A Land Geek Student’s Success Story—What You Need To Know For Your Own Success

Hey, it's Mark Podolski, the Land Geek with your favorite niche real estate website, www.thelandgeek.com. and before we get started with today's guest that I know everyone's gonna be really excited about, I think I should properly introduce my co host from the Art of Passive Income podcast, Scott Todd. Six Sigma Scott Todd from scotttodd.net landmodo.com and if you are not, if you are not for some crazy, insane reason, automating my favorite word, by the way, automating your Craigslist postings. I'm not sure what you're doing. Postingdomination.com thelandgeek Scott Todd, how are you? Mark?

I am awesome.

How are you?

I'm really excited because I don't think that both of us have had on the Art of Passive Income podcast one of our students in a while, right?

Yeah, I mean this is the first. No, yeah, that's right. We've had a student and it's nice to hear success stories. In fact, you know, case studies and hearing what people are doing are always kind of like my favorite type of podcast. So I am extremely excited to hear our guest story today.

Yeah. So we are shelving one of these big time, you know, guests for one of our own in our community, PJ Riley. Pj, how are you?

I'm great. How are you? Mark?

Pulse is still normal. Before we start talking to you, PJ about your journey with Land Geek, I would be remiss if I didn't plug away. Go to thelandgeek.com download for free the Passive Income Blueprint. Get the ebook how to avoid 3 fail land, buy mistakes and of course, get this podcast delivered each week to your email inbox. And don't forget About Loan Geek Lonegeek IO. Start automating your payments, no note, setup, fees. We are the solution in the marketplace for note management. Set it and forget it. And of course, let's not forget posting nomination.com the Lonegeek. Scott, enough plugs, enough.

But I think it's the Land Geek, right? I don't know if it sounds like Loan Geek, but the Land Geek.

No, Loan Geek IO and the Land Geek.

No, no, no. The postingdomination.com thelandgeek yeah, yeah, the Land Geek.

Not Loan Geek.

Land Geek. It's amazing to see how many people are using posting domination. And when you go out into Craigslist and you see them applying the principles that they learn in there and then you realize that that is that market is like huge for them in terms of it takes them having to sit at a computer all day. It teaches them the algorithm, and then it automates their whole Craigslist posting. It's crazy to me that people are not using this system and learning about it because it will revolutionize their business.

And I agree.

They could lead to success like our guest PJ has had.

Yeah. So let's talk about PJ Riley. Pj, first question for you.

Go right ahead.

What was your impression of Land Geek before you got into Land Geek?

Well, you know, I'll back up just a little bit on that. I tried a lot of things, Mark. I've tried direct sales. Gosh. Insurance. I tried to open a gym. I've tested out everything out there. I'm kind of a serial entrepreneur. I was talking with one of my bosses at work one day about investing, and he says, hey, you ever thought about investing in the city of Detroit? And I said, no, but let's, you know, let's go do it. I'm kind of a. If there's an idea out there, I want to go find out if it works or not. So I go on there and I start looking online. Really nothing that I can. It's not going to work out for me. However, during my search, I see something called the three Fatal Land Buying Mistakes. I have never heard of land investing. The only real estate experience I have is a few years of tax lien investing. So I have absolutely no idea what this is about. Like I said, I like to pull the trigger quickly. I watched every single Coffee Talk video and every single. Everything you had on YouTube. I looked up the podcast right away and started watching that. I thought, this is. This is something that can work now. I pulled the trigger a little early. Instead of sending out postcards, I went straight to Zillow, and I found a guy selling a couple of properties pretty close to me, and he was offering a certain price. And I said, you know, I'll give you half of that for both those properties. And he said, yeah, let's do it. So that was my first experience with land. We did a little bit more in that same area, and then I realized I don't know nearly enough to be successful. And that's kind of where I. Where I got the toolkit and I got started there. And, you know, it's been. It's been great ever since. I mean, I've made a lot of mistakes here and there, but had a lot. Quite a bit of a success there.

So were you skeptical at all? Like, did you Google me or did you. I Mean, like, what made you eventually pull the trigger and convince you to give it a try?

