Coffee Talk

All right, let's see how this goes. Very cool.

We are live, Mark.

All right, Coffee Talk. And David is hosting today. But I'm still drinking my coffee.

Yeah. Hey, everyone. Happy Wednesday. Good to see you. As usual, you've gotten tired of seeing my face. And the one reason you got into this program, because he was so friendly on a podcast. He was so lovable on a YouTube channel. The one, the only, Mark Podolski. Welcome back, Mark.

I'm back, baby. I'm back. Refreshed. Re energized. I'm ready to tackle the second half of the year with a vengeance. We got a lot of great stuff in the pipeline.

I love it. Have you ever taken a vacation that long?

No. No. I mean, wow. I remember I took six months off, like after college. I had, I got like a job and I saved a bunch of money for six months living at home. And then I took off for six months to Australia with a buddy. But after that, I've never taken, you know, that much time off just from, you know, even. Yeah. And it's weird, like after a while, like, you need to be productive. Like, I couldn't wait to get back.

So if you don't know who we are, Mark Podolsky, he is my mentor. He taught me how to flip land. You wouldn't even think flipping land is a thing, but we do it every day. And we buy raw land from out of state owners who likely owe back taxes, turn around, sell it on owner financing, and that's how we generate our passive income, about 25% of cash deals, and I don't shy away from those. But this is our business model. We flip raw land. Interesting, right? So if you want to learn more, go to thelandgeek.com and Mark. So flipping land, right? So you've been doing this since 2001. Now you've just taken a one month vacation. Did you feel like you could have done that any earlier?

Oh, absolutely. I was just scared. Like, my treadmill just turned off, you know, Like, I know I could have done it, but this is really interesting to see where the systems would break down without me. Like, how tight were the systems? And unfortunately for me, the systems are so tight, I'm not needed at all. Like, you know, the only thing that we really took away that, that last three days was the weekly meetings. That was it. So, you know, everything else that Mark does, you know, the only thing I, you know, I stepped away from some, you know, the roundtable and podcasts, client calls and just meetings. But other than that, like, the day to day running of the business is so tight and so systematized and so automated that nothing broke. And, you know, there was one or two things that I had to kind of do financially that, you know, I had to do, which took about two to three seconds, maybe a day. But other than that, like, it's. It was so smooth that it was very humbling, like, business doesn't need me. Business went up, deals closed, you know, way more often.

You make more money.

That's what I'm thinking. Like, all right, it's time to like, you know, start another business or something. I don't know.

Heard it in podcast. This is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. But to get there, Mark, it's a long journey. So it took you over a decade, but then you turn around, turn that into education. So it takes most of us about 18 months, maybe a little bit longer. That's okay.

Yeah, I mean, you know, it's interesting. It depends on what your metric is for success, right? So for some people, they're like, you know what, I'd be really happy if I had my passive income paying for my mortgage every month, Right. For other people, they'd be really happy if their passive income paid for the mortgage and family trip every quarter, let's say, right? For some people, it would be, I wanted to replace my income so I can quit my job. That was you, Scott, Todd, the Rickmans, a lot of people, Chris Pritchard. You know, we're able to do that, you know, in 18 months. Let's say for me, it was, that was my goal, right? That was my metric was can the land investing business exceed my investment banking income? And it took me 18 months to do that. So, you know, it just depends, like, what's your metric? It's a great side hustle. Daniel. Diva.

Good morning, Danielle. Good to see you. Isn't it weird seeing Mark back on here, Danielle? Like, I'm still kind of not used to it, but I'm loving it. I'm loving it. It's nice not to be the, the main person.

Yeah, yeah, it's. It's hard, right? It's hard to just kind of like talk into a camera.

So for the two. First two weeks, I didn't have a guest, so I did it on my own. And, you know, that was okay. Like, I can talk about this model for over half an hour and not need any feedback, but sometimes you just like it being a conversation. So look, we got 12 viewers right now. Just, you know, put a comment Let us know you're watching. Say good morning. Welcome Mark back.

Yeah, let's listen.

We're taking any questions, questions.

Yeah, yeah, I know. I can't wait to catch up. It's crazy. Like, we got boot camp coming up in, oh my goodness, dying days in Scottsdale and Orlando just about filled up. If you haven't, you know, sign up for Orlando boot camp yet, go to lanky.com forward/boot camp. Daniel, do we, do we still have room in that room? That room's great.

