Coffee Talk

Yeah, you're great at it.

We are live. Happy Wednesday. It is coffee talk as usual. And doesn't it feel like forever since Mark Podolski has been on this thing? You might think he's gone into full retirement, but he is just about done checking my. It. Sam.

Huh?

Okay, so let's put it on the list of things not to do while live. Sean, switch your WI fi so that at my house and one of them is much stronger than the other so I switched to that one and you should always do that before you go live. So nice words of wisdom there.

There was no way to know that wouldn't work before you tried it.

Anyhow, we are not the most professional people, but we are professional land investors and that's enough for us. Yeah, Mark Bodolski is still on vacation and doesn't this feel like the longest month ever since you've heard his voice, seen his face? We all miss him and he will be back next week once his month long vacation is over. So if you don't know who we are and why we're even talking on your Facebook group. We are semi and mostly professional land investors. We buy and sell raw land. We buy for 25 cents on the dollar and sell on owner financing creating passive income. And we use automation to do it. And this is why Sean Rickman is with us today. He is my friend, my automation ninja. Go to Whenever I have a pain point I reach out to him and ask him what's the most proficiently lazy way to do this?

Sean.

So if you are interested about what we do, go to thelandgeek.com I will put that link here for you. Go check that out. There's a wonderful webinar you can watch or just browse the site. And if you want to take that even further and really want to know what we do, break it down. Then schedule a call with us landgeek.com training and you can schedule a call with myself or Mike Zaino and we can break down this business for you and see if it's a good fit for you. And do you want to have a true four hour work week like Shawn does? We'll see. All right. So Sean.

Yes sir.

You are the automation ninja. Can you tell me your story of how you even got into the automation world before land?

Yeah, yeah, for sure. I actually have a degree in mechanical engineering. That's what I did. I had 15 years of experience doing automation engineers. So if you've ever seen that show how stuff is made or things like that, you know I love that show. I actually had a couple machines featured on there in, in Food Plants. So yeah, that's, that's what I did. I would take a plant that had, you know, 20 people working and making a thousand of something a day, and I would build them a machine that made 100,000 of that thing a day with the same staff or less. So, you know, the, the exact lessons don't translate. I can't create a machine to sell land. But all of the lessons are the same, which is exactly what you said. I try to be as lazy as possible. What is the most I can get done with the least amount of effort in the end? And that's always the motivation, man.

Hold on. I've never known this about you, but you've worked on something that was on how it's made. Oh yeah, like I need your autograph now, Sean. Like, you got it.

But I can send that over.

So you can show people how to make 1,000 Snickers per day versus 100 per day.

Oh, absolutely. That's easy. Yeah. I worked on machines that made 10,000 cupcakes an hour. You know, stuff like that. You wouldn't think there'd be even that many sales for cupcakes in the U.S.

So, I mean, that's how we, you know, we get, you know, food for cheap because automation tools allow us to produce at mass quantity, Absolutely less resources. And I know automation has a bad reputation for stealing jobs, but, you know, what's your take on that?

You know, it's interesting because people do talk about that a lot, but at the same time it's like, well, you don't want to give somebody a job that's outdated just because that's their current job. The reality is that, you know, once you start automating things, people find other jobs to do. Now there are tons of jobs maintaining those machines that I make because they don't last forever, you know, and those are good paying jobs that you can train to do, just like they trained to do whatever it was they were doing before. And so the jobs are always there. You know, it's just people have a fear of change, but change is inevitable. You know, you just have to go with it.

So let's talk about change because, you know, I've made my story very public where, you know, I used to say I was not very good at systems or automation, but that's changing a lot. And I've embraced the change. And part of that change has been reaching out to you and bugging you at weird hours of the day, mostly because you are in Europe and we'll talk about that in a second. But yeah, surrounding yourself with people that are smarter than you and which area that you are weaker in. So one thing we've talked about often is how do we mail, what does our process look like for receiving leads? And so you love automation, but how do you feel about delegation using a va?

