Grill the Geeks: How To Succeed in the Land Investing Business

Hey, it's Mark Podolski, the land Geek with thelandgeek.com and you are going to get a special treat. Now it's gonna. So I want to introduce to you a special podcast segment of what we recorded at Boot Camp, which is our Grill the Geeks segment. And Grill the Geeks is really special because it's an opportunity for the newer Land Geeks to ask questions to Land Geeks that are just a little farther than them. They've either gone through the coaching program or they're in the coaching program or are in flight school or just graduated flight school and get to ask any questions they want to those Land Geeks and you get an inside look at their business. So we have three Grill the Geeks for you on this podcast. The first is Mikayla Sorny. She's a past coaching client and her story is absolutely insane. She is so young and is doing so well. It will absolutely inspire you. The second geek is Chris Merklein. He is current coaching student and you can hear how he is navigating his way through his land investing business. And our third geek is Trey Rabone, who is a flight school student. Also, just a reminder, save the date for August 12th through 14th in San Antonio for the St. Anthony Hotel for a live boot camp. Live boot camp. It is going to be incredible. Two and a half days of land investing immersion. I promise on Sunday the land investing clouds will have dissipated. Everything will be clear and you'll just be pumped up. And it's just so cool to meet everyone in person. Our community has such an abundance mentality. It is second to none. I hope you can be there. It is limited space, so go to thelandgeek.com Boot Camp and register and secure your spot. So enjoy the special podcast of Grill the Geeks.

So without further ado, I think I'll go to Mikayla first. And Mikayla, good morning. If you wouldn't mind just giving us a little bit of an introduction, telling us a little bit about yourself and what brought you to Land Investing. We would appreciate that.

Sure. Yeah. Good morning, guys. So I found Mark's podcast back in probably like middle of 2018. So I just listened to all the free content that I could get first and then kind of realized that paying for things, it makes it quicker and it just. Mark has a great program. So I was in college at the time so I didn't have too much money. So I thought land investing was great because I was always interested in real estate, but it was a cheap kind of a Lower barrier to entry. And you could buy some properties for cheap, get, you know, see that the process works and then kind of scale from there. So that's what piqued my interest at first.

Okay, great. Sounds great. I'll go to Trey first. Trey, I'll come to you first. Good morning to you. Please, if you wouldn't mind, give us a brief introduction about what brought you to Land Geek and Land Investing.

Well, I kind of start. I bought the toolkit a while back in the summer, actually. And then I kind of messed around with it for a little while and just was appeal. The appealing was the passive income and finding a way to offset, you know, just have that the financial freedom that it would offer. And that's kind of what lured me into it. It took me a while to get started, but it. I love it. It's been great.

Yeah, we'll get to some of your successes here in a little bit with flight school. You had a pretty amazing run. Chris Merklein, my brother from Wisconsin.

How are you?

Good. Tell us a little bit about you and what brought you to land investing.

Sure. Well, my story is I googled the word land investing. So my family and I, we bought like a nine and a half acre parcel just outside of town where we live with the dream of someday building a new house on it. And we did that like eight years ago. And I was looking at my personal finances a couple years ago, and I'm like, okay, so we purchased the property for something like 68,000, paid it down to somewhere in the 25 or 30 range, and we've been able to enjoy it. So this is a different concept than the Land Geek philosophy, but it's what brought me to the industry. And one day I'm sitting out there, I'm like, okay, so we've paid down the principal. We only owe like 25. It's worth in, you know, 120 probably at this point. And we've been able to camp on it and hunt on it and throw small parties on it and motorcycle ride our dirt bikes on it. It's really been enjoyable. And like, that is so much better than Wall Street. I mean, my 401k and those investments, those are just numbers on a computer screen that sure it help our family's financial future, but it's completely different. And so I googled Land Investing and I stumbled on all of the Land Geek stuff, and I've been 100% completely addicted ever since.

That's great, Chris. Yeah. I remember talking to you probably about a year now. Into your journey, isn't it?

Yeah, something like that.

Awesome. Very good. All right, well, thanks, everybody for being here. It's time to grill them. So go ahead and throw your questions up here in the chat. And great. We have one already from Jason. I'll come to you first, Mikayla, can you talk about the early stages of mailing? How much did you send out and how long did it take you to get responses? Can you talk through how long it took you to build up some inventory?

Sure, yes. When I first started, I was doing the typical 100 letters a week. I actually was physically printing them myself, writing the envelopes. I would not suggest that, but that's what I did just to get started. So, yeah, 100 a week consistently for quite a while. It took a couple weeks to get to actually buy some property. You get some calls from people who might. They think the price is low. Or for example, I had someone who. They needed to go through probate, really wanted to buy the property, but just couldn't because of the chain of title. So you get a couple of those in there. So maybe took me a couple of weeks to actually buy a property. They were smaller, cheaper lots to kind of get started. Not sure if that helped or. Or affected the timeline with that. And then to build up some inventory. I would say it took a few months, like I said, but I was just consistently mailing at 100 a week, and I would suggest doing that consistently. That helped me. And it also, at that point, you're not trying to buy a bunch of properties at once. It's more consistent, especially when you're starting out. I found that that was really helpful. So I would say to recap, a couple of weeks to buy a property and a few months to build up the inventory.