You know, I. It all made sense. It really did. It made sense. It wasn't. I never had no experience with it all, but it, you know, I wasn't skeptical really at all. I'm sorry to say that, but I really wasn't. I bought in right away. I thought it was a great idea and, you know, just kind of went with it. Yeah. No issues there at all.

Okay. All right. What was the biggest challenge that we helped you solve when you first started?

Biggest challenge was. Gosh, there were so many challenges. How to market a property, how to. Where to go, what counties to. To go look for things like that. The toolkit had quite a bit of things like that. Gosh, mistakes. And I made so many mistakes along the way. I bought properties with more back taxes than the properties were worth themselves. That was early on. Made quite a few mistakes. But, you know, through that and through the Facebook page, too, since that started, we've had a little bit of help there as well.

All right, great, Great. What was it like? When did you know? Like, after you did your first deal, or was it before your first deal? Like, when did you feel like, okay, this is. This can be. I could be successful at this?

Man, it was pretty early on. Once I saw the return on terms, once I saw what you can actually get back on these properties, you know, the. The rate of return was just unbelievable. And I'll be honest with you, Mark. I. Like I said before, I'm not a real estate guy. I'm not an incredibly savvy business guy. If it's going to. I could see the writing on the wall. I could see where this was going. I could see that it was going to be. If I could do this at a small scale, all I needed to do was multiply it even bigger. Just keep going, keep moving forward, pretty much.

I love it. I love it. And then, Scott, Todd, what do you think about PJ and what he did in the beginning?

Yeah, I mean, I think that what PJ did in terms of, like, jumping into it and taking action, that's something that a lot of people don't do. I mean, I mean, that sounds a lot like what I did. I mean, like when. When I got the investors toolkit, I sprung into action within. Within two days, 48 hours of having it. I'm mailing it was maybe it was the excitement of doing it and what I think happens. And you talk about this, you know, the. The law of diminishing Intent. Right. You know, like, if you don't take action right away or you think that you have to know everything about the transaction or everything about the whole experience, well, then what will happen is that information will. Will go to the wayside. It will end up in a drawer down there somewhere, never to be seen again, and you won't execute on it. And you'll always think, like, when. When times get a little tough, you'll be like, oh, yeah, let me go read about this, or let me figure out how I can do this. But because you didn't take action immediately, then it will always be that one, you know, thing that you never do.

Yeah, it's like the old saying, this time next year, you wish you would have started. You'll. You will wish you would have started today.

You know, I mean, because really, there's no. I mean, you know, I can't really think, especially with land investing, I can't think of too many mistakes that you can't unfold. I mean, you know, like, we know of, like, Irv, right? Like Irv within our community. He went out and I think, what Mark, he bought, like, 30 properties, and then he figured out, like, maybe I better start to sell these things.

He made a big mistake. He didn't even get educated.

First.

He just started buying it, and then he's like, oh, gosh.

Yeah. And he's buying.

He made tons of money. He made 300% out of mistake.

He's buying all the wrong properties in the wrong places. And, you know, but yet he's still. He's still chugging along. And I think that. That's the thing is like, PJ took action and he wasn't afraid of, like, well, what. What's the. You know, what could happen? It's almost like, well, what's the worst that. That will happen? You own land. And I mean, like, that's what I. That's what I sprung to also.

Exactly Right. And I've worked really hard in businesses and endeavors that didn't work out. So, hey, you see a little bit of success. Keep moving forward. Just keep going. It's going to keep. It's going to work.

How did it feel, pj, when you started seeing that the strategies in this model actually work?

It was pretty awesome. You know, you can kind of. You kind of foresee your future when you see a $500 property turn into a $5,000 return. And you can kind of see. It's exciting. I mean, it really is. I actually enjoy land. I really do. I like going and looking at properties. I love it. So the whole overall picture was really exciting. It was. Gave me something to. It was a successful business, and it was. You can really see it starting to take off.

So how long have you been doing this?

About a year and a half.

And how much have you made.

This year? Last year? Last year was $27,000. Wasn't a full year, though. Last year was just a fraction of a year. It's about $27,000 this year. We're going to hit roughly 75 on the year.

That's about.

With about 25 properties right now going on terms on payments plus cash sales.

