5 Land Investing Habits Successful Investors Practice That Beginners Don't

Hey, everybody. Welcome to Land Geek Nightcap. We got a small crew tonight. John Burnett and myself, Scott Bossman.

I wouldn't call it a small crew.

I mean small like large and hard.

It's good.

Large and hard. I like it. So tonight, tonight, John, good to see you. We're talking about five land investing habits that successful investors practice that beginners don't. So I guess they consider us successful investors. We'll see.

I guess so.

We'll see at the end of the show how good our list is and we might throw a bonus or two in there. So, but welcome, everybody. Joining us, Daniel Bryan is already saying hello. Daniel, nice to see you on here. One of our faithful viewers. We're a few minutes late tonight, so hopefully that doesn't affect our viewership too much. But as always, happy to have John. John, eight is enough. Burnett here.

Cheers.

Handsome Rob, good to see you. John, Land investor now for what, eight or nine years, John?

Eight years. It was my land of us, my land investiversary this month, so mine was too July 1st. Oh, wow.

Was the 10 year. I thank you. Thank you. I ordered the, ordered the Investor toolkit on July 1, 2015.

So you should have done July 4th.

It would be more let freedom ring.

Right, Let it ring.

But, but yeah. So Dano, I think is traveling tonight. Mark is still abroad, so all you folks out there are stuck with us. But as always. Oh, I forgot to mention that the beginning, John, I forgot to mention for those tuning in in the rerun, we do this live every Tuesday night. So come engage and ask questions because, you know, we bring topics, but we don't have, we don't have to, you know, address those topics the entire time we're here for an hour. So. Yeah, we'll blow.

You might just get some free coaching.

You might get free coaching. Yeah.

And we might struggle to pronounce your name.

The coaching gets better for, for every drink we have. That's just how it is.

What are you drinking tonight, Scott?

I, I, I'm having a brew tonight, so Lagunitas Little something something smooth and silky IPA, 7.5%. And you know, you know you're 50 when I can't even read it out here. So how about you?

That's funny. I've got, let's see, this is apple cider vinegar, lime juice, cinnamon and bitters. Because I'm an adult.

Yes.

And some Tabasco and blueberries.

Oh, that sounds very yummy.

It is very nice. It's a very adult mocktail. No Shirley Temples for me, thank you. I.

Well, very good. Hope you are. Hope all of you watching are also having a cocktail or a soda or coffee or whatever. But. So let's get down to. Let's get down to business here. Let's, let's, let's spitball here a little bit on. On the five on five line investing habits, successful investors practice that beginners don't. So John and I, we did talk about this prior came. We're very prepared for this. And we did agree, right? We did agree that the number one. Oh, where's my list, though?

We gotta make it up now.

The number. The number one. The number one successful habit that we think or the number one habit that we think successful land investors have that maybe not all new land investors have. Right. Is mailing consistently to the right areas.

Yep.

So let's talk about that a little bit. John. I do think that's very important. I think a lot of newbie line investors, they make a mistake and they quit mailing because maybe they're overwhelmed or they quit mailing because they haven't had success. But let's talk mailing and why consistency is so important with the mailing.

Yeah. So I think my kids have this book. I may have. I may have told this story before on the podcast, but my kids have this book, it's called. I think it's like, Sam and Dave Dig a Hole. Okay. This is pertinent, I promise.

Okay.

But so in this book, you've got these two boys, and they're like, they're basically digging this hole and they're digging for treasure, right? You see them digging down and. And then there's you. You see a cross of, like, the dirt where they're digging. You can see they're like this far away from a diamond. And then they say, let's switch directions. And then they dig that way. And then they get, you know, this far away from an even bigger diamond, and then they pivot and they keep on pivoting, and then they end up like they find a bone. Right? That. And then they're like, yeah, we found treasure. But anyways, I think it's. It's easy to do that. Like when you, when you send a mailer, if you don't get any responses, it's an indication that basically the market is telling you something. And what it's telling you is that your pricing is not on point. And if you move away, you're going to restart that whole process. And I've seen people bounce around from county to county to county to county to county, and Never actually seeing success in any given county because they don't actually take that data and then react and remail. And so I think that's a really important thing. If you're getting, you know, very few or no responses, it's an indication that your pricing is off. If you, if your responses are bonkers, like everybody wants to talk to you, it's probably indication that you may be offering too much, right? Not necessarily, but probably. And then, you know, and then there's the Goldilocks zone. But you want to mail with consistency. It allows you to keep your finger on the polls and make sure that you get that right.

Yeah, for sure. And not only mail it consistently, but I think to the right areas is really important.

Right.

You know, John, back when we started, we talked a lot about going after tax delinquent parcels and you would get a list from the county of tax delinquent parcels. And those are great lists because it's the lowest hanging fruit. However, all the parcels on that list are everywhere in the county. Right. Some of these counties we work in are huge. It takes three hours to get from one end to the other. So if you get a tax delinquent list from a county and you have a list of properties from all over the county and you intend to mail all of those, that's very difficult to do because it's hard to find pricing. It's hard to find accurate pricing and accurate data before you send out a mailing campaign. So now we focus more on a small area within a very large county and we'll worry about the taxes on the back end. Right. It's a lot easier to get a list. It's a lot easier to get data. And you know, these subdivisions that we mail are really cookie cutter. Right. They're, they're, they're, they're oftentimes, you know, 95% of the parcels are all the same size. And that makes it really easy to find data and really easy to mail. It makes it really easy, really easy to consistently mail. Because a lot of these subdivisions, they have five or 10,000 parcels. That's going to keep you busy for a while with the mailing.

