Geographic Arbitrage: Counties Where $3K–$8K Buys Still Win

Eat baloney, buy land. Oh, eat baloney, buy land. Trade the fork for the deed in your hand. Skip the filling, let the sandwiches stand. Your fortune will grow when you buy your own land.

Gentlemen, Mark's playing the air guitar. Welcome to Land Geek Nightcap.

Good to see you. I play air guitar like Eric Clapton, baby.

Uh, the guitar— Don plays the real guitar and Mark plays the air guitar.

Yeah, well, you start a band.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, you know, Scott sings.

Yeah, yeah, I could, I could sing, you know, kind of a karaoke, you know, guy, so we could do that. Right. Uh, well, good to see you guys. Uh, thanks everybody for tuning in for another Land Geek, uh, nightcap presentation tonight. We're, uh, we don't really have a script tonight. We're going unscripted, we're going wild. Zeno's not here, so we gotta, you know, usually when he's here the energy is real high, so we gotta work on this tonight. Let's not, you know, let's not, let's not let it falter. But, um, we're talking a few things tonight. We're going to talk— we're going to have a little review on our Coaching Live weekend, which was amazing. Uh, we just had a phenomenal, um, uh, webinar with Valerie Young, so we'll touch on that. And then we're also going to talk for people, uh, about like how you'd even get started in this whole business. Uh, and, you know, I think before we do that, let's do some intros. So I'm Scott Bossman, DudeBuddy, the Nightcap OG. That's the first time I've ever called myself that, by the way.

How'd it feel?

I don't know, a little weird, a little pretentious maybe.

At least you're not calling yourself Handsome Rob. That's right.

Yeah, yeah, we won't make John introduce himself. John Burnett, Handsome Rob, Eight Is Enough Burnett is here. John, good to see you.

Good to see you.

Yeah, and as always, uh, Mark the Land Geek, the Godfather Podolsky.

Mark, so good to see you guys.

I miss you guys so damn much. It was so great being with you all weekend, and, and now I'm lonely, right?

Well, uh, Mark, give everybody a recap. Why, why were we, uh, in each other's vicinity this last weekend?

So this last weekend we had about 50+ coaching clients come to our coaching live, and over 2.5 days we just really spent time lifting the constraints out of their land business. We had people there who were doing $40,000, $50,000, $60,000 a month in passive, all the way up to somebody, you know, who, who's at $200 a month.

Impassive.

So, uh, you know, we had people from all levels, but we worked with everyone to help them know what they needed to do to get to that next level. And, uh, and dude, buddy, should we kind of just give a quick recap of like what we do and why we do it?

Yes, we definitely should. Uh, so we are land investors, and we were taught this amazing land investing model by Mark J. Podolsky. For those of you who just are finding us for the first time, a great resource is Mark's book Dirt Rich, which you can find on Amazon and Audible. It's a great presentation on how he got into the business 26— what, 26 years ago, Mark?

He got into this when he was only 3.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Flattery everywhere.

John, you had to be like 13 by that time.

Oh no, no, when I was 10.

Oh, you were 10.

Okay. Yeah.

Oh, okay.

I remember, I remember it vividly. I saw him and I thought, someday I'll be like that man.

Uh, and, uh, what, what did Mark do back in 2000 that got it? He started buying land at a deep discount, and, and he primarily bought these parcels at tax auction. Which we don't do so much anymore. We target landowners directly. But we, we help landowners get rid of land they no longer want, and they are no longer emotionally attached to. And we buy these parcels at a deep discount. And then we'll, we'll flip them for cash. But what I love is, we sell most of our properties on owner financing, which when you do that 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 200 times, creates a land portfolio for you that pays you monthly. So you have this monthly recurring revenue. And the other great thing about this business is, uh, because it is a laptop business, you can do this on your computer from anywhere. We can employ systems to help us run our business. So you can be like John Burnett and, you know, work his business an hour a day And, you know, Chase's dozen kids the rest of it.

Scott, you're already getting love in the chat. Check Mr. Bossman out aging backwards. Looking good, bro. Have you been using that beef tallow? Oh, who's that from?

In the year 2000.

Well, thank you, thank you very much. I have used beef tallow. Not tonight. But I did shave tonight. See, when I shave, my white whiskers go away and I look a little younger for at least, you know, a few days.

Wait, hold the phone. What are we using beef tallow for? What do I need to be informed?

Oh, it helps, uh, helps with your wrinkles.

Oh yeah, that's great. I should use the beef tallow.

The, the, the crow's feet here. Yeah, yeah. Mark, you ever use beef tallow?

Every day. Oh yeah, but I can't get rid of the crow's feet.

Believe it or not, I'm using it wrong.

What's that? Is that—

believe it or not, Mark's actually 92, turning 92.

I mean, the crow's feet are the good— the crow's feet are the good wrinkles because that means you smile and laugh a lot, right? It's the— yeah, it's the— it's the furrowed brow that are the bad wrinkles.

Yeah.

Yeah, you know, you're frowning a lot.

So yeah, John doesn't know how to frown. If you hang out with John long enough, you just like—

I don't get furrows on my brow, I just get a big lump. It turns into a big bump. So I don't know what that's gonna look like when I'm 92.

Uh, oh, Brad, Brad Kelly does have a good point. There is a difference between the cooking kind of beef tallow and the kind for your skin.

So I just use bacon grease, seems to be working fine.

I just use ghee.

Stick of butter.

Oh, yeah.

It's already, it's already devolving very quickly.