I mean, it's the next best thing to automation to a point. Once a VA is trained. Well, from my perspective, it's almost the same as something that's really well automated in that I don't have to do it and it gets done the way I want. So I mean, both automation and delegation I find to be very addictive feelings. Once you get started, that's what you want to keep working on.

Absolutely. So if you've ever heard the Roundtable podcast, Sean kind of talked about what it looked like to be in Europe doing this business, to be overseas when your Internet connection isn't as strong and the hours you can take calls aren't as great. But did automation really make that trip possible or automation and delegation? Sean is frozen. He's automated himself so much that he does not have to sit here. All right, let's shot him. Buffer a little bit. All right, so he is gone. Okay. I love it. When I'm back on my. So my own story with automation delegation is that, you know, I grew up trying to do hard work. Right. It was ingrained in me that hard work is a good ethic to have, and it is. But in today's economy, you need to have smart work, especially in this business. Like, you know, people are attracted to this business model because it can be scaled, it can be automated and delegated. So by doing those things, you can really get this business down to five hours a week, four hours a week, or like Mark Podolsky, two hours a week, where you're just making the high level decisions, providing the money and you're your team is doing this for you. And that's what I'm shooting towards. I'm down to about maybe six or seven hours a week in my business. I've got a lot automated and delegated on the buy side and most of it on the sell side. That's the one part that's a little tricky. But if you have any questions about automation or delegation, what tools we prefer, what platforms we use for delegation, please leave a comment and be happy to answer that for you. I am going to see what's up with Sean. So one of the tools we use is Voxer. I prefer that over typical text messaging. It's for good quick access. So I use that with a lot of VAs. So now you can get trained on whatever platform you prefer. Some people prefer Slack. I prefer Voxer, just because, you know, I'm more used to it. But if someone will show me that something's better, I'm definitely open to change. So Sean says his network gave out. Give him one minute. Sorry. No apologies, Sean. You should have a good, strong connection like I started with. So now we're even. Yeah. So one of the reasons Mark was able to take a vacation for an entire month is because he built such strong systems in place, both for his land company and both for the land geek, that between delegation and automation, you can truly step away from your business. And any good test for you is, are you able to step away from your business right now? And would it continue generating sales? Would you continue buying land? For the vast majority of us, that's no right. Eventually, that's where we all want to be, where you are no longer an active manager for your business. And that's we're all shooting for. And why would we even want that? You know, it's hard to break out of a routine when it's go to work, work hard, come home, unwind, spend some time with the kids, sometimes with the wife, go to sleep, maybe watch a TV show before then. And it's really hard to break out of that pattern when you've been doing it for so many years. For example, this morning I have a virtual assistant helping me out to share this live feed to multiple Facebook groups. Now, that was something I've done myself for the last few months. Takes me about 20 minutes, right? So it doesn't seem that that much of a time suck, but 20 minutes, you know, every single week, spread out over an entire year, that's going to add up. You know, I'm kind of curious. Let me just see what that looks like. So 20 minutes times 52, that's over a thousand minutes divided by 60, 17 hours. So I really value my time because instead of posting to all these groups, this morning, I was able to help my wife out with some dishes, spend some time with my son, slowly eat my breakfast instead of scarfing it down so I can make the live in time. So my quality of life has improved because I've delegated even a tiny task like that. And you'll be surprised like, so I prefer the Dave Ramsey avalanche method applied to automation. So a lot of things you might have heard from Mark Scott or anywhere within the community is, you know, find whatever pains you the most and automate or delegate that. Now, I completely agree with that because that will allow you to have the joy in this business for much longer. But at the same time, if something pains you, like sales, well, that's not going to be the first thing you delegate, because that is a much tougher task to delegate. So the method I prefer and have successfully been doing is what is the thing that takes you the least amount of time for your entire week? So for me, that started with uploading my list into Algae Pass every Monday to mail my 250 people. Now, didn't take me that long because I had streamlined the system. I had already, you know, preset what I was going to mail and took me 13, 14 minutes, tops. But, you know, having the mindset that, you know, I need to get out of this business, and rather than tackling something that takes me, you know, 10 hours a week, let me tackle something that takes 13 minutes a week. And so I did that, and it went off without a hitch. You know, I hired someone immediately for it, literally posted on upwork. Hired someone within two hours. I made the training videos. They did it perfectly because, you know, I was able to explain. Hey, Sean, welcome back. I was just explaining my avalanche method for delegation where I, you know, tackle the thing that takes me the least amount of time first. And so Sean is still a little frozen. He's got this awesome grin. So what I'm gonna do right now is take a little screenshot there on my computer and send that to him later. I'll turn that into a meme for everyone. Oh, that's gonna be awesome. I can't wait to do that. You'll see a meme here within a half an hour. It's shiny back. Oh, man. I'm gonna do another screenshot. By the way. This is getting too good for me. So. Yeah. So please leave some comments, Let me know you're here. Who's here? It's okay. Technical difficulties are part of the business. Can't let them get you down. Things are going to happen, all right. Just got to keep moving forward. Maybe you can't log into a certain county GIS site for a time. I've had that happen to me. Right? So technology is beautiful thing, but sometimes it'll fail you just like it failed Sean Rickman right now, the automation ninja. But you just got to keep moving forward with it, you know, like, there's got to be backup plans, contingencies. There's Always something to work on in this business when something is failing, right? If, let's say it's a holiday and you can't call any counties, well, there's something else you can work on in this business. You know, create a training video for due diligence. You know, train someone to check back taxes for you. You know, there's so many things that can be done. So Sean is again logged on, but frozen. Hey, John. Good to see you, John. So it's always nice knowing that someone's on the other end watching. I can see how many people are watching. However, I can't see who is. So thanks for reaching out, John. John. So John Jasnyck is killing it, by the way. So if you ever want to know what it looks like to hit a home run out of the gate, talk to John Jasny and reach out to him. The guy is killing it. I think he's up to 5,000amonth and he's only been doing this since December. So I'm going to take another screenshot of Sean Rickman right now. Oh, my goodness. I'm just getting so much good shots of him for some memes later. Hey, Connie. Enjoying the coffee talks. So Connie's flight school class last night had the automation class. Now Scott has some great insight on that. But look, everyone in this community has strong points that Mark has really honed in on. And they just finished that up. Hey, it looks like Sean is live again. Hey, Sean.

