How to Handle a Dip - Land Business Tips From The Land Geek Guys

Hey, it's Mark Penolski, the land geek with your favorite niche real estate website, thelandgeek.com and on this week's Roundtable podcast, we have all the usual suspects. We've got Eric the Technician Peterson. Eric, how are things in beautiful Franklin, Tennessee?

Things are good. Good to see you, Mark.

It's good to see you. It's good to see you. We've got Landon AI, the aquatic investor. Harris. Landon, how are you?

Doing well, Mark, good to see you.

I like the Atlanta hat. We've got your better half. Teria put in the reps. Harris. Terea, how are you?

I'm well. How are you?

Good to see you. We've got. I love it when you call me Big Papa. Tate. Litchfield. Tate. How are things in Sin City?

Really good. We Stanley cup, baby. About to get it done tonight.

Are you up?

Three zero, three one, yeah.

Three one. Yeah. I assume in hockey, it's just like basketball, it's really hard to come back down. Three one.

Yeah.

That's three game. You gotta win three games in a row.

Yeah. Yeah. And last but not least, the brain, the professor, your flight school Sherpa. Scott. Todd. Scott. Todd. How are you, Mark? I'm great.

How are you?

Pulse is still normal. Respiration's fine. We have a good topic. It's the dip. What do we do when we're in a dip? So, first of all, I think it'd be interesting. I'll just start with Tate. Tate, how would you define a dip?

You know, there's a book out there that'll define it that I recommend everybody reads. But for me, it's. It's kind of a season or a period of time where you feel like you're almost going backwards, where the wheels have fallen off and you are in an uphill battle with no end in sight. To me, that's what a dip feels like. Now, we all know that every single dip has an end, but a dip is a season when things are just not going according to plan.

Yeah. And we all experience a dip because, let's face it, we can really control our effort. We can control our attitude about what happens. But there's so much in a marketplace that we can't control. And so if one of those things that we can't control is when someone actually puts their hand up and says, hey, I want to buy this, right? Almost everything up to that point, we can control. So, Landon, why don't we start with you? When you're in that. That dark time where you feel like, oh, my Gosh, it's been a month or two weeks or whatever that metric of I'm kind of freaking out is for you. How do you, how do you mentally, physically, spiritually prepare and handle a dip?

Well, I think honestly, like first take a breath. Like, I think, I don't know any business that you do that you start with that, it doesn't, it's not always on its peak. Like, I think any business that we do or that you're starting up, you're going to get this debt even when you've done this for forever. I think some of the things I think that we all get used to is the highs. We love the highs. We love to experience those highs. But I think like I said, just we got to take a breath. And then I think one of those things, you have to go back to the things that worked. Just start reviewing like simple things. Start going back to your metrics. I think I was talking to a coaching client a couple days ago. We were just talking about, you know, we're going back to things that were. What, what were those things? What were those ads that were. What were those, those platforms that were working best for you and then, you know, evaluate kind of what's changed in the market and then maybe start reviewing some things that you can change. But I guess the biggest thing is we don't ever want to stop. We just, you keep putting, going forward, put your head down and you just keep moving forward. Because if you stop, you're definitely going to be stuck in a dip. Not only are you going to be stuck in a dip, you're going backwards at that point. So you keep your feet moving and you just keep working until you get to the point where you're at. But you know, I think like I said, I think you just don't want to get wrapped into a mentality of this will never end. You know, we just, like I said, we just keep moving forward.

Yeah, it's. It's really good advice and having that perspective that, you know, here's all the things that I've done well and just to keep moving forward and not get sort of lost in, in that, I guess in your head, right? This, you know, that, that negative self talk. Oh, this is never going to end. Right?

Yeah.

Sharia putting the rep terrace. What do you do?

So Landon and I kind of tag teamed this part of it, but we will try to figure out what may be causing the dip. So is it a lead issue?

Right.

Did our leads slow down? So kind of going back to the metric. What may be causing it.

Is it.

Is it on us? Like, did our lead we slow down? If so, how do we get our lead back up? Should we try another platform? Can we increase our ads on certain platforms if the lead did not slow down? Is it a sales problem? You know, let's get our sales team together, and let's talk about why we're unable to close some of these deals. Is it just a market problem? Right, so sometimes we're still doing what we need to do, but the market has shifted, and then we'll have to make adjustments based on that. But we just kind of dig down deep, like Landon said, We look at our metric. Is it on us? What can we do? Is there something we can do? What actions can we take? All the while trying to maintain positivity? And I think some of it comes with experience. When you've been doing it for some time, you realize this is not going to last forever. So it's a little easier to know we're going to come out. But in the beginning, it may be a little hard when you start off in a dip. So, like Landon said, keeping your head down, looking at your metrics, being able to determine what was working, what may have changed, and then make an adjustment.