That's great. Trey, can you speak to that as well?

Yeah, so I. I've probably been in this business the shortest amount of time. I literally just got my email last week that flight school was over. So I started at the end of December, and so I'm probably not even at four months yet. And I went. I had the advantage of going through flight school. I met Scott Drew and. And kind of talked to me about flight school and gave me some tips. I couldn't really even get county research part. And so Scott had called me and gave me some. My free coaching or 30 minutes. And. And that kind of kicked me off and put me right into flight school. So I got a fortune with that. If you're thinking about flight school, that that was the big advantage for Me, because we started mailing on week three and then I started buying property the next week for wholesale properties and basically just following the recipe of, of what Scott Todd teaches. So I feel like I caught a little bit of an unfair advantage because I was able to jump right into flight school when I joined in the business. So. But yeah, as far as acquiring property, we started buying wholesale properties, I think on week four. And then the mailing started coming in at about week eight, seven or eight.

So.

And we were able to buy right then.

Awesome. What about you, Chris? What was your experience like in the beginning?

My experience was very good. I think I got a little bit lucky in choosing my location and we were getting responses immediately to the point where I was afraid. I was like, holy cow, I think I overpriced them. Which is a lesson for anybody new in the business. I mean, go through your due diligence and be confident in your numbers, but don't be afraid to buy. So I bought a bunch of properties and was able to. There was a lot of cash buyers in the early days and it really worked out well. Again, part of it was luck. But don't be afraid to do, just execute. Get some properties in your inventory and good things will happen.

Yeah, so I think the common theme there is you're all taking action and you're taking action according to. Well, Chris, you started with the toolkit, correct. And had some success that way.

Yes. Yeah, I went right through the whole process with the toolkit and then flight school and now coaching.

Great. Awesome. More questions coming in. Mikayla. Coming across the land business as a college student and now graduated, do you plan on developing this business as your full time and avoid going into the workforce or do you plan on keeping your W2 job?

Yeah, so I do have a W2 job now. I have had it since college. But yeah, the ultimate goal is to have that financial freedom and live off the passive income and just keep kind of growing the business. I was, I guess, kind of lucky because I had extra time, you know, at the beginning stages to spend more time in the business. But now I spend maybe a couple hours a week on it. Mainly just kind of monitoring all the different pieces, making sure everything's, you know, working the way it's supposed to and then just keep building up the passive. I'm hoping, you know, in a couple years I do like my, my full time job, but there's still days when I, you know, have to go to meetings or have to go to the office and then on those days I cannot Wait, you know, to do this full time?

So your timeline is a couple years?

Yeah, that's what I'm planning. Yeah.

Awesome. And you just graduated college, what, two, three years ago?

Yeah, I graduated in 2019.

Very, very cool. So that's pretty inspiring. Graduate college and be done with your W2 in five years.

Right?

That's great, Chris. I'll come to you for this next one, and then we'll hit all of you up. I think it's a good question. How many properties do you prefer to carry in your inventory?

Well, I like to carry as many as possible. Lately it's been difficult to keep the inventory up, but I'll defer to the most recent podcast that was released, and I think you guys hit the bullseye. I think a minimum of 10, target for 20 if you can. And what they teach in flight school is figure out your budget and divide by five or seven and start there and then work your way up to a minimum of 10.

Great advice. Trey, how about you?

Same thing. I think I found it tough to get to 10, and, you know, without any arrogance, they. We would just sell them, and then you couldn't, you know, you buy two or three and then you sell two or three and you're back at zero. So we, you know, we. We put in a lot of work in buying and started upping our mailings and started buying more wholesale and, and just trying to get that. I remember Tate had said in one of the classes that things get different. You know, it all changes when you get over 10 properties. So that was really a goal of ours, and, and we've been able to get there now. But, you know, it's. It's a. It's a definitely mindset shift when you start looking at it that way and at that scale. I felt, you know, just trying to figure out a way to. To. When we first came in, we were hoping to maybe buy two or three properties and sell them and see. See what happens. And then, you know, we hit the ground running and. And, you know, now we're trying to figure out how to. How to buy more. And. And it just keeps growing. So it's. It's. That's the hardest part, I think, is just to keep buying. Can't have enough.

Yeah, keep buying. You know, I think it's. It's somewhat time dependent also. You know, I think Mikayla, as a veteran here, maybe you could speak to inventory. Mikayla. And how is that? I mean, I think your capability of carrying more inventory, I think improves as your business grows. Doesn't it?

