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Funding a Dream Lifestyle Through Land Investing with Nephi Gomez

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In this episode of The Real Estate Investing Podcast, Ron Apke sits down with Nephi Gomez, a land investor and active member of the Land Investing Online (LIO) community.

Nephi shares his unique journey into land investing, which stemmed from his desire for location freedom as he prepares for a move to Brazil and frequent travels to Mexico.

Though he has a background in real estate and short-term rentals, it was the flexibility and cash flow potential of land flipping that truly caught his attention. Nephi explains how land investing gave him the opportunity to earn income while traveling, a perfect fit for the lifestyle he envisions.

Nephi, who works full-time as a software project manager, talks about how land investing became a solution for his desire to escape the restrictions of his current job.

Starting his land flipping journey in March 2024, Nephi discovered Land Investing Online through Action Academy and quickly realized the potential of the business. His very first mail campaign of just 1,000 mailers landed him a deal that brought in a $30,000 profit.

Nephi also breaks down how partnerships, goal-setting, and strategic hiring have helped him scale his business, with plans to send out 20,000 mailers in 2025 and build a robust team to support his growth.

⬇️ Listen or watch the full episode below to get an inside look into how Nephi plans to scale his business in 2025 and utilize land investing to fund his exciting move to Brazil! ?

 

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Ron (00:13.628)
Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the Real Estate Investing Podcast. I’m your host, Ron Apke, joined by my guest, Nephi Gomez. Nephi, really happy to have you in here. And you just had that confession. I’ve been calling you Nephi for the last six months. You never corrected me. But Nephi is so happy to have you. Welcome to the show.

Nephi Gomez (00:30.422)
Yeah, thanks for having me. Glad to be here.

Ron (00:33.253)
Yeah, so let’s just get into what got you into land investing. I think that’s kind of the biggest question. A lot of people, there’s so many people that come from different spots, different career paths, and I’m gonna learn a lot about you here too, so I’m excited about that and your exact story, but what got you into land investing?

Nephi Gomez (00:50.112)
Yeah, you know, for me, the big, the really big reason was the location independence actually. So my girlfriend, she’s from Brazil and you know, we’re working on our paperwork right now, but I really want to be able to move there indefinitely and just spend time with her and her family and her country and just get fluent in Portuguese. So that’s really the big one for me because there’s lots of avenues. You know, I have real estate, I have short term rentals.

But this is the only one that I really felt like I can just pick up my laptop and go for sure with like the active income side of it.

Ron (01:26.746)
And you started about six, seven months ago or so. How long before that, before you started, were you researching? So like real estate, multifamily, Airbnb, whatever it is, those are great, but they’re not like cash heavy where you’re going to replace your income relatively fast. Were you looking at other things as well to get into or like how’d you land on this business model?

Nephi Gomez (01:50.188)
Yeah, definitely. So it’s kind of funny. I started first with like, I started house hacking in 2020, you know, got into a fourplex and then got into six bedroom, three bath and then a three bedroom, three bath. But then I noticed like, this isn’t really going as quickly as I would like it to be. You know, I’m not really like, I’ve been doing this for a while and not like free. And so then I started exploring other avenues for active income. The first,

The first one that came to mind was like buying businesses. felt like a natural step from real estate to, you know, buying and selling real estate to, to businesses. And the other was, since I already had them was maybe focusing more on the, the Airbnb and short-term rentals. But the more digging I did and figuring out like why I was doing what I wanted to do, the more I realized what I wanted was the location independence. And that’s where, you know, I landed on.

land investing, just kind of seeing how people are able to do this from other countries, from their homes. And that was very, very exciting to me. then I also, I still have my real estate and the short term rentals. I’m trying to kind of steer toward midterm rentals because I know people who travel the world with midterms rentals as well. But yeah, that’s the goal for me is to just be to be free location wise. I have family in Mexico. I have family in Brazil and

You know, it’s just not the same talking with them over Skype or just visiting for a week, you know? Yeah.

