How This Husband And Wife Team Found Financial Freedom In 8 Months

Hey, it's Mark Podolski, the land geek with your favorite niche real estate website, www.thelandgeek.com. and I'm super excited for today's podcast for a number of reasons. But before we talk to our husband and wife guests, I'd be remiss if I didn't properly introduce my co host, the mini Batman himself, who actually now has a full bat six sigma. You know you love them. Scott Todd. Scott Todd.netlandmodo.com and most importantly, if you're not automating your Craigslist and your Facebook postings, posting domination.com thelandgeek Scott Todd. How are you, Mark?

I'm great.

How are you?

I'm super excited, man. These are my favorite podcasts. They really are. I think they're the listeners to your podcasts.

You know what's cool about this one is that our guest today sat in front of me, like, right here where I was. Okay. And I saw them, like, start from, like, nothing to what they're going to tell us today. I've seen them grow, literally, like, right in front of my eyes. It's amazing because, you know, they were in flight school. I'll let them tell the story. But, like, they were flight school. I watched them, like, grow. I saw the deer in the headlight looks like when I'm talking about getting the list and, like, what do I do? They also made me jealous so many times with their beautiful views, scenic views, because they took a lot of these flight school calls out in the wildlife. So I'm excited to hear their story because I feel like a proud papa here.

I know, I know. It's like your little acorns are going into an oak tre tree. So without further ado, I do want to just remind everybody, today's podcast is sponsored by TL Folio. Go to TL Folio.com unlimited funds. Scott and I are eventually going to do a webinar on this, but John and Valerie Burnett, a husband wife team, are crushing it in the land investing business. So this is always my favorite pod type of podcast when we get to talk to our students whom are doing the business. They've gone through the journey. It's really recent, it's really fresh, and we sort of get this insight and this insider look at what it's like to go through it. And so the first question, John and Valerie, is, how did you guys even find us?

Yeah, so we, I guess it goes back to just about two years ago. We're in Northern Idaho right now a couple Years ago, we also lived in northern Idaho and moved to Jackson, Wyoming. On the way over there, we listened to Cash Flow Quadrant by Robert Kiyosaki and it really, it was recommended to us by someone. We just thought, let's listen to it. Let's just make them happy. And it really shifted our mindset. Prior to that point, you know, I had told Valerie, I am an employee person. I always want to be an employee. I never want to start a business. And then we listened to that and it really shifted our perception of what it means to be an employee and what it could look like to invest or to own your own business.

Yeah, we realized there was a whole other side to life that I think a lot of people don't really realize is out there. You know, there's the investor and there's the business owner quadrant. And, you know, so many people are just caught in this rat race of being an employee. And some, you know, we need employees in the world. We need that. But John and I realized, and this is kind of a cool part, like just something we realized about each other was that we both had investor and, you know, kind of a business mind about us. So we were like, ooh, we're kind of interested in this. This is cool. We could do this. And we really want to and. But we kind of needed to know why, because we're like, you know, it's not, we don't need to make a bunch of money. We don't need to be rich. Like, what do we really, really desire? And the thing that we came up with was we just, we want more time. We want more time with our family, we want more time with each other. We want to be able to do other things besides working. Like, we've always wanted to be, you know, doing more ministry in our church. You know, we just like couldn't even believe that kind of sky's the limit with your time if you're not having to work a 9 to 5 job all the time.

So we kind of gradually got to that mindset and from there we got involved in. And I think this was actually a really good thing for us. We got involved in a business that was really challenging. It was really. So we went to Jackson Hole, big vacation area, and we were involved in the vacation business.

We were doing employees again.

Employees.

Yeah, as employees.

And so I was managing a business that did vacation rentals for about 350 different properties. We do reservations and stuff, and we managed a handful of those as well. And it was really good, but really challenging. And Relatively inflexible because whenever anybody is off, they're wanting to travel, they're wanting to be there. So holidays, weekends, that's when everybody is there and giving you business. And so there wasn't a whole lot of flexibility when it came to scheduling and stuff like that. And we had two little kids, actually.

We were just pregnant with them.

Oh.

Yeah.

We had one and then we had one on the way.

Yeah.