Yeah, definitely. I've had times where we had maybe 20 properties in inventory. And I know as a beginner, that sounds really scary. It's like, it's a lot of money you put out, and you have these 20 properties, and who knows, you're thinking, who knows if you could sell them? But I can guarantee you it's much easier to sell the more inventory you have. It's extremely. It just makes the whole process a lot easier to sell them. And then, yeah, I think as you grow, you kind of get more confident in your pricing and in your areas and more confident in your team that they're going to be able to sell them. And you take those. Those leaps, you know, maybe you find someone who wants to sell you five properties at once. But similar for me, as many as I could have in inventory is great. I'd love to have 10 to 20, 30, but it's, you know, it's. Certain areas are difficult to buy in. And, you know, since COVID I think everyone knows it's a little bit more difficult to buy in the market, but pretty much as any, you know, as many as I could buy. And I also started getting a little creative with, you know, the offers we're sending. Owners thinking of different ways, like, how can I add value to them that. Because they'll even tell me, these owners, you know, I get 10 offers a week or something like that, you know, whatever it might be. So I just try to be creative with different value adds that make us stand out, that maybe they'll accept their offer rather than the other hundreds of offers they're getting.

Awesome. Thank you. Here's another great question, and I often felt this early on like I'm running out of money, right? Have you guys felt that? And how did you replenish things? Or what did you do when the bank account dwindled a little bit and you spent a lot of money on land and those numbers go down? Chris, come to you first?

Well, I was in a position where I could just put a little bit more personal money into the business because I could see that it was working. But through flight school and coaching, you learn so many different creative ways to bring some money back into the business. And one way is if you are buying land on mailers, you should be buying it 20 to 30 cents on the dollar. And if you're buying in an area where other land investors are working well, with one or two emails or one quick posting on Facebook, you can close to double your money by wholesaling a lot. And so that's a creative way to get money back into the business today.

Great. Trey, you felt that pressure at all in the first four months?

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. It's a real thing, you know, just getting comfortable with it, picking up investors. We've tried to get creative with it. We've done the wholesale route. I actually bought wholesale from Chris, so I actually know Chris from that. So, yeah, I bought. Tried to find ways to just put money back in there and try to bring in investors. And I think once you get two or three under your belt and you start realizing that these properties will all fail, you know, you just have to put some work into them and just, you know, find the right person. There's. There's something for everybody and, and once you get confident with that, then you feel a little bit more confident when you're trying to raise the money and you, you, you're confident that these are going to sell and. Good. And that's what we've kind of done.

Great, thank you. And Mikayla, what strategies have you employed to keep the bank account money intact?

Yeah, a couple different ones. I will say. I definitely felt that too, at the beginning, that pressure. So there's a couple things within land investing that I think separate too, so, like, you can do. I've done land ARP deals where I'm buying land arp, so just put maybe a couple hundred dollars as the down payment and then. So that's all you need to get into a property. I've wholesale properties, I've sold portions of notes to my properties. I've taken on loans. And then you get into more of like the finance where you can, you know, there's zero percent interest, credit cards. I know some people use that. Like I said, you can take loans on people, equity partners. So I've kind of tried a little bit of everything, I think, except, except equity partners, because I think I, I just, I love the profits too much. I'd rather take a loan and pay the interest percent. But there's a lot of creative things you could do. I wholesaled a lot at the beginning, like very consistently, probably for maybe a year or so just to kind of keep growing the money. So I'd say it's probably the most simple way, but there's a lot of other options out there.

That's great advice. Thank you so much. Talk a little bit about goal setting, Mikaela, since we're with you. So is there a macro goal that you have? Do you tend to set business goals weekly, monthly, quarterly, annually? All the above and Then how do you hold yourself accountable?

Sure. Yeah. So I definitely have like macro goals, as in you could say financial freedom within a few years, then break that down level by level, creating annual goals usually and then quarterly. So there's a couple different books you can read on this, like traction, and it helps you set goals. Um, I like to meet and I don't know if many people do this, but I meet weekly with like my acquisitions manager, sales manager, and like a marketing manager that I have just to make sure that they see my face and they kind of know that I'm here because it is virtual. Sometimes it's. You can lose track of them a little bit. And I think that really helps us set our goals. So we have, you know, obviously the revenue we want or whether we have a bunch of different goals, whether it's like our passive income amount, total revenue, even like my acquisitions manager, I have goals of number of properties to buy because each position kind of has their own goal set. So I take my macro goals, break that down even further, sit on top of them, like meet weekly, and then I have like some metrics where I'll have them send. For example, at the end of the month, the acquisition manager sends me how many properties she bought, sales manager, how many we sold. Marketing will tell me, like how many leads did we get, the conversion of those leads. So kind of just breaking down into really micro level metrics that you can track.

Awesome. Thank you. That's a great answer. Chris, how about goal setting for you?

