The Frugal Off-Grid Masterclass: Building in the Right Order

When I moved off grid over six years ago, I initially thought mostly in a system of building different projects. I wanted to do a cabin down the road. I knew that I needed infrastructure. So, I was mostly focused on the things that people talk about regarding survival, food, water, and shelter. Over time, I realized that starting a frugal, practical homestead was a lot more about systems and order of operations. And doing things out of order can cost a lot of mistakes and time and money. That can look like starting off on the wrong piece of land or building systems out of order and therefore they're not working with you.

or simply creating so many expenses that you basically become trapped. And you know doing the right project at the right time can absolutely change your tra trajectory. And in today's workshop what I want to talk about is the framework that came together and built this entire system over time through years of trial and error. Okay. And so I'm going to talk about how to find and buy land, how to build your homestead, how to generate income, how to eliminate debt, and how to thrive. And this and this is really about what long-term stability looks like after the initial excitement wears off. The plan was always to generate 100% of my income from the homestead, and I've done that.

But I've gotten better at it and refined it and we're going to talk about income and debt toward the end. This workshop is free and will give you a very good foundation and later I organized a much deeper framework of this workshop into my four-step off-grid land system which leads into the frugal off-grid path. Nonetheless, this workshop will get you thinking clearly and fully understanding beginner off-grid mistakes. Several days ago, I made a post on my YouTube community page announcing I was going to do this free workshop and I asked you guys if you had any questions and I got a lot of questions. I was able to narrow it down to about two or three questions per section that applies to each individual section.

And then there were a few questions that were a little bit outside of the scope of this workshop, but I'll answer those at the end. So, we're going to start with how to find and buy land, which is one of the most commonly asked questions I've ever gotten in these six years that I've been off offrid. And when I first created this lecture, I told people how I initially had searched all the different websites, all the different states, how I did searches to find my piece of off-grid land. And since then, I've built my off-grid land locator tool, which actually it uses the same terminology I used to find my place.

And so, instead of having to fully explain that to people, I can just say, "Hey, go check out my off-grid land locator." It'll help you find pieces of land that are otherwise more difficult to find on land listing websites. Uh, but it does give you more of an explanation of how that works on on that page. So that's that's the best way guys if you want to you know people say I can't find a piece of property that's affordable or I can't find the right piece oftent times it's because people are searching within 30 minutes of their hometown and I searched the entire United States.

I used all kinds of different websites and I used really broad terms like like I didn't narrow it down at first. You know, I started with $10,000, you know, something like that, and then saw what was available and then narrowed it down and narrowed it down until I found a piece of land I could pay cash for that was within my budget, which wasn't much. And you know, you you just have to do what you have to do. If you're in a position where you can't pay cash or whatnot, maybe owner finance is a good option for you. A lot of places will carry the bill and and they'll even let you start to build that that first day and you can negotiate that.

Hey, can I start to build right away? You know, maybe you can show proof that you're reliable and you're going to pay. Paying cash is a great option. You know, something that I came to realize later, I often tell people, don't buy more land than you can afford to fence. And it's less about fencing the property. Fencing is great. I love fencing, but it's less about fencing and more about living within your means. If you can afford to fence a piece of property, then you can probably afford that piece of property. It's just a good rule of thumb that I learned along the way. Save what you can.

If if you just start small and you can put five bucks aside every week, every month, and it'll start to grow. You got to start with something. If if you feel like you can't swing five bucks, then make it five bucks and make it happen. It's important because it'll compound before you know it. I don't know why it took me 40 years to figure that out. It just seemed impossible. I was super poor and lived on the streets as a kid and it wasn't easy and it I didn't have like a good father figure to teach me to save money or anything. And maybe some people do and they just and they missed out on that opportunity too.

But I'm telling you it's it is as impossible as it might seem. Start with something and then add it up and it'll it'll compound over time. You can offer them the less money than they're asking. If they want 5,000, say, "Hey, look, I've got four. I really would like the piece of land." And see what they can do, especially when you're paying in cash. But even if you're going to owner financer, you can work that out. And loans, I don't think, are the most ideal thing, but in some scenarios, like I said before, if you can't pay cash, then you can owner finance. If you can't own or finance, maybe you can get a USDA loan.

