Create Wealth And Enjoy Early Retirement With Land Investing

Hey, it's Mark Podolski, the land geek with your favorite niche real estate website, thelandgeek.com and on this week's podcast. This is one of my favorite podcasts. We have coaching grads, Jason and Clint Spiro. Our first cousin duo, Scott Todd is out today. Jason and Clint, welcome. How are you guys?

What's up? Doing well.

Nice to be here.

So let's just get into it, fellas. First of all, tell everybody how you got into land investing.

So we both grew up out in.

The country an hour or two outside of Houston, did a lot of hunting and fishing. Our family had a bunch of land, and a good chunk of it, though, was an undivided interest, and we ended up losing a bunch of it around. When I got out of college, an investor bought everybody else's share and forced my parents to sell or not sell, but subdivide it. And so I was pretty devastated from that. You know, we lost a bunch of our land. I always had this goal to get a bunch of land and had this drive for that. And some point, I think the end of 2014, a family friend contacted me and said, hey, there's some land next to your parents that's going up for tax auction. And so I jumped on that. I learned a lot about the tax auction. I was ready. I took a loan out. I was ready to buy this property. I spent a thousand dollars for a lawyer to do a title report for me, which is crazy, right? That I could do it now for.

Like in five minutes and $5, you know, I could do it, right?

But I did all that and I learned a lot. And a couple days before the auction.

You know, they struck it off the list.

And I was like, well, this is good because now instead of buying this property I'm going to keep, I could try to, you know, take what I've learned and try to buy more property. And around the same time, I was on a road trip with a co worker, a millennial co worker, who introduced me to podcasts. I had never listened to a podcast before. So first thing I looked up was about real estate. And I pulled up, found something called Flipnerd. And when I looked at the titles there, I found one that said invest in raw land. And it was a podcast that you did, Mark. And I listened to that and took your advice and went to www.thelandfeet.com. and from there, I was just constantly watching all of your corny little videos that you made and got the toolkit. And that was in early 2015. And around that time, my kid, who was about one and a half at the time, stopped sleeping. And it was just really rough. But I did buy a couple properties. And in October 2015, I went to the first boot camp. And I asked because I was so limited on time. I mean, I was working, having to.

Wake up at five, deal with the long commute in Houston traffic.

And, you know, I asked my cousin Clint to come join me, and he jumped on board and came to Vegas with me.

Yeah, we went to boot camp. And I didn't know anything about the lane geek until I went to boot camp. I learned everything right there with you, man.

That is. That. That's incred. That's crazy. I. I remember meeting both you guys at that boot camp and. And Clint was like, like, just like this character in the. In the elevator. And, And. And Jason's like, more the engineering type of. And so how. How did you guys, like, structure it to. To work together?

Well, I also, I have an associates in business, and I had worked in pawn shops for a long time, so I had. I'm his negotiator, kind of. So that's kind of how it's structured.

Yeah. And I mean, I. I had a. I had a really good job with engineering, and I mean, I did some sales, project management. I was a technical supervisor.

I mean, had a really good job.

And Clint was more. I really don't like having those awkward conversations with. On the acquisition side. And I mean, he's perfect. He spent all the time in the pawn shops.

He's a dealer. And so.

And we were practically brothers, I mean.

Growing up, lived next to each other, so knew it could work, and so.

Asked him to help kind of do a bunch of the.

I'll take care of some of the.

Management side, and he does some of.

The marketing and talking to people and.

Setting up everything to begin with.

And right after that boot camp, we did the coaching and, you know, did.

Through the coaching and then starting 2016, and that's when we started selling properties.

And 2018 was a big year. Last year was a pretty big year.

So, I mean, since then we sold.

Over 3 million properties.

3 million in properties.

3 million.

I mean, it's like, how many say.

What.

An enterprise value? Over 3 million?

Yeah, about 3.2.

3.2 million. And so I know, Clint, you've got a crazy story. You know, what's your. What's your craziest cash deal?

Cash deal.

Cash deal.

I guess the easy one is just we paid 10 grand for something and sold it for 400.

Yeah. Tell me about that deal. Everyone listening wants to pay 10 and sell for $400,000.

Yeah.

Well, on that one. Well, first when we saw it, we're like, well, we don't really know much about this area, but it is three. Three miles from a Walmart.

You know, two miles.

Two miles from a Walmart. You know, you start looking into stuff like that, you're like, you know, this is an area that kind of has some stuff.

You're like, I don't know.

But that was one thing. The other thing on that one, someone was trying to buy it for 300,000. And I remember I negotiated with them. I was actually kind of driving, and I just sent them a few short emails, and they. They wanted to buy for 300,000. And I said, oh, yeah, I'll give you a. 30 acres for 300,000, no problem.

It was a 40 acres.

