How Do We Go from Doing a Deal to Growing a Business?

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! Welcome to Land Geek Nightcap, fellas.

Cheers.

Tonight we're picking up exactly where we left off last week. So if you haven't watched part 1 yet, go back. We live in the rerun, totally fine. But last week we walked through the entire anatomy of a land deal, from choosing a market to mailing, intake conversations, due diligence, closing, marketing and sales, and getting paid all in 1 hour. It was the— it's the complete playbook on how we do land deals. But tonight, we're asking a different question. We're talking about a different topic. How do we go from doing one land deal to growing a scalable business? All right. Last week was a cliffhanger.

Last week was a cliffhanger.

Yeah, something like that.

Classic.

And also, you know, how do we do this without building another job for ourselves, right?. So I think it's kind of in line with Mark's second book, really, Dirt Rich 2.

Yeah.

Which if you haven't checked that out, you should. As always, I'm joined by, on the top right, Mike Zaino, Zaino, the Zen Master. Breathe in the mailing, breathe out the marketing.

My name's always spelled wrong.

Sorry.

But glad to be here. A little bit of wine. This is wine. It's a French wine. I Bought it for the show.

Yeah, you got it flown in? Yeah, nightcap.

Uh-huh, nightcap specifically.

Fancy, fancy guy tonight. And, uh, on the bottom of the screen, uh, we have handsome Rob, Eight Is Enough John Burnett, or John Burnett, John Eight Is Enough handsome Rob Burnett. It's a big mouthful, but it works.

Middle names.

Yeah. Yeah, and I should probably introduce— unless maybe you guys want to introduce me for a change. I don't know. This is Scott. Thank you.

He drinks the, uh, Johnny Lawrence beer.

That's right, Coors Banquet. It's one of the best, uh, one of the best hot summer day beers. Who agrees? Anyone?

I've never had it.

Oh, you haven't? No, yeah, it's just, uh, Coors Leaded. It's not Coors Light, it's Coors Leaded.

So, okay, I've had Coors Leaded.

Okay, yeah, but, uh, good to see everyone here tonight. Uh, people are, people are, uh, joining us as well. Ethan Lutz is here. Uh, Ethan, good to see you. I think he's from Idaho, John, if I remember correctly. Um, Kelly, uh, correct me if I'm wrong, Ethan, but I think that's right. It's good. It's, uh back, crawl into the back of my mind here. Kelly Lausanne is here. Scott Christianson is here. How are you, Scott? For all the other people watching, drop in the chat. Where are you from? Are you active land investors? Are you learning about this? Mike, you're good at this. Do you want to tell everybody what we do and why we're here?

Oh boy, the clock.

I mean, last week we set a clock and you didn't abide by it. So 30 seconds-ish.

All right, so basically we have, uh, become very proficient— some might say expert level— at buying land sub-$5,000. Means we buy land for $5,000, between $4,500, $5,000, or $6,000. And, uh, we can do that. We can buy it at 25 cents on the dollar, so we can buy it really inexpensive. We allow people to buy from us on owner financing, small easy monthly payments. The land moves quickly, we recoup our capital within the first year, then we have months or years of, of a, you know, a payment stream that— so it's a note we've created. And so we, we do this over and over again, and it gets to the point over time where it can replace your income and you can, um, just sort of live the life that you're looking to live, you know, where you want associate with who you want, do the things you want. Um, time freedom is what we're after, and this land business does that very well.

Couldn't have said it better myself. Thank you, sir. Must be the French wine.

The French wine. Yeah, French as well.

Imported.

Yeah, made from French raspberries.

French raspberries, the rarest of the raspberries.

Uh, well, uh, and, and for those in the chat also, maybe, uh, you know, again, tell us, uh, where you are in your journey. And I know some people on the call, uh, what I love about Nightcap is we have some people who just discovered us, we have some people who are in week 3 like, uh, Kelly Lazon here. Kelly, that sounds French.

It does.

I think it's a lazon. I think that's how you pronounce it. And, uh, we probably got— oh, Jeff Evenson, he's in flight school. We probably— and I know Scott Christensen's been in business for a while. So, you know, maybe put, uh, in the chat what are some challenges you're experiencing, uh, with growing your land business. We'd be happy to chat about those. And my memory served me correctly, served me right, uh, Ethan Lutz is in Courte. Oh, another French term.

Ethan, wow, for me we have a theme this evening, don't we?

Let me go grab my— what do you call those? Beret. I'm gonna grab my beret. Yeah. Uh, all right, well, fellas, so last week we did the anatomy of a land deal, so, uh, let's talk. Let's talk tonight about what a business looks like. And I think, you know, since we've all done this for a while, maybe we should reflect on our experiences a little bit, and let's talk about maybe some of the bottlenecks we experienced in growing an actual business for ourselves. But really, I think the business— we'll get to that— but really, I think the business, you know, in scaling business, it really, it really revolves around a few things. We want to automate, we want to delegate, we want to systematize to the best of our capability, and a lot of us are using AI to help with all of that stuff today. John was just bragging about this amazing process he created today, and Mike was bragging about his mediocre process, and I was feeling left out because I just, I'm just a regular guy. But anyway, no, just kidding. But a lot of us are using AI. I think, you know, Another thing that helps grow businesses is other people's money. So I think those are all the topics we'll talk about tonight. But, but, uh, Mike, you want to start off for us? What, what, what kind of bottlenecks do people experience, do you think, when trying to take this from doing a deal to growing a business?

