Facing Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt by Doing It Dirty, Ugly and Scared

Hey, it's Mark Podolski, the land geek with your favorite niche real estate website, thelandgeek.com and this week's roundtable podcast was canceled. That being said, Kirk Parrot showed up not knowing it was canceled and I forgot that it was canceled. So Kirk and I are just gonna have a free flowing conversation about life, land, love. Who knows, who knows where this is going to lead? But if you're not familiar with Kirk Parrot. Kirk is our latest lanky coach. He has been a land investor. Kirk, how long been land investing now?

Since February of 2021. That's when I started flight school.

Since February 2021.

Yeah, I did a little bit before that, but flight school is when I went, I went all in.

Yeah, we don't like talk numbers, but let's just say Kirk has solved his money problems and his time problems and, and is here to, to give back. And, and you as. So you can as well. But so Kirk, we were just talking about two acronyms and when you're, when you first start out in the land business, really any land, any business, or anything new in life, you've got to deal with these two acronyms. And what's the first acronym?

It's fud. It's Fear F U D. Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. That's what we all deal with whenever we start anything new. Whether it's a new business, whether you have a new baby, whether you start a new job. Like that's just, that's just life. You haven't done it before. You have lots of doubts. You have what's it called, Imposter syndrome. And, and you know, it's just, it's the hump that we all have to get over every time we do anything new.

Yeah, it's, it's so true. And, and I, I go through it in different phases in different seasons of life depending on what it is. Personally, professionally, you always have to face the fud, the fear, the uncertainty and the doubt. But you have another acronym for the antidote. And what is that?

Dus. And DUS is D U S so dirty, ugly and scared. The only antidote to that FUD is to just do it and you do it dirty, meaning that it's not going to be perfect. You don't have a perfect plan. Ugly, meaning it's going to be worse than you predict or expect, especially the first go around. I always expect to suck at anything that I do the first time, typically the 10th time, typically the 10, the 20th time. But the more you do it, the more you get Better and scared. You're always scared when you do something new for the first time. It's so dust. You just got to do it, do it dust to, to go and counteract the fud.

Yeah, yeah. I feel like as human beings we need a challenge because we habituate to everything we and everyone. I mean even, you know, your, your primary relationships, right. You end up taking them for granted if you're not intentionally putting in that effort to bring in some novelty. Same thing in your, your business life. I mean, how many clients do we have? They're tired of the, of the money making county. They habituate to it and they want to add complexity to life. But there's other ways to add novelty to the land business without having to, you know, do, you know, really just give things up, you know, that are profitable. But yeah, but there's something under that fud. It's like, oh, there's novelty here, there's challenge here. As long as I can do the dust, you know, I can get there into the dirty and you know, I can be un. Uncertain that I could be scared.

Yeah, without a doubt. I've been, I've been, I think you. And you've actually keyed me onto this. I've been listening to Ryan Holiday a lot, right. And reading the books and really getting into an understanding stoicism. And one of the big things that he talks about is the resistance that are that big r. That kind of like, you know what you need to do, you know, it's not going to be necessarily easy, but you know that if you do it and the more you do it, things are going to get better. And even as things get better, you still have that resistance, right? And I think that resistance still falls into that fear, uncertainty and doubt. Like I've been in this business and doing this business now for, since 2021 like we talked about. I still wake up every day and every time I've got a big purchase coming, you know, I'm sweating the bullets, I'm counting the figures, making sure and then making sure that I make myself believe that we can do it just by looking back. And you know, it's. I don't think it ever really goes away. The higher you climb the mountain, the thinner the air is. The, the, the bigger and broader the view is, the more your vertigo kicks in.

It's such a good. It's so, it's so true. It's never, it never gets easier. You just get stronger.

That's right.

Is, is absolutely what I think happens. And even when you you level up. Like, I'll. I'll have those doubts. Like, you know, if I had a slow week last week, and you think to yourself, oh, am I never going to get enough sale again? Right. Like, and then, of course, like, you know, of course you do. Right. They all sell. You never get stuck with land. But, like, you have that slow week and you just extrapolate it out and you think, oh, it's. It's never going to change. And the same thing when things are going great, you think, oh, this is going to continue forever. Like, it's like we're, like, surprised by it. There's, like, some glitch in our software. Yeah.