Yeah, right.

And then the other really important thing, I think is a lot of new investors mail, and they might even get a deal a few weeks later. But then they might get overwhelmed with all, am I doing everything right? And I gotta slow down, I gotta put the brakes on. How many times have we heard that? I gotta put the brakes on. I got all this coming in. I'm overwhelmed and they put the brakes on, and then they quit mailing. And they might do a deal or two, but that deal or two becomes kind of onesie. Twosie, as you say. John, I like that you've said that before. And it just slows your progress because you're not mailing consistently. Whereas I think if you create a system for yourself to mail bi weekly or once a month and you just make that your mailing day and you consistently mail, that will create deals for you. And as Mike. Mike Zano and I have said for years, if you're consistent with your mailings, you're going to come into some golden nuggets every now and then. Right? So I think those are the important things.

I think that's really good. Yeah. And I think, like, I mean, when you think about it, there's a lag between sending out your mail and acquiring property. Right. And so it's important, like you, when you get to the point where you need property, you don't want to be starting your mail up right then. Right. You want to have like a set of leads that. That's actually available to you. And so I'd much rather see people, like, if people are like, let's say you've got a ton of inventory in a particular county, I'd rather see somebody slow down their mailing than stop it completely. And then the other thing to think about is even if you get too much inventory, you can always wholesale it to other investors that need that inventory and recoup your investment. And so I think it's. It's better to be active than to stop things because it'll really impede the speed of progress.

Yeah, for sure. And, you know, I think another thing that. That makes people stop or halt the mailings is maybe lack of money. Right?

Yeah.

Or what they perceive as a lack of money. They're like, hey, I have these five deals coming in. I don't have the money to buy these deals. What am I going to do? I'm going to stop mailing, right? I gotta stop mailing. I gotta get these deals done. Whereas I think if you have the mindset that, okay, this person, this person sent me back an agreement, they signed the purchase agreement. Like, I now control that deal for the next month. Right. We can, you can figure out a way to get the deal done. Right. So try to hold on to those deals and sit down and have a conversation with yourself. And that's another podcast topic, like, how do we get the deal done if we don't have the money? Right? So, so, yeah, I don't. Maybe, Maybe we don't get too deep into this because we got five more steps to go.

We just keep going. We'll just do one podcast for every number.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. But for those of you watching, any thoughts on point number one? Any questions on point number one? Daniel? Bryan. If you get backlogged short on cash, you can always sell notes with something like TL Folio and whip up some cash to keep moving. That's exactly right. So, you know, you gotta sell it on owner financing first, and then you can sell the note. But that's a really great way to put cash back into the business. It's something I wish I would have done early on. So.

Yeah.

Daniel. Thank you. Don Thrasher. From the time the mailing goes out, when should we expect a response? That's a great question. Yeah, I think there's kind of. Well, it depends on how you mail, Don. Right. With our software, LG Pass, which is really nice. You upload the list, you click send, the mail goes out. I mean, the data goes out. But there's a little bit of a lag time Right. Between when the data gets over to lob.com and how they process the letters and that type of thing, and then they send it out. But I don't know about you, John, but I'm seeing, like, we're seeing probably a peak of activity after a mailer right now at maybe like week three is where we're seeing the peak.

Yeah.

Maybe we should start getting some responses.

I think that sounds about right. And I think if you're. The other thing is, are you sending standard class or first class? Right. So standard class is batched together. I don't. I still don't understand exactly how it works or how the post office does it, but basically it takes longer.

It's.

And it goes out at inconsistent times. So basically the answer if you're sending standard class is who knows? Right. But I think. I think sending out first class, I think that. I think that that sounds right. And then I. I like first class, too. Especially if. I mean, it's. It's what we. What we teach. Right. First class, especially when you're starting, because you get a strong response and consistent response early on. So.

Right. Awesome. All right, thanks, guys, for the questions. Comments. Let's go to point number two. So point number two tonight is. Oh, I think this is important. So, John, we talk about this in a few ways, but when you get into this, you're excited and you're really craving that first property, right? So, so we thought, number two, the, the number two point that was really, really important here is that we don't chase every deal. You talk about that, John.

Yeah. Scott Todd used to call this gotta have landitis, which. Let's just bring that back. So you don't want to have. Got to have landitis, right? So basically, I mean, I remember when Valerie and I, we got our first response back. We were in flight school, we got our first respond back and, and we almost had an aneurysm. We were so excited. While we're like, oh, my goodness, it works. This is crazy. And they, they sent us back a counter, a counteroffer, and we booked a call with a coach right now we were like, it's urgent. We need you today. And, and we talked to them and they were like, yeah, honestly, I don't think I would do this deal. It was kind of a.

You deflated, didn't you, John?

Yeah. Yeah, you do, right? Like, it's. There's this, there's this thing where especially, you know, like, if you're waiting three weeks, like you send your mailers, you're waiting three weeks, right? You're like, is this even working? And then something comes back and, and there can be this sense of, like, I have, like there's, there is, I don't know, this, this idea that. What is it? I guess a scarcity mindset. Like, this could be the only one, right? And then you, you can try to make it happen and you could try to smash that square peg through a round hole. And, you know, I've seen people be a little bit desperate and pay too much for a property or, or there's always, like, you know, talk to a lot of people. One of the unfortunate things that we run into every so often is people who, their spouse died and their spouse is still on title to the property, right. And they want to sell the property, but they have to go through a legal process to get their spouse off the. Off the title. And that costs money and sometimes more money than the property is worth. And, and it's easy to kind of try to chase those deals, but you just need to, you just have to move on and, and wait for the next opportunity to come.

