I’ve turned this new passionate idea over a hundred different ways in my head, usually at night on the ride home after spending 12 hours on a film set! This idea doesn’t feel like a hobby, but it feels like something I’m being called to build or at minimum work towards.
I’ve seen a version of a multi family arrangement done well…
A group of immediate family members pooling together on a piece of land maybe 10-15 acres total, with each family holding their own section, but sharing the larger footprint.
A garden big enough to matter, fruit trees that take a decade to mature, planted anyway because someone’s grandchildren will eat from them and a bunch of chickens running around in a contained environment.
Even in a newsletter I’ve created built on being honest about decision-making, it is a little uncomfortable to write about publicly. You know the saying “don’t tell people your goals”; I’m sure whether or not I work towards this in the background while building my creative career someone will have something negative to say. Maybe not, who knows.
Here’s where I actually am with it.
The idea I keep coming back to isn’t buying raw land solo, it’s the shared-family model because the capital and the labor both get lighter when they’re split across more than one household. That means the real first decision isn’t “how many acres,” it’s “who’s actually in.” Land is easy to buy, but a functioning multi-family arrangement that doesn’t fall apart over money or decision-making five years in is the hard part.
The structural question I’m sitting with:
How do you own something like this so it survives disagreements, deaths, and decades, without one person’s decisions being able to unravel it for everyone else? The honest answer is that the “we’ll figure it out as family” isn’t a legal structure. We need a real operating agreement, drafted by someone who does this professionally.
What’s actually stopping me right now? First, is the elephant in the room, money. Then it’s sequencing. I don’t want to buy land and then figure out the family structure after the fact; I’ve seen that go badly for other people. The real next step is a conversation with the people I’d want to build this with. I need to know whether they’re really in, before a single dollar moves or an idea is planned.
Premium Access
I will have updates when these conversations are had and completed for paid members only. Continue to follow along my creative entrepreneur journey full of business decisions, creative reels and investment updates from someone who is actually in the field, not speaking from the sidelines. I will have other like-minded members soon who will also be able to pass on great lessons through out podcast and chatroom on Substack.
If land or another investment has been sitting in the back of your mind, I’d genuinely like to know what’s stopped you from moving on it?