Avoid these 3 crucial mistakes when buying land in 2026

Eat baloney, buy land. Oh, eat baloney, buy land. Trade the fork for the deed in your hand. Skip the filling, let the sandwiches stand. Your fortune will grow when you buy your own land.

Are we pumped up or what? Hey guys, good to see you again. Land Geek community, if you've been thinking about getting started in land investing, but you haven't pulled the trigger yet, this episode is for you. Tonight, we're breaking down strategy, how to get started, but also how to avoid mistakes that stop people from getting started and making money and building the time freedom that they came here for. So these are mistakes we're gonna try to avoid. They're early decisions that feel small, but have big consequences. So avoid just one of these mistakes and you're gonna move faster. Ignore the mistakes and you're going to stall. So let's get into it. First of all, intros. My name is Scott Bosman. I've been a land investor for over a decade. Joined here tonight by, as always, Mike, the Zen Master, Zeno, breathe in the mailing. Breathe out the marketing. How's it going tonight, buddy?

It's going great. I'm happy to be here. Thank you all.

What do you got, a Pinot Noir?

I see.

Ah yeah, that is very classy.

Very, very good. I don't know what to do when they do that at restaurants.

I'm so—

I'm like, I'm just so in left field. They gotta pretend. I'm like, take it back. Think about it.

On my lower right, we have John Burnett, handsome Rob, Eight Is Enough Burnett. John, how are you tonight?

I'm doing great. I got my Spindrift, not nearly as classy as Mike, but I'm working on it. I mean, it's a little classy. It's real fruit juice.

It's real frigid. Is that what it's real?

It's real fruit juice.

A real fruit juice? Yeah, I thought you said a real frigid, which— oh yeah, it's probably that as well.

There's frigid and fruit juice.

Very good. Good to see you, sir. Uh, and as always, we're joined, uh, by the myth, the man, the legend himself, the Godfather, Mark J. Podolsky. The Land Geek is here.

Good evening, fellas. I am drinking a very fancy Concoction of lemonade, LMNT, Element. Stay salty, my friends. Stay salty.

Stay salty.

I was getting my kids on salt water a little bit, so I made my own Element. It was, it was very exciting.

But nice.

Yeah.

So I've— my kids are, they're not that into it right now.

I prefer my salt via potato chips.

That's just fine.

Yeah, yeah, one potato, right?

Absolutely.

Thanks, everybody. How about the comments, by the way? I mean, I feel like we should just start the, the pod with a big group hug for Don Thrasher. Is that wrong? If that's wrong, I don't want to be right. Bring it in, Don Thrasher!

Uh, And if you're not a hugger yet, you will be when you meet Mark. It's just, it just happens. There aren't many people that turn down Mark J. Podolsky's hugs.

Well, there was that one boot camp, remember, Mark, where you started like at the end of the camp, you, you started hugging one and hugging the next one. He reached a critical point where you had to hug everybody.

I had to hug everybody. It was, it was, I mean, there's awkward and then there's what happened there.

That was memorable. It was a certain point, there's no going back.

There's no going back. There's no going back. Oh, man.

Well, thanks, everybody, for the, for the energy in the chat. It's fun to see all of you making comments before we even get on the air. So, but we should probably get down to it. So tonight, we're talking mistakes. We're talking mistakes in land investing. As you're first starting out in the business, there are bad, bad things we want to avoid.

Right.

So maybe not bad, bad things, because really, there are not really— there are not terrible things that happen in this business, even if you do make a mistake, because we all make mistakes. But I hate to put Mike on the spot, but I think I'm going to. But Mike, if you're just starting out in this business and you've decided to take action, Yes. What, uh, what is, what is one of— what's a common mistake that people make in the beginning, uh, that maybe prevents, maybe stops them, stops them straight in their tracks? Like they make a mistake, they don't get any traction, and they're done. They just decide they're done.

I think— you ready for this? I think the biggest mistake you can make in the bidding is worrying about making a mistake, because the reality here is that we follow such a margin of safety. If you would just do nothing other than follow the numbers, it's mathematical how we look at these properties, then you'll never put yourself in a situation where you will buy something that, um, you know, that you won't be able to sell or be a bad— because we buy everything with instant equity. So I think that the fear— but that's okay, put that aside. But the fear of making A mistake is your biggest mistake because we're all going to make mistakes. I think we fail forward. Mark used to tell me, create a new problem and solve it. That was the mantra I had, and I love that. I tell people all the time, over and over again, new problem, good problem. That's what Mark would say— new problem, good problem— because that's how we move forward in this business. So I think the biggest mistake you can make is worrying so much about making a mistake that you do nothing.

I love it. I love it. And you're very right. And also just the thought of making a mistake prevents people from taking action, right?

Yeah.

I mean, just thinking that this isn't gonna work, right? There's no way this is gonna work out.

Yeah.

This sounds goofy. I'm not gonna do this, right?

Yeah.

That's a mistake right there in itself, is letting your anxiety prevent you from taking imperfect action. And for a lot of people, it's difficult to take imperfect action.

Right? Right.

You're doing something that's completely outside of your comfort zone. So I love that. What about you, John Burnett? As somebody who's just getting started in the land business, what is a major mistake that sometimes people make that pull them off the track.

