The Land Doctor

Creating Customized Dream Ranches

STORY BY LORIE A. WOODWARD | PHOTOS BY THE LAND DOCTORS

When Kelly Hurt was trying to settle on a name for the ranch brokerage he founded in Allen, Oklahoma in 2015, The Land Doctors fit the bill.

“It resonated on several levels,” he said. He earned a Ph.D. through a program that focused on cleaning up and restoring contaminated properties. Hurt is a trained Land Doctor.

Second, Hurt had discovered that soon after closing most people asked him the same question: “Do you know somebody who can help us improve our ranch?” They were searching for someone to help them realize their dreams for the land whether it was restoring the land’s ecological productivity, building a house or creating other infrastructure.

“I remembered a case study that I’d read about McDonald’s and how the company had increased sales just by asking, ‘Do you want fries with that?’” Hurt said. “I started asking, ‘Do you want a house, a lake or some other improvement with your ranch?’ And I set about to put a team in place that could help people ‘doctor’ up their land.”

The team has determined that clients almost always want to change, improve, remove or build something.

“The relationship that we’ve developed with our clients through the acquisition helps us work together to effectively achieve the vision for their property,” Hurt said.

Finally, he knew first-hand about the land’s healing power. Hurt was a young teenager when his older sister died in a car accident. He used a “pack of hound dogs, a .22 rifle and a fishing pole” to cope with the grief.

“Land and nature can heal individuals and families,” Hurt said. “A farm or ranch gives them a quiet place to slow down and enjoy being with one another. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to appreciate that as the most important part of this whole deal.”

When Hurt claimed the name in 2015, he was a solo act with no listings. Today, the team of highly educated, boots-on-theground professionals numbers 10. Collectively, they’ve sold about 50,000 acres within the borders of the Sooner State.

“Oklahoma is mostly small farms and ranches,” he said. “We’ve amassed that total 300 acres at a time, which translates into a lot of transactions.”

The Measure of Success

For Hurt, bigger is not better. In his eyes, success is not the number of agents, the number of sales or a massive bottom line.

“The best accomplishment in this business is the acquisition of talent and lasting friendships,” Hurt said. “In our culture, it seems like people have bought into the idea that the person who leaves this world with the most material possessions wins. In my mind, the big winners are the people who lived a life doing the work they loved with people they enjoy.”

He recounted an experience with his young son. They were running trail cameras on one of the company’s listings. His son asked if they were working.

To which Hurt replied, “Yeah, this passes as work for us. Why would we ever want to stop living this way?”

Hurt, who previously worked as the Chief Environmental, Health and Safety Officer for the Chickasaw Nation’s Division of Commerce, recruited Ron Ward to join the firm upon his retirement from the tribe. During their respective tenures for the tribal government, they had worked together on numerous projects including constructing WinStar World Casino, the world’s largest casino.

“When I figured out that everyone wanted us to build something for them, I knew nobody could deliver better than Ron, so I asked him to join me,” Hurt said.

The rest of The Land Doctors came from the rank of colleagues or former clients. Each has roots firmly in farming, ranching, hunting or some other land-based pursuit and all bring real world experience and specialized knowledge. Their expertise ranges from advertising, video production and information systems management to construction, development and ranch management.

In the case of Steve Owen, he brings more than 40 years working as a landman for large independent oil and gas companies to the table for the Land Doctors’ clients. In 2021, he retired as Senior Vice President of the Land Department for Continental Resources, Inc., where he oversaw 117 people, negotiated complicated transactions and associated contracts with individuals and other energy companies, and reviewed title opinions often exceeding 200 pages. His career culminated in the closing of over $2.5 billion dollars of assets.

Hurt helped Owen and his wife find their dream property. By Owen’s own estimation, they were picky.

“Kelly about drove himself crazy finding the property that was exactly right for us,” said Owen, who was reared on a corn and soybean farm in Illinois and educated in Kansas. “But in the process, we became fast friends. What I’ve learned is that is the expected norm with Kelly and happens more often than not.”

Owen never expected to return to the working world, but the opportunity to focus his attention on the land’s surface (and work with his best friend) struck a chord with him.

“I’ve spent the majority of my career working with subsurface estates,” Owen said. “Being part of The Land Doctors’ team gives me a chance to help folks buy where they want to live, work and play, while making them happy and establishing relationships that last.”

Unlike the corporate, bottom-line atmosphere, he encountered in the oil and gas industry, The Land Doctors operate as an “all for one, one for all” family. Owen told a story of visiting an old-time ranching couple who were considering selling and interviewing potential agents.

As he often does, Owen took his wife and son, who was home from college, with him to meet with the potential clients. Watching the family’s interaction was the reassurance the owners’ needed. They listed with Owen and The Land Doctors.

“The Land Doctors is a family enterprise,” Owen said. “The depth and breadth of Kelly’s knowledge constantly impresses me, but he’s the most humble-and-down to earth person you’ll ever meet. His moral compass doesn’t waver and his unpretentious leadership sets the tone for everything we do around here.”

Mayberry Meets NASA

Hurt, a member of the fifth-generation farming family from north Mississippi, had never considered going to college until the 1980s Farm Crisis.

“I’d have probably never left home without the Farm Crisis,” Hurt said. “But, after our family went through that, we all had to go get a job away from the farm.”

His stellar ACT scores earned scholarship offers from multiple universities. He decided to stay close to home and attend Mississippi State. His strong academic performance as an undergraduate in geology, prompted an offer of graduate school.

