Coffee Talk

One. Hey, it's Mark Podolski, the land geek with your favorite niche real estate website, www.thelandgeek.com. in case you don't know who is on with me, it is David Ben.

Alice.

The Facebook whisperer. He will help you step by step to grow your business using the power of a little platform that we like to call Facebook. In case you don't know what our business model is, it is a land investing model that teaches people step by step how to increase their passive income just by shuffling paper. So it's a one time sale of raw land and then you get your money out usually within the down payment or six months of the down payment with recurring income, without tenants, without toilets, without termites, without trash. It is what we like to call the ultimate subscription model. If you want to learn more about it, just go to thelandgeek.com David Ben Alice Is that a fair assessment of what we do?

That's perfect. No renters, rodents or rehabs. I've been working on a piece, so no painting, no problems. I got to figure that one out. We'll have an alliteration for every single letter at some point, I'm sure.

Yeah, no problem. No painting, no pain in the butt, no parasites.

Yeah, okay. Although you could get Lyme disease camping on a property, I guess.

You know what's even interesting about this is no paper because we've got a 90% automated with software. Oh yeah. So even though we're saying we're shuffling paper using Simplifile, we don't even do paper anymore.

Simplifile is amazing. So before Simplify, it can take about three weeks to process on the buy side. So when we're buying properties, if you're watching this, you're not really familiar what we do. We buy properties from people who live out of state from the property, and they probably owe back taxes. So they're highly motivated. So when they accept my offer, at that point I do some background research. I have a va, takes her about a day to do it. If I'm going to push forward with the purchase, I can record a deed in about a half an hour. Top sometimes it's faster. But I don't have to mail something into the county. It'll take what, three days to get there. It'll probably sit on the clerk's desk for another few days. If they decide to kick it back, they mail it back another three or four days and then I got to correct it and mail it back in. Life before simplify is like Fred Flintstone pushing a stone vehicle.

No. It's crazy how long it used to take me to do the paperwork in this business before we automated it. Like, and I had it pretty much automated. I had, like, my nice mail merge. I was using a system called daylight. Took me 20 minutes. Like, oh, it's only 20 minutes now. It takes two seconds.

I know, right? Degeneration.

Yeah. Daniel Clark Diebaul. Good morning.

Good morning. Danielle.

Danielle, how many. How many more spaces do we have for Scottsdale boot camp? Are we full?

There's not that many, Mark. I was talking to her a couple. I mean, she'll probably give us an answer right now. I was talking to her a couple days ago, Right. We're literally down to five openings at that point. It could be less now.

And it's me. So get on the wait list because, you know, we could have cancellations. So even if, you know, even though we're full, get on the waitlist. There's is enough time because that's August.

Yeah. Wow. Not so.

Or Daniel. Do we get a bigger room? I don't know.

We're going to need a bigger boat.

We need a bigger boat. All right. Waiting now. That's crazy. So if you know that you're gonna miss this one, go to the landgeek.com here. I'll put it on here. Www.thelandgeek.com forward/bootcamp, and sign up for Orlando in October.

Yeah, it's October 6 through 8, I believe.

Yeah, I'm looking forward.

I haven't been to Orlando. I've been to, you know, east side of Florida. Never been there before.

Yeah, you'll love Orlando. And then Scott Todd takes us to a really good Columbia. It's called the Columbia Really Good Cuban Restaurant.

Ooh, I can't wait.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, David Benalis. We always talk about a book. Oh, wait, wait. Happy anniversary.