Yeah. And so it was. So that reached a point where it was pretty challenging. I was seeing our kids, so our first kid, about an hour, a half hour to an hour a day. And so that was really tough. I was out of the office for a good amount of time, and it was a stressful work environment, so I would come home and be stressed with our child.

Yeah, totally relate. I mean, I remember when I was working my investment banking job, I literally would wake up in the morning, my children were asleep. So my wife's like, don't wake up the kid. Right. And then I would come home. He was a baby, is like, I want to say six months old. And when I got. When I got home, he was literally cranky. So it was like that time, like, he was just about ready to get to bed. So my wife would give me the baby, I would go under a fan with the ambient noise, get him to sleep, and then put him to bed. And that was literally 20 minutes, five days a week with my son. And it was heartbreaking. But the funny thing about it was that all my friends were doing the same thing. It was just didn't see him in the morning, put them to bed, and then maybe would go to the park on the weekends. But then once I was able to quit my job and do land investing full time, it was just a whole different world. Now, look, I'll be honest. The jury's still out on my three kids. That's a good or bad thing. But it was, you know, for me, selfishly, it's been. It's been amazing. And now you're actually replicating that as well, because how long did it take before you were able to quit your job, John?

So.

In July of 2017. And I quit my job at the end of March of this year.

Wow.

Yeah.

Wow.

Yeah. But that. That employee experience just really drove us just, like, gung ho to figure something out. We hadn't found the land business stuff yet, but we just knew, you know, we had listened to the cash flow quadrant. We're like, we hadn't done anything since then. We were like, it's time we have to figure out solution.

Yeah.

And so John started listening to a bunch of real estate podcasts to and from work. And we found two that we really liked. It was, one was Kevin Bupps, and then the other one was Matt Therios. And so we both really liked those, but John had time to listen to them and he did it back and forth from work. And then he was like, well, let's start signing up for. Let's do something. Let's pull triggers. So we signed up for Single Family Housing Investing with Mat Therio. That was the first program that we signed up for. But what we soon realized, we took it. We were like, wow, they're giving us a bunch of systems. This is awesome. It was really, really good. And it's actually kind of similar to what the processes that Land Geek does. But.

But the problem was that we just, we needed something that we could do remotely. And everything we were looking at there, I think it can be done remotely, but it was. It would just be really, really hard. And so we were talking about like driving an hour and a half every weekend with. Then we had a newborn and you know, putting up these, you know, the guerrilla marketing signs, all that kind of stuff.

Right.

So anyways, that's kind of where we were at. And then we listened to Kevin Buck's podcast. Mark was on the podcast, and I just listened to that and it just made a lot of sense. And so I came home at that point. We had a two week old and I talked to Val and I just said, I think this is what we need to be doing. And so we both listened to the podcast together, we talked about it. We're like, this makes a lot of sense and it's something that we can do remotely. And so we hopped on a call with a coach and, you know, and then after talking to them, we're kind of debating between the toolkit and flight school. And then, you know, after that conversation, really decided that flight school was right for us.

We're going to do this all the way. We weren't going to do it halfway or anything like that. We were just like, this is the way we're going to get to financial freedom. You know, we just. Because every time we talk to one of you guys, we're like, this is possible. This is going to happen. Like, these guys did it. We're gonna do it too.

Yeah, I think that, like, for us too. You know, I tend to be an optimist when I come into these situations. You know, it's just like I'm gonna Be the best. I'm gonna knock everybody out of the park. I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna just kill this thing. It's gonna be great.

And.

But in reality, you look at it, you're like, okay, we've got two kids under two. You know, we're married, I've got a full time job. We really need help. And in reality, there's a lot of challenges that we're facing that are gonna pull us and the opposite direction of where we want to go. And so that's kind of where that was the big clincher for us on flight school. We really wanted the life support and also the accountability that it would provide.

