Coffee Talk

Hey, it's Mark Podolski, the Land geek with the landgeek.com and I'm so happy to have another coffee talk with you. So in case you don't know who I am, I'm a professional land investor. I've been a full time land investor since 2001. I've completed over 5,000 unique transactions in that time. And I'm also the host of three podcasts, the Land Geek Podcast, the Best Passive Income Model Podcast, and the current podcast, the Art of Passive Income Model Podcast. And the way the system basically works is all we do is we look for properties from landowners that own property, but that asset has now become a liability. We know that because they typically owe back taxes. So we send them an offer, quote, unquote, top dollar offer, 20 to 30 cents on the dollar. About 3 to 5% of those people will accept that offer. We then do our due diligence, we close with that seller and then we market that property online. And our average return on investment is 300% for cash and about 800 to 1000% on terms. So a terms deal is basically we owner finance the property in this way. We take a piece of raw land and we make it cash flow just like a landlord would would with a rental home. And the way that works is we usually ask for a down payment which we usually get our principal out on the deal. So we usually get our money out on the down payment or within six months of that down payment. And then we get a recurring passive income piece about a car payment between say 249 and $500 a month. And so now we're getting this income coming in every single month without any renters, without any rehabs, without, without any renovations and without any rodents. And because we're not dealing with a tenant, we don't have to deal with Dodd Frank. We're exempt. We're exempt from RESPA and we're exempt from the SAFE Act. So this is why I call it the best passive income model. It's a one time sale. We get passive income without the traditional headaches that most people have to deal with real estate. I also want to talk today about if you're an international land investor, how can you do this model? And what's great about this model is that you can really work this business from anywhere in the world as long as you have an Internet connection. So for international investors, basically the model is you buy US land now, you're still responsible for US property taxes and you're also responsible for income taxes. Here, something called Firpta F I R P T A, you can Google it. But basically when you make a profit, the US government will take 10% withheld of your profit to pay for income taxes in the United States. And then you will still be responsible for taxes in your native country, whatever that may be. As far as setting up a U.S. lLC and a U.S. bank account, those are things that you will have to do as well. Very simple to do. It all can be done online and then you'd have to use a virtual mailbox company. I'm using Smart scan or smart service alert.com you can just have an app and then when you're sending out your offers you would do a system like agentpro247.com and do that. So it's really, really simple in that for sure. So we've got some people online and I'd be happy to take anyone's questions. So what questions can I answer for people this morning? This fine Wednesday morning, I had my bulletproof coffee earlier this morning. Now I'm just drinking relay coffee. So Seth's question is a tax question. Do you pay quarterly tax payments to the irs, Arizona, if so, how much? That's a great question, Seth. So when you are a company at a certain point you can pay estimated tax. The way I actually run my own business, I'm paying a monthly payroll tax and then I pay quarterly taxes with my bookkeeper. My, my cpa. My bookkeeper actually take care of all this for me on an automated basis. So I am paying quarterly and I am paying monthly. So I hope that answers your question. All right, David Manales. Good morning, Mark. Wish I was able to join, but watching is fun too. So David's at a job right now. David just got back from a huge social media expo. Has all these crazy ninja tips to increase our market online, especially on Facebook. So hopefully the next Coffee Talk, which will be Next Wednesday at 9:30 Pacific, David and I will be able to join in for sure. All right, what other questions can I answer? Should I jump on the treadmill here? Jump on the treadmill. I've got this treadmill desk from Trek desk and I love it because look, sitting's the new smoking. All right, here we go. I gotta push this in. It might be time to get a new treadmill. Okay, so Bruce Anderson has a question. We are spending too much time coming up with an offer amount on properties, particularly when there's somewhat unique parcels. Ideas. