How to Profit from America’s Housing Shortage - Without Owning a House

I once dined on steak with a candle's soft glow, but the bill left my savings despairingly low. Now wisdom has taught me, so simple, so grand, Eat baloney, buy land. Oh, eat baloney, buy land. Play the fork for the deed in your hand. Skip the filling, let the sandwiches stand. Your fortune will grow when you buy your own land.

Skip the fork, everybody. Welcome to the Land Geek Nightcap. Tonight, it's dealer's choice. No script, no agenda, no guardrails. This is your chance to take over the show. You got questions about land investing, mailing, pricing, selling, mindset, tech, deals you're working on, or the crazy stuff nobody else talks about, fire away. Nothing's off the table. We're opening up the bar, pouring the drinks, and giving you unfiltered access to myself, Scott Bosman, the Zen Master Mike Zaino, buddy John Handsome Rob, 8 is Enough Burnett, and the Godfather himself, Mark J. Podolsky. Hey everybody, how we doing, fellas?

Awesome. Am I the only one that during the intro I'm jumping around my office just screaming and punching, and it's so exciting.

Headbanging.

I definitely was headbanging. I hurt myself.

It was great.

I'll turn my videos off.

I mean, that definitely creates some energy, that opening, for sure.

It does. It's one of my, uh, my son's favorite songs. He refers to it as jazz, so I'm not sure he entirely knows what jazz is.

He's like, Dad, can you play that jazz song about the baloney? But that's awesome, the jazz song about the baloney.

They asked for a baloney sandwich yet?

Uh, no, my children have never tasted baloney.

You're a seasoned land investor, that's, that's in your past, John.

They—

we did go to Costco once and they had Spam samples, and my kids are like, Dad, we need Spam.

I concur with that.

I concur. I'm a spam lover for sure. So, well, everybody, I hope you had a great Thanksgiving. Uh, Mark, did you, uh, you know, were you able to step away from the table without, uh, uh, needing to unbutton the pants? Everything go okay with the meal?

And no, no, total disaster. Uh, I got a DEXA scan afterwards and As I told you guys, I'm fat, brittle. It's not going well. The aging is not going well. So I wish I were joking. Got a lot of work to do.

I mean, all you gotta do is— what was it, uh, add 20 pounds of muscle and gain and lose 20 pounds of fat? I mean, you're there, man. You're at your ideal weight right now.

I'm at the ideal weight, just not the ideal composition.

Uh, all right, so you're using a personal trainer to help you with that?

Yeah.

Oh yeah, like how often?

Uh, I go tomorrow night. I'll let you know.

Like once a week? Oh, they're gonna recommend—

so yeah, I mean, based on my DEXA scan, they're like, every day you gotta come in here. They're gonna see me and they go, what a sucker.

Oh man. Well, you're a land investor, you have no excuse to not change the density.

100%. I thought I was doing all the right things.

I think you look actually pretty young tonight, younger than normal. I don't know what's going on here, but it's a haircut, man.

It's a haircut. I mean, yeah, but internally my biological age is like 73. Did you guys have a good Thanksgiving? Yeah, it was good.

Very good.

Very good. Yes.

Well, uh, like, like we said, it's, uh, dealers to dealers to deal— what did I say? Dealer's Choice tonight.

So what do we just wait for people to ask questions?

Yeah, yeah, I think, you know, we open it up to the community and the masses that are watching. And if you have a question about anything land investing related, or Mark's Texas scan, you know, let's talk about it.

Anything health related.

But yeah, well, Mike, Mike, Mike, maybe for people just tuning in for the first time. Yeah, you want to, you want to tell them who the 4 goofy guys are here and what we're talking about and why we're here?

We're all land investors. We all, the three of us, uh, I don't know how you're all looking at us, learned from the gentleman on the top right. That's Mark. Mark is the land geek, and he taught us all how to buy land. Uh, this is pretty crazy, like, we buy land at 25, 30 cents on the dollar, right? So, you know, once we buy it, we have this huge, uh, you know, profit margin we can make, and we offer to people an owner financing. Repayments. Here's the thing, you know, when I explain this model to people, I think they get two sticking points, Mark, right? Typically, number one, oh, sounds great, but who's going to sell you land 25 cents on the dollar? And the other sticking point, yeah, okay, great, you convinced me of that, but who's going to buy it? I think that's— other than that, the people like, yeah, that makes total sense. Now you buy land cheap, you can go offer an owner financing, multiply your money. I mean, everything sounds great, but what do you say to them, Mark, when they say this is two sticking points? Like, who's gonna sell it to you And who's going to buy it from you?