Really is really is.

Land question. Let's talk about Coaching Live though. So I'm curious, John, what was, what was the experience for you?

Yeah, it was great. So I mean, uh, being in a room with a bunch of people who are, uh, a lot of whom are really performing at a very high level in their business. And so I selfishly get things for myself and my own land investing business as I go and hang out with everybody there. Um, and it's just a great group of people. Like, everybody is is pushing forward. They have a very strong why, a very strong reason to push forward, and they're encouraging each other. We're all hanging out, we're having meals together, getting dinner together. It was great. And then a lot of us, actually all of us, prepared content and presented, and hopefully it provided some value. And yeah, it was great.

Yeah, I loved your modules. I did What was my— mine was other people's money. You, you guys did the sales one, which was great. That was one of my favorites. But John, yours was fantastic about the other models and your experience with it as well. So if you guys haven't signed up for the May boot camp yet, I think I'm gonna twist John's arm to do that talk again.

That'd be good.

You won't have to press very hard.

Just a little bit. Okay.

Yeah, just, just, just a little.

Yeah.

Um, you know what I got as a, as a big takeaway from Coaching Live was what Jeff Jones was saying, how we're different. Our community is different than any other real estate community, where he's coming from commercial real estate and, you know, everyone is, is like, you know, they got their knives out, they want to shiv you, they want to take your business, they want to take your market, and you don't— you're like, you got to protect yourself. And then if they do help you, they want their pound of flesh. Where he's like, this is the only real estate place where I've experienced where everyone just wants to help because they just want to help because there's plenty for everybody. We just have a massive market And we're all going to run out of money before we run out of deal flow. And I think everyone gets it. And, and even Valerie, like, Scott, like, tonight, like, she's telling everybody where she's buying.

Yeah, that was amazing.

Like, the exact subdivision. I've never seen anybody be so open about their market.

Yeah, that was a really neat moment. And, and I hope that people on the call kind of gathered that, how neat that was, because We had a lot of people on that webinar, almost 100 people on that webinar tonight, which was exciting in itself. And then Valerie's telling them, you know, where she started working. And, you know, I think that just— it, that stems from a few things, you know, number one, the market. The market's just, it's a blue, it really is a blue ocean of land. And tonight we're talking about the blue ocean land parcels are really the ones that we buy for between, I'd say, $1,000 and $5,000. Typically, I think in I think in the promo it says 3 to 8, but I'd say maybe 1 to 8. There's such a blue ocean of those properties out there in the United States that we can buy that we're not worried about it. And then I think the other thing too, Mark, that I love about this community, and it stems from the top, and I remember you talking about it from day 1 that I met you, is just this abundance mentality that we don't We want our people in our community to succeed. We want everyone to hit their time freedom goals and financial security goals. And when you have that mindset and that feeling of abundance, you know, you just, you go further, farther, faster, I think. And so I love that about this community.

I like that, like, with the abundance mentality, like, if you think about it, well, the abundance mentality works in our model in a way that it doesn't work everywhere, right? Like, so if you had, like, I always think about, like, if I had a pizzeria in my town in northern Idaho, 30,000 people, um, if there's another pizzeria two doors down, right, if we were to get together, trade all of our secrets on how to sell the most pizza, right, it's actually not necessarily mutually beneficial, right? Whereas we're dealing with markets that are so big where I'm, you know, and some of my counties are tens of thousands of parcels I'm interested in buying, right? And so there's really, there's room for me to talk to people that are working that same county and mutually grow and benefit each other, uh, you know, just because of the size of the market.

Yeah, no, 100%. I mean, we're just, we're just very lucky. And it's been this way for 25 years. I don't see it changing. Actually, I was on a webinar today, people were asking me like, is this going to become more efficient in our market? And I'm like, no, it just isn't. And it hasn't. And I think the technology like Starlink and, and, uh, you know, a Tesla home and, you know, drones delivering things to you— our rural land is going to become more valuable. And, uh, so yeah, I, I don't know what you think, dude buddy, but I mean, I, I concur.

Oh.

Mark J. Podolsky, uh, coaching live. I think we need to invest in a soundboard. We're gonna have like a little button we press every time.

I, I think we'll talk to AV about that.

Great. Yeah, we need to up our game on Nightcap. We were talking about that over the weekend. We're gonna, we're gonna start employing some, some new, uh some new features here, maybe some segments, maybe some, uh, you know, some visual aids, some, some, you know, uh, sound, sound bites here and there.

I miss the segments selfishly.

Yeah, we're gonna have a new segment, uh, what do we call it? The moment of zen, the minute of zen, where John just sits back with his guitar and plays soft music while Mike says something zen-like for a minute or so. That'll really calm people down. We'll have to raise it, raise the energy again after that.

But yeah, yeah, yeah, speaking of Mike, he did a great job at Coaching Live. He did. He— yeah, he— his mindset session was fantastic.

Yeah, yeah, we'll have to have him talk about that on Nightcap. Uh, but, uh, Scott Elliott is wondering where Zeno is tonight. He had a, he had a family obligation, I think, or he has, he actually has a family obligation very early tomorrow morning. It's a little later for you East Coasters out there, so he's, uh, and he's resting up after our Coaching Live, Scott Elliott, which, uh, which was a really great weekend, and we hope you're at the next one.

Yeah, Scott Elliott, it's not the same without you, Scott Elliott. Come on, brother.

Come on, brother. Scott Elliott, I don't think you should wait. I don't— he wants to wait till the Dirt Rich Summit to come to the next Coaching Live, but I think he should just join the coaching live at the next Dirt Rich Summit.