Ron (03:19.76)
Yeah, 100%. That’s exciting. Are you working a job right now? what does that look like? Are you working a job? Did you quit?

Nephi Gomez (03:28.554)
Yeah, don’t tell my boss. But yeah, yeah, I’m working. work for for Northrop Grumman. I’m a Scrum Master. So software project manager. I actually really enjoy it. It’s very fulfilling. But working for the Department of Defense comes with a lot of restrictions. You know, I have to ask permission every time I, you know, leave the country. I have to report back every time I come back. You know, I have to report every foreign contact. So

There’s just a, doesn’t work for the location freedom kind of lifestyle that I’m looking for.

Ron (04:03.834)
That makes sense. talk about, so you started in March, talk about those first couple months, like are you the type of person that kind of hits the ground running, gets rolling right away, watch all the education, then start taking action, or what did that look like your first two, three months?

Nephi Gomez (04:18.038)
Yeah, I like to think that I’m a person that hits the ground running, but sometimes I’m pretty methodical. You I like to think things through. And so that sometimes kind of slows me down a little bit. But yeah, I mean, I was first introduced to land investing online through Action Academy. I know a lot of folks kind of went that route and talking with a few folks, particularly with Dylan. Dylan Rush was the one that pointed me to yeah, to your guys program.

He gave me some really good advice, know, really advising me to hit the ground running. He basically said like, yeah, start the course and just get to the mailer section. And once you get to the mailer section, stop the course or yeah, send your mailers cause that’s going to take a while and then you can continue the course. So yeah, that’s a, that’s a kind of how it started. That’s the path that I started on and

Then along the way, someone reached out to me, my partner, he’s just basically saying, hey, have you considered partnering? And I kind of thought about it for a second. it made a lot of sense. was just kind of like, land investing is capital heavy. And as far as the mailers and the purchase of the land, so just made sense to me starting out to definitely have a partner to work together on that.

Ron (05:43.43)
So do you know when your first mail was sent?

Nephi Gomez (05:47.008)
Hmm. I can’t I want to say it was April 27th actually

Ron (05:51.228)
Okay, so end of April. And when did you buy your first deal? I know you’ve had quite a bit. Some people, it takes some time. Like the first six months, and we talk about it with a lot of people we have on the podcast. First six months are ups and downs. if you can be profitable in the first six months, you’re doing really, really well. Talk about that first deal you got. Was it from your first mailer? How’d that go? How’d that first mailer go?

Nephi Gomez (06:13.77)
Yeah, it was from the first mailer. It was pretty wild. you know, I remember early on in the partnership, you know, I told Simon that we have to have some kind of like competitive advantage, something that differentiates us. And so I’m from Utah and I didn’t know, but apparently Utah is a non-disclosure state. And so…

And I just so happened to have my real estate license because I was trying to save money on these house hacks, you know, trying to get back my, the down payment through some commission. And so I had access to MLS. I didn’t have that same barrier as everyone else. we targeted, we sent our first mailer out. It was actually only a thousand mailers, I think. And, our, yeah, then, you know, we, we set everything up. We set up our open phone and it just started a

just started ringing and between the two of us, yeah, between the two of us, we actually kind of had a hard time keeping up. Maybe it just felt that way because it’s like, they’re calling like on a Saturday morning, Saturday night, or like, you know, different times during the day. But yeah, I just had a hard time keeping up and at the same time learning the whole thing, you know, learning how to qualify deals and all. We had two really promising deals. One fell through.

but the other one went through and yeah, that one was like, that was a home run. Like I think we closed on it a month after sending out the mailers. And as soon as we closed on it, know, Simon took the initiative and put it on Facebook marketplace because our realtor was out of town. And then I think that same day we had a cash offer. was a, a buy for 20, sell for 50. So that was the, that was a really fast turnaround.

Ron (08:04.185)
And you sold that fast. Yeah, so that’s… And that was the only deal from that first mailer, is that correct?

Nephi Gomez (08:05.717)
Yeah.