I'm not feeling confident about this going forward. I don't know what's going on over here.

We're going to keep your answers to yes or no.

Good thing.

Thumbs down, thumbs up, thumbs down. So I don't know if you heard the audio. I got some amazing screenshots of you.

I did hear that for a second. Yeah. Apparently a very good looking grin.

So there's that. And you'll see the other ones later, I'm sure.

Super looking forward to that.

Oh, man. So what did it look like for you to. Obviously you really excelled at your job. Why did you want to get into the land business?

I mean, it was really just freedom, you know, it's like you can make good money at something, but if you only have two or three weeks a year to do the things you actually want to do, it's not enough. But also that, you know, when you're working with a bunch of engineers, you have a lot of strong personalities for how things should work. And I just became one of those people where I got good enough at efficiency and Automation that when people didn't want to do things the way I wanted to do them, I found it frustrating because I knew most times that the way I wanted to do it was going to be the most efficient in the end. So, I mean, what a better way to apply that than have my own business that I can make exactly the way I want? So, I mean, in the end, it was probably more of a control thing than I realized at the beginning.

That's exactly what popped in my head. I was like, man, we need to talk about this more. So it comes down to control, right? So we attract a lot of software engineers. And by a lot, I mean up to 20% of this community is software engineers. And, you know, like, I've talked to a few of them and they said it's because they're listening to podcasts while they're coding or doing some, you know, specific task where they go in deep and, you know, they heard Mark on a podcast. But this business, because of the automation, it's so appealing to someone like yourself that genuinely likes control. And let's just be honest about it. It's nice to have control, right? I don't want to be out of control. I want to be fully in control of my financial destiny. And what better way to have a land business that you can fully automate or, I mean, can you fully automate this?