So I hope we have room because I just. Someone signed up for flight school this morning, so they're looking to go to Orlando.

Oh, wow. Yeah. So also August flight school is going to fill up very fast. So, you know, I hate to sound like got to do this, but you know, you got to do it. All right?

But yes, we do have a lot of urgency built into this business because there's never been a better time to do this business. It's getting easier and easier, which will mean a few more people will come into this business. There will never be competition. I don't believe. But there's no time like the now.

Really don't hesitate on, really, now is the time. And I'll tell you, if you're not a big economics person and you don't like to study economic trends, I'm kind of economically geeky in that sense. And we are at the end of our 10 year cycle, right? So real estate works on a 10 year cycle. We are very much due within the Next, let's say 12 to 18 months for a recession. Now, is it going to be like 2008? No, but we will hit a dip. And now is the time, you know, be that pig that's building their house full of bricks. Right. Be prepared now because the deals are going to be really, really good in the next 12 to 18 months.

Right.

So right now, I mean, you know, land investing, our cycle is a little slower, right. So we're the last to get hit when real estate takes that dip. But we're also the last to recover. So, you know, we probably have a little bit more Runway, but now is the time to really start cranking up the business and then be ready when the deals just get better. And what's awesome about our model is that, you know, we've no competition. Right. We don't have hedge funds, we don't have private equity groups. There's no big money doing this. We don't have huge swings in it. Right. You know, from a, from an economic perspective, very few People are going to fall out based on their $250 a month note payment to you, right? Yeah. I mean, you know, they. Some people will fall out, but it's not going to be, you know, a huge problem. And, you know, even in 2008, I was very profitable. 2009, I was profitable. 2010, I was profitable. But 2010, my personal income took a big dip and, you know, I had to lower my. Over my personal overhead. Now, the business was still profitable, but if I was preparing, say in 2006, 2007, I could have, you know, sustained that a little bit better. So I'd never gone through a cycle before, and now I'm really super vigilant about it. John, just on what's up, Ontario. John. Yeah, Bryce.

Bryce is here. And John from Hawaii.

Oh, nice. Selling $80,000 deal today. I love it.

Gotta love, you know, every time you go on vacation.

Hawaii, by the way, that's the other things. You can do this from anywhere.

Totally. I. You know, like, I'm getting away from even needing paper at this point. We gotta talk to Jutnot Pro, because I don't need paper.

Yeah. You know, it's funny. I just closed that big deal in Nevada. And. And so, you know, we went through title. We got the. We got our title insurance, but like, the actual deed itself, turbo scan, like, just. I don't need paper anymore pictures. I don't need a. Like you said, like these big physical things and, you know, all the paperwork and the cabinets, like, now.

I know. I love this. Yeah. Yeah. So, like, we've got a few people that do the van life and do this business. So, I mean, if it's freedom people are after, man, like, you can actually have a side hustle like this and be traveling. I mean, Shawn Rickman just got back from Hawaii. You just did some traveling. John Montero is working from Hawaii. I'm going to set up an ops in Hawaii.

Yeah, I mean, it really. You're only limited, basically by your imagination. Because once you get these basic things in place, your virtual mailbox in place, you get your systems in place with, say, LG Pass, where, you know, we've got our mailings automated. Right. We just upload a list. That's it.

Oh, yeah.

And then the whole System's automated. We're 90% automated with software. And then we got geek pay on the back end with a set and forget it note collection system. It doesn't. You can just. All you need is an inexpensive computer. That's it.

This business is beautiful. I mean, I talk to people almost on a daily basis, and if someone wants to talk to me or Mike Zaino, we are the people who can. Look. My whole goal on a call is to see where you are, see why you're interested in this now, and give you options, and that's it. And most of the time, these people just realize, like, yeah, this business actually works. It's not some kind of weird, you know, why is Mark doing the education now? But, no, he has his own land business, and it's very profitable. We just. We love what we do as far as the education aspect of this.

Yeah. About real estate education is like, there's so many guys out there, they're like, oh, I'm teaching this stuff, but they're not doing it themselves. Right. So they're talking about things they did in 2005 and 2006, and then I'll teach you how to do it. But, like, the market's different now, so it's, you know, I sleep well at night doing deals. I can stay a little bit ahead of my students.

