How to buy a ranch with $236

Two weeks ago, I began telling you the story of our 10 years at The Rally Ranch by not telling you anything about The Rally Ranch, but rather a quick anecdote about what life was like renting a parking lot without a bathroom.

Then life happened, and I didn’t send this last week, because turns out it’s a harder story to tell concisely than I expected. As I like to say, if I knew how hard anything actually was, I would never do it.

But as usual, I digress, so here we go.. 

We’re starting the actual ranch story off like any good real estate story.. Doomscrolling Zillow for properties I could never afford.

The year was 2014, and it was what we could call the first year of “success” for Rally Ready. We lost money, but we also brought in more than $1000 gross revenue, so it felt like a slam dunk, and there was a ground swell of opportunity at our feet.

I wanted to keep that motivation up. So I would scroll Zillow from time to time and daydream about what property I would buy if the resources or opportunity presented itself.

And I found an amazing property in Bastrop county. 

It was 850 thousand dollars.

I did not have 850 thousand dollars.

So I clicked “contact agent.”

The next day, I was at LKQ Pick Your Part trying to find some parts for our BMW 318ti. I found a good donor car, and I was considering whether I should buy one door or both doors to replace the dented and rusted doors that were currently on the car I aimed at building into a rally school car.

I checked our Frost bank account.

The account balance was $236

So I decided maybe I’d just buy the driver’s door.

While I was struggling with the fact that I had lived in Honda world my whole life, which meant I had only brought 8mm, 10mm, 12mm, 14mm, 17mm, and 19mm wrenches and sockets, which didn’t necessarily correlate to BMW hardware, the phone rang.

It was the agent from the aforementioned property in Bastrop.

Like a good used car salesman, he mentioned that he was pretty sure the sellers had decided to keep that property, but that he’d check.. Meanwhile, I should give him my wishlist for a property and what my use case was and he’d see what he could find.

So I gave him a quick synopsis, and he said “no, like the whole wishlist. What’s the dream?”

Well hell, dreaming I’m good at.

So I laid it on him.

No more than 45 minutes from downtown Austin

Open acreage for a main training area.

Forest with changing elevation, ideally with existing roads.

A big stock tank with enough water to never have to fill a water truck with tap water.

A big ol’ ranch house that could double as a classroom and a small workshop.

Private enough that neighbors won’t complain about the noise.

Before I could finish, he was just positive he had the place I was looking for. “I’ve got a place I think you’re gonna love.” he claimed, with a confidence only a man who had successfully sold Firestone tires to a Ford Explorer owner in 1999 could muster.

So, with my remaining 160 dollars, I agreed to meet him tomorrow to look at this 750 thousand dollar property in Dale, TX (wherever that is) that I definitely would be able to afford.

When I pulled up to the gate, I knew I was done for.

It was perfect.

The 2 miles of gravel road leading to the gate was charming to me at the time. 

The narrowing road that just kept getting skinnier and skinnier until it arrived at a working oil pump, and a sagging gate made from old drill pipe that was a visual reminder to get your tetanus booster? Spot on.

Time from the Capitol Building to the gate? 44 minutes. Nailed it.

The next hour was a blur of adrenaline, excitement, and vision for how we could turn this truly unbelievably perfect property into our new home.

There were roads through the woods, huge elevation changes, 3 stock tanks that never ran dry, and as we had written down in 2010 at our first vision session for this new rally school concept, there was a 2-story house with a shop downstairs and a porch that overlooked the track.

I put in an offer.

Who was gonna pay for it? No idea, but I had to at least put in an offer.

I got a counter offer, and it was less, but not much less.

Cool, now I have a baseline.

Over the next few weeks, I brainstormed on ways I could make it happen, who I could beg or borrow from, how I could update my business plan to show a way to cash flow this idea of a race car driving school with old Honda Civics at a cattle ranch in a town nobody had ever heard of.

And then, a few months later, I sat down to lunch with my friend Adam, who had recently sold his company. 

Adam and I met at X-Games, where we had aggressively canvassed across the sidewalk as spectators left the Rallycross race. Adam had brought his kids, and thought driving rally cars sounded cool, so he came out with a friend.

Despite shearing all of the lug studs off of the Integra we let him drive, Adam was hooked, and he saw the vision.

I could fill a few emails with how we got from that first lunch to Adam buying The Rally Ranch for us, but the CliffsNotes is that we sure wouldn’t be here without him.

June 5, 2015, we unlocked the gate for the first time, and started moving our things into The Rally Ranch.

There may never be a feeling quite like the absolute endless and immeasurable opportunity, optimism, excitement, and sheer joy of the first day we walked around the ranch ideating where we’d be doing what.

On the hard days, I try to think back to that day, before I even owned that land, and how big and possible everything felt.

So while it took me another 5 years to buy the ranch from Adam, and that story is an even longer one, this will have to get you through today.

Next week, I’ll share the following week between buying the ranch and teaching our first class, and my next lesson in blind ambition, assuming I could build a whole rally course in 5 days.

Love you, mean it (especially you, Adam). Catch you next week if I can stay focused and actually keep writing..

TD

 

The original tenants that got booted when we moved in

Lake Lasek a few months before Bucky cast his first line

The ranch house from my first visit in 2014.. There’s still some green trim showing that we never finished painting.. Oops.

The forest rally stages definitely started with good stockEditor’s note - I don’t actually believe anybody will read this far down Dave’s old man story time.. So if you make it this far, we have a 2-Day Rally School October 6-7 and if you reply to this email, I’ll give you a ridiculous deal on a seat in that class.. Yeah, I’m typing to myself at this point, aren’t I.