Oh, absolutely. I mean, if you consider having a VA do something as part of your automation, then absolutely you need to learn the parts first. But in the end, there's no question that you can be completely out of it if you want. The last piece will be getting someone in place who makes the decisions, but you can get right up to that edge where you have somebody doing everything else, and then you just get a snapshot of what's going on and you say, yes for this, no for this, charge this much for that. And then in the end, you'll find someone to take care of those decisions and you can be out. You can be an actual entrepreneur who just improves the business when and where you want.

I like it. I like it. So there was a flat school class last night. I believe they are the either the May or June class, I forget that just had their automation class with Scott. And the July class is in the process of getting a list and mailing right now. So what advice would you give to someone starting this business? What should you automate first? What should you delegate first? You know, how would you approach that?

The first thing you should delegate or automate is the thing that you hate doing most because it's twofold. You know, like we said, the thing about automating something is it's such an addictive feeling. But the rush you get from automating something that you genuinely hated doing, that's the high, you know, once you have that, it's going to motivate you to get with the stuff that maybe you don't even mind doing, you know, but. But in the beginning, there might be so much stuff you don't mind doing. You realize you just created another job for yourself. So you need to get used to that feel of passing something off for no other reason than because you can. So you can free up a little more time for yourself to actually be an entrepreneur. So that's really what it is. Just pick something you genuinely hate doing and try to get that automated or outsourced.

Okay, so while you were frozen, I had just told the audience that this is a common answer, right? Automate the things that you do not like doing. What if someone really loves this business, should they stay in it? Or do you think by staying completely in the business, not delegating or automating anything, that it will lead to burnout?

I mean, you know, it's find a job you love and you never work a day in your life, right? If you are just. If it feels like a holiday every day and you're doing everything front to back, keep doing it. Because in the end it'll be easier for you to teach someone else how to do it. But I definitely recommend documenting the things you're doing, actually having it written down, or making videos of yourself doing it, screen captures, just so it's there. So that on the day that you do burnout, you don't have to keep doing it for another month because you have to figure out how to get it all documented and recorded. You've already got it and so it's even for you. You know, maybe you. You spend your whole life enjoying doing it front to back. I don't imagine I'll ever meet any, anyone who is like that, but you do something enough times, you start to skip steps. And so it's always good to have it even for yourself, as a reference. But then like I said, on that day, you burn out and you're ready to pass it off, it's there and you'll be 90% of the way to passing it off. Now you just have to find someone or some way to do it.

So that's some very good insight. I like that. Even if you're not training Someone to do something. You should document it because now you can critique the process. And so I know how your mind works. How often are you your entire business and is this the most efficient way to be doing it?

I think about individual parts of it more often than the whole business. But I definitely, you know, I just revamped my whole CRM and the next day I thought, oh, I've got a better way to do it. Unless it really starts sewing some cracks, I can't imagine I'll go back and revamp it completely for a while. But yeah, I mean, it's an addictive feeling, like I keep saying. And I think about it, I don't think about it in a stressful way. I think about it when I'm relaxing and I'm enjoying. How can I make this better? How could this be the jet streamliner of land businesses? And it's, it's fun to think about, you know, because not only does it get me out of the business, but in the end, you know, you can figure out ways to just kind of, you can have a successful business and it's crushing, but then you figure out little ways to just trim the fat along the way. And it's just, it's a great way of doing it. You know, you just save a few bucks here and there and it starts adding up so quickly and there are less errors along the way that cost you. It's fun.

I like it. I like. We got a comment from John Jasniak. So he says he could speak to this. Exactly. He's an engineer, so we attracted a lot of engineers. Hates the office environment. So the question for you, one, how do you spell your name?

Sean?

Second is so very few people have heard your story, but you are a coach within the land geek system. So are you doing full time land right now?