Yeah, so the first sticking point, I would say, if I offered you right now for 25, 30 cents a dollar everything in your garage you're not using, and you're getting taxed every year, by the way, for everything in your garage, would you take it?

Hell yeah.

Yeah, they would take it. So that's who's selling it. It's the people that it was once an asset It's not now a liability. Now, well, who's buying this? So after doing over 6,500 deals, never getting stuck with a piece of raw land, I can tell you with 100% confidence that there's a pig for every barn. Yeah, it all sells at the right price. So who's buying it? People that don't like people, they want to be away from the people, people that like nature, people that grew up hearing buy land, it's the only thing that lasts, right? You've got people who are, uh, preppers, right? They're preparing for the worst, they're hoping for the best. You've got outdoors people, you've got people that, uh, are investors, you have people that are even speculators. They think, oh maybe one day this is gonna be worth something. You've got people who just think it's cool. They just think it's cool. It's the same thing. I, I like to think of it as man jewelry. It just feels good, right? Like, think about it. Like, John is buying Val jewelry, most likely for Christmas. She's gonna put the jewelry in her ears 99% of the time. She won't even see it.

Right?

But she likes the way it makes her feel. She doesn't even see it. It's the same thing with the land.

People don't—

maybe go out there, but they just like the deed. They like the way it feels. I own something. I own this, and I can afford it.

Makes sense.

Just to clarify, did you say man jewelry?

Man jewelry. Okay, because most of our clients are men. But I would say that, you know, We do. We have women who are—

call it land jewelry, right?

Land jewelry.

I like the idea of just having like a deed, like as a necklace. I think I'm going to start sending that to my clients.

You said crazier things, John Burnett.

We got such a good point. Like, should I already be shopping for my wife? Is it time for Christmas shopping already?

I mean, it's Cyber Week. You missed out most of the deals.

Yeah, I got some parcels for you. These are great stocking stuffers.

Right in the stocking, right?

Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

If she doesn't like it, 90-day guarantee. We'll exchange it for something she loves. No problem.

I love it. I love it. Yes.

Awesome.

That's who we are. That's what we do. And thank you, Mark, because that's truly When I talk to people, you know, I talk to a lot of people, as does John and Scott. It's like everything makes sense to them but those two things, you know, because you can kind of wrap your head around everything, but then that part, they kind of get stuck. But I think, you know, we don't even question it anymore, right? It just happens. We mail out letters, we buy land, we put out marketing, we sell land. It's just like what we do. We don't even question it anymore. We forget, like, maybe what it's like when you're new, trying to evaluate the model and what it might appear to like that new person.

Yeah, I mean, 100%. I mean, there's a lot of things out in, in the world that I'm like, I can't believe anybody buys this. But these are like billion-dollar industries.

True, true.

Sorry for that.

My, my bougie dirty dirty martini. It's extra dirty.

Very, very bougie.

Both bougie.

We concur, I'm gonna have an olive. I only got 3 olives, so we're going to do 3 concurs.

All right, we do have a— we do have our first question of the night. You guys ready?

Yes.

Yeah, uh, from Daniel Bryan. Daniel, good to see you. Uh, he's got a fun question. So he bought a property a while back found out there's a fence along the main road that blocks the easement to a whole lot of properties out there. Yeah, thoughts on dealing with this? That's a good question.

I've had something similar in the past.

I've had something similar, John.

I've had something similar, Texas.

Mark?

Yeah, I mean, yeah, I've had, I've had rough access. I've never had a It fence.

Yeah, so it's, it's kind of interesting how— I mean, I, I, I very rarely this happens, right? But it did happen to me one time, and I went and I consulted with a lawyer. He's like, yeah, take the fence down. They can't do it. Just like, just take the fence down. Like, which I didn't. I went and had someone talk to the neighbor and we got rid of it. But, uh, it's like, they can't do that, you know? And so, but I don't believe in— I want to make friends with the neighbors, right? So, but I don't know, what did you guys do?

I'm trying to think. I think I just sold it and disclaimed to the guy that, hey, there's a fence here and it shouldn't be here. And he liked, he like climbed the fence to get to the property and he liked the properties. Like, I'll deal with it. Mike, we owned that one together actually. That was a 40-acre parcel out in Nevada.

Oh, the fake one.

What's that?

The fence climbing deal.

He was a fence climber. Yeah, and it was a little bit hard to get to, but he liked the area. And I was, you know, I was able to disclose to him that there's legal access to the property. Don't know why this fence is up. And he went out there and liked it and bought it. I don't know whatever happened. So we didn't have to take any action with that. And you may not have to, Daniel. Right? If you just disclose it to the potential buyer and say, hey, you know, something's going on out there, I don't know what. Um, but I think the other thing you could do is report it to the authorities, uh, because it's definitely not a legal fence. So, Mark, what was your experience in Texas?