Yeah, that was a fantastic answer. And I'd have to concur with everything that she said. But for me and my team, what it really boils down to is daily and weekly tasks. You know, the macro goals are fun to talk about, financial freedom and so forth, but really what are you going to do about it today? Things that you can control. How many mailers am I going to send? It's going to be now 30 is the new 20. I would argue that 50 is the new 20 just because of the, you know, slightly lower response rates. But we're going to, we're going to mail 50 letters today and we're going to, you know, get at least two ads put out today. These are the things that we can control. And I found out, you know, then you'll hit your macro goals as long as your daily habits are in line with those.

I think the daily habits are very important. Right. And to sometimes leave the emotion out of it, those longer term emotional feelings and just do the things today that matter. Right?

Yeah, exactly. And Mikaela mentioned a great book, Traction. For those of you who haven't read it, it's a game changer if you subscribe to it.

Awesome. Thank you. What about you, Trey? Setting. I know you're early in the business, but talk about setting goals a little bit.

I'm probably striving to be more like Mikayla, but I view it more like Chris. I don't have the big picture down that well, but I, I, I feel like we're along the lines of are just trying to be consistent with what we're doing every day and if we're getting the results we're looking for, then we'll continue to do that and if we're not getting the results we want, we'll increase those and we just kind of stay on top of it that way and communicate with all of our people that these are, this is why we're doing it, how we're doing it and it's worked for us so far. So just trying to be consistent though, I think the hardest part is to actually do it every day. It's easy to go, well do it tomorrow and you know, next time, you know, three days have gone by and you haven't done it. So we try to just make sure that we're doing it consistently.

Awesome. Thanks for that. So again, a common theme there I think is consistency for sure. Alexander has a question to Mikayla about, about county research. So how did you decide which counties to target other than the fact that other investors are there?

Yeah, so like you said, that would be probably the biggest one. What other investors are there? I think your price point also matters. Certain areas are definitely more expensive than the others, something I value. But it's kind of a double edged sword is what information can you get online. So certain counties have very good GIS systems. All the information is online. It's extremely easy to get that info. But then on this, on the flip side of the coin, all the other investors are getting that information. So those areas might be a little oversaturated. So when I started I looked for that, where can I get information easiest? And now as I kind of expand, it might be a little bit opposite where I'm looking for areas that aren't super easy to get into and then hopefully the competition or just the saturation is a little bit less. But yeah, I would say your price point. Look at their GIS map, look at their zoning. Do you want to go for certain zoning of a property? Those are some of the things I also look for when I'm thinking if I'm going to sell these properties, who. What's their customer there? What type of person wants to buy these properties? Is the area. Is it growing economically or is it, you know, what's kind of going on there? Those are some of the things that I look at.

Great. I might start breaking the questions up a little bit just to make sure we get them all answered. But, Chris, do you want to. Do you want to talk to that as well, briefly, county research and how you started?

Sure, yeah. All the things that Mikayla said were 100% accurate and trying to be of the abundance mindset. I'll share a little secret that I use that I don't think is talked about very often, and that is looking for an imbalance in supply and demand. There are different tools online that you can see how many properties have sold in a specific area versus, you know, how many are advertised. And you look for that imbalance where, let's say there's 500 properties that sold in this county, but there's only 100 advertised right now. There's a clear imbalance, and I target those specific areas.

That's great advice. And then, Trey, how are you finding deals so early?

County research, just so all of my counties. I've just followed the recipe back to the whole flight school situation. I look for where there's land, investors. I found a budget that would work for me, and I haven't left that county yet. Still there.

Awesome. All right, Kaylin, coming to you for this next one. How I think your coach was Tate correct, or was it Eric? It was Eric. Okay. I couldn't remember. I'm sorry. So how did the connection you formed with Eric kind of help facilitate your growth in the business?

It was great. Definitely invaluable. I love all the systems in place. For those of you don't know, I'm a computer engineer. That's my day job. So I love automations, all that systems, all that stuff. And just having Eric and the group of coaches literally anytime I need to reach out and there's a million questions that you won't really think of until you just come up with these random situations that just happen to fall in your lap. So it was invaluable to have a coach there at any point I needed help, just reach out to me, jump on a quick call or a text message. And then there's also, like, when I was in. In coaching, you had like a strategy call at the beginning, which really kind of set the path for the full year. You have the quarterly calls and then the other calls that you have. So I think definitely the most valuable part of coaching was just having someone there basically whenever you needed them. And like I said, these random situations will pop up. They're rare and.

But.

But it's just nice to have that. So I think that bond was, Was great.

Yeah.

To have.

To have an expert in your wing, I think is helpful. Chris, what's your take on that? How has your connection with your coach facilitated the growth of your business?

