Get The Inside Scoop From The Coaches—Insights From Our Last Bootcamp

Hey, it's Mark Podolski, land geek. The favorite niche real estate website, thelandgeek.com and on this week's roundtable podcast, we have almost all the usual suspects. We've got Eric the Technician Peterson. Eric, how are you?

I'm good.

Good to see you. We've got Taria putting in the reps, Harris, for about four more minutes. Trea, how are things?

Going well, Mark, thank you.

Good. Good to see you. I love it when you call me big papa. Taylor, Litchfield Tate. How are things? Good.

Happy to be here.

Good to see you. Last but not least, the brain, the professor, your flight school sherpa. Scott. Todd. Scott. Todd.net, landmodo.com learn anything but anything. Investor ninjas.com Scott.

Todd.

How are you? Mark? I'm great.

How are you?

I'm great post bootcamp, but I got to tell you, we got a great topic for this week's roundtable. Scott, what's our topic for this week?

All right, so we see a lot of reoccurring themes, questions in the chat throughout boot camp, and I think that we can all each add a little perspective to it. So to the coaches, like, what's one of the reoccurring themes that you saw in the chat in bootcamp, and what's your thought on it?

Let's start with Teria. Put in the reps here, Harris.

One thing I saw that was reoccurring was the request for us to go into deep dives within some of the tools that we use. And one of my suggestions and will always be my suggestion, like, we don't manage those tools outside of, like, Lanmodo and Geek Pay and those kind of tools which are run kind of by the program here. We don't. I'm not an. I'm not an expert on, you know, Datatree. Like, I'm not an expert on that. So my recommendation, from my perspective, was reach out to the company who created the tool, go on YouTube, find demos. Like, there's always a way to find the information that you need, but kind of expecting the coaches to be experts on every tool that, you know, a student or participant wants to know that that's a little unrealistic and tough sometimes.

I mean, we're geeky, but we're not that geeky. Even Eric Peterson is not an expert. Every single tool, Most of them, yes, but not every single one of them. Which leads us to you, Eric the Technician Peterson. What was a recurring theme you saw in the chat?

You know, I think that the one that stands out in my memory at this moment would be around the idea of tools, but what's the minimum required or when do I need this tool in my business? So we talked about what's the minimum kind of baseline group of tools that you need in order to kind of manage this business. And I believe that's. That's LG Pass, it's Geek Pay. And from there I think there's, you know, airtable is commonly used, but I won't say it's completely necessary. It can be very helpful for organization and sharing stuff with your team, but not required. But I think the other two tools, in my mind that would be required is some kind of CRM to manage the sales side of the business. We like Follow Up Boss, but there are others out there. I've used pipedrive in the past. Another possibility, the other one would be some kind of an email marketing platform, whether that's Mailchimp, ConvertKit, Constant Contacts, AWeber, whatever you like. I know Mailchimp is free for a certain amount of subscribers, so it's a good place to start, but in my mind, those are kind of the base tools now, maybe underlying that you've got the Google suite, whatever that's called nowadays. I think it's Workspaces now or something.

But.

That'S really the main things you're going to need in order to operate this business.

I love it. I don't have a bone to pick with anything you said. In fact, we've used or use almost all of those tools that you mentioned. I love it when you call me Big Papa Tate. Litchfield Tate, what did you see reoccurring in the chat that stuck out to you from Bootcamp?

I saw a lot of people chatting about specific locations, a lot of people saying, where should I mail? Or asking those kind of questions. And, you know, it's kind of a sensitive topic, and we kind of glaze over that we don't typically answer that question live in person. And the reason we don't want to answer it live in person is if you found an area that is really, really good or really hot or really attractive, we don't necessarily want to showcase it and tell everyone else about it. And so it's not that we can't confirm or tell you you're on the right track or anything like that. It's just we don't necessarily want to accidentally encourage a group of individuals to target that specific area based on your research. You know, and this is where county research is so, so important. We hear a lot of people talking about, hey, what. What else do you do for county research? Right. What. What aren't you telling us when it comes to county research? And the truth is, we are looking at comps. We're going where we know other people are having success, and we're building our businesses using the exact same methods that we learned about in the investors toolkit and in flight school. So y can add to it, but really, you got to make sure you're doing the core things correctly, and then you can add extra layers to it, but for the most part, focus on, you know, what you're doing and doing it as. As well as you can. And if you're not getting the results you want in an area the market's speaking to you, listen to that feedback.