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. So Bruce, this is how I come up with my pricing. It's really really simple. Really, really simple. I will call the assessor and ask them for the last six to 12 months of sales in that area or on that APN. Now, if they're all over the place, I'm going to take the lowest one. Okay, so that's it. And I'm going to divide by four, and that's going to get me a huge margin of safety because that gets me to my 300% return on investment if I have to liquidate it for cash. Okay? So hopefully that helps. So let's just take an example, right? I call the assessor and I'm looking at a one acre parcel. It's $10,000. A 20 acre parcel is $15,000. A 40 acre parcel is $45,000. You know, and so I'm putting all these numbers in my spreadsheet. And so now I'm coming up with kind of an idea and a kind of a range for ones and fives and tens and forties. And maybe there's, you know, five properties that recently sold in the last 12 months of, let's say just five acres. Okay, so you know those five, five acre properties, they sold for 5,000 once, sold for 10,000, one sold for 12,000, one sold for 100,000. Right. So we've got like an anomaly. Maybe, maybe there's a home on there. Who knows? Okay, I'm going to take the one for 5,000. I'm going to divide by four. That gets me to what, 1250. That's going to be my offer for those parcels. So I'm going to batch them into fives, send out those for 1250, then I'm going to do the same thing for the tens, same things for the 15s and do that. Okay? We don't want to send out an offer for a one acre parcel, the same thing as a 40 acre parcel. Okay? That 40 acre parcel person that gets that low ball offer is not going to be happy. They're going to send you glitter in the mail. Bruce. That's not good. I hope that helps. All right, Bryce Young. Bryce, if you are a registered LLC in a state, do you pay your state quarterly or monthly or at the end of the year? It's going to depend on the, on the company's income. But typically I pay quarterly. When I first started, if there wasn't any profit, then it might be, you know, end of the year. All right, okay. Yeah. For state taxes, that's exactly it. For payroll and state taxes, that would be quarterly. Carrie, what is your typical inventory turn time? Also, if A property sits, how long before you adjust the price to move the property? If I don't sell that property in 30 days or less, I freak out, the team freaks out. We have to adjust something. Okay, maybe the price goes up, right? But maybe the down payment goes down, right? Or maybe the monthly payment goes down. So either way, something has to change. Okay, 30 days or less. That is a really good indication. Good indication that if you're doing what we teach you to do as far as getting your ads out, right, and you're putting out enough ads, that could be the first issue is like are you, are you marketing enough? Right. If you're not using postingdomination.com thelandgeek you may not be getting enough listings out there. Right? Because I can press a button and put out 124 ads. Right? If you're doing two ads a day to my 124, that's probably not enough, right? 30 days or less. All right, hope that helps. Seth, great new tip. I just found Best Self company. They've journals that break down 12 weeks into a journal. Oh my goodness, that is huge tip. I'm gonna check that out. Best Self company. So if you're not working the 12 week year, I would definitely recommend getting the book because basically the way a 12 week year works or average company crushes it. Crushes it. And November and December because they have annual goal. Well, what if you compress that into four annual goals? So four 12 week years. Every day is a week, every week is a month. There's a built in intensity for you and your team in the business and it really is great. And then it allows you to pivot right and see, okay, were our goals too low or our goals too high for that next 12 week year? Love that book. All right, Bruce Anderson. Awesome. Okay, thanks. So some, some deals we closed this week. We closed two cash deals. I'll take it. You know, they both sold on Craigslist. Or wait, yeah, Craigslist. I was thinking buyers list, but no Craigslist. What other questions? Do we have any other questions? I have some notes. Let me go take a look at my notes here in Evernote. We had some questions from the Land Geek official motivation group and wealth creation group. Congratulations by the way to Derek Marshall who wrote another great day in the land business. It's like magic. Closed on the buy March 1st, closed today on the sale. Turned $1,500 into $9,000. And they had like a copy of the check in Facebook. You know, this is like a typical bread and butter Deal, Right. Not a lot of money to get in this business. Awesome. Oh, look at this. Seth, great tip. Damon John uses it and swears