I feel like you left out one of the 8s. You had automate, delegate, but we have eliminate.

Oh, I like that.

Some things you don't have to do, you know.

You, you—

oh, is it per— a perseverate? Is that right?

It's perseverate.

Yes, could perseverate about things that really you don't need to, you know. And, and things that, you know, maybe you could eliminate the stress of wondering if a mailer is going to produce. They all produce over time if you stay consistent. You might eliminate the stress of wondering if a property is going to sell. They're all going to sell. They all sell, right? Particularly when you buy the way we do. So there is this, uh, uh, oh, shout out to John, uh, right out of the gate.

Thank you, Reagan. I'll demo you your $20 next.

Um, but I think you're asking me if we're starting to scale the business, what sort of bottlenecks we might want to remove. Is that what—

yeah, what challenges, what challenges do you have, Mike, when in just doing, you know, what, what challenges did you experience in trying to grow this to something bigger that wasn't like cannibalizing your time?

Yeah, so your money— I think I touched upon this at the coaching live. We have an annual for some of our coaching clients to get together. When this, this business is comprised of a just a multitude of small little processes and different parts, right? But if in the beginning, it's just you, and you're the one doing everything, you can get fixated on one aspect of it, where you just forget about something else that's really fundamental. And I had— I talked there about how, you know, maybe going a couple months and realizing, oh my God, I didn't mail. Just because there was other parts of the business, not overly complex, but I was putting my attention there. Which removed my attention from something very basic, which is mailing to create deal flow. So I think that's one of the bottlenecks in the beginning. One of the limitations to your growth is if you're trying to do everything, you certainly can, but you can't focus on everything at the same time. So you could easily, um, forget things or delay things that need to happen, or if they were happening consistently, consistently, you'd have better results. So I think that's the first bottleneck. I mean, realizing this business is not overly complex. It's a bunch of small connected parts, but if you're trying to do them all, you just can't do them all at the same time yourself.

Yeah, I think it's a balancing act, right? Like, um, you don't want to do everything yourself, but you don't want to hire too early for every aspect, every part of the business either. And we've, and we've seen both extremes, right? With different Land Geek folks that have come through. Some people do everything themselves, like I did the first 3 years of my business, like I created another job for myself, admittedly, right? And then you have other folks who invest a lot of time and energy and money into creating all of the systems needed to help run this. I mean, we got automations running, we got people working in business, but we haven't had a sale yet. Right? So like, where do we meet in the middle with that? And I think that's a huge challenge when growing this thing is kind of knowing, I don't know, knowing when to outsource, when to hire, right? When to get things off your plate to create more space and time to do the things that are really important in the business.

But, you know, it's a really good problem. Mark used to always say, new problem, good problem. A good problem is you, you're doing something yourself, it's getting results, but you've reached the limitation of your own efforts. That's actually a good problem, right? Because you prove the model works. And now you go into the next phase, which we're going to talk about, like scaling it, right?

You—

it's—

and so what you're saying is sometimes people haven't really proven the model and they go right to scale. That can be disheartening. It can be dangerous because you could work yourself out of the business because you just created a bunch of complexity that isn't producing results yet.

Yeah, for sure. Well, let's, let's talk. Oh, good, John.

I think, yeah, it can be easy to just be distracted to like, so if somebody comes in this and they're an engineer, right? And they, they love solving problems and building systems. Um, it, it's— there's always something you can be working on. You can always like create the perfect system. And there are things that are less fun, like picking up the phone and calling owners. And so, you know, like I've seen some people who come in from that optimization standpoint and they're optimizing, optimizing, optimizing, optimizing. And they've never posted an ad, right? Like, and they've— and so they're building this like ideal system, but it's not actually— they're not actually a business, you know?

Right. Yeah, exactly. And, and, you know, to keep in mind, like, you need to pay for these things, right? You have operating expenses in your business. So, um, you know, I think I look back to when I was learning the, the business and my coach, the renowned Scott Todd, who taught many of us so much, just had such an impact on so many of us as we were growing our business. He basically said to me, Scott, hey, you need to know your numbers. Like, what are you spending this month? What are you— what are you— like, are you laughing at me? What are you spending this month? Right. And And, you know, I'd say about $1,500 I'm spending on mailings, some tools here and there. He's like, Scott, you need to find the cash this month to cover those expenses, right? So you got to cover the expenses in order to scale as well. So that's a whole nother discussion. Whole nother topic is how do we, how do we cover our expenses to be able to create a profitable business and scalable business?

Mike, I only laughed because I was, you know, wait, when are we going to put down this, remove this comment about how great John is? And there's any comments about me? And there were a couple, you know. Kelly, I'm looking forward to your first— oh my gosh, shout out!