Thank you, Mark. Thank you. You remembered. It's a very special day for me. One year ago this time, I pulled out my credit card, I typed in the numbers. I moved forward with my investing career. I bought a toolkit. I literally did about two days of research, about half an hour each day on you. Right? So, like, I heard. I heard you on. I heard one of your students on the side Hustle podcast about two days, like, May 22nd last year. And now I'm at that point, I was like, okay, this is going to work. I'm going to do it. I had already been mentally preparing myself for something within investing because I was reading Rich Dad, Poor Dad. I was going to gear up to learn how to figure out how to flip a house. I'm already in construction. That couldn't have been that hard. Then I hear this podcast talking about how little downside there is in this business. I looked it up. I was like, toolkit about a thousand bucks. I could do this worst case. I mean, there is no worst case. I learned something. I'll probably learn something for something else. So I got in, and I haven't looked back. It's been the best year of my life. And that's not an understatement. My family has enjoyed the benefits of this business, so much so that my wife stopped working three months into it. My son has enjoyed so much more quality time with both of us. We are really designing our lifestyle. Mark sent out an email a couple days ago talking about lifestyle design, and this business has allowed me to do that. Like, I'm designing the life of my dreams. This is amazing, Mark.

Yeah. I mean, really, I have to tell you, like, just hearing that, I feel like I can die in peace because, you know, before I started teaching, nobody really thanked me for helping them buy a piece of property. Right? Like, they were happy, and I was benefiting myself and my family, and my family was happy. And like you said, like the free. I mean, really, we're in the freedom business is what we're in. And having that freedom and flexibility to raise my children. You know, my son was six months old when I quit my investment banking job. And to be home every day and, you know, go to the park and my wife could run out and do those things and raise my kids, now the jury's still out. That was a good thing for them.

I've never met them, but I'm pretty sure it was a good thing.

I hope so. You know, it's really an amazing, amazing, amazing accomplishment that you were able to do it so quickly. Retire your wife, spend more time with your family, and live the way you want to live, lifestyle design. Because, you know, there's nothing worse than feeling like you don't have control of your own life. And I had a nightmare the other night that because I was at the Apple Store. I talked about this on the, on the, the Land the Roundtable podcast yesterday. So I had. I had this terrible nightmare that I was working at Apple, and I'm going in and I'm nervous because I don't know how to. How to navigate politics of dealing with a boss and doing my job right and maybe getting fired and the consequences of all this. And then I woke up like, oh, I don't have to work for anybody.

That's funny. War your nightmares. Working at the Apple Store. That's hilarious.

Yeah, it was crazy. Oh, look at this. Elaine Lopez, your cousin.

This is my cousin on my father's side.

When the student is ready, the teacher will appear. Congrats. It's. Yeah, it is true. It is true.

My family is full of entrepreneurs, Mark. So my cousin Elaine is killing it in the life insurance industry. Just killing it. And she's tried a few other things, but, like, this is like what my family's made up of. Like, we're just nothing but entrepreneurs. Like, my dad started his own business in the 80s. We've, my brother had his own board up business. Like, we've really, this generation in my family has really changed what it is to make a living and make a life for themselves.

And it's amazing. It's amazing. So what was the book that really kind of helped you with mindset and motivation and even investing in real estate?

Rich dad, Poor Dad. If you ask any investor what book really did it for them, I can guarantee like maybe to about 80% it's going to be Rich Dad, Poor dad was the launching point for them in the business. And it was for you? It was for me. It's been so long since I read the book, I forgot how magical and powerful it is. So this morning, anticipating this, I got it on Kindle again. I saw the things I highlighted and what I thought was important. And so, I mean, I was reading through a few of them. They're pretty powerful. So let's go through a few quotes and talk about them. Right? Yeah, yeah, Sounds fun.

Let's do it.

So here's a good one. Money is one form of power, but what is more powerful is financial education. Money comes and goes, but if you have the education about how money works, you can gain power over it and can begin building wealth. When I read that, I was like, okay, so the education is way more valuable than any, you know, specific deal within this business. And you know, I talked to a lot of people on calls, you know, talking about this business, explaining the model. And honestly, Mark, a lot are hesitant because they want to hold on to whatever money they've saved for their first deal and then they'll get the education.

Yeah, yeah. It's sort of like saying, you know, I won't go the doctor, you know, until I'm in excruciating pain.

