A Student Success Story—The Little Tortoise With Big Grit

Hey, it's Mark Podolski the Land Geek with your favorite niche real estate website, www.thelandgeek.com. and I'm super excited for today's guest because she's one of our own. But before we talk to our guest, I'd be remiss if I didn't properly introduce my co host. You know him, you love him. The brain, the professor, the flight school Sherpa. I don't know how many more nicknames we're going to give him, but you know him. Scott Todd from Scott todd.net landmodo.com Most importantly, if you're not automating your Craigslist and your Facebook postings, posting domination.com thelandgeek Scott Todd. How are you, Mark?

I'm great. How are you?

I'm great, I'm great. I'm actually. I switched coffee brewing methods. I went from Aeropress to Chemex and it's like, it's like drinking a tea now. It's like very interesting.

So wow. I mean that's like that coffee brewing stuff seems complex, man. I just go to the machine and hit the button and it comes out. I don't know.

Yeah, yeah.

What's the difference?

It's different in that it. Well, first of all, it takes longer and just the whole process is longer. It's a little more math to it. Water to coffee grounds and you got to get the skin scale. It's whole process. But did you guys hear that voice? I got to properly introduce her. It is Mimi the terrorist Hunter Schmidt. She has gone from Land Geek client newbie and three years later, she is now coaching Mimi Schmidt. How are you?

I'm great. How are you?

I'm great, I'm great. I'm so excited to have you on the podcast. I'm so excited that you are our latest and greatest Land Geek coach. But I just want to rewind the tape and let us know, like, how did you start? How did you even find us and what was that journey like for you?

Well, thank you so much for having me. I wanted to say that first I was working for Customs and Border protection, part of DHS back in the fall of 2015. I live in Northern Virginia, so I had a hellacious commute and I was so tired of listening to the to the radio. So I started listening to podcasts. Bigger pockets. I even caught myself on like the Art of Charm one time and before I even realized it was like a.

Dating.

I found you guys and I listened to the Land geek podcast all 89 of them on YouTube. Work less, earn more, learn how. Right? I think 86 was the self directed IRA. I loved it. I loved listening to you and Joanne Frazier. I had multiple virtual cups of coffee with you. Remember those days?

Yeah, I do remember those days.

Yep. So that's how I found you. I started listening to you and I was working for dhs. I managed data analytics teams that would look for weapons of mass destruction, intellectual property rights violations, narcotics and terrorists coming into the United States. So it was a super cool job. It was just really stressful and I couldn't be the mom, wife, sister, sister, daughter friend that I wanted to be. It was. The stress was starting to eat at me and make me, make me. I wasn't happy. So I started listening. I bought the toolkit and I went to the 2016 Scottsdale Boot Camp. Was my first one. I've been to nine now, but that was my first one. And then I joined coaching that June of 2016.

And when you started in the coaching program, I remember because, you know, I forgot you're managing how many people at the time and.

Oh yeah. So we had a project coming out of the Boston bombing that Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the older brother, was not supposed to have come into the United States, but CBP and TSA's targeting systems missed him. And so we got this project to enrich the watch list. So it was super cool. After major worldwide, after a major worldwide terrorist event, we'd come into work and there'd be a list and was up to us to find something, try to find anything on this list of new people that were super important. And the work we did, it led to the death of multiple terrorists. Well, my reward for that was to be sent to rebuild, do the lead. The next gen rebuild of precheck for the TSA. It was 120 people and it was way up right south of Annapolis, Maryland. And so lots of people, lots of commuting and with a really difficult client. So I would have my coaching appointments with Scott at 9, 10 o' clock at night. And I was so flustered and exhausted by the time I would talk to him. So I don't, without coaching, I don't, I wouldn't, I wouldn't have gone anywhere. I wouldn't have gone anywhere. So I was really grateful for coaching because it kept me accountable and it kept me moving forward in my business.

Yeah, I remember being worried about you. Do you remember that, Scott?

Yeah, yeah. I mean like I was even worried about Mimi a couple times. Like few times, like some of the things that she, you know, like. Mark, think back to her first boot camp, right? Like there we are in Scottsdale. We're in that terrible room with the low ceilings. Mimi's in the front of. We're facing the audience. So she's on the front right side. Right. There she is. And you're like, hey, does anybody have a problem making 300 to 1000% return on money? And Mimi's hand goes straight up, right? And you're like, what?

And I'm like, oh, oh.

Like that's one of them.

Yeah, yeah. Mimi, do you remember that?

Oh, yeah, I remember it. I distinctly remember it.

How do you feel about the margins now?