And if you can't do that, maybe you can just get some kind of other loan. And and that could be that's risky. It is a gamble. You shouldn't do it if you're not going to be responsible. But even if you got a pretty crazy rate, but you're you're going to move onto your piece of land. You're going to call the county ahead of time, find out what you can and can't do, move out there knowing what you can do, do what you can, and no longer pay rent or mortgage. That alone could actually make it absolutely worth taking even a crazy expensive loan. But I don't recommend it if you don't have uh if you're not going to pay it back.

You got to you got to pay it back. Get yourself out of debt and then things are going to pound out a lot better. And I've got a few questions on this section. How do I evaluate counties before buying land? That's a good question. I I always say start with the county. Apparently, it even frustrates some people, but I'm not doing it frivolously. By saying that continually, I'm helping the right person understand that it might just be easier to just follow the rules. And there's a lot of off-grid fantasy stuff on the internet, and that's cool and fun to watch. But if you're building a home for yourself and there's a lot of reasons why it might be a good idea to just follow the rules.

And if you start with the county, you can find a lenient county or a county that really actually supports people who are off-rid. They like that community and that's going to be a lot easier. So then once you locate a county like that, then you buy land in that county. And that's why I created the off-grid county directory. And you can check that out on my website too. It's step one. What does unrestricted land usually really mean? In my experience, there's just really not unrestricted land. There may be places that are far out that the county just doesn't they don't care much. You know, maybe you're just so far out there, they just don't really care much.

There's people that just build what they want to and they never get bothered. And that's perfectly fine if that's the way that it works out there. But usually, in my experience, when something says it's unrestricted, it's the realtor telling you that because there are people that have done whatever they wanted to, and so the realtor just says that because it's a wonderful selling point and they're not worried about what happens to you down the road. They just want to get that check. I feel like that's the truth. And and so I would just, like I said, start with the county because maybe they are really really lenient.

But if you call and ask each zone, each department, you'll know for absolutely sure. What mistakes do people make when buying land too quickly? Probably getting excited. That might be the first thing is is seeing something that excites you. That's a that's a red flag. If you know what I mean, is if right out the gate you're like, "Oh my gosh." And you're thinking, "How can I make this work? I can't afford it, but maybe if I take a bigger loan, what if I sell the car? If it's going to put you into a tight position and and it's just because it's a romantic property, that's probably the biggest mistake people make up front.

So, we're going to move on to build your homestead. This is one of the more exciting parts. So, I told you I I this this entire lecture came about years ago. It's a good lecture, but I've made a better one now and I updated it. But my, you know, my initial survival instincts were food, water, shelter. Like I'd always been told growing up in survival classes and stuff. And then I I already knew that I prefer shelter, water, food, because if you're in the wrong environment, you can die immediately if you don't have shelter. That night, you could die. But you'll be okay without water and food that night.

You need water next and food. Ideally, you'll just start with all of them. And and then my new framework includes a few more systems that we'll talk about in the future, but but yeah, you can see shelter, water, food. These are really important to start with. And a camper van or an RV, a shed, or a home. If you have a nice little camper van like I did, you can start day one and have all of your needs met pretty well and then build the systems out over time. I think that the obvious go-to for water is a well. And a good thing to do is to search property around you.

There's a there's a registry for wells and you can see the depth and the flow rate and you can get an idea way before you ever even buy a piece of property. Is it potentially possible down the road? Are there a lot of wells around me? Does it make it pretty clear that there's really good odds? You know, and could it sustain you? And you'd be surprised, you know, a residential well, they might want a lot more, but even if, example, for me, a one gallon an hour well would cover more than my needs. I only use about 400 gallons a week because I'm mostly on rainwater and hauled water currently.

So, rainwater can help you offset that if it's legal where you're at. Andistns can really help. And I've got an entire DIY underground sistn. I built about 10,000 gallons of storage for about $200 in liners. Um, you can read more about it on my website, DIY Underground Sistn, in any search engine will bring it up. And there's a water calculator on the website to help you with that. And there's diagrams of this. And also, some people are worried that I used vinyl liners. Well, they're actually PVC coated. And I'm I'm confident in them, but there are water you can get water grade liners if it's a concern of yours, but they're underground.