And that was exactly what it is. I mean, yeah, I get emotional, like, even talking to you, Scott, like, it's, it's. It was so practical, straightforward. I mean, you gave us like, I mean, every single time a session be over, we're like, are you kidding me? They just gave us like so many systems that we would have had to like, maybe trial and error for like many, many years. We just felt so blessed. Yeah, we felt so privileged to be. I don't know, we just felt like we were getting like something for free. Even though we did pay a little bit for flight school. But it was like, man, we're paying like less than a college education for like a chance at financial freedom for our whole, for the rest of our lives. And so anyway, we got to the end of flight school and Scott did this like great, you know, inspirational speech at the end. But really, actually what it was was, you know, a heartfelt like. He was so excited for us to experience what he did. Like, I mean, he knew what it felt like to be financially free now. He knew what it meant to like, not be and what it meant to be and what it meant for his family. And so he just got really excited for us. And I literally just started cr, like, oh, I know, because we are gonna do this. You know we're gonna do this.

Scott, do you remember this?

Yeah.

Yeah.

In fact, someone from their class, not too long, a few months back, actually went back and posted just that segment of the video to their, to their class. And I rewatched it and I'm like, I honestly gotta say, like, I don't end every flight school thing. I always end with like an upbeat thing. But I will tell you that July class, I can't remember why, but I think I do know now that Valerie Shunbad, but like, I've never been able to replicate that one. Like, that was like make it just say, here, watch this. I can't do it any better.

Yeah, yeah, watch this video. This is how excited I am for you. But really it meant a lot. And I mean we just knew this was going to change our lives. But we were going to have to work really hard. You know, I am like really glad that you were honest with us about how hard it was going to be, the dips that we were going to experience, that kind of thing. And that is actually what led us to go into coaching straight away. Yeah, I mean we knew we needed, we were going to need some support along the way, accountability along the way. I mean John and I are lucky we had each other, but we actually needed even more than that. We needed, it was starting a business, you know, although we had basically we felt like we were buying a franchise because it was all set up, it still was going to take a lot of work. Plus we had full time, you know, full time jobs. I had a three week baby, you know, when I started flight school. And then John was just managing four businesses. So we got straight into coaching. We were blessed to get Eric Peterson. I mean what an amazing coach he's been. But what we had to start doing because we had full time jobs and the babies, we had to start waking up at 5 in the morning doing our follow ups. At 5am John was working during his lunch breaks to post ads. Oh no, he posted ads at 5 in the morning too. You know, at lunchtime he was doing the marketing too, lots of marketing side. And I was actually on the nap breaks for the kids and then when.

The kids went to bed then we would do the business some more. Yeah, you'd have like 30 minutes to an hour before we went to bed, you know.

And I was doing all of the client service stuff so I was contacting the leads. I had one hour, half an hour to an hour a day to do it because the kids were sleeping and I didn't want to, I didn't want to take time away from them. I couldn't really. It was actually impossible. So. But anyway, we were like, we're gonna do this. And it was crazy, to be honest. It was a really hard thing. But the one thing we remember is we kind of begged Eric, could we just slow down a little bit?

Yeah, we kind of reached a point after Christmas and we were like, we, we were, we were tired and we knew that I was gonna be done with my job in a few months. And so I was like, we're, you know, we're, we're just gonna slow down a little bit. It's gonna be okay. And then Eric kind of gave us a kick us in the butt speech. You wouldn't think of Eric, but he's definitely a butt kicker.

Yeah. We were convinced he was gonna just let us off the hook because we kind of gave him a sob story. And he was like, you guys, as long as your marriage isn't in trouble, you need to keep going. And we're like, okay. So that was awesome, because I think we were just in a big dip, you know, and he just really helped us. We needed the coaching through it. So the other thing we had to decide was how fast did we want to get out of the rat race? Okay. And part of the thing that we had to decide was how to get that quicker. So we really liked the game Cash flow.

Yeah.

Great game. Yeah, that was a really good game for us to play because. And John became, like, an expert at it. But one of the things. The reason why John wins cash flow every single time is because he's very conscious about how to increase your cash flow but also decrease your expenses at the same time. I mean, pay off those things that you're paying. You know, how do you decrease your. Decrease your expenses? And so what we needed to do is sit down and see how we were going to do that quickly and how fast we wanted to get out of that rat race.

And we kind of.

We reached a point. I mean, the cost of living is so high in Jacksonville hole. And then we had family in northern Idaho. It wasn't a bad move to move back. We love it here. And so we reached this point where we're like, you know, we could. We actually decreased our expenses by about 75% in the move.

Wow.

Have there been any expenses that were cut that you really, really miss that you might trade some of that freedom and flexibility in take that hit?