Um, that's not a shout out, that's, that's, that's him saying I will shout you out in the future when I get my first—

no, no, I know that's Kelly saying that, but then we got Scott bought my fancy drinks and vocabulary. I'm just— oh, okay, what's that's what Bosman has taught me, perseverate. But, uh, and then, uh, yeah, Phil, uh, great to see you on here, Phil Winkler. So yeah, there's some quasi shoutouts there. Yes, thank you.

Yeah, some quasi shoutouts.

We'll count them as a quarter each of them.

So yeah, I mean, you're reaching a little bit on the shoutouts, a little bit stretch, reaching a little bit. But, uh, but John, do you, do you concur? Look at me concur fishing. Do you concur that the, that, uh, that, that we need to, that we really need to be on top of like early on what we're spending, uh, because that's going to affect our ability to grow this thing?

Uh, yes, I agree. I won't concur. I'm not gonna go for that.

Not gonna concur.

Yeah, but no, I do agree. I think that there is a You know, uh, there are kind of like— this is something that, that, uh, I've heard you say, Scott, which I think is true. Like, there's our number that we're looking for, right? Our, like, the— I want to get to $10,000 a month, I want to get to, you know, whatever that is. But the first number is covering those expenses for your business, right? Once you get to that, that gives you a level of freedom within your own business where it's like, this is running profitably, right? And then you can move forward to the next number, which is your ultimate number.

Love it, love it. Well, should we talk delegation a minute? So, um, delegation is the major way that we scale this business. So, Mike Zaino, what, what are some of the first things that you would delegate, uh, in this business year one?

Uh, year one I think one of the first things you delegate is probably due diligence, in the sense of that, um, you know, that's a pretty rudimentary process— calling the, uh, county, gathering information, just checking out different important facts relative to the property. And I think that we could outsource. So I think that's one of the first ones I would outsource. You know, it used to be scrubbing the data, but we don't really have to do that anymore. Right now, we can just go to something like Zamplo and just pull the data that we need. But that's the first one. I just, you know, you look at the process, you look at the simple tasks that start to repeat themselves that you could outsource. And I think one of them that sticks out right away is due diligence, for sure.

Mm-hmm. What about you, John? Any other, any other items that you would outsource year one to help you be able to focus on different aspects of your business that, that might move the needle money-wise? Oh, hello. We can't hear you, John. John's muted. No, we can't hear you.

Wow, we shut him down.

Shut him down.

Too many accolades. He's out.

Oh, now I can hear you.

Okay, great. Okay, what I would delegate. So my first big delegation that I did was intake manager. And that was really helpful for me for a variety of reasons. One thing is that you know, um, it eliminated, um, a lot of just the day-to-day work that I had to do in terms of like interacting with owners and just managing that process from start to finish. But I also found for me that I hit a point in my business where I kind of had this, um, like I, I would— I got people mailing me accepted offers or counteroffers, and I put it in a stack, and then I was working on this other stuff. I'm gonna work on my website and then I'll get to that after I'm done with that. And then I didn't get to it that day. And then the next day the same thing would happen and the stack got bigger. I got to this point where every time I looked at it, I just like felt this pit in my gut. Um, and then I hired an acquisitions manager. And she worked all the way through that entire stack and got me to the point where, like, I'm like, okay, I guess we're buying that. Yep, we're buying, you know. And, and it was a big turning point in my business where, um, where, you know, we, we got on the other side of that, that hump and then bought a lot of land and made a lot of money off of that.

So No, I love that. That's a, that's a huge, um, that's a huge role to delegate. And, um, you know, I think that there are things that you want to delegate year one that just make good sense, like financially. Like you think about the $5 an hour jobs or the $10 an hour jobs, like that would be due diligence, right? Uh, $10 to $15 an hour job would be intake manager or acquisitions manager. You know, some other things that, that might be a little bit cheaper are outsourcing some of your marketing. You know, maybe you could hire somebody to create Facebook ads for you and actually post for you, right? Or to create ads that you utilize on land selling websites or to create ads that you utilize for email campaigns. That's something I did really early on is because I couldn't— I knew I needed to engage with my email campaign list twice a week, but it was, it was just a lot to sit down twice a week to come up with content to consistently mail that list. So that's something I outsourced early on. I do think there are things though that you should delegate that maybe we hold on to a little bit too long to scale. And I'll give you an example. So I used to rely on myself for mailing campaigns, right? I'd say, okay, I'm gonna sit down first of the month every month and I'm gonna mail. And you're right, John, you have all this other stuff going on and you're supposed to mail first of the month, which is a money-making activity. And then you realize 2, 3 weeks later you haven't mailed. Well, in all honesty, you've lost money then, right? Because we make money when we mail. So it really helped me when I delegated to my acquisitions manager not only the all, all of the intake conversations, but also a mailing schedule, right? Like, we're gonna sit down before every calendar year, and we're going to determine, okay, here are 12 to 24 areas that we're going to mail. And these are the areas we're going to mail every single month. And Love, you need to hold me accountable. My acquisitions manager's name is Love, just for everybody that knows. Honey, it's just, she's an acquisitions manager. Love is going to hold me accountable, right? And she's going to say, Scott, it's the first of the month, Time to mail. And she's breathing down my neck a little bit, which is really great because there's some accountability then provided from my intake manager to me to make sure that we're sending the mailers out, which are really the money-making activities.