The sun's not deteriorating them. They're not leeching into the, you know, they're not leeching into your water any more than a an algaene water bottle would. PVC, by the way, is the same thing that lines your plumbing. Gardens, manure, livestock. The first thing I did to start my gardens was I used a wheelbarrow. There's cattle that graze out here. I just walked my entire property, filled an entire wheelbarrow with manure and started my my compost and I broke that down, added sand, and made my own soil pretty quickly, started a garden, and was surprised to see that that first season I had I had I almost brought about 60 different ears of corn.

Well, actually, no, it would have been 60 stocks. So, I don't know, maybe 150 ears of corn. I almost brought them to uh harvest, but it got too cold and froze everything. But it made good pig food, good learning experience. The manure helps you build that up quicker, having livestock. Start simple with chickens or something. Rabbits are great. Um, I wouldn't suggest starting with a bunch of livestock cuz every livestock has to have its own system. That gets expensive to this day. People ask, "Why don't you have llamas? Why don't you have this and that and the other?" And I get that it's fun and whatever, but realistically, I have pigs, chickens, horses, you know, and then I've got the dogs and the cats.

They all have a job and they all do it well. And that's that's five systems already. And you don't want to have more systems than you need to. Pigs are easy and horses make a massive amount of manure which I'm going to regenerate the entire property with over time. And I've got a few questions on this section as well. So, what should beginners build first after buying land? Very first thing I built after I started my homestead was I came out with the camper van. I built a shed and I put a little carport on the shed and I was able to park the camper van under it.

And you see the camper van met all my needs. I had food, water, shelter. And the shed is a redundancy of that system. So now on the shed, I'm able to slowly build out food, water, and shelter. So now there's redundancy. You see, if if one system fails, there's a backup to it already. That was the first month. So that's the first thing that I would focus on. Is it better to start with an RV, van build, shed, mobile home, or cabin? If you can start in a mansion, that might be ideal. I don't know. It, you know, a cabin I think is obviously the best move if you can.

But if you can't, if it doesn't fit your budget, bad idea. If the only thing that fits your budget and the county will allow is a tent, then start with a tent. And you can do this, you know, you just got to be careful, have redundant energy, you know, heat. You got to have redundant sources of heat and be careful with that. Um the the camper van was a good option for me. It was about the cheapest version that wasn't a tent. Uh but, you know, I called ahead and said, "Hey, can I do this?" And they said yes. And so that's that. If they don't allow that, then you know, move up to the next best option.

How do you build systems in the right order? I'm going to talk about that. I think I'm going to talk about that more toward the end. Um, but what's let's say shelter, water, food, you're working through these systems. Well, ideally you come out with this unit that has all of them met already and then you start to expand. So then you want another system that's like this that does it all. Then you got redundancy and it has it has the ability to store shelter water food. Uh and then you can start a garden, you know, maybe start to put that manure together. You can start, you know, I brought out a couple IBC totes and so as soon as the shed was done, I put a couple IBC totes on that.

You know, you can work on multiple of them and it doesn't have to be a perfect order. It's more about knowing what systems to do and being confident. You can work through them in systems and try to keep it balanced like starting with everything at once and then slowly, you know, you want to try to get everything going eventually, but those are the two most important is basically shelter and then shelter again. Okay. So, we're going to talk about generating income. This is one of the I'm actually really passionate about this. It's something that I think I'm good at, something I've done my entire life.

Ever since I was a little boy, I would create stuff and sell it or do work or whatever I could think of. Sorry, I forget about the mic. And I've done that my whole life. So, if I was going to tell you today, you're going to you're going to move forward and start your homestead, start right now. Build a website. If if it has to be a free version, start with a free version, but build it. They're not that much money and it's going to compound and pay you back. This is leverage media. So, social media is golden. Maybe YouTube, whatever you feel most confident with.

You can There's a lot of people that have doubt about social media. uh everybody has something to say and share that a certain portion of the community is going to want to see. So no matter if somebody's done it a thousand times, if you make a a a channel, there's going to be a certain amount of people that want to watch you and there's plenty for everybody. And so I would definitely, you know, think of what you want to name your website and think about what you want to name your social media and you're thinking of starting a business. This is not just being a content creator.