Okay, so between the passive income and the cash.

Right.

How does that move the needle in your life? Like what? Like give me an example.

It's overwhelming right now. A lot of the income that you bring in from the business rolls back into the business itself. You can see, though, how if I wanted to pull out of my day job right now, and I think my, my, my boss may be listening to this at some point, so I'll tread lightly here. If I did want to pull out of my, my job at any point, that would cover my, my expenses.

Freedom. What do you think, Todd?

Yeah, I, I agree. I mean, you know, like, it's. It's amazing to see how the, the, all of the land buying and selling, they all compound. They start to build up and snowball very quickly. And then you start to get into. You start to get into this groove where you do reach a point in which you can start to apply, you know, practical ratios that say, I'm going to pull this amount of money out of the business, you know, every two weeks, and that, that begins to support your. Your own living. But definitely the lower you can keep your expenses, the faster you're gonna get out and have that freedom, too.

Pj what are you looking at? At potential business that you feel like you'll be able to secure in the future doing this model?

I kind of have it. I have it on my wall back there behind my head, roughly. I mean, the goal is, you know, $10,000 a month in on notes and copying Scott Todd and his YouTube videos. My, my overall goal monthly is 83, 333. It's get you a million bucks a year. And the way things are moving, I don't see any reason why that won't happen.

What are you gonna do with all that money, pj?

I don't know. Maybe buy more hats. I don't know. I don't know. Wife will stop working. I'll tell you that the wife will stop working first. That's definitely the number one goal. We go to Disney World a lot. We do a lot of vacations, but I'd like to bring the wife home and have her not have to work anymore.

So, pj, when you say a million dollars, are you talking about a million dollars of sales, like land sales in the year? I mean, you're not talking about cash. Or maybe you are.

No, that's gotta be a gross. So It'd be, I mean, 83, including payments and cash sales per month.

Yeah.

So term sale, like all land sales, Everything combined. Yeah, everything combined. Yeah. And that's where I think a lot of people get hung up, Mark, is the fact that, you know this business, you know, if you. When you build it, not all you can say, I want all my deals on terms. And that's never gonna happen. You know, like, I think. I think we run about 25% of our deals are cash deals. And so, I mean, those are nice pops. And then what happens is, all of a sudden. Or someone pays off their note, all of a sudden, you're sitting on, like, a lot of cash that you have to hurry up and redeploy. That's why mailing all the time, always be closing those envelopes is so important because you never know when you're going to really have a lot of cash. And the secret is to keep it moving, because money loves speed.

Yeah. And it's like the same. Keep moving forward, you know, you got to keep going. There'll be a month where I'll have $20,000 in cash sales. I mean, that's great, but that won't happen for another two months. Now you got to look at it as an overall picture. You know, it's an average of the whole year. Not so much. I'm. Every single month, I'm getting X amount of dollars.

Right, right. So, pj, what specific feature did you like most about the training?

Gosh, it just. It honestly, it was kind of a warm and fuzzy feeling. It made me feel like I could. I had somebody go back and look at when. If I had any questions. Best thing. Gosh, just the overall package was. Was probably the best thing. Anytime I had a problem or I had an issue to where I needed an answer, I just go back and look at that.

I love it. I love it. And you know, pj, we're not the only game in town.

Yeah, yeah.

Bigger pockets, you know?

Why.

Why did you pick Land Geek and not the other guys?

I just liked it better. It just Seemed. It seemed to make sense more. It seemed like. I guess the way you guys were talking, it just kind of made sense to me. And I did look at other people. They seemed a little bit. It just was a style issue. It was really kind of a style issue. I felt like I fit better with the Land Gate community. It felt bigger and a little more welcoming than the other groups and the other real estate groups in general. You know, you go to other. Other real estate type meetings, they didn't feel as welcoming as Land Keep. It seemed like it was. Once you're. Once you sign up, you're here, you're with us.

Yeah. Yeah. Do you remember, you know, your best deal in the beginning?

Best deal? Oh, yeah. So I had. I. I sent out a mailer to a community here in the state I live in, and I got one back, And a lady says, you know, I hear you're wanting to buy my land. I said, yeah. So I go into my usual little talk to her about what I do, and she says, listen, stop. I'll give it to you for 500 bucks. And I said, and this was a 1.8-acre property in the central Rockies. This is not. This. It's a nice property. And so I said, oh, okay.