Yeah, great point, great point. And I, I think you, um, a couple of things. One, John, I think you're right when it comes to intake because The thing about the intake is that it can, you know, these conversations take time, right? So if you're focused on, uh, building some, some, some flow in your business, um, definitely feels like it could detract to have to take some phone calls that, you know, are going to take some time, right? Because those sometimes are building relationships and whatnot. So I think that is a really powerful, um, piece to outsource. And Scott, um, you know, 100% right. The, the VAs can start to create accountability for you, right? Because, you know, what better way to create accountability is than to put people in your business who are going to hold you accountable, right? So I, I think that's, um, that's really important as well. That's another piece. I don't think we focus on that piece enough, actually. We talk about scaling, the fact that these people that are going to work with us on our business, they become accountability partners for us, right? Because they want to do their job, and for their job to happen, things need to happen, right? So they're going to prompt you and stay on top of you. And, um, I think it's a great example.

Yeah, I think we need to get out of our own way in so many parts of this business, right? Um, oversee things, work on the business, but not not be, you know, consumed by the inner workings of the business. Yeah. And when you can, when you can hire other people in your business to help do those routine things, who maybe aren't, you know, like, I worry about them, you know, I might worry about the money, right? Like, oh, you know, I just bought thousands and thousands of dollars worth of land this month. Right. As a new person, as a new person in the business, year 1 through year 5, probably your eyes are really on the bank account a lot. And you're like, well, I don't want to, you know, I gotta be like, I gotta be responsible with my money here. But I also need to like, I also need to mail because that creates the money-making opportunities, even if you wholesale, right? So if you approach, if you take the emotions out of it a little bit, and you have just a routine for mailing, that's going to create opportunities for you to make money wholesaling. Yeah, so just another, another thought.

That's a great point. And I'm looking in the comments and a couple of things that stand out. Um, Kelly, you know, oh, I'm not looking forward to marketing. That's a common thought. I mean, we get— I feel like there's two mountains we, we climb initially in this business. One is to buy land and one is to sell land, right? So, and clearly, you typically conquer mountain one first, right? Climbing that mountain. But the second one, marketing. But I think what, you know, I think something that could help, and this might also answer a little bit of Jeff's question about guidelines for roles you're talking about. If you think about the finished product, right? If we're talking about marketing in Kelly's comment, You know, you think about an ad that's out there, whether it's on Facebook Marketplace or a land site or whatnot. So you think about that finished product, and then you think about, well, what are the components of that finished product? Like, what allowed this to— and then you can start to see the individual pieces, and then you start to really get a grasp on what you need to do, right? If a finished ad has, you know, the ad copy, the pictures, the— all of these things, right? So then what do you need to make a good ad? Well, there it is. You just break it down into its ingredients, and then you start to figure out how you create each one of those ingredients, right? So I think that's a way to sort of take the pressure off it. I don't know if that's the right word, but you know what I'm saying.

Follow—

are you tracking? That's the thing I like to say now. I heard someone say it to me.

I think there's tracking and there's like just creating processes, right? Yeah. So Um, like, John, do you ever draw— draw out— do you ever draw— draw out your business? Draw out your business.

That is a difficult word, particularly in New England.

Draw.

We can't say that word.

Draw out my business.

Pirate out that business.

But yeah, I do. So like, one of the things we talk about a lot is Um, swim-laning your business. And by swim-lane, um, if you, if you think about it like basically you've got a piece of paper and you've got, uh, distinct rows. The top row is you. These are the things that you're responsible for. The next row down is everybody else, right? So you've got like virtual assistants, helpers, and then below that you've got services and tools.

Right?

And so you can map a process from start to finish. Oh, and then below that you have other people that are, you know, like your sellers and stuff like that, right? So you can map out a process from start to finish and you can say, okay, uh, I pick out where I'm gonna mail, so it starts here, and then I send it to my virtual assistant over here, and then she loads it into this tool, and then it goes back up to me for approval, and then it goes down and around, and you can kind of see where things are at. And early on in your business, you'll find out, like, you'll map out these processes and it's just you. It's just the top bar. I'm doing everything. And so when you go through that process, you can identify kind of holes. For me, I would go through this and then I just started highlighting the things that I just didn't particularly enjoy or wasn't good at, you know, and those were the things that I focused on. On delegating, which was helpful.

Yeah. I think it's important to document all those processes no matter where you are in the journey because it's gonna be you heavy initially. Right? But to document it all out, I think is really helpful because you see it all on paper. I mean, in today's day and age, people are so spoiled. Right? You can draw something out and then upload that diagram into an AI tool and say, help me create an SOP for what I just drew out. Like, this is exactly how I buy a property, right? From this step to this step to this step. And anyway, I think it's helpful to draw it out. That's something I did from the beginning. And there's this— there's this actually— there's this good book that I would recommend to people who are interested in scaling their business. And it's actually called Get Scalable. It's by Ryan Deiss, D-E-I-S-S. And he's a big proponent of drawing everything out. Right? So draw everything out first, and then, John, you know, John, create your swim lanes. Like, where are you with all of these processes? And then the goal is for you to be really, you know, really unattached from all of the things that you draw. That you draw, right, in your process, except for maybe the most important, the most money-making things in your business. So check out that book. It's a good book for helping scale. But I think drawing out the business is really helpful in scaling and then taking yourself out of roles that are not necessarily money-making roles in that diagram and then outsourcing those things.

