An entrepreneur's story about building trust with landowners

In this episode, Straight Talk hosts Emmery Mehlhoff and Alisha Nord visit with Nic de Castro, founder and CEO of LandTrust. 

Nic grew up hunting and exploring the outdoors. After several years in the corporate world across the United States, Nic found himself in Bozeman, Mont., with a passion to begin his own company founded on his love of the outdoors. Enter LandTrust.

LandTrust is an online platform connecting landowners and recreators. Similar to AirBnb, Vrbo and other hosting platforms, LandTrust allows landowners to sign up their land for free.

In today’s episode we talk about how:

• LandTrust works and what it is 
• You can protect your liability AND share your land with others
• To protect your property rights and give access to hunters

To find out more about LandTrust and to sign up visit https://landtrust.com

Farm Bureau members receive an additional 5% on their LandTrust listings. Find out more https://ndfb.org/benefits/landtrust/. 

Contact our hosts at emmery@ndfb.org . 

Transcript

[Straight Talk theme]

[00:14] Emmery: Welcome to Straight Talk with NDFB. I am your host, Emmery Mehlhoff

[00:18] Alisha: And Alisha Nord. 

[00:19] We are your Farm Bureau duo bringing you your competitive edge.

[00:23] Alisha: Today we chatted with Nic de Castro with LandTrust. We talked about the company as a whole and what it looks like for the outdoorsman, along with the landowner, and how LandTrust benefits both.

[00:34] Emmery: We talk about how LandTrust works, how you can sign up your land, your liability situation, and how much money LandTrust could make you. Join us for this episode. 

[Straight Talk stinger]

[00:49] Emmery: Well, welcome to Straight Talk with NDFB. Today we have Nic di Castro from the... CEO, excuse me, of Land trust. How are you today, Nick?

[00:57] Nic: I'm doing really well. Thank you, ladies, for having me on.

[01:00] Emmery: So you're joining us from Montana. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and who you are?

[01:07] Nic: Sure. Absolutely. So, yes, I'm calling you from Bozeman, Montana, right now. That's where we know some corporate headquarters. We also do have an office in Fargo as well. Yeah. So I guess if you want to get back into who I am, where I come from, originally, I was born in southern California. I grew up hunting, fishing, surfing, all sorts of outdoor stuff. Once I grew up, got through high school, I went to the east coast to go to school, and then I followed a career prior to starting this company all around the country. So I lived in Boston, Chicago, New York, San Francisco, LA, Boulder, Colorado, and then found my way up to Bozeman in the end of 2016.

[01:47] Emmery: So what inspired you to start LandTrust? Do you.... were you tired of living all across the nation, or what was your motivation?

[01:56] Nic: It's a great question. So, again, I grew up... I know some of your listeners are going to think Southern California hunting? That doesn't make any sense! Well, I'm 36 years old. When I was growing up in the early '90s, it was a little bit different. It was a pretty great place to grow up then, there was a lot less development. And, yeah, I grew up with a passion for the outdoors. Obviously in my 20s, with my old career, I was traveling a bunch. I did not get to get outdoors too much in any of those cities. So when I had moved to Colorado, I started to kind of reconnect with fishing a lot more. And then when I got back to Montana, I did a lot more hunting. And I would hunt, of course, throughout my 20s with my dad when I go home. But it wasn't all the time. And kind of immediately was confronted with what today is LandTrust, which is in Montana, we have actually quite a bit of public land, which public land is a great resource. But if anyone out there likes to hunt or fish or do other outdoor activities, private land is amazing and offers really cool opportunities. And you don't have to deal with kind of fighting with the public to go out and enjoy a resource. And I found myself wanting to access the beautiful farms and ranches that we have in and around Bozeman to go out and hunt your fish for the day or the weekend. And I was happy to pay for the opportunity, but there was just no easy way to do it. And of course, door knocking has existed forever, as I'm sure all your members know. But frankly, the success rate of door knocking was very, very low. And it's not just from my perspective. I've talked to many people about that. It's just things have changed over the years. So, yeah, that's what led to wanting to start LandTrust.

[03:35] Emmery: Basically, LandTrust works with both the farmer and then the recreationist or the hunter fisherman to connect them and give great opportunities for both. What does that interface look like? How does it work?