by it. Bestself co product self journal. Wow. I'm gonna copy and paste that link for sure. Awesome. Awesome. Self journal. Okay, so let me see my notes. Where is it? Aha. Here goes my notebook. Okay, so Jim Baker wants to know how would I upload my offers into a mailing service like letterprinting.net or click to mail one at a time or will mail merge take care of it for me? Those services will actually do it for you. All you're going to do is upload your Excel spreadsheet into one of those services and it'll automatically mail merger for you. So hopefully that helps. Ryan Palmer, I've got a lead, but the owner is deceased. The son contacted me and says he has power of attorney. Any suggestions on how I make this deal work? So, Ryan, this happens all the time. You've got to see the way that they did probate. If they didn't go through probate. Right. And both mom and dad are gone and you have power of attorney. Well, what does that mean then? You've got to have a little bit more, I think, than power of attorney. I actually would need a little bit more details on that deal, but typically it'd have to go through a probate proceeding. Otherwise you'd have to do a quiet title, which would probably kill your margin on that deal. So it might be a pass. If a county did not have online access to recorded deeds. Would you still work it if there were juicy deals? Yeah, absolutely. We work counties all the time that are digitally in the. In the dark ages. Absolutely. Just call the county and have them send you a list. How do I structure a deal where the two grantors live in different states? Well, pretty easy. What you're going to do is have a, you know, a little mail chain, right. Where you'll send the first. The send the deed to the first grantor with an envelope and instructions to then sign, notarize, and send to the next grantor and then have them sign and notarize and then mail it back to you. So pretty good. All right, we got some more questions here. Seth, how much value? There's a property bordering BLM land add. You know, value is always going to be in the eye of the beholder. Right. For me, I think it's really nice to have 640 acre section bordering your property because now it almost expands that you have more privacy. You can go out and do whatever you kind of want on that property. So I think it adds a lot of value, actually. But just because I think it adds value doesn't mean your buyer will. But I would definitely market it as a benefit for sure. Bordering BLM, you've got 640 acres of privacy. You know, for sure no one's going to build next to you on that, on that side. Right. And then you can use it recreationally any way you like. All right. Any other questions? It's kind of hard to drink coffee and walk on the treadmill desk at the same time, but I'm going to try it. David Benalis. How am I doing, by the way? Anything else I should be discussing? I know he's working. Maybe he won't be able to comment. But Seth, this is a great tip on that journal, the self journal. $32 buy now. That makes your success inevitable. I'm gonna buy it. Reach your goals faster, simple and distraction fee free. Make success, in other words, a really pretty site. This is really nice. One time purchase. 2879 for the self journal. Wow. Very, very cool. Very, very well done site. That's a great tip, Seth. Thank you. By the way, who's coming to boot camp? Who's coming to boot camp? We're just about full. I think we've got five spots left. So go to the landgeek.com boot camp and register. Register. If you don't have the toolkit, get the toolkit first so you have some, you know, fundamental knowledge and then come to boot camp. Includes two tickets. Oh, I'm feeling the love. David. Doing great. Love it. Thank you. David's been coaching me on how to do these, these live videos here. There it is. The landgeek.com forward slash bootcamp. Nine what's up nine boot camp, baby. Boot camp. Nine will be there. Nine. How many boot camps you've been to now? I want to say, would this be your fifth? Also, we had a really great podcast yesterday with David Benalis and Mike Zado, Scott Todd Tate Litchfield, Rachel Mueller and Eric Peterson. And I think that's going to go out. I don't know when that's going to go. I have to ask Danielle. But it's going to go out this week and we kind of talk about why people keep coming to boot camp, why they go to boot camp. We also did some case study stuff and how Eric Peterson went from making $100,000 profit last year to making $100,000 profit in his first quarter this year. And what he had to do to get that next level. So there it is. Register there. All right. Any other questions? Any other questions? Seth, is the toolkit updated with David Benalis Facebook section? It is. It is updated. And I'm going to send out a email today letting