Nephi Gomez (08:11.916)
From that first mailer, yes, we had some promising leads that almost we almost closed on but didn’t quite go through

Ron (08:19.356)
So when you got into this business, Nefai, did you have set goals for 2024? What did that kind of look like? If you’re getting into a new business, like, okay, I wanna make this happen. know you wanted freedom as far as location freedom. Did you have set goals financially for 2024 or what you wanted to make happen with this business?

Nephi Gomez (08:40.392)
Yeah, mean, I think ultimately my like where I was where my mind was at was I wanted to be able to relocate to Brazil by Christmas. That was the plan. I didn’t actually have like a specific number in mind that I wanted to, I think, hit, would have been which might be why I’m not on track. But yeah, that was I mean, that was the main goal was just just to

Yeah, and six months be able to relocate to Brazil. And to me, what that meant was just being able to pay off some credit card debt and just have enough money to, I guess, live for six months.

Ron (09:23.132)
So on a monthly basis, what are you kind of doing marketing volume? Actually, before we get into that, let’s talk about your partnership. Because I know you had a partnership, and then that kind of dissolved. Sounds like amicably based on what we talked about off camera. And I think it’s like when you can do that in a professional manner, and both parties understand this is what I’m looking for. usually when goals just don’t align, or maybe it’s just like someone feels like they’re working more.

You don’t have to get into all the details, but talk about that a little bit because some people try to make partnerships last forever and they’re just not meant to.

Nephi Gomez (09:58.444)
Yeah, yeah, I mean that was a huge learning experience for me. It’s the first business partnership I’ve ever been a part of. like you said, yeah, we did end amicably. We’re actually gonna talk with our lawyer later today to just kind of amend the LLC and everything. But yeah, think, know, when I said I wanted to get into a partnership, a lot of people gave me lot of like, told me to just be cautious about it and not kind of jump into it too quickly, you know.

One thing was like, you know, do you guys compliment each other? Do you guys need each other? What does he bring or you bring that the other person doesn’t? And at the time, I think it also made a lot of sense because since I’m an agent, you know, the pros is I have access to all this information, but the con is like, I have this hurdle of, you know, disclosing to everyone and some like a lot of paperwork disclosing that I’m an agent. So

The thought was like, maybe we could do everything under Simon’s name or kind of work through him, but I have the data. And eventually we didn’t have to do that, but that was kind of the thought going in. Yeah, I mean, it started out great. It’s really great starting out to split the costs and to have someone to bounce ideas off of, especially when you’re kind of just learning.

So working together, keeping each other accountable, I think really helped us get over that initial hump and that initial learning curve to be able to still be doing this six months later. And we learned a lot. And I think where we maybe weren’t clear on was like the extents or the length of the partnership. I think Simon maybe had a much more long-term permanent perspective. And I think I had a much more.

you know, temporary, let’s get, you know, let’s get on our feet and just kind of go from there. And, so yeah, that was a, think if we were really clear on that from the beginning, that would have helped a lot. at the beginning, we were a little bit struggling with our roles, like who does what? I think I was kind of advocating for a round Robin. Let’s just kind of like, you know, each lead that comes in or

Nephi Gomez (12:20.096)
You know, you take one, I take one, and we take it to the finish line. And I think he was like more, you know what, let’s have an acquisitions manager who gets everything to the purchase agreement. And then another person who takes it from the purchase agreement to title and closing, et cetera. And so that’s what we did. And it actually, you know, worked out really well. I think both, you know, could work well. I was the acquisitions manager. He was the operations manager.

Funny enough, I think we might have been better like switching them around because I’m the, I have an engineering background. I’m really meticulous, you know, and he’s, he worked in sales for bigger pockets. So he’s got that, you know, relationship management, more people skills. And so maybe, maybe we got it backwards, but either way we, we learned and we got out of our comfort zones and I think we’re both making a profitable exit. So.