You're not trying to be a content creator. You're trying to make income from your homestead. Regardless of what it is, if you're just running around and welding gates for people, or maybe you're doing them here, or maybe you're doing, you know, you're a mechanic that goes around or maybe you're doing it on site. Whatever it is, think of a a great name. Do some research. Make sure you're not creating something that's already been created. Get a unique name. Be creative. Don't copy people, guys. Copying other content creators is a horrible idea because while on the surface maybe you recreate maybe you look at someone's website and then you go create your own website but you're copying that person and you know you are you don't know why they did it exactly the way they did.

You just know what it looks like. So you copy that surface layer but there's so much more below it that you don't know you don't know why. And so if something goes wrong, maybe you're not making the sales, maybe you're not getting the traffic, maybe, you know, maybe no one's visiting your website, you can't troubleshoot why because it wasn't your idea. So be unique. Look at other people for inspiration, but create something unique and be true to yourself. And that can evolve over time as you learn who you are. But a blog is one of the very most important things you should start right now.

And I'm talking to you before you even bought land or moved off grid, but you know you want to start now and and because you can have a basic idea of what you're doing. If you know right now you're going to be a mechanic offgrid, then start mechanicoffrid.com and the blog to follow it and then start posting stuff you know about. You can just And here's something I love to just do. Just be honest. You don't need to be performative for people. You can say, "Hey, I'm not off- grid yet, but I'm going to be, and here's some of my thoughts." There 10% of the community wants to hear from you, and here's some of my ideas, and here's how you change oil or whatever it is.

Start the blog and start putting those together. And you can search the internet to see what people need to know about mechanicking off-rid and start to share that. And uh I'm not sure. Oh, I see hand painted signs and flyers. So, this is for the group of people that just is like, I hate hate hate social media. I'm never going to do it. I still think you should because you don't need to act. If if you're rough and tumble around the edges, just be rough and tumble around the edges on social media. Just be who you are. But but you can also do like hand painted signs and flyers and put them up and uh go to your market and showcase your skills that way.

But I often talk about copy the childhood lemonade stand. You know when you were a kid and you just set up a simple stand whether it was a yard sale or whatever. That's how easy a business basically is. Word of mouth if if people know. So you put up some signs to tell people. People noticed. They came in. They saw something they liked. They bought it. And even then you probably didn't even think about it. But if you were in a good mood and friendly and whatnot to them or at least being who you are, it probably went pretty good. And if you're like a total jerk and whatever, then maybe it didn't go as smoothly.

And it that applies to making your own business mowing business, you know, it it all boils down to providing a better service to people. And so you're actually really trying to create value for people. That's when a a business succeeds. It's you don't start a business to make money. That's not going to succeed as well as start a business to answer a question that people have and solve a problem they have and then monetize it lightly and and always try new stuff. Man, the first time I did this this whole lecture here, it was a really good thing for my business and I was nervous about doing it.

I wasn't sure it would work and it went really well and it's a good thing I did try it. So, we're going to talk about eliminating debt. Oh, I got to answer some questions. How can someone realistically generate income while building an off-grid homestead? These I'm telling you, these this is the gold. This is what you need to do before you even buy the land. Website, social media, blog, get started right now making blog posts. That's the first thing. That's gold. And then you know a lot of homesteads and I even did this you know I used to sell tea and corn flour and things like that and that's great and it did great.

It was actually it was nerve-wracking to phase those products out uh because they made good money. I had no problem selling them. I didn't even have to advertise them or tell people about them. People just naturally liked my content, went to the website, bought the products. The thing is is as that grows, it's not as scalable as having assets. So as it grew and grew and grew, I found myself in the shop working eight hours a day to, you know, order mailers, print postage, make packaging, pack orders, put together the packets, print the uh print the stickers, email the customers, refund the customers, ship the products.

There's a lot to it. And eventually I was like, I'm not I didn't move out here to work 8 hours a day for the rest of my life. I want to create more assets and and just live a good life. And so that's why I started to transition into I I sat down and thought after I' I'd been out here six years before I finally said, "Okay, I've been out here long enough to really know what I'm doing and what I have to offer people." And my system and and process is unique. Uh you know, I've always built a frugal homestead. I started with very little money.