everybody know that it has been updated. We are also in the process of updating our due diligence course in the toolkit. So the toolkit is kind of a, you know, a living, breathing work in progress. Always a work in progress. We're always improving it, we're always updating it, especially as the market changes and as things change. So absolutely, absolutely, it is there now. So always, you know, I would say once a month at least or every six weeks, go back to the toolkit and see what changes have been made. Nine, there's a lot of great value at boot camp, and it's always getting better and better. Thanks, man. I appreciate it. All right. And Nine and I are gonna party in Vegas. It's in Vegas. Although his wife is not gonna be happy. How's Kaylee doing? Nine? She's sleeping. Nine's got a newborn. We were just, we're talking last week and he's holding the baby and it's just so great. How great for Nine to be able to, like, work from home and do that. All right, does the toolkit include coaching? It does not include coaching, but it does include two 30 minute coaching calls. So, you know, basically, as you go through the toolkit and you have gaps in your knowledge, you need more clarification. Get on a call with a Land King certified coach and get your questions answered. Absolutely. So does it include coaching per se? No, but you can get coached. Hope that answers the question. All right, speaking of coaching, flight school is full. Our next flight school will be in May. So the April class has been filled up, but we are filling up the next class for May. If you want to learn about flight school, set up a call with David or Mike. Go to the landgeek.com Free training. Free training. And scroll below and just book a call there. Let me see. Www.nalandgeek.com free-training show. There it is. There it is. Bryce, coaching is amazing. Yeah, thank you. I appreciate that. It really, you know, it's so funny because I heard somebody say, hey, look, would you go to Mount Everest without a Sherpa? No, you wouldn't go to Mount Everest without it. You want to go up Mount Everest Sherpa. And if you're going to start going to the land investing business or any new business, you need a Mentor. Because, you know, if you don't, it can be very dangerous. Just like Mount Everest. All right, any tax books you recommend picking up Profit first later today. I love Profit first. I work Profit First. Jim Atkinson, my cpa, is also a Profit first certified cpa. He actually works with Mike Michalowicz to do that. So I think that alone will do it, honestly. Otherwise I, you know, I don't think it's a good use of time. For sure. Cynthia Chapati read Profit First. Great book for this business. I never get tired of saying Chapati, Cynthia's gonna be like, mark, enough. I get it. It's annoying. Let's just say Cynthia, Cynthia Tripp. Yeah. Profit versus Great. And it's a great book for this business as well. If you need cash, right? If you're doing all terms, deals, you need cash. Email supporthelandgeek.com and we'll buy 12 to 18 months of the cash flow from your note and then that note will revert back to you. And that way you get your money out to deploy on another deal. And then you also get the back end passive income coming back to you. So it's like a win win. And your ROI if you do the numbers goes crazy. We'll walk you through it. All right. Cynthia, did you find him through his Profit first professionals network? You can say my last name for sure. Mark. Hahaha. Good, good. Okay, well, Cynthia Chapathi. I did not find Jim. I actually already worked with Jim and then it just turned out like we're both huge Mike Michalowicz fans. Mike was on the podcast and Jim actually has his own podcast and he had Jim, he had Mike on his podcast and then he went through his training because he's a cpa. So I think, I think Jim came first for me and then profit first. So I didn't implement it right away with him, but it's really been great. It's really great. I love it. Every two weeks I do my transfers. Owners pay profit taxes and then. Wait, owners pay taxes? Profit and expenses, operating expenses. Right. So everything goes to the income bucket. I can kind of see the cash flow. And then from the income bucket, everything goes out. So I've got those five main accounts. Right. So it's good. All right. Any other questions? Is everybody drinking coffee? Cynthia Tripathi, do you drink coffee? Are your tea. Are you tea? You're kind of healthy. I don't, I don't know what Cynthia's vices. Nine Are you a coffee drinker? Seth, you're too young to Be drinking coffee. And Bryce, you should definitely not even be drinking coffee. It's funny to do coffee talk. And if I'm the only one drinking coffee, I feel like everyone should be drinking coffee at the same time as I'm drinking coffee. Or maybe a