Yeah, absolutely. Speaking of feedback, on a bunch of the surveys, the attendees loved when we would argue.

Really?

Yeah. Yeah. And I think one of our big arguments was, what are the last two things you outsource? And, you know, I forgot where Eric landed on this. On this.

Same with me. Same with me.

On the wrong side.

No, the correct side.

So Tate and I were on the side of the last two things you ever outsourced our county research and sales.

That's right.

It was only one thing.

And you're wrong. We agree on the sales. County research.

No, exactly. I said the second. Right. So the last thing you outsource the sales.

Everybody's in agreeance on that, right?

We all agree on sales. We don't agree on county research. Tay and I have the best logical argument. If you get a county wrong, it doesn't matter if you have.

You shoot yourself in the foot.

Yeah.

See, the thing is, it's like. See, I think that when you phrase it the way you phrase it, you're wrong. Because when you phrase it, how do you phrase it? See, when you say county research, that the last thing you get rid of is county research, then the message that you're sending to everybody is that they should be sitting at the computer that they should be sitting at the computer researching the county. And that's not what should happen. That's not what should happen. Because what should happen is what we teach in flight school is find the other land investors. We give them a formula to go do that. They don't have to do that work. They. They should have the final say so that. Yes, this is where we're mailing. Because that's.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Wait, could you just rewind? They should have the what?

I'm sorry, What Yeah, they should have the final say so in it you're talking about, but you're saying they should be doing the work.

No, no, no, no. I'm not saying you necessarily.

No, no.

I think it's completely off my plate.

No, guys.

Completely.

No, guys. No. When you say the last thing. Listen, I'm telling you, because I talk to the flight, you're in this wrong. No. And Eric, you agree with me.

Don't, don't let.

No, listen. Listen to what?

Listen.

It sends the wrong message. I'm telling you, it sends the wrong message. And here's why. When you say that the last thing that you should be outsourcing is county research, well, then to everybody who's listening to this, who's not thinking about it, they're listening to your words, your exact words. The last thing to outsource is county research. So they're going to sit there behind the computer doing this work. And while any good CEO would say, I agree with that strategic direction, what you're telling them is that they should be doing that work. And what I'm saying is that they should not be doing that work. They should be having a VA go out and do the research for them and bring that back to them to do the pricing matrix and to bring that back for them and to do the stuff that we talk about and bring that back to them in that aspect. If it's just that one sliver of making the decision, then we agree. But the phrasing to say that the last thing you should turn over is county research. County research is one component of that. But the direction, setting direction is a strategic initiative that should be set from the CEO. That's all I'm saying.

I agree with that.

I agree too.

I agree. Okay. I agree with what you said. I'll give it to you. What then should the phraseology be?

The next to last thing that you should be turning over to, to your team is which county you're going to mail to. But the researching of it. The researching of it, that's.

Yeah, I agree.

Low level stuff, guys.

You can have somebody pull the comps, you can have somebody build the matrix, you can have somebody pull your data. But I guess what I was saying is the thumbs up on mailing, thumbs up on buying, that's one of the last things that you should do.

Yeah, I mean, like, right. Research is low level work. It really is low level work. Where are the other land investors? Yeah, these counties.

It is low level work. But I want to make sure that they're thinking Strategically about the way I want them to think. Strategically.

And in that aspect.

And in that aspect, I'm really watching them more closely than I would say at intake.

So. Hold on a second.

Or. Getting the list.

Did we just all agree?

No, we're never gonna agree.

No, no.

Eric, I think we agree.

No, Eric, weigh in.

No, I'm, I'm on Scott's side. I think the, the language steers people the wrong way. I think we could say maybe county selection or county Google.

County sign off. I like that. County sign off. The last two things you should have, you should. You should ever let go of completely is the county sign off in sales. Are we all happy now?

I'm happy.

We can be happy.

By the way, I know what Mike Zeta would say. Whatever Scott Todd thinks is what it was. Yeah, Scott, that's a great argument.

I agree with Scott. Yeah, I mean, Eric, I see. Let's see.

I did.

Eric, you agree?