Okay, yeah, like, I mean, I get it. Like, so if you do one deal on your Own. It could take maybe four or five months, you know, bumps and bruises and scrapes along the way, and maybe you make another thousand. But if you invest in the financial education, whether, I mean, if it's our program or just even another book on money, how, man, the return on that is crazy.

Yeah.

So I bought the toolkit for a thousand. My return on investment has been huge. I mean, 100x how much is like 110 grand over like 100. Like, it's a lot. It's crazy. It's nuts. It's over like 12,000%, I think.

Yeah, it's, it's, it's incalculable. And if you, if you look at your life, right, the things that you, you've really, you know, for most people, I would say, like the things that they've really are most proud of, the most meaningful things in their life have not been easy things, right. And it took some learning curve, it took some work involved, and then they got to this other side and then they enjoyed the fruits of labor. Like, it wasn't like, you know, you could just press a button and just start doing deals. Like you had to go through these, this process and embrace the suck and then do it and now you appreciate it, right? It's like, you know the joy marathon runners have, right? Like every step of that 26 miles is just horrible. But then they get to the end, they're like, oh, accomplish something.

This business has so many mini marathons within it, right? So this is the overarching marathon of building a long term business that's automated and it'll get you about minimum 10,000amonth passive income. But there's these smaller races where training a VA can be a pain. But once you got that and it's running smoothly, it's that, that feeling of elation like you talked about, like, I just finished a marathon, like, oh, this feels good. I can move on to the next thing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. And you know, I would make the argument that the money's great, but it's really what you want is that freedom. That, that feeling of waking up knowing that, you know, my passive income exceeds my fixed expenses. When I'm on vacation, money's coming in and I'm not doing anything.

This is the ultimate insurance policy. You know, Aflac will pay you if you're hurt, but if for some reason you lose your job, unemployment insurance is only going to cover like 40% of what you're making. If I decided not to work another day for the Next, I think three or four years, I'll have 4,000amonth coming in. And look that. That's not to say like I'm going to be on a jet going to a bunch of islands or somewhere, but it means that my family is secure for a while and until I find something else. But I love land flipping so much.

Seth asked the questions like why do you use Fancy hands or upwork more and why. So we actually. Danielle should answer this for him. We're starting a new program of our own, trained land investing VAs. But I personally like both. I'd say that for little tasks I love Fancy Hands because they're us based. But for our due diligence, we have a VA in the Philippines that does our title work. It's like 11 bucks per deal. I think our tech probably came from upwork as well, but. But I love Fancy hands. What about you, David?

I'm about three platforms right now, so my long term due diligence VA was from upwork. My list gathering VA is from upwork to make phone calls. For the intake side, I use Fancy Hands and I use Fiverr for a few other website related things.

Yeah, yeah. I mean and when I think when I first started Fiverr was like where I would go to first. I found Janie years and years ago, I think on Fiverr and she was doing my. When I first automated my mailings, she was a VA in South Carolina, US based. And. And it was great. Right. And then for the due diligence part, I outsourced that. I think it was up. It was probably upwork when I first started doing it, but now with software, I mean we're 90% automated. It's sicky. It's great. So any other questions? Any other questions we can answer on our coffee talk? In case you don't know who we are, it's Mark Pelosi, the land geek. The landgeek.com professional land investor. I've done over 5,000 land flips since 2001. And I'm with David Benalis, the Facebook whisperer. Also a side hustle professional and investor.

Yeah, yeah.

And mentor.

Soon enough it will be more than just a side hustle. I won't have this office behind me. Like this will not be my drafting room. It'll be. Well, it'll be someone else's. At that point, it doesn't bother me.

Great.

I got to figure out where to work from. So I've been considering certain spots within my house. Nothing's super ideal. I could do the coffee shop thing, but I've Done that in college and I come home smelling like coffee beans.

Yeah, the coffee shops, hard to talk because you're talking to buyers and sellers. It's not ideal. You could do. I didn't convert one of your garages.