40 acres. And they said, there's like, well, we'll give you 35. And I said, I'll give you 35 acres for 350. No problem. And then they finally said, okay, we'll give you 400. So I negotiate a thousand dollars or a hundred thousand dollars while I was driving in, like, 20 minutes or something. Wow.

Yeah.

The crazy thing with that was we had no idea because the market changed.

You know, the demand in that area.

And the market changed, and I had no idea. I thought maybe. I thought it was a good deal. I thought, we're maybe going to sell it for 70 grand. And Clint said, no, we're going to. Let's list this for, like, 150. And then we started getting calls, and we had an offer from day one for 100 grand. And I was like, I just wanted to take it, you know, and that's why, you know, because he, you know, was as broke as a joke as, you know, he was at that time.

Yeah.

And he was like, no, I need to turn it down.

I was hungry for the money. And I didn't like, you can't walk away from the table when you know.

There'S a lot that you care about.

Because people called us and, you know.

Then it was like, okay, take it off the market. Relist it.

So, yeah, we ended up marketing it for what we were marketing for 450 or something.

Yeah.

After we marketed for 150. So that's a. That's probably the only property we've changed. We've marketed higher than we started.

And you saw yourselves you didn't have to use a local broker to get that kind of Money. I assume you went through a title company.

Yes.

Yeah.

So, yeah. So I mean, pretty much, what do you say? I mean, anything over kind of five grand or something that has a high potential, just depends.

But we'll go to title companies a lot. The.

And then, you know, a lot of the other success kind of took that, that pumpkin plan approach of what was so special about this property. And I found all the qualities of that. And then I went to, you know, took a little, spent a little bit more time researching and found some just like it and, you know, quadrupled some of the offers. Because there's a big difference between two miles from the Walmart here versus out the other parts of this county where.

I knew people were offering, you know, $100 an acre.

And that got us several more properties that were, you know, I paid a lot more money for. But then, you know, we made. We had another property, sold it for.

A few hundred grand, and yet another.

One that sold, same thing, but on terms.

So.

I mean, yeah, we have a term for them. That's a 20 year note. $600 for 20 years with like, what.

Was it down, 50 grand? 50 grand down and 2,700amonth. And we paid 60 for it. And we only sold three quarters of the property.

Yeah, we still own some of it.

Yeah, we kept some of it just.

To keep long term.

We do that too, with a bunch of property, a bunch of stuff by.

Where we grew up. We keep a bunch of those properties just to have so fully accumulating.

I want to have 100,000 acres.

Yeah. I mean, these numbers are insane. They're just insane because I think it's the biggest deal that I've heard of where somebody paid 10,000 and sold it for 400,000.

And we had another one that was basically same as this property. And I went through the maps, I found another one. Somebody lives out of state. And I contacted them and bought it. But we had a deal.

Somebody was going to buy, buy it for half a million cash, and they drug it along for a year. And it was just a bunch of headaches. And then Covid happened. A bunch of companies went bankrupt and.

It was a mess. But we ended up selling it on terms.

Okay.

But I think we can't beat the one deal amount.

Those other deals are, they happen all the time. The smaller deals, you buy something 5.

Or 10, sell it for 50. And that happens a lot.

No, I mean, those are still, you know, we spend for 5, 10, sell for 50. That's a solid, you know, triple right yeah, for sure. Those are great deals. So how much time are you guys working actually in the business?

I barely do anything. I mean, I, I travel a lot. I mean, I work some, but I, I don't, I don't remember the last time I've worked like 15 hours a week. Yeah, I can't tell you the last time I worked 15 hours a week. When we started up, I was sure maybe working 60 hours a week doing, you know, starting it up, making the website, all that stuff. But in the past three years, nah.

I'm just hanging out and I, I was fortunate. I mean, I said I had a good job, a great position, but the commute was, it was like that opening.

Scene of Office Space where you're just. It was brutal. And, you know, I had two young kids and I wanted to be home. So in 2019.

I, you know, I left that job and I took a little vacation and I still work with them part time as a consultant. So I, you know, I may work Forward, you know, 15 hours a week with that. And then I, you know, just work an hour or two a day on land.

So you're both kind of retired.

Yeah.

So you work where you want, when you want, with whom you want?

Yeah, no, I called it my semi retirement. And it's, you know, I know we could send out a bunch more offers or we could really hit it harder, but we're both kind of, you know, relaxed. I mean, I wake up and have.

Breakfast with the kids and take them.

To school and I coach my kids baseball team. It's, I wouldn't trade it for anything.

So, yeah, I don't have any stress.

So he doesn't, he's, he doesn't have.

A, you know, wife and kids, but he can go wherever.

He travels a lot and.

Enjoying life.

Wow. Okay. So I'm listening to this and I'm a newbie and I want to be like Jason and Clint and be retired in a few years. What, what advice would you give people?