Eric Bob and Tria would be more diplomatic and be like, yeah, you both have good points. Zayn is just afraid.

Listen, we don't have time for diplomatic stuff, right? Like the diplomats. We just gotta go into it. What's our next fight? I know what the next. Like, we keep having the same one too, which I've never even given my. My thing, but I've already forgotten what the question of the week is, by the way. You know, I asked it.

But anyway, the question is, what did you see in the chat? That was a recurring theme.

Yeah, okay.

This was your question.

It was just. Yeah, see, but you guys got. Listen, I think my whoop is telling me my blood, my heart rate's like 150. I'm getting a strenuous workout right here. All right, so look, it has to do with a lot, with what we just even talked about, right? The who. And that's the thing is I see a lot of questions in the chat, constantly about, hey, how do I do this? Or how do I do that? And, you know, everybody wants to kind of look at it from that low level stuff. And the one thing that it took me a while, it took me a while to get from boot camp, that I see now. And Mark, you always say, like, you know, we all hear this, but like, when you. Once you've seen something, you can't unsee it. I've seen the other side. So now I know which is. It's not. It's not. How do I do it. It's okay. I understand the process. I understand what the big picture is. Or that's. That should be your goal at boot camp is try to get the big picture of this thing. Because if you're implementing what we're talking about, what you're doing is now you're going to get people to go do this work, right? And that's the only way that you're going to be able to make, to make this business work is by multiplying your time. Because if you can't multiply your time, it will never work.

Right.

There's no way you can do all of this on your own. It's too many moving pieces and it's not like it's labor intensive and it's not like it's too much work. There's just too many moving pieces at scale.

At scale? Yeah. You want to scale this business? I 100% agree. And you know, it's, I don't know, Scott, if you ever read my Monday meditations on Mighty Networks and Facebook, but I wrote, I made the argument this is like a four year process, right? You start in the land business, you're just a baby. You're just a cute little baby. That first year trying to get to just walking. That second year you're a toddler. Now you might be a wealthy toddler by the second year, but you're still a toddler. You're still kind of figuring out the pieces of the business. That first year is just getting confidence and getting competence. Really the two Cs. That second year is more about scaling. I think the third and fourth year are really honing in your leadership skills and really getting to that point who not how and getting better at that. And then, you know, that fourth, fifth year in the business, you're, you're kind of more grown up, if you will. But it's, I mean, my, my question is, do you guys agree with that timeline or do you disagree or would you change the mindset of it a bit? Tweak it. Eric, let's start with you.

Yeah, I mean, I think overall I would agree with it. I think those earlier years is where you kind of, you get your feet wet and you gain experience from kind of working through different situations and it's not going to come with just a small handful of deals. We've got to move through enough of these deals to see kind of enough variety, I guess, that, that you're going to run into. And the other thing is like some of these problems take time to come up too. Like if you're going to have a default on a property, if you're going to have someone I Don't know, leave a bunch of trash on a property or something like that. Like, that might take some time. You're going to sell the property, months are going to go by, they're going to pay for a while, and then all of a sudden they're going, Then, you know, maybe you resell the property. Someone goes out there and says, why is this, you know, whatever junked car on the property or tires or whatever it is, and, and some of those things just take time, I guess is, is really what I, I want to say.

Okay. I love it. Tate.

Yeah, I agree with the analogy. I mean, as Eric mentioned, it takes time for these things to kind of surface, but you don't know what you don't know. And to think that you're going to become an expert in something in 12 months is honestly silly. I'm still learning things. Right. I'm still increasing my knowledge. And sometimes the way that you do that is by surrounding yourself with other intelligent people. Right. One of the reasons we all enjoy this podcast is we get to spend time together, but we also get to learn from one another. We're always trying to grow. I'm trying to grow as a land investor, I'm trying to grow as a land buyer, I'm trying to grow as a CEO. I'm trying to grow as a person who hires periodically. These are all skills that constantly need sharpening. And I would say it's a lifelong pursuit. Nobody's going to be perfect at anything ever. You've always got something else to learn. Go, go learn about a new approach or a new tactic or a new, a new, you know, method, a new, a new type of a deed, a new type of a trust. I mean, there's so much out there. So, yeah, four or five years or a lifetime.