Oh, absolutely, come in, the water's beautiful over here.

Oh, Land Cravings is here. Is that Paul? Is that Paul Flanagan? I think that's Paul Flanagan.

Paul Flanagan?

Paul Flanagan? Is that you, Paul?

Is that the actor Paul Flanagan?

I think so. Put it— well, I could be wrong, but I think that's Paul. Throw it in the chat. Oh, look, that's his plan.

That's his plan.

That's my plan. Thanks, my plan. Well, awesome. So let's touch on briefly, Mark, also the really amazing webinar we had tonight with Valerie, Valerie, and the fact that, you know, we're gonna have her on Nightcap here really soon. But that was pretty neat, huh?

That was so cool. I mean, she's— John, she hasn't been in a year.

I know.

And she's in— she's at just under $10,000 a month in passive, over $700,000 enterprise value, and she loves it. And one of the big gems of wisdom that she brought, which I absolutely loved, was like, she's like, you know, the land all kind of looks the same. She's like, what differentiates me is that I'm having fun with it. And so she was talking about this, this area in Arizona where people would be asking about like nudist colonies. And so she just had photos in her ads and like just likes connecting with people. And because they're connecting with Valerie, they want to buy land from her. And again, the land's affordable. It's affordable. So it's just, you know, she's like, don't take it so seriously. And, and how simple the model is. She's like, you just need a phone and a— what was it? Like a—

yeah, she and Danny Walsh were talking at Coaching Live about— and I think this is the case— a lot of times we have a tendency to overcomplicate the business and we get away from the fundamentals, right? Yeah, the fundamentals make you money. The mailing makes you money. The marketing and the sales make you money. And a lot of us are focused on systems and scaling, which is all well and good. But in the first couple of years of the business, her point was that— or her and Danny's point was that you really only need like a Facebook account and a piece of paper to sell land, is what they were getting at.

Yeah, you know, so simple.

Yeah, keep it simple.

We do like to overcomplicate it. I think that's just so boring.

Yeah, yeah. And I mean, we all have like technology FOMO. I had it this weekend with John Burnett in his fancy Scribe notebook. Like, oh yeah, what's that? Here it is. Yeah, there it is.

See, you're missing out.

But all of these things distract us to what's actually important, right? But I did tell my wife, I'm like, I know what I want for my birthday. But then, but now, now, you know, my phone was listening and all these different notebooks are popping up. So now I need to do my due diligence on the different types of notebooks.

But okay, let me just ask you though, because I'm just curious. What problem are you solving with the notebook?

Well, I actually do. I have a Post-it Notes problem. So I've had a— I've always had a hard time banishing this problem in my life. I have lots of Post-it notes next to me with all sorts of notes, and it, it looks messy and it makes me feel a little messy. So I'm hoping the, the Scribe notebook will just help me be— maybe look a little cleaner.

Okay, work a little cleaner, because there's been so many times where I'll go to like an event and I'll see what other people have and I'll just buy it. And then I get it. I'm like, wait, why did I get this? Why did I get— like, I thought it was cool. And like, I have a reMarkable. I don't even use it anymore. It's literally sitting in the drawer. And I hate my handwriting.

Well, the Scribe— so I also read a lot. So the Scribe is also a notebook slash Kindle, right?

Okay.

And John, doesn't the Scribe have a penmanship um, like corrector?

Uh, I don't think it really corrects your penmanship. I can read it sometimes, but I thought it is—

I thought I read, I thought I read that the most, the most recent one will actually, because my handwriting is horribly messy, that it actually makes it readable.

Oh, I mean, that's cool.

Yeah, that would be good for me too.

I like that I can write on my Kindle books too. I can take notes directly in the book notes. And then you can add a little like, you can add whole pages of notes. So yeah, that's super cool.

In the chat, has a Scribe notebook.

Yeah, I'm just curious in the chat, like, what's been a book that's changed your life? Like, give us a book recommendation so that DudeBuddy can get that book on his Scribe put notes all over to the Post-it notes, and we can all have like a little book club on this, on these books.

I love it, I love it. Very cool.

Yeah, so praying Scott Elliott's like, 'Dirt Rich too!' Brad Kelly, he just said 'Dirt Rich.' All right, Brad Kelly, Vladimir will get you everywhere, right?

We got 46 people, uh, viewing tonight, so good, good-sized crowd. So Uh, say hello, uh, throw in the chat what part of the world you're coming from. That's always exciting to know. And do you have any questions about land investing that we can answer? Um, and, uh, we got, we got some of the regulars here. Rick, Rick is here. Rick Colcock, awesome to see you this weekend.

Rick, what was your big takeaway from, from Coaching Live? Gotta put in the chat.

Please, please put in the chat. Todd Williams is here.

Sean Love is here.

After Coach Love is here, I think Todd Williams was just on the webinar. Todd Williams was on the webinar, I think. Yep. BJ the Land Grabber is here.

By the way, can I, can I just, uh, speaking of the gap in the game, can I, can I just, uh, well, I won't even do it. I wanted to do it.

Don't tease us.

Well, I, I, I got a text from Ben Hardy the other day and I was so—

it was so cool.

Wow, no way!

Yeah, because Ben and I were in a mastermind group, we, we kind of bonded, and, uh, so he just texted me out of the blue. He's like, hey brother, what's up? Like, hey man, it was just really like— I was kind of like starstruck for a second.