Yeah, I mean, we, we did the Mike Zeno approach, and we just were really cool about it and said, hey, look, this is our property. We, we can't access our property. Um, we're gonna have to, you know, get there. Can you, can you do us a solid before we have to call the sheriff and get, you know, right, people involved and lawyers and all that? And, you know, yeah, we're reasonable. Now, if someone was like— I think we had one person who was unreasonable, and sheriff just goes out there and takes out that, gets the bolt cutter and does their thing. So, um, you know what I found over the years is that everything's solvable in the land business. IRS liens, you can get those cleared. There's, there's nothing that's really unsolvable in, in a sense. Now, like, I've bought a side of a mountain That was a problem, but I disclosed it. And, you know, again, there's a pig for every barn. Like, it sold and, and we made money. Uh, now today, if I did that, I've just called John, right? So now you have a whole community of people you can wholesale this property to that might, you know, feel better about marketing it.

That's awesome. I'm kidding about wholesaling.

I mean, I've sold mountainsides. They're very pretty.

They're very pretty. I mean, people, people like, like it, so you never know. They all very good.

John, any, any last words of wisdom on this topic?

No, I think the only, um, sometimes you can flip a negative as a positive too. So like, I've had properties burned down before, um, like a forest fire comes through and and a property burns, or I bought it knowing that and got a good deal on it, and I can pitch that as a positive, right? And so I say like, you know, we're discounting heavily, there's new growth happening, here's an article, you know, stuff like that. But, you know, when you've got a negative, sometimes I had a property recently that we just sold last week And the roads were pretty washed out. Like, it was, you know, you gotta hop over the, the chasm to get to the property. And so, you know, so we just— yeah, so we just, we just kind of have— it's one of the nice things about, you know, buying at the discounts that we do. Like, you know, I made a lot less money than I wanted to, but I still made money on the deal and discounted it and pitched it as a great deal for somebody else.

So just brought up a great life lesson. It reminded me when I was doing insurance work years ago before land investing— never hop over a puddle. Because I was out doing work and I hopped over the puddle, but it looks— what looks to be like shallow water on the other side could be 2 feet deep.

Mm-hmm.

Oh, I almost lost my whole leg.

Whoa, that reminds me of those ankle support That reminds me of the old adage, a wise man never plays leapfrog with a unicorn.

Yeah.

Anyway, I digress. Oh, I would say one other thing, Mike. I'd say one other thing to Daniel. We're going off the rails. We said no guardrails. Daniel, call all the neighbors. 'Cause the guy who put up the fence probably wants it, may want that land. And you could even have some fun with them on the phone.

You're already claiming it as yours, might as well buy it.

Yeah, exactly. So might be a good and easy neighbor sale for you.

Yeah, you've already proved it. You've already fenced it.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Very good, very good. Martin Cancella, Martin, good to see you here. Can you give a brief recap of the Dirt Rich Summit? He's bummed he missed it due to a conflicting work conference.

Well, you can book up— you can block off next year. I think we already have a date, don't we? You can block out a date.

October 7th.

Yeah, 7th to 9th.

I'll put it— put that in the chat here. But, uh, yeah, let's give a 30-second synopsis on the Dirt Rich Summit. Ready, set, Mike.

Well, we had about 200, I would say 200-ish, 250, I think, which is kind of cool if you think about it, because if you— across the whole country, all of us get together, there's only 250 people. Like, it shows you how tight this niche is, right? I mean, you go to a local meetup, you're going to have more than that. We had 250 people across the country, but came together. We had all kinds of inspirational stories, all kinds of, uh, presentations. We had vendors there, all different aspects of what you would need to run a successful land business. They were there. Um, you know, I thought Mark gave some really incredible, uh, content. You know, just, uh, Mark, you were performing pretty well up there. Like, I really— I'm impressed. Like, uh, you know, you bring the energy. You know, you really do. And I would say if you go there you go, you leave inspired, and you leave like so with so much more knowledge about this business. Because no matter where you are, if you're at the beginning, you're thinking about doing land investing, you're going to meet people at different phases, and you're going to solidify why you might want to do this, right? If you're just starting out, you're going to find all different ways to acquire property. If you're in the middle of it, you're going to find ways to market and sell. If you've been doing it for a while, you're going to find ways to scale. I mean, I think we really cater to a a broad group of people that are investing in land. So I was— I thought it was like amazing. I really did. I thought it was like— we've done a lot of events over the years, and this one was by far the greatest in my opinion. We've had so much fun and so much learning. I learned a lot. I learned a ton.

I concur.

