How Important Is It To Make Decisions Solely On You?

Hey, it's Mark Podolski, the land geek, with your favorite niche real estate website, www.thelandgeek.com. and on this week's Roundtable podcast, we have the usual suspects. Minus minus one, we got the Zen master. Breathe in the mailing. Breathe out. The marketing. Mike Zano. Mike, how are you?

I'm doing really well. Glad to be here.

Glad you're. You're here and not risking your life in some, you know, towering inferno. So great, we've got the technician, Eric Peterson. Eric, how are you?

Good.

Happy to be here today.

Good to see you. And it's always a little uncomfortable for me to see you without, like, you know, a pork rib in your mouth. Coming from the what? Coming from Tennessee.

You got to be kidding me, man.

You've got the most feared woman in the country. Let me finish my intro. The terrorist hunter, Mimi Schmidt. Mimi, how are you?

I'm doing much better. It's nice to see you.

You're on the mend, which is great.

I'm off my crutches after five weeks.

Fantastic. What?

You just said you couldn't do the tip of the week.

I am off my crutches. I still have that huge boot on.

Still injured, but I'm still injured.

I still work two hours at PT every Tuesday morning.

We're not going to get through this intro.

Can't do the tip of the.

I mean, this is the show.

This is the show. I love it when you call me Big Pop. Tate Litchfield. Tate. How are you?

Good. Yeah, Like, Mimi, full of excuses.

Fantastic.

Was that a dig?

No, Just because she made me do tip of the week last week. Like, totally on the spot, which is.

Not that good, by the way.

Guys, you do not want Mimi to cloud up and rain all over you, okay?

Oh, Mimi and I, we're tight. We're tight, but all right, Scott.

Speaking of Scott, you love him. The professor, the flight school Sherpa, the man, the myth, Scott Todd from Scott Todd.net landmodo.com learn anything about anything. Investor ninjas.com Scott Todd. How are you, Mark?

I'm doing great, man, but it looks like you might need a haircut.

I just got a haircut, and we can't tell. I'm growing it long. And I'll take it, because right when I got on Eric Peterson's like, man, your hair looks great.

So I look like man bun?

Like, man bun, bun, bun.

Oh, man bun.

Wait, were you able to understand Eric because he didn't have, like, the rib out of his mouth or what?

Like, no, he had the burnt ends going, and I could.

He might have said, you need a haircut. And it sounded like good haircut, but the pork rib kind of muffled it.

Yeah, the pork rib muffled it.

Muffled it.

Wait, if you turn around, is there a man bun back there?

There might be.

Oh.

For those of you who can't see the video.

Oh, tune in on YouTube to see does Mark have a man bun or not? Anyways, we got a great topic for the roundtable, and so I'm gonna just kind of phrase it this way, because this is. This is sort of a pet peeve that I have. Like, other people, like, notice it in me, and they call me out on it, and now I'm calling other people out on it. We'll just pick on Scott Todd. So I'm in Tampa, and we go to this really nice place, like, incredible restaurant called Burn Steakhouse. Of course, Tate couldn't make it, but whatever. That's a whole other story. So it's a massive menu. Like, you can't go wrong on this menu. And I look up at the server and I say, what do you recommend? And the server kind of looks at me, and Scott looks at me like, why are you asking the server? Like, well, you know, well, they work here. They kind of know what's good. Like, you can read the menu. You know, what you like, pick what you like. He doesn't know your tastes. He might think that, you know, the. The. The lamb chops are good, and you don't like lamb. Maybe you're a vegan, whatever it is. And so, you know, and so we get these questions oftentimes, and whether it's a tax question or a accounting question, but ultimately the answer is, well, it's your business. What do you think you should do? So, Scott Todd, give me an example of this in the real world in our land investing niche.

Okay? So, you know, as an example, someone will say to me, hey, I can, you know, I think I can buy the property for X dollars, you know, $2,000, for example, but I might only be able to sell it for $5,000, maybe 4,500. So I'm only gonna, like, maybe double my money or, you know, not really gonna hit that 300,000% return mark talks about. So, yeah, like, what do you think? What is the most you would pay for this property? And, like, that's a hard question to answer because, like, I don't know. It just really depends on the situation, right? Like, do I have someone ready to buy it? Do I think it's going to sell fast versus slow. Am I okay making that amount of money or not? Right. So, like, there's many hypotheticals that you could throw in there. And I think that that's sometimes, you know, sometimes you got to figure out, like, what is my yield requirement? Like, how much yield do I want to make on a particular deal or how much money do I want to make on the deal? Or, you know, it's not always about getting the best deal. It's about getting the deal done. You're an investor, invest.