Not. Not really, I think. I mean, the biggest expense is. Was, like, rent, you know, and we.

Don'T have, like, car payments and things like that, you know, like, we are pretty conscious about that.

We did move. We're on one vehicle now. But part of that's just so easy because everything's within walking distance here. And so we only really need one car, you know, Whereas, you know, back in Jackson Hole, I had a commute of 30 minutes a day. And so it's like either one of us is just going to be stranded, you know?

Yeah. And we could have done this, like, slower if we wanted to, you know, but to us, it was like, we Didn't. Our lifestyle wasn't maintainable, you know, especially with the full. You know, we were trying to do the land business and the working the other businesses. It just wasn't sustainable for us. So we really needed to quickly.

And I would say, you know, not sustainable. Like, we couldn't have done that for, like, 30 years, but we did do it, and we could do it. You know, it was definitely doable, and it was definitely worth it.

Yeah. Right.

Right. So if you're listening to this podcast and, you know, what advice would you give to somebody that's, you know, maybe they don't love their job. They're a young couple, they've got young kids. You know, they're. They're in the rat race. Like, what would be some. Some just actionable advice to have them sort of replicate or duplicate exactly your success so that they could do exactly what you've done. Where. I mean, what's life like now? I mean, just kind of paint the picture real quickly.

It's a.

It's substantially better.

I mean, we are like. It's like peace. It's like. It's freedom. I mean, we see each other. John and I are, like, seeing each other so much more.

Well, and we've just, like. I mean, one of the biggest things is that I've literally quadrupled my time with the kids during the work week, you know. That's crazy. That's insane.

Yeah. One time we got during. During the whole crazy time when we were trying to do all the business and, you know, the other jobs at the same time, we got what was called hand, foot, and mouth disease. It was really fun, but it took us out of work for seven days.

And so I was. I was at home for seven full days, and it was. It was pretty. Pretty miserable. But during that whole situation, this was. This was probably a month before we moved. We quit the job.

Yeah.

Yeah. And during that whole situation, the one thing that our son Gideon said and dozens of times today, just over and over again as, daddy's home, Daddy's home, Daddy's home. And, you know, it's just such a good reminder that, like, we're doing.

That's why we're doing this, you know? And so now, yeah, instead of like a half an hour to an hour, John's home, like, four to five hours a day. I mean, with the kids. I mean, he's seeing them. With. Seeing them that much more. And so. And then I was able to just not. I don't have to work at all right now. Like, I'M just focusing straight on the kids all day, and it's just been wonderful. And then John's focusing on the business, and it's just like that is helping so much with the business now. It's kind of turning into that Ferrari that we needed to be.

So, coming back to your question of what advice you would give who. I think one of the big things is just is. I think the first thing is do something. It's so easy when you have this desire. I mean, who doesn't want to be financially free? Everybody wants to be financially free, but it's so easy. I mean, I've talked to a lot of people who have those desires, and they've just been looking for something for years and haven't taken any action because they're looking for the perfect model. And I think that the key is to, you know, a just start taking steps forward. And I think one of the biggest things is education. And the other thing is, I think when we looked at, you know, the investment that we would make both in flight school and coaching, we did, and Valerie mentioned this, we thought of it like a franchise. Franchise. That whole idea is something that makes a lot of sense to us. You know, if you're starting out a restaurant, the likelihood of success is relatively low. But if you're starting out a franchise, you have a successful system already given to you, and the success rate is far higher. And that was kind of our same mentality. It's like, we don't want to create our own system. We want to find a system that works, and we want to plug and play, and we want to learn from other people's mistakes as much as possible, rather than relying on ourselves to make all the mistakes, to educate ourselves. And so with that, with all that said, I think education is something that is worth investing in if you're going to use it. And so I think that's an important thing to keep in mind to come.

Up with your why. I mean, if you're just gonna, you know, get rich. To be honest, that's just, like, not like a really personal reason. I mean, it's fun to have money and stuff, like, and it is freeing, but you need to figure out why you're doing something. Because Scott talks a lot about in flight school that you're gonna experience some dips. You know, you're not gonna have a sale maybe for a week and a half, two weeks, I don't know what it is. And you're gonna kind of feel down, and you need something to push you through that. You need to understand why you're doing it. You know, you have to have enough drive. And then my biggest thing is like, yeah, invite accountability into the whole thing. And coaching.