I love the, the top thing, the one thing, you know, like just do one thing every day to keep it moving. If you don't have time to do anything, just try to do, you know, market one property, make one phone call. That's a big thing for me because sometimes even if I do have the time, but I don't feel like it, if there's just one thing you can do to keep it moving.

Yeah.

So I called him tots for the.

One thing and I'll send him a tot so he knows.

Okay, that's the one thing I need to do.

And so, yeah, I'll call it the tots.

I mean, really, just if you're motivated.

Or if you really want to do this, go.

Just go get all the resources that.

You offer and, you know, do the.

Coaching, do whatever you need to do, and you won't be just disappointed. I know when I. I was a penny pincher, as you could get, I was very conservative with my money. And so spending money was very hard for me.

And, you know, after watching, you know.

Listening a bunch of your podcasts and.

Everything else and dealing with the commute, I mean, I just. I wanted to do something.

I remember talking to you and you said this was best investment you'll ever make.

And there was no question was. It was.

Oh, yeah, I. I remember I had to push you, Jason.

But it was funny, you know, sitting there watching his videos and, you know, my wife was there next to me looking, and she's like, is that that Russian car salesman guy?

Like, what is like, like you watching that videos again?

And, you know, I thought. I thought she was gonna give me a hard time. She was very, you know, she was.

Supported and trusted me that I knew I was doing. And now we get to stay at home together. It's nice.

Yeah, I mean, it's amazing to listen to, and I'm so proud and happy for both of you and that journey. And it didn't take that long. I mean, 2015, really, it was about three years then.

Yeah, there's about two years of struggling, and then it just kind of snowballed.

And I think.

I think year two, I mean, there was still about 175,000 in sales, but.

Yeah, year three is when it really kicked off. Now the passive is nice because we can handle those fluctuations. And I have a pretty good profit first system going on. Keep up with the savings and everything else. So it's just slowly growing.

Wow. Is there any other time saving techniques you guys would recommend to people? Any software or services that you really like?

I mean, my tip of the week is something like that.

Okay, well, don't tell us yet then.

Yeah, no, I mean, yeah, really just doing one little thing a day. I mean, I'm an Excel guru, so.

I do a lot of that. The scrubbing and everything else is just nothing for me. So what's your.

What's your fixed overhead like with your virtual assistants?

It's just right now it's just us. I very seldom use the virtual assistant.

Oh, my gosh.

We pretty much do everything. We tried to hire an assistant one time. Well, the other thing is I was kind of over my head, doing a little too much, spending too many plates and I also then tried to hire someone and I was also in that two year mark, like in that two year mark and I wasn't really getting paid much and I just crashed and burned.

No, I think.

I guess I've used. I've used some VAs in the past and I think it just depends what.

County you're doing, what type of properties you're dealing with. And if you're doing the high volume with a bunch of the smaller properties, I think you need VAs and, and you need to keep it going and.

Whatever your bottleneck is. I think a lot of people, the.

Bottleneck is kind of scrubbing the list to get the offers out. And that's not really a problem for me because I scrub them pretty quick.

If I get to a county where.

It'S just being a little complicated to do that, then I could send it out to a va. But the title search and everything else, usually I take care of it or it's going to the title company. I don't know what else. But there's. We're getting to the point we want to get bigger. You're going to need to get those. I think that's the one thing you need to really get to is bringing in those assistants.

Oh yeah, you did just start sending.

The offer letters out different, right? I mean, so, I mean, because I do a lot of this stuff, you.

Know, myself, I don't send out a.

Ton of offers.

And my daughter likes.

Kind of taking the little sticky thing off the envelope, so.

But.

Yeah, I mean, we did all this with just really pretty much us.

Amazing. And what about funding? Do you guys have outside funding? Do you self fund?

No, it's self fund. I started out, you know, I was trying to buy that property by my parents. It was a $25,000 loan.

And then I sold about 10 or.

15,000 in stocks I had because they're stocks.

Right.

And.

And then, you know, I added some more money that I had to it.

But that's pretty much it. And then.

Mainly there's some of those.

Big deals that kind of replenished it. Wow.

So what does the family think of all this?

Well, it's funny, my mom, you know, over the years, every time she finds out, she's so, you know, she's so worried and more assertive than I am.

When it comes to ending things.

And it's just funny listening to all the people trying to talk you out of it or saying, oh, you sure about that?

You sure you bought another property?

Oh, you better watch out.

You better watch out for that. Yeah, you want something over there? That's the bad area. I'm like, watch out for water. It might not have water. I'm like, all these people know it doesn't have water.

That means I could buy it for cheap. So, yeah, there's a lot of not.

Listening, you know, not listening to people.

But otherwise I think they're stoked to see success.

Yeah, no, no, everybody's supportive and happy.

It's just, they don't. Nobody understands really how, how we're doing it.