We are absolutely full time. Rachel quit her job, I want to say, almost a year ago. And then I left my engineering job. It's been just over six months now that we've been doing it permanently. But yeah, I mean, if you're an engineer, you know, the more I think about it, the problem a lot of times is the guy giving you direction is either not an engineer or he's been out of it a long time. And so you get tasks that you know are not the best way of doing something and it can drive you crazy because you, you know, given your livelihood to doing things well and efficiently and being able to get out of that and make something in your own vision is just such a great feeling. So, yeah, but I agree. That's definitely why I think the last boot camp I sat next to two separate aerospace engineers. So we attract some very successful people who just want to be able to do things their own way.

And we also attract cabin makers. Right. So this business attracts a lot of different type of people. So yes, you could be the very analytical minded or you could be like myself, or you're just a grunt worker, hard working, but just want to find a way out. And oddly enough, this model applies to all walks of life and I think that's what it's beautiful about it because this community is very involved and we have a lot of different perspectives. So even within the, among the coaches, you have myself, who I excel at the creative stuff, the marketing pieces, and Sean, who is just like I said, an automation ninja. And so, you know, with all of us at the helm for available to one on one students, there's really no reason not to have a fully automated business that is successful, that is also on the creative side because you can leverage us. Right. I'm, I'm picking on Sean every single.

Day and I'm bothering you all the time for marketing questions.

Absolutely.

And something I'm great at.

And our friendship together has really excelled both of our businesses. And you know, there's no, there's no such thing as a lone ranger in this business. You know, you really cannot. I mean, so what? There'll be the 1 in 1,000 that will do this all on their own, but why not, you know, latch onto someone else who either excels in an area that you don't or has already done it and you can learn from them. It just, it baffles me why you wouldn't reach out. So please, you know, reach out. Go to thelangig.com training I mean, both of us, both Sean and I went through the coaching program ourselves and Mark, being the forward thinker that he is, invited us to be coaches within the system. It's a great honor. We are forever thankful for that because we generally enjoy helping students and, and you know, using our strengths because honestly, it makes us look really smart, doesn't it, Sean?

Oh, yeah. Something better than when you have to teach it to somebody else. Somebody's going to ask you a question that you never even thought of, so now you got to go research it so you can sound like the expert. So.

Yeah, exactly.

You're actually the expert.

I love it.

I love it.

So we got another question for John. How did you make the transition if you are full time? So, so were There any nerves there? Pay cut, probably some hatred or jealousy from others. I also just found myself really struggling to work for others and their visions as opposed to building something valuable on my own. Can you speak to that, Shawn?

Yeah. So there's a lot of nerves because it's the end of life, as you know. It's an interesting way of putting it. You've never not gotten up, gone to a job that pays consistently. But the thing I kept telling myself is, well, what's the worst case scenario? It's just that I end up back where I am now with more business knowledge. So the next time I have an idea or something, I want to try. And that is just the absolute worst case, you know, so it's like the potential downside, like I said, is that you end up back where you are. The potential upside is that you get everything you want in life. So they're so misweighted that it seems crazy not to do it. In a way, I certainly took a pay cut, no doubt about it. Having said that, you know, we're working on obviously building it up so I'm making the same amount. I could go get a part time job doing anything I wanted if I needed to supplement, which I think would be fun, you know, after being an engineer, which is so regimented and so difficult and so draining, at the end of the day, I can go bartend for a couple days a week and supplement my income, which sounds like a blast to me by comparison, you know, and so. But yeah, you're gonna get a lot of jealousy in the form of people telling you that they don't think it's a good idea. You're always gonna have that when you're trying to do something different. And so you have to watch out for that because what people are really telling you is that they can't do it. But that means nothing for you. You know, if you have the vision, you are 90% farther along than everyone else who you can just tell is never going to leave that desk job. And you can't let that hold you back.

So you are actually touching on a topic that has nothing to do with automation and delegation. But we've had some really good conversations kind of revolving around concepts you would find in the book that you recommended to me, the Code of the Extraordinary Mind. Now, can you speak a little bit more to that of what it takes to really take a leap and actually take a shot at having a life worth living?

