How to Know When is the Perfect Time to Start the Land Business

Hey, it's Mark Podolski, the land geek with a favorite digit real estate website, thelandgeek.com and today we're asking the question, when is the perfect time to start the land business? Or not even the perfect time. When's the right time to start the land business? And we've got almost all the usual suspects for this week's roundtable. We've got Eric the Technician Peterson. Eric, how are you? Mark, good to see you. We've got Landon, AI Harris. Landon, how are things going? Well, Mark, I'm tracking macros, by the way. Barely. It's not even stopped. We got your partner in crime, Teria, putting in the reps. Harris. Tria, how are you? Good. Good to see you. Although, Tria, I think we're having mic issues with you, but that's okay. We've got. I love it when you call me Big Papa. Hey, Litchfield. Tate. How are things?

They're good. Happy to be here.

Good to see you. So, Eric, let's just start with you. When you first started the land business, were you worried about the timing? When's the right time to start, you think?

No, I. I was not worried about the timing, and I don't even think it occurred to me, honestly. I think in today's market, that maybe could be a bigger concern. Like, you know, is. Are too many people doing this? Is it too crowded? Is this really going to work? Um, but ultimately, I would say, you know, the best time to start the land business is. Is a lot like the best time to plant a tree right today. But ideally, as. As far in the distant past as you could, because you'd be that much further along.

Right.

When we're talking about building passive income, it takes time to build that. Right. So if we started last year, we'd be that much further ahead. So I don't think that in my opinion, there's. There's necessarily a wrong time to start, but I think the right time is now.

Yeah, I mean, that's. I almost feel like that's the definitive answer. We could just stop the podcast. I want to thank the listeners. Just remind you, but. No, I mean. But it really is the definitive answer, but I think we should add some color to it. So, Landon, AI Harris, what would you add to that? I mean, when you and Terea started the land business, was this a fear? It seems like there's a lot of people that are starting the land business. Or is now a good time? Is the timing right?

Yeah, you know, when we started, you know, I think this was such a new niche for a lot of us and we hadn't heard of it, we hadn't, we didn't know anybody doing it. And now maybe you see some doing it. But I still feel like this is still a good niche where it's still, still kind of hidden. I'm still kind of one of those hidden gems that people haven't heard about yet. And you know, when's a good time? I think honestly, like, you know, I follow with Eric, what he was saying. It's like now, you know, I, I don't think that there is in this business what we find, what we've seen, at least in ours is, you know, sometimes the economy may go down, but that's a great time to buy, you know, and that's, that's the time when you want to set it up where, when it does come back up, guess what? Making sales we bought at the right price. So now, you know, we're, we're at a, a place where we're, we're, we're making, you know, good returns on what we're doing. So I think, you know, no, there is no bad time, at least none that I've seen, you know, here. You know, Teria may think different, but I, I think we're in a good spot.

Taria putting in the reps. Harris, what are your thoughts?

Can you guys hear me?

Okay, Kind of. I mean, I think we're going to make fun of your audio off.

Landon is setting up my new office today, so everything's kind of disjointed. So I agree with Eric and Landon. We didn't, I didn't think about it when Landon said, you know, hey, let's look at this new venture. And because we were already looking for something to do passive wise, it never occurred to me is the timing right? It was how do I get involved and how do I grow this business? So for me, most of my life it's never been some things are timing related, but not necessarily this business, we decided we were going to do it no matter how long it took. One thing I will say that I hear a lot of and it was a concern of mine in the beginning was financially, am I ready to do it? So not necessarily, if the timing right. But it's timing right financially. But even when we got in, we found ways around even that question. Right? So leveraging investors and finding ways to raise capital. So for us there wasn't a bad time to start. It was just actually starting and seeing it through.