I'm so jealous right now.

He's like my favorite, he's like my favorite author. Yeah, that's awesome.

Besides Mark—

what's that?

Oh, I was just looking. They were putting where they're from. I've sold land in Dickson, Tennessee.

Fun fact. Oh, wow. Yeah, Dickson, Tennessee. Vegas. Lakeland, Florida. Whitesboro, Texas. Crestview, Florida. Bellsmere, Florida. Los Angeles. Dallas, Land Geek student. Awesome. Well, where are we next? Oh yeah, does anybody have a Scribe? Throw that in the chat. And do you love it? And if not, what should I get? Maybe just more Post-it notes. Um, well, now that we're half hour in, should we get to our topic? Well, so, so let's talk a little bit about how, uh, people— well, number Yeah, let's talk about how people can find these cheaper land parcels that we were talking about. So, we were talking about how it's a blue ocean out there and the vacant land market is massive. So, John Burnett, let's say you just came across this idea, you know, yesterday. There are resources out there that help us learn about the business like Mark's books, and we have podcasts galore. But what are some other things you might do as you start to do a little bit of due diligence on on land investing?

So, well, first I have a question. What is a blue ocean? Everybody says blue ocean and I have no idea what it is.

Oh, great book. That's The Blue Ocean Strategy. Oh, Scott, do you want to explain it?

No, you explain it.

Okay, in any market where there's a lot of competition, it's called a red ocean. Because, you know, the sharks are all killing each other and the ocean becomes red. But a blue ocean is when there's no competition. In this book, The Blue Ocean Strategy, takes a strategy of where you sort of take— you combine two different sort of elements of a market and make a completely new market. So one of the examples is Cirque du Soleil, right? So Cirque du Soleil is a blue ocean where you have the circus, which is typically for kids and family. We got a lot of overhead with the animals. And then you have the, uh, theater, right, which is typically for adults. Well, Cirque du Soleil combined it, got rid of the animals but kept the magic of, of sort of the circus along with the the beauty of dancing and, and just created this blue ocean in, in entertainment. So that's sort of an example of the blue ocean strategy. It's just, it's, it's its own category.

Okay, that's awesome.

No competition.

No competition. So I would say if somebody came in and basically, um, were looking to jump in through land investing. So they wanted to push forward, do their due diligence. Ultimately, what we focus on is markets where we can build a business, right? So we're looking for markets with a lot of land and a lot of repeatability, right? So ultimately, our focus, which I think is, is really a core focus of our model that sets us apart, is that we want something that's scalable, that affords time freedom. Something that you can do over and over and over and over again. So we invest a lot in large rural subdivisions. The property's already been subdivided. And, um, and so you're looking for areas like that, and ultimately property that people want to buy as well, right? So you want repeatability, you want a lot of properties, and you want property that ultimately will sell. And so for that, you're looking for, uh, for me, generally, uh, a few core things. I want property that is accessible, so legally accessible and physically accessible, right? You want some type of a road that's platted out, that's been turned into at least a dirt road. Uh, I like property that has recreational potential. Not all of my properties do, but when they do, it's a nice bonus if you camp on your own property. And then the third thing is the ability to build, right? So off-grid, 100% fine by me, but I'd like a property where you could build at least some kind of an off-grid cabin. When I have those three things in place, then generally that's a property that, that I can move. And so we're looking for properties like this that, uh, in areas like this that ultimately we can kind of build a business around it. And to this day, you know, Um, I, I still do the bulk of my deals in the first county I ever mailed, you know, and I bought I think 6 properties there a couple weeks ago, you know. So, and, and it's an area like that, an area with lots and lots and lots of property. So did I answer the question?

You did.

You killed it. Yeah, crushed it.

I think, I think that, uh, I have an even easier hack. Like, if I think if you're interested in this business, what I would do is I would just spend some time on some land selling websites, and just kind of get a lay of the land, so to speak, on where— nope, where— right, where investors are doing deals. And, and it's very well known that we don't work in areas where realtors work. Right. So when you go on these sites, you'll see realty companies. Well, if there's realty companies that are selling land, number one, the land is probably really expensive. And number two, it's a more efficient market. And we don't work there. We work in areas where realtors don't work. So I would spend some time on these land selling websites and look at the listings and, you know, see if there's, if there's somebody with a land company, they are a land investor. And those are the areas we like to work because— and typically, they're a little bit— typically, they're a little bit cheaper areas like we talked about. We're buying these properties for $1,000 to $5,000 and selling for $5,000 to $30,000. So, you know, look at— look on these land selling websites, where are land investors selling land for $5,000 to $30,000. And then you can kind of just reverse engineer because if you see John Burnett on a site selling land for $5,000, you can venture to guess he bought it for maybe $1,000 to $2,000. And it kind of gives you an idea of, you know, where people are doing deals, the price points of land and that type of thing. And then also what John was talking about, the features of these land parcels, what you can and cannot do there.

So yeah, you stole my, my deal.

Stole your thunder?

That was the easy button. Go to where the other land investors are, the land sites. So simple. Uh, do you guys ever get the Land Report magazine? It's beautiful.

What is the Land Report?

The Land Report's kind of like the Rob Report of land. It's like these beautiful— you know, if you're a billionaire, you get the Land Report. It's like, oh right, I'm kind of bored, I'm gonna buy a $45 million ranch. And it's, it's like, it's like that. And it's just these gorgeous, you know, huge, huge parcels and beautiful color layouts. And I felt like, would it be cool if we did like a Land Geek Report and it was just like, our, our land, oh, $3,500, you know, like, why not? I think it'd be great. I like it.