Yeah, I mean, that book is so great. So, you know, just going specifically off that book it lays out sort of these five steps, sort of transitions that you have to make to get to where somebody like Mark Podolsky is, who, from our perspective, you know, he thinks of an idea and he can change the whole community. You know, he's, he's just gotten to a point. I mean, you meet him and you see that he's where everyone wants to be. He's genuinely happy, he genuinely enjoys his life and he makes huge moves because he's gotten to a point where he knows how to do it. And this book really lays out not nothing to do with the business of that, but the mental steps that you have to go to. And if you ever try to do this kind of thing, you realize that it does take a lot of that. It takes a lot of mental transition from all the things that you grew up learning, like you need to have a good paying job to be a secure person. But if you're here and you're listening to this and you've bought the investors toolkit or you're thinking about it, you are at or on your way to the first big transition. Because most people will never do that. They won't, they won't even sit and type in their Google search bar. How do I make money outside of a job? And I mean, if that wasn't the first step for most of us, then I don't know what was. But that's what it takes, is just to kind of step outside that little box and think, maybe there's another way. And then you started on the path.

So what was the hinge or the fulcrum of? When you're in your day job, you're frustrated. What was it? Was it a book like this? Was it a podcast? What flipped the switch, thinking I got to do something different?

It was a bad situation. I, you know, you know this about me, but the people watching do not. I love to move around and travel. So I had moved three times in six years, which means I changed jobs. And in the engineering community, they don't like that because from their perspective, it takes them six months to a year to really train you to be proficient at that job. And so if it looks like you're a flight risk, they don't want to hire you. So I moved to North Carolina and I knew when I got this job that I needed to stay there five years minimum or I was not going to be able to get another job because I just needed some kind of consistency on my resume. And I got there and it was the worst job in engineering. I'D ever had. It just couldn't have been more frustrating. The whole company just functioned so poorly. It made you crazy. And so it was a simple troubleshooting exercise. Okay, I can't stay at this job and I can't get another engineering job. What are my options? And the only clear option was I have to figure out how to make money outside of engineering. And so that, of course, led me down an Internet rabbit hole, which led me to land. And from my perspective, that was the best job that you could try and do, because I could do it with almost no money and I could do it very part time to start, just to prove that it worked. You know, in the first six months, we only bought one lot, but we were also not spending that much time. It was a very part time thing just to kind of prove that it worked for us.

That is an excellent story. Actually. I didn't know that about you. So this is pretty cool. Like, coffee talks are good for me because I get to know more about my friends.

Well, you never ask me anything except how to help your friends.

Yeah, we only talk about other really weird stuff. Yeah, we typically talk about the esoteric and rarely dive into our personal stories. So that was pretty cool. Wow. So when you went down this Internet rabbit hole, what was the timeframe from? Huh. This looks interesting. To purchasing a toolkit.

It was actually pretty quick. So, I mean, from once I found Mark, which was on, I think, Retipster, and I was reading because, you know, everybody starts looking at buying and flipping houses or renting out houses, because that's just something everyone knows someone who does that, or there's all the shows, but, you know, you have to have a lot of capital for that. And I actually had already bought a townhouse and I could see how the money rolled in really slowly. You know, one big thing that you have to fix a leak in your roof, and six months of profit could be out the window. And so I wanted something that was just safer. You know, I don't like to take a big $50,000 leap. I'd rather buy a $500 piece of land. And so, yeah, I saw that on retipster and I probably ordered the toolkit within a week. You know, I had to show it to the fiance to make sure I wasn't crazy. I need a sounding board, too. Off the rails. Because, you know, being in that situation, you want to make sure that it's not desperation driving you to make a bad decision. And we both really looked at it and agreed. This seems like it could Be very legit. And it's a low cost point, you know, for the investor toolkit. It's just not that much money for something that really genuinely could potentially change your life. So, yeah, it didn't take long to jump into it.