[03:50] Nic: Sure. So for any of your listeners, they may be familiar with home sharing websites like Airbnb or Vrbo. Maybe they've even used RV sharing platforms like RV share Outdoorsy. Well, you know, LandTrust is a land sharing marketplace. So we look and feel a lot like these other marketplaces. So landowners, they can come on and list their properties with us. So we have about a million and a half acres in about 40 states of land. Most of that is owned by owner-operator production ag landowners. So multigeneration farmer ranch families, and they list their properties with us and the types of activities that they'd be willing to host. So, of course, I started the company around hunting. So hunting is by far the largest activity that we facilitate today. But we absolutely do facilitate fishing. We've been getting a little bit more into the rv and camping side of things, and there's a myriad of things you could host. And, yeah, for a landowner, it's a pretty easy process. It doesn't cost anything, so it's free to list with LandTrust, we're business partners with our landowners, so we only make money when they do, when people actually make bookings and we tell our landowners, you maintain all control. So you can decide, "Hey, we only want to host, let's say turkey hunting. My family likes to hunt deer, but we don't really care much about turkeys. So we'll host turkey hunters out here, and we want to only host three turkey hunts this year, and it costs this much." And these are the rules. So they get to retain all control over their land and their property rights. And then as a sportsman or someone who loves the outdoors, they can go to landrust.com and they can look at all these different know. We obviously just launched in North Dakota earlier this have, I believe we have quite a few listings in North Dakota, and we already have facilitated quite a few trips out there, too. But yeah, a sportsman can come and look at different listings and what they have to offer and prices and calendars. And like I said, it looks and feels a lot like Airbnb or Vrbo, some of these other marketplaces that your audience may be familiar with.

[05:42] Emmery: Yeah, it's really great service that you guys are offering. Just if you think about one of the biggest complaints that farmers and ranchers have about hunters is feeling like their property gets trampled on a bit you know? Especially if it's a trespassing situation. But being able to write the terms and be able to have people come on, because typically farmers and ranchers want to have individuals come on to hunt, to fish, to take care of some of the wildlife and to enjoy it just as much as we do. Being able to set those terms and say, "Hey, this is what we're looking at. This is the season our corn is off this time of year. This would be a great time for you to come out," is really attractive. So as a landowner, somebody who's interested in listing land with you guys, what does the sign up process look like? I mean, I know with Airbnb, for example, there's some hoops you have to jump through just with filling out some paperwork. What does it look like to sign up land on your LandTrust?

[06:41] Nic: Yeah, great question. So we try to make it as easy as possible. Again, we work with hundreds of producers all over the country. We know that whether you're a farmer or a rancher, you have about six jobs every day. So we understand that in a lot of states, we have what we call landowner success managers, and their job title is descriptive. Their whole job is based around making our landowner successful, because when they're successful, we are. That's how we make money. So actually, in North Dakota, we have great landowner success manager. His name is Austin. He's based in Fargo. So if you have a North Dakota landowner who's interested, they can give us a text or go to the website. We have a phone number on there. You can text or email us or call us. And if it sounds interesting to you, Austin will actually come out and visit your property and answer any more questions you have. He's happy to take photos. And really, our team takes on all the onboarding tasks as you talked about filling out paperwork or doing stuff online. We do pretty much all of that for our landowners. So we have a team of people whose only job is building listings for our landowners to make it really easy for them to go live on the site. So Austin would come out and visit. If all the questions are answered and it sounds good, we'll set up, I don't know, 15-20 minute call to review your listing, show you how it works. It's really easy. Our farmers and ranchers basically manage their LandTrust listings from their phone. Once it's set up, you get text messages and emails, and from that point, it's basically just deciding whether to accept or decline booking requests. You will get questions, but you can talk to the sportsman over the phone if you'd like to. Only if you'd like to. They don't have your phone number. We don't give any of that information out and really vet them. And if you like them, you accept booking requests. And if you don't, you're declining. This isn't something like a hotel where someone can just book your place and you have no say in that. Everything is a request. Like I said, you can message back and forth with them, you can call them over the phone, and if it all sounds good, you accept bookings. And that's when you make money with LandTrust.

[08:43] Emmery: You guys are a member benefit with NDR here. So I believe our members get 90% of that booking fee.