Yeah, I think, you know, just, I think the people who have done this for a long time, we just say no a lot, right? And sometimes it's no because you just know from the first few seconds, the deals on your desk, it's just said no, like, we're not going to do it. Right. If I offer you $1,000 for your property. You have $2,000 back taxes. We're saying no, right? Yeah. Probate issues, you can figure those out sometimes pretty quickly. It's a no right. And we're not going to do a lot of digging to help people go through probate or we're not going to do a lot of extra work to help people go through probate. So. But I think it also comes down to price and knowing when to say no. Because like you said, John, you know, we make our money on the buy. We need to make sure we're buying these at a good price. We need to just make sure the property makes good sense for us. We talked about this a couple weeks ago. Like, how usable is the property? Right. How many times, John, have you sent a mailing campaign out to a good area and then you get an accepted offer and you look at the property and you're like, oh, like, I don't want that property.

Yeah.

That happens all the time, doesn't it?

Yeah, it does. Yeah. You just like the whole. And, and honestly, sometimes, like, you know, there's like a. I, Sometimes my mindset when that, When I see that stuff happen is what does the. Make me buy this price? Right. Yes. And so what is the price at which, like, you know, I'm. And sometimes I pick up the property, I'm like, oh no, what am I gonna do with this thing? But it's such a good price. And I've had that. I mean, I, I think I've told before, but I, I bought a Property once for $750. The whole thing was in this giant floodplain that flooded seasonally.

Yeah.

And I sold it cash for four grand. Not too long. And it had a recent tax deed and the chain of title and stuff. And so I had to sell with a special warranty deed, and I, I sold it for four grand cash to somebody who hosted a musical festival on this. On this property.

Yeah, I remember that story. That's awesome.

But, yeah, so, I mean, I think that there's a price point to make things work, but yeah, you got to be picky and don't try to, don't try to make something happen when it shouldn't.

Yeah, yeah, I have a story like that as well. We bought a property probably five, six years ago now that. Come to find out, it was pretty much mostly all underwater, like a pond. Right. And our original offer was in the thousands. And we're like, we just can't do that. Like, it's not usable you know, it's not. It's like, we can buy it from you for a couple hundred bucks. And they're like, okay, right? And really, like, no emotion. Okay. And then I'm like, well, let's see what a neighbor. Let's see what a neighbor contact does. So we contact the neighbor, and the neighbor's like, I've wanted that property for years. I want it. I'll give you ten grand for it. Ten grand for it, Right. Like, it's crazy. So, but anyway. But. But you do. You have to know the power of. No. You know, you have to be choosy on your deals, and if it doesn't meet your criteria, again, like, is it bad to own land, John, at an even deeper discount? Probably not. Right. You can be a. You could be a land banker and sit on that property for. For 20, 30 years if you want to pay $2 in. Pay $2 in property tax every year.

Right? Yeah. Yeah.

So.

All right.

Awesome. Any questions, folks? Questions or comments about point number two? Let's see. We got a couple comments coming in here. Don's rancher said it or said it. Well, homo equals gotta have landitis.

Yes. Awesome.

Dinesh, good to see you. We both know Dinesh. Yeah, Dinesh is here. Good question to this. Is there a certain minimum number of activity one needs to see to determine if the county is the right one? We have started the dirt rich, I think, starter kit, and we'll start flight school in October. So let's briefly touch on that. John, What. How do you know if you're in the right county?

I think that, like we talked about, if you are not getting responses, then it's an indication that you need to adjust your pricing. Right. And then the question for me, I think it would come down to what is the price point that the market demands and does that price point make sense? Right. In terms of, like, your margins. Right. And so if you hit, like, let's say you hit a subdivision, there's, you know, 200 properties, and everybody wants 60% of retail value. Right. Then it's probably not. Right, Right, right. And so for me, that would actually be the number. So it's not necessarily like, I. I have had counties where, you know, and I think I've told this story too. There was this one county where I saw. I saw this one guy that I know, and he had bought this property there for $2,000, and I thought to myself, if he can buy property in this county for $2,000, so can I. Which, no, I could not. Right. And after many, many mailers, thousands of mailers, I found the price point which was much higher than 2000. And I did dozens of deals in that county. Right. And, and did well in that county, but it took me a lot of mailers to find out what that price point was. So I think it's more about the price point than about the amount of mailers that you're sending.

Awesome. Very cool. Thank you for that. Thank you, Dinesh, for, for chiming in. I think we had a, didn't we have an episode, John, a few, maybe a month or two ago about county research? I think maybe. I can't remember. I thought we did all of these.

Just blend together.

All right, let's talk number three. So number three, the number three successful or, I'm sorry, the number three thing that successful land investors do that maybe the newbies don't. Right. We're not, we're not shaming the newbies here. I think we need to be very careful here. We need to be very PC. We're not.

Yeah, we're proud of you newbies. We're very proud of you.