I also find that the biggest bottleneck in my business tends to be me.

Yeah, for sure.

So, you know, like, there— sometimes you'll map out these processes and you're like, there's like 5 approval points from me in this process, right?

How do I get that down to 1 or maybe 2, right?

And you can really re-engineer these things so that, you know, there's there's less complexity and just, you know, less writing on you.

Yeah, I think that'd be a great book, John. I can see it now. It's kind of like written like a kid's book. I Am the Bottleneck, and it's a caricature of you and your neck as a bottle. I think it'll be a great, great-selling, uh, book.

I like it.

John the Bottleneck.

John the Bottleneck. Bottleneck John.

John.

Bottleneck Burnett.

I mean, we, we expect a song next week, uh, titled Bottleneck John. That's a great title for a song.

It's like a pirate name.

Yeah, it's like it should be like a pirate theme song or maybe some type of, uh, Bottleneck John. Uh, that's awesome. Well, uh, Mike, what other things do we need to scale? So I can think of one thing that that I started doing. Maybe you can complete me on this. Like we used to do back in the day.

Mm-hmm.

One thing I used to do, something that I didn't do initially that I do now to grow my business more quickly. Uh, it has to do with, well, that's going to give it away. See if you can complete me on this. Yeah.

You're really, really not giving me any hints.

Really vague there, aren't I?

Like wicked vague. Is that what we'd say up here in New England? So you're saying— why don't you repeat the question one more time?

Okay, so there's one other thing that I think really helped me scale in my business, and I was very hesitant to take this approach initially. But really, when I utilized this approach, I was able to buy more land, I was able to create more velocity for myself, Oh, you're talking about other people's money. Other people's money. Ding ding ding ding ding ding ding. You complete me. Yeah, I mean, I kind of—

that's, you know, I think that can be scary. I think, I think step one to other people's money, honestly, in my, my thought process, is partnering with people. Uh, you bring other people into the deal with the partnering Somebody who are wondering— if you're wondering what I'm talking about, take straight debt or other people's money, you're going to get a much higher bite of the— a much bigger bite of the apple, right? But it's you, you make the decision, right? You're the one that's really owning the deal. When you partner with somebody, you give up a bigger bite of the apple, but you also have another set of eyeballs on it. So you start to get confidence the more you partner with other people. That's a real benefit of it, right? That's why I think there's no shortage of deals out there. So who cares if you partner with people initially on some deals and you get another set of eyes and you split the profit? Over time, it just helps you develop into a more seasoned investor where you're like, you know what, I'm good. I can make a determination on my own whether or not this is a good deal. I'm ready to use other people's money and not partner. I think that's the progression you should follow.

I think arbitrage too.

Like, I, I—

that was one tool that I leaned on to scale, where you're like, all right, I've got all this momentum, I'm able to sell X amount of properties, but I, you know, I, I only have enough money to buy Y amount of properties. And so I could get land arbitrage properties in, and that allowed me to maintain momentum and start scaling a bit. So I think that's good. And then the other thing that helps with getting other people's money, uh, it's just having a track record, right? If you've got— if you're looking to utilize other people's money for your first deal, that's a harder conversation than your 20th, right? Or your 10th, right? So building up a track record, you can, you know, you can do that either through partnerships or through land arbitrage or just using your own money. And then approaching other people's money as well.

Love it, love it. We should probably hit some comments here. Uh, Scott Christianson: Mark's books have been a good breakdown of the roles. Dirt Rich 1 and Dirt Rich 2 have a good overview. He's outsourced due diligence, not fun for him and doesn't have time, and pays for photos too. Love that. Um, Be here. And Scott also, I figure once I get sales going consistently, I'm going to get an intake manager. Yeah, I mean, I think, uh, the, the income you're bringing in justifies, you know, hiring more people, right? So although sometimes I think you need to hire people when maybe you're not quite ready for it, uh, because they, because they, uh they are able to work on things in your business that allow you to work on the money-making things, right? So it's kind of a, I don't know, it's an interesting balance. Awesome. Well, so let's do this. Let's do a little game, shall we?

Ooh.

Okay, so I'm gonna— it's a little rapid-fire game. I'm gonna ask a question and I want you guys to answer. All right, um, do we get points?

Is it—

I mean, I'll figure out point system later.

Okay, because like, so at this point the whole game is you just ask us questions and we provide answers.

Yeah, and I will judge, I will judge who has the best answer.

We're gonna do like a a nightcap Jeopardy or a nightcap, uh, you know, Wheel of Fortune.

That would be fun. Yeah, Wheel of Fortune. Yeah, that'd be, that'd be a challenge to pull off with the wheel and, you know, the puzzles.

We could do that though with a couple of, uh, viewers, and then maybe they could win something. Maybe we could even, uh, wrangle in a starter kit or something like that. Would be really cool.

We could bring in 3 contestants and do an actual Wheel of Fortune game. That would be fun. Let you work on that, Mike.