No, I agree with you in the collective intelligence, just the community just, you know, if you, you could just spend years and years just going through the vault of past podcasts and past training and learn so much.

Think about some of the people we've had in our, our community, Mark. Like the active individuals we have. We have everything from professional athletes to, you know, world class investors. We've got pilots, we've got engineers. Like, we have got very, very smart group of people collaborating constantly. So sometimes I learn things that aren't necessarily land related, but they can be replied to the land business or vice versa.

Yeah. And as the Zen master Mike Zaina would say, because they got a. Give it up for him, because I, I was, you know, ripping on him in his love of Scott Todd is that he always comes into every situation with a beginner's mind. He's always curious. He wants to learn more. He doesn't come in with that mindset, oh, I'm not, you know, this person that I can't learn anything from. We can learn from everybody. And it's, you know, when you have that mindset, you. You do learn from everybody. It's just being curious enough and keeping your mind open enough to learn about, you know, from Tate, that new sales tactic, or Eric, you know, a new automation. You know, Terea's got a new way of handling something with her marketing or, you know, bossman and Zano. I mean, everyone in the community is doing things just a little bit differently, and something might really resonate with you, but at least try it and. And see. Maybe this is just a better way for sure. And I do this with you guys all the time in every aspect of my life, Whether it's smoking on the Traeger, tracking my fitness, you know, just getting better at leading. Right. Really thinking more clearly about who, not how there's something to learn from everyone, which, you know, teases up the whole. Back to Scott Todd.

Yeah, I mean, I would just say that, you know, at the end of the day, it's always about learning, right? Like, it's always about learning. And like you guys have said, it's not. You're going to encounter new experiences or new challenges every single time. And I think what puts a roadblock to most people here is that. And, like, I'm guilty of it, too, and that is that you often think, okay, well, man, I got to figure this thing out. Well, there's been other people that have done it. There's been other people that have, you know, gone down that route. And, you know, you can sit there and try to figure it out on your own, or you can just talk to somebody who's done it. And if the. If you talk to the person, the right person who's done it, well, then it's going to shortcut the whole process. And, you know, Mark, it's funny because even where we are in our business lives, I mean, back in September, someone new came into my life, and in terms of someone I've learned to grow and respect in the September timeframe, and, man, all of a sudden, you start to get pieces of his business, which has nothing to do with the land business, but you start to get a glimmer into what this guy does, and you're like, oh, well, that's pretty cool. How can I apply that over here or what can I do over there? And so I think it's really just having that open mind and, you know, really just understanding that it truly is a lifelong learning process. So how long, you know, how open are you going to be to it? And I think that if you try to rush it and you try to judge someone's success, I mean, if I would have judged my success versus yours, and you know, I knew that you replaced your income in 18 months, and if I got to 18 months in one day and I, and I didn't do it, well, then if I quit, well, then that's on me. That's a time horizon that I put on myself. I mean, we've seen people that just chisel away at it, right? Month after month, quarter after quarter, they just keep getting better and better. Takes them three, four years to replace their income. All right, no problem. There is no judgment of success that it has to be done in this timeframe or it has to be done this exact way. I mean, there's many different ways to do this. I think the most important thing is that you just keep moving forward and you don't quit.

Right?

Like, if you know that there's something here, you don't quit because once you quit, it's over.

Yeah, I agree 100% with everything you said. And the reason I wrote that post was every time, every single time I get on a call with one of our coaching clients, they all say the same thing to me. I feel like I should be farther ahead than I am. But why? You're just a baby in the business. And it's, to Scott's point, it is a imaginative or a made up timeline. You just pulled it out of thin air and now you've created this standard or, you know, you've moved the goalpost for yourself. And it's so much more joyful when you just focus on the things that you can control and work diligently at those things and let go of the timeline, surrender to it and eventually you're, you'll wake up and your bridge will be built. You'll be to the other side of it and you know, your passive income exceeds your fixed expenses and you, you've, you've reached your goal and then you'll do something, you'll hit another goal like, but it just never ends. It just never ends.