“College was a whole lot of fun and somebody paying me to keep going to school seemed like a good deal,” said Hurt, laughing.

His Ph.D. in environmental science was conferred through Mississippi State’s Department of Forestry. Post-doctoral work, sponsored by the National Academy of Sciences at the Kerr Laboratory, brought him to Oklahoma in 1997. Later, he served as Tyson Foods’ environmental manager for Oklahoma before embarking on his career with the Chickasaw Nation. As his responsibilities grew for the tribal government, he began assessing their real estate purchases from an environmental standpoint. In 2008, he obtained his real estate license and began selling property part-time.

“Growing up, our family had dairy cows, beef cows, pigs, chickens, and horses, and in our spare time, we built houses and cut pulpwood,” Hurt said. “On Sunday mornings, we went to church, but the rest of the time, we worked, unless we could sneak off and go hunting or fishing.”

In 2010, real estate became his primary focus. All his education, life skills and hands-on professional experience informs the way he approaches the land industry. As a scientist, he is trained to find answers through careful analysis. Thorough evaluation coupled with the farm-bred self-reliance gives him the confidence to tackle just about anything.

For instance, when clients wanting to raise cattle commercially come to The Land Doctors searching for productive ranch land, Hurt and his team calculate the cost of a ton of forage per acre based on the various soil types across the ranches under consideration. Ranches that produce the most forage with the fewest inputs such as fertilizer or feed enhance the rancher’s chances of success.

“Cows don’t eat acres, they eat grass,” Hurt said. “So, we want to find the ranch that naturally produces the most forage for our clients so that they can increase their stocking rate and profitability.”

The forage calculations, which are derived by dividing the sales price by the number of tons of forage produced per year, allows clients to compare “apples to apples” and to make informed decisions. In one case, a client had narrowed the choices down to two ranches. One looked lush, while the other did not. The visual assessment told one story, but the numbers based on cost per ton of forage instead of cost per acre told something completely different.

On the lush ranch, Hurt’s cost per annual ton of forage metric showed that, although the ranch looked great, it was not very productive. “When we divided the price by the tons of annual forage, it drove the price up to $2600/annual ton of forage. The calculation for the ragged ranch yielded $543/annual ton of forage. It was ugly on the surface but had superior bones.” The client bought the property with the lowest cost of operation and within a year had transformed it into a lush oasis through improved grazing management.

“To succeed in this business, you have to look, listen and learn,” Hurt said. “It pays to be open-minded and curious. Everybody on our team is a lifelong learner and our clients benefit from that.”

He continued, “Of course, none of the knowledge matters if you can’t get along with people. Somebody described our approach as ‘Mayberry meets NASA’— and it fits. As country kids who were raised right, we know how to get along well with others.”

Land and nature can heal individuals and families.

What to Expect When You’re Expecting

According to Hurt, the key to success in the ranch real estate business is understanding clients’ motivation and helping them realize their expectations.

“If you think about it, people don’t buy land as much as they buy an expectation of what they’re going to do with it, so we work hard to understand the purpose behind the purchase,” Hurt said. “We ask the right questions and then shut up and listen.”

The interview is wide and deep. The team extracts as many details as the client has considered and then they ask questions to prompt the clients to consider other topics as well.

Once the team is completely clear about what the client wants, they turn their attention to finding it. Their goal is to identify one or two properties that seem like a perfect fit and show those to the clients instead of dragging them hither and yon in hopes that something is a match.

Sellers get the same intensive attention. The team listens to their stories about the land to best position it with buyers.

“They know more about the property than we ever will, so it makes sense to really listen to them,” said Hurt.

Then, the team uses their experience throughout Oklahoma to understand the property’s relative merit and value in the marketplace. The Land Doctors find satisfaction in communicating exactly what a property is and isn’t, so they avoid pointless showings and work with buyers who are interested in that specific type of property.

“We only work in Oklahoma— and we see a lot of ranches,” Hurt said. “We know when something is exceptional, and we know how to make a good ranch better.”

Hurt estimates his team collectively has 50 years of experience with mineral sales and leases, 75 years of experience with ranch sales, more than 100 years of experience in all phases of construction and 150 years of farm experience. Hurt, with his geology background, excels at all aspects of surface water and groundwater.

They pride themselves on being creative and tenacious. Hurt recalled a property that was divided by a deep, impassable creek. To get from one side of the property to the other required a circuitous, five mile trip. When the prospective buyer noted he was really interested in the property, but didn’t want to contend with the inconvenient drive, Hurt asked if he’d buy the property if there was a bridge. The buyer agreed. Hurt and his team built a bridge.

“We’d never built a bridge before, but we did it because it needed to be done,” Hurt said. “The property sold, and the client was happy. Now, he exclusively uses us for his real estate transactions.”

And that level of attention doesn’t end at the closing because the clients are then part of The Land Doctors’ family. As new opportunities such as carbon contracts, a great opportunity to buy or sell minerals or other things that might be beneficial pop up on the radar, the team will reach out to their clients.

“We don’t always make money by doing that, but we think it’s helpful—and we are always looking for an opportunity to help our folks out,” Hurt said. “From the beginning to the end, we’re partners in making our clients’ dreams come true.”°

Dedicated to the memory of Christian Owen, beloved son of Steve and Kelly Owen, May 14, 2001—March 16, 2023.