That's so funny. And no one wants to join?

Like, no, I've, I've asked, you know.

Or I've offered advice or told people and most, most just won't do it.

He actually had a friend that he got from his other company in on it that he's selling like Amazon stuff or whatever, and he bought a bunch of properties but then just let them sit there. And so we just bought how many.

Was it like nine of them.

Nine properties from his friends.

I was like, do you still have all those properties? Yeah, I don't do anything with them. And I was like, well, I'll buy them from you. So I basically bought them from them less than wholesale. And I know, I'm like, okay, I.

Spent 17 grand, like a bunch of 28 year properties.

Yeah. I'm like, this is going to be about 1500 in passive in like six months.

So.

Yeah, crazy, crazy. Well, this is such an inspirational story and I'm so glad you guys took the time to come on the podcast.

And just thanks to you, Mark, we have the time.

Yeah. And you have the time. It's amazing. So thank you. But now we're at that point where we want to ask one more tip of the week. A website, a resource, a book, something else actionable for the auto passive income listeners to go improve their businesses, improve their lives. What do you got?

So mine, I used to spend a lot of time on like the county CAD website, trying to locate properties and stuff. And I've been using the Land Glide app, which is like 10 bucks a month or whatever. But I mean, I can be on the phone with someone and type in their name and bring up their property like that now.

Yeah, that app's amazing.

Streamlines everything. I love it. I don't know how I did things without it, honestly.

Yeah.

And I would say I would give a book. I know there's A bunch of books.

That have been on there.

So I was thinking of one that I hadn't heard. And if you're, if you're a listener and you're really moan about this and.

You haven't read Four Hour Work Week.

And Rich dad, Poor dad and Think.

And Grow Rich top three.

If you read those three and you really want to do this and you're.

Stuck in a rat race, whatever corporate.

Job you have, I mean, it's kind of hard for me to picture somebody reading those three books and not taking.

Action and doing something.

I mean, you read all those and it just made you hate everything that.

Wasn'T a four hour work week.

And. But if I want to say a book, it's called the Goal by Ellie Ler.

Goldrat.

Yeah. Yeah.

And that I use it, I've applied it in my engineering job as a project manager.

And you can apply it with the.

Land too, but it covers finding the bottleneck and I manufacturing process, and they cover a story of somebody that owns a manufacturing plant. But you got to do the same thing, even with land, for each stage in the process. You can't just send out 100,000 offers and expect the next phase of the process to handle all of them. So you got to find that balance of, is it 100 offers a week.

Versus how many ads you need to post, how much money you have, and you balance all of that and you can optimize it. And I really, I apply that in all phases.

That's awesome. That's awesome. Well, my tip of the week is learn how you can duplicate Jason and Clint's success. And it all starts with just a phone call. Just go to landgeek.com training and see if this business is right for you. You can, you start in flight school and then you can go into coaching. And we're going to take you up that mountain of land, investing quickly, safely, efficiently with Scott Todd, who's done it thousands of times. And next thing you know, your biggest problem is going to be with Jason Clint's biggest problem is what do we do today?

Too much free time.

Too much free time. So just go to landgeek.com training Jason Clint. This has been amazing. Any final words of advice?

I'll say thank you, Mark.

No idea.

Move the needle real hard.

Yeah. Amazing. And I can still, you know, I still picture it, that first boot camp with you guys, and it's to see that journey. You know, I say this all the time, like, I can now die in peace professionally. Like, you know, and it's it's so gratifying for me. So thank you, guys. And, and you did the work and, you know, so it all goes to you. But I'm immensely, immensely proud. I really am.

And that, that, that story of that American businessman at the Mexican fishing village, that was the first time I heard.

It was at your boot camp. And I've listened to that thing, chapter 14 of four hour work week. I've listened to that probably 100 times. And that was the biggest thing I got from that boot camp. I remember you telling me that, and that just instantaneously just changed my thought on everything.

Yeah. And that's how we start every boot camp. That's like the ritual is that story. Well, thanks, guys. I want to thank the listeners. Remind them the only way going to get Jason Clinton to come back and tell us more crazy stories about buying land for 10 grand and selling it for 400,000 cash is if you do us three favors. You got to follow us. Rate. Review the podcast. Send us a screenshot of that review to supportlandelandgeek.com we're going to send you for free the $97 wholetailing course, how to Double youe Money. 30 days or less. All right, guys, are we good?

Awesome.

All right. We doing this?

I don't know.

He could.

It's.

What is it? Oh, it's okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

One, two, three. Let freedom ring. Thanks, guys.

Thank you.

Later.

Later.

Thanks for listening to the Art of Passive Income podcast. Start your journey at www.thelandgate.com and www.www.scotttodd.net. read and review the podcast and email support@thelandgeek.com your screenshot for a free Passive Income launch kit.