Right? Right. So, Tate, how do you, how do you kind of help people with their, their thinking so that they kind of take ownership of it? Not, hey, what do you guys do? But think about it in the terms of, you know, what is going to be as me, as the CEO of my own company, I should be thinking about what I'm comfortable with.

Well, I think it's important to realize that this is a process. It's not something that most people are good at immediately. Right. Most people who get in and start building the land business have never built their own business before. So they're not comfortable thinking that way. And so it takes time for them to adopt the CEO mindset, the CEO mentality. And like Scott said, what Scott's margins are might be way higher than what your margins are. And you've just got to ask yourself, is this a worthwhile activity based on my expected return? Does it make sense for me? How would I do this? How would I? You know, we're happy to share, right? Assuming we can and it's not something we're not going to feel comfortable sharing about, like maybe a probate question, maybe a legal advice. We're not going to give that kind of information, but we're happy to share as long as we don't hinder you from spreading your wings and making those decisions on your own. And the reality is it just takes time. You got to get comfortable being uncomfortable. And some people catch on to it really, really quickly and others don't. I mean, we see it all the time. How quickly should I outsource? Well, the cop out answer that we always give is once it becomes painful, once you decide you don't want to do that job anymore, outsource it. Well, when is that? Right. What's the timeframe for that? There is no date, there's no timeline. You know, for Scott, he hated scrubbing that list after one night. He needed to outsource immediately. Right. For other people, they love it. I don't get it, but they Love it.

Right?

And that's okay. Keep going. So I think it just takes time. You got to do a lot of reflecting, reflecting on your business. You got to be working on your swim lanes. You got to take real accountability for the success and failures that you are having within your business. And that will help you realize when it is time to expand and spread.

Your wings a little bit.

Yeah. What I love about our coaching program though, is that, and we always say this from day one, it's not coaching therapy. So when you ask us a question, we don't just sit back and like, well, what do you think you should do? Right. And kind of, you know, boomerang it right back to you. No, we. We do utilize our experience and shortcut it for you. But there are certain things where we'll tell you what we're doing, but ultimately the question is, the real answer is, what are you most comfortable doing? And so, Mimi, I'd love to know from you, like when you're having these one on one coaching calls, what kind of question do you get where you're like, I'm gonna tell you what I do, but ultimately, this is sort of personal preference. Like, you know, like Mark, it burns with Scott. Like, you know, Scott might eat that steak medium rare, but you know, Mark is going, you know, eating way cleaner than Scott. And you can tell just by looking at me on the video how much healthier I look compared to him. So one of those things, for me, that's ridiculous.

For me, it's what vas do what? Right? You can have so many different vas do so many different things, and there's no one definition of an intake manager or a Facebook poster or a sales associate.

Right.

It's really about not only your personal preference about how to run your business, but if you've got a va, you want to be able to help them develop their career and give them more interesting, exciting things to do.

Right?

And you may find that you have a V.A. that's not good, so good at what you originally hired them for, but maybe they have a talent that you can use another way. So I found that I hired these people, and their jobs morph over time. And so what I originally thought about how I wanted my business to go becomes more efficient. People get better, their roles change. So it all depends upon where we are in the life cycle of our businesses too. So I think that question of how do you do it, what do you have each one of these roles these people do, it's very personal about where your business is. It's not so much. It's not black and white.

It's not black and white. So, Eric Peterson, how do you handle these sort of, you know, grayish type of inquiries that you get where you don't want to be, you know, kind of jerky about it and be like, well, I don't know, what would you do? But you want them to think in a way where they can take total ownership of it but still be comfortable enough that they're not just totally off track.

Yeah.

So I think that sometimes our students or the community in general, they're just looking for an example. They might not always be looking to do exactly what I do or what Tate does or somebody else. But, you know, we talk about following the recipe and, you know, doing the processes that we teach, but there are aspects where you've got to kind of make your own choices and do your own thing. But for those new investors, sometimes they don't even know where to begin with that. So, you know, we're gonna, we're gonna share our perspective and maybe how we do certain things. But kind of like others were saying, you know, I mean, what I'm doing today may not apply exactly to a situation of a current student of mine. You know, they might not be at that point yet, or maybe they're past or who knows? But I think the important thing is being willing to share an example so that someone has kind of a jumping off point to say, okay, well, I understand what you're doing there. Now let me make it my own and run with it in my business.

Yeah, no, I love it. Zen Master, when you guys are doing nightcap and people are asking you all types of questions, are there any. Is there ever a point in time where you're. You're kind of uncomfortable with the question because it is so personal.