That's not a bad idea. I may go that route. I don't know, I gotta. That's something I gotta figure out. But I have time. I got at least six months to figure out where I'm going to work. Maybe I'll just vacation the rest of my life. And does it work from there? I could be like Sean Rickman and Sean and Rachel.

Yeah, I mean, you know, just kind of nomadically, just travel, go to a WI FI spot, work, travel, you know, it's all good. Here's Scott Thomas. Set up the home office so you can write it off. Make sure it's a large space. It's based on square feet.

Yeah, I've got 300 by 300 home office. That's a great idea.

I'm writing off my 500 square foot garage.

I love it.

It's legit. It's legit. Yeah. Be like Tim Ferriss.

So how would that be like Tim Ferriss? Like, you gotta tell me, like, because.

I think Ken is just, he just travels and works.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, you know, he's an interesting lifestyle, is James Altucher. I don't know if you know who his, his podcast.

I've heard a few of his interviews with Tim Ferriss.

Well, he's an interesting guy. He. He made like 10 million, lost 10 million, made another, you know, 10 million. I think a lot of these law. I think he's, he's had fortunes and lost fortunes and had for. I mean, I think he cycled like two or three times. Like, he's a really good case study on when you're wealthy, what not to do. Right?

Yeah.

And. And he kind of, you know, he writes in this very vulnerable way where you feel his pain. So he's super relatable in that sense. But what he does is really interesting. He lives in New York, but we all know how expensive New York real estate is.

Oh, yeah.

He literally lives in Airbnbs. Him and his wife just go to Airbnbs and they travel in different Airbnbs. So he doesn't own anything. He's not paying, you know, this rent. He can, he just has total flexibility and freedom. He's got, you know, work like us. Right. He's got a podcast and, and he writes and he doesn't. He can work from anywhere, so why not like, it's really, like, why couldn't we just literally travel the world on Airbnb and work and travel and do that? Like, with my three kids.

I can do that.

After they're, like, they're out of school, I would do that, but, like, so I probably have seven years before I do that. But, like, I think I could convince my wife, like, let's just do that. It'd be adventures and fun.

Yeah, I'm planning to do, like, a modified version of that. Like a family nomadic style of living where we do have certain home bases within the U.S. but after you guys gave me that tip on the the Roundtable podcast two weeks ago for finding cheap flights. Oh, my goodness, Mark.

Like, oh, was it skyscanner?

You know, it was skyscanner and it was Scott's cheap flights. So between.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

And what Sean mentioned, I cannot see myself staying in one place for very long anymore. It was nuts. Like, lax to Paris, 400 bucks round trip. Like, okay, let's go for a month. Yeah, I can do that now. Next year with. With this business. That's how old your son he is? 17 months.

Sean Rickman's on. Sean, Sean, where are you right now? Are you in the south of France? Are you still in Valencia, Spain?

They're gonna be heading to Palermo, Sicily, soon enough. I don't know when, though.

Holly Hansen, if you have large debt and low income, when is it time to buy the toolkit? That's a good question.

That is a good question.

Low income, when is it time to buy the toolkit? Honestly, don't buy the toolkit. Your. Your main goal right now is to get out of debt. And I would say the Dave Ramsey method of just taking that on slowly is, like, today, because there's enough free information out there. You know, you could go on YouTube, you can go on the podcasts. I don't know. What do you think, David?

So I'm split. Okay. I didn't tell you this when I started, especially my interview for One on One Coaching. I had like, $85,000 in school debt going into this. If I told you that, you'd be like, this is not for you.

I might have been like, oh, that makes me nervous.

Right. But a little company financed my education called American Express.

Oh.

And it worked out for me. So I was in a position. Not the smartest financial move ever. Right. Generally, we're pretty conservative. We're very risk averse in this business. I took a huge risk. It was either. I mean, not quite to this extent. It was either bankruptcy or success. So look, if there is ever a country to take huge risks, it's America, because we have such good bankruptcy laws that allow you to start fresh. But go the smart strategy. Dave Ramsey. Play conservative and then take it from there. You'll probably need the cost of the toolkit plus at least another thousand for some envelopes, buying a list and buying your first property.