Yeah, that's really interesting. Because it is true. Because to Eric's point, the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. But the second best time is today. But it may not be for you, but it's almost an illusion in that sense, because everything's figureoutable. It's like, well, if I know that this is true and I know that it's. I'm going to benefit the longer I'm in this. Well, I just need to solve this problem, and maybe it's capital and maybe it's time, but if this is a priority, you figure this stuff out, right? If you want your passive income to exceed your fixed expenses without having to deal with any headaches like renters and rehabs, renovations, you figure it out and you just do it today. You don't wait, because again, that it's just another day for that tree to. To grow. Big papa. We'll let you close it here. Eric, really, Erica really made this podcast easy.

He did a great job. He answered it very well. The one thing that I'm going to bring up is this word figure outable that you used. I don't think that's a great.

So I, I. All right, fine, I'll.

Is that a real word?

It is not a real world word. I think her name is Marie Forleo. She's a big finance person, and she wrote a book called Everything is Figureoutable. And I actually heard her speak, and she's Italian, that her mom was like, marie, everything's figureoutable.

Okay?

And she's like, okay, that's right.

I'll let it slide.

I'll let it slide. I'm not the grammar police or anything. I have grammar down, Grammarly downloaded. I pay for it. It's a great app. So that tells you where my English.

Skills, by the way, maybe that's our tip of the week.

Grammarly.

Grammarly.

Look, if you're not using that, like, come on, people, I don't know where you've been. Like, it's amazing. And pay for it, because it's that good. It's like six bucks a month.

Come on.

All right, since English is her second language, I'll let the figureoutable slide. But you said that, and I was like, figureoutable. I went and searched. Is figureoutable a real word? And the answer is no. So kind of funny, but Eric hit the nail right on the head with what he said, and, you know, I, I really wasn't concerned with the market or, you know, real estate as a whole, because our niche is so small that I don't really care what's happening in the multifamily space. I don't really care what's happening in the single family home space or airbnb market. Like, that's not my audience, that's not my market, and that's not the tactics or tools that we use to grow our land companies. So for those of you who are saying, oh, it's, you know, not the right time for whatever reason, let us know what your hesitations are and we can debunk those. Right? Because it's a good time to be a land investor. I was. I'm going to give a little tease, Mark, if that's okay. At the upcoming boot Camp, you've asked me to do a state of the market address, right? And it's something I've taken very seriously because I want to provide true and accurate information. So what I've done is I've gone into LG Pass and I've sorted all of the sales that we've had in Q1 of 2024. We've gotten really geeky. I could tell you all kinds of metrics. I can tell you about marketing platforms, and I'm going to be sharing that at the boot camp. But for the sake of this podcast, just to tease a little bit, we had our best quarter on recorded history at the start of this year. So if you're wondering about whether or not this is a good time to be a land investor, let that sink in. The best quarter.

And.

And I've seen Mark's numbers going back 20 plus years. This is the best quarter I think any land investor has ever seen. I mean, you've seen the numbers. Would you agree with me? Would you disagree with that?

No, the numbers are insane. I 100% agree with you.

So for those of you who are wondering, is it a good time to be a land investor? Look, it's. It's always a good time. If you don't believe me, you know, you got to test it, right? Like, you got to come test it. You got to hear us out. You got to see what we're doing, and you really got to put in the time to make these businesses grow. But there are a lot of buyers out there. There are still crazy amounts of deals to be had at ridiculous prices. We got an accepted offer recently from a mailer to a county that everybody on this podcast knows very, very well. And the lady told us that this was the first offer she'd ever received in the last 20 years. Now, I don't know if that's true. Maybe she just lost the other ones. Maybe she's just telling me what I want to hear. But we're going to do a deal. She's got six lots, I think, and we're buying them for about 20 cents on the dollar. So good opportunities still exist. I'm finding deals left, right and center. So if you're not, you're doing something wrong, you're not following the recipe.