Um, I have a different perspective than most people. You know, most people say, you know, off-rid should just be about going out there, building a homestead, not asking anybody, and just doing whatever you want to. And I don't mind that, but that's not the way I want to do it. And so, I've always said just just stay in contact with the county. contact the county, find out what you can and can't do, follow the rules, then you've got a really stable foundation, and uh I guess that's my point. After all the time out here and really living a certain way and really seeing things a certain way that is different, I realized that that's where my values at.

And so now I'm showing people, hey, here here's a really easy, structured four-step system so that you can find the right kind of land, find the right county for you, do due diligence so you don't mess it up, and then build your homestead with confidence. And that's what I sell now is, well, first of all, I give it away free. I've built this entire website to have all the resources somebody needs to build their own frugal homestead. They can use all the tools freely, the water calculator, all those things. They can read the free guide and the information is there, but it would take quite some time to piece it all together throughout the entire website, all the different blogs and library and research.

And so it is all freely available and what I'm selling is I took after all of this I had the best understanding. It took me six years to fully understand and I created a new lecture with a book that accompanies it and I fully explained my system all in one place and you get my you get the other the original eight hour webinar of this. You get my original books. There's three ebooks plus the new ebook plus the new lecture. A massive amount of all the information organized in one place. So, it's not like a lot of people are like, "Hey, here's the secret to this and you can't have it unless you buy it.

It's behind a payw wall." That's not my system. My system is here. It's all freely available, but if you want it real quick all at one time and you want depth, here it is. The frugal off-grid path. Should should people keep a a traditional job while building? Yes, absolutely. If if you've got a good job, you can get yourself a place that's, you know, maybe it's a 30 minute drive or an hour drive to work and back and that works out good for you, good. If you have a good opportunity to try and build a brand and maybe be entrepreneurial, if you think that's something you like, then start now and get it going.

Start generating almost enough to live off of and make sure you're saving a lot of money. And then there's the scary jump from from once you know it's going pretty good. There's a day where you know it's going to hurt and it's not certain, but you're going to have to quit your job and then put 100% of your time into the to the business you started, but that's not for everybody. So yeah, absolutely you can work a 9 to5. And how can somebody start without needing a massive amount of money? You can start just like I did without a lot of money. I searched the entire United States for the cheapest piece of land that would meet my needs.

I paid cash for it. At the time, it was only a couple grand. I think that you could still get a piece of land similar to this for for maybe five grand. Maybe maybe you could get one for two. It just depends. You got to look around. And if you shop a broad area, then then that's what you can do. And live within your means. If you The trick to being rich basically is to spend less than you make. And it sounds easy, but until you do it, you won't fully understand it. If if a guy makes 50k and he only spends 30k a year, he's way better off than the guy that makes a million dollars but spends a,250,000.

So, next up is eliminating debt. Here's how you eliminate debt, my friends. And if you didn't have the context, I grew up really poor, you know, like I said, I was on the streets. I was in and out of foster proctor care. I didn't have a good start. And and by the time I was 18, I already had some surgery and I filed bankruptcy and there was all kinds of problems. And and this is why I recommend this is not everyone has to do this kind of thing, but but it felt like I was in a hopeless situation. And and so I'm speaking to you who are also feeling in a hopeless situation.

I when I moved out here, my credit was like 420 or 425 or something. And now it's almost 8. And it would be eight. I'm almost done paying off all my credit cards and whatnot. But uh you can pull your credit, okay? And then your credit comes back and there's a lot of bad stuff on it and and maybe some of it's old and whatnot. you can actually go on your credit report or whatnot and dispute stuff and you could say, "Hey, you know what?" Like say for instance they went they put it into collections and now it's not credit one debt, somebody else bought it.

Well, you don't technically have to pay that guy. And that's just the way the world works. And and so you can go dispute that and some of that might fall off and that could help your credit start to crawl. And and the point and the point in doing this isn't to screw somebody over. The point is that now you're ready to move forward with your life and get everything worked out and build your credit and do good. So hopefully you'll be able to bring your credit up a little bit. Some of the other stuff will just fall off after 7 years. And in some cases, you might pay some off.