No, I don't think any personal questions are uncomfortable. I don't like to answer anything that would be like, tax related, illegal, because, you know, I don't want to be perceived as giving any advice like that. So I would probably shy away from those type of answers. But I think what we're talking about here is, is customizing the template. Right. So, you know, what's taught in flight school is a template. And at some point, through your own experience and through, you know, we can show them examples and of what we've done in certain situations, but experience is going to be the true teacher here. And then you're going to slowly morph that template into, you know, what it is that'll work for you. I know that we always talk about. Scott talks about in a flight school, you know, that's a recipe for brownies, right? So he. Maybe he's teaching that brownie mix. But when you're done, you can make muffins, right? You can make scones. I mean, he's given you a template, but then you can take that template and you can alter it to fit your need as. So I think that. And I also think when you were talking about this, I sort of think about how people measure success, too. Some people might think of more time, more freedom, more money, or I want to have a sense of accomplishment. I grew something from nothing. So that's all very personal. So, I mean, we're all following the same model, but the metrics that we use to judge our success and the particulars of our business are going to vary. But that's sort of like when you become artistic with it.

After you.

You've learned the fundamentals, you've. They're ingrained in you. You know, the five plates, you know how to spin them. Now it's like, okay, I'm gonna customize because I sort of feel like I'd like to do this a little bit different or maybe I'd like to go after these type of properties or I'd like to. Whatever.

That's.

That's just gonna come with experience.

Yeah, yeah. And it. I really love what you said, and I really think that when you know your why deeply, you can endure any how. And then the how is not that critical. But it's all about, is this going to get me closer to my why? And use. Kind of use that as the decision matrix and then kind of bounce it off of the expert, like Mimi or Eric or Tate, I guess, Scott tattoo, you know, you know, so like, and, and. And just kind of get their example. So. Scott. Todd.

Well, I think the coach on you today, I think the coaches could be like, when you go bowling. I think I've said this before, right? You have these. What are they called? Bumpers. Like, so it doesn't. You don't get a gutter ball. Like, they're going to prevent you from getting a gutterball. But, you know, there's lots of room on that alley the way you bought, you know, so they're sort of keeping you from going way off track with these sort of ideas that may not be very productive. They're sort of keeping you right in line. We'd be more likely to get that strike.

Yeah, absolutely. Scott, do you like that example?

Yeah.

The gutter Ball. Bumper. Bumper ball.

Yeah.

I think that's a good way of doing it. You know, it's. It's really hard to answer questions that pertain to a certain person's financial aspects, too. Right. You know, and you kind of talked about this, like, tax advice, legal advice, like, well, should I form an llc? I don't know. Should you, you know, like, it. It depends. There's a lot of it depends questions when you're talking about business formation and legal entities. And that's where you really have to have people that, you know either doing a research or talk to people, because, you know, what might work for me may not work for you and your situation. And, you know, I always tell people, especially when it comes to, like, the LLC thing, man, I know a guy, he still buys land in his own name. He's been doing it for decades. Okay. Like, every property buys is in his own name. Well, he has a reason why he does it. I don't understand it, but someone's told him to do it, and that's what he's doing. But, you know, it works for him.

Yeah. I mean, I think ultimately what we're talking about is an exercise in. In humility, where just because you're, you know, more than someone else, you really have to be able to step back. And because there's. There's sort of this egoic type of, you know, that need to be wanted or that need to be. You want to just show you what a. How smart you are and what an expert you are. But there are those kinds of questions where the real good answer is being humble about it and saying, honestly, I don't know what is best for your particular situation. Only you know that. And I can tell you what I do. But this is a very personal thing. And the real answer is, I don't know. And to get back to Scott's example, it might be maybe an LLC formation. It would be good for you. But I don't know your tax situation. The real answer is talk to your tax professional or talk to your. Talk to your legal professional about that. I mean, so I always like to say, like, the only thing I'm really an expert in is, you know, I know I don't know. And that way I keep an open mind about things and that as I get more information, I can be open to it and not sort of be trapped by expertise. So I think, you know, it was a fun discussion. It was a good discussion. I'd love to give Eric Peterson the last word on this.

The last word. Thanks. Mark, you know, I think.

The whole.

Conversation today was built around this idea of you are starting your own business, and with that comes responsibility.

Right?

You've got to make decisions to either grow your business or let it peter out. And, you know, having others around you in the community or coaches or what have you, they're going to help you to hopefully make good decisions. But ultimately, it's your business. You know, do the research and reach out to others for help and, you know, go from there.