That's right. Successful investors know the power of follow up. And I think, John, this applies to both the acquisition side and the sales side because. Yeah, I mean, I, I think, you know, and I think where I, I think I've always been pretty decent at follow up, but I think where it became really important to me, really, where it became really known to me that it was so important was when I started hiring people, right. And I start hiring a sales assistant, I start hiring an intake manager, and I see that we're leaving, we're leaving money on the table on both sides of the business because we're not following up frequently and in a timely manner. So follow up is really key. Like be a little bit persistent on the buy side. Be, be very persistent on the sell side. Right. And if, if people, you know, if you have a conversation with somebody and then they don't get in touch, right, you need to, you need to be smiling and dialing multiple times a day. You need to be texting, you need to be emailing to see if you can get a hold of that person to have a follow up conversation so we can help them get rid of the property on the buy side and then so we can help move it on the, on the sell side. And I mean, that's a, that's another podcast topic is, you know, follow up in sales and how important that is. But John, what are your thoughts?

I just am reveling into the sentence, smiling and dialing. That's like my favorite thing.

Oh, man.

Yeah. But, yeah, I mean, I agree. I think the thing that, like, for me personally jumping into this, I mean, every time you take a new step in the land business, there's kind of this pit in your gut, right? Like you feel the butterflies. Like, I remember when I first sent out mailers, I. I sent out physical mail, right? And I remember standing by that, that, that mail, the p. The post office box with it open and a stack of mailers and just kind of hovering there for a while and just feeling a little nervous. And I did it, right? And then that became rote. But it's the same thing with, like hopping on the phone with people, right? It can be the kind of a thing that can make us nervous, right? And the longer you wait, the more you just put it off, right? You can think of a million things to work on in your lamb business besides picking up the phone and talking to your sellers and talking to your buyers. And so I think it's really important that you, that you're smiling and dialing, right? And because that's, that's where, that's where, like, if that's not in place, right, you're not going to be buying land, you're not going to be selling land. And you'll find that, you know, as you start having these conversations, they come more and more and more naturally. I did not consider myself a natural salesperson, somebody who is a negotiator, right?

Yep.

And I, I was able to make a lot of. A lot of things happen just by, just by picking up that phone. I mean, how many times, Scott, like, have. Have you had somebody talk to you and say, I get so many of these and like these letters and I've responded to so many of them, and you're the first one to actually call me back. Right.

Isn't that crazy? Yeah.

So, I mean, you pick up that phone and you are already ahead of a lot of other people, right? Yeah, so.

Yeah, that's exactly right. And it's very interesting, you know, to, to know that people have gotten offers on their, on their property and, and they, they essentially get ghosted by the people that mail them, right? So, you know, and then you show up, you know, in the other person's wake and help them solve this problem and they're, you know, they're wanting to get rid of it and you're able to help them out. So. So the follow up is very important. I mean, a lot of people say you know, if I get an offer back in the mail, what do I do? Do I email them? Do I call? Do I text them? Do I call them? Call them, like, call them, right?

Yeah.

I mean, I think in most cases you can kind of meet them where they are. If they email you, you can email them. But I think we always end our email with like, hey, do you have a few minutes we can hop on the phone, right? Yeah. Or, you know, we can definitely do this over email. But do you have a few minutes where we can hop on the phone? Right. It's just the, the personal connection online and over the phone is really helpful. And I think another thing with, with follow up John, that. That our team uses a lot is, is Loom and sending videos, right?

Yeah.

Just talking people. It does impress people.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm always amazed. People are like, yeah, yeah, you send somebody. So a Loom video is like a recording and it'll show like a little. A little circle of your face over the screen and you can like talk about the property or with the process or whatever it is. And you send it to people and they feel so special and they're like, are you from the future? And how did you make a video just for me?

And you send them a text that says, larry, I created a video just for you. Click here, right?

Yeah, yeah.

They're very. People, very appreciative of that. It helps also with the, With. With the people who are doubting your legitimacy.

Yeah, right.

We send videos all the time. Hey, hey, Mr. Buyer. Just want to put a face to the name, you know, my name's Scott. I've been a land investor for a while. You may be wondering about the legitimacy of all this. I've been doing this 10 years. Like, you can Google me if you want. Right. This is a great property, blah, blah, blah. And it can go. It can go over really well. Yeah, that's a golden. I agree.

That is a nugget. And everybody said Dinesh and Don just asked us about, like, the cost of lymph. So Loom is there's a free plan. And I think you get 25 videos on the free plan. And then basically what happens is the oldest one just drops off right as. As you go. So you can actually, you can use that thing for a good while. I use Loom, the free plan for a long time now.

John. Loom used to. They used to have a five minute limit per video on the free plan. Do they still have that?

I don't know. I'm not on the free plan anymore, so.

Well, I. I always say to people, don't do what I did for like, three years and. And be, you know, stick in the butt. I'm not paying for loom. I'm just gonna use the free plan because you gotta. You gotta fit. You gotta fit an entire training video into five minutes.

Yeah, I. When you think about it, like, there's some. There's some tools where. When you think about it, like, okay, 20amonth, like, kind of sucks. But if you sell. If. If you can use that tool to sell one more property.

Yeah.

Right. Then it's. It's effectively paid for. And so it's. Those are the kinds of things that can have a high yield because like you said, it has a massive impact on people's trust.

Right.

When they can actually see your face.