Yeah, man, I feel like Mike's answer was so good, right? It's just gonna be lame in comparison. But I will say, so my answer— I think that Mike's answer is more important than mine. It was actually the thing that, that impacted me the most because I just tended towards worrying and got that pit in my gut each time I, I came to the new stat. But you know, you got to learn by doing, and you start by doing imperfectly, and then as you go, you pick it up, you get better and better and better. And so I think that's really, really important. What I was going to say was I think people have a big temptation to work in their backyard, and depending on your backyard, that could be a big mistake, right? It's important to work in a county that's going to work really well with the model, and you don't have to be afraid. I mean, I, I live in Idaho. I do deals, and I've done deals in over a dozen states, right? And I've done deals as far away as Florida, which is literally as far away as you can possibly be from Idaho in the United States, right? So don't be afraid, you know, to branch outside of your backyard and do deals where the numbers make sense. So—

Wow, I love that. You know, I never work in my backyard because Laura hasn't had a W-2 in 10 years and she does all the yard work. So I'm never in the backyard. Or the front yard or the side yard.

Oh man, I love it. I'm trying to be fancy over here.

We go, uh, we got a running banner now, Scott. Nice job.

We got a running banner for, for the community. Throw in the chat, type in, type in the word county if the— if, if, uh, oh, that's not what's supposed to say, but type in, type county if this is the part you overthink most, right? Or do us another solid, type whatever word is the thing that you're struggling with, right? Or just any word. What is it that you overthink most in the land business? And we are here to help tonight. I'm going to fix that typo I made. But Mark J. Podolsky, I'd like to hear from you. Yeah, totally.

I love the comment Matthew Bright just made. First time joining live. I love the podcast. Big shout out to John for setting me up with the starter kit today.

Thank you, Matthew. I told him I'd be Venmoing him $20 after the show.

So I love it. I love it. I— okay, so I love what you guys have said as far as like big newbie mistakes, and I'm, I'm going to tell a quick story. Is that cool?

Yes.

So I'm not sure if he's the winningest coach of all time in college athletics, but he might be. Uh, and Mike and I aren't huge sports guys, but I know the story about John Wooden. Mike, have you heard of a coach named John Wooden?

I have not.

Okay, so he, he was a coach at UCLA, and I want to say he— they won like 12 championships in a row. Wow, like something crazy.

Yeah.

And you've heard of a guy named Kareem Abdul-Jabbar?

That I— Skyhook, I know that.

Skyhook. Okay, so, so Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, before he was Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, he was Lou Alcindor, and he went to UCLA. Oh, and played, uh, for John Wooden. And John Wooden was famous for starting practice the same way every practice. And these are, these are top, you know, recruits in the country. So you come in and you think, you know, you're going to go and you're going to learn some kind of fancy play, right? Yeah, in college basketball. You know what Coach Whitten does with these guys?

No.

Guys, here's how you tie your shoes and put on your socks properly. So here's how you put on your socks. And here's how you tie your shoes. So he started with the fundamentals. Wow, the simplest fundamentals. And then from there, he built championship teams. And so I think oftentimes a big mistake I see newbies making is they go and they start really trying to go past the fundamentals of what we do is simply mailing and marketing. Don't get fancy in the beginning. You don't need to have a fancy website, and you don't need to hire a bunch of VAs, and you don't need a bunch of tools, and you don't need, you know, Claude Opus 4.5 and ChatGPT 5.2 and running certain agents. Just get the fundamentals down, and then from there build upon that. So I think because we're adults and we have all this experience, have beginner's mind, as Mike would say, being the Zen master, and start as a beginner. Have no expectations of yourself. You know, a big win, Matthew Bright, is betting on yourself and just starting and going through that first module and just following that recipe and doing each step at a time and thinking, okay, today I'm going to learn how to tie my shoes.

Yeah.

Tomorrow I'm going to learn how to bounce the ball and just go through the fundamentals one step at a time. That's, that's my new answer.

Mark, you know what I love about that is I feel like, you know, the times I get overwhelmed, when I go back to the basics, it's so deep and old. Brings me a sense of calm. So if you're not thinking too far, like you are thinking about just the fundamentals and doing them, doing them well, you can go deep into that and it can bring you a sense of calm, I believe, and focus.

Yeah, absolutely. There's so much FOMO out there. I need to learn this, I need to do that, I need to hire this person, I need to get this tool. No, you don't. No, you don't. You just need to get a list. Yeah, price the list. Yep, mail the list. That's it, start there.

Yeah, it's like information overload. We were talking on— we just had the webinar, we were talking about— I don't know if you were on at that point, but we were saying like, I tell people all the time, you can go on YouTube and you can find 5 experts will tell you 5 different ways to do the same thing. It's so overwhelmed. We get overwhelmed with information, right? So we need to follow a proven path and stick to it with people, you know. And that's why I say what I love about what you've been doing Was it 25 years more now? I mean, how many years?

25 years.

Yeah. And so, and here's the funny thing, you're still doing the same thing. You haven't—

no, we, we just closed on a, on a deal. We bought 135 lots yesterday. I love this business.

Yeah, same model, same niche, same thing. That's crazy. I see people out there, they teach this today, that tomorrow, the next thing the next day. They want to educate, they want to teach. That's nice. But I love the fact that, you know, we've been doing this a long time with the three of us, but you've been doing it so much longer. And the fact that you're still doing it, I think, speaks volumes, you know, still actively today.

If I could find something better, I would. I think we have the— don't tell anybody— the best thing out there.