Oh, it's been phenomenal. As with most things in life, you know, relationships are the key to success in this business. And Tate is my coach. He has been phenomenal, just like Michaela says. I mean, these different situations will pop up that you can't anticipate. But Tate has been there and he's seen it 100 times. And so he's able to. To talk you through it. He's been able to introduce me to others in the community that I would have otherwise never found, and they've been extremely valuable to my. To my business. And lastly, I mean, when you feel a little frazzled and overwhelmed, he's the perfect person to have a quick call with and he'll just, he'll calm you down because everything in the business is very simple. You just follow the recipe. But sometimes you just, you know, there's a lot going on and, and Tate's the perfect person to, you know, to bring you back down to earth when you get a little bit overwhelmed.

Oh, that's great. And then, Trey, maybe you could speak to this on a different level. What was your experience with going through flight school and the support you experienced there?

Oh, I, I mean, I asked a lot of. I asked a lot of questions. You know, I, I had the access to the boxer, so I would send you messages all of the time. And I had.

Was.

They had access to tape and, you know, coming in so new to the business and being able to go into flight school, it was like having Scott Todd there with you because we were going to meet every week, the classes are there, kind of, this is your homework for the next week. And you just, you know, I'm very task oriented, so them being able to just lay out a plan like that was great. And then when I, I would just reach out to you or. And was able to get my answers and, you know, it was great. I find it easy to have somebody you can go to at any time with dumb questions, but feel like dumb.

Questions, you know, no dumb questions, that's for sure. Awesome. Let's talk A little bit about sales. So Mikayla, Janet wants to know what's your sales secret sauce? So if someone is struggling with sales, what tips can you can you give them?

Good question. So I think I use Follow up Boss or my sales manager uses it. And that tool is amazing. I would highly recommend it. You get to see not only when they click on your emails and click on your links, but you can get a version where you record the phone calls. So that's really helpful. And it also just gives you the whole background of a person. So you know if someone's coming back in their retire kicker and you know they'll reach out to my sales assistant or sales manager maybe a couple months ago. They come back, she just reads the person's contact and it's like, okay, you know, you can kind of gauge how serious a person is. But I think marketing is key. Obviously the more eyeballs you get on it, I think is better. For me, what really kind of unlocked as I grew was I was able to access different paid platforms. So I still heavily use Facebook Facebook Marketplace but like Land Flip the Land networks, those paid platforms you get for me at least lower number of leads but they convert a lot better. So they're very serious buyers. They know what they're looking for. And you kind of like my sales manager doesn't really, to be honest, waste her time talking to them. They're very serious. So that was a huge change besides the typical. But like I said, I still use Facebook Marketplace, all of that stuff. But I think that kind of took it to the next level for me. Those certain paid platforms, they're not necessary but I found that they really helped me.

Great.

Chris, how about you? Any, any advice in the sales department?

No, I agree 100%. Follow up boss is a game changer as soon as you're. As soon as your business can support it. It's relatively low. I don't know if it's 100 bucks a month or something like that. So it's not free. But if you get any kind of volume, you're going to lose track of your emails. Keeping track of everything in outlook, it gets crazy pretty quick. So Follow Up Boss is a fantastic tool and my sales manager uses it as well. And as you start to think about your business and your roles, being more of a CEO rather than the sales manager yourself, you have a view where you can go in and see what your sales manager has been doing. But a little bit of secret sauce for me would be in your ad writing. Be specific and target a certain type of a buyer and don't be afraid that you're going to leave others behind. For example, truck drivers for whatever reason are a good target for certain buyers and a certain type of property in Colorado. So you start writing your ads specific to truck buyers. It doesn't mean that somebody who doesn't drive a semi truck isn't going to buy it. But I found that when you really start to dial in on a very specific type of a personality and a specific buyer, the ads start to gain a little bit more traction.

Okay, great. And Trey, you must have some sales tricks. You know, four months in doing deals.

I, I think that I agree with everything that they have said. I do all of those things. I use all of those services that talked about and, and I have a follow up system as well. I that the one, the most important thing is obviously let's just assume we're all marketing but the most important thing is to get them on the phone. I think if you get people on the phone you're just going to have more sales. You're going to be able to build a rapport, build a relationship. There's no tone and emails. There's no tone and direct messages and so you really don't get to know anything about them. And they don't know if you're a robot. You know, they don't know who you are in today's world. So I think if you get them on the phone, if you can't get them on the phone, I don't even put that much effort into them. My next conversation would be pushing them to get on the phone again. You know, every time I talk to them it's like, just call me, let's get this worked out. And the people who are interested, they'll call you and you're just going to close way more deals if you just get people on the phone. So I push for that.

That's great advice. Thank you very much. Mikayla, when did you start getting or when did you start using VAs and how did you find them?

I think my first VA was a referral. So it's a little bit different actually. No. So my first VA was list scrubbing. I want to say my second was a Craigslist ad poster. But I think it's a little unconventional to hire that one out. I just need the ads to get posted daily and I just didn't have the time to do it. That was through a referral. But mostly all of mine have been through upwork. I did hire one woman from hiremymom which is kind of like similar to upwork, but you just pay to post an ad and then you don't pay them weekly. But most of mine have come from upwork and honestly, pretty immediate. I like to hire out all the mundane tasks first, like list scrubbing, posting ads, that type of thing, and then work your way up to the. To hiring the managers.