Yeah.

And I think that's. Yeah, definitely. The other piece is, like, it's also easy to hit something like this and say, I'm going to be unlike anybody else. I am going to be enormously successful because I'm going to work so incredibly hard. And there's. I think there's an element of that that's incredibly health. You know, you should be very gung ho. But also I think you need kind of a healthy dose of reality alongside that, which is, I need accountability, I need help. Because there's going to be other stuff that hits you in life, and things that are. That you're excited about can at different times be substantially less exciting, and you have to push through regardless. And so having some level of accountability alongside that is really important, too.

And discipline, you know, you guys talk about the mailing and the marketing and stuff, and, you know, it's like, you have to do that stuff, otherwise you're not going to be successful. You have to keep doing the things that seem a little bit, like, monotonous. And that's discipline. That's so good for you in your life, you know, in your whole life. It goes across everything.

Yeah.

So learning how to kind of get through some of those hard times would be consistent and have. Discipline is a big, good skill that we learned through this.

Scott. Todd. Are you proud, Papa?

Yeah. I mean, like, you know, geez, they listen to me, I gotta tell you, like, flight school and, you know, like, flight school is really weird because there's so many people on. I don't mean, like, there's hundreds. I mean, like, there's, you know, 10. 10 people on there. It's not possible to understand or to know if people. If what you're saying is resonating with people.

Right.

Like, because it's not like that. I'm sitting there saying, okay, Valerie, did you get that? You know, it's almost like teaching a class where you're at the front of the room and you got to believe that people are listening, right? Like, you got to believe that they're listening. And then they show you that they're listening by how they take action, right? And so then, you know, to hear or to see. Like, I remember, like, John and Valerie, they would sit there. They'd sit outside, okay. They. They would. I think sometimes they're sitting by a fire mark, like, you know, like, they're making me jealous over here. I'm like, I'm like, you know, in Florida, I'm thinking like, man, that looks beautiful out there. It was hard for me to concentrate with them in the picture. And then, you know, like, you know, they would come along and they didn't necessarily, like, you don't know, like, you don't know if it's. If it's clicking with them or not. And then you start to see some of their successes. You start to see, like, okay, they're doing it. They're kind of taking action. And you know that the recipe is going to work, right? Like, we talk about just following the recipe. Mark, you and I know that the system works if they just follow the system.

And so, John and Valerie, how long did it take before you did your first deal and what's been your best deal so far?

So.

I think it was and a half. Maybe it was either a month or a month and a half. We started flight school in July. First deal was in August.

Scott, is that typical with your flight school students? About a month, month and a half.

To buy a property, I think.

Or did we do a month?

Was that the sell bought in August? Oh, yeah. And we sold in October or something like that.

Yeah. It's been a slow, steady process, to be honest, because, you know, I don't know unless you're working it full time. I mean, you're, you know, it's a, it's. For us, it was a slow, steady process, but we had to push through and. But we could just see the business was building upon itself. I mean, that was so encouraging. It's like, okay, this is a note that's gonna last us like six or seven years. We're building our paychecks, you know, and it's just like, it's so different than, you know, being an employee because you're just like, oh, my gosh, like, there's no end to this. This is so amazing. This is so different, you know, but, yeah, so it took us a little while, but it was slow and steady or whatever, and we did it. You know, we're not like this, you know, magic bullet, like, amazing couple that's doing amazing. But I think that the thing is we're working hard, you know, and we keep going. And we knew that. We knew that you guys did it, so we're going to do it too. And we might do it a little slower, we might do it faster than others. We don't know, but we're going to do it. You know.

I feel like yeah, go ahead, Scott.