I'll work on it. I'll work on it.

Great game show host, Mike.

Oh, thank you. You would. I think, yeah, I'll just flip the letters.

Maybe we should do that Dirt Rich Summit, like a live Wheel of Fortune.

Oh.

Family Feud. We've surveyed 10 land investors and they said—

speaking of the Dirt Rich Summit, oh yeah, we should be talking about that. It's important. This is our— this, this is our most exciting event of the year. Uh, it's in Austin, Texas this year, uh, again October 1st through the 3rd. We're looking at, uh, what, 2 and a half months away.

It's coming quick.

Pretty close.

Why didn't that work? I'm trying to post a comment and that didn't work.

Oh, I see it.

All right, I'll do it again.

August, Texas, 12.

Well, you see it, but I don't think that— I don't think the folks see it.

Oh, okay.

All right, let's do this. There we go. Uh, Dirt Rich Summit, Austin, Texas, October 1st through the 3rd. Um, Really fun event, right? I think what's really cool is if you're a beginner, come sit in the main room. There's a couple hundred people, there's a ton of energy, you learn a ton, right? Uh, for those who are contemplating coaching, like, sign up for coaching now and you can come and get into the coaching live room because coaching live is running concurrently. So we have the main room, but then we have the coaching live room where 30 people are working on their businesses. They're breaking down their businesses and building them up again an entire weekend.

Right.

And, you know, Scott Christiansen, you'll be in that coaching live room, which is exciting. But, but it's pretty neat how we have people, you know, all walks of life at all different stages in the game of land investing at that weekend.

I do concur.

Oh man, didn't even fish for it, you guys. I didn't even go concur fishing.

I need to sip some wine.

Well, I'm excited for this game called Questions and Answers.

Okay, you ready?

Yeah, yeah. All right, do I have to like— how do I— how do I chime in?

You really— I know, I'm gonna go just one-to-one. I'm gonna go one. Let's start with you, Mike.

Ready?

I get a hard question, I know it.

All right, no, that's not bad. Year 1, what is one thing every investor should automate?

Year 1, everybody should automate mailing.

Mailings, I concur.

Concur.

Everyone should be automating their mailings because like you don't want to be that guy. You don't want to be that 2015 guy who's, you know, printing, printing letters, stuffing envelopes, licking envelopes, stamping envelopes. You don't want to be that guy. No, it's going to save you so much time and energy. So you should all be automating your mailings. With what tool, Mike Zadel?

Uh, LG Pass.

LG Pass helps us automate our mailings. All right, John, ready?

Like when you did your mailings, did Did you guys ever accidentally get the ones that you have to lick instead of like this?

Oh, yes.

Yeah. You're just like, you're just— that flavor is just in your mouth.

Yeah.

Like, I just said 250 letters and I have no saliva in my mouth.

It's just— I use the sponge technique, sponge with water.

I use the licking technique.

I'm sorry. Next time, if that ever happens again, John, stick a little sponge, a little bit of water. Okay, just don't over-soak the envelope.

Noted. I will tell past John. I will take my DeLorean.

That's awesome. Uh, okay, John, here comes your question. Okay, year, year one, what is something every land investor should delegate? Due diligence. Due diligence. Love it. What's the, what's the next thing after due diligence?

What's the next thing, uh, after due diligence? I feel like I'm gonna get this wrong.

I don't think there's the right answer.

Oh, well, in that case, uh, I'm gonna say I would probably do Intake Manager.

Intake manager. All right, Mike, what would you do? Be due diligence first, followed by due diligence.

We already have— what, uh, so are we talking automate versus delegate? Is that what you're getting at here?

We're talking, uh, we're talking delegate right now.

Ah, uh, well, I think by the end of year 1, you're ready for an intake manager for sure. I mean, because that's going to free up your time and energy to start looking at other parts of the business. So I concur.

See, I, I disconcur because—

is that even a word? Is that Scrabble?

I don't know.

I don't think so.

I concur.

Is it— what is the opposite of concur? I'd like to know.

Rob, do you ever concur? John just robbed you.

Maybe one of the con is with, uh, maybe it would be contracur. I think that could be a contracur. Yeah, like the contrabassoon. Uh, I'd like to know, maybe Scott Christianson could check for us, what's the opposite of concur? I mean, I disagree, right? But that's not—

because every time you say Christian, I think of Sister Christian, the song Sister Christian, Sister Christian, 1980. 1980.

Night—

night, uh, what's the name of the band?

Night— uh, Night Ranger.

Night Ranger. Oh, what a good song.

Is it 1980? We'll have to check. But anyway, I digress. So, so to me, I actually liked the intake conversations. So Night Ranger right there, Kelly Lazon. Kelly Lazon. Night Ranger, what year? And I think what I outsourced first, which was my big pain point, was some of the marketing stuff. Like, I hated marketing. So I think if I can outsource the marketing and spend time on the conversations that I enjoy on the intake side, why not do that? Silence. Dead silence.

I'm looking at the comments.

I just said, ah. I'm looking at the comments. I feel like we're not in sync tonight. I feel like we're not in sync.

No, no, no, we're doing good.