You realize a lot of people don't know. People think when they come here, oh, how many people set It's such— we had 250 people at a— we have an annual conference across the country. How small of a niche is that, the 250 people? I mean, that's— it's a good amount of people, but for everybody across the United States, or even the country, could come to this, we had 250. It's such a small niche.

It's such a small niche. It's such a boring niche, you know? Like, if you're single, you're not picking up anybody at the bar. Telling them I'm a land investor, right? You're just not.

I buy raw land.

I buy raw land. Do you improve it?

Nope.

Nope. You subdivide it?

No.

You entitle it?

Nope.

Nope. I make a cash flow though, like a rental home.

Yeah, I, I, I would— I have a story along those lines. I was not trying to pick up anybody at the bar, but I was being social at the bar on New Year's Eve, and I spoke to this gentleman, he had to have been probably in his 80s. And he's a very successful real estate investor. And he asked me what I did. And I said, I buy and sell land. And he's like, you're the first person that's ever told me that in my life. And we had a nice conversation about it. He's in his 80s. All he's ever done is homes, right? Homes, multifamily, flips, whatever. And I'm the first land investor he's ever met. This is crazy. But we started talking about it. He's like, you know what, you're on to something that's really smart. And, and, you know, he might be, might be a partner with some funds later on, right?

Wow.

So it's a nice connection to make at the bar. But it just goes to show you how rare this is.

It's funny.

He said you were the most handsome land investors I've met, too. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, for sure. Thank you.

Thank you.

Until he meets John.

Yeah, it's all bets off.

While we're on the, while we're on the topic, we were talking counties. Let's, let's, uh, answer a question here. Uh, I think it's Nam, maybe it's Nam.

You know, Nam's just on the webinar.

Let's go. Yeah. Okay, nice. So Mike Zaino, yes, how do you pick Mike, Mark's got this great secret county list, right?

How—

don't tell anybody— how do you pick from the crazy long county list and how do you decide what to offer, Mike?

Yeah, first of all, very valuable. If you could find out where these deals are being done, that is step one. Like, literally, that is step one. So Mark, that's pretty cool that you allow people to have that list. Um, number two, I would say depends on how much capital Nan, is that how much capital you have? You look at that list, you start to do some research, go to land sites, look at the counties on that list and see what the properties are selling for. You divide that by 4. Do you have that much capital available? Can you buy one of those properties? More? Could you buy maybe 2 or 3? If not, maybe look for another one where you can buy. So I think a lot of it, once you know the area, you got to start dialing into your price point based on your budget. So I think that's probably the next clue that I would give you. And this is— I always say it, you're an investigative reporter. There are land deals being done out there every day by the four of us and by many other people. You need to find out where, how much we buying them for, and how we selling them. Like, that's your— that's what you have to find out. So, but take it in a step-by-step progression. Number one, where is it happening? But number two, which one are you going to focus in on? So that's going to come down to your budget. So I'd start looking in that manner.

Awesome. Thank you for that. Hopefully that was helpful, Nan. Let me see what other questions or comments we have here. A comment from BMK Property Solutions. Everybody always looks at them with googly eyes when they tell them. We're all still getting the googly eyes too. Like I was— like, like I always tell everybody, my mom still gives me googly eyes 10 years later. She's still nervous that I quit my job 5 years ago. It's just how it is. Um, very good, very good. Well, uh, let's talk, uh, some other mistakes. What are some other mistakes that, uh, people might make, uh, in the beginning of their journey? And, um, John, if you have one at the top of your head, feel free, but, but I do have one as well.

Okay, I guess one that comes to mind is, um, Like, I remember when we were starting land investing, Scott Todd, he would always talk about gotta have landitis, right? Like this, like you're so excited, you're so pumped, and you're like, I'm gonna buy land, I'm gonna buy all the land, I want it all now. And you can kind of make, um, you want to make sure that you're buying within the model, right? You're buying 25, 35 cents on the dollar. But the other thing I think that, um, If you like, some people get really excited, I'm gonna buy all the land, and they buy like 10 properties all in one subdivision, right, that are kind of the same one to another, right? And that works if you want to wholesale some of those off. But really, when you think about having 10 properties all in the same subdivision with similar features, it's like going into the mill or going into the grocery store, and the grocery store has 10 gallons of Dairy Gold milk. Right? It's great that they have a backlog, but it's a single product. And so if you, if you buy too much of the same product, it could take a while to clear it out. And so I think it's good to have a little bit of backlog, but to focus on diversity and not, not spend all of your money on just one product type.

Awesome.

That's, that's great advice. I think that You know, a lot of us, when we get into that gotta-have-land-itis stage too, John, right? Like we're so badly looking for a win, the first property that comes across our desk is the one we're going to buy. We have a tendency to overpay as well sometimes, right? We want that first property. So that's a, that's a mistake that a lot of people make as well. Like you, like you had mentioned.

Now we know what kind of milk he drinks, right?

Only whole. That's great.