Oh, concur, concur, concur all day long, all the time. Uh, one thing I love, Mark, is that you had more of your coaches' help than ever with all the presentations. And, you know, it used to be all Mark all the time, which we loved, but it was nice to hear from others, right? Everybody gave great presentations. Mike Zaino, John Burnett, Jim Lalla, Roberto, right? Everybody. Jeff Detmer. Yeah. Scott Bossier. Yeah, thanks. But it was fun, you know, it was fun to hear from all the coaches and hear, you know, hear what their maybe field of expertise is or, you know, what they're— where they were 10 years ago and where they were now. And it was very valuable in that regard, I think.

So many people have been doing it for so long now, Mark, that you can like lean on that depth and get so many different variety of experiences, right? That's really cool, right? That's something I think that you didn't have at the very beginning, right? But now you have— you have so many people that you've worked with and so many people have developed this to a high level that you can just listen to their stories now and get such inspiration.

No, it's amazing. And, you know, I'm the first Land Geek, but we're all Land Geeks. And so to your point, it, it's really just so gratifying to, to hear everybody's story and how they've evolved their land business and, and the abundance mentality. Like, everyone wants to share and they want them to be successful and want them to be up on stage a year from now.

Yes.

And we even had, uh, you know, Kirk in the, in the room. He's like, yeah, 367 days, I'm at $10,000 a month passive income, right? And, you know, and everyone's celebrating. It was awesome.

Very motivating.

It was awesome. John, any last thoughts on the summit?

Just that I concur. I mean, it was great. I just really— there were just a lot of awesome people there. I think it was just really great. But it was also great to get positive comments about the nightcap and that people actually watch this and enjoy it. And so that was really great. But yeah, really inspiring. I just, I went away just feeling, feeling really great and, uh, ready to go.

Yeah, awesome. Uh, Chantelle Krueger McCallum, good to see you and Daniel there. Uh, they said it was a great experience, can't wait to, to see everyone next year. Uh, Daniel, thank you very much for that. That was great to meet you guys in person. Is the location already locked in? It is. I think it's at the same location, isn't it, Mark?

I believe so.

Yeah, that Hilton downtown Austin. What's that?

Yeah, Mike, not broken, don't fix it. That was not broken.

Yeah, yeah, it was just a seamless weekend too with the— we've talked about it— the, the tech crew was phenomenal.

It was on point. Oh my God.

The AV team was on point and Mackenzie who coordinated the entire event was absolutely amazing. Didn't miss a beat with anything with 3 different rooms going at the same time. So yeah, it was an awesome, awesome event. Cool, all right. Let's find another question.

John, are you sipping coffee?

What's that?

Are you sipping coffee?

This is non-alcoholic.

Thank you, Joe.

Thank you, Porter.

Oh, okay. Like it.

All right. Yeah, Mark looks younger.

Mark, mullet's coming back. It's already back. The young generation.

Oh, the mullets are—

yeah, I'm working on it. I'm working on it. What is it? Work in the front, fun in the back.

Party in the back. Yep. Business in the front, party in the back.

This is part—

yeah, I love it. All right, from Daniel, has a friend who's interested. How does he get them started? John Burnett, you have a buddy who's interested in land investing. What are you gonna recommend they do?

So I would recommend that they get on the phone with one of us and then we can talk to them and find out if it's a good fit and then get them on path and get them in a spot where they're learning. So I think you need good education and good information. You know, it's good to not go at this alone, um, and it's— you need to maintain your momentum, right? And so come here, you can send them to Nightcap. I think it's great, you know, like we, we do these things, we answer your questions, we can give you good information. And then just— they just need to start learning. They give them the book too, give them, uh, Dirt Rich, give them Dirt Rich 2, and then yeah, just have them hop on the phone with us.

Are we doing a, I think, a Q&A next week? Maybe that might be helpful. Yeah, doing something next week, I think.

Um, I think we are next, next Tuesday night, I believe, at, uh, right before Nightcap.

So get a double dose, Q&A and Nightcap. What a great intro.

Yeah, send them our way, Daniel. Uh, awesome. And then, you know, I think, um For anybody in your life too, just show them some results. Show them the proof that this works, right? That's fun. People might look at you kind of, they might give you the side eye initially, like, "Land investing?" And then, you know, show them, "Hey, here's what I'm doing." And it's pretty neat. So, you can, you know, get them a Got Land t-shirt. It's a pretty awesome t-shirt. All right, awesome. Let's see here. Oh, here's a good one from Charles Jones. Charles, good to see you, sir. On average, how many mailers do you think an owner of land receives on an annual basis from investors? Let's assume our price point under $10,000. Ooh, that's a good one.