But Jeff Scott talks and there's a 5-second pause.

I was looking at the comments. Opposite is dissent, said Jeff. That makes sense.

I think I dissent— is that the word? I dissent.

If you disagree with the concur, it's very similar, right?

But is that the verb? Is that the correct—

I still like contracur. I'm going contra.

All right, I'm gonna I'm gonna figure this out. Um, okay, next question. You ready? Yeah. Year 1, what is something— uh, Mike Zane, what is something land investors should never delegate in year 1?

Uh, you know, I think it's gonna go between, you know, the title search versus, um I'll go with title search. I think you should still really be dialing into that, which is part of due diligence, but I'm, I'm breaking it apart from that. You really want to be confident that you have a clear chain title. Bless you.

Oh, God bless you.

Thank you.

I can't believe how wrong I was, by the way. I really thought Sister Krishna was 1980, but it's 1984, so I'm feeling a little bit inept right now. John, what is something someone should never delegate year 1?

Uh, I'm gonna go sales for 400. Wait, did I use that right? Sure.

Sure.

I would say, uh, sales. There are maybe some exceptions. Like I've seen some people very rarely delegate sales within that first year. But usually it doesn't go well. That's usually a decision that you regret, and that's the point at which your business stops moving forward until you realize that you regret it.

Oh, we don't— and we don't want that. All right, the opposite of concur: I object. Oh, I oppose. I differ. Right, dissent. All right. I like kontraker better.

I think kontraker all the way. I want a t-shirt that says concur on one side and kontraker on the other.

I like kontraker. I really like that. All right. Okay, cool. So here we go. Think of yourselves back in 20, what, '14, Mike? Is that when you started this? Yeah. And 2018, John? 2017?

2017, yeah.

2017. And 2015 myself. John, what is one tool that you could not live without today? That you didn't have when you started?

I mean, it's probably going to be AI, right? Like, right now, Claude is becoming more and more something that I'm building with. So that's— but I would say, if I weren't going down the AI route, I would probably say Airtable has been just a really nice tool for me, uh, and building my business, because you can store all of your property information in there. You can build a bunch of processes around it as well. It, you know, interacts with other tools really effectively, and it's way better than keeping track of things in a spreadsheet, right? The best thing about a spreadsheet is that you can do whatever you want. The worst thing about a spreadsheet is you can do whatever you want. There are no rules. There's no structure, right? And so Airtable gives you kind of the benefit of a spreadsheet where you've got all the rows and the columns and everything, but it adds a little bit of structure to it. And so it's a little bit more defined and has better, I don't know, it's just lasted longer in my business.

I love that. Mike Zano, one tool that you couldn't live without today.

Yeah.

You know, I, I can't say AI.

No, I won't. I, I had done the business for years, um, hand mailing, uh, merging with Excel and Word. So I'll say LG Pass. I, I, I, I just did that for so long and it was just no bueno, no, no fun.

Yeah, that's an amazing tool. And you know what, there are exciting LG Pass updates occurring.

Right, like you're on the inside. I don't know these things. What do you got? How does he get the inside scoop, John? Do you know about this?

He's the beta tester. No, uh, I'm not a beta tester, but, uh, Mike, you're not— maybe you're not in LG Pass much anymore because you're, you know, your team is in there, but there's some pretty cool things happening. It's like Tria Harris is in charge now of LG Pass and Geek Pay, and SH stuff is getting done, man. Like, she's getting some stuff done, which is pretty cool. Uh, did you know now, guys, that in LG Pass, when you create a sale, you click this little button and it creates a loan in Geek Pay? You don't even have to set up the loan in Geek Pay anymore. It's done for you, which is pretty amazing. Like, think of all the time— yeah, that's right— that's being saved by that. Um, and it's just getting better all the time. There's a property tax payment portal, right? They're remailing features. Um, it's just, it's just such a, such a, it's just a tool that has saved us hours and hours and hours. Um, I think I would say two tools that I rely heavily on that, um, I couldn't live without today. One would, one would be Geek GeekPay, because like I've tried managing stuff on spreadsheets before and it was a disaster. Yeah, so GeekPay is really phenomenal for that. And then we're very Google Drive heavy in our business. I think Google Drive is a, is a tool that most everybody, uh, relies on and needs to, to learn a little bit about because there are some pretty phenomenal capabilities, uh, for Google Drive. And you know what, do you guys ever talk to people who are a little bit intimidated with the technology of this whole business?

Sure, but I don't think it's as technical as they might think. But, uh, because these tools are all essentially websites you log into, right?

It's not like overly complex, and it builds over time too, like You know, I always think about it like we— so my family got 6 kids, we've got a bunch of routines, all these different things that we do. If I were to look at all of the routines and all the things that we do now when we had one kid, I would be totally overwhelmed. I'm like, how are we gonna— right, this and that and the other thing? And it's like, well, the reality is it built gradually over time. You start with this and then you keep this thing and you get rid of that thing, and then you got this thing. And then so, you know, all of us, all the tools we implement here, you know, it was just one at a time, gradually built up.

I love it. You know what I also love about today? Have you guys heard of the site or even not?

Oh yeah, Udemy.