I love it. I love it. I love it when you call me Big Papa Tate Litchfield. I mean, Tate, are you ever even in a dip?

Yeah, dips occur. You know, I really kind of echo what everybody else said. I mean, not like I want to be in them, but I welcome the challenge. I know how to put my head down, put my nose to the grindstone.

And get to work.

And that's often how I confront and battle these periods of. Of slowness is I get creative. I have no problem addressing the fact that what's working or what was working is no longer working. And I think that's part of, you know, what helps me get in and out of these debts. Dips quickly is you've got to be able to pivot. You've got to look at what worked in the past and learn from it, and then also sit down and reflect on what you've accomplished. Looking backwards helps me have a good perspective on what's yet to come. So dips occur. We see them. I'd be lying if I said I haven't been in one or we're not in one at any given time. I mean, there's always a dip going on in our business. It might not be the entire business, but something's broken, something somebody's not performing.

It's Normal.

Yeah, there's, there's always something going on. I, I, I think what's interesting that, and, and because I, I know you guys so well is, is what you're not saying is that when the dips occur, you can regulate yourselves emotionally because you guys take really good care of yourselves. And Eric is the same way. I mean, he's there. There's probably not a, a piece of exercise equipment now that, that Derek. Eric doesn't own. Right. But, I mean, you know, Tate's cycling and getting out of his head. You know, Landon is, you know, in the gym. If you've seen Landon at boot camp, you know, oh, yeah, this guy's seen a, a barbell or two in his life, not to mention swimming. Sharia works out just as hard as Landon. And the only person in the group that I know probably doesn't work out as, as much as they probably should, and we'll shave him for it in another round table might be Scott Todd. But if you count donut bicep curls as an exercise, that, that works too. But, But Eric, what, what about you?

Well, first of all, I heard that.

That Scott Todd now bikes to his new office, so he's exercising at least twice a day.

Okay. If that's true, then I apologize, because that's.

No.

So I think it's important to, to realize that, you know, no matter where you're at in the, in this business, if you, if you don't feel like you have been through a dip, that inevitably you will find one at some point.

Right.

At some level. I think it's also important to note that a dip doesn't just necessarily mean a dip in sales. In other words, Maybe you sold four properties or 10 or 50 properties last month, and this month you sold none. Now, that could certainly be a dip, but there can be other things, too. Like, we could lose staff.

Right?

Right.

Our vas quit, and that causes an area of the business to falter. Right. If we don't have someone in place to back them up or what have you, and the list goes on. Right. I mean, there's many things that can cause a dip.

Right.

We're a struggle in your business. And I think a lot of what people have said already are the same things that I keep in mind. You want to analyze, figure out what's what, where's the root of the problem? You know, if it's a sales issue, if it's a staffing issue, if it's a system issue, what is it? And, you know, do we have something that worked before. Let's look at that. If not, you know, what is it that we're not doing that we. That we should maybe be doing? Maybe something Tate's doing that we're not doing, or Teresa is doing that we're not.

Whomever.

Right. Like, if we're. A simple analogy, might be like marketing. Maybe we've been marketing on one or two platforms since we started this business, and that's been great. Like, we've done really well, we've sold lots of property, but something changed, and all of a sudden, one or two of those platforms aren't working for us anymore or they're not working as well. Like, that might be a prime time now. It might have been better to do this before, but at least at that point, maybe it's time to expand to other platforms or wherever that analogy fits.

Right.

Within whatever's going on in the business. But looking at alternatives, in addition to realizing, hey, these things worked, how can I see if those still work? How can I re. Implement those things? But beyond that, what new can I try to maybe, like, get me out of here? Right.

Yeah. You know, it's so funny when you mentioned that, because when I'm talking to a coaching client who's in a dip, the first thing I'll ask them is, are you attending the mastermind calls? Are you attending office hours? And if they're not, they're losing out on the collective intelligence of the community and what is working for them. Right. But go ahead. I. I cut you off there.

Sorry.

No, no worries. I think that's entirely true. I mean, part of the benefit of coaching is that you do have access to this community, Right. This tight community of people that are in the same situation as you. And if you're not taking advantage of those calls to, to ask questions and get feedback, like, you're really missing out. You're not taking full advantage of what you're paying for. So, you know, I think that those, those are the things that, where I would start.

Right.