Very good. Well, I thought it was— I thought of a mistake that I've actually come across here a few times recently. You know, Mike, you and John and I have the— have, uh, we're fortunate to have a lot of calls with people who are interested in starting the business and, and, um, you know, contemplating whether or not they want to do this. I've spoken to a number of people lately who I think a mistake that can be made sometimes is waiting for the right time, right? I don't know if you guys hear this, but I hear people who they've been thinking about this for a year or they've been thinking about it for a couple years and they've actually learned a lot and they've watched a lot of podcasts and they're really familiar with the model and they know this they know this model is right for them, and they're spending all of this time like getting ready, but they never take the productive action, right? So I think that's another thing to just— I would encourage everybody to think about is if you've been in that information gathering mode for, for a really long time, you can get stuck there. Right? You can get analysis paralysis, you can learn about every single land investing model out there. And there are different ones like ours is different because we focus on the micro deal kind of, right? But then there's macro deals, and there's entitlements, and there's this, that, and the other thing. You can get stuck, you can get stuck there, and you can get stuck there for months and months and months. Right? So I just encourage people to think, okay, there's this line, Right? And the, the information gathering phase is on this, this side of the line, right? The action occurs on the other side of the line. And to cross the line, you have to make a decision. What is my decision going to be? Am I going to start doing this? Right? And you need to commit to yourself. And it's scary because you got to commit to yourself before the results are there. Right? But that's how everything is. So, uh, for everybody on the call, uh, this is a great motivational video for me. I've recommended it for a long time. Look up, uh, Steve Harvey on YouTube and just type in, uh, Jump. Uh, Steve Harvey, after, after every Family Feud episode, he does like this little epilogue, like, and he's a pastor, I think. So he gets out in front of the crowd and he does like this little mini sermon and he talks about jumping. He talks about like crossing the line and jumping, uh, even though you're fearful, even though you don't know what's coming. You need to make that— this— you need to make that decision. You need to take that action in order to get on the path to success.

That's so ironic because I was gonna go with, uh, I feel like we're playing Family Feud here and like, okay, I'm gonna go with asking for people who don't know the business for advice about the business if you should do it or not. And see what's on the board.

Ding!

Because I think a lot of people do that, right? Isn't that true? They're like, you know, I know I'm thinking about doing this, but I'm, you know, then they go and ask people that— and this niche is so tight and so unique that you imagine just asking the app, oh yeah, I think about investing in raw land, I'm gonna sell it for owner— people can be like, that sounds crazy, you shouldn't do that, Bob. Like, okay, I won't do that, that sounds great. But no, go to people that are actually doing it. Like, what I love about what we have is a community of people that are doing the same thing. In fact, when people work with us, one of the benefits is they can come 4 nights a week, they can immerse themselves in a mastermind environment where people are all surrounded by people with the same goals to build a successful business with time freedom. There's only a few of us that work with Mark, and we've all successfully retired ourselves, our spouses. Like, so, you know, this is the environment you want to be in. This is the group you want to surround yourself with. Um, it's, it's so true. And people often say, Mike, you, you have, uh, um, you know, all this land, you know, why, why are you doing all this stuff with Mark? It's like, you kidding me? This is how I stay close to my mastermind. These are the people that help me go from glass ceiling to glass. I'm like, oh, I think I've done it. And then I, I hear what they're doing, I'm like, oh my God, I'm so happy where I am, but I'm so humbled by the people in front of me. So you got to have that group of people that can help you elevate. So Don't go out to the normal folk that usually hang around within your circle. Nothing wrong with them. Sure, they're beautiful people, but they're not looking to build something like you are. Go to the people that have already built it or attempting to build it and circle around them so you can start to grow.

That's great.

I love that.

I concur.

I concur.

The first concur. We've had some good praise in the comments. Too.

I have, I have a cacao drink on its way. I'll have to wait for that.

Probably bring me down my night. You know, there's this old, old cliché by Jim Rohn, old saying. I'm, I'm just curious, like, do you guys still think this is applicable today?

Yeah.

You're the average of the 5 people you hang out with the most. Yeah, I, I do, I do. And I think that for some people, that, that part's hard too. It's like you've got to transform everything.

Yeah.

And if I'm starting hanging out with, you know, the 4 of us, well, you're gonna transform. We're gonna make you think bigger. We're gonna have you do things outside your comfort zone. And, you know, we're not watching Netflix. We're not watching sports. We're, we're going out and we're doing deals. We're deal junkies. And yeah, you'll, you'll just see the world very differently in this community, but you will leave something and some people behind that are threatened by your growth. And it's, it, it can be uncomfortable.

That's so true, you know. And it's nice about the current world we live in that, you know, because if I was just— if there was no internet like this and that, how would I find another land investor? Like, literally, like, how like the fact that we can connect this way is what has really made the opportunity even more real for many people, right? Because now we can— and, you know, part of your mastermind could literally just— not trying to pat us all on the shoulder, but we've all done— I mean, Mark's done probably close to 10,000 deals now. We've all done collectively thousands of deals. You come here on Tuesday nights, just hang out, use this as a place to rejuvenate, to to reinvigorate yourself, to get excited, to get motivated, ask questions, like surround yourself with these types of things that can really help you.

Yeah, absolutely. Oh, I've got a mistake, by the way, unless John has one.

No, you do your mistake.

I've got, I've got one that's, that's like an oldie but a goodie.

All right. Okay.

You know what it is? I'm gonna buy this property. And then I'm gonna stop mailing and I'm gonna stop buying. Oh yeah, until I sell this property. The one in, one out. And next thing you know is you sold the property and you've stopped your deal flow because you're doing the mailing. It can take 6 to 8 weeks to get that next deal. So never, never stop your deal flow. That is a big mistake. You don't want to be a chicken company with no chicken. Was that KFC in like London a few years ago? Ran out of chicken.

Chicken.

This become a very expensive soda machine.

Yeah, exactly.

Mashed potatoes only.