Well, what I was going to say is like, there's two things that I see in John and Valerie, right? Especially in talking to him. We all have desires, like every one of us has desires. I think that the people that do what John and Valerie have done, they have one other component to it and it's ambition, right? Because we can have all the desire in the world and we're like, man, I sure want to, I want to get rid of this job. I don't want to be here anymore doing this. I want my own time, freedom. That's desire. The ambition says, I'm going to wake up early, I'm going to stay up late, I'm going to give this thing everything I have. And then the one thing that they kept saying to themselves, and I hear Valerie say this all the time, and it's, you know, think of it as like the four minute mile. Four minute mile says, man, the minute that someone broke the four minute mile, other people realized that it could be done. They went off and did it. John and Valerie kept saying to themselves, if all these people can do this, well, then so can we. And so they combined desire, ambition all into one. And this is what you get. This is what you get when you combine those two things together.

Together, right? I know. For me, that's why I love the idea of flight school. Because if you just have the toolkit, you're off on your own, you're doing it on your own. And when you hit that first brick wall, there's no one there to sort of support you, encourage you, answer your questions, to help you through it. I mean, yeah, we do what we can and especially in the mastermind group, but there's no one sort of making you do it. But when you're in flight school and you have to do it in real time, it's almost like, I don't want Scott to be disappointed. I don't want to have to deal with the mini bat, right? It's like, I'm doing this, I'm getting on five. I don't want to face Scott the next week and be like, I didn't mail, I didn't market and have to deal with that. It's like, it's almost like it becomes like, I want to just do it just for Scott's approval. And then you graduate from that. And then it's like, okay, Eric is showing up every week, he's going to be asking me, what have I done this week? And you don't want to disappoint Eric and just, you know, even, you know, to kind of fuel you on those during those dips. I think it's really critical. I don't know if you guys feel that way or not. Hopefully you do.

Oh, I don't know. Like, honestly, I mean, we're both really driven people and we're, you know, good at business and stuff. No way. We would have totally just bugged out. I mean, we need. We need those tools. We need those accountability, that accountability. We need the expertise. I mean, we have this last week have dealt with one of the big, weirdest, craziest issues in the land. Stuff we've done. And thank goodness we had Eric. I mean, he just guided us through the whole thing and gave us like a template of dealing with this kind of situation that probably will come up a bunch and we'll be able to, you know, deal with this in such a professional way from the get go. You know, we didn't have to experiment and, you know, make a bunch of mistakes. You know, we're using the expertise, people who have done this for years, and we're just like, hey, what should we do? And they're like, this is what you should do. Okay, perfect. This is. You don't have to learn those hard mistakes. You know, it's just such a. It's such a wonderful thing what you guys are doing. We are so thankful. We can't believe you're willing to, you know, give your systems away, that you've worked tons of, you know, trial and error out and you've developed these amazing systems, and we're just thankful. It's totally changed our lives, you know.

Well, I mean, for me, that's the most gratifying thing now for sure. And I, yeah, I got. I got the goosies. So instead of, instead of the tip of the week, how about you tell us like, your best deal so far, what you paid for it, what you sold it for and how you sold it.

So, yeah, so it's actually like, I would say it's both our best and our worst deal. So it was a lot that we purchased for 1250. We sold it with 250 down and then 149amonth for 84 months with a $10 a month or, sorry, 250 doc fee. 150 down and then 150amonth for 84 months with a ten dollars note fee. So that comes out to over a 1000% return. That was also our stressful situation this last week because it turns out that we told the people, you can't build on the property until we deed it across to you. And then they. They went over to the area from South Carolina within two days. And then they called me and they said, we're on the wrong lot. And we built.

So.

Oh, my gosh.

I mean, it just goes to show, though, that, I mean, you can make these amazing deals happen. I mean, we bought, we actually this piece of land. It looked like a desolate piece of land, and we didn't want it. This buyer or that seller kept calling us over and over and over, and we're like, I guess we gotta call this seller back and just, maybe we should buy it. But we don't even want it because it didn't look good. And then we find out, okay, we buy it from him.

Because we're like, yeah, well, we negotiated it down first from 2000 to 1250.

Yeah.

And we found out it has power.

It had power. He didn't even know. And it has incredible views.

And those things that we thought were.

Yeah, we sent our photographer out there to just take pictures. We're like, I'm sorry, did you just take pictures of the wrong lot? And he was like, no, no, this is that one. I'm like, we're like, I mean, these incredible mountain views, power on the lot. So we got the property super cheap. I had just never been out there. He had no idea. I asked him to add power. He had no idea, you know, and so we just were like, you know, we just don't think you have a great lot, but we'll take it off your hands.