And it's really. It is really important to understand that it is, as much as you may be deeply emotional and what's happening or not happening, if it's, you know, not going the way that you want, it's still temporary. And like we talked about, it is the path. You have to go through this to get to the other side. And that's what makes you special as well in what you're doing. Because if everybody could do it, then they would have gone through that period as well and been there. But the fact that you go through that period where others don't and won't and can't is the thing that makes you special. Doing it is what makes you special. Doing that thing, whatever that thing is.

Yeah. I mean, it's. And nothing worth doing is easy.

Right.

It, you know, it's. And it shouldn't be, because where would the. Where would the. The joy of it all be? Or. You know, it's interesting, I was listening to this interview with this guy, Sebastian Younger. He's got a new book coming out, and he's a journalist and he goes into war zones and he risks his life to go into these war zones. And he lost a good friend of his who was also a journalist in a war zone. And that's when he kind of quit. And he's like, okay. Because he knew how devastating it was for his family and his. And his. For his buddy's family and his buddy's kids. Like, I don't want to do that to my family. But the reason he did it was he grew up in a affluent suburban, you know, neighborhood and. And just didn't feel like there was anything. There was no meaning into his life. It was just too easy. And so he would go into these war zones and he found meaning. He's like, I'm doing something important. I've got meaning. There's. I'M reporting back to the United States. Real horrific tragedy among us. And for him, he felt really alive. And I don't think we have to risk our lives to. To have that. That meaning and that purpose. But there's no getting around the FUD in it either, right? There's just. There's no getting away from it. But you do have the antidote. Just knowing, like, all right, this is gonna get dirty. It's gonna be ugly. Not uncertain, ugly. And I'm gonna be scared while I'm doing it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, even, like, my first podcast, they were terrible. I can't even listen to them. My first YouTube video is horrible. They're unwatchable. They're so bad. But you just get better.

Exactly. I mean, you know, I do a lot of. We do a lot of posts and whatnot in social media, and, you know, some of them just stuck. But you don't know that until after. We're actually. Oftentimes I know while I'm doing it. But it's the path to progress. Like, if you're not willing to take the first step, which is going to suck, and the second, which probably hopefully will suck a little less, and it'll be incremental, but as long as you keep going, that's your path to progress. So, you know, and like you said, we can do what 99 of people are doing and get 99 the same result as 99 of people, or we can do what 1% of people are doing, which. And 1% of people are the ones that are sticking it out, doing the work. And most of the work is working on self. Most of the work is stripping out old identity. Most of the work is getting over that imposter syndrome and that feeling of being. Being not where you want to be, and continuing to always move forward regardless, because that's how progress is made.

So, Kirk here, here's the question. And I heard this from a buddy of mine, really bright guy, and he would ask himself this question, what am I doing I'm not willing to do forever? And I thought, oh, that's a really interesting question. What am I doing I'm not willing to do forever? And I thought, well, you know, if I take on this project, like, let's say, for example, I'm going to start making live streams on TikTok, am I really willing to do that forever? Probably not, right? And now that we're having this conversation, I don't know if that's the best question, because I'm going to have to at Some point, age out. And what about all the opportunities where I can't project into the future what I'm going to want to do forever? Things change so quickly. And just because I like to do something, I think I like to do it now, doesn't mean that once I get through the suck of it all, I won't really enjoy it. So maybe it's not a great question to ask yourself. What do you think?

You know, I kind of, I'm kind of with you on that. I don't know that that's the, That's a question that I ask myself. I think the question I ask myself a lot is, are you willing to do whatever it takes? Because I think about the result, but I also think about the person that I need to be to get that result. And if I really want that result, then I really want to be that person. Am I willing to do what it takes to be that person?

Right.

Right. That's real work. Everything we do, especially, I feel like everything we do, especially in this business, is all about building a new identity. For me, it's building a new identity for sure. Moving away from my kind of corporate, you know, self, which I spent 26 years building, to being a real, true entrepreneur, a creative, maybe an artist as well, and a capitalist and those. That identity looks very, very different than the guy who climbs the corporate ladder, you know, works to build teams for other people and implement other people's needs and goals, which is great, by the way. I mean, that's most people, but I want these results. And this is a different type of person. And it takes a lot to move from here to here. So I ask myself constantly, am I willing to do what it takes and whatever it takes to get here? And I make sure I answer that yes, and then just do it.