And then, then you have to take action. We can't just come up with all these ideas or plan for things and do nothing. Right. Nothing's going to change. We have to get in there and take action. We have to direct our team to, to make changes or whatever has to happen. Like, we have to step in and after realizing the things that need to change or the things that need to be done more often or whatever it is, like, we got to make that happen and we got to hold the team accountable. If we're asking Them to change. They may not want to do that. So we have to find ways to hold them accountable to make progress and find your way out.

Yeah, absolutely. And it's sort of to just self delusion to think, oh, things aren't going to change. Right. I, I had 10 sales last week and now next week nothing's going to change. I'll get 11. Right, right. I mean it's constantly changing. I mean in every, in every aspect of your business, Scott. Todd, I don't even know if. Do you ever get into a dip? Do you? Should we go back and have Tate redefine it for you again?

No, it's okay. You know, I, I think that like the point that you just brought up, the fact that we think that nothing's going to change. Well, it's always going to change, right? Like it's, there's always going to be something that changes. And I think that when you're, when you're in a dip, the first thing that you have to. I, I would do three things. One, I, I would recognize that, oh, I'm having a pity party right now, right? Like that's, that's typically the beginning of the dip is, oh man, nothing's going my way. You start to, you start to have those self doub out, you start to feel bad for yourself, you know, so, so one, give yourself a break and have your little pity party, whatever it is, right? Like, yeah, things aren't going your way right now. But the thing is, is I, I try to remind myself of, okay, right this second, it's not the best, right? My world's not the best right this second. But is my world getting better, okay, than it was a year ago? So, you know, there's a book called the Gap in the Gain. It talks about this, like, look back at where you've come from, not where you are at this given moment or if your goal is here. Oh man, I'm not going to make my goal or oh man, I thought I was going to make the goal. Now that's the pity party. Am I getting better? Right? And I think that what you'll find is that for all of us, life does get better, right? Like we move, we grow, we, we do better. And the longer you can look back, man, the better you're going to be. Because now I think you even mentioned it. Being grateful, right? You're grateful for the things that you have. Like, oh man, we're way better off than we were 20 years ago. We may not be better off than we were yesterday or Last week. But give it time and we'll come back out of it again. So, you know, you got to recognize that you're there, give yourself a break, and then get out of it as fast as possible and, like, you know, get back to work. The other thing is, I do think that success leads to success. And what I. What I'm trying to imply there is that. Look, and Landon probably knows, you know, any. Any sports coach, trainer would probably tell you this, is that when you're having a problem, what do you do? You go back to your money shot, right? Like, you go back to the. To. To everybody. Like, I'm sure all pro athletes have this simple thing that they can do to snap themselves back into it. Golf, for example, which I do play. Mark, I'm willing to challenge you, by the way, to around for the land Geek championship here since, you know, you want to take digs at me, it's okay. We can do that.

That's fine. As long as we're not taking a cart. Are we going to walk the course? Sure, let's walk it, baby.

Let's walk it. Because, you know, it's not how far you walk, it's the. The lower the score wins. And like, I gotta.

I. I just. I just want you to get some fresh air.

Oh, I get fresh air, man. I get fresh air. Don't worry. Okay, so, like. But in golf, if. If I'm. If I'm like, jumping up some shots, well, to me, what I do is, I'll say, okay, time out. I go back to that one club, that one shot that I know, man, all I gotta do is take this nine iron and hit it, and I can, nine times out of 10, get it right where I want to be, 100 yards from here. And even though I might need to take out my driver right now, I need a mental reset. I need to get some confidence back. So you go to your money move, right? Like, you go to that, that. That go to shot, and you deliver on it. And even if you got to take a couple of more times just to go deliver on. Now, how does this relate back to land? Well, I mean, you could. You could say, hey, listen, I just need. I just need an influx, right? Like, I just need a sale. I need to get that sale feeling back. I need to get that adrenaline back. So what do you do? Go wholesale something, right? Like, you know, like, boom, boom. What happens? You got a sale now you got some energy back, right? Like the. The energy's back. Go wholesale something. Yes. You could probably make more Money somewhere else. But you know what, you feel good about it. You know, and it might, it's not, I'm saying, I'm not saying it's instant, but once you have that success now you're back in the game again. So don't use, don't forget to use that as a lever. Go to your money, money move, whatever it is. Or maybe you' getting a response to your mailings. No problem. Go buy something wholesale. Right? Because then you have some new energy. I got a new property to market. You're excited about this new property to market. See, these are the things that you can do and you can control. And you know, Mark, you even start off by saying you can't control everything. I would tell you that while you can't control when someone's going to accept your offer, and while you can't control when someone's going to buy a property, you can control the actions around that, such as, I'm going to go and I'm going to buy a property wholesale, if for no other reason that I have a new property that brings some lifeblood into this thing that me or the team or whoever can get excited about. And then once you get that, then all of a sudden you'll start to see that these things start to work again.