And I'll also say this is that, you know, oftentimes where we're not having success, well, we judge that on ourselves, right? So, I mean, I've talked To people that are like, man, you know, I thought I would have been a better salesperson or, man, I thought that, you know, I haven't figured out how to sell yet, or I haven't figured out how to market my properties, and I haven't figured out how to, you know, get the marketing message and the sales message together or all these other things. Or they might say, I'm not a good salesperson, so I can't do this. Right? They just. That's quitting, right? Like, that's quitting. As opposed to saying, look, maybe my sales. Maybe I'm not good at this. Maybe I'm overthinking this and then getting help for that thing that you need help in. And I think that that's the big thing is, you know, we're not. We. We cannot be experts in everything. We're not experts in everything. You're better at some things than I am, and I'm better at some things than you are, and that's. Eric's better at some things. See, we all have our own skills and talents that we bring to the equation. And I think that when you look at that and you internalize that weakness and you go, I can't do it. Well, now all of a sudden, you're empowering that weakness as opposed to saying, okay, well, I need help over here because this is a weakness, so let me get some help. And whatever help looks like, maybe it's education, maybe it's a partner, maybe it's somebody to do the work. Right, Whatever that weakness is. But, man, once you recognize those weaknesses and power through them, I think all of a sudden your business will take off.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think some of the best advice is work on your strengths and find someone else to help you with your weaknesses. Right. I mean, if Tate is more detail oriented than me, which he is, I'm going to throw more things to him to say, hey, you know, can you help me find someone to help with these details? And sure enough, he'll find the right person because he knows, like, left to my own devices, it just won't get done. I won't do it. I'm just more big picture. So it's. I don't work on that weakness. It's just something I'm not going to ever, you know, get better at necessarily, because I don't need to. I think I'm going to do way better working on my strengths, and that's going to move the needle in my life and be more just fun for me than, you know, White knuckling my life and trying to get better at these things that I'm just not that good at. It's like trying to write left handed. If you're right handed all the time, it's not to say that you shouldn't get competent enough. For sure, that's, that's a different thing. But you don't have to be an expert in every single thing in the business for sure. I thought it's a good topic. We kind of rambled a bit.

It was good.

It was good. We think. Scott Todd.

I don't know.

I know we started one way, we went the other. Well, we're at that point in the podcast now where we're going to put someone on the spot and ask them for their tip of the week. A website, a resource, a book, something actionable for the art of passive income listeners to go improve their businesses, improve their lives. Before we get to Scott Todd though, I have to give a shout out to our sponsor, which is flight school. Learn how the next 16 weeks can change your life. Go up the mountain of land investing with Scott Todd as your flight school Sherpa. He's done it thousands of times. He's going to take you up there quickly, safely, efficiently. Oh yeah, and by the way, that flight school tuition ain't going to cost you nothing. You're going to make back all that money. 180 days or less, guaranteed. Just show us your work schedule. Call. Learn more. Go to thelandgeek.com training thelandgeek.com training you have nothing to lose a year from now when you're passive income exceeds your fixed expenses. Or maybe you're just at $5,000 a month in passive income. Maybe you're at $3,000 a month in passive income. Either way, it's going to make a huge difference in your life and you'll be so glad you did it. Okay, Scott Todd, what is your tip of the week?

Simple. I'm going to tell you exactly what Tate said. I don't do this. I don't do tip of the weeks. No, I'm kidding. I'm going to, I'm just going to stand up and do one. Here it is. This week, Mark, this week we've had two, two major updates to two of the systems that we use the most. Number one is LG Pass, right? We, we changed the interface, we've added a whole bunch of other stuff. So if you haven't been on the LG Pass in a while, go check it out because lots of new stuff in There and continuing to grow and to develop. Every single month we're rolling out new, new updates. The team is, is chisel away and just happy with the team's progress on that stuff and constantly getting feedback like oh yeah, this is good, we got some cool stuff on the, the roadmap for 2022 so go check out LG Pass. And not to sell sound self serving, but you know what, Lanmoto has reached the end of its life on the old platform. So Lanmoto One is like going away as we speak. Lanmoto 2.0 if you will. Completely different platform. Everything is different over there and just getting ready to power away. I mean bigger servers, everything. Like it's a whole ordeal, man. It's a whole ordeal there for future traffic. And we're getting slammed with traffic all the time now and it's continuing to rise. So in 2021 the traffic 5x, our monthly traffic 5x so page views were up five times. We went from beginning of the year about 100,000 page views a year to over half a million page. I'm sorry, 100,000 page views per month to over half a million page views a month. That's our average now, three month average. So just an incredible amount of growth on there. New servers are in place and we're in the transition right now. So go check out the new Lanmoto. You can see it now by going to. Well if you go to Lanmoto you'll see a difference. Either there's a bar on the bottom that says go to the new site or if you end up going there because of when you're listening to this and it's already live, well then guess what, you're already on the new site. Go check it out. Landmoto.com Two tips on the way.