I think it's depending on the area too. There are some areas like we talk about all the time, Florida is a very competitive market, right? Someone in Florida is going to receive a lot of offers. Does that mean you can't get a deal there? No, you absolutely can, because it's a matter of timing. But you just got to keep, you know, hammering away the mailers, and it's going to take more to get there. Some of these rural properties, you know, people think it's saturated. But Scott, John, we know we mail some of these areas, or sometimes, yeah, it's the first letter I've ever gotten. Like, you know, you run into these situations where, you know, someone hasn't even been contacted, or Maybe they were contacted, but they didn't open it because, you know, it's like the old credit card analogy, right? When the people send out credit card offers, we get them all the time, run the trash, in the trash. But the one day you happen to open it, or somebody opens and they need a credit card, that's the day that they really, uh, you know, take action. So it's tough to say. I'd say in Florida, Charles, you're going to get a lot of people receiving a lot of letters. Still, you can do a deal there. I still do deals there myself. It just takes a little bit more to break through the noise, and it takes consistency. Other areas, not so many. It's tough to say how many though. I don't know. Let's say— I guess he's just looking for a guess too. I don't know. What would you guess, you guys?

Well, we ask people occasionally, you know, hey, have you gotten other offers on this property? Yeah, I've gotten offers.

Well, how—

you know, when's the last one you got? A couple months ago. 'Right, like that's a common response from people a couple months ago or a year ago.' Like, that's actually very common. And, um, uh, so, so I don't think people are being, being just inundated with offers. I don't think they're getting 4 letters a day, right, which you see on some sites. People are getting 4 letters a day. No, they're not. They're just—

I bet you've all had this happen. You get, oh, I received a letter from you like 6 months ago or a year ago, and they call you like, yeah, and they contact you. So if they were getting, you know, blasted with letters, how does that happen? You know, it wouldn't.

Yeah, exactly. What about you, John? What are your thoughts on it?

Well, I think Mike brought up a really good point about timing. Like, well done, Mike.

Drink to that.

But I mean, one of the things that I've done a lot is remailing, right? There's some areas where I'd remail, you know, every 90 days or so. And if you add that up, you know, that's somebody who's getting 4 letters from me every year, right? And the reason I do that is because it works, right? Because you hit these people over and over again and the timing's right and there's actually a somewhat of a predictable churn rate. And so just, you know, even, even me resending letters when the timing's right, it clicks.

So yeah, I think a more interesting question might be how many offers, how much money do I need to spend in mailing on average before I'm into a profitable deal? Uh, I mean, Scott, we were talking about somebody that did a different program for land flipping, and they spent $40,000, $30,000 on mailing.

Yeah, over $40,000.

Over $40,000 on mailing to buy a $30,000 property to sell for $50,000. Yeah, so they were not profitable. So for us, how many mailers do we have to spend on average in a month before we get a profitable deal?

Is it 100? Yeah, it's 100.

It's 100.

I mean, right now there's areas where our purchase rate is 1%, right?

So it's 100.

Yeah, it's just $100, Charles. So the question is, how many $100 lottery tickets will you send out in a month before you're profitable?

Yeah, yeah, that's a great point. An excellent point about the consistency of mailing. And it makes me think of something— when I can relate to my own life, it makes more sense. Like, I have You know, we all receive so many text messages from different things, and even friends. And we didn't have ever had like a, like a busy day or two or a week, and all of a sudden like you didn't respond to a friend and the text is way down there. It's not— I mean, it's so like, it takes a lot to break through the noise in our, in our life, not just mailing, but in any aspect of it, that you have to be consistent, you know. And it's not like we don't want to respond back to them, but mail letters to people. There's things that I want to do that sometimes go on the back burner, but if someone would remind me, oh yeah, I do want to do that, but it's like life just keeps rolling along and, and things get left in the dust, you know. And so they have to be kind of rebrought. So when John mails again, it brings it back up to the top, and maybe it doesn't work that time, but it comes back to the top, and eventually it comes at the right time when the person can pay attention to it, and bang, a deal is blossomed. But you have to keep that. I mean, just look at your own life. I do it all the time. It's like, I don't want to ignore my friends, but sometimes get so many correspondents in a day, or maybe I'll Vox with Scott Bossman, he won't reply all day, and I know he's not ignoring me. Maybe he is, but I'm just saying, break through that noise.

But then he messages you back and you leave him on read, and it's just gonna give a little taste of his own medicine. Yeah, exactly. Give me a taste of my own medicine.

But you gotta break through the noise, right? You can see it in our own lives. It makes sense when you think about it, right? These people might want to sell, but you need to remind them of the fact that they want to sell.

I love it. I love it. Push through the noise.

So much.

Very cool.

It's not a reminder.

Oh, the reminder. Remailer.

They remind me of it.