Udemy, Udemy, I don't know how you pronounce it, but There is a cheap course. There's a cheap course on Udemy for everything, right? You can pay $10 to take a 20-hour Google Drive course.

Yep, right.

You can take a YouTube course. What's that?

There's another thing available called—

what's that? Well, yeah, it's just free. I mean, it's not free. I mean, there's a subscription. If you want the bells and whistles, right? But yeah, I mean, AI nowadays, right? But, but every once in a while you find somebody who's a little bit— there are people out there, believe it or not, boys, who are anti-AI, or they don't want to— they're a little bit nervous to go that route. I think Udemy is a nice option for that, or YouTube University, right?

Old school online education.

Old school online. Yeah.

Exactly what people used to do back in the 1930s.

All right, in the 1930s.

Yeah.

All right, let's do one last thing, which I think will be fun. Uh, corsiva, that's another one. Kelly, thank you. Kelly does all— thank you, appreciate that. Um, okay, let's do this. Let's do this one last thing. I think this would be fun, good way to end, uh, the podcast. Um, tonight was about building a business and like We could go on about this for hours and hours and hours. It's really hard to do this in 1 hour, but really comes down to, right, like you need to automate things, you need to delegate things in order to create a system, right? People have AI now, which is helping them accelerate greatly. But I think we all have those realization points in our business where where you were like, you know what, I've created something where, I've created something that's a real business. And I know that because of blank. So Mike, was there, is there something in the past where some moment that you can reflect on where you realize, you know what, like I have built a real business because blank. Any idea?

A property sold and was automatically loaded up into Geek Pay, and the loans— the loan was, uh, created, initialized, and payments started coming in, and I didn't do anything.

You didn't do anything?

Yeah, well, I shouldn't say I didn't do anything. I, I was the architect, but I didn't do anything in those The Architect.

You're that, you're that, you're that weird guy in The Matrix, the Architect. Yeah. I love that. So you took a, you took a deal full cycle.

And without taking it full cycle, without taking it full cycle. Right.

I love it. John, any memory in the past that comes to mind?

I think that for me, like, one thing is when you start really feeling the time freedom piece, right? So moments where I was— I mean, I had this, like, I was with my family hanging out in a pool, and, you know, down payment comes in, right? And I don't know, Like, and I didn't talk to anybody when we bought this property and I didn't talk to anybody when we sold this property, right? And that was managed by my team. And so those are the points that, I don't know, feel the most impactful to me.

Yeah, for sure. Awesome. Yeah. And I guess I'll leave, I'll give an example as well. So, um, a couple years ago I was in the hospital for a week And, uh, 10 years ago it would have been a different story. Like, I would have been stressed. I would have been worried about, you know, covering patients. I'd have been worried about income because I was in the hospital for a week and I couldn't work for a while. Like, I would not have been able to do my physical therapy job for a while after I'd been in the hospital for a week. So if I had had this surgery back in 2015, it would have been tough. But I had the surgery in 2022, I think. And, uh, there was no greater feeling than knowing, like, when I was laying in that hospital bed, my— like, we had sales, right? And I wasn't doing anything. So that to me was like— it really dawned on me. And that was 7 years after I'd started, but it really dawned on me that, man, I had created a business here. I had a team of people working for me. And they were doing deals for me when I was sick. Like, that's pretty cool. That gave me some huge perspective in this business.

Awesome.

So, so I think when you, when you feel those, those are freedom moments, right? We talk about those, those are freedom moments when you, when you can experience something like that and realize, you know what, I am free if I'm able to like either spend time with my family or or, you know, need to like concentrate on myself for a little while because I'm not doing the best, but my business still runs, uh, and maybe I check in for 5, 10 minutes a day on my computer, which is pretty low-key. I think that's when you get there. So, so scaling is what this thing is all about. Like, the reason we do this is to create time freedom for ourselves. And Mike You've done it, John, you've done it, I've done it. We've all created businesses where we can literally spend 5 hours a week in our business and make a lot more now than we did 10 years ago in our W-2 working 40, 50 hours a week, right?

I concur.

You concur?

For the last sip of wine, I concur.

The last sip of fresh wine. Fresh wine. Fresh wine.

Fresh one, fresh one.

All right, everybody, and, and one last thing. You don't— it doesn't happen overnight, right? It takes a few years to get there. So stay the course, just keep showing up, and you'll get there. But this is fun. So next week we're off, fellas. We've decided Mark's off, so we're off. Like, that's how it is. Mark's taking off July, we get a week off.

We have one week.

We get one week off and then we'll be back beginning of August with another, uh, another new topic. And, uh, yeah, guys, this was fun.

This was—

I have an important question. What's that? Who won the game? Oh, uh, that's right. Was I keeping score? Were you keeping— it was— I mean, you guys are so awesome. I mean, of course it was a dead, dead tie.

Yeah.

Dead tie. Yeah, yeah, dead tie. So, all right everybody, thank you for a good night. Mike, you good?

I'm good, great being here.

John, you good? I'm good, I'm great. Good to see you guys. We'll talk to you in a couple weeks. We're off next week, and, uh, keep the Dirt Rich Summit on your radar, October 1st through the 3rd. Night everybody, see you there.