Okay, great. What about you, Chris?

I think like Mikayla, I hire almost all off of upwork. I think I've hired one or two off of Fiverr. And I think my first VAs were a Craigslist ad poster. I found a really good Craigslist ad poster guy, although he struggled lately for some reason, Craigslist is changing. But then I had another one, an ad copywriter. That's something that's just not one of my skill sets. But so between Craigslist posting, Facebook posting, and writing ad copy, those are my first go to's.

Okay, great.

And how about you, Trey? Have you outsourced some things?

I outsource everything. The only thing I really do is sales. And my wife is. She buys. She's a great buyer, so she buys. She's been training her whole life for buying, so she's awesome at it. So she buys. She wheels and deals, negotiates buys. Right. And so she kind of handles all that. All I really do is sales. I farm out everything.

That's great. It's great. You guys complement each other so well. We have kind of a fun question here. Let's do best and worst. So, Mikayla, best, best deal ever. And I don't think this one has ever been answered, but worst deal ever. Maybe there isn't a worst deal.

I'll start with worst. I guess there was one property. I just bought it in New Mexico. I switched counties, didn't really market it, and I just wholesale it. I mean, I maybe made a couple hundred bucks on it. And honestly, that's probably the worst deal. I don't think I've ever lost money on a property. So nothing bad there really. Best deal. I was able to buy two neighboring lots right on the water in Florida. They had direct access to the Gulf, so I bought them both for total for 8,000. And I sold them on terms for 100,000. I think it was like 10,000 down a piece and then like 2,000amonth, something like that. So by far, best deal.

Mark. Mark's jealous. Look at him. That's amazing.

Yeah, it was a great, great deal.

That's phenomenal. Good for you, Chris. Worst and best.

The worst My friend Trey's on the call here. So I wholesaled him a property for 3,500 bucks. So I just needed. It was one of those. It's going back to an earlier question. I needed some cash in the business. I think I bought the property wholesale for $2,800 or three grand. And just with inflation and the way that the cost of land is going, I needed some money. Trey reached out and so we worked out a deal. So I made 500 bucks. That's. That's the worst deal, my best deal. I'm trying to think cash. I bought a property for $750 and I sold it for like seven grand like 15 days later. So that was really, really good. And not too far from that property, I bought another one for I want to say 40, $700. I got $1500 down and someone's going to be paying me $300 for the next five years for a really, really phenomenal yield rate.

Awesome. That's great. All right, Trey, Worst and best.

Well, the best ones are always the ones that I just bought and sell it. It sells within like two or three days, like just as fast as you get. The marketing of my very first deal was like that. I bought a wholesale deal in flight school on Friday. I think you actually helped me with this one, Scott. And I sold it on Monday. And I was talking to this guy and I had no idea I had what I was talking about, somehow got through it and ended up. He ended up paying. I, I made like two and a half times my money and he paid it out only on 12 month terms. So it was a awesome deal. And I was, I was hooked after that. You know, I haven't had one that good since. But I think those are the best ones for me is just when you buy something and as fast as you get it up, you've got it sold. I think those are the most fun for me, but I really haven't had a worse one other than just dumb mistakes I made. Learning and just trying to work through it and not being able to answer questions correctly and you know, those kinds of, the nervousness of all of that. But I really haven't had a bad deal or anything like that, I would say, at this point. But by the way, I love these stories.

We need to have something in the group where people are like bragging and I don't know about you guys, it's kind of ridiculous. If you listen to other. If you go to other business groups or other real estate groups, their worst deal is Bad. It starts with, I went into bk. Like, it bankrupted me and it took, oh, yeah, my worst deals. I made 500 bucks with Trey out of flight school. This is insane.

This is insane.

So I love it.

Yeah, I love it, too. The stories are phenomenal. And, you know, the amazing thing is that those deals come if you're just consistent. They don't come all the time. But if we go back to the consistency we talked about earlier, Chris, with mailing every day, marketing every day, that consistency is going to produce some golden nuggets for you along the way. So I think that's kind of the bottom line. Awesome. Trey. Yeah. Trey, you need to speak to this. So there was a question. How many have you bought and sold since you started the business in December?

I bought over, I think I met 45 or 47 properties bought, and I have sold 22. Exactly.

That's just phenomenal. That's so awesome. Good for you. Let's see here. Characteristics. So, Michaela, let's talk about vas a little bit. What are some characteristics of a valuable VA for you? And have you ever had to fire one?