I did a potato diet once, Mark, back in the day. I don't know why I read somewhere back in the late Early '90s, late '90s. I, I don't even know. I don't know why.

It's like the carnivore diet.

Yeah, that's all I ate. And it was like, what was the starch diet? Maybe. I don't know what it was called, but you know, there's one— there's a diet out there, you know, just search YouTube and find it.

What diet are you on now, Mike? Were you allowed to diet on the potatoes, or was it just like you're just like boiling and eating.

I was eating all kinds of potatoes, boiled, mashed, everything. I'm not, I'm not on a diet right now. I realized something. I had an epiphany. And I don't know if you guys would agree with this epiphany. I know that, you know, I think what happens is people need to sort of do something to get out of their comfort zones, right? But what I need to do is be consistent in the things that bring success. And I know that I'm, I am being consistent. So I'm not looking to do anything radical to change it up. I'm just looking to be more consistent. So I just like a lot No, I'm not giving up this, not giving up that. I'm just going to continue to be consistent. I'm going to continue to go step by step. So I really don't have a diet right now. I just sort of moderate. Moderate, the word moderate.

I'm actually doing a caloric deficit now with ChatGPT. I created a custom GPT. So I'm like, okay, I want this much protein and this many calories.

Okay.

And so I just log it. And then it's like, like, what's the next meal? And it'll tell me Okay, you know, it's a lot of nonfat Greek yogurt and shrimp because it's like high in protein but low calorie. But, uh, yeah, see, I, I like seafood diet, seafood and eat it.

So how many calories do you eat a day?

1,900 and 170 grams of protein.

Whoa, now that's impressive. Now, so it tells you, hey Mark, go have a yogurt.

Yeah, yeah, it'll say, okay, based on where you're at, like, let's say that I eat, you know, some eggs in the morning, right? It's like, okay, that was like, egg whites are really good and vegetables are really good. They're like, okay, for lunch you should do like ahi, like a poke bowl, like these, like all these low-calorie, high-protein types of food, lean chicken. But I'm like, hey, I want to have a steak tonight. Like, okay, if you're gonna have steak, no problem, but like, you're going easy up until this point. Like, so kind of like you can budget. I know Catherine Hollingsworth is like, you're a lot of fun, Mark.

I know we're, we're being steered back to the topic by Jason Holland. I, I appreciate that, Jason. We do die, we digress. We do.

We should be called.

I know, but, uh, but we have fun, don't we? I mean, it's pretty low-key, very informal, you know.

But I think Jason's got a good— he's got a good question though.

All right, what— let's see. Oh, okay, here we go. How do we select the best counties to focus on?

It's a great—

John Burnett.

Oh, me. Um, so the things that you're looking for. One thing is repeatability, right? So one of the things that we focus on in this model is, um, we want area— like, we focus largely on, on large rural subdivisions. When you focus on a large rural subdivision, you might have thousands of properties that are very similar to one another. And what that means is that when you market to acquire these properties, you can actually send an offer letter because you have comps that are actually comparable. You can have a pretty good gauge of what the retail value of that property is, and then you can back-calculate what you want to offer to get the margins that you want. So repeatability is really key. So I'm looking for areas that have rural subdivisions, and I'm generally looking for areas where, um, ideally, you know, I, I talk about there are 3 things that I, I typically want, right? So One of those is access, right? I want there to be legal access and actual physical access to the property, a dirt road or something like that. Um, I want there to be ideally some recreational potential on the property. It's not critical, but it's nice to have because that's a great selling point if somebody can camp on the property. And then the third piece is the ability to build, right? So if somebody can build um, you know, off-grid is fine, uh, if they can recreate and if it has access, that's a really sellable product for me. And then the other part is, so that's, that's kind of what I look for. And I, the, the big thing, um, that I probably should have mentioned first is you want to go where you're seeing other people seeing success, right? So don't try to reinvent the wheel. Don't go to an area where you don't see anybody selling anything, or, you know, you want to go to an area where other people are actually doing deals. You know, we talk about how like if to— if you go to the lake and you're going fishing, you want to go to where the fish are biting. You don't want to just, you know, just cast just anywhere, right?

So I love that, John. So you told us what's— what the great steps are to find a good area. And what I would say is that sometimes we see people make mistakes when they don't laser focus in on an area, uh, and maybe they maybe they mail too many different areas within that county all at once, right? So your approach is much better because we're isolating a spot that's hot, right? And we're picking a subdivision that has all these plotted out land parcels. And it's easier to find data for those small areas within a really large county. It's easier to mail to that area, knowing what you need to offer for a property in that small area. Rather than going all over the place within that county. So that would be something that I would just say to Jason that we see sometimes people making mistakes with, with mailing and trying to acquire property, they're kind of all over the county. So I would really laser focus in on an area like John described, where you can find the data where it has great access and some really good usability. And you're going to have more success there with deal flow, I think. Awesome. Katherine earlier did say— where did her mistake go? She was talking about due diligence. I think we should talk about that for a minute. Because every once in a while, we do make mistakes with our due diligence, or people make mistakes with their due diligence. So, Mike, talk a little bit about that. And What mistakes do you see or what do we wanna make sure that people avoid when they're purchasing a property with their good due diligence?