hot beverage. Or maybe just a beverage. I don't know. All right, anything else before we end? Before we end, Seth? I drink straight black coffee. Three years now. Wow. Yeah. Seth is in university, so that's probably it. Kurt Richter. Kurt, nice to see you, Kurt. You coming to boot camp? Iced coffee. I love it. I love tea more than coffee. Bryce. Very healthy. Very healthy. You know, that green tea and the antioxidants. You can't beat it. You can't beat it. Oh, by the way, I want to share this. I'm going through the Wim Hof breathing method in cold exposure, and it was 54 this morning. I went. I did. I swam laps in my pool. My pool is about 65 right now. It was amazing. Amazing. You guys have to check that out. Especially if you're in Arizona and, or California and you want. You've got a pool and you want to swim, like, year round. It's amazing. All right, maybe next boot camp. All right, Kurt. Whatever. Cynthia Tripathi. Tea is way better. I disagree. The caffeine buzz is completely different with tea and coffee. Health wise. I agree. Tea is way better. All right, Anna, do you still have seats available for boot camp? Mark? Yeah, absolutely. You got to go to thelandgeek.combootcamp and register. Now we've got five seats left, so don't wait. Anna, get in there now. For sure, Bryce. Straight tea, no cream or sugar, like those British people. I like it. I like it. Bruce Anderson. That cold therapy is truly amazing. Yeah, it is amazing. It's like a superpower. It's incredible. I was in Telluride and I did a 10 minute, you know, cold shower in the Rockies. And, you know, after like, 20 seconds of maybe being a little cold, it was amazing. This guy's, like, on something here. This whole thing is incredible. Cynthia, you don't need caffeine if you work out in the morning. No, I know. I don't need caffeine. I don't need it. I love it. I love it. I love the ritual of my aeropress. I just love making it. I love the smell of it. I just love it. I know, I know. It's more for me than the ritual of it. Just like, you know, meditating. Right? All right, Anna, I'm halfway through the book. I Need to finish it before the boot camp to feel more prepared. Anna. Absolutely not. Absolutely not. Well, it'll help, but it's not required because I promise you, after boot camp, all the land investing clouds will dissipate and everything will become clear. Guaranteed. It's great. I actually would argue that the toolkit is really good fundamental knowledge, but if you really want to get to the next level, you got to get the boot camp, the networking, meeting other people. You know, it feels real in the room because people are actually closing deals. And in real time in that room, the case studies, the stories, everything just becomes very, very clear. And then, you know, we have, you know, lots of different ways of getting that learning to the next level. All right, I've got one minute before I got to have my call with Danielle, which I think sounded bad. I don't have to have my call with Danielle. I want to have my call with Danielle. It's great. Last question. Here it is. Mark, have you tried nootropics like pyrasetum or neuocept? These are brain vitamins, enhanced cognition. You know, I haven't done it. I do the bulletproof coffee, and I think the butter and MCT oil and the fact that I'm on the treadmill desk, like my brain cognition is. Is really, really good. I mean, look, I'm not against trying it, but I haven't done it. I haven't done it. I have to look into it for sure. But I have really. I mean, ever since I started doing the bulletproof coffee combined with the treadmill desk, my focus has been really fantastic. I also, I wear like these head. This headset when I'm trying to get like real, real deep work done. And I've got this app called Brain fm and I just put it on like this focus music and it's really great. Bulletproof from what company? So I don't. I don't use it from the actual. The company itself. I forget the guy's name. If you look up, you know, if you Google bulletproof coffee coffee, there's a guy that went up and like, created this whole thing, but basically I just do Kerrygold butter, which is unsalted, obviously, you don't want salt in your coffee. And then a tablespoon of MCT oil. I blend it. It makes like this frothy latte with good coffee, and it's great. That's all I do. I don't actually buy his beans or any of the other things. I forgot his name. All right, well, I want to thank everybody for jumping on this call. I hope it was valuable. If you want to learn more, go to thelandgeek.com and hopefully I'll see you on the other side. If you haven't gone to the Land Geek Bot yet, if you go to the landgeek.com you can subscribe the bot. It's really fun and check that out as well. All right, thanks everyone and I'll see you on the other side.