Yeah.

And I'm like, all right. Well, I'm kind of lost for words. And so I say, okay. And, yeah, went through that. She had about $3,700 in back taxes. However, within about a month, I sold it for 18,000 cash. And that was an issue. Sorry. That was an interesting story in itself. So the sale was strange and pretty shocking. So the buy was. The sale was also as shocking. I met a guy at a bank, and he shows up with a grocery bag full of cash. I'm not kidding. He walks in to this bank, and he goes in front of the tellers, and he says, hey, we need a place to count some money. I'm like, all right. And I'm walking with this guy.

I'm like, all right.

He seemed like a really nice guy. No issues with him. He takes his bag, dumps it on the table, and he says, you want to start counting? I'm like, yeah, yeah. All right. And so one of the tellers comes up, like, can we help you guys out? And we count the money. And unfortunately, it was the end of their day, so they had to. It caused them to restart their whole daily count. 18,000 cash. We'll do that. But, yeah, he got his car with his deed and drove away.

Scott, have you ever had a situation like that? I'VE had that once. Not that much cash.

No, I. I've only had, like, a few people that, like, have. Have said, I want to meet you. And they wanted to give me cash, but it was only, you know, like, $1,000. And, you know, I mean, that. That, like, makes me think of, like, when I was investing in mobile homes, and the guy's like, bring the deed or bring the title right now. And I'm like. He's like, and how much do I owe you? And I think it was, like, $5,000. I'm like, okay, okay. It's, like, getting dark, and we're outside the trailer. It's him and, like, four other guys, and they're counting out the cash to him for the 5,000. Then he's like, you good? I'm like, yeah, I'm good. I put it in my pocket.

I'm, like, walking back to the car.

Facing, you know, like, every which way I could. But I've never had 18,000 cashed out. That'd be great.

Yeah, that was definitely the big one. I had another interesting one guy. I had a property up on Craigslist, I believe it was back then. He says, well, I want to buy this property. I said, well, that's great. And he goes, but I want to buy it before I leave the state. I'm like, okay, yeah. What kind of time frame are you working with? Three hours. And I said, three hours? Okay. Where are you? He goes, I'm on the highway. I'm heading towards Kansas. And I said, okay. And so I printed up a deed as fast as I could. I went to the bank, got it notarized, and I met him at a truck stop. There's another cash sale. 2,500 bucks. I met him at a truck stop about an hour from the Kansas border where he'd been sitting. He had cash in hand, gave it to me. I gave him his deed. I haven't seen him since.

Unbelievable.

Now, the majority of the deals, don't get me wrong, are conventional deals, predominantly online. I very rarely meet people, you know, it's done online payments, nothing out of the ordinary. Terms deals, very normal. But these were just some of the interesting deals that I've had, and if they come up, hey, go for it. You know, don't. If that's an option, and that's the only way you're gonna get 2,500 bucks or $18,000 cash, you go for it.

I love it. What advice would you give a newbie that's kind of looking at this model? You Know, maybe they're scared about taking action and they're on the fence. You know, what would you say to them to kind of help them along? Because, you know, it wasn't too long.

Ago you were there. I would just, and it's easy for me to say at this point. I would say go for it. If a guy like me can make a business like this work, honestly, anybody can do it. I mean, it's. You just have to work and you have to have those days where, you know, things aren't going great, but you decide to drive to a truck stop on the side of the highway. You know, you just got to keep working and keep trying at it. Another thing is you've got to have, you got to think when you've developed yourself and you're in the business now, you've got to be able to have relationships with people. I think I spend a lot of time talking to older people on the phone for long periods of time. They just want to tell me their story prior to selling me their land. You know, they get the deed, the offer, they call you back and they just want to tell you about their themselves. Be willing to do that, be willing to sit down and talk to people at the end of this 30 minute conversation and you find out how she met her husband and in the 40s, you're going to get a great deal out of this.

I like that advice. Scott. Todd, what do you think?