[Speaker] First of all, I mean, I think the due diligence typically does start at the very beginning when you're choosing an area to mail. Since we tend to mail areas that are a cluster of properties that are the same size, shape, and use, so when you do, When you analyze that area, you're already uncovering some basic fundamentals. You're probably going there because you know that there's access to most properties there, there's good use to the properties there, taxes are low and annual taxes. So all the things that make a good— so then when someone comes across and you have a property to buy, well, you want to double-check, is there any back taxes owed on this property? And if so, how much? That's really important. And then, you know, basically after that, you really want to make sure you're talking to the person that actually owns the property. Many a time, if you're in this business long enough, you can hear all the time, oh yeah, my uncle passed, I've been paying the taxes, I'd like to sell it to you. That's great, county thanks you, they appreciate the taxes you're paying, but you probably don't have the ability to sell it to us, right? So we want to make sure that we're talking to the actual person that can convey title. So that's probably the two biggest ones right out of the gate. Now, if you, You do want to double-check that there's access to the property and then double-check what you checked initially, that there's a use for those properties. But I would say, you know, are you talking to the person that, um, you know, owns the, owns the property? And, um, what do the taxes look like? I don't typically go too deep into all the due diligence until I have like an accepted offer. If you just have discussions, do a price first because Nothing worse than I have people when they talk about, hey, I got this big deal, all these properties, and they're doing all this work. I'm like, did you come to any sort of agreement on a price yet? Because if you didn't, you're doing a lot of wasted work. Get to a number, agree upon that number, do your research, and if you have to adjust it, you can come back with facts. Oh, listen, I really wish I could buy it at that price, but you know, I just found out X, Y, and Z. Or maybe you got a good deal, but don't do too much work until you actually uncover if you've got a valid seller on the line that actually will sell to you at the price that you're asking.

That's a, that's a great point, Mike. I think that's a big mistake newbies make as well, is they start doing due diligence on the list. They don't have a deal yet, but they want to start doing due diligence on the actual list. It's a lot of wasted time.

That's what's, uh, you know, I, I think what's great about a model with the, um with the fact that we use the blind offer, right, rather than neutral letter. Like, we're just— we're dialing right in. We have a specific range we need to be in, and then if someone agrees to that, okay, now we'll go deep and we'll see if we can find anything. You know, we're really looking to find if there's anything wrong. Like, we're searching. Like, there's got to be something wrong here. Find nothing wrong, great, we can move forward.

Yeah, I love that. We don't want to be in the appraisal business.

No. And that's what many people do when they do the opposite of your method, Mark, with a, with a, uh, a neutral letter. You know, we were saying that in the last webinar, like, I'll be like, yeah, Mark, how much you like to give me? I have no intention of selling, but I'd love to know what my property's worth. You should just become a free valuation guy, right? Not a way you want to spend your time.

Exactly. You know, John's got 12 kids. He doesn't have time.

And no time.

No time.

Great advice from all.

Great advice.

Uh, comment from Charles Jones: is his dry January just turned into mostly dry January? I mean, well, I'm glad you did it with us, Charles.

Yeah, yeah, moderation. Cheers.

Uh, we'll be— you know, that's, that's optimistic thinking for sure.

Yeah, dude, you're only gonna have a drink on Tuesday night during the nightcap. That's it, keep yourself safe.

Mostly dry January, love it. We have some other questions coming in. Let's talk maybe one more mistake. I'd like to say one because I think this is a huge mistake that a lot of people make. And that is not picking up the telephone to call potential sellers, but also to call buyers. I think there's kind of this, especially nowadays, barrier to talking on the phone. And I think it's whether it's because we've just gotten out of the habit of talking on the phone. Like, my kids don't want to talk on the phone, right? People don't want to talk on the phone anymore. They want to be— they want to do everything, you know, centered around text messages and emails and whatnot. But I really do believe that property acquisitions occur on the phone and sales occur on the phone. A majority of the time. So if you have that, if you have that barrier, try to get over that because you're going to do a lot more deals. And, you know, you never know what you're going to discover on a phone conversation with some of these people because they may divulge something to you on the phone that they don't divulge over text or email. Like maybe they own a lot more property. And because of the relationship that you establish with that person on the phone, they get to know you, like you, trust you, they're gonna be more apt to sell you more land, right? Or they're gonna be more apt to buy more land from you when you develop a good relationship with people. So I'd say that that's a mistake I commonly see that I would recommend everybody try to focus on, on the acquisition side and the sales side when you're first becoming a new land investor.

Really good.

And I think to say, to add to that, Don't be afraid to get on the phone. Some people feel like, right, what am I going to— just be yourself. That's all you have to be is just be yourself. And if you're new to the business, embrace it. Hey, just guess what? I, I'm excited. You're the first property that I'm buying, and so we're gonna kind of— I'm gonna go through this, and I might make mistakes, but I promise I'll keep you in good communication, and I'll— and, uh, I'll promise I'll follow through whatever I say. And I hope that Once this goes well, if somebody else ever has questions, I can maybe refer them back to you and you could tell them what a great job I did, right? Just be yourself. You don't have to be anything other than who you are.

I love it. Be yourself. You don't have to be anything other than who you are. Yeah, I was thinking that.

What's that song? As You Are. What sings that song?

That's Nirvana.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking when I said that.

Yeah, come as you are, Mike.

What you had a coaching live a while ago, we did a circle just around sales. And I— and somebody asked me for advice. And the advice I gave was don't try— was it don't try to not be yourself? It was a great double negative.

Statement though, that's, that's it.