Yeah. And then we also have the, you know, happy customers guaranteed. So if you have watched the. The Coffee talk, I think it was, what, six weeks ago, Right. Someone demanded their money back. They sold some weird property. I talked to Mark right after the coffee talk. I was like, did that phase you at all? He's like, doesn't bother me one bit. I gotta get used to that. But, yeah, that's pretty awesome.

Yeah.

So Hansel says, yeah, that's what amazed me is I was driving home Uber driver, and the whole way I was open. So I talked to Uber drivers about this business on a daily basis. Mark. So my truck was stolen and I opted not to buy another vehicle. I talked to Uber drivers daily about this. Because you're already doing a side hustle. You know what it is to be entrepreneurial. You don't want to work for someone else. This is perfect.

Yeah. You know, no offense to Uber drivers, but they're totally discounting their time, Right. Because what they've done is they've exchanged their time for money, Right. And they have solo economic dependency. So if they're not driving, they're not making any money. And so as a side hustle, you really want some? Something that creates passive income. So Hansel Hodge is working on his business, but not in his business. Right. Richard Schultz at Starbucks is not in Starbucks whipping up your frappuccinos. And you shouldn't be the one doing everything yourself. That's not being an entrepreneur. That's being A freelancer. And we see this all the time. Dentists. Right. What are they doing? They're so economic dependent. If their hands aren't in somebody's mouth, they're not generating income. Right. So their only passive income piece in that business is the hygienist. Right. Or if they get an associate. But other than that, most of them don't think like that. And they think, oh, I gotta build my practice, build my practice. And next thing you know, they burnt themselves out, you know. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, the three D's in dentistry were, you know, first they get divorced. Oh, no. Yeah. Then they would get depressed, and then they would, you know, die.

Oh, no.

There's a reason they have the highest.

You know, and on top of that, no one likes them.

Well, yeah, that's the other thing is, like, you know, if every day, you know, people like, oh, no offense, but I really don't want to see you today. That gets old, too.

That's gotta do something to the psyche. Oh, man.

Yeah, yeah. You know what's funny is we get a lot of doctors in this business as well, because they know I've got sole economic dependency. Right. High income doesn't translate to wealth. Right. There's a big difference between, you know, net worth and income. And so this business grows your income, but it also grows your net worth. So if you've got $30,000 a month coming in passive income, that's the equivalent of $10 million in the bank at 4%. Right?

Yeah. You've done the math.

Yeah. Joe Chop still yet to get the mailers out.

What's going on, Joe?

Is Joe in flight school?

No, no, Joe's not in flight school. If he was in flight school, Scott Todd would have beat him over the head with a bat.

We'd all beat him over the head with a bat. Joe, get a flight school. What are you doing, man? Yes. If you can't execute on your own by yourself, we'll make you execute in real time with your class.

Yeah. Hey, Joe. Joe, schedule a call with me. We got to figure out what's going on. We got. We have options, but we want to keep you moving forward. Just schedule a call with me. Let's figure out what's going on. We don't want you having a sad face on a Wednesday morning. We only want happy faces. Okay, so next week. So schedule call with me for tomorrow and then we'll prob. You know, problem solve this troubleshoot. Might be flight school, it might not. We'll talk about that. There are some Other packages available. And next week I want a smiley face. I got mailers out.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's always interesting, like, how the mindset is. Look, I want to suffer. I want to do this on my own. I want to get a deal done. You know, I don't need anybody's help. I got the toolkit. I'm going to do it on my own. It's like, okay, would you climb Mount Everest by yourself? Would you get a Sherpa to take you up? Right. They'll take you up safely. They'll guide you through. You know, these are the parts to avoid. These are the parts that, you know we're going to get up there faster. Yeah. It's still going to be hard, but you're going to get up there and you're going to survive and you'll climb Mount Everest, Right?

Absolutely.

So let us see your tenzig. Norank. Right. Let us see your management. We've been there before.

Matt. Excellent.

See, Matt's in flight school. Yeah. And it keeps the bat away, which is good. Yeah. So research is the hard part. I get it.