You can start saving money now. We already talked about that. Even if it's five bucks a month, start now for sure. Every single month, five, you know, and and eventually you can boost it up 10%, 20%. And hopefully you get to a point, especially once you start your homestead and you no longer have a rent or mortgage, you should be able to start saving 50%. Then you're starting to put away a buffer and when things go wrong, you're okay. And you start to get ahead and you got a nest egg and an emergency fund. Pay off your smallest card first and then the next and the next and get rid of all that and just keep your credit cards so that you can use them.

Say payday's in a few days and you need to get groceries. Go get groceries and then on payday pay off the card completely and always pay it off and never spend more than you can pay off and you're going to be blown away with what your credit score does and whatnot. And honestly, I've got such good credit now and it's funny because I'm not I'm probably never going to use it really. But you'll what happens at the beginning is you boost it enough that maybe you do maybe something tragic happens and you do need to to use a loan to get a truck or something and you'll have better credit and and it'll help you get ahead if you're responsible with it and stop wasting money.

You know, some people debate that really like some in some way. Obviously, you don't want to just like like if you don't need a truck payment, don't get a truck payment. If you don't need a mortgage, don't get a mortgage. If you don't need the nicer condo or apartment, don't get it. You don't need to have a $10,000 laptop, get the $500 one that'll get by. You know, if you can just build a couch out of wood and put some pads on it like I did, do that. Don't buy a couch. But some people say like like if you if you just love to get a coffee on Saturday and it's five bucks, you might not cut that out because it's a reward.

And as long as you're careful in every other way, a couple little things like that shouldn't kill you. But definitely don't just blow money. This person said, "How important is eliminating debt before or during the off-grid process?" Well, I think is I think if you're responsible and you're truly building a homestead, I think it might just naturally happen anyway. If you're careful and you're you're really trying to build something and and grow, it's going to kind of naturally happen. But I think it's important to because you need to have an emergency fund. You need to start saving. You need to not be strapped down with having to pay all this debt.

A lot of people don't realize they got three credit cards and they're paying 200 bucks a month just for interest. And then they're barely getting by. They're never fully paying them off. And you don't even realize that. Imagine if you had $200 more dollars a month. And all you got to do is get ahead once and then just stay there. And it changes everything. that $200 buffer that when your battery shot and it would have destroyed you, now you've got that in the bank, battery dies, and you're like, "Oh, phew. I don't necessarily want to spend it, but thank God I can just get another battery and keep going and keep saving." And that's I think that's what it is is it it frees you up a little bit.

How do monthly payments affect long-term freedom? It's the same thing is like I I just kind of said like don't get a truck payment if you don't need it. You don't want payments on anything. That's why it's better to buy a piece of $5,000 land than $10,000 and finance it. Because if you don't have the payment, then immediately you don't have rent or mortgage. And and now you have $24,000 more that's liquid and available to you. Imagine having $24,000 available to you. Basically, think about that. Whatever you pay in rent or mortgage, times that by 12 and you don't now you don't pay that. And that's what you got free and liquid.

Now, imagine how much less money you'd have to make to get by if you spend less. How do people over wait avoid overbuilding or overspending early on? Yeah, we we'll talk about that a little bit more later. And it's uh like I say, the systems, you know, start start basic. Don't don't get a $100,000 well on day one if it's going to pull you back from being able to maybe fence parts of your property or build the shelter that you need or the livestock or water it. You know, it would be better to have a really good rain harvesting system and all your systems in place to start with because that's going to allow you to not pay mortgage and to save money and eventually buy that well as well.

you're ready to thrive. And initially when I did this, this part was a little more motivational. You want, you know, now you're now you got things going. Why don't you start to enjoy life a little bit? Take a deep breath, create boundaries, surround yourself with good, improve yourself, read books, journal, eat healthy, sleep, help others, be kind, stop complaining, don't be a victim, and never give up. And that's true in a lot of ways. You know, the first six years I was out here, almost the whole six years, I was working as hard as I physically possibly could. I destroyed my body. Honestly, for the last 3 months, I've been recovering.

My back is still jacked. Like, I'm I hope I bounced back fully. I pushed myself too hard and I learned the hard way. Hard work is great in the beginning, but you don't want to overdo it and hurt yourself and and eventually it's actually a good strategical thing to work less. Learn what you want to do is as you build your business, you start to learn. You got kind of an 8020 rule. So 80% of the effort you put into your business is almost kind of wasted. And it's only 20% of it that is actually really generating income and doing the most for you and your homestead and everything, right?