Yep. For sure. Awesome. We got some comments coming in. Ken Green is here. Ken, how's it going? It's a frustrating business. Sometimes after many thousands of mailers, you get crickets. Newbies will quit saying. Newbies will quit saying. It does not work. Seasoned investors will keep going. Exactly right, Ken, to touch on, I think it was point number two. Thank you for that and some of these other technical questions I think we'll come back to after we get through our. Our five tips. Sorry, my dog is into something. He came running in here with a chip bag in his mouth. I'm gonna let him have it. All right.

Sounds like one of my kids.

All right, so what are we on? We're on number four. Number four. Point Point. Number four of what successful investors do that maybe a newbie doesn't. Right. And here's number four. Successful investors invest in relationships, community, and not just land. This is so huge for all of us, in my opinion. I think, you know, I. I think of how much I've grown in the last 10 years as an entrepreneur. And it really comes down to the great training that I got. But it also comes down to the relationships that I have developed and fostered over the years. And we talked about this a few weeks ago. I love it. I say it all the time. We make real friends. We make deal friends. Real deal friends. Right, John. And I know you. You know, John, from the beginning, you had accountability partners. I have a great accountability partner, Mike Zanel, even though he's not here tonight.

Jerk.

But he's a great accountability partner. And so speak to the relationships and community a little bit. Jeff.

Yeah. So, like, I have people that I have met with pretty much every week for six years now. Something like that, and they're just people that I met from the Landgate community. And when we first started meeting, our agenda for a meeting was, what did you say you were going to do last week? What did you actually do last week? And what are you going to do next week? Right? And then we would just talk about what's going on in our weeks and mastermind a little bit. And it's, it's been great. Like, that's been such a massive pick me up. I've learned a lot alongside these people. I've grown a lot, you know, and it's been, it's been huge. And I just think, like, it can be a lonely business. You know, I jumped into this with, with Valerie, my wife, and both of us were able to be excited together, commiserate together. And that community and our relationship was helpful, but it still could be lonely. And some people jump into this solo, right? And it's hard to get the people around you excited about what you're doing, but there's a lot of other people doing what you're doing, right? And they're going to be excited alongside you. They'll commiserate alongside you, right? And they'll give you advice when you need it and they'll encourage you when you need it. And so I think it is very important to be in community, you know, and to, to find other people that you can come alongside and they can come alongside you.

Yeah, for sure. And I, I think a big part of this also is just interacting in our forums. I think a lot of people and this, maybe it was me included, I was intimidated to, like, post a question, right? And I kind of slap myself on the hand now, like, why did you have that mindset back, you know, 10 years ago? Don't be intimidated as a question. Like, the seasoned land investors are here and the coaches are here to help people learn how to do this. So don't feel like you're asking a stupid question, right? There are no stupid questions when it comes to this whole thing. So just take a risk. And it's not even a risk, really. Just, just make, just, just type the question, right? Yeah, Type the question on YouTube. Everybody's gonna see it doesn't matter, right? Type the question. Type the question in our Facebook group. Type the question in our, in our online group. And more than just the coaches are going to be willing to help out. I see, I see new land investors all the time, reach out with helpful information to people, right? Maybe they've been doing it six months and, and somebody day one Asks a question, that person, you know, six months into us is, is answering the question, which is really neat to me because I think on, on that, you know, at the six month Mark, you're, you're learning by teaching as well. So don't be hesitant to ask questions. Don't be hesitant to reach out to people and, and form those connections. And I think, in all honesty, a thing that really did it for me, John, and I'm sure it did for you too, was meeting people in person. So we do have an event coming up in November, the Dirt Rich Summit. Look at that, look at that, look at that. Had it ready to go Nov. 6 through the 8th, 2025, in Austin, Texas. You know, Mark says it all the time. Live events change lives. And, and I totally agree. Like, that first Lane geek event I went to, it changed my life. I met Mark and Scott, Todd and other people, and I could. There was just a ton of proof in the room and a ton of inspiration in the room. So if, if, you know, I, I would highly recommend to people, if they've just gotten into this and they haven't been able to attend a live event or you got in this two years ago and you haven't been able to attend a live event, it can be really amazing because you're gonna meet, you're gonna make real connections there and even connections you can make money with, they're pretty cool.

Yeah, you'll find real friends and deal friends. And real deal friends.

There you go.

Yeah, I consider myself a real deal friend, Scott.

You're. You're both. You're definitely both.

I'm glad. I'm glad.

All right.

Awesome.

Okay, any comment? Let's see if we got any comments or questions coming in here. Don Thrasher is exactly right. Get out of your comfort zone. Those are some other technical questions we'll get to after tip number five. So here's tip number five. What successful land investors do that maybe newbies don't.

Ready, John? Ready.

Successful investors find the right balance for automation, delegation. So I can think of a couple scenarios here, right? Like you have people who they, they invest a lot in training and starting. Starting land deals, but they feel like they need to have every tool in the book and they need to start automating and outsourcing everything before they're bringing in any money. Right. And then you have people on the other end of the spectrum, and this was more like me. And this is the person that Mark talked about in Dirt Rich 2, who they become a freelancer, they've created Another job for themselves. I did not start out automating, outsource nearly soon enough, right? So where do you find the balance to be, to be the cool guy or gal right in the middle, which I think is really important in this business. What are your thoughts, Jeff?