I love it. I love it. If I could find more counties where I could consistently get 300%, yeah, that'd be great.

Do you remember, you know, why you felt that way? Because that was kind of a bold thing. I mean, that was a big. I mean, it was like, I don't know, Scott, there's like 80, 90 people in that room.

Yeah.

She's like the only one in the room who's like, only one room.

Like honest, like. Yeah. I mean, you know, other people are uncomfortable.

I didn't want to feel like I was taking advantage of folks, but I think the first time that I sent someone a $3,500 check two weeks before Christmas who was stuck with a piece of land that they thought they'd never get rid of. And now she had all this money to buy gifts for her grandk and she sent me puzzles, Christmas cards. She was so grateful, I thought, I have no reason to feel bad about this. It was a great feeling to be able to help her out, to take that piece of property off of her. And I sold that property five days later for $9,000. So, yeah, I didn't. I don't feel bad about that anymore.

Yeah, yeah. So my big concern, I think when we looked at your coaching application and I remember talking distinctly about Scott about it, I said, you know, we think Mimi is going to do really well in this. But our biggest fear was that she was going to fall in love with the data because you were so analytical and so geeky. And we thought, oh, she's never going to send out an offer because she's going to take a look at the list and she's going to fall in love with, with the data and start and then just never, you know, sort of do it. And then, and then. Scott, what did you say? I forgot how you kind of convinced me.

Well, what happened was I Just said she'll do it, right? Like she'll overcome the data. I know she will. And then she showed up to her. She showed up to her first coaching session with like her, her comps, like for her county. And it was the most in depth analysis I've ever seen produced for like land. That piece of data that she produced, it's probably worth like $1.3 billion. It was way too much overkill for what we do.

Meaning how did you sort of bridge that gap between your analytical side and then the entrepreneurial side that sort of has to be ready, fire, aim approach, because that could not have been comfortable for you.

And Scott told me right off, you know, way too much, way too much, right. And I always go back to that mail when I sit down in the morning. What are my priorities? Mailing and marketing. And so I work on, on that marketing aspect. Told one or I don't let let myself touch anything else till one or two in the afternoon. I just chase leads. You know, I've just set. I'm very regimented and so I just have set myself a schedule. I don't let myself get out of it. So, yeah, it's just help from you guys. I'm making sure I'm on the right course. Right. Like Scott says, just follow the recipe. So I still have to fight that. I still do my own data, but once I've got a county up and running, I only look at the data quarterly to build a new list. So then I have fun playing in the data, looking at new counties now. So I still have to check myself.

But that's great. That's great. So how long have you been land investing? How much time do you spend land investing? And what is life like now after 36 months of being a professional land investor?

Well, it's been, it was two years this summer and when I got to 5,000.

Two years, I'm sorry.

Yeah, yeah, 5,000amonth in passive income. My husband was finally like, okay, I'm willing for you to quit your job and give it a go. Okay. And you got a year. Which he's kind of backed off on now because he sees the value. But so I'm four months in where I'm just scaling, I'm scaling the business now, right. And just pushing it way up, increasing the number of ads, increasing the number of counties. And I'm having. I'm so much happier in every aspect of my life. I'm so much happier. I can be the mom I want to be if I want to go to The Virginia Tech game. I can leave Friday morning. I don't have to wait, right? So I love it and I love being involved with the community still. That whole network that you guys have built, it's so positive. And I didn't, when I grew out of coaching, I really, I didn't want to leave it. So I'm just really enjoying still being.

No. And we love the fact that you're going to give back as a coach and going through what you've gone through now. What do you think makes for a. Like, if you had to say, okay, if I was going to make like a witch's brew and I was going to throw in these ingredients to make a great land investor, what would those be?

Grit. Definitely the grit. And I would say you have to be willing to take feedback, right? Because if you're hard headed and headed down a particular direction, you have to be able to take that feedback to not be so analytical or to push more in a certain direction, right? So the grit, you just can't give up, right. You've got to set your expectations that you're gonna do this until you're succeeding, right. And then when you. And success is how you define it, right? Until you've reached those goals and then you'll set another set of goals and you've just got to keep at them. So I think grit and being able to take feedback are the two most important things.

I love it. Scott. Ty, what are your thoughts on that?