Also, the mindset I think is important. If you're going into this and you have to do well right away because you have so much debt, it's almost not fun anymore. Right. It takes, it's, it's, it feels like, it feels bad to me. Like it should be fun. There should be a lightness, a joy to doing this. And if it's, if you have to be successful in 30 days, otherwise you get this crushing debt weighing you down. I feel, I feel like it takes a joy out of it where. Let's get rid of that pressure first and then, you know, do it. I don't know.

So those are two perspectives there.

I was so miserable in my job. Like, I literally would have gone a million dollars in a debt to get out of it and, and do something. So I don't know. I, I, David, I, I have a weird thing about debt.

Yeah.

But it's, you know, there's good debt, like education debt is good debt. So if you're going to go into debt, it should be good debt. Nothing wrong with your debt. But if it's on TVs and if it's on refrigerators and it's on stuff that doesn't generate any income in the long term, like, you gotta, you gotta figure that out.

So I guess I should put some context to it. I also sold two vehicles to, you know, get the capital for, you know, buying property. I also cut a lot of expenses, so I was taking other actions other than just taking on debt for the education. So. Yeah, I mean, everyone's an adult. They can make a decision for themselves. Right?

Right. So Ben Clark is feeling the pain. I hit 500 on mailing this week. Still no accepted offers. I'm committed to the process. Any feedback is appreciated. Is Ben in flight school?

No. No. Toolkit owner getting into his business.

Okay. So the problem, Ben, is that your offers are probably too low. Your pricing out of the gate was probably too low, or it just hasn't been enough time to get your accepted offers. If it's only been 500 million this week, it's probably not enough time.

I'm gonna say it's time more than anything. Else, I'm literally. Last week, I got an accepted offer for something I mailed in November.

Yeah, I mean, I get accepted offers from two years ago. Yeah, people hold. They save the offers.

You spread the seed in the garden. Sometimes some things will sprout up fast. Other times it'll be dormant for, you know, months. So, yeah, just be patient. It'll come.

Patience. Patience is a virtue. It really is. I almost feel like grit plus patience equals success. If I. What do you think? Like.

Yeah, I think you just summarize, like, 300 business books in that one line. Like, you can save people so much money on business books by patience plus grit equals success.

Yeah, I mean, absolutely. What was that book? It's like a seminal book, like Carol Dweck about the growth mindset versus the fixed mindset. Right.

I don't know. Yeah, I gotta pick that one.

This is a interesting question. Do y' all put expiration dates under offers? I love Derek Marshall. He's so Texas, y'.

All.

Of course.

We all do it. Yeah.

Derek, you have to. Because otherwise there's no urgency. Right?

Yeah, I put. I put an Excel expiration. It's usually about a month after they receive it, but even then, people contact me after. But, hey, want some money? They're gonna contact you fast.

Derek Marshall, I'm so sorry. I thought I responded to you on intercom. It wasn't great. So I didn't do something. Right. And Nick was kind of walking me through like, I'm intercom deficient for Geek Pay. But what you were mentioning to me, I am going to do this weekend. We are going to create a checklist, an onboarding checklist into Geek Pay, as well as training videos in every aspect of it to help, you know, people that are just getting to the program on how to do it and really, you know, ease the support calls on that. Look at this. Grit plus patience equals success. Daniel Dye ball.

Danielle Diebo.

All right, Any other questions? Okay, I do. But never have stood by it if someone. Yeah, I don't stand by it either. Absolutely. But I do think that's important to have in there. You don't need to stand by.

But I got.

I'm not going to do the deal now. It's expired. You could also change your offer lower if need be because it's been expired.

Yeah, exactly. I would say, hey, you know what, if someone responded too late? Even if I haven't got a lot of responses, I'd be like, wow, I just picked up five other properties in the same area. I don't really need this one that much anymore, but I can offer you 200 bucks less and then, hey, get a better deal.