Yeah, yeah, it's such a good point. You know what I think it is and tell me if you disagree. I think if you go on social media and you on that algorithm, the algorithm, if you're interested in land or you're interested in real estate, you're interested in E commerce, or you're interested in whatever you're interested in, you click on something, then the algorithm's like, oh, really? Let me show you all these ads from all these other people and let me show you these groups and let me show you this. And it seems like because of your interest, it's like all these people are doing it. But you forget there's like, you know, a billion people on social media and you only might be seeing six or seven ads or, you know, or ten groups. It's like. And then of that percentage, how many people are actually doing it? So it feels like there's a lot of people in the land business, but in reality, it's a really small niche and again, it's kind of boring. It's not sexy and it's not mainstream. Again, you're not going to go at HGTV or the DIY network and see flip this land. The before pictures draw land, the after pictures draw land. It's boring. So I think that could be it. I think that's, that's one of the things. But ultimately, timing wise, it's, again, it's the same thing. It's. It's what Eric said, you wanted to do it 20 years ago, but the second best time is now. And ultimately, like what Landon Shreya said is that timing's never going to be perfect, in a sense, for your life. You're always going to feel this feeling like, oh, everything. I'll start when I have this or I'll start when we have this. No. And again, Tate's going to roll his eyes, but everything's figureoutable. If you feel like you, you don't have enough capital, well, there's places to get capital. If you feel like you've got a big life and, you know, if you got job pressure, you got family pressure, you're doing this. Do what I did. You get up an hour earlier, you go to bed an hour later. That's all you need. But the timing is never going to be perfect. It's just not. And that's not for the land business. That's for anything you really want to do in life. It's never going to be perfect. And anyone who tells you there's a perfect time to start anything is. Is just fooling yourself, really. And I mean, you know, I don't know why people start a gym membership on January 1st. The best time to start is today. Don't wait. I don't know why when you start your workout, you start out on a Monday. Do it today. It's just, do it. Do it today. Start today, not someday. So on that, I do want to remind everybody that today's podcast is sponsored by flight school. Learn how the next 16 weeks can transform your life. Go up that mountain of land, investing quickly, safely, and efficiently with our team teaching you that recipe. And by the way, I know what you're thinking. What about the tuition? Ain't gonna cost you nothing. Guaranteed you're gonna make it back 180 days or less. Just show us you did the work. Learn more. Go to land. Geek.com forward/training. Start building that passive income without any headaches. And yeah, if you're getting value from this, do us a favor, Follow rate, review the podcast. Send us a screenshot of that review. SupportLangic.com I'm send you for free a signed copy of the rich you you are have dirt rich. Then you'll get another copy to give to friends and family. You'll love it. And of course, Tate gave a great tip of the week, which was Grammarly, if you want to get real geeky with another tip, you have to wait for next week because my tip is super geeky. All right, we ready to do this? 1, 2, 3, 3. Let's. Not bad, not bad.

So you always say, not bad.

It's not bad. It's bad.

No, that was just bad, man. Like, what's.

What's the standard? We're all. We're all virtual. It's really hard to sync this up. Audio.

I'm just saying, you can't say that everything's not bad when that one is clearly worse than a lot of other ones.

First of all, can we give Sharia a little grace? She's moving. I don't even know what she's doing. And she's still doing it.

She's got all the grace. In the world because I love her. But it wasn't her fault. This was a collective fail, right? Like, we did not do good on that, plain and simple. I mean, we're lucky that people still listen to us after that because it was like ring. It was. That was.

He didn't call anybody out either. Mark, you're the one that blamed it on.

I didn't. No, no, I didn't blame it on. Do you feel like I'm calling you out on that? I'm just saying it's hard to do. We can't see she's feeling ashamed. Oh, my gosh.

We are not a shame based family.

We are not shame based at all.

We are not shame based.

I'm feeling shame for possibly bringing on shame.

Yeah, shame on you for shaming her.

Oh, my gosh.

We better end it right now.

You know the shame. You know what? We should end this.

Goodbye, everybody.

We're sorry. Thanks, everyone. All right.

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 forward slash training. Let freedom ring.