Yeah, I think you're right. Like, there's effectively two ditches that you can fall in. And one is like leaning so heavily on automation and delegation that you never actually get anything done, right? And then on the other side, never automating and delegating and totally burning yourself out. And so I think it's, it's important, like part of it is to, I think, to identify which of those ditches you're naturally going to fall into and then fight against that particular temptation, right? So if you're like, Mr. I'm gonna do everything myself because, you know, because I've got the time, like I've got, you know, I've got 30 hours a week that I can put into this thing, so I'm not going to delegate a thing, right? Well, I, I was in a position like that at one point and I totally burned out, right? And actually this was my live event story, right, like where I, I came to this live event and I was like, really burned out at that point. And I think it was a turning point in my land investing business where, you know, we did, we all got in a circle, talked about our businesses and our pain points and, and basically everyone in the room just went one by one and just ringed me on the fact that I had to delegate and that I was, I was gonna burn out. And I, I did. And my business really took off right at that point as soon as I delegated. So I think that if you're the kind of person that's going to try to take on the world, right, without delegating a thing, you need to delegate and you should start doing that so that you don't burn yourself off. You don't burn yourself out on those highly repeatable tasks. On the flip side, if you're the kind of person who's like, Mr. Automation and I know how to do all the things right, it can be tempting. You know, we talked about how important it is to smile and dial, right, to get on the phone and you know, you know, when it's really easy to build an automation, when you've got a stack of people that you need to call, right? It's really easy to be distracted by any given little task. But the reality is that you need to be doing the things that have the biggest impact right now. Right. So you need to be picking up that phone, you need to be calling people, you need to be posting ads, you need to be doing all of those things that are moving the needle and not focusing so much on building out the perfect CRM that's going to do all of the things I need to do as soon as I have some leads. Right?

Yeah, exactly. Like CRM guy that you, you know, you spent 30 hours in the last week on the CRM. Are you mailing? Oh, no, I actually, I quit mailing a few weeks ago. No, no, no. As Mark says, no, you know, are you, are you, Mark? How many properties you have in inventory? 5. How long do you have those properties in inventory? About a month. How's the marketing going? I haven't started yet.

No. Yeah. No.

Right. So it's really the mailing and marketing. Right, the mailing and marketing make us the money. Oh, the main.

So many M's, I can't handle it.

So. So yeah, I mean, but yeah, there, there is a, there is a, there is a fine line there. You know, the, the really repeatable tasks, the really redundant, boring tasks that really make this a great business. Actually. Those are the things you can hire out for really cheap. Right? Yeah. I'll never forget, John, when I, when I got into this, I had a VA screen scrape county GIS websites. For me, that was my list. She would, she would get my list that way. See how many hundred names for an hour? 100 names every hour.

Wow.

I paid her five bucks an hour. And every morning I woke up and I had 100 new names to mail to.

Right.

That was worth my $5 an hour. How's that VA still working with me 10 years later. It's pretty cool.

Wow, that's awesome.

Yeah, it's fun. So that's number five. Any comments or questions? Let's see here. Comments or questions? John Palmer. I can't wait to delegate marketing. Most people are in your boat there, John.

Yep.

Let's see here. How far along or what amount of income is this balance? I mean, that's a good question. So. And I think everybody's, you know, it's different for everybody because people have different amounts of capital when they start out.

Right.

But I really feel like, I feel like, Jen, maybe you feel differently, but if three to four months into this, you've learned how to do it, you're acquiring land, you have some operating expenses around maybe $1,000 a month. I really feel like three, four months into this, you should be able to cover those operating expenses with, with cash. Right. Like, like. And how do you do that? Probably wholesale. Yeah, I, I think it's really important to have the mindset at least that hey, if I'm spending a thousand dollars on the business this month with mailings and I'm hiring some people and I have some web tools or whatever, like I need to do everything I can this month to try to cover that with cash. And then if I can cover that with cash and I do more deals, then you can cover other things with more cash, right?

Yeah.

So it's hard to know exactly, Don, what the right balance is for everyone, but I think that's kind of the mindset you need to have after you, after the first couple of months of learning and doing and acquiring land, you know, for four months into this, you should start bringing money and to help cover some of these costs. What do you think, John?

I think that that makes a lot of sense. And I also would say that something to bear in mind with delegation is that delegating different tasks comes with a different price tag. Right? So generally the higher the critical thought requirement, the more you're going to be paying, right. If something is click copy paste, click copy paste, the price tag for that is going to be very, very low. And so if you have highly repeatable tasks that are taking up a good chunk of your time, those are things that you can delegate and actually free yourself up to make a lot more money in your business. And that can be at a very low cost. Right. If you're looking to hire an ad copywriter, well, that's a little bit more of a critical thought requirement that's going to come at a higher, at a higher price point. So I think that part of it is focusing on what it is that you're delegating. And then the other thing that comes to mind too is there's like I have, I had this one point where I had the stack, right, the stack of accepted offers and counteroffers that have built up and it was sitting on my desk and every time I looked at it I got that pit in my gut, right? Because I wasn't smiling and dialing. Right. I'm going to say this over and over again, but I, at one point in my business I had this big stack, right? And I knew like, I just got to, I just got to do this. But I kept on thinking about all of the automations that I could be doing and all these. Right. I kept on focusing on other tasks and, and then there was this Point where I hired an intake manager and she went through this whole stack of things and I made a lot of money. Right. And so there is a point like the. The one thing you also want to think about is that delegation actually enhances the. If you do it right. Right. Delegation actually enhances the ability of your company to make money. Right. So if you're doing it right, you're not just setting it and forgetting it and just pulling out. If you do, if you delegate well, it will make your business stronger and you will make more money.