Yeah, I love that question. I think it's just, it's all in the becoming. What are you becoming? And it's okay if the goal you, you set for yourself, you, you don't hit it, okay? But now you've, you've become something new. You've become stronger. You have a whole new set of skills you can stack on and you can pivot as opposed to the person who gets dejected and they think, okay, this just isn't for me. And they, they, or, or maybe they're, they do hit something, but it's not what they thought it should be. It wasn't. They didn't hit their expectation and they, you know, were dejected. It's, it's, it's a Very. It's a very crazy inner game that we're all playing. And yet I think that's the sort of, the, the secret sauce of it all is that it is play, and it is play. It is a game.

It's, it's, it's akin to if you're, if you're in, like, for me, it's in, in this position of making this change later on in life. It's akin to, like, going through college. Right. Like, right when I started college, I was. I was just finishing high school as a high school student. I was a successful high school student. And, you know, I wasn't an engineer yet. Right. I had to go through five years in order to become an engineer so I could do that. I had to become the person so I can do the things that I wanted to do. It's the same thing here. It's. And I think that's why it's so hard, because especially as you're older in life, too, like, your identity is a lot more solidified in your path. Right? So. So I, And I think we kind of see it with some, some folks, right? Some of our coaching students where they're having a rough time going through that transition. It's not easy. It's not easy. But the goodness doesn't come when you stay the same person. The goodness comes as you make the change.

Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, there's, there's always the, the fear of, you know, how do I do this? Right? And it's not like, that might not be the question. It's. It's not how do I do it, it's who can help me.

Yeah.

And, you know, and that's really where we become valuable as coaches, is like, okay, you got a capital issue here. We can help you. Here's how you like. There's no problem in the land business we can't solve. And I. It's. But that, that inner game, you think to yourself, okay, this is stressful. This is harder than I signed up for. You know, this is a business, and it's just like you're in the fudge and you need that other person to say, no. I knew if I can do it, you can do it. Just need time. You just need more time. All right, Kirk, we've had some Internet issues here, so let's land the plane. What's your tip of the week? What's a website, a resource, a book, something else actionable for the auto passive income listeners to go improve their businesses, improve their lives, maybe go into the dust as which is the antidote to fear. What do you have for them?

Well, I have, I've talked about it earlier, but I have this book here, the Dip.

Yeah, right.

So this is one. I just pulled it out last month. Like I said, we had a slow month and I pulled it out to remind myself that the dips are always going to happen. No matter how long I'm in this business, no longer, as long as I live, there will be dips. And the goodness is on the other side of the dip. It's committing, being committed to get through it because that's where the learning is, that's where the goodness is. And on the other side is the glory.

I love it. I love it. My tip of the week is check out Sebastian Younger's book that came out. He, it's really interesting. The guy had a near death experience. He talks about it and it's, he, he, he's, it's, it's really interesting. But he tells a story and all these other, other things. So we'll have a link to that. I forget the name of the book. I, I haven't bought it yet. I've got, I put on my wish list to do. But you know, I heard his interview. I thought, oh, this, this is really interesting.

I'm gonna check it out.

So check that out. And also check out flight school. It's our, it's our sponsor for this podcast. Go to landgeek.com forward/training schedule a call. Learn how you can go up that mountain of land investing and you know, go through the fud and then come out the dust. We'll help you do it. 16 weeks, you're going to start building that passive income with no renters or rehabs, renovations or rodents. And I know what you're thinking. Oh, the tuition, the tuition ain't going to cost you nothing. Guaranteed you're going to make back that money 180 days or less. Just show that you did the work. So go to the langic.com forward/training to learn more. If Kirk and I are giving you value, you know, show us some love. Follow rate, Review the podcast, Send us a screenshot of that review. Support the Lanic.com and I'll send you for free a signed copy of Dirt Rich and maybe even dirt rich too, which is coming out soon. The plot thickens. How to scale your land business without missing a beat. Kirk, are we good?

We are good, Mark.

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