[08:51] Nic: Yeah, I think the standard revenue share. So just our business model. Again, landowners are our business partners. Our mutual customers are the guests. So we don't charge landowners anything to sign up. We only make commissions on transactions. And so our standard rate, I think we've updated it recently, is 80 - 20. So landowners keep 80%, LandTrust gets 20% of the booking, and Farm Bureau members get a 5% increase on that. So it'd be 80 - 15.

[09:16] Emmery: That's awesome.

[09:17] Alisha: How many employees do you guys have at LandTrust? And then also, are they remote in a bunch of different states, or how do you get...um, you had mentioned before that you have employees that go out to the farms and ranches and take pictures and meet with them. So how does that all work?

[09:34] Nic: Sure. Yeah. So LandTrust, we have -- gosh, I should know the exact number -- I believe we have right around 20, maybe 21 employees, but a good chunk of them are here in Montana. I think at our office here, we've probably got ten, but we do have employees kind of scattered out across the country as well. And then our landowner success managers, those are people that we hire in the markets and they're the ones know go out and visit with ranchers and farmers. So we have two of them here in Montana. We have one in North Dakota, two in Nebraska, one in Kansas. And those landowner success managers will cover adjacent states as well.

[10:09] Alisha: Approximately how many acres participate in LandTrust right now?

[10:13] Nic: I believe we're going to end the year right around a million and a half acres in roughly 40 states. I think we roughly doubled it this year.

[10:21] Emmery: Have you gotten a lot of interest from North Dakota farmers? Has that grown over the last few years?

[10:26] Nic: Yeah, absolutely. So we technically didn't really launch North Dakota till, I mean, we hired Austin, our North Dakota landowner success manager, I believe it was around March. And so we technically didn't even have North Dakota launched until March or April of this year. But we have quite a few listings already in North Dakota just in that little amount of time. So yes, there's been quite a bit interesting. We have, I don't know, 89 packages in North Dakota so far.

[10:51] Emmery: Are you finding the same interest on the consumer side of it? Are people excited about it or do they want to come up?

[10:59] Nic: Oh, yes.

[11:00] Emmery: Okay.

[11:01] Nic: Yeah, I had our data scientist pull a couple of stats. So just generally speaking, there is overwhelming interest from the demand side and there's never enough land. So we are constantly seeking to add new landowners to our platform so that we can support the demand that we see. So we had almost 340 sportsman days just this year in North Dakota. We had over 1200 users who have favorited North Dakota as their state and a majority of those are actually from outside of North Dakota. So your question is, are there a lot of people that want to come to North Dakota? Certainly. And again, this is with only a handful of months under our belt in the North Dakota market.

[11:42] Alisha: So what do you feel like has been successful for people finding out about you? You said that just in this last year that your land size has about doubled. So do you do lots of outside pr and marketing or social media or where are people hearing about you?

[11:58] Nic: So on the landowner side specifically, trust is in our name because we know that this entire community, the farming and ranching community, is very trust oriented. Like good old fashioned trust. I started this company and I drove all over the place and sat down and shook hands and looked people in the eyes. And now I have a team that does that. Certainly partnering with -- we've been partners member benefits with Farm Bureau for the last couple of years in a few states. So we're Farm Bureau member benefits in Montana, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and North Dakota. There might be one or two I'm forgetting. We're working on kind of an American Farm Bureau partnership as well. You know, obviously, the stock growers organizations. And then we do a lot of trade shows. But interestingly, one of the biggest channels, the top two channels that we receive new landowners from, one is actually our advertising that we do to the sportsman side. So landowners are seeing our ads for sportsmen and they're saying, oh, that's an interesting thing, and they end up signing up like that. And then the second largest is actually just referrals from our existing landowners. We're really grateful for our landowners who have been with us. We have landowners now who've been with us for three, four years, and they really love sharing kind of their experiences with their, family, neighbors, you know, partners all over the country. And so we do get a lot of landowners just from word of mouth.

[13:16] Emmery: So your biggest demand in North Dakota would definitely be hunting, you'd say?

[13:21] Nic: Yes, I would say just generally across our platform today because we started with hunting. Hunting is still 90-plus percent of the bookings. Now. I think we're going to see that shift a little bit more this coming year because the RV and camping is growing. We've been investing in that and then fishing and just other general outdoor recreation I think will grow, too.

