How to Spend Less Time and Letting Automation Take Care of the Land Business

Hey, it's Mark Podolski, the Land Geek with the favorite niche real estate website, the landgeek.com and on this week's roundtable, we have almost all the usual suspects. We've got Landon, AI Harris. Landon, how are you?

Doing well. Mark, how are you?

Good, good. The aquatic investor. We've got Kirk, and he still needs a nickname. Kirk Parrot. That's what this podcast could actually be about. If you want to know what the podcast is about. By the way, before I make all the introductions, we're each going to go around and talk about a recent deal and get into the numbers a bit. So stay tuned. Don't. Don't just drop off, because we're making the introductions. But anyways, Kirk, we do have to work on your nickname. I have some ideas. I have some thoughts. Dude. Buddy, the Nightcap OG Scott Bossman. Scott, how are you?

Doing well, Mark, good to be here.

It's good to see you. We've got Eric the Technician Peterson. Eric, how are things in beautiful Franklin? Things are.

Things are good.

Mark, good to see you. And last but not least, I love it when you call me Big Papa Tate. Litchfield Tate, how are you?

Doing well, thanks. Happy to be here.

Good to see you. All right, so because Kirk is sort of the new. The newbie here, let's just pick on Kirk first. Kirk, let's talk about your most recent deal. What did you pay? What'd you sell it for? How long was it on the market? Let's get into the spice. It's like, you know, the Bobby Flay of it. All right. Everyone loves those cooking shows because you get to watch the master cook.

All right, well, I don't know if I'm. If I'm definitely not in master territory. That's why I'm here, to be among masters, for sure. But we had a pretty good deal. Not characteristic of everything, of all of our deals, but we recently sold a property on terms. Let's see, we purchased it for 5,000. We sold it on terms for.

33.

5.

Wait, wait, you bought for 5,000? You sold it on terms for 33,500.

Yes.

This is your most recent sale. This is just like, thinking of, like, this is a good sale. This is what I talk about on the podcast.

This is a good sale from a couple days ago. So, yeah, okay, yeah, we did. We did well with it. It was a. It was a one of those. I mean, it's good where we hit a home run. There's no doubt about it. Doesn't happen all the Time, but definitely grateful. When. When sales like this happen. You know, we just happened to come across a couple good properties from a motivated seller. And very quickly thereafter, we found a couple motivated buyers.

And.

Where did you find these motivated buyers?

Our motivated. They came from Facebook. So it was somebody who responded to one of