I would totally get it. But that's when flight school becomes the most intense. Because these are mental blocks that are keeping you from going forward. It's not the outside sources. It's not the research. It's a mental block. And so gotta bust through that, gotta push through that. We've all been there. You know, I've been there. I have blocks every single day, but I have to overcome them. And that's what it comes down to is, you know, are you gonna do this business anyway? And, you know, Joe, look, I've seen you around the community. I'm glad you're still moving forward. But. Yeah, there are a lot of block walls in this business. You know, the first one is 3007 counties. Mark, does your model work in all 3007 counties?

No. No. If you want to start buying infill lots in Manhattan, this ain't the model. You want to start buying infill lots in San Francisco. This is not the model.

Yeah, absolutely. There's 3,000 different counties. We're buying assets for pennies on the dollar and selling them. I suppose you could do that anywhere, but for the velocity of deals that we do, there's a few states that this works in, maybe like seven, eight states. And, you know, I just talked to someone from North Dakota this morning. I just. Every time I talk to someone from the north, northeast, I always say, look, you're going to be tempted to work this Business near you, please consider, you know, working New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Texas. Those states where there's more sun than you know what to do with.

Yeah, nobody wakes up. Boy, I'd really love to buy some raw land in Minnesota. Unless you live in Minnesota, so having a fire pool as possible.

So you live in Phoenix, it's like 140 out there. Do you notice any, like cyclical flows of, you know, sales in hot states during summer or cold states during winter?

I, I don't notice that too much. It's interesting. I track the really key metrics in my business, but I don't go so, so deep in the analytics that I'm just making myself crazy. And I think that's one of those analytics that I think isn't that helpful for our business. Because if I buy any asset 23 cents a dollar, yeah, it's gonna sell. Now, will a Colorado, you know, five acre parcel sell in December and January? It does, right? Will it sell faster in summer? Probably. But this is the reason that we always say, look, you got 90 days. Go out there, look at the property, stomp the property. We don't love it. We either refund your exchange of a property you do love, so do it.

Now, 90 days is enough for the snow to melt or the 140 degree weather to go away, right?

Yeah. And I have a 365 day exchange policy. So take your time, get out there, but lock down that parcel now before, you know, John Montero buys it and flips it. Makes $80,000 profit.

Absolutely. So, yeah. Where were you on vacation, Mark?

Oh, so I went all over. I was in Tucson with the family, then Newport beach for elite weekend. My wife flew out, met me in Newport. Then we came back, took the kids to San Francisco. And then after San Francisco came back, we had a couple days here repacked and we spent a week in Santa Monica on the beach. So August was great. I mean, just cool weather. Family time, July, you know, everyone got their needs met. So as far as how much time I worked, every day I worked, zero. I would say, you know, two minutes of checking email at night and doing stuff I had to do financially, you know, paying a bill really, which is the only thing I actually did, and then maybe forwarding emails to people that, you know, emailed me directly and it had to go to the proper person. But other than that, I didn't spend any time in the systems of, you know, LG pass and looking at deals. You know, maybe I would approve a deal, but other than that, I mean, I Spent less than five minutes a day.

Beautiful. I mean, there's no reason you would even have to change that coming back to work, right?

No, but I, you know, but client calls are important to me. You know, Coffee Talk is important to me. The podcast is important to me. Like, I like this stuff. So, you know, I've set it up where everything I'm doing, I love to do. And if it's something that I'm not loving, I just actually wrote an email about this for the Sunday. The Super Sunday productivity tip was, you know, every month, once a month I'd have to download bank statements. Right. So I figured out how to, how to automate that. So that's off my plate. Yeah, Yeah, I love that.

That's a great tip. You gave me that tip about a month ago. Sweet. I love it. Yeah, yeah, you gotta, you gotta open the Sunday email, though, if you want to know that tip.

Open Sunday email. Yeah, yeah.

And if you're not a subscriber to his emails, go to the lang.com and there's an opt in there. So just go ahead and put your email there. And now you'll get the super secret Sunday tip, right?

Yeah. Any other questions? Any other questions? Comments? What are you drinking, David?

Oh, my coffee is right here. I've got, I got my Joshua Tree cup.

Oh, nice. I gotta get you a Lange cup.

I have a lanky cup. I just use it, I use it last night so it's. I haven't washed my dishes yet.

Oh, okay.

It's all good though. This is, this is similar. I mean, this is land Joshua Tree.

Alexander McGlynn, what are some good strategies that good buyers.

To get buyers on board with automatically charging them every month? I have some folks that didn't get initial.

What are you using? Geek Pay. Alexander Use Geek Pay.