Okay, great. Great. Well, we're at that point in the podcast where we get to pick on the Zen master and ask him for his tip of the week. A website, a resource, maybe a quote, a book, something actionable for the art of passive income listeners to go improve their businesses, improve their lives. Before we get to Mike's tip of the week, I do have to give a shout out to our sponsor for the week, which is flight school. Learn how the next 16 weeks can literally move the needle in your life. Start building up that passive income and do it quickly, safely, efficiently, with somebody who's done it literally thousands of times. Go up that mountain of land investing. Learn as you do with Scott Todd and as your Sherpa doing it, and start, you know, really living the benefits of passive income without renters, without rehabs, without renovations, without rodents. Learn more. Go to the land geek.com forward slash training. The land geek.com forward slash training. And I just want to thank the people at flight school for sponsoring the podcast this week. All right, Magazine.

So this is an old quote, but I have a visual to go along with it. And so I thought this would be very helpful. This is a very good quote. Not because I made it up, because I didn't make it up. It's rehashed. So do you guys. Can you see the picture?

Yes.

Yeah, it's a horse.

Do you remember this quote, Mark? What's on the horse's tail?

The fly.

So even a fly can travel a thousand miles on a horse's tail. I think what that speaks to is surrounding yourself with people that can help you. So I think that's what we talk about with flight school, with the coaching, is the fact that you can literally change yourself by surrounding yourself with people who are, you know, just can provide a different experience, a different set of skills to you. So that's actually going to go right here on this blank spot on my wall in my new office. So, yeah, I'm gonna fly. I know it's a rehash, but, you know, the visual, I think adds to it.

I mean, I get the sense, like, Tate, it just wants to, like, jump.

I love it down your. I love that. I love.

I was gonna write Scott Todd on the horse, but he got mad. But I called him a horse once and I said he was a stallion, not a horse, and I was gonna be the fly, but I don't know, he didn't seem too thrilled before when we brought the Step Up.

But now we have a visual aid, it makes a lot more sense. It's just. The question is, where are you gonna write Scott's name on that horse? Worse.

All right.

I don't know where the room is.

Kate. I see where we're going with this podcast. It's going to quickly spiral out of control. I am kind of curious, though. Like, Mike, in the background behind you are those of yourself.

I listen, this is going to be covered soon. I told Laura, wait a minute. You're supposed to get the quotes, but you weren't supposed to put my initials there. That's so presumptuous. But she thought, oh, I didn't know that. I thought. I asked you if you wanted your initials there. So I haven't allowed anybody into the office yet because I need to put a nice mountain scenery over there. Yes, there are a couple of quotes. I do.

It's okay. It's all right. I'm just trying to understand, you know? I mean, would you like to see the quotes?

Yes, yes, certainly. Give us a tour.

Holiday Inn.

MZ is going to be gone. It's 2%, and then.

I like the MZ.

You do? I was kind of presumptuous, don't you think, to have your own mz?

No, no, no. It's. You know, if it said Mike Zano, big deal, then. Yeah. This is mz.

Did you see the other one? Yeah, yeah. And of course, the horse with the fly right in the middle. I won't put anybody's name on it. I just know who it represents.

No, no, I love it. I mean, Mike, do you go to parties now? And when people ask, you know, who you are, do you kind of, like, go into anchorman mode? You're like, people know me.

He hands them a book of his quotes, and it's like, here.

Some light reading material.

They call me the Zen master for a reason. Here's my quotes. I mean, look, it's all good, man. All good. No worries.

It's all good.

I. I do have a. I do. I guess we're. I guess we haven't finished our podcast yet, have we?

Well, no, We.

We can.

We can. We can do the awkward abrupt end.

Okay.

Because I just gotta thank the listener. Yeah, Yeah. I just want to thank the listeners, remind them the only way that Eric Peterson is going to continue coming on these roundtable podcasts with a full rack of ribs is if you do three little favors.

In his mouth.

In his mouth. Chewing them during the podcast is if you do three little favors. You gotta subscribe, you gotta rate, you gotta review the podcast. Send us a screenshot of that review to support@thelandgeek.com we're going to send you for free the $97 whole tailing course, how to double your money, 30 days or less, and a free Mike Zano quote attached to it. That's a retail value of $1,200. So take advantage of that. Please do it. It really helps us. And thank you. So are we good, everybody? Tate, are we good?

We're good.

Mike, are we good?

We're good.

Mimi, Great.

Scott.

Yeah, all good.

Eric, we are good. 1, 2, 3. Let's let that freedom bring.