All right, Chantel. They sold land this week. Congrats, guys. That's awesome. Congrats to you.

Cheers.

We'd love to see the numbers if you don't mind sharing. Chantel really discovered she enjoys creating ads and getting those responses back. She and Daniel are talking about a VA intake manager advice. Ooh, that's a great question.

Well, that's a good one. I, I don't recommend hiring anybody you know because if you have to fire them, it's awkward.

You sound like you're speaking from experience.

No, no, no, just saying. I'm just saying, no, don't— family members are probably not— and they're great, but you know, if you ever have— it's, it's— anyway, that's just one bit right there. But also, I think an intake manager, somebody that is organized, a good communicator, can build rapport, right? There's no really— they just have to be somebody that could just carry a good conversation, right? Because a lot of people, you guys know this, right? They'll sell to us because they like us and we're likable, but we can carry a conversation, ask them questions. I call it— we talk about all the time— land therapy. Something we're gonna— you want to get a land therapist to be your intake manager. Because these people, some of them, they've owned property for decades and they'll let it go, but they want it, you know, the old couple be like, "Oh, we used to go out there and do this." Or perhaps sadly one of them has passed away and he or she relived the memory with it. And so there's this whole process of them and they want to process it. They're ready to let it go, but you provide them a very valuable service by allowing them to process, you know, why they buy it in the first place. Ask them, "Why'd you buy it? What happened? Did you go to it? What?" Oh, then you hear the whole story. At the end, they're ready to let it go. So you need, you need an intake manager is really a land therapist. And that's what you're looking for.

I love it, a land therapist. I think you also need someone who's a little bit of a hustler and they need to be organized, right? Because when you've been in this a while, we're dealing in high volume. So we need to have somebody who communicates with the potential seller, but follows up and follows up and follows up because we want that deal. It's just like it is on the sales side, right? So, to have a little bit of hustle and to have some organizational skills and ask the right questions. And how do they know how to ask the right questions? You just have to train them really well, right? So, I think you just need to know the intake process really well. You need to know all the questions to ask. And then hire that out to somebody else so they can do it. Um, but, um, but yeah, I guess that'd be my advice. What about you, John?

Yeah, I would just say don't go set it and forget it. It's really easy to— whenever you've got, uh, an area that, you know, doesn't like give you joy to run, you know, like maybe you're tired of of managing the intake side of your business, and then you delegate it, and you— and then you kind of pull away and don't keep tabs on your, um, your virtual assistant. And then all of a sudden, you know, lead flow stops, or you're just not buying properties at the same rate as you should be. So it's important to keep close tabs. And like, um, like Mike and Scott were saying, make sure that you're training continuously. There are tools that you can use that actually allow you to record phone calls as well. Um, like, uh, OpenPhone does it, Follow Up Boss does it. And so you can use that as training materials where you can go through calls and, um, and, you know, just make sure that you're keeping close tabs and not going set it and forget it.

And I I will add that I just think if you can hire a family friend, my intake manager actually is a good friend of mine. He does a great job. But I'm saying just be careful with family. Make sure you have an expectation set, because if it's not clearly set, it could get awkward when it comes time to make adjustments.

That's all.

Yeah, I love what John said too. I think a daily huddle goes a long way. Just staying engaged with them. They know you're engaged. 15 minutes a day. You know, what's, you know, what were the bottlenecks yesterday? What are you looking forward to today? What was a, what was a win? You know, these little touchpoints, let's, let's do a roleplay and incentivize them correctly. So if, if I'm negotiating with John on intake side, And I know that the most I want to pay for this property is $2,000, and I, and as intake, I can get it for $1,800. Well, maybe I'll get a bonus then for saving that $200. And, and now they're aligned with you as well, and they're motivated to do it. So, um, and then of course, if you've read Dirt Rich or Dirt Rich 2, shameless plug, You want to hire 3 to test, keep one. Who's got the emotional labor?

Right?

Who's going to go above and beyond? Who's going to do the thing that's just beyond SOP and solve problems and think?

Awesome. Hopefully that helps. Chantel, good luck. Have fun. Listen, all goes. All right, well, here's a good one. Has anyone tried getting AI input on pricing your offers? Any measurable success with that? I bet John Burnett is doing this.

I, you know, I haven't done it on kind of our standard deals. I did try it once. I got a kind of a weird big deal, um, and, uh, use ChatGPT with deep research. And was pretty impressed with, with what it was able to pull for me. So I think that I would maybe be interested, but I also wouldn't be surprised in the areas where I work if it was just totally off base, right? So I think for me, I, I think it's worth trying, but I just think a set of human eyeballs on your offers is going to be the best thing. And the reality is that You know, one of the benefits of the model is there's so much repeatability. You know, when you're dealing with rural subdivisions and you've got, you know, 4,000 5-acre lots, you've got a lot of comps, you know. And to find a, you know, like a land selling site where they've got a map search, you can zoom right into the area where you are sending offers and you can see what the active comps are. And so for me, that's, that kind of trumps everything. So I think it's worth trying, but I, I would trust my eyeballs above ChatGPT.