You know, I think that there's so many pieces of Mimi's story that's important to understand here. One, if you listen to what she said, you know, here's somebody that digs deep into analytics. She's a very analytical person, right. You know, and so it's so easy for people to kind of like, they're so, I don't know the right term, Mark. They're so hard headed, if you will, right. Like they're so headstrong that they're like, this is what I know and this is what I'm going to go do. And Mimi started that way and I'm like, wait, too much information. Just do this scale down. And Mimi was one open, she was open to learning, right? So like she recognized that if I'm going to do this and I want to be successful at it and I'm going to pay someone for advice, I might as well listen to their advice, right. And take it to heart. So she executed on like what the coach said, right? Like she listened, she put her own beliefs aside and then she executed. And I think that that's one of the secrets to. To kind of success in any type of a coaching program. The other. The other thing that she kind of surfaced over a little bit was she said that, you know, once she got to a certain point, her husband was on board saying, okay, you can go get your job, you know, one year, or whatever. And the cool thing about that whole experience there is that, you know, this was not as, like, glazed over as that. Right. You know, like, there's different dynamics in any family relationship. And one of it could be that, hey, one person might be afraid of the other person's goals, right? Like in it. And it could be something to where, man, if they do that, then we could suffer financially or all this other stuff. But what Mimi did, which is, I think, a very compelling story here in and of itself, is that she continued to chisel away at her own goal. So Mimi did not have this artificial time horizon that says, I'm going to do this, and I'm going to do it in a year, or I'm going to do it in six months in order to prove to somebody that I can go do this. What Mimi did was she's like, you know, I'm going to do this. This is important to me. And she slowly chiseled away at her goal until she got to a point, which was the tipping point, right? And what I mean by that was, the tipping point was all of a sudden, like, wow, this really is a viable source. And then all of a sudden, it helps in the family dynamic, right? It helps.

Mark.

We hear all the time, like, how do I convince my partner that this is a good thing? Well, ultimately, there's nothing you can say that's going to convince them. What you have to do is you have to show them, right? Like, you have to show them that, hey, oh, wow. Yeah, man, this is really is good. And the way that you do that is you just slowly chisel away at it. And then one day, you know, like, one day, the family needs something like, hey, man, sure wouldn't be nice to go on vacation. And you're like, here's the cash. Let's go, baby.

Right, Right. It's like, hey, I just did this deal. So, Mimi, do you have a favorite deal?

No. Well, I just bought one last week for 2,500 and sold it for 10,000 cash. No, mine are all fairly small. Like he said, just the. I feel like the tortoise, not the hare.

No, I don't think there's anything wrong with it. And you know what's so interesting, Scott, is, you know, Mimi kind of quickly mentioned she's been in nine boot camps, right? And that's a lot of boot camps. I think Tom Willis has been to maybe 11, nine has been to maybe nine or ten. I think you and I are then the most, right? Oh, I've been to the most.

You've been to the most.

I've been to the most. But Mimi's up there. And what's interesting is we can't find Mimi all weekend, right? Like, literally, it's like, wait, we know she's there, but you don't really see her. Mimi, what are you doing at boot camp?

Well, I. The latest version of Kaizen is called Agile and I've got like, I used to run these things called release training events where you get these huge groups of 100 people together and do planning events. And what you do is you come up with these strategic objectives for your business. And in that planning event, over two, three days, you break it down into two week chunks of work that will enable you to get to that strategic goal. And so I always saw boot camp as my release planning event. And I would go in and think, okay, where do I want to be by the next boot camp with my business? Because you learn so much at boot camp, you get so overwhelmed and you take notes and then Monday you're back at your job and you're busy and you don't get the things implemented. So I'd make a quarterly plan of those strategic objectives and I would break them down into monthly and two week chunks of what I needed to take action on so that when I came the next time I had another plate space in my business. And then I try to stay an extra day so that I could actually start on some of those things there. At the boot camp, I wouldn't sit around and chit chat so much. I would use those, the free time to actually start on the things I was learning while they were fresh in my head. And that worked for me because at work I couldn't go to the mastermind calls. I'd have an employee walk in my office and it looked like I was watching television. I couldn't chase sales leads because there was no conference room. Or I'd be walking down the hall and they'd be like, why is she talking about land? Right? And I was the boss. And so I remember sitting in my car once doing a sales call. My employees, like, why they were coming back from lunch. Why is Mimi in the car? So I just had to find the time where I could. And so boot camp was the best time to really focus because you're away from all the rest of your life.

Yeah. No, and I think the, you know, for me, the biggest takeaway of that is that, you know, if you're listening to this and you think to yourself, well, I just don't have the time to, you know, create passive income in my life. Really, If Mimi could find the time, I guarantee you can find the time, because, I mean, there's. I don't know of anyone that might have had a bigger, more important job managing that many people with kids and, you know, the commute. I mean, everything going on and then still finding time as a side hustle to create passive income. So, literally, there's no excuse. If Mimi can do it, you can do it. And utilizing the boot camp to create that time, you know, is phenomenal. Scott, Todd, what are your thoughts?