I actually had a professor once tell me that. I think she was like a mountain climber and like a competitive mountain climber. Like they would go to these events and they would climb these mountains. And what she said was that whenever she would get to the event, she would start and she would walk around and introduce herself to as many people as she could. And people thought she was like nutty and like they wanted to be, you know, left alone. They were thinking mentally and. And here she's walking around saying, hey, I forgot her name. Here I'm so and so. And she said that there was a strategy behind that because she knew that if she got into trouble on the mountain that because someone had a personal relationship with her that they would stop and, you know, help her and try to make sure that she was okay. And I think that PJ kind of hits on a key point, whether it's on a buy side or the sell side. The minute that you make that personal connection with someone, then everything else is dropped. It doesn't matter if it's price, it doesn't matter the why you have that personal Connection. And then it's that connection that will ease the friction in the relationship and in the transaction too.

I mean, I talk a lot about this at boot camp. My biggest regret when I got started was not having that relationship type mentality. And to this day I get a little sad about it that I didn't have, you know, like a mentor to kind of guide me and tell me, hey, Mark, you know, you might want to think about this like a real business. And a real business, you know, deals with relationships and people and, you know, it's just that I want, you know, I'm just flipping, flipping, flipping one time sales and you know, it's, gosh, it was such a big mistake. So, pj, for you to come out of the gate, you know, knowing this and Scott, you knowing this, like, I get a little, I get, I'm proud of it. But I'm also like, ah, man, did I screw up. And looking back on it, I think I was just arrogant. What do you think, Scott? Well, I think so.

I mean, like, I think that we all get into that point where we feel like we, we can do it ourselves or that we've got this down and we don't need any, any assistance. You know, it's the, it's the DIY mentality. Right? You know, I can, I can do this. I don't, I don't need anybody. And I mean, that just goes right back to the relationships too, because I know for me, I had had success doing this, but I don't know that I could have scaled it with. Without having the mentorship and friendship that you and I developed and the relationship that we developed at the scale as fast as possible because I took that opportunity to leverage someone else's intelligence. I think that that's where, you know, coaching and whatever comes right back into it.

Yeah. Pj, what do you think about that? I mean, you know, you really kind of. Ready, fire, aim.

That's exactly right.

I mean, do you look back on that like, you know, if I could do it over again, this is what I would have done.

You know, I definitely would have joined up with you a little earlier instead of just buying those properties. I definitely would have done that. But no, I don't think I made a ton of errors early on that were. That would have prevented me from continuing on. I think it just, there's, there's not too much I would change. Those errors did kind of shape me into what, what we have right now.

No, I love it. I love it. So, all right, we're now PJ we're at that point in the podcast where I'm going to ask you for your tip of the week. A website resource, a book, something actionable where the art of passive income listeners can go. Right now, it's improve their businesses, improve their lives. What do you got?

I got two for you right now. The first is a video production company that we have here in the Denver area. It's CheeseandCrackers TV. CheeseandCrackers TV. They've done a little bit of work for us, for me, in a business sense, but also in a personal sense. They do a great job. It's a company. I believe they originated out of England. They do a lot of local stuff here. Now they do stuff for discovery and other different, larger organizations as well.

Website. I'm not impressed at all.

But no, no, no, the website's not the best. And I think they told me that. I told them I was gonna plug them here and they said, you know, the website's kind of in progress, but it's a good company. They do a pretty good job. Second, tip of the week, the points guy. I'm not sure if you've heard of the points guy.

I've never heard of them.

The pointsguy.com kind of teaches you how to utilize credit card points for things like vacations, hotel stays, things like that. I've only been really following them for about a month now, but as far as, like, having a credit card for business, I mean, we're buying certain things anyway, might as well get the right benefit from those. And he seems to do a pretty good job. Blogs just about every day.

Very cool. I'm drinking the Marriott juice, but I'll look into this.

Awesome.

Yeah, the points guy. Great tips, great tips. How about you, Scott? Todd, what's your tip of the week?