And so as you can start to identify those 20% of things that you're doing that are making exponential difference, then just do more of that and and don't do the other 80%. Start taking that 80% energy and putting it in there. So you're working less and getting better results. That's how rich people get rich. And I'm not rich, but I can see it. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. My whole life I I was fighting and in survival mode. And I finally get the homestead set up so that all the infrastructure is there. I get my occupancy permit for the cabin.

And it was right about then that I was like, seriously, this is wild, right? But I'm telling you, I was holding my breath my whole life. I literally, it's I swear it's like I didn't get that little bit of relief until I was 42 years old. Just finally, it's like I finally landed in a solid foundation. And that's what this is all about. It's not that I love all the rules in the world, but for me it was just I just wanted to build a forever home that's safe and secure and solid and I did that and and I'm just sharing with other people how they could do it, too.

I'm not saying it's the only right way. It's just the way that I did it. You know, we talked about debt and all that and I hardly bought anything for the longest time. I would hardly buy clothes, hardly buy hardly buy anything. And it was just just recently. I felt guilty when I did it, too. But I I bought a receiver so that I could listen to my records and and you know what though as I noticed like I listen to Temptations and 50s and old music, you know, uh Marty Robbins and those songs make me feel really good and it and those allow me to really enjoy my life in my cabin.

And so you see that that investment is actually a valuable investment. That's still not a frivolous p purchase because now I'm on my feet and it actually makes sense to enjoy life. Like what else are you doing this all for? Uh I was running my business on a cell phone forever before I got a computer, you know? And so you can just start to finally enjoy your life and and also improving yourself is massive. That's one of the biggest things that one of the biggest transformations on my homestead is who I, you know, well, who I was at the beginning and who I am now.

I've grown a lot, that's all. Lost a lot of weight. You know, I quit drinking and all those kind of things. So, so here's some questions for this section. What does long-term off-grid success actually look like? I think I think if you can generate most your income, if you can generate most of everything from your homestead, that's I think that's pretty great. If you're if you're creating somehow most your food, water, shelter, and all those things, I think that that'll put you in a pretty good position. How do you avoid burnout while building? And that's something I was just touching on is how I finally felt relaxed and cooled.

And it's great to work hard at first when when you don't have money, but you have time. Work hard and and use that to create wealth for yourself, such as building and whatnot, but don't work so hard that you tear your body down. That was my mistake. I messed up there. Uh, what would you do differently if starting over today? Man, I I I feel kind of good about the fact that I just really wouldn't change much, but I I probably would have slowed down a little bit. I worked way hard and and I prided myself on it, but looking back, I that's not the best approach to go.

It's good to have good work ethic and all that. Don't be lazy, but that's one of the biggest mistakes I made. And uh what what else? I probably would have started spreading the manure out on the ground sooner to improve the soil, but that's a long game. It takes a long time to get there. Uh oh. Had I known I could have built the sistns, I just dreamed up the sistns one day and then that made a massive expansion on my rainwater harvesting cuz I couldn't afford, you know, the barrels. The barrels are a dollar a gallon, you know. So that 10,000gallon system would have cost 10 grand, but I paid 200.

So that helped. Uh, you know, I'm not saying it's perfect. If you can afford $10,000 for 10,000 gallons of storage, then go for it. If it's in your margin, you know, but it wasn't in mine. So, if I could have done that right out the gate, that probably would have helped. Oh, and I I told you guys to start your website and and social media and blog today, I would have if I had I known how important a blog is, I would have been creating higher quality blogs from day one. And I didn't. I messed up big time there. So, those are some good things that'll help your business grow.

And here's some Oh, well, let's Well, yeah, here's some final questions. And we're still not we're not done yet. We're still going to uh wrap up. I'm going to give you kind of an an a little bit of an overview of um my new framework that I how I understand this all better now. But uh what do most people completely misunderstand about off-grid living? Well, the first thing that comes to mind is people constantly tell me if you're on the internet, you're not off-rid. If you're this or that, you know, and all they're doing is moving the goalpost. Like I think it's just fun on the internet to mess with people, but the definition of off-rid is just simply disconnected from the electrical grid and technology changes and whatever.