Yeah, I think, Mark, it's funny because, as was just mentioned, people go to boot camp, and then, you know what? They go back to their everyday lives. Like, it ends on Sunday. They race back. They're back at work on Monday, and they don't necessarily put away time for their own goals. And, you know, if you. If you just listen, like, this is what Mimi just said was exactly what I was talking about. That's how she just slowly chiseled away at the goal, right? Like, she didn't just go to the bootcamp for the social aspect of it. She went there with an intent purpose on working on her goals, Right? Like, that was the time she went on to working on her goals. And, you know, essentially, she continued just to chisel away at them ever so slowly. You know, like, you hear the tortoise and the hare story. She's like the tortoise. She's just, whatever. I'm just going to keep marching to the goal. And she took it seriously. And I got to tell you, there's a big difference in the ability to achieve your goals when you do that, as opposed to race in, race out, and, okay, I got what I needed, and I'm not going to execute anything.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So, Mimi Schmidt, any final words of wisdom before we get to the tip of the week? If someone's listening to this and they're nervous about maybe investing the toolkit or going to flight school or going to coaching or even boot camp, what would be your words of wisdom?

The model really works. The model really does work. And because, you know, you fear that you'll mess up sometimes or that you can't do it. And I made mistakes, but none of the mistakes that I've made have. They've all been overcomeable. And looking in the rearview mirror, I've learned so much from them. So I think I learned more from the mistakes than I do, just the successes. So that's it. The model works. And don't be afraid, because can't mess up that badly that it'll, you know, you'll come out on the top.

Yeah. I mean, one of my favorite Mimi mistakes is sending out offers with no offer and still getting deals.

Yep. Yeah.

I'm telling you. I'm telling you, man. She's. She's made every mistake. She's like. She's made the mistakes. She survived. Okay? Like, people are so afraid of making mistakes. And I always say, like, listen to Mimi. She sent out offers for $0. She made a mistake in her mail merge. And literally, people. I see people that like, oh, my gosh, I made a mistake on my offer letter.

That's the end.

It's terrible. My career is over. No, it's not. It's just beginning, baby. That's how you learn. That's how you grow, is make the mistakes. And if you want. If you want to know about mistakes, just ask Mimi. She'll tell you about all the mistakes. They're great.

Yeah, I laugh at them now. I ripped up a deed once. Thank goodness. I'd taken a picture of it a couple days before, threw it away and went, oh, wait a minute. It's okay. It's all good.

And this is why you want Mimi as your coach, for those of you going into coaching, because she's seen it all, she's done it all. She's not going to let you, you know, come up with an excuse because she's like, look, if I can do this, I was doing this and this and this, you can do it. And, you know, the efficiency of it, the grit, all of it is embodied in Mimi. And you come out of it so much more, you know, I think more of a sense of accomplishment when you have to go through the struggles and the hardship like Mimi did, as opposed to somebody that might be coming into it with, you know, more time or maybe, you know, less, let's say, of like. Like a just general life struggle than Mimi. So, you know, really remarkable. But she's not going to let you come up with an excuse, for sure. All right, well, now we're at that point in the podcast where we get to put Mimi on the spot one more time. Your mentorship has been amazing. But we want to know your tip of the week. A website resource, a book, something actionable for the art of passive income listeners to go right now. Improve their businesses, improve their lives. What do you got?

I have said it before, but this is a really good tip. For your terms deals, Geek Pay is truly the best solution. But for your cash deals, wholesale deals, buying and selling, and for paying your stateside VAs, pay them with Facebook Messenger. Just think you can give your stateside VA's a Christmas pay raise, and it won't cost you a cent because there are no merchant fees on Facebook Messenger. Why? If you're gonna buy wholesale deals from each other, why pay the merchant fees? Pay each other for. Through Facebook Messenger. For your wholesale deal.

It's a great tip. Facebook Messenger. Scott, have you done a deal through Facebook Messenger?

No, I have not.

I thought I buy wholesale deals through Facebook messenger with other linkies.

How much can I transfer on Facebook Messenger?

There's no limit. There's no limit and there's no fee.

Does it come right on my bank account? Is that what it does?

One to three days? Ach. Could take up to five days. I just had one. Take five days. One to three days.

I don't know. Yeah, I mean, I'm gonna send everybody bills through Facebook messenger from here on out.

Send them Facebook Messenger. It's, it's, it's immediate. I love it.

Could you set up recurring? I wonder if it could compete with Geek Pay. That'd be cool.