Pretty good. That might be one of our better ones.

Just curious, how many people on this call took action on Tate's tip of the week last week versus mine? I know. Zaino took twice the action on mine. Mark, you said you were doing it. Did you do it?

I did do it, and it did feel good.

3. Three people took action on my taboo that I can account for. How many people gave.

See?

Yeah, because Laura, Mike, and Mark. That's my three. Mimi did it, too. That's four, baby.

Four.

Sorry.

There's the showdown.

Hey, listen, that's your guys's loss.

I don't.

I don't. I don't have anything to prove to you guys.

How big do you write, Mark? Because I started today doing double space because it's a lot.

Really?

I can't even read this. It's so ugly.

Oh, my gosh. You guys have been busy.

So wait, wait, what is today? I went double space.

Yeah, yeah.

Look at their journals.

That's a lot of writing. That's a lot of writing.

It's a lot. That's a lot of writing.

But I've been impressing myself with how smart I am. All these things that come out.

I know. It's great getting them out. The problem is I can't read them after I write them.

There you go.

This is interesting. It is interesting. It's very helpful. I might still employ Chase tap. Because I might still employ his. I haven't had a chance. I'm going to Give it a full chance or a guest. Okay. No hard feelings.

It's okay. I mean, I. It's okay. Listen, I'm. I'm cool with it. I'm confident. I know that the listeners are really going to find a lot of power in outsourcing their entire lives. I'm cool with it.

All right, we'll see.

Okay, we'll see. Is Burns open? Scott? Todd?

Yeah, it's open.

It is. Is it safe to go there? That place is like.

Yeah, I think it's okay, but I don't know. I, like, I still haven't eaten in a restaurant, like, since March, so.

Wow.

I think the last, like, honestly, the last time I went to a restaurant was with you at the end of Beginning of Mark.

Wow.

Yeah, I. I haven't been inside a restaurant, but I'm eating outside now.

Yeah.

With the misters, and I feel somewhat safer doing that.

Yeah. What's weird is, like, my wife and I went to the mall the other day and we're like, oh, let's just go to the food court. We go to the food court, get some food. And I'm like, well, where are we going to eat it? Because we haven't eaten like. Like, we've eaten in the car on a nice day. Nice day in the car. We've eaten, like, outside, but there was no outside seeing him, so we sat in the food court and ate. It was really kind of weird. Like, should I take down the mask and eat? It's okay.

I mean, Eric, are you. Are you just bringing in barbecue or sitting outside?

Come on, man.

We've been out to eat a few times, actually. Yeah.

Yeah.

What about you, Mimi?

We order out a lot. Because I've been on crutches until Sunday. I couldn't really cook. I've been ordering out a lot or the girls make something. Natalie made homemade pasta. Literally rolled the noodles out. Yeah.

Wow, that sounds good.

That's really good.

Really yummy. That's what she did last night.

Mamma Mia. That sounds really good.

Yeah.

Yeah. How well does that freeze, by the way?

Or she sticks the dough, you know, after it's been cut into the noodles, into the fridge or she dries it.

Okay. So I'm just going to put in the chat where to send it. Just put in some dry eyes, and next week we'll do, like, the whole taste test. Yeah. What about you, Tate?

We haven't really been out more, so. Because little kids and eating out is kind of a lot of work for us still right now. So we take out Eat in the car. Kids are strapped into car seats. It's good.

They're little baby masks.

Well, that's just it. They. I mean, my daughter won't wear it. It's like she's afraid of it. She won't do it. So we don't go anywhere as a result. But all right.

Yeah.

I mean, I'm really excited for the Mike Zano merch, where I can get, like, a mask that says, deal flow solves everything, or a picture of a horse and a fly and just kind of rep. And then just, like, the MZ as the logo. What do you think, Mike? You could get a contractor on Etsy.

I knew I should have hid.

I told her. That's presumptuous.

I knew it.

I know you guys. I could tell by the way you reacted. You're all like. That is so presumptuous.

It's not.

It's not intended to be there.

I love it.

I think it's great.

I eat out all at lot, Mark, because I eat a table of 10 guys twice a week. So what are you gonna do?

It's awesome.

I feel bad that Laura's getting blamed for this. The whole quote. Yeah.

Why'd you even bring her into this?

This is you, Mike.

Have you guys noticed how he threw her under the bus completely?

Like she did a thing, did you a favor.

Is Laura there? Can she defend herself? No, she's busy. She's busy.

Okay. Don't worry, Mike. I got her phone number. I'll call her.

All right, well, thanks, everybody. See everyone next week.