What do the returns look like for a project of, let's say it's a thousand acres? Or if you want to go through a previous case study, that would be great as well.

Yeah, happy to.

And I mentioned this at the beginning of the conversation.

There are these very large timberland investment funds who buy tens of thousands of acres.

They invest hundreds of millions of dollars into land.

And the returns that they typically get are about a 4% to 6% return.

These are the bigger funds.

So aside from the randomness of mother nature, is there anything about investing in timberland that keeps you up at night?

So John, if you could please give us a brief background on who you are and what you're doing now.

Yes, happy to, Ton.

Thanks for having me on.

And yeah, very quick background on me.

So my career started in wealth management, you know, working for the big wealth management companies.

You know, did that for the first decade of my career, enjoyed that business, you know, had a nice client base, but, you know, really wanted to pursue something more entrepreneurial outside of, you know, the Fortune 500, you know, type, you know, company structure.

Nothing wrong with that.

So what are other value creation methods that you're using to create revenue or returns for your investors on timberland?

Who's typically selling these properties?

Yeah.

So in our region in the Southeast, and it's, and it's, you know, can be d- you know, different than other parts of the country is most of the land, upwards of 90% of the land is owned by individuals like you and me, Dave.

So, you know, it's a, it's a fragmented market.

You know, there's opportunity to find, to, you know, to find deals from individuals.

But yeah, typically individuals, you know, third, fourth generation, uh, you know, families that have had, you know, land in the family for years.

You know, maybe the, the folks who inherited it don't wanna manage that property anymore.

Um, who are you looking to connect with these days in 2026?

But what are some things that you've sort of noticed about people that have made this successful transition to entrepreneurship or kind of like what are the benefits in your mind of like why you could never go back?

Yeah, so the stakes were high for me when I left my wealth management business when it comes to the financial side of it.

At the time, I didn't have a family, right? So I didn't have that risk, but I was walking away from a very nice business that I'd built, a very nice income that I've created for myself.

And it didn't happen overnight, right? It was kind of a slow boom.

build up over you know maybe two years where i started to think you know i like what i'm doing but i don't want to do this for the next 30 or 40 years of my career and so i guess what i would just tell your listeners is if there's a way for you to maybe put one foot into the entrepreneurial world first before you jump into it, because that's what worked for me.

I can only speak from my experiences.

That startup that I joined, I had invested in that company and then I left wealth management to run sales.

If I had to guess.