If you're using LG Pass, we've got LG Pass data that's going to actually give that information to you, powered by Xampla. So it's not using necessarily AI, but it might be.

Yeah, I concur with what John said for sure. Yeah, one now left. That's it. Last concur.

No more concurring.

Sad. It's a sad day. All right, awesome. Hopefully that's helpful. Yeah, I don't think we're there yet, right? I think maybe we will be at some point. But I'd like to trust and verify that information on AI is in line with what I'm seeing in the market. Let's see here. Oh, here we go. Oh, this one's gonna kill me. Come on, Donald. Donald's new but diving in headfirst, happy to find a great community. You guys rock, but a special shout out to Mike, 'cause you're the man.

Thanks, Donald. Check's in the mail.

You probably told him to say that, didn't you?

Everybody I talked to— oh my God, gotta say hi because it makes Scott mad.

Oh, okay.

Oh, Donald's gonna crush it. He's on his way.

I love that. Donald, welcome, and, uh, look forward to having some interaction with you. No, but awesome. Glad to have you here for sure. And I love anyone who loves Mike. So there you go.

Yeah, I would say the words, but I agree.

I agree.

We need more olives.

All right, here's a good one. Oh, Andrew Pond. Andrew, how are you? Seller did not return mailer, but called and they agreed on a price. Should Andrew send him a purchase agreement to sign and return before working on getting him to sign and notarize the deed? That's a great logistical question we get all the time.

I don't, um, to be honest, you know, what's that, Mike? I don't always do that if we're in good communication and, you know, because the deed's going to convey it. Really what they're looking for, uh, the makings of a good deal is clear, crisp communication and staying on top of things. So you can do that if you feel safer, uh, if you feel better. I don't always do it. Our team, you know, just depends.

Yeah, yeah, I would say I rarely do it. In all honesty.

So I think it's overkill.

Yeah, yeah, because, uh, Andrew, I think the, you know, the offer that the mailer you sent to them, the language on it says something like, uh, you know, pending your due diligence, right? So it's not a binding agreement really per se anyway. Um, so I think a lot of these, uh, conversations that you're having with people on the phone can just be, you know, you just have Yoshi on the phone come up with the final price. You could do a formal purchase agreement if you want to on the front end to protect both you and the seller, but we typically just do the deed unless the seller asks for that. Cool. All right, let's see what else we got. Let's see here. Oh, uh, Carl says it's good to see me. Uh, Daniel told his friend to read Dirt Rich and he's been talking with him about the results, which got him interested. That's awesome, awesome.

Thank you, Daniel.

All right, very good. Okay, here we go. Uh, Daniel was talking about, uh, for when we were talking about mailers at the start, you have to account for honing in your mailers too. Took me about $300 400, modifying every 100 before I got reliable response rates. Yeah, so, you know, Daniel's talking about getting to know your market and to get to know the pricing in that area. And sometimes it takes a little while, takes a few mailers to kind of dial in on that price.

Yeah, less than 30,000.

Yeah, right.

Less than 40,000 mailers or 30,000 or whatever it is. Yeah. So Daniel and Chantel's sale, it was from one of the 21 properties they bought. They bought each for $700 and they sold the property for $2,000 with a $249 doc fee.

Nice job.

Wow, sitting on a nice little land portfolio there.

I was talking to Daniel at the, uh, at the summit, and I think— Daniel, correct me if I'm wrong— but when they had these 21 properties, they brought them to Nightcap and they said, should we buy it? And we said yes, and they did.

I can't remember.

Oh, that's an interesting little—

oh, I think Yeah, I, I hope that deal brings you, uh, brings you much joy, Daniel. Uh, let's see here. Uh, Daniel, not sure if it's called an intake manager, but we are also looking for someone to follow up on ad responses to filter out actual leads. That is one of the best things to outsource.

Yeah, in my opinion, more like a sales assistant. I think he's talking about on the sales side, right?

Yeah, that— I mean, because sale, like, like speed to lead is so important. Think about your own life. If you are scrolling, you ask a question, like, you're gone in like at the most 5 minutes, then you're off. Like, I literally have the attention span of a ferret on a double cappuccino now. Like within 1 minute, I'm off to the next thing. And so if you have a sales assistant within 60 seconds or less is getting back to that person, is this still printed? Boom, yes it is, they're engaged. But if it's, and you know, an hour later, they totally forgot about that property.