I like the idea of having a page that's just purely dedicated to like Sagebrush.

Yeah, yeah, like, yeah, it'd be like, but it'd be kind of cool and just get an owner-financed, um, you know. I know people that sold tons of land. Remember those, what was it called, the Penny, Penny, uh, you know what I'm talking about, those free magazines, and they put them in there. It's old, this is old school, this is like '80s, '90s stuff.

Well, I mean, it's definitely before John Burnett's time, and you're putting a little pressure on me.

I've never been able to buy anything for a penny, Mark. So no, I know that.

Oh, Patricia got a Pennysaver.

Pennysaver. Okay. Yeah, Pennysaver magazine. Okay, now I have heard of that. I have heard of that. Awesome. Lori Ulm gets the land report. Yeah, John Burnett's not in there, and neither am I. We are not in the land report. That's okay.

The little nickel.

Um, awesome. So Mark, any other advice for, for beginners other than the things we, we brought up?

I, I would say, you know, uh, not to bring up the podcast again, But I was on a podcast today, and the question was, you know, what, what is— what are the characteristics that somebody has that separates a successful land investor from, from someone who ends up not being a full-time land investor or, or washes out of the business? I'm like, first of all, I don't think there's any such thing as failure in life. Like, you either learn or you, and you learn something in that process. Like, there's no, there's no failing, essentially. Um, but I think that, you know, the conventional success of somebody who solves their money problems and solves their time problems in our niche are two things. And I'd love to argue with you guys about it if you guys want to argue. Yeah, we could do like the McLaughlin Report, and Scott's like, no, wrong. The first one is a big why. It's got to be something bigger than you, right? You're gonna have hard days, uh, it's gonna be uncomfortable. You're gonna have to get outside of your comfort zone on, on things, and it's gonna feel uncomfortable almost a lot in the beginning. You have to embrace the suck, essentially. But if you remember every single day why you're doing this. And John had a big why. It's like, I want to spend more time with my kids. Like, okay, well, I could eat glass for my family. If I'm doing it for them, great. I'll, I'll do the thing I don't feel like doing because I know it's important. So big why, this burning desire, big why. And the second one is grit. And just, you just showing up every day. And having the grit. You get knocked down, you get back up. Get knocked down, you get back up. What do you guys think?

Get ready, it's tough. If Zeno was here—

that's right, get ready, it's tough.

Grit.

He loves his anagrams. No, I don't think you need much beyond that. You need the— you need a reason to show up every day. You need You know, like, this is like any other business. You're gonna dedicate time and energy to growing this. And I think I always talk to people too, like, you need to have really realistic expectations that this is not get rich quick. You know, we talk about that all the time, Mark. This is for most of us—

what is get rich quick, right? Literally, like, there is no such thing as get rich quick that actually Yeah, it's a pipe dream, right? Yeah, it's a fantasy. It's a pipe dream.

Yeah, but, but there are things out there that make people, you know, click a button to buy something to get rich quick. And, you know, this, this for me is just, uh, I just, I just like to make sure people realize that, you know, you're growing a business here and it can take you 3 to 5 years to grow it to, to the point where it feels really, really impactful. So I think if you bring the time and the drive and your why and those realistic expectations to this, and I think anybody could be successful. John? I concur. Oh, thank you.

Oh, I would concur with Scott or me?

Just Scott.

I don't agree with you. But yeah, I mean, I like one thing I say a lot is like the core differentiator I see between success and failure in our niche is, is really just persistence. Right. And I think like, I, I do think, I do concur with you, Mark, that I think that ultimately persistence, I think is driven by that grit and that why.

Right?

You need a reason to continue when you don't really feel like it, right? Like when you're— when you hit the end of a hard day and you just want to sit down and watch Netflix, but you know you need to do, do a little bit of work on your business first, right? So yeah, absolutely.

I think one of the, the big traps of successful land investors is complacency. Yeah, actually, because then they, they've done the thing and it's hard to get to that next level. And I think that's where our community comes in, and that, you know, we can inspire them to like, no, you never want to stop growing in life. Like, you know, you're— look, there's nothing wrong with camping and then climbing, right? So there are times in life, seasons of life, you want to camp, you want to rest. You want to look around, enjoy the view, enjoy what you've created, you know, let the machine run for a while. Like, I take a month off every year. Fantastic. But then I go climb again, right? Because it's just fun. Like, it's fun.

Yeah, right.

You want to live a life where you want to watch that movie that you're living.

I like that.

Oh, it's got Elliot.

Yeah, some people are chiming in here. You know, Brad Kelly says, uh, fall forward. Uh, we all fall forward in this business. We all start doing things that are outside the norm, that are uncomfortable, but that's— we hear it all the time— where growth occurs, right? And then to take action, and, and even imperfect action, but, but Scott You know, Scott takes action, right? He visited his properties in Putnam, took photos, put up for sale signs, right? Had to travel to Orlando for work anyway. Oh, he put some signs up for Zaino. Oh, nice. Okay, I see how this is. Scott Elliott. No, but yeah, taking action is another thing, right? Doing a little bit every day in your business. To move forward. Um, that's, that's actually massive action, Scott. So that's, that's pretty phenomenal.

Um, I also think like you have to run your own race, right? Like if I'm, if I'm listening to Valerie Young, like it could be demotivating. Like what, like what's wrong with me?

What did I do wrong? How come I'm not there?