I don't. I don't think it is.

Like, what am I saying? I don't want to compete with Geek Pay.

It doesn't.

You.

You can't do recurring. And you. It's. It's a debit card. It's not credit card. It's peer to peer. But yeah, no limit and no fees. So, like, my, My stateside vas love it because there's. They get more money for a VA that, you know, doesn't make so much. That. That is. It's. That amount is material. That's the word I'm looking for. And for a wholesale deal, 3% on PayPal of $5,000 is 150 bucks. Save yourself 150 bucks.

I'm doing it.

I'm doing it. Doing it. So what other cool kids are doing anyways? Venmo. Facebook Messenger.

Venmo. They just had hackers that were able to go change passwords.

Oh, okay. Not Venmo.

Yeah.

All right. Great tip, Scott. Todd, what's your tip of the week?

Mark, look, sometimes People are out there and they're, they need some forms for their website, you know, like, you know, contact forms, etc. And you know, I like to use jotforms and I pay like I don't know, $9 a month for jotforms. But you should also look at hello forms co helloforms co and it's cheaper. They actually have a free version. If you're going to do like 25 forms, 25 submissions on one form. Otherwise for $3 a month you get like unlimited forms, file attachments, submission archives. Pretty cool stuff.

Cool.

Hello, simple and smart. Contact form to email service for developers.

There you go.

There it is. This looks nice.

Oh wow.

It's three bucks a month, Scott. I know. I don't know. I'm. I think they're not gonna make it though. They're too inexpensive.

Nice way to kill the tip. Like they're gonna make it $3 a month.

No, they're gonna make it. They're gonna make. Doesn't look like there's much development.

Worst case scenario, you get, you get a 30 day notice that they're shutting down on you.

Go back to jot forms.

Go back to jot forms. I mean like why did you leave us anyway?

All right, so helloforms co. Alright, well I've got a tip of the week that is not fully formed because I'm about a quarter into the book. But I'm really enjoying it now. It's not. Well, you know what it is for everybody because when you first start listening to it or you start reading it, you think, oh, this is really for CFOs, CEO, COOs or CEOs of public companies. Because basically it's case studies of CEOs that do sort of capital allocation of investment dollars of public companies and, and how they did things differently. They'd focus on cash flow instead of per share earnings which is sort of the metric for Wall Street. So as you start getting into it you're like, oh, this is pretty MBA ish. But really for our niche of land investing, we do need to think like professional investors and how we allocate our capital resources, the discipline of investing, the way they look at it, the management structure and these CEOs, how they were sort of iconoclastic in their time period and they were doing things that were just different. It is called the Outsiders and I'm really enjoying the book by William and thorndike. The outsiders. Eight unconventional CEOs and their radically Rational Blueprint for success. Right now I'm reading about Templeton from Teledyne, who's like, warren Buffett is like, this guy's the best. So I highly recommend Outsiders William and Thorndike is my tip of the week. I do want to remind everybody that if you want to learn more about how Mimi became so successful so quickly and was able to get out of her, you know, let's face it, she has like the coolest job, but he is still a job with all the headaches, right, and the commute and the stress and the pressure and, you know, all the wine drinking that goes associated with it. If you want to get away from it and you want to start creating passive income, even if you love your job, maybe one day you won't. You owe it to yourself to accelerate through flight school. And flight school is a 14 week program. You've got the best Sherpa in the world to take you up that land investing mountain. It was Mimi's own personal coach, Scott Todd, and he will take you from, you know, sort of naive newbie all the way to grizzled vet. You'll be sending out offers, you'll be executing in real time with your class. There's no other way to execute as quickly as there is like in taking like a group class. It's like if MBA and peloton sort of have like a love child, right, of land investing. It's motivational, it's fun, and you get results. 14 weeks. So if you want to learn more about it, just go to the landgeek.com training schedule. Call with the nightcapmeister Scott Bossman or the Zen master Mike Zano. All right, well, I want to thank all the listeners. And the only way that we're going to continue to get the quality of guests like Amini the terrorist Hunter Schmidt is if you do us three favors. You got to subscribe, you got to rate, you got to review the podcast. Send us a screenshot of the review to support@thelandgeek.com we're going to send you for free the $97 launch kit, passive income launch kit. All right, Mimi Schmidt, are we good?

We're good. Thank you so much. It was fun.

Thank you. Thank you, Scott. Todd, are we good?

We're good, Mark.

All right, let's do this. And oh, by the way, tune in to hear Mimi on the land Geek roundtables as well. So she's like a pro at this now. 1, 2, 3, let freedom ring. All right, thanks, everybody.