Yeah, you're exactly right.

Yeah.

We say all the time mailing makes. We make money on the buy. Right. But we also make money on the delegating. For sure. It frees your time to work on other things to make your business better. And a lot of times the VA is a lot better at something than you are, John. That's just the way it is. Yep.

Yeah, I know. My VAs are all better than me. The worst person in my company.

Right, Right. Oh, man. A couple comments coming in from Dinesh. You nailed this, Scott. When we talked about looking at delegating, what you like least to do, but also wait to do it first yourself so you understand it and then you can be prescriptive with your va. For sure. Yeah, I totally agree. I don't think you need to be an expert at the process because a lot of times the VAs are better than you. Right?

Yeah.

So excuse me, if, you know, 75, 80% of the process, get rid of that thing. Right?

Yeah.

And a lot of times the VAs are a lot better than you. And then Daniel Bryan, Automation System should be treated like debt. Only use them when you found something that works and add jet fuel. I like that.

Yeah, I like that. Have you ever. Do you have any. Any instances of delegating poorly, Scott? Have you ever done that? Yeah.

Yeah.

Am I the only one?

No. It happens. Right. And that. And that's just another. It's just another dip that we all experience in this business, and probably any business, is that you hire the wrong person, unfortunately, or they don't work up to your standards, and then you need to hire and fire and move on to the next one. So.

And I think. And I think sometimes there's something about, we'll have something that we just don't like doing, and our immediate reaction is just to delegate it. And then once it's delegated, it's like we just stop looking at it. Right. And while we're not looking at it, you know, it's not operating the way it should be. So it's. So this is my phrase. Actually, it's from chat GPT, but set it and forget. If you set it and forget it, you will set it and regret it. That was hard to say.

I like it. I like it.

Yeah.

Yeah. I got some nightmare hires, John. Like, I went to all this work creating these training videos and these, like, SOPs for somebody to follow, and I'm like, okay, do this, do this, and do this. And they, like, did their own thing. I'm like, wait a minute, but I asked you to do this and this and this. We'd like to do it this way. No, but that's not what I asked. And it was just a nightmare. So I'm like, yeah, sorry, we're done with that. So, yeah, every once in a while, I don't know, you find those. Find those situations. But. All right, well, geez, we're coming up on an hour already. We do have a bonus. Do have a bonus item for, you know, what makes a successful land investor or maybe successful. What? A successful land investor does that maybe a newbie might not. Right. So here's the bonus item. Successful, successful investors play the long game. They just don't quit. And how often do we see this, John? Six months in, people are frustrated.

Yeah.

They quit. Right. Or maybe they have a rash of luck to begin with, and then for whatever reason, life hits them and they quit. Right?

Yep.

Persistence is the name of the game in this thing. Like, this is. This is a marathon, not a sprint, and you need to come into it with that notion. This is not get rich quick.

Right.

So I think that's. That's another characteristic that I think a lot of successful investors have. Yeah.

Never stop, never stopping.

Oh, that's a good one.

That's not mine either, but I'll claim it.

Never stop, never stopping.

I like it. Never stop, never stopping.

Oh, sorry. I like it.

Yeah, no, I think that is. That's really key. Like, I mean, it's like, we talked about it with the mailing. Right. It's really easy to just. To just stop. Right. And a fizzle and. And it is the kind of a thing where, like, you're going through all these and I mean, just layering on top of, like, I feel like what we've built here, Scott, over this podcast, is a pyramid. Right. Because, like, persistence is, I think, layered onto each of the individual items that we've already talked about. Right. And ultimately, like. Like, being in community is extremely helpful for being persistent. Right. To be around Other people to be encouraged by other people, to be encouraging other people and to under. To be. And I think you can be encouraged by seeing other people having success, right?

For sure.

And. And to like, you know, I, I remember for Valerie and I, we saw people seeing success and so we knew it was doable. And sometimes we saw people seeing success before us. Right? And that could be both encouraging but also discouraging because you're like, what's wrong with me? Why am I not doing it? But I'm really happy now, right? Like, I think you don't want to be overly comparative. You want to be persistent. You know, keep on digging that hole and you'll find the diamond, right? And you can see people doing it around you. But if you give up, you won't, Right? And I, you know, like, Scott, I know you've seen this where you see somebody take a break, right? And they take a break either because they're frustrated, right? And they're like, ah, like I, you know, I sent on my mailers, I didn't get the responses I want, right. Or it could be something like, even just. It takes a lot of persistence to build this business. You could have a hard week at work and just be like, you know what? I'm just going to take a break from the land business just for a week, just for two weeks, right. I just need a break. Right. Or it could be a family crisis. It could be any number of things. And that break balloons. And it's hard to get back into something that's challenging the longer you stay away from it. And so it's important to just keep at it, to not give up, you know?

No, that's amazing advice. I can't. One, I can't do better than that. That was awesome. And I think to bring it back to your storybook analogy from the beginning, right. I think that we have a lot of proof that this works, right? And I think if you tap into the community and maybe tap into the coaches and you just tap into your ability to just keep. Keep doing, right?

Yeah. Come here to nightcap.

Yeah. Come to nightcap, right?

Yeah.

You will find the diamond. You will find the diamond after digging, right?