Well, you just got to run your own race because on a long enough timeline everyone gets paid in this business. And so you can't really compare.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I remember we would do— we did the live boot camps, we do Grill the Geeks. I remember being up there, people. So there was one couple that gave the amount of sales that they had done. And I'm like, what? Like, you know, and, and I got to that number, right? But it was on a different time frame than them. And, and you say you're, you're right, like you have to be motivated by people's success as an example, or as an example that the model works, but you have to push forward with effort and intensity in your, in your own lane where you are.

So, well, this comes down to the Gap and the Gain book that Ethan mentioned earlier, right? It's, it's all about it's all about measuring your progress by looking backward and where you were a month ago, 3 months ago, right? And if you started this 3 months ago, and you own 3 parcels of land that are worth $15,000, I mean, what a great start. But if you started this 3 months ago, and you own 1 parcel of land that's worth $5,000, you're still moving forward, right? And, uh, that's how we, that's how we kind of measure our progress year to year. Like, look how far we've come compared to a year ago. And that— I've talked about this before, but that's kind of, uh, there's this parallel with patient care with that whole thing too, uh, in the physical therapy space, right? Like, people, um, and sometimes people are getting better even though they re— even, even though they think they're not. So So you have to kind of point out to them, but hey, you know, look at where you were 3 months ago. Look what you couldn't do then and what you can do now. And that's just a kind of, I think, a really great way of looking at things for people on this entrepreneurial journey. So compare yourself to yourself, not to John Burnett there.

I mean, I'm gonna compare myself to John Burnett.

Right.

Yeah, you—

yes, I have, I have permission.

I want to feel depressed, I'll just compare myself to you. But I don't. And if we all want to be depressed, we can just compare ourselves like Elon Musk or Mozart, right?

Whatever. Like, right, right.

Pick the person. But why? And you know, what's interesting psychologically is at Coaching Live, I think we started the day on Friday, I just asked the question to the group. I'm like, who feels like they should be further ahead than they are? And they all raised their hand. I find that super interesting. Everyone feels that way. Maybe not John, but everybody else.

No, for sure. For sure. Awesome. Well, uh, let's see here. Yeah, Mark didn't get the memo to wear glasses tonight.

I know, black frame.

This is what happens, by the way, when you get a certain age, by the way, because now you guys are all blurry. So now for me to see, I take my glasses off. I can do this. Now you're clear, blurry, clear.

Yeah. See, just a few weeks ago I was fine at a computer distance. Uh, you know, I could do this just a couple weeks ago, and now like all of a sudden, I don't know, I can't. So I got to put my readers on and I gotta lean in closer so I can see you.

I can't see anything without these. I convinced my kids successfully that I'm blind without my glasses, so I take them off and I'm like, where did everyone go?

You're like Velma.

Jinkies.

Velma from Scooby-Doo. Her vision was so bad she couldn't even find her glasses. Oh man. Well, does anyone have any questions about land investing? We do have a couple actually. So, let's go back here. We're coming up on an hour here pretty quick. This is a great question from Tony Sanders. Tony, we've actually had full episodes dedicated to this. But we could talk, we could talk, uh, briefly on it for sure. So John Burnett, what are some strategies on how to talk people down when they have a high counteroffer?

I think that there's a few things you can do. Like, one thing is you can talk about actual features of the property, right? Well, are you aware of this and that and the other thing? But I also think Sometimes I'll just be straight with people. I mean, I won't now, but somebody on my team will be, right? And the reality is like, that might be a reasonable price point for your property, but here's the reality of the market, right? Like, I offered you $3,000, you want $5,000.

The—

this market, right, you could— you've got a few options to sell this property. One is you could sell it through a realtor. How likely do you think it's— it is that a realtor is going to be excited about the commission on that property of $5,000? Probably not very excited. And also, you're paying that commission out of your $5,000, right? And then the other option is for sale by owner, right? You could list it on Zillow, you could, you know— but the reality is, like, these people, if they— if they're out of state right, or if they're away from the property, which almost everybody is a large distance away from these properties, that's a challenging proposition, right? How are you going to list that? Are you going to get photography?

Uh-oh, he froze in Idaho.

He froze in Idaho.

He's a frozen potato spud. Well, what are you saying? Was really good.

Yeah, it was really good.

So am I back?

You're back. Oh, you're back.

You're kind of Max Headroom-ish there. Yeah, I think you're back. Yeah, I think you're back now.

Okay, so, um, yeah, like, we can even tell people, like, here's how I sell property, right? And Mike Zaino has a line that I think is great, which is the The way I, the way I make money selling property is honestly like, what I'll probably do with this property is I'll, I'll make money by selling it for a small payment over a long period of time. You could do that, right? And everybody's like, no, no, I don't want to do that, right? But, and I'll just tell people, for me to make— for, for this to make sense with my own margins, this is the price point, right? So, and the reality is like, these, these properties are hard to sell, and we're offering an easy sale. In exchange for a discount, right? So that's— I guess that's the way I approach it. It's just like just being honest, like, this is, this is the way it's an efficient market, you know?

Yeah, I think it depends on the how high the counter offer is. I mean, um, you know, Mark, if you got, you know, if you offered somebody $5,000 for their land and they're they're countering, you know, $100 grand. Are you calling that person?