Ron (13:17.788)
Nice. It’s good how you guys handle that for sure. And you see these blow up sometimes way worse, and they create so much. And it’s good you guys did it before it got worse at the same time, because I think you guys both on the back of your mind probably knew, like, OK, this probably isn’t a long-term thing. This isn’t working. So that’s really good that you did that. So talk about, since you’ve been in this business yourself, what do you kind of look like? What’s your volume on a monthly basis?

Nephi Gomez (13:41.856)
Yeah, you know, that’s something that we could definitely, that we could have definitely improved on. So we did basically one month, we did a thousand, another we did four thousand and then we did a thousand and then I think we took a break and then we did four thousand, something along those lines. So I guess now that we are have this freedom to take things in our direction, that’s something that I know that we’re both going to be better about. It’s like, you know, setting a goal and just being setting a target and being

consistent with it. I think that yeah, we’ll be a we’ll be I’d love to have 20,000 mailers out by the end of the year. So that’s kind of what I’m thinking.

Ron (14:21.052)
Love it. So have you written down any goals for 2025 yourself doing this business yourself and everything like that? You have any goals written down or any goals in the back of your mind? Obviously, you said initially that Christmas 2024, you’re trying to move to Brazil. What does that look like? What does that timeline look like?

Nephi Gomez (14:39.03)
Yeah, I think mainly for legal reasons. You know, starting her immigration paperwork, I don’t think that’s going to be possible legally, but it would be great to be able to do it financially. honestly, my vision right now is more around of just kind of building my team. So since I’m not going to be working with my partner anymore, you know, I started hiring, started the hiring process, looking for a VA on

onlinejobs.ph and I actually, my vision is to create kind of more, not just have one VA, but almost like an org chart of VAs, a small one, with the intent to be a lot more kind of in the background, pulling the strings and not so much in the weeds. So yeah, I think right now my vision includes, you know, having that team of remote workers. I’d love to have like a

I want to hire primarily in the Philippines and it would be awesome for me to just host like these annual recheats out there in the Philippines, go out there in person and just kind of get everyone together in person. Initially this hire is going to be like an operations manager, someone who would be my second self. Then I intend to hire an acquisitions manager, a due diligence specialist and maybe like a bookkeeper or someone to do that.

Ron (16:05.403)
Is that engineering background pretty helpful with as far as like org charts, systematizing stuff? Is that kind of where that engineering background comes into play?

Nephi Gomez (16:12.938)
I think so, but you know, I’m kind of, feel like I’m a little bit, I’m all about, you know, I started after college, I was a process engineer and currently I’m a software project manager. So project management, visibility, just visibility of work. Yeah, that’s like a pretty big deal for me. And yeah, but don’t get me wrong. I actually really loved being an acquisitions manager. I love like getting on the phone with folks and just talking.

getting to know their situation, you know, they’re real people and some of them really need the money and you’re kind of helping them out, you know. So that’s a really fulfilling part of the role for me.

Ron (16:55.293)
I like that a lot. So what’s that hiring process been like? What’s your timetable on hiring this operations manager, getting them in? Because hiring an overseas person, there are systems to be able to hire them for sure. Onlinejobs.ph is great, and we refer people to them all the time. What’s that process going like? How do you feel about it?

Nephi Gomez (17:17.13)
Yeah, I feel pretty great. mean, actually, this isn’t my first try. So, you know, man, 2024 has been interesting. It’s been a ride because I actually did hire a VA and for to help me on the Airbnb and she did land flipping on the side and then I had to let her go. So this is actually my second round, second try. I’m taking all the lessons I learned from the first hire to the second. But.

Yeah, I recently got some really good advice on hiring. And the main thing is, yeah, I’m hiring full time, starting at $5 an hour, looking for someone with a lot of leadership qualities. I’m actually asking them to submit their disc profile. you know, I actually on chat GPT, I just threw in the job description. I need this person to do this. Tell me the ideal disc profile for this person’s position.

And it showed me, it’s like, they need to be a high D because they need to, you know, be able to keep things going, take control and be a leader, but they also need to have attention to detail and be meticulous. need to be a high C as well. And I kind of asked, I threw mine in there, turns out I’m a high D and a high C as well. So I’m basically hiring myself out there, which is pretty cool.