Yeah. So I think his question is, how do you convince them to get set up with Geek Pay at that point so it's in their best interest. So they're more likely to default or miss a payment from, you know, some kind of weird circumstance if they're not. If they don't have automatic payments set up.

Yeah. So what we say is, look, if you never want to get a late fee, do this, this is your set it and forget it system. It'll automatically bill you. Right. And you know, you can say, look, if you, you know, set this up on ACH, you know, the next two days, I'm going to lower your note fee from $12 a month, $9 a month. Okay. That'll motivate You. But if you don't do it in the next two days, it's gonna go to be 12 bucks a month. Give them a deadline. Deadlines really work very well. Yeah.

And everyone always waits to the very last minute. Possible. Yeah. The next flight school is August 22nd. Every month I have an email that says, I'm really sorry, but we are full. Please don't make me send those emails anymore. Sign up early. I really don't like sending those emails, Mark. It just breaks my heart. I know, but, you know, we keep flight school at a maximum of a certain small people so that we can have an intimate group. Yet you don't get lost in the, you know, among the questions.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, we figured out the ideal size where, you know, it's, you know, it's perfect amount of engagement yet it's. Yeah, that's what it is. It's perfect amount of engagement. If it's too big, you won't engage. If it's too small, it feels like, you know, you just got like the microscope on you.

Yeah. Doug.

Awesome mailing's going out. Want to learn to scale more effectively. That's what we're going to teach you step by step. Boot camp, really, all the land investing clouds are going to dissipate and everything's going to become very clear after boot camp.

I love boot camps. And now I know I'm going to be right there in the main room with you, learning from you. I'm still going at this point right now. I know how to do this business. But I'm going to learn something from you this weekend that I've probably never heard before. So that's why you want to be going to these things. It's supplemental education that's just about necessary to really solidify success.

I think so, yeah. Joe, just had a great question. I love that question. Doesn't everyone mail the same people in the same counties? Yes, we all get deals. So go to the mailbox. Right. And tell me how many credit card offers did you get today? Right. You'll keep getting them, yet somehow they're all making money. So, you know, we're all working the same counties, but how many properties can you buy in in a year? Joe? How many properties can I buy in a year? How many properties can Dave buy in a year? The reality is the market is massive and there's very few people doing it. So you, me, a million people in this niche, we'll all run out of money before we run out of deal flow. So, yeah, you know, It's.

It comes down to timing.

It's not like housing where, you know, they'll get. These guys are getting 10 offers a day for their house. Right. Land is. It's. I mean, there's One county with 30,000 properties, tax delinquent. 30,000, Joe, how many can you buy? Can you buy 1% of those? Can you buy 1%?

Not even that.

That's one county.

Yeah. Even in the most populated counties by us, they're probably only getting four offers a year.

Right.

Just because someone works in county doesn't mean they're actively mailing. Like, as much as we preach the 20 a day, I know a lot of people that are just not doing that. So it might have the appearance. Appearance of being very saturated, but it is not.

It's not. It's a massive market. You just got to show up. What is it that. That quote, 80% of life is showing up?

Yeah, yeah, that's it. You know, do your mailing, do your marketing. If Mike Zane was on, he'd have some kind of zen about breathing in the marketing or breathing in the mailing. Breathing out the marketing. Yeah.

I mean, Joe, I've been doing this full time, full time since 2001. I've never had an issue with deal flow. If anything, I have more deals than I can handle. So why is that? Because I'm consistently mailing. I'm consistently mailing.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Well. Well, I think it's right about that time, Mark.

All right, well, thank you, everyone, for joining us again.

We're glad to have Mark here. Let's give him a big virtual hug. Welcome back, Mark. Welcome back. We missed you.

Thank you.

All right, well, go to thelandgeek.com learn more about us or more about you. So your future. We don't care about us. All about you. Some ram.

It's all about you.

Yeah.

Right. So, yeah, I mean, you know, that's. That's what this is all about is, you know, how quickly can we move the needle in your life so that you can work when you want, where you want, with whom you want, and, you know, be totally free. Let freedom ring.

Let freedom ring. That's you and Scott. So I. I mean, we'll figure something else. Copy talk, baby.

All right.

All right, we're in the broadcast, and it usually takes about four or five seconds to end. So here it goes. Good talking to everybody. See you all next week.

See you next week.