Yeah. Scott Bossman has the diamond. Ask him the question, he will give you the diamond.

There you go. But I'm still digging, right? Like, I'm just in the same hole. I'm just going deeper and finding. Finding diamonds as I go deeper. So. So the proof is in the pudding, right? I wanted to get to another topic tonight, but we're running out of time. But there, there was a post in the Facebook group today, John, from somebody who had just read Mark's book and they thought, they thought was good. And then they came to the Facebook group and, and they, they were a little bit negative Nelly. A little bit of a negative Nelly on, hey, this, this looks like a Facebook group where people are just buying and selling land and selling it, you know, buying, buying land and selling it to each other. And, you know, I kind of wanted to get into that tonight. We might not have enough time, but, but I think, I think what that person is lacking is not seeing is that this is, this is a community that has some longevity. We've been around for 10 years, right. We've been around longer than that and there is a ton of proof that this works. So I think what I would say to people who just found this and they just come in Facebook group and, and they see all, all these, you know, negative comments about people selling desert squares to other land investors. And it seems like a multilevel marketing thing in that this can't be legit and, and people are just moving dirt that doesn't have any purpose. Right. A lot of negative stuff out there today that I wanted to address. I think we kind of did address it anyway. But I would just say just be open minded and learn more.

Right.

We have a ton of proof that this works. Don't use only a few comments in the Facebook group to influence you. Use the tons of podcasts that Mark has interviewing successful clients like John Burnett.

Right.

And like many other people. We had Dave and Jess Parmalee on last week. I still figure out that podcast. It was a pretty cool podcast because they got into this in 2021 and he quit his job in 2024.

Yeah, it's crazy.

I mean, three years in and he quit this and, and he's not. They are not only selling land to other land investors.

Right, right, right.

There's something.

I mean, think about it. Like. Yeah, I mean, I've. I've sold to other land investors. I bought to other land investors. It's a very, very, very small percentage of my business. That's.

That's what I was going to ask you, John. What, what percentage of your business do you think, what percentage of your sales would you say are to other land investors? Like wholesale?

I don't know, five, five to ten, maybe. Yeah, like, it's not, it's not much. Right. So for me, it's. It's very, very small. Right. And I'm. And, and when I do It, I'm doing it like I'm creating opportunity for them because generally when I am selling wholesale, it's because I have too much inventory in a specific area. Right. So we've talked. Sorry, we're getting, we're getting on rambling, John, tangent time. But I mean, so I have certain property types, right. And I think of them like products, right. And so one of my product types would be 5 acre mountain lot with trees, right?

Yeah.

And right now I've got too many of these five acre mountain lots with trees, right. And so I might sell one or two of them wholesale, right. Because I want to build up inventory and other product types, right. Because the reality is that, you know, if I've got another product type would be 5 acre property looks up at the mountain and it's flat and has sagebrush on it. Right. And if I've got five of those, it's still just a single product. And so for me, I don't want to be overstocked with a certain product type if I find that I've got too many that I might wholesale some. But I'm my, my end game. I'm selling to, to the end buyer, right. And other, other investors. So.

Yeah. And you know, like Mark says from, from, from the beginning of all of this, every piece of land sells and every buyer has a different reason for buying the land, right?

Yeah.

There are people who like desert squares. There are people who like mountain squares. There are people who like freed squares, right?

Yeah. It's funny, like, I mean, we were just in Southern Idaho. My, my in laws have a ranch there and it looks a lot like the property that I buy, right? Yeah, it's. And it's so much sagebrush, right. Hundreds of acres of sagebrush. And it's beautiful, Right. Like, I mean we've, like, we'll, we'll go around. Like I'll go traipsing around that property with my kids, just exploring and it's, it's a blast and it's stunning, right?

Yeah.

So the reality is like, there's beauty there and there are a lot of people who see that beauty. And my job and my business is to communicate that beauty, right?

Yeah.

So.

But where's the water, John?

Where's the water?

I'm being the naysayer right now.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like, so when I invest in an area, a lot of times I'm looking like I'll zoom out on the map and I like to see a little bit of activity happening. Yeah. Like a home here, a home there. Right. And when you look at these areas, when you see that, that means that people are making it work. Right? And people are making it work and somehow they're drinking water.

Exactly, Exactly.

And when you, when you dig into that and you seeing these clusters of homes, you realize, oh, no, there is a lifestyle that makes sense and people want that. Right. And they're making it happen.

So I love it. I love it. All right, well, we covered a lot in this episode. Next week we're featuring the. The guys from Vamplo, John, for, for part of the podcast they're going to come on. So Zamplo is a, is a, is a company that Landic has relationship, relationship with now for list gathering, list building. So they're gonna be on for a few minutes, I think, for the remainder of the podcast. I'm not sure what the. What the topic is. Maybe we'll just do like an open forum Q A. That might be fun.

I like it. So everybody come. Bring all your questions and get free coaching from. From me and Scott, who might have a bad Internet connection. So it may just be me. Hopefully Mike's gonna be here next week.

Okay, Michael, Be here.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

All right, guys, well, thanks for a great night and spread the word about land investing. And if you guys are interested to know more, I mean, lots of resources out there, you can email john@thelamegeek.com 1 1noh jonathan.com oh, Scott@thelandgeek.com and we'll be here next week talking land. Good night, everybody.

Cheers, everyone.

Thanks, John.

Thanks.