Ron (18:38.598)
That’s awesome. I haven’t heard of anyone doing that with the overseas. But yeah, I’ve done some disc profiles in the past for sure. That’s exciting to hear. You feel pretty good about this round as far as I think learning from anything. If you’re learning from mail or you’re learning from whatever, like you’re learning, you, I don’t want to say messed up a hire, it’s just a learning experience. And it’s so warm and fuzzy at the beginning. You’re so excited about someone and then reality kind of hits sometimes. I’m sure that might’ve been, you feel pretty good about this kind of.

taking what you learned, like you said, and implementing on this next hiring process.

Nephi Gomez (19:11.404)
Yeah, and actually I learned a lot from you guys from a specific like a YouTube video you guys put out on how to hire a VA. You know, there’s a lot of really good filters and questions to ask, you know, please submit an audio application. What does your technology setup look like? And there’s a, there’s more on, are you comfortable with like the night shift? Are you comfortable starting with this, you know, pay and it’s a

That was super helpful because I just filter out all the people who just don’t follow the instructions. And there’s a lot of people who will do that. They’ll just blast their application, their generic application. And sometimes you can just tell they didn’t read the job description and definitely didn’t answer the questions on the job listing. So, I mean, that was already like a big help. yeah, I feel a lot more confident going through on this one, getting a lot more applications and…

being a lot more targeted. I have two already. I posted it like this week on Monday and I already have like two or three people that I’m really confident that I want to interview.

Ron (20:18.256)
Nice, that’s exciting. If you kind of take a step back in like 24 months from now, like where do think your business is? Like in your mind, like where do you want your business to be? Not even necessarily financially, what does your business look like 24 months from now?

Nephi Gomez (20:33.644)
24 months from now? That’s a good question. Okay, we’re in.

Ron (20:38.405)
What are you trying to build towards? You obviously said you want to build an organization. And not everyone says that. Some people want to stay very lean and not put money into people and just do everything themselves and they don’t have to rely on other people. But it sounds like that’s a big part of it for sure is building people around you.

Nephi Gomez (20:54.144)
Yeah, no, definitely. I’ve met some folks who they just like, I met a stay at home mom who all she wants to do is be able to stay at home and do a deal a month and she’s happy and that helps her do what she wants to do. But for me in my, even in my W2, I realized that I get a lot from being a part of a team and even like a remote team. So really, I think building that structure and having that team behind my back is…

is important for me. I think working remotely can be very lonely sometimes. I don’t think people realize that when they’re looking for a remote job or jumping into landflipping. If you’re at home a lot, it can just kind of take a toll. So I really want to build that team around me to support things. But yeah, two years from now, hope I have. My goal is to have my operations manager.

That org chart filled out the acquisition manager, due diligence specialist, bookkeeper, hoping to be able to do those annual retreats, know, go out to the Philippines. Maybe once we get profitable enough, bring them over here to the States, you know, get them really excited about like what we’re doing, building that team. My three main focuses with the business currently is I want to focus on realtor relationships, creative financing, and just very fast implementation. So,

And what that looks like to me is like as much as I as much as a cash offers has been working for me I really want to make this I like the creative side of things just to be able to really be a problem solver and explore other solutions that might work better for specific sellers and doing it at volume, you know being able to All I’m looking for at this time is being able to go back and forth between the US Brazil and Mexico, you know send my

10,000 mailers a month, maybe 20 mailers a month, 20,000 mailers a month, and just have a really solid team. know, people that I really admire and respect, and they admire and respect me back, and just working together to make something great.

Ron (23:08.368)
That’s awesome. That’s a good vision. You got to write that one down for sure. like being able to travel to Philippines, doing that with having a team of people around you, like that is important. And so many people overlook the value of being around people that you actually respect and you actually want to be around. Like so many people hire. I don’t know. And that’s like one of my biggest things when I’m hiring is like, do I want to actually be with this person all day? And it’s just, it’s just the truth. Like, and some people probably don’t want to be around me all day, but that’s fine.