All right, Mark, my tip of the week today is. And it's something I've been playing with now for a little bit is mailparser IO mailpar S E R IO and what this thing does is you can go in there and you can basically set up kind of emails that you might receive on a regular basis. And you can say, I want you to grab this information and this information, this information. And what it does is it will take that information out, it will put it into any other type of document. So it'll use like, you know, you can put in PDF, you can put it in text files, whatever. So think of like, any email that you, you receive on a regular basis that maybe has key data whether it's stripe data or stripe payments or credit card payments that you're receiving and you want it to go into, you know, kind of a database or something. You can actually go in there and customize this integration so that you can do whatever you want with that data without having to rekey it or re enter it.

Can't I do. This is zapier.

Yeah.

I mean you can do a form of it. This one is stronger than the one in Zapier. But it's still, still along the same lines.

All right, I like it. I like it. Well, my tip of the week kind of sucks. It's never bounce, never bounce. Real time email verification and email cleaning services. Now once you've got, let's say in mailchimp, I don't know, let's say I don't know where they start charging you at because I use aweber.

Right.

But at some point you want to get rid of these emails that bounce.

Right?

Right. This company will do it. And let's see what the pricing is. I think the pricing is pretty good. You can analyze your list for free, so that's good. But neverbounce.com I would check it out. It's pretty good. Up to 10,000 is 0.08 cents per email.

Hey Mark, you know it was funny, I was on a call the other day and someone was asking me like how can they solve a problem? I immediately, I was looking at my okay, well okay, let's do this. And we created and designed a system like on the fly. And we actually talked about on the mastermind call with just recently about how to get deep packets out. I don't know if you remember last week's call or not, but you know, it was really about connecting this system together and thinking this through. And someone said to me, they said, you know, well, how did you figure out how to do that? And essentially, you know, I think you, you and I kind of do the same thing, which is we look at all these little tools and they may not have an application today for us, but we kind of store them. And so then when we need something we're like, ah, let's go over here. We start to connect all the dots. And that's how we have automated what like 90% of this business now?

90%. 90%.

Yeah.

I mean you've got to be able to embrace your inner geek here even if you're not geeky like us. There is a little geek in all of us. Right? You just gotta embrace that little automated system. Geeky person that wants to make their lives easier, like, and just start doing this stuff and, you know, bookmark these sites and come back to them. Like, every day I'm looking for something cool. Every day I'm checking out new technology and playing with it and spending money. If it works, great. If it doesn't, then I just cancel it. But I mean, I'm literally at that point now where I'm 45. I understand that life is precious. And time to me, never get more time. Right? I can always make more money. I can't get more time. Anything that will save me time, I will buy. And I. Gosh, I wish I had that attitude in my 20s because it's really helped me scale my business to the next level and gotten me out of so many things because I value my time. DJ Riley, what do you do to value your time?

What do I do to value my time?

What kind of tips and tricks do you have to automate and scale and save time?

Well, to save time, automate everything. Lonegeek IO Yeah, I pretty much. I put my kids to work. That really helps me a lot. If I need envelope stuffed, the kids are at it. That's how we automate in this house. I have three daughters and they do a lot of work to help the business.

I love it.

I love it.

Well, pj, I really appreciate you taking time, your busy schedule, and to kind of share your journey with all the listeners. I know that this is like one of their favorite podcasts is hearing your story, your case study. And I really, I really want to thank you. I really appreciate you reaching out to me and just telling me sometimes people are doing great, they don't even tell me. So, you know, I really, really appreciate it.

Yeah, yeah, no, Mark, I really appreciate it. You know, had you not taken that journey many years ago, there would be a lot of us would still be searching for something to be a part of. And I really do appreciate that. And thank you, Scott, as well.

Oh, thank you. Alright, Scott. Todd, this has been a great podcast.

I agree.

And the only way that this podcast continue growing is if you, dear listener, will take 20 seconds out of your day and just subscribe, rate and review the podcast. Do so. Please do so. It really, really helps us. Ej, are we good?

We're good, Mark. Thanks a lot.

Thank you, Scott. Are we good, Mark?

We're awesome.

All right, should we try to do it?

Ready? One, two, three.

Let freedom ring.

I don't know, pj, what do you think?

I don't know. Maybe try it one more time. One more time. Let's do it. We'll all do it together.

One, two, three.

That'll work.

All right. Thanks, everybody. See you next time.

Thanks.