Things I Didn’t Learn In Land Development… Except By Pain

Easy vs hard learning:

I always appreciate the few times when something comes easy in land development. It’s not often though. Over time I’ve come to know that most of my real learning didn’t come from easy wins anyhow. In my case, the real learning came from adversity which I refer to as “the experiential pain paradox” a.k.a. “good learning can come from bad pain, even though you don’t think it can.” That’s me all right and I have a good example. - After about 2 years in land development I was starting to hit my stride. The market was good and I was quickly selling my lots at high market value. So along comes this builder, K.B. He writes up a take down schedule on a few of the worst lots in the project. I don’t like take downs as a rule, but I knew he was an up and comer in the area and a solid financial citizen, so I went for it. Speed reading the full price contract, I fully executed the entire P&S Agreement. Deep inside the speed reading part of the now fully signed contract I warranted to him that power was available to each lot and was physically located on each lot. In reality there was hard infrastructure serving 2 lots from each pedestal, but the boxes were only physically located on every other lot. K.B. was a smart guy and didn’t miss the chance to collect some extra bucks from me to settle the matter. What did I learn? The word warrant in a contract basically means I am promising now and forever the thing I am warranting and that a warrant in a contract can survive closing, which is usually when contract promises are fully fulfilled and I am relieved from further obligation. I definitely learned from “The experiential pain paradox” on this one and it stuck forever. Never made that mistake again, but there were others…many others.

Just north of the wildlife preserve on I-5 in Marysville, Washington sits the Village Taphouse and Grill. They serve all day breakfast and over a land developer sized plate of over easy eggs, harsh browns and biscuits & gravy (with a little extra heart medicine ladled on top), I met Raye Little for the first time - land agent extraordinaire. He knew his stuff. Unfortunately, I didn’t. Being brand spanking new in the business, but with a background in sales and sales management in a totally unrelated industry, I leaned into him about a project he was selling for my investor. “Raye, the lots aren’t selling fast enough” I confidently said, along with a whole lot of extra meaningless know-it-all advice. He fired me that night which is kind of weird since it’s usually the seller that’s supposed to fire the agent… right? I should have known when he slowed way down on shoveling the country style pancakes into his mouth and glanced up at me with dead eyes and a droplet of syrup slowly dribbling down from the corner of his mouth, but I pressed on anyway. He fired me, I made sure to say good riddance to him in no uncertain terms, then I found an agent that didn’t sell a single lot for me for months. Cooler and wiser heads prevailed when Marc my Land Manager got us back together without either one of us losing face. Raye went on for years to teach a much more humble me a shitload of stuff about dirt than I never could have learned on my own. Thank you Raye Little and Rest In Peace, my friend. Another experiential pain paradox moment for me. The good news is that permanent learning happened again.

Then there was my experience with a local and very powerful Native American Tribe. My investor had already bought 530 acres smack in the middle of their federally recognized reservation before I came on board. My job was to develop it into residential lots. Working with this Native American Tribe was difficult, eventually impossible. The Board deeply resented the fact that outsiders owned fee simple land within their reservation boundaries. Not only that, my investor’s holdings were smack-dab-dead-center in the middle of it too … and 530 acres isn’t a couple of stray lots. My projects were the bullseye for every deep seated tribal resentment going back generations. Since the Board members were highly political amongst themselves and personality driven I figured it would be best to develop a meaningful relationship with the Chairman. Over months that began to happen, but wouldn’t you know it - experiential pain was on the horizon. The tribe was just finishing a huge casino and it was going to economically change everything for them. The Chairman was very proud of the accomplishment and invited me to a big pre-opening lunch and tour, along with about 500 other people that were way more important than me, or so I thought. On that day I had an unexpected but important personal matter at home to deal with, so I sent Marc my Land Manager to fill in. He knew all of them too so I figured my absence wouldn’t be noted - what with the Mayor, County Commissioners and every other political suck-up in attendance. Once again, I was wrong. Unfortunately, my failure to attend was duly noted and the Chairman never spoke with me again. Luckily (and completely unknown to me) they were working on a plan to buy my investor out and a few weeks after the Casino debacle they made a great offer on all of the land. It went back to them and I got out of 530 acres of perpetual migraine headaches. On a separate note I was happy to see them get the land back into the B.I.A. tribal land trust. Even though they made my life a misery on the land development side I have always realized that the United States Government totally screwed the Native American people under the guise of Manifest Destiny. In reality, it was just plain robbery with an unthinkable dose of murder and suffering. Read the book “Black Elk Speaks” if you are a little bit fuzzy on the subject.

Anyway, what I’ve come to find in land development and life in general is that when things come easy we should enjoy them and be grateful. In my personal experience there hasn’t been a whole lot of deep learning there, but enjoy it we should! Isn’t guilt-free joy supposed to be a part of our lives? I think I read that somewhere once! At the same time, the deepest learning for me has been through mistakes I’ve made. The experience of pain is also natural and inevitable. I don’t look forward to it but somehow over time I can stand tall to it and not fear it like I used to. It seems to me that with true learning, by whatever method, we build an inner strength and fortitude where we can successfully adapt to anything and thrive no matter what comes up in life. Be strong, stay humble and have faith…It’ll all work out!

Contact me at: ldr@landdevelopmentrealities.com