But yeah, being around people that you want to be around, hiring people that you actually enjoy being around, it’s so important. And those are our employees that stay long, long term are those people. But shoot, I had a question. Getting into like, if you had advice for someone getting into this business, you’re obviously, you’re not far removed from not being in land, you know what I mean? And that’s kind of, I like getting people on the podcast who are relatively new. But if you had…

some advice for someone looking into this or listening to this podcast, what would you kind of tell them if they’re on the edge teetering between land investing or just staying in their W-2 and settling?

Nephi Gomez (24:16.906)
Oof. I mean the first thing is like, let’s, you know, let’s figure out if land is for you. For me, location independence is huge, you know, and it’s working for me. I want to work for my laptop if it’s between land or WE2, like land all the way. I guess my advice for folks starting out is like, you know, lots of people have done this. It’s repeatable. It’s, you know, you can do it. Anyone can do it. It’s very easy to learn.

But for that same reason, I would suggest looking for a very specific niche or some kind of competitive advantage that will make you stand apart from the rest. I think my concern sometimes is that the barrier to entry can be a little low. so it’s, most people, like almost anyone can learn this business. So looking for something that really sets you apart.

For me at the beginning, it was focusing on non-disclosure states and that’s really, really helped me out to this point. then, and moving forward, I don’t know if I’m going to only focus on non-disclosure states, but I know that I want to focus on relationships with agents and specifically creative finance. That’s creative finance. And then also just for me, very fast implementation and turnaround. So yeah, that’s my advice. It’s like.

You will be successful with land if you just basically follow the process, but also look for opportunities where you can niche down.

Ron (25:50.873)
Everyone has their own like spin to make this like do it like do a couple of deals and then like add you like what’s working, what’s not working, what and it’s so different for everyone. You’re you’re my third student I’ve interviewed today on a podcast and it’s just it’s not a ton different. It’s not like you’re that much different than Shelby and Shelby’s not that much different than Chad who I’ve talked to today. And the other thing that when you’re talking and one of our missions at Land of S &L is providing freedom through land. It’s a very open ended thing, but it’s what we do.

and all three of you, your freedoms are very different. Shelby’s freedom is staying at home with her daughter, being able work online. Your freedom is being able to travel, location freedom. Chad’s freedom, he doesn’t really want to quit his job, but Chad just seems to love to own the business. think that’s kind of like his freedom, is being able to own a business, run a business day to day. And he also has a young kid that he’s raising as well. So it’s really cool kind of seeing different people’s freedoms.

Nephi Gomez (26:37.195)
You

Ron (26:48.335)
But as far as that advice for people just starting, like absolutely getting into it and then just putting your own spin on things. It does not have to be a crazy spin where you start building houses or building self-storage facilities on land. Seller financing. It’s not that difficult of a concept or creative financing. I’m sorry. It’s not that crazy of a concept, but it’s going to get you deals, Nephi. And it’s going to, I think it’s going to separate yourself. Anything else you’d like to add or anything else you can you think can be valuable to listeners, anything like that?

Nephi Gomez (27:18.731)
Hmm.

Nephi Gomez (27:23.152)
I think off the top of my mind, think community is big, you know, being engaged, engaging with other like-minded people, having conversations, bouncing ideas off of others, you know. I think a lot of people can be successful independent, but you know, finding that group of people that can really support you, not just in the intellectual, but also in the emotional. Sometimes entrepreneurship is just lonely and just…

So yeah, support, community, I think is big. Yeah, that’s it.

Ron (27:57.945)
Yeah, I love seeing that within our community as people meeting each other, people talking on their own, you meeting other people. And it’s really cool to see for sure. But if you guys are watching on YouTube, hit the Subscribe button below. If you’re listening on Spotify or Apple, leave us a review. Share this with a friend. It really helps. Nephi, thank you so much for coming on today. And we’ll talk to you soon.

Nephi Gomez (28:16.768)
Yeah, thank you, Ron.

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