Yeah, yeah.

They say no. Contact them again a little bit later.

There we go. All right, two minutes left. Any other questions? Yeah, questions. I'm surprised I was asking any Facebook questions, David.

Yeah, I know.

You are the Facebook whisperer.

I mean, like even the entire Facebook ecosystem, you can ask questions. You have questions about Messenger. I can answer those questions about paid traffic, I can answer that.

You know, I have a question. I have an email question because Danielle and I were like fighting last week.

You're a southpaw, Mark. I saw that.

I'm leading with the left. Okay. So Danielle said, mark, I think five emails a week is too much. I said, danielle, I love emailing. I want to show up top of mind awareness. She's like, it's too much. I think you get too many unsubscribes. I want to know from the community. Danielle's laughing. How often do you want to hear from me email wise? Right. So we definitely have the newsletter on Thursdays. You're getting that whether you want or not. So that's. You're definitely getting one. Right? We got the Sunday tip. Right. So that, that could be two. What is the right number? I really think that, you know, if we go into Kevin Kelly's a thousand true fans, because we typically only. We have at least a thousand people open the emails. Those are my thousand true fans that want to hear from me that much. But Danielle and I are going to fight about it in about one minute.

I've heard four times a week solid. Four times a week. Give them a little bit of break in between so you're not completely exhausting them. But man, I want an email twice a day from you, Mark. Like, your true fans are gonna want more. Do I use Instagram? Instagram has been tricky. It doesn't convert well for actual sales. It'll get you likes. It's a little tough to get people off the Instagram platform. It's a little easier on Facebook. Maybe one day I'll figure it out. But for now, Instagram is what it is. It's a spot for really cool pictures. It's not the marketing powerhouse that is Facebook.

Right, right. So, Holly Hanson. I hope that helps. Alright, well, I thought this was really a fun and hopefully educational coffee talk with David Ben, Alice and myself. If you want to learn more, go to thelandgeek.com don't delay. You know, if you're. We got three spots left for flight school, go to landgeek.com I'm going to put in here training, get on call with Mike or David and learn more. And even if you have a question about geek pay or you have a question about the toolkit or.

Yeah, if you just want to learn more about this business model and this coffee talk was not enough good resources are the podcast or just schedule a call with us and we can break it all down in 15 minutes and then just chat about life for the other 15. Right, that's fine.

Yeah. So. All right. Bruce Anderson. Too much email becomes overload. We would prefer fewer Kurt Richter. If you want to hear five it is. Okay. But if you don't, it will push you to unsubscribe. Huh. I don't understand.

I think maybe people can opt in for additional emails.

Ah, that would be interesting. That'd be good. So we could, we could definitely segment it. Like that'd be kind of cool. Daniel, like we say, hey, on your first email series, how often do you want to hear from me?

Yeah. And just like bullet point. This is my Thursday newsletter. This is my Sunday productivity tip. Just let them check off what they want to hear.

Right. So, alright, so four is what you're saying, David?

I've heard four again and again and again. And it's like Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, like skip a day but don't do anything on the weekend. That's, that's what I've heard. Hey, but marketing is one giant experiment, right? Right. What works for one thing is not going to work for the other. It's just continue trying something until it works. Right?

Right. All right, well, I gotta go have a call with Danielle Dybal and I.

Get to talk to John Becker in eight minutes.

And you got John Becker from Brazil.

Yeah. You can do this business from Brazil?

From Brazil, absolutely. All right, well, I want to thank everybody. Get your mailing, get your marketing out. As Mike Zana would say, breathe in the mailing, breathe out the marketing. All right. David Benalis, always a pleasure.

Mark Podolsky. I enjoy talking to you, man.

All right, man. Happy anniversary. The second year is going to be absolutely epic.

It's going to be epic. Epic. I guarantee that. Yeah. All right.

It's the year of David. All right, see everybody next time. Next. Next Wednesday, 9:30. We'll see you then. Thanks everybody.

I like the salute.