Yeah, yeah, I mean, we, we joke, but it is true. I mean, no one's gonna out-competing you on being you. So, you know, and so often people want to emulate, you know, Mike. Like, I even tried the Boston accent. It doesn't work.

You have to be, you know Where were we, Mark, when you did the, uh— we were somewhere and you did a live call. You did it. I don't know where that was, but at some point that was boot camp. You took a live call, right?

I took a live call in front of the group. Was I, was I buying land or selling land?

I don't remember.

Like, it was crazy because like it was a live call. No one knew it was gonna happen.

It was awesome. Yeah. Oh man, you nailed it.

Hey Mark, remember that time you were Mike Zeno for Halloween?

That was awesome too.

Oh man, we should all be Mike Zeno one night. We'll just surprise them.

We'll all be Mike Zeno.

Exactly.

We won't tell them when, but, but it may happen.

Oh, by the way, I've got another mistake if any— if you guys care.

Please.

Or John, do you have one? I feel like I'm Talking too much.

No, you go. I'll do my mistake later.

No, no, you go, you go.

Oh, well, so my thought was just, I guess it, I mean, I guess it's just the same thing, like consistency. Um, like having, like, one thing that was really helpful for me was like having a schedule for doing this, right? So if you think about it, if you're, if your goal was to get in shape and have a regular habit of going to the gym and somebody was like, when do you go to the gym? And you just said, I don't know, whenever, right? The likelihood of you actually seeing success is not very good. But if you said, yeah, every morning I wake up at 5 o'clock and go to the gym, or after work I go to the gym at this particular time. Like for Valerie and I, when we jumped into this, we had a specific schedule that we operated on and it was great. Like we did well within that schedule. Outside of that schedule, we didn't feel guilty about not doing land. We had that time effectively blocked. And I think that was really helpful for us to to build and grow.

Yeah, that's, that's way better than mine. I'm glad you took it. It's way better.

That's not a mistake, that's success.

Well, don't not do that, I guess.

Is that a double negative? Don't not do— don't not budget time. Yeah, I do, dude. Buddy, I think a big mistake's a Lance Knob. And when I say that, it's that you don't like the land. Yeah, it's priced right, but for whatever reason, you don't like it. And you're like, well, if I don't like it, someone else is gonna like it. And that's being a land snob. Like, I don't eat McDonald's, but a billion people love them. I'd buy a McDonald's franchise. Absolutely.

You know, Mark, I've even been a— I've been a land slob. I've been a land snob. I've been a land snob after I acquired a property. Do you guys ever get those properties that are kind of like add-ons? Like, you know, like you're basically buying one, getting one free almost from somebody because they've got a great property in one area, but they have this other one over here that they just want to get rid of.

We had a name. What was the name?

I can't remember.

We had a name for that. Wasn't the $1 Skittle? That was—

I, I can't remember. But, but you acquire this property and you're like, yeah, I'm just not really excited about that property. I'm just gonna let it sit in my inventory for a year because I don't think it's going to sell, or whatever. And then you finally get around to marketing it and it sells in a week. Like, you can be a land snob that way too. So like It's just kind of interesting how these things, they keep popping up here and there and everywhere. And it really just comes down to, you know, if you have a property in your inventory, they all sell, market the thing, right? People love owning land, and somebody's gonna buy it. Somebody's gonna buy it whether or not you think it's gonna sell or not. Just how it is.

Yeah.

So, yeah.

Landslob.

A lad slob. Don't be a lad slob.

Like, we've all, we've all bought property from land slobs too.

Yeah, we have. Yes, we have. Uh, is this Don? I don't, I don't know if this is Don or not. Uh, yeah, is that—

I think it's Don.

Don's on.

I don't know, I just haven't seen his name pop up. Oh no, that's not Don, never mind. I always forget who BMK Property Solutions is, and now I feel bad because I forget every episode and he tells me every episode and then I forget again. But I'm 50 now, right? My, my brain's not as good. Oh, it's Brad. Brad, the many— one of many Brads that we have. Brad says that listening to us has made him stop being a land snob. So that's That's what we want. That's for everyone.

I want— I had somebody say once, like, that there were certain properties and they had their make-me-buy-this offer. And I think that that's like a great mentality, right? Like, I was like, my acquisitions manager, he was like, I don't even know if we want this. And I'm like, I definitely want it at the right price, you know? Like, there are very few things, as long as it's got clear title, right, that I will not, that I will not buy because somebody will get it.

Mm-hmm.

Exactly.

Absolutely.

Awesome. Well, we're coming up with— we have 5 minutes left. Brenda, we do see your questions. We're just getting a lot of questions. So I guess what are the 3 biggest mistakes? Well, if you go back and watch, we actually talked about probably 5 or 6 mistakes in the land business, some centered around county research, due diligence, being a land snob. Being too much in your head, not taking action, right? So go back and, uh, go back and take a listen. Hopefully it'll be helpful for you. But she does—

landowner trying to do this on your own.

Oh, a landowner.

That's land—

that's—

oh, that's a tough one. And I was like, I'm a landowner.

You know what, you know what's hard about the land— you know what's hard about the landowner thing is like even if you do bootstrap this and you do a deal, like, do you know if it's not just luck? Right? Like, if you just push through and you get a deal done and you get a deal and it happens, like, was it just lucky or was it true? Versus I think if you have someone that you're relying on to help teach you how to do this, you just have their experience to help guide you to know that, yes, you did everything right, and every step you took in this process was right, and the money you made was, was great, and it's a true legit land deal.