Yeah, good point.

Awesome. Let's see here. Not another, not a question, but another nightmare. County, county, county lost the deed twice. I have to contact the owner and get a new notary out there again. Oh yeah, I think we've all been there too, right? Like, especially in the snail mail counties. Some of us just avoid the snail mail counties now because it's just too much of a hassle, right? Right, we like to— we like the counties that use Simplifile for e-recording, or, uh, what's the other one? CSC. I can't remember what that stands for. It's another— you— another e-recording service. Um, twice?

Yeah, twice.

What's that, Mike? We lost twice. That's crazy. Yeah, that's a bummer.

I have never heard of that.

Yeah. So Daniel, you know, I think if that was me, I might skedaddle, but you never know. And had it under contract too and had to drop the sale. Oh, that is a sad day.

That is a sad day.

He's in a little dip, right?

Well, the good thing, you know, people want the property, so it'll sell once you get it straightened out.

Exactly, exactly.

Up the price.

Speaking of The Dip, Daniel enjoyed the book The Dip. Started listening to This Is Marketing by Seth Godin, which also enjoying it. Mark, you love Seth Godin.

I love Seth Godin. We need to get Seth Godin on Nightcap. Seth, I'm sure you're watching.

I'm sure you're—

you're welcome to join.

Yes. Oh man, how many mailers— this is from Courtney. Courtney, nice to see you. How many mailers do you recommend to send out each month to keep at least one closed deal a month? Well, some areas, like we mentioned earlier, 100 mailers will get you an offer or will get you a property. 100 to 200 mailers will get you property. So I think if you're, you know, you're starting out and you're wanting to gain some traction and gain some momentum, at least 100 to 200 mailers a month to start out, but you could definitely take it further, right?

Like, at school, uh, recommended, uh, um, you know, rhythm of 20 a day. We, you know, you can't go wrong. 20 a day and you're gonna have deal flow.

Yep, for sure. Awesome. Daniel did bring it to KnifeCap, and Mark's— oh, that's right, Mark said if we don't buy it, he will.

Mark's the one.

Mark's the one.

Awesome. Very good. Any other questions out there, guys? Dealer's choice, we got 5 minutes left.

Any answers? Any answers?

Any other burning questions about land investing? Any deals you're needing help with? Any, uh, nuts and bolts questions. Fellas, this was fun. I liked the, uh, I liked the non-scripted, you know, uh, dealer's choice tonight. It's good.

Well, it flew by.

It flew by. Definitely flew by.

John, no, uh, no kids in the lap tonight.

Yeah, there's no, there's no kid of the week tonight.

Ah, next week.

Next week.

You have to bring them all on one at a time, and then you're gonna start again. We're gonna have to see if we remember who's who.

Rotation.

Yeah, then we'll have to guess. Which one is it again?

Yeah, we've got lots of rotations going for Advent.

So speaking of Advent, I have to show this to you. My wife got this for me tonight. My wife is, uh, so wonderful. She got me this Star Wars advent calendar.

Oh nice.

Oh right, and, uh, December 1st was Baby Yoda and December 2nd was his little vehicle that he travels in.

Oh, you can't eat it though?

Uh, no, you can't eat it. It's like heavy duty, like this is, uh, quality action figure material right here.

He can, but he probably should not.

Right.

So I'll, I'll keep you updated with my Star Wars figurines here as, as the, as the Advent season passes. Uh, I want to give one little— I give a little shout out to the Minnesota State Maverick Mankato, uh, sorry, Minnesota State University Mavericks. Have advanced again to the Elite Eight. There's the Elite Eight in the Division II football championship, uh, so my son will be playing this weekend in Michigan.

Are you going?

Oh, go Mavs! I don't know. Last, last week, uh, last weekend's game, it was a tough— it was a tough drive. We drove to Indianapolis, Mark, and, uh, uh, the way home was brutal. It was 10 hours of 10 hours of snow the entire drive. Snow, snow-packed roads. Oh, it was tough, tough ride. I'm still tired from it, so I don't know if we're making it this weekend or not.

How far to Michigan?

Uh, it's like 8 hours. It's a long drive. Yeah, piece of cake. Yeah, but anyway, go Mavs, you know. Yeah, and I appreciate you guys. Uh, fun to, uh, fun to spend this time with you as always.

Yes, I am. Yes, you agree. I'm out of olives.

Awesome, everybody. Well, uh, I don't know what our topic is next week, but we'll bring a good one. And, uh, we appreciate y'all coming. Uh, Mark, thank you. John, cheers. Cheers, brother.

Thank you, guys.

Good night, everybody. Have a good night.

Good night.