Yes, I have had to let some go. Some things I look for, and it's kind of cliche, but a lot of people say, like, self starter, all that stuff. But really they do need to be. They're working. They create their schedule. I don't really dictate when they work. So they do really need to be diligent and get their work done. Depends on if you hire them on upwork or not. You know, you can see their. Their pictures of them working. But yeah, like someone who's a self starter, someone who's willing to learn in case I want to train them on something else. Because I've come across a lot of good VAs who, they started at one job and their job is really morphed into other things just because they're. They're willing to learn and they're quick at learning. So someone, yeah, self starter, good at learning. You know, willing to learn, diligent, organized. I like someone. Maybe this is a personal preference. I like someone who's easy to reach. We use Slack, and with it being virtual, it can kind of feel like, you know, if they don't answer within the day, it's like, well, are they actually working? You know, and you kind of question it. So I like someone who's, you know, open communication.

Great. How about you, Chris? What. What makes a good VA for you? And have you had to fire one?

Oh, yeah, we've had to move on from others. But in the real W2 world, I like to hire slow and fire slow, but in the VA world, I hire fast and fire fast. But what makes a good VA for me is somebody who's hungry, somebody who's gonna hustle. Particularly anything that's helping you sell land, they've got to get after it. And I've got to say, Tate introduced me to a really good sales va where he is, he seems to be hungrier than I am. He's waiting on me to deliver good so that he can get out there and get these things marketed. And I absolutely love that. And one comment that I've learned kind of from tape, kind of from real world is that if you're not keeping holding these VAs accountable and communicating with them regularly, not all of them, certainly, but some of them will take advantage of you. And I had that case where I was overpaying for a service, and I wasn't holding this person accountable. So you can't be afraid to make that tough decision. It's a business. It's not a friendship. And you've got to move on to the next va.

That's great advice. Trey, how about you?

I've switched from VAs a little bit, but I think that being pace, you know, showing a little bit of patience and being able willing to train and show them exactly how you want it. I, you know, I kind of went into it just assuming anybody who was considered was interested in a land land VA position, was already trained and knew everything about it. And I was leaning on them because I didn't know the answers to anything. So being being able to just show them what exactly you wanted and taking that extra time. But yeah, I, I, I've had to switch around. It's just part of it.

Okay, awesome. Let's see here. Mikayla, talk about where you find your managers. So did you find your managers on upwork? Are they in the country? Are they stateside? And then if you wouldn't mind maybe talking about how you pay them.

Sure. So my acquisitions manager found her on upwork. She actually, this was a little different. She actually didn't have any references. So. And this kind of goes back to the hiring thing when I first started. I would use their upwork, you know, reviews and stuff, and kind of take that as Bible. Or if they didn't have any, I would like, oh, I'll give them a shot. Now I kind of ask, do they have references, which some vas. I get it. It's they're like, okay, just look at my profile, but some are new. So for my acquisitions manager I saw she didn't have any and I said I see you don't have any reviews. Like do you have any references that I can call? So I called a guy that she used to work for, you know, said she was the best. So I found her on upwork and then she asked if she could actually work off of it. So I said sure. So she. There's actually this website, it's called screenish, like screen I S h. It's not the best tool but it's one of the, you know, timesheet tools. So she uses that. And an old acquisitions manager I had, I hired her on hire my mom and she just put it in a Google sheet. Like the hours that she works, there's a bunch of different ways and I would pay them via PayPal. So I have like my business accounts on a PayPal account. So that's how I pay them. So yeah, mainly find them on upwork. If you can find a reference, especially for these manager positions, I think that's great. I've had really good experience experiences when I've been able to do that. I like to now hire them stateside due to the time zones, the communication. For example, my marketing manager, I need her to speak English fluently. So that's kind of bad. Acquisitions managers talking to clients. Sales manager. So for the higher level positions I do like to hire stateside.

Awesome. Great answer. Chris, how about you? Can you speak to that?

Sure.

Well, for the intake manager I was using, or still am using land va4u. I was introduced to a great intake manager and things are going really, really well. And then out of nowhere, about two or three weeks ago they. They notified me that my intake manager was going to be away from work for a while. So they introduced me to a new one and I have to confess it's been a little clunky. So I had to step in and oversee the intake of a couple of properties recently and it just highlighted the fact of why we have VAs in the first place. I did not enjoy jumping back into that role, but it exposed a weakness in my business and that my systems aren't clearly defined where I was able to just bring in a new one and have her take over. On the sales side. I just got lucky and I put word of mouth out around locally here and somebody got back to me and she's turned out to be just absolutely fantastic. It's somebody who's semi retired but really has a knack for sales and so she's local and it's worked out really well. So I got lucky that way. Just through word of mouth.

Right, awesome. Just so everybody knows, we have about 10 minutes left for Guerrilla Geeks.

Here'S.

A good question about optimal startup budget. So, Mikayla, any, any suggestions on what you would want to start flight school with as far as budget goes?

So I'll speak personally. So I did the toolkit first and then quickly moved to flight school. And like I said, I was in college, so really did not have much saved. I've heard stories of people in debt, so I think, sure, it's great. If you have a couple thousand, you could buy a couple properties and not feel a lot of pressure with that. You're not putting your life savings into one property. I feel like that just allows you to flow, that flows easier. But I know people personally who've been in debt and started and me, you know, a couple thousand dollars.