Okay? I love this business.

Is this the one I told you to go back and negotiate in flight school?

No, no, this is. This is one later. This is a later one, but we.

Did that one, too.

Yeah. See, Mark, that's the thing is, like, John, Valerie were on a. On a flight school call. It was a Q and A call. And I forgot the exact situation, you know, But I remember that it was like that they had this property and, like, either you didn't have the money for it. Was that it? Or what was the deal with it? And I told you, Valerie, I'm like, go back and reduce it. Or maybe you guys offered too much for it. I told you, go back and reduce it.

And then you guys.

Yeah, yeah, we did. And we went back and, yeah, you just helped us have confidence. And, you know, man, we had just no idea what we were doing starting off. But, you know, Scott telling us to go back confidently tell the seller this. Remember, you're, you know, you're doing them a favor, taking this land off their hands. And so when you kind of act like that, it's like, hey, like, you know, we're picking up a bunch of land, like, maybe we'll pick yours up. You know, kind of having that. That sort of mind frame can help you, you know, get your best deals. And I remember Tate once saying on a podcast sometime that, like, you make your money when you buy the property. I was, like, kind of confused when he said that, but then I was like, wow, he's right. Like, it. You have to, you know, buy it low, and then you can get these amazing returns so that the purchase of the property is really important, almost. Sometimes more important. You know, that price is more important than what you sell it for sometimes. So, yeah, that was. That was super helpful, Scott, when you had to go back and do that.

I'm looking for the comment because it was good. I want to remind myself, well, you.

Know, you guys, this has been an amazing, amazing podcast. I'm so, so grateful that you took the time to share your stories with. With everyone, and it's so inspirational. And you're, you know, this. This, you know, young, beautiful couple raising a family, and. But now you're doing it in alignment with your values of, you know, family first, you know, spending time having that freedom, having that flexibility, and we're going to do what we need to do to accomplish that. And I feel just lucky that you found us.

Right.

You could have done it in a different model, but I think that this model really suits you in a way that it's, you know, you're going to be able to travel the world with your children and, you know, keep this growing and building and live the life of your dreams, and it's just amazing to watch.

And it's weird to us that we're on the podcast because, like, it was just, like, a little while ago, less than a year ago, that we just kind of heard this, you know, but it just goes to show, you know, this is possible and it's so worth it. It's worth the hard work. You know, it's not a magic bullet. It is, in a way, because it's a plug and play system. But you have to be willing to put the work into it and you have to take action, you know?

Absolutely. Absolutely. Scott. Todd, Tip of the week.

Oh, how do I take away from.

I know, I know. I mean, that's like. Do we even do a tip of the week?

No, we're going to have to pass today.

Mark.

I think That I think the tip of the week is, you know, if, you know, John and Valerie can do it. They've got a big life. Right. Not everyone is going to have two small children or start this being pregnant and have a full time job if they can do it. And they were able to get up at 5 in the morning, go to bed late, take action, follow the recipe with Scott, you can do it too. It's so inspirational. Listen to this podcast again and again. Just know that, you know, I'm not special, Scott special, but John and Valerie, you know, are like, we're all just doing like, we just had a big why and just executed on it and nothing was gonna stand in our way and do it. So I want to thank you guys so much. It's, you know, it's, it's so wonderful to hear. And.

Yeah, if anyone, you know, wants to reach out to us at any point and need some encouragement too, like, we can, you know, let us know because we, we can, we can just kind of tell you our story or whatever and, and help you push through as well.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, if you're on the fence about flight school, have you call John and Valerie.

Yeah, for sure.

All right, so I want to thank all the listeners, you know, please, if you're enjoying the podcast, you're getting value out of it, please subscribe, rate and review the podcast. Send us the screenshot of that review to support the landgeek.com we're going to send you for free the passive income blueprint. I'm sorry, the passive income launch kit, which is $97 course for free. So please do that. All right, are we ready? We're going to do this, Mark. Ready? One, two, three.

Let freedom ring.

And. They did it. It's good. It's good.

Seriously.

They got freedom.

Yeah. Yeah. Yep, that's what it is. It really, really is. It feels really great, Scott, just like you said.

That's great.

All right, well, thanks again and we'll see everybody next time.