Daniel Apke heard about buying land from e-commerce mentors and sat on the idea for about a year. Then he talked his brother Ron into leaving work that was not paying them in any way that mattered. Ron had been in college sports. Daniel had been in online selling.

They started while the day jobs were still there, with about $8,000 to $13,000 in marketing. Within two or three months both had quit. Early profits around $10,000 grew into six-figure closings in their telling.

The method they describe is unglamorous: find a large parcel priced under what it could be, improve it, split it. They say deals have closed in about 40 states. Cold calls replaced expensive mail.

Mail, then the phone

On Upflip they walk through that shift in how they find sellers. The episode is about parcels and phone calls, not a house they renovated for television.

The marketing budget and the state count are theirs. The start was a mentor's suggestion and a year of thinking about it.