Exactly. Like if you compare college education for the slight chance you'll have a very good job within whatever field you go into, compared to the low cost of a toolkit or flight school, compared to how drastically that could change your financial future. I mean, is it a no brainer or is it something you should still evaluate?

I mean, you know, it's, it's a good question because everyone I talk to is in the landing community.

Right?

Yeah, it was all for us. So I can't say that there won't be somebody who looks at it and thinks that's not the business I want. But it's, it's just such a good business. And I did, I couldn't find any other businesses that had such an open community. You know, there were a lot of real estate guys who offer a very similar situation, but I couldn't find one review. I couldn't find them showing me one person who'd actually bought it or gone through the coaching program and came out the other side and said, this is great. Whereas Mark couldn't be more open. You know, he'll tell you everything about the business. He'll put you in touch with people who have bought the toolkit or bought coaching so that you can ask them actual questions to see how it was for them. And I mean, that's so invaluable.

Excellent takeaways. I love the action you've taken. Let's take maybe one or two more questions and then that's it. Wrap it up. We'll go back to our usual nonsense conversations on Voxer. So how do you automate your intake? A quick summary of what that looks like. Because you can talk for maybe three hours about this.

Yeah, I mean, I could go over a very complicated flowchart that I've currently made. It's color coded and Absolutely. Sometimes I just look at it to make myself happy. Yeah. So, you know, the first part obviously is the mailing. So I've automated mailings. Those go out every day. I just turn off and on which counties I want to mail to and those go out. I have a VA who looks at. I get all my mail scanned. It goes to a mail scan service. I have a VA who looks at that folder every day, sends me things he doesn't know what to do with and he does skip tracing, which is finding a good address for a letter that got returned once that comes in. And I have an interested party, we have a va, she has a follow up flowchart to follow. So call this person back and she gets all the notes and it'll say if, you know, if they don't pick up, but they have an answering machine, leave a message, wait two days. You know, it's very specific. And so there's no, I don't. That's just the way I am. I prefer to give people a very regimented way of doing it and then if they find a better way along the way, that's totally fine. But that way they're not kind of out in the dark. And right now the VA does basically everything as far as intake. The only thing I do is the VA sends the lot to due diligence if it looks good. And then the due diligence comes back to me, a little screenshot of it, and I just look it over and say, yep, that looks good. And I give an amount I'm willing to pay for that lot. And the intake VA goes in and tries to negotiate something lower than that. And that is my entire involvement in the intake process.

So let's talk a little bit more about, you know, the worst case scenarios you anticipate. So I am of the opinion that I would rather have something just launched and then kind of figure out what could go wrong along the way. I've talked to you, I know you know some, we got some space engineers within the community and it's their job to envision every possible worst case scenario and plan for it ahead of time. Now if you are like that, do that method. If you were like me, it's better just to have something 80% good enough and launch that and then address those, you know, what happens here, what happens there, scenarios. Otherwise, if you're like me, you'll never get anything done. If you're waiting for perfection, if you're like Sean, you can achieve perfection and then launch. So there's more than one way to automate and delegate. It's all about. The mindset though, is that of the 7 billion people on this earth, you are not the only one that knows how to do any specific task. Either there's someone that already inherently is just smarter in that particular area, or they can be trained, and that's a talent as well, to be able to learn any task and do it efficiently. How many VAs do you have total right now, Sean?

Ooh, that's a good question. I want to say in the range of five, and then I've got some that do very small tasks. You know, somebody who does design. So if I need some Photoshop or something like that for an ad, but, you know, that's very sparing. And there's some people on Fiverr that I use regularly, but people who I actually have in my system who can get automated tasks. I think I have five VAs right now.

So we're talking about time today, and Stephen LeBlanc has a good question about time. I've been reading about the boot camps that get people started. I don't see how they can get time away from jobs, kids living away from family. Can this be something? Started dedicating a few hours a week until land income versus current income become equal. So here's a question. Is a boot camp necessary to start this business?