So, at the end of the day, it's just semantics. It really doesn't even matter. But I think a lot of people have a fantasy idea of what off-grid is. And and really, if you want to have an ex a perfectly if you want to build a residential home right here, put in a septic system, put in a well and all that, you could have the exact same home right here, you know, and and you can get a nice solar system and and you don't need to be in pain and whatnot. the or suffering or struggling. The reason I I struggled is I started with almost nothing and so I started with very very very very little.

So I was basically just homeless out here on my own land as I slowly built up infrastructure. So if you can afford to start day one with a cabin and a septic system in and a fully fenced yard and then that's by all means the way to do it. What do you emphasize? Oh, why do you emphasize counter research so heavily? So, I think I pretty well covered this, but it the whole point behind it is I'm speaking to the person who I was when I started basically. And no one said this. I've still never heard anyone say this. Start with the county, not the land.

What it does is solves a huge problem for you right out the gate in a simple sentence that you'll remember. And I'm just saying that if you go to the county, talk to the county, find out what you can and can't do. You know, you call counties before you ever buy land, you find out, oh, this county is workable and they're they don't mind if I have a homestead really. You know, I just got to follow some simple rules and everything will be okey dokie. Well, then you you start there. You stay in contact with them all the time. They've been nothing but friendly when they came out and inspected my compost pelp privy toilet system and and this whole process.

There was not one point where they were mean to me or anything. People make it sound so scary and it was just frustrating a little bit like it's monotonous as all going through the paperwork but they weren't mean. It it wasn't scary other than your own oh no this is scary but in but in all reality it wasn't that bad. And that's why it's just might be easier for certain people to just follow the rules. And that just, you know, that the whole point is that it takes away the possibility of creating expensive mistakes and wasted time. Uh oh. And what does frugal Oh, what does frugal sustainability actually mean to you?

Well, so frugal itself, a lot of people think frugal means to just be cheap and not spend money at all. That's not true. But when I started, I did choose not to spend any money at all. However, eventually over time when you as long as you're in your margin, you're making enough money to cover it. And they make sense, you buy stuff that has a use for you that's going to compound. And so I have expensive work boots because otherwise I'd be buying a $45 pair every month or two, but instead I've got a pair of boots that I could resole for life. There's some things that cost a little bit more money, but they're still frugal because they actually in the end make the most sense.

Um, an example, paying a truck company to haul hay in for me makes more sense for me right now than to buy a big old tractor and have a massive payment. It would be really nice and people would think I was pretty cool to have the tractor, but it just makes more sense financially in my margin to just hire a truck, even though it's expensive to have the hay delivered for now. That just makes more sense. Just briefly, I just wanted to show you this is the beginning of my new lecture, which is a systemsbased structure. So, building a stable life and this is after six years.

I still find that previous lecture valuable, but I now better understand things. And and so I talk about evaluating tools and resources, decide what actually matters, choose forward progress, accept perfe or or uh imperfection without losing momentum. So an example, my my livestock shelters are still scrap material. I'll upgrade them eventually. And now I no longer just look at food, water, shelter. I look at shelter, water, food, power, and income. And they can be moved through in any sequence over time. You want to start with all of them in the camper van or whatever the cabin, but and then and then slowly build all these systems up.

These five systems are all you need to be successful. And so this is my systemsbased thinking. And so if this workshop helped you organize things and you want a deeper version of my systemsbased thinking, you'll want to check out the frugal off-grid path. The new lecture will touch on everything we talked about today, but in way more detail and it's more structured and it includes the road map, which is to help people calm down and have clarity if you're on the fence about the whole thing. my first two books from the first two years out here. It comes with the eight hour version of that webinar series.

So, so each section I spent over an hour on and you know, of course, it has my new lecture and the ebook that accompanies it. Um, or you can get my author printed physical copy that, you know, it's got a nice cover on it. And then this is nice paper, not just regular printer paper. All the diagrams and whatnot are in there. And before you get started at all, go get my free guide on the website. It's super inclusive. It includes an overview of the four-step off-grid land system and it covers gosh, I think the first two years. There's all kinds of photos. It's very, very detailed.

It was going to be a book, but I chose to just give it to everybody for free. And ultimately, the important thing is to not try to just rush into it and do everything at once. It's about building a structured life with a little bit more order and moving forward with confidence.