I might. Well, back in the day, I might, because I wouldn't want to anchor it. And I would just say to them, hey, look, I think, you know, I got your counteroffer. And do you mind having a chuckle with me? Because I really think your counter is kind of low. And they're like, what do you mean? Like, you offered $5,000, I'm countering it at $100,000. Like, I know, but you should actually have countered at a billion dollars because the odds of you getting $100,000 are the same as a billion. So you might as well should have countered at a billion and then tell your friends, my land's worth a billion dollars, I won't sell for anything less than a billion because that's what is the— you know, that's how many people are going to pay for it. And then, you know, they might chuckle, uh, or you know, hang up either way. But I'm like, look, your neighbors are selling it for this price. I didn't mean to offend. And, you know, look, best of luck. If you get $100,000, nothing would make me happier. And, you know, you know, keep my offer. And if the timing is right and you are ever interested in selling it, um, you know, a fast, easy deal, we can close in a week. I'm your guy. But that's, you know, to your point, like, I just can't do it.

Right? Like, we gotta do it.

Gotta make money.

I love, I love that. Can we have a chuckle together? That's a, that's a new one that I've never used. Maybe I'll have to start implementing that. Let's have a chuckle.

All of his phone calls from now on.

Yeah, but by the way, I had a buddy, uh, come in and he was telling me that he's, uh, he's like a real high— like, you know, like those SEC reports that people don't read? He's the kind of lawyer that writes them. He lives in Chicago and he's telling me the story about one of his super wealthy clients. And they, like, when somebody asks them for something, which they get asked They just say, I'm sorry, I can't. No explanation. And it works. So I'm gonna start trying that. I just wish, you know, Dude Buddy would invite me to his place. He's like, I'm sorry, I can't. No, of course I would come. But you know, I mean, wow.

I see how you're—

wow.

Oh, Brad Kelly.

That's great.

Yeah. He always says like, your land might be worth that, but this is what I can pay for it to make sense for us. That's great.

Right.

You know, I love your, I love your tactic, John. Like, you know, you can definitely do this yourself. However, we can make it really easy on you. I can have a check to you in 2 days if this all checks out. Right. Um, I think some counteroffers are reasonable. You know, if you're sending an offer at $3,000 and the counter's at $5,000, that kind of screams to me meet in the middle, right? And, and your margins are still probably pretty darn good. Um, but you know, every once in a while you get a counteroffer too where people are kind of, uh, they're not budging, right? And then, and then you can always challenge them a little bit. You know, hey, just, you I'm just kind of curious, you know, what makes you feel like it's worth this much? Just ask them questions, right? You never know what will happen when you get on a phone call with these folks and just start conversing and talking, you know. I've actually witnessed Mike Zaino, you know, talking, talking a guy down over a half-hour conversation from a high counteroffer to an accepted offer. Work just because of the connection that you make with people on the phone. And then there are also some like tactical things you can do. Because sometimes people think their land is better than it actually is. So, and you suss this out in the conversation, right? You have, you ask them questions. Well, have you actually been to the land, Mr. Seller? No, I've never been there. My dad was there. Oh, okay. Very good. Do you have any pictures of the land? No, I don't have any pictures. Okay. Well, not sure if you realize—

Make any improvements?

Right. Make any improvements? Like, is there anything special about this property you can tell me? Right. Does it have power? No, there's no utilities out there. Oh, okay. Well, not sure if you knew, but, you know, we actually bought the neighbor's property at this price and down the road we bought it at this price. So we're buying properties in this area at this price.

Right.

And also, not sure if you knew, but there's a neighbor across the road that has some junk on it. You know, there's some, there's, there's some terrain on your land that's a little concerning. It's kind of a divot in your land, right? Or there's a wash going through the property. Valerie talked about that tonight. There's a wash going through the property. And these are all things that may kind of devalue the offer a little bit. You know, that being said, would you be opposed to me taking this off your hands for this amount? I can have it checked in 2 days. And a lot of times, And they'll agree to it. Right. So, so those are some ideas for the counteroffer. Awesome. Love it.

Yeah.

I concur.

Ethan Evans concurs. He's used those exact points with sellers. Yeah. Realtor. I can buy fast. I'm going to sell on terms, et cetera.

Awesome. Fantastic.

Very cool. Okay, Jared Russell, Jared Russell, comment or question, or maybe when we purchased two properties from a gentleman who fell on hard times and was praying for help one morning, he received our offer letter that afternoon and called us. How cool is that?

That's awesome.

I mean, that's That's pretty cool. And I think we've probably all had stories like that too, right? Where the property is maybe a burden to somebody for whatever reason, or they're in a hard spot, they're in a tight spot, and we're able to help them by taking their land off their hands. And, you know, we've all gotten thank you cards from people for buying the land. That's an awesome story, Jared. Very cool. Scott Elliott, I don't know, is that a counteroffer you received? 100,000 pesos?

I think we missed the context on that.

All right, it is Cinco de Mayo. Oh yeah, it is. Oh, it is Cinco de Mayo, right?

Yeah, you know, you know what Tate mentioned to me today? He's like, when's the last time Cinco de Mayo Landed on a Taco Tuesday.

Oh my goodness, like the planets are all aligned. It's crazy.

I may need to go to Taco John's after this. I haven't eaten much all day.

So what is Taco John's?

Taco John's?

Yeah, I've never heard of it.

You guys never heard of Taco John's?

We have Taco Time, we have Taco Bell. Oh, that's all of the tacos in Northern Idaho.

No Taco John's?

Lots of taco places here, but no Taco John's.

Oh my gosh, Taco John's is a fast food taco place like Taco Bell but much better, and they have my very favorite and healthy potato olés, which you need to get with a side of nacho cheese.