I love it. Please don't sell out Land Moto. Please just, you know they're coming for you.

The private equity calls are coming and.

Then they're going to jack up the prices and we're all going to be back to where we started. Does everybody know the origin story of Land Moto? Why you started it? I don't know.

I mean basically what happened was in. I think it was like 2017. Somewhere in that range it might have been 2018. I don't remember the exact year, so I think it was 2017 or 18. Before that I was a happy camper advertising on Land and farm. I paid $50 a month for unlimited listings on Land and Farm back in the day. $50 a month unlimited and very happy with that. And I Got wind that, oh, this big company bought land and farm and.

That they were going to all out.

Go Star, bought them all out. Big old mean company did that. And finally the sales rep calls me one day and says, hi, I'm your new rep. And I'm like, I don't want a new rep. I don't even want to talk to you. And she's like, yeah, I'm calling to let you know that the price is increasing. And my $50 a month price was quoted at over $500 a month. Okay. And all this great stuff. And you're going to be here and here and here. And I'm like, I don't want to spend $500 a month. I want to spend $50 a month. And she said, no, it's 500 for what you have now. Or we can reduce your plan. You don't get unlimited anymore, but you can get, you know, you know, 50 listings or 20 listings for like, the same price. And I'm like, listen, this is garbage. She's like, well, we didn't raise the price throughout the years. And I'm like, that's your problem, not my problem, so I shouldn't have to pay the penalty. And she said, well, that's just the way that it is. Sign this new contract for a year. And I refused. And she's like, okay, well, you're going to be kicked off the platform. And I said, I'd rather spend money on my own platform than spend money on your platform.

And.

And I'll make mine available to everybody. And you'll regret the day. Well, they haven't regretted the day. They have not regretted it yet. They have not. They haven't. They haven't changed their. Their ways yet. I am kicked off the platform. So I try. I tried to do something later, a couple years later, and they're like, sorry, you're not. You can't get an account here. I'm like, oh, boy. Okay. All right. So basically, Land Moto became open to other land investors because I realized by store, yes, my spike store, that the land investors were getting harmed here. And, you know, it probably cost me more than $500 a month to run my spite store. I should have been. I should have maybe just stayed over there. I don't know. But now I've got this thing. And you know what? We're going to build it, right? We're going to build it. We're going to keep building it. And so basically, yes, Lanmoto is basically operating as a loss leader, a negative profit center. Whatever you want to call it. A nonprofit? Yeah. Okay. It's all those things we give away every year and we're getting better. But at the same time, right now, like I said, traffic is just blown up. This year, servers were not consistent and the platform needed to change. So we have a new custom platform on big old powerful servers and lots of room for growth. So I'm happy. And I mean with all things. Things do change.

I never get tired of hearing that story. Eric, what about you?

I know that story well, Tate.

Yeah, it's cool.

I benefited from that story a lot.

Doesn't it make you just want to go out in the world and start a new spite store? Like who's. Who's wronged you today? Well, you know what?

Don't do it.

It sounds like a lot of work.

From a business perspective, it's the worst thing ever, but it's so fun just to start it. Anyways, I want to thank the listeners. Remind them the only way we're going to be able to keep providing you value is if you do us three favors. Follow rate Review the podcast, Send a screenshot of that review. Support the Land Geek.com I'm going to personally signed send you a signed copy of Dirt Rich, which is really valuable.

Right now.

In the world of crypto. So check it out anyway. Please do. Really helps us. All right, we ready to do this? 1, 2, 3. Let let freedom. All right, thanks everybody.

Thanks for listening to the Art of Passive Income podcast. Are you ready to learn how you can start building a passive income without renters, rehabs, renovations or rodents? Schedule a free consultation@thelandgeek.com forward slash training.

Let Freedom raise ring.