It's not. If you have all of. If you have Tony Robbins level motivation inside you, you can do it. I mean, that's the only way I can describe it, because you really have to be the type of person who's gonna be hugely self starting. Whereas bootcamp invigorates you, besides giving you, you know, you walk away not just with a hundred ideas, you walk away with that motivation. You're seeing people, not just the coaches, not just Mark up there who's in the stratosphere, but you're surrounded. Even the people who attend. A lot of people attend several of them, and so they've been in it a little while. So you'll talk to people who have sold one lot, six lots, 10 lots, and you're just surrounded by people who are proving that you can do this. And there isn't anything I've been to that's more motivating than that. Even to this day, when I go to one of those boot camps, I walk away with a notebook filled with ideas, and I'm just. I'm pumped and ready to go. And so, you know, I just think they're fantastic. But if you can't absolutely can't get to one, you need a planning system. I mean, that's really my only advice because, you know, everybody's got this huge list of to dos and there's a lot of good information out there. And it's something that we've been working on too, of figuring out your to dos, figuring out what's actually important versus what you perceive as being urgent. Because this is important. You know, as Tony Robbins would say, actually bring him up again. To be in the zone is to work on Something that is important but not urgent. And that is what this, this can be for you because it's something that is very important, but technically, you don't have to do it right now. And that's what makes it a good thing to do. Now's the time you want to do it. If you wait until it's urgent, then it's too stressful. It's, you know, it's going to be way too much on you. And so you really want to try and figure out, you know, if it's important, how can you free up those couple of days? And once you look at it, not from I can't do it, but a how can I do this? Perspective, you'll find the way to do it. You know, it's not a stress thing. It's just figuring it out. There's always a solution.

There is so much to unpack there. You just touched on so many possible things. So the first thing that came to mind was, no, boot camp is not completely necessary. It's super helpful, though. If you can't do that, you definitely want to be plugged in to the Gold Mastermind Facebook group where we archive Wednesday calls between Mark Podolski and the one on one coaching students. You can stay current on very specific questions, post questions to the group. So. So I would say being plugged into a community is absolutely necessary for this business, at least to be a fly on the wall to watch the conversations that would be necessary. So boot camp not necessary, but very helpful. And if you want to find out about boot camp, go to the landgeek.com bootcamp. August is sold out. We are going to be in Scottsdale, Arizona in August 11th through Texas. Sold out. There were 10 more spots made available recently, so reach out to Danielleandgeek.com so two L's in there and hopefully there's still a few spots left if you were entertaining the idea. And after that, we have Orlando in October, October 6th through 8th, and oddly enough, that one is nearly sold out as well. I think there's only like 10 spots left. And so this community is growing. The ideas are catching on. There will never be competition. There will always be deals to be had. But as it becomes more popular, you definitely want to take action faster and be one of, you know, have that first mover advantage because we, we haven't even scratched the surface on what a land business could look like, you know, at the top of the game. Mark's only done 192 deals last year. There's so much land out there to be bought. Sean, what'd you think? Do you like Coffee Talk?

Yeah, I'm a fan. I really like just yammering on.

I know. Like, we have 17 people just watching this yammer. Yeah, I dig it. And, you know, here's a little shout out from Mike Zaino. Fly in the horse's tail. This. This little saying is gonna be catching on for quite some time. He is at the beach right now, and so I'm a little jealous, but it's okay. I'll have my time in the sun, figuratively and literally. Sean, great talking to you. The automation ninja. We get to do this again sometime. This was fun.

Yeah, man. As soon as I get on a better Internet connection, I guess you and me both.

All right, man. Well, I'll talk to you soon. Anyone else, just go to thelandgeek.com, check out the resource, learn more about this business. You can really take a risk and actually change your life in a very positive way. All right, Happy Wednesday. I will talk to you all soon. Mark Podolski will be back next week. Yeah, and this is the part of the end broadcast, Sean. It's kind of awkward because we click end broadcast, and it doesn't end, and it doesn't end. So actually, I'm gonna click it now, and it's gonna take a.