[13:40] Emmery: For that RV camping, you need an RV hookup. Is that the biggest barrier from getting started with something like that?

[13:49] Nic: Yeah, it's a good question. And I want to be clear. We're still learning that marketplace. We know hunting pretty darn well, I'd say at this point. We've been doing it for four and a half years. I mean, there's always much to learn, but the RV stuff is newer to us and we've done quite a bit of development around it in the last few months. As we learn that market, there are like, what's called full-time RVers. They're probably not going to be the customer for LandTrust RV camping. The type of market that I think will serve in the RV camping world is much more of the off-grid boondocking. It's a term for RVers that it means you don't have any hookups. And so they're literally just like, they love the outdoors and they probably own their RV or camper to enable them to go outdoors longer. They like to hunt, they like to fish, they like to bike or whatever. And they bought this RV so that they can go do that for a few days at a time out in the middle of nowhere. If you, as a farmer or rancher, do have hookups, that's great, but it's not required.

[14:44] Emmery: I actually had a guy who texted me who got my number from a neighbor who went through the whole run around and just texted me and said, "Hey, we have a trailer. We are hunters. We just like to park in your field and sleep in our trailer tonight. Is that all right?" It would have been way easier if you could have just logged into the app and just requested and, hey, I could have made $20 off of the experience. So that would have been a good option.

[15:09] Nic: Absolutely. But I do think that's kind of more representative. Again, it's not going to be the full time RVers who are driving big rigs, who are towing golf carts or whatever. That's just a different market. We're looking more for the people who love the outdoors and they own their rigs because of their love of the outdoors. Like I said, we're still learning, but we're starting to kind of dial into who that perfect customer is.

[15:32] Alisha: So that kind of brings us to liability and insurance, as we all know that we're kind of in a sue-happy time frame right now. Is that something on your guys'end or is that on the farmers and ranchers end? Or is that just where are you at on that?

[15:49] Nic: Yeah, it's a great question. So since day one, it's been one of the most important things. Liability is always question number one. Yeah. Unfortunately, we do live in a much more litigious society today than we probably did, I don't know, 50 years ago. So LandTrust handles this in a myriad of ways. First, we call this whole thing kind of trust and safety. So I'll walk through from start to finish how we handle this. So, first and foremost, any person who you'd host through LandTrust has accepted our terms of service. So when they create an account with us as a guest, they're holding our landowners harmless. So that's just part of our terms of service. Next, they are doing id verification with us. So for your guests, you have to take a picture of your driver's license or your passport. They do like, live photos. And make sure you are who you say you are. Next, they're paying for their trips with their credit card upfront. And I don't know if you ladies have ever booked Airbnbs or Vrbos for you and your friends. If your name and credit card are the ones on the line, it just kind of adds another level of responsibility. I would say. So we removed that anonymity that I think was the standard before LandTrust. It was someone knocking on your door, right? Or like you said, Emmery, someone randomly texted you because they got your name from somebody. You have no idea who those people are. If something bad did happen, you have really no recourse. So with us, we have ids, we have credit cards. They've already done our terms of service. Also, after every trip, the landowner rates that guest and the guest rates the landowner. And so that is another big kind of accountability piece. Not many landowners are going to let a three star sportsman or guest onto their property. And so I think that ratings thing really keeps people honest as well. 

And now with insurances. It's important to note that I think it's 34 of the top ag producing states, they all have some flavor of the same type of legislation at the state level, which is like an agritourism liability limitation. And North Dakota is one of those states. But essentially they say, "Hey, they want to encourage producers to do this type of stuff because it brings new income onto farms." But they know liability is a big deal. And so the states, essentially, with these agritourism liability limitation laws, are saying, if you're doing any of these things on your property, and as long as there's no gross negligence, we will limit your liability at the state level, which is great. Beyond that, LandYrust has a few different types of insurances. So we have participant insurance. So even though that guest has already accepted that they're holding you, the landowner, harmless and that they're responsible for themselves, if they get injured. Let's say they step in a badger hole and break their leg or something like that, they're liable for themselves. But they could also come to LandTrust, and we'll pay up to $10,000 in medical bills. We have property protection, which we self insure. So if someone breaks a gate or the fame shoots a cow, it's never happened. But it's asked a lot about that. That guest is responsible for that. But if for some reason, they're trying to not be responsible for it, LandTrust will write a check to the farmer or rancher for up to $10,000 per incident. Joke. We'll write you a check for the cow, and we'll eat the cow. And then the last piece is just our general liability. So we have a million dollar general liability insurance policy. It's a last dollar policy. It backs up any insurance policies that the landowner has. And in quite a few states, you, the Farm Bureau, have insurance policies that could be called like, the agritainment riders. Not all states have it. I know you guys have different insurance blocks, but in quite a few states, I know that Farm Bureau actually offers an insurance product that's, I think it's a couple hundred bucks a year. That's like first dollar agritainment coverage. We try to approach it from every way we can. I often ask ranchers and farmers, when they ask about liability, I say, well, have you had anyone else out in your place that's not your family recently? And they say, yes. Well, you have more exposed doing that than you are having people out through LandTrust.