You know, my potato—

I love cheese, right? We were talking about that this weekend. Especially the processed cheese like Velveeta and Cheez Whiz. Yeah, and Taco John's, they have, yeah, processed nacho cheese.

What was the thing that Roberto was talking about that, that he— it was like, oh yeah, like, like, yeah, it's like chips, hot sauce, and lime, and all kinds of—

he put peanuts in it.

And soy sauce.

Soy sauce. It was a hot mess. We gotta call Roberto. You have the Papas Locas. Richard Evans says the potato au lait are fire. What's a potato au lait? I love the way you're like, this is healthy. This is a fried potato. Oh, they're not healthy.

No, no, not— it is not healthy. It's like a They fry them. It's like a flat tater tot. You know, tater tots are kind of, you know, cylinders. Well, this is flat, so it's a little round— it's a little round disc of a potato, and they put seasoning on them, and then you dip them in nacho cheese. It's, uh, and I'm gonna go get some after this because it's good.

It sounds really good.

Even though it's not authentic, most likely. But you do have churros. They also have churros, which Taco Bell does not have churros. So anyway, I can't believe you guys haven't heard of Taco John's. That's craziness.

I'm gonna look it up. I'm gonna Yelp it.

I mean, I've never been to a Chick-fil-A until like a month and a half ago. Oh, so baby's first. It's great.

Let's do one last question, shall we? And then we can go off and celebrate Cinco de Mayo with a margarita or potato lace. Or both.

Simultaneously. Or both.

From Ivan Van Buren. Ivan, good to see you. Could someone walk through what the seller has to do when I am buying? Does he just sign the deed, then the agreement of sale? Then after that, I pay him? John Burnett. Yeah, can you give us a quick rundown on this?

So basically, uh, we mail an offer to somebody and they may sign it or counter, and then we get that back. Sometimes I'll even just move forward with due diligence and stuff even just on a verbal agreement if it's an inexpensive property. We'll do our due diligence, um, and then on the other side of that then, uh, yes, the seller will sign and notarize the deed, and they will return that back to me, um, and then I issue payment to them. So, and I issue payment after I record the deed. So that's it in a nutshell. I love—

will you—

do you work outside Simplifile counties or only Simplifile?

Now, I have worked outside of Simplifile counties, and it bothers me. So, yes, yeah, I think I'm trying to deed now and it's so annoying. Yeah, it's such a pain.

I—

and sometimes I'll send the deed and I'm like, did I send the deed? There was one time I think I sent the deed 3 times. I notarized and then I was— I called the county afterwards and I was like, did I send you that deed? And I was— they were like, yeah.

Yeah, 3 times. Oh man, that's funny.

Yeah.

Awesome. Yeah. So Ivan, to clarify, you see, I have an agreement of sale on the offer letter. Yeah, we have an offer letter that serves as a purchase agreement. So that, that works. Yeah.

I have to get on a call with you guys. Do we have a link?

Yeah, well, I'll throw a link in the chat if so. If anybody on the, on the call is interested in land investing, and want to learn more, John and Mike and I would be happy to have a conversation with you. So just go to thelandgeek.com/training and let's see, there we go, thelandgeek.com/training, schedule a call, we'll chat about the business. And yeah, we all love the business, it's all changed our lives and, you know, we're we're not special. I mean, John's special, but John is special, but I'm not. I'm not special.

I'm not.

It's just— yeah, exactly. And John thinks he's special, which is kind of— no, I'm just kidding. He doesn't. He doesn't at all. He's like the most humble person in the world. Uh, but, uh, but yeah, you know, you don't, you don't need anything, uh, crazy special to do this. You just need, like we talked about earlier, the time and the drive and the why and the grit and, um, the realistic expectations that you're going to grow this over the next few years to, to help you and your family become more secure with your finances and help you achieve some freedom of your time. That's what it's all about. So awesome.

Cheers to that.

Well, Patricia, she's scheduled twice, so John and I will both talk to you. Yes.

Okay. Maybe we get—

what we should do is we should have everybody on the call with Patricia simultaneously.

There we go.

Yeah, there we go.

Well, we'll be back. We'll be back in a week. And Mark, are we going to do a little— well, we got a few things on the horizon. We need to have Valerie on Nightcap. We need to have maybe a women in land investing episode on Nightcap where we can feature the Valeries and the Stephanie Deans and the Jessica Allreds and, and the people who are doing really well, uh, in the land. And the females are doing really well. Jessica Tran. Yeah. Quinn Vu. There's so many.

There's so many.

Yeah.

Remember when we first started this, like, in our room there'd be like 2 women, right? Yeah. And I think it was like me and Schmidt and a bunch of guys.

Tria Harris, our coaching extraordinaire.

Yeah, right.

Yeah. So very cool. Well, thank you, gentlemen, as always.

Thank you, guys.

And we'll see you in a week. And if anybody ever has any suggestions about what we should talk about, we should start prompting that earlier in the call, actually. Maybe next week. If you guys have any thoughts on what we should talk about next week in the world of land investing, we'd be happy to talk about that. So, yeah. And Rick Colcock, we'll end with your comment. He says he thinks that we're his special friends. Well, we think that you're our special friend too, Rick.

Absolutely.

Rick, bring it in. Bring it in, Rick.

It's great being with Rick this weekend.

Great seeing you this weekend, Rick.

He's a great dude.

All right, everybody, have a good night. Mark J. Podolsky, John, thank you.

Thanks, guys.

Talk to you later.