Interview with Member Johnny Newsom (LA 1372)
Transcript:
Steven Butala:
Steve and Jill here.
Jill Dewitt:
Hello.
Steven Butala:
Welcome to the Land Academy Show entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala.
Jill Dewitt:
And I'm Jill Dewitt, broadcasting from sunny Southern California.
Steven Butala:
Today, Jill and I talk with Land Academy member Johnny Newsom from Clarksville, Tennessee. Welcome Johnny.
Johnny Newsom:
Hey you guys. Nice to see you guys.
Jill Dewitt:
Yay.
Steven Butala:
All right. Right before we started, you were just mentioning that you've seen a few of these episodes, so welcome to the co-host of the show.
Johnny Newsom:
Yeah, yeah. I feel like I made it.
Jill Dewitt:
Yay, on the other side of the camera.
Johnny Newsom:
Yeah. Yeah.
Jill Dewitt:
Awesome. Cool. Did you tell anybody you're doing this today or-
Johnny Newsom:
Yeah. Yeah. Told my mom, yeah. I told everybody. I was like, "Hey, I'm going to be on that podcast I'm always telling you guys about.
Jill Dewitt:
And did mom say, "What's a podcast?"
Johnny Newsom:
No. She listens to you guys too. She's kind of a little bit like my business partner.
Jill Dewitt:
That's fantastic.
Johnny Newsom:
Yeah, yeah.
Jill Dewitt:
Okay, this is super cool.
Steven Butala:
That's great.
Jill Dewitt:
Next time, we'll have mom on.
Steven Butala:
Yeah.
Johnny Newsom:
Yeah.
Steven Butala:
Great.
Johnny Newsom:
Yeah.
Steven Butala:
It's going to air two weeks from this week. I'm not sure exactly which day.
Johnny Newsom:
Oh yeah. Two weeks from today?
Jill Dewitt:
It'll be not this week, but the week after.
Steven Butala:
Yeah.
Jill Dewitt:
So you can plan for it. We'll let you know.
Johnny Newsom:
Yeah, okay. Yeah, sounds good.
Jill Dewitt:
Awesome. So tell us, if you would, what's your background? What you do before you came to Land Academy?
Johnny Newsom:
Yeah, so I was a little bit of an unusual background. I don't really come from a corporate world, or even a business... I kind of come from more of a... before this, my primary source of income was really just buying and selling furniture online. I would get free furniture off of Craigslist and sell it on marketplace. And then before that, I was flipping iPhones and stuff and working a job and flipping iPhones on the side. And doing furniture, I was able to do that full time and not have to have a job. I did that for about a year and a half, and being in the car a lot, it allowed me to listen to a lot of podcasts. So I was kind of trying to figure out a way how to do the same thing with a bigger object with larger spreads and yeah, that's how I came across this.
Jill Dewitt:
That's cool. Okay, I got to ask. What were your numbers like? You would just get them for free basically, find some people that just want to get rid of them quick and you you'd just come take them and then-
Johnny Newsom:
Yeah.
Jill Dewitt:
[crosstalk 00:02:46] a couple bucks and then did you have to deliver them all?
Johnny Newsom:
Yeah, I delivered them all. I was typically doing anywhere from 2,500 to 3,000 a month.
Steven Butala:
That's great.
Johnny Newsom:
Just getting free furniture. Yeah, you'd be surprised. If you find a metro area and you just look on Craigslist, people give away stuff that's like 100, $200 and you pick up a decent amount of that and you just put it on Marketplace. It really was a nice... yeah, it [inaudible 00:03:15] see the intrinsic that people would give stuff away that was actually kind of valuable, you know? So like going into land, it wasn't a large... it wasn't a large leap to be able to see like, "Oh, this is a different object doing a similar thing with [inaudible 00:03:33]"
Steven Butala:
So what are your numbers like with land?
Johnny Newsom:
So with land, we're starting... last year, I kind of did... I was just getting into it, so I did smaller deals. And also, a lot of options and whole selling type deals. So last year, my bills were kind of $3,