[19:32] Emmery: It's pretty obvious that's one of your number one questions.

[19:35] Nic: Oh, yeah.

[19:37] Emmery: Would you say overall that you find that you very rarely have to use any sort of liability protection at all, or does it creep up? We're always afraid of that as landowners because obviously there's a lot of people that talk about it. And then there's the one bad story that happens to somebody out there. But what have you found just on the ground experience that you guys have?

[20:02] Nic: Knock on wood, we've had zero claims in four and a half years on a couple thousand trips. So, look, eventually it's just wild, large numbers. Something will happen. But that's why we carry all this stuff, and we will always take care of our partners, who are our landowners.

[20:16] Alisha: I think that's extremely important because, like Emory said, I think that's the number one concern when it comes to the farmers and ranchers is it's not that we don't want people out or we're not excited for them to have this experience. We're just always so worried for that once-in-a-lifetime somebody gets hurt or there's an accident, because we all know that they do happen, and I think that is the biggest concern. So that's great. You guys are fully covered and have many different options for both parties.

[20:46] Emmery: So, okay. Looking at the kind of land that's in demand, are people mostly interested in the grasslands out west? The bird experiences, the elk experiences. Is there demand for duck hunting? What are you finding is highest in demand? Like, area wise? And then what about amount of land? If somebody has a section, quarter section, I suppose signing up 15 acres probably wouldn't do much good.

[21:14] Nic: Yeah, that's a great question. So let's start with that last piece, size of land. The 15 acres might be actually pretty interesting. It just depends on which 15 acres it is. Right. So it's funny. Unproductive ground from an ag perspective is very productive ground from a rec perspective. And we often say that that unproductive acreage, from a production standpoint can often be your highest dollar per acre when you start to roll out recreation, like with LandTrust, if it's 15 acres and it's creek bottom or river bottom, with timber and stuff, that absolutely could do well. So I would just say that there's no minimum size to be listed. It just depends on what that specific ground looks like and maybe has access to. I would say, unless the ground is almost like one of those Iowa rectangles of flat, dark earth and it's just corner to corner beans or something like that, with no timber, nothing around, like that might not be something that would do well right now on LandTrust because there's no kind of habitat for wildlife and for hunting and fishing, that kind of stuff. But generally speaking, if you've got a mix of whether it's pasture or crop and timber or draws or water, any of that kind of stuff is very interesting to people. We have a lot of upland bird hunters. We have a lot of turkey hunters. We did more turkey hunts this last year, I think, than any other species by itself. And that's one of those ones that farmers and ranchers usually kind of laugh at because they don't really care about turkeys. But turkey hunts do a lot of revenue, and it's something to keep an eye on. And then in your part of the world, waterfowl is a very high interest because all the potholes and stuff. So, yes, of course, deer, of course, the big game stuff is always popular, but I think the things that a lot of landowners maybe don't think about is upland birds, grouse, huns, pheasants, of course, and then waterfowl and turkeys.

[23:03] Emmery: So money-wise, if you're looking at signing up something, what are you realistically looking at making off of a little program like this? Just some nice pocket change or what have you seen out there?

[23:17] Nic: Yeah. So, of course, everything depends on what the ground is and what it has to offer, right? So I want to obviously say that, but our landerowners are averaging anywhere from 5-to-10 thousand dollars, I think is kind of a very average number just from the hunting space. And of course, as we add new, quote, products on, like RV and camping and farm and ranch experiences, et cetera, that will grow. But we have plenty of landowners who've made 40, 50, $60,000 a year just from the hunting aspect.