Yeah, I mean, you said so many good things in there and it's so true. I mean, I think that the confidence piece and moving your feet, also celebrating your WINS. In that WhatsApp chat for our coaching clients, we try to celebrate our wins every Friday. And a win doesn't necessarily have to be a sale. A win could be, I just went into a new county, I just hired a new va. I just upped my deal flow by sending out more offers or I found a new wholesale.

Source.

Right. So there's all these little wins that you can go back and, and look at. And again, the going back piece that Scott was just talking about is looking at the gain. Taking that perspective, seeing how far you've come, even if you just started, you can still look back at. Okay, well, I, I knew nothing about land when I first started. Now I'm learning about all these facets of a new business that I had no idea about before. And you can take, you know, some pride in that as well. And I can say, just for me personally, as we wrap up when I'm in a dip, I'd like to ask myself this question. And it comes from a guy who was born with a really rare disease named Sean Stevenson. He's a motivational speaker, he passed away several years ago now and he says, is, is this happening to me or is this happening for me? And when you look at the things that happen in life and when we're in a dip, is this happening to me or is this happening for me? Because this is happening for me. This is an opportunity for me to get better in so many more aspects of my life. And it's just one of those magic phrases that I, I, I've never forgotten. So hopefully everyone got a lot of value out of this podcast and next time you are in that inevitable dip, you'll have some tools at your disposal. Go back, listen to this podcast and realize you're not alone as well. And we all have to manage our way through it. So we're at that point now in the podcast where we get to talk to Landon AI Harris and ask him for his tip of the week, a website and resource, a book, something else actionable, where the art of passive income listeners can go improve their businesses, improve their lives. But before he does that, just a shout out to our sponsor, which is Flight School. Learn how the next 16 weeks can transform your life and will even help you get through those inevitable dips. As a community, it's incredible because you're going to go up a mountain and learn with Scott Todd, who's done it thousands of times, as your Sherpa guiding you start building that passive income without renters, without rehabs, renovations, rodents. And I know you're thinking, oh, that tuition, it ain't gonna cost you nothing. Guaranteed you're gonna make it back 180 days or less. Just show us you're doing the work.

Learn more.

Go to lagic.com forward/training thelandgeek.com forward slash training Landon Harris, what is your tip of the week?

Okay, so I've been playing around with this extension for probably about six weeks and it's called Lavender AI. I'll put that in the chat. But okay, so basically it is, it's an extension that uses AI to help you kind of structure your emails a little better. So basically it gives you a score. You write the email, it gives you a score, and it'll tell you some areas where you can improve it. And so one of the things that they claim is that it's supposed to help you get a 20% more positive reply to whoever you're speaking to. So I've been playing with this a little bit back and forth, some personal emails, then I started switching it and started to talk with some of our, some of our Previous buyers. And just to see if I can get a little bit more engagement. And I, you know, from right now, it does seem like you're getting a little bit more engagement, but it's. It's. I don't know, it's kind of cool. It's got a little, you know, a different way that you can set up different tones to speak to buyers. You can set up different subject titles that might relate to your audience better. One of the things I did like was that it has a. It will show you what emails and what things you can do that will get a better response on phones. So if somebody pulls up an email on a phone, what could you do to this email to be able to engage with them better? So it's a little cool, kind of a. Like I said, it's an extension. I don't call it an app, but it's more of an extension. But, you know, we're in this AI world now, so I figured this was kind of right along with that.

So, Eric, what do you think?

I'm gonna check it out.

I'm gonna check it out. All right. Fantastic. Tip of the week. All right, well, I want to just remind the listeners the only way we're going to be able to keep intimidating Landon to come up with tips of the week every week is if you do three little favors. Follow rate Review the podcast. Send a screenshot of that review supporthelandgeek.com I'm going to send you a signed copy of Dirt Rich, by the way. Dirt Rich 2 is coming out, so. But once you get a signed copy of Dirt Rich, I think it's going for about 2 billion on the Binance crypto exchange right now, so don't quote me on that.

Impressive.

Impressive. In some weird, worthless crypto. But anyways, selfishly for yourselves, it does. It does help, and it gets us better guests. So please do it. All right, Eric, are we good?

We're great.

Cherie, are we good? All good, big Papa? Yep, Landon?

We are good, Professor.

All good. All right, let's do this. 1, 2, 3.

Let freedom freedom ring ring.

All right, thanks, everybody.

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