I think to that point too, like, one of the things that I did, uh, early on, because we talked about, like, Mike talks, but Mike gave— I think Mike gave the best advice out of all the advice?

Hurtful. Yes.

Right.

But you don't want to be too much in your head, right? You got to do something. And I am definitely the type of person that can be in my head too much. So also, can we all just acknowledge that Mark J. Podolsky has the loudest water bottle in the history of all water bottles?

I just, I did a podcast this afternoon. And I'm thinking, oh my gosh, I've ruined it. I hope they have good editing. I apologize. It's like I'm putting the water bottle right on the mic. I apologize. I'm gonna dehydrate.

Put it over— put it on your— on your right side.

Can you hear it now?

But anyways, trying to drag my— oh yeah, so like one of the things I did is I just like, I asked all of the questions. Any time that there was doubt, any time there was worry, right, then I would always just escalate it to somebody who is active and successful, right? And so I leaned like really heavily on my Coaches and it was great. And as I did that, I gained a lot of confidence in what I was doing and I stopped asking the same questions over and over again. I asked new questions and then I just, I learned and I grew. So I think it's important to, you know, to stand on other people's shoulders.

I love that. That's probably a really great way to end the episode.

Well, I think Mike should end it since he's had the best answer. Not that we're competing for the best answer.

I mean, the best advice.

The best advice.

I already gave it. I don't know. I think that that was stand on the shoulders of giants. Of Mike Zagnoli. The way to success.

Stand on the shoulder of Mike Zaino. You know, yeah, that's what it is.

Yeah.

How great.

I'm going to physical therapy now. It's great.

Yeah. But all joking aside, like, for free, you can come on MICAP and, and get validation in the community and just with us, like, you know, and ask.

Yeah, I tell people all the time, you have a free resource, we'll answer any questions you have.

Come on.

And check it out. Make it part of your accountability routine.

Let's, let's do 2 more nuts and bolts questions for people because I feel bad we didn't answer Brenda's offer— uh, answer, uh, question. So I'm gonna answer a question quick. So Brenda, your question was, how do you determine the amount to offer? So there's a process, but basically what we do is we, uh, we find an area that we want to mail And we'll do a market analysis to determine what is land selling for in that area. And depending on the area we divide, so let's say a part of 1-acre parcel that is selling for $10,000. All we do is divide by 4 or divide by 3, kind of depending on the area. And that's our offer, $2,500, $3,300, going out to that area. And we kind of know if we're in the right area with our pricing, if we get a 3 to 5% response rate. And, you know, maybe half to 1% purchase rate. So that's a quick answer on that one. And then let's give Jason Holland a little help real quick, Mike, with his mailings. And then we'll call it a night.

Ready?

Jason sent out 500 letters so far. He has one deal out of it. Is that a normal response rate? And how do you increase your response rate?

Well, the reality is not every mailer nails— knocks out of the park. Consistent mailing does, but there's some variables we don't know to really answer this. How long has he been sending those letters out? Um, one deal out of it, did he send them all to one area? Um, what did his pricing look like? But you know, what happens though is this is where the market starts to talk to you. So you say, okay, 500 letters, one deal. Well, perhaps you need to adjust your offer price at this point. You haven't dialed into that market yet. So it's like you're calibrating— was that the word? Sounds like a nice word.

That was a big word.

Calibrating your mailing, right? And it's like, you're like, click, click, click, click, click, and you're trying to get it right. And it's like, you go too far in one direction, you get way too many accepted offers. And that's a problem because you're overpaying. You go too far in the other direction, you're getting one deal or no deals, right? You can kind of like click it in the right way. So stop— just send out— change your offer price up a little bit. Um, you know, that's assuming you're in one area and you mailed everybody the same offer. But this is literally the market talking to you. So how do you increase your response rate? Listen to what the market's telling you when you make your adjustment, but not crazy, incremental.

Is Jason in flight school?

I don't know.

I don't think so.

Okay, well, when— Jason, if you're in flight school, you schedule this one-on-one coaching call, and this is where we actually calibrate with you.

Yeah.

And we analyze your market, and we kind of help you maximize that first mailing because we, we know the market.

Yeah, yeah. That's what's key about week 2 of flight school, um, when they run into Mark the Maraca.

Yeah, because it's not—

because that's awesome, but it's with a Y, not an I.

Why?

Oh man, I gotta just forget it. I was just gonna—

yeah, that's it, forget it.

Forget about it, forget about it.

No, but I was gonna say that, uh, week 2 they run into Tate Litchfield, and I tell people, if you're ever going to meet an A player in this game, he may be one of the A players. Like, this is the guy you want to meet when you're starting to mail because he's going to help you dial it in. So it's one of the advantages of flight school.

Awesome.

Well, thanks everybody for, uh, That's the new nickname. I love it.

Like, that is so good.

Next week with water bottles.

Uh, for, for those, uh, who are new to land investing and you want to learn more, go to thelandgeek.com. Go to thelandgeek.com/training and book a call with us. We'll be happy to talk with you about, uh, where you are in your investing journey. Maybe you started, maybe you haven't, and, and we'd be happy to help steer you on the right path to doing that and avoiding some of these mistakes that we talked about tonight. Thank you everybody for joining us. Mike, I will always stand on your shoulders, and I will let you. Good night, everybody. We'll talk to you later.

That was my favorite part.