[23:42] Emmery: Wow.

[23:43] Nic: And remember, this is almost pure profit, right? This is just an asset. It's monetizing an asset that sits underneath your feet every day. So it's just access to your land. It's not guided, it's not outfitted. It's just, "Hey, you guys are allowed to go out here for a few days." If you have lodging, that's great because it can increase the booking sizes. Lodging for LandTrust could mean you'll allow somebody to tent camp, you'll allow someone to pull an RV on the property, or you got a little bunk house or cabin or whatever it might be. It's not required, but it's nice to have.

[24:11] Emmery: That makes sense. So, Nick, do you still get to enjoy going out hunting, or are you pretty busy by your company that you started here? You started your dream, but now do you get to enjoy it?

[24:23] Nic: When I started the company, I had zero children, and now I have three daughters, four and under. So I have a four year old, almost three year old, and a one year old and a company. So I do not get to hunt very often. But it's a phase of life as we keep building and my daughters get old enough to take out, I'm hoping I get to do quite a bit more.

[24:44] Emmery: Yeah, that's awesome. Are you guys still looking at starting a partnership with Onyx Maps?

[24:49] Nic: Yeah, we do partner with them right now. So it's a good question. And for the landowners out there, again, we build this to be do it yourself for the sportsman. And a big part of that is maps and ensuring that those guests can understand your property maps, understand waypoints, understand places they can and can't go, et cetera. And so we do partner with Onyx Maps and another mapping app called Huntwise, both more in the hunting space. And so as part of your listing with us, our team will build these digital maps of your property. Again, talk to you about, hey, where do you want people to park? Where a trail, mark where tree stands or blinds are, mark where game cameras are, all that stuff. And then once somebody books with you and you accept it, we send that over. So their arrival instructions is not only kind of your written arrival instructions, like, hey, you go two and a half miles down the road, and at the windmill, you make a left and it's the red barn, that kind of stuff. But also, we're sending them the complete digital maps of your property as well so that they can be truly self guided.

[25:49] Alisha: So if people want to connect with you or just kind of, you see more about LandTrust or what other people have said, whether they're interested in participating or if they're a fisherman, RV, hunter themselves, where do you have where are you most public? Is it Facebook? Social media? Your website? Where can they find the most information about LandTrust?

[26:12] Nic: Yeah, absolutely. So our website will have everything. And that's where you can see all the listings. And if you're a landowner, you can probably go out into whatever state you're in and see which one of your kind of peer landowners is listed with us. So I would go to landtrust.com. Along the top, if you're a landowner, there's a "for landowners" green button there. Sorry, it says "list my land." There's a lot of information there. There's videos of landowners who've been listing with us, talking about their experience with LandTrust. There's a bunch of information, a lot of the stuff we've been talking about here. And then obviously as a guest, when you hit landtrust.com, you can just search by state. You can search by activities or species that you're looking to get after. As a landowner, feel free to call us. So we're real human beings. There's no chat bots or AI involved in any of this stuff. There's real live people here. And a good number to call is 406-709-8450 and our team's here, happy to help if you read reviews about us on Google. Our landowners love how much customer service we provide, so we see ourselves as a service provider. We'll make it very easy for you guys to get your questions answered, but also get your listings live and making money, if that's what you'd like to do.

[27:22] Alisha: Very good. Well, thank you so much for coming on and talking about LandTrust. And we as Farm Bureau are very excited to have you as a member.

[27:31] Nic: Oh, we really appreciate you having us on. It sounded like my team in Fargo was at your annual conference and really enjoyed meeting everybody, and it was kind of our first introduction to the market. So we appreciate being partners. We love the Farm Bureau. They've been our best kind of partner across all the states we're member benefits with. So we really appreciate, we're excited to do really good work with you guys, too.

[27:53] Emmery: Thanks so much for offering that service to our members, and thanks for being on with us today, Nic. Really appreciate it.

[27:59] Nic: Thank you, ladies.

[27:59] Emmery: Yeah, we'll talk soon.

[Straight Talk stinger]

[28:03] Alisha: You've been listening to Straight Talk with NDFB. To learn more or to register your land, head over to landtrust.com.

[Straight Talk theme]