Awesome. Chris, any, any advice on the budget to start with? Flight school?

Boy, this is such a common question. I want to say, you know, maybe three to $5,000. I was in a position where I had another deal where I had a little bit more than that. But going back to an earlier question, it depends on where you work. You can find areas where you can buy land really, really cheap and still get five to seven properties in your inventory. But I would say somewhere in the three to thousand dollar range, you should be able to have a real go at it.

Awesome. Trey, how about you?

If this is flight school specific, I would say whatever you have, you know, they have a formula that you'll help you figure it out and get you into the area you need to be in. I know that in my class we had people with all budgets, you know, from very small to robust. And I would say that they all were able to find counties that they were, they were able to buy and move forward in. So I would say if we're talking about flight school, I would just do it. You're. You'll end up buying more than you're expecting to. So, you know, you might as well just jump in there and just learn, figure it out. That's what I would say.

No, that's great advice. You know, I'd like to emphasize too that we, we've had people with a couple thousand dollars in flight school. We had a gentleman go through a couple years ago, Mark. I don't know if you remember Bill blanking on his last name right now, but he had about $1,500, $2,000 to put toward land. And he bought 10 land arb properties, and he sold them all by the time flight school was over. So you can do this. You can control property for 100 bucks and turn around and sell. We have some amazing land Arb stories lately in flight school as well. Comment from Katie. Keep in mind the cost of sending mailings. You want to have money over your purchase budget. True. Yep. You want money for mailings. But again, you know, I think flight school is awesome because we keep, you know, we. We teach you multiple strategies on the buy side for acquiring those properties. See if I've missed anything here. Mark's wondering why. Kind of wondering why Michaela's still working if she's doing deals like that. Those deals are phenomenal. I have a question, Trey. For anybody on the fence wondering if they should take the plunge with flight tools, what. What advice would you give somebody who's. Who's seriously considering?

I would say first, you should do it. If you. If this is something that you're interested in doing. You know, my questions to Scott in the very beginning, when I talked to him on the phone about it was like, is this real? Are people really doing this and being successful with it? And, I mean, is this a real thing? You know, anybody who probably stumbled across this probably has also looked at other business opportunities in some other way. And. And, you know, they're never what they seem. So that was my first question. I don't know if you remember that, and I do. And I would say I learned so much in it. It is. It is a real thing. There's no doubt that you can do it. The only thing I would say is you just have to show up every week, take your assignment, and do it every week, and that's it. The rest will take care of itself. And sometimes I was trying to figure out software or buying something that, you know, I was kind of in the middle and not really sure what I was doing. But I knew that I had to have a property on by Wednesday of the next week, and that that's what you needed to do, because before I got into flight school, I spent a month messing around with, just trying to get one county list together that I never even got anything mailed. So for me, I would say, sign up, show up, and just do your homework, and you'll have. You'll be successful in this. There's no doubt.

Awesome. Thank you. Chris, any advice for people on the fence about coaching, words of wisdom for those folks? Yeah.

Well, I mean, I agree with Trey 100% the one thing that I would add is that it's make sure that you have the time commitment. Depending on where you're at in your life, there's work to do. And these stories of folks like Eric and Mark and I'm sure you, Scott and Tate, who spend very little time in the business every week, that is a very, very real thing. But that doesn't happen right away. It's a lot of hard work. Early mornings, late nights, weekends. You've got to be able to put the time in. So if you're in a place in your life where you can make that time investment 100%, it's worth it.

Awesome. Thank you. And how about you, Mikayla? Any advice for those on the fence?

Sure, yeah, I totally agree with Chris. It is a time commitment if you want to, you know, make the most of it. And I see a question, how do we pay for coaching? It pays for itself. You have deals and it really just pays for itself. You could do it in, you know, different monthly payments, whatever, but the deals that I were doing, that I was doing. Yeah. And so I think definitely have the time commitment. Make sure you're able to devote the time that's needed to it. And I think don't overthink it. I think if you're confident and I think maybe you have like a gut feeling about it. But sure, there's, you know, analysis paralysis, all that stuff. You start kind of second guessing yourself and almost to the point, you know, maybe some people like self sabotage where they're like, oh, I don't know, and they kind of back out and say, don't second guess it, just go for it and your questions will be answered and, and as long as you're willing to put in the work and like everyone's been saying, be consistent, it should be successful.

Oh, that's great. I love the statement about it pays for itself. It really does. You know, when I, when Scott Todd was my coach six years ago, it paid for itself. Billy Rogers, I don't know if he's on the call this morning, but Mark, during one of the last grill the geeks, you know, he famously said he makes now more per month than what his annual coaching cost, so.

Exactly. I'm gonna steal that line.

Michael, if you don't mind.

Copyright, copyright that.

Well, it's too late. I actually just copyrighted so you could trademark it.

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