods i see carrie underwood it's like nobody's hassling these people that's part of the draw and why people move here tonight that's awesome man yeah yeah because the la culture like you get tmz following you or paparazzi or whatever you can't live a regular life you know
They just want to be left alone like everybody else. You know, it's kind of like you, you probably go places and meet people and you're kind of like, man, I just kind of want to do my thing right now.
More and more now. Yeah. As a podcast host, it's, it's a little better than like a celebrity I'd say. Cause you don't get like fanboys. It's more like high level conversations or like people that you help. So it's, it's cool.
Chapter 5: What are the effects of generational trauma on success?
The power of social media and the opportunity, you know, Gary Vee said this a couple of weeks ago at this mastermind I was at, and he said, we're in the greatest opportunity in small business history. We're actually in the third quarter of it.
And he's like, I'm really passionate about this, and I'm going to start really drilling people, because if you're not using this opportunity of these seven platforms right now. And I would have never met you if it wasn't for that platform. Instagram, right?
Yeah. And growing up as a poor kid with nothing, I've always looked for the hack. I always looked for the way that I didn't have to pay for something, but I could learn or grow. And when social media came on the scene, I remember I was out of college, but everyone was like, that was a time when you had to be in college to get a Facebook account. So I lied and somehow got in there.
And I was like, I can see all these people and connect with all these people without having to drive around town and call. Mm-hmm.
And I just kept doubling down on it. Unfortunately, I did it really bad, bad social media for like 10, 12 years. Yeah. Until I met Neil and some of the other people. And I've just really been trying to become a student of all of it. But I think it's the greatest opportunity that we have in front of us right now. And it's sad that people don't take advantage of it.
Yeah. No, it's cool to see you and, you know, the guys older than me like utilizing it now. Gary Vee is actually someone I learned from when I was first starting out in entrepreneurship. I watched him daily. Wow. Probably a year or two straight.
He's so, I mean, just the guys that he's, he's a legend in our industry. He's responsible for so many people activating that opportunity that they normally were being held back. And he's an innovator. He asked at the mastermind, he's like, how many people, um, stand up if you use chat GPT as your primary search bar right now? Well, there's only 12 people and I was one of them.
And he's like, you are way ahead of it. Like, I'm like, who thinks about that? He's,
so ahead of it and he's current and relevant and modern but he's you know older in generation absolutely it's cool so you use chat gpt more than google i do wow i'd use as a search bar i might have to start doing that i i kind of question myself on everything i do like can i use chat gpt for this like i i uh yesterday you could take a picture of something it'll tell you what the macros are in it what yeah that's crazy yeah i was like whoa that's crazy what other prompts do you use it for
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Chapter 6: How does Nashville's growth affect real estate?
So he makes them read a book to access the iPad for an hour, I believe. That's awesome. Yeah. They should come out with an app for that. Yeah. Or it's like do this and do this and then you get access. Yeah. That's so smart though. Cause I hated reading as a kid with the books they assigned in school. But if you were to, you know, pick some interesting topics, I probably would have read as a kid.
Have you seen where Dr. Jordan Peterson is starting his own university? I heard about it, yeah. How's it doing? I don't know how it's doing yet or anything, but I'm just thinking. I'm like, I bet you all of his curriculum is going to be like stuff that we should have been reading. Oh, yeah.
And there's a few guys in our space starting schools now. Really? It's exciting for someone like me that's going to have kids in a few years that there's an alternative to public school now. It needs a reinvention.
I mean, we have pretty good schools here, but you still have the classic bullying and the criteria and the curriculum. Yeah. But man, we need like a modern shake up new approach to like how kids can get their education. Yeah. And speaking of bullying, you and I both got bullied. I'd love to hear about why you got bullied and what you took away from that.
You know, mine was it was a progression. I didn't really know it was bullying until it got so bad. But I was six years old when we got a phone call from my father. He was at a pay phone in New York City and he was he called my mom. I still remember I was sitting on the floor on a console watching it out of a console television watching TV.
And I remember my mom, like, she was crying and stuff, and I didn't know what had happened, but that was him at the payphone about 10 minutes before he drove to the Verrazano Bridge, and he jumped off the Verrazano Bridge. Wow. So I grew up without a dad. My sister was only six months old. We were living in Vermont. They were apart. He had a lot of PTSD. He was 30 years older than my mom.
He served in the Marine Air Wing in World War II. Wow. He was a Jewish immigrant in 1926, and then he joined the U.S. Air Wing in... he really suffered from that. Um, and, uh, he tried to get help over the years and they met my mom in the seventies. Um, and he was 30 years older than hers. He was 47 and she was 17. Holy crap. Yeah. And, um, they, she got pregnant with me. They were on and off.
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Chapter 7: What valuable lessons come from overcoming bullying?
They, he didn't want to get married again. He had been married before, but she moved to New York city with him. And, um, then they ended up splitting up when they split up and she went back to And it was interesting because when they met, his business was he had a tape and record salvage. So they were taking eight track tapes and they were apparently fixing them and reselling them.
Well, later in life, my mom told me he was counterfeiting them. Oh, wow. He had a full warehouse. And part of his problems were for 10 years, they didn't pay taxes and the IRS got a hold. Oh, damn.
So at six years old, you know, when you don't have a father and you're like, well, I want to play little league. I want to learn how to make a Pinewood Derby car. And you don't have a man there. Like you go and you find other men that will help you. Right. And so I think that's where mentorship started, Sean, where I was like, I can learn from other people. It was automatically put in my DNA.
And I had eight uncles and aunts. My mom came from a big family, very tumultuous family. Drugs, rape, incest. Wow. Just really bad in upper Vermont. And so she's had a really, really rough past. But she raised me. She was the father and the mother. And kids would get ahold of that. And like, I didn't really know we were poor. We were on government assistance.
Um, you know, we got food stamps, all that sort of stuff. Oh, your mom hid that from you.
Yeah. I didn't really know. Like I just, we always had food. We always had, but the first time I ever knew was when I had, um, I wanted a Huffy BMX bike. That was the gold black one that came out with the gold bars and everything in the eighties. Yeah. And we couldn't afford that. You know, everything always was like, we can't afford that, you know? I want tricks, you know, or fruit loops. Nope.
We got to take the corn flakes. Right.
And, uh, so I remember having a bike and she had painted it. Like she taped it all off, painted it. She's very crafty. My mom's really, really, you know, can fix anything and, uh, gave it to me for Christmas. And so I was on that bike and I remember being around like six or seven other kids. And then they all started making fun of me. They're like, look at his bike. Like it's been spray painted.
It's not even a real thing. And I think that was the first time that I felt like, oh, wow, all these people are ganging up on me. Yeah. And then there was some situations where there was sexual things that happened in my life that shouldn't have happened with other kids beating me up. But I remember one time...
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Chapter 8: How can self-love impact your business journey?
You just didn't tell people because fear of getting bullied and made fun of. And that's another thing later in life that I've learned how important it is and the honor and legacy of my family. I'm proud to carry it on.
Yeah. Looking back at it. Yeah. Now with my kids, they're going to be four different races. Um, but I want them to embrace that, you know, it should be a good thing. You shouldn't be shameful over your background.
Absolutely. Absolutely. But, you know, I'm interested to know more about like how did how did the like later in life, where did that bring you in bad places before you got to the good places?
Yeah. I mean, I went through a party phase in college drinking like five days a week, no chasers. So I did some liver damage. I still get blood tests every year and my liver still is damaged from that. I was on Accutane because I cared a lot about my appearance. That messed me up. I was smoking weed a lot. So, yeah, I pursued that stuff. And I was super lonely, honestly, in college.
I didn't have, like, friends or anything.
I had bad examples that I fed off, and, like, it drove me towards doing a lot of that stuff, thinking, like, oh, that's what I need to do. And it was the same thing. Like, I tried to work my way to people loving me. I tried to, you know, drink my way to people wanting to hang out with me. Yeah. I hadn't done anything until I actually moved to Nashville area. I went off to college.
I was a good kid and everything. But when I moved to the Nashville area, I realized, oh, everybody wants to hang out with the guy that has weed. Right. Right. Everybody. Everyone likes you a lot more when you're drunk. Yeah. And I just doubled down on that. And that was my life for so long. And I started realizing the dark, dark places it was taking me.
But most of all, what you just said was I looked up one day and I was like, who the hell are you? I don't even know who I am because I'm trying to be this person here, this person there, this person there. Right. And in mortgage and real estate industry specifically, that's what I've done for 24 years now, is you're constantly trying to please people.
In my industry, you're told I choose you or don't choose you multiple times a day. I choose you for the loan. I don't choose you for the loan. And with people with trauma and issues, I didn't realize how bad that could get. And it just built up to the point that I was smoking weed all day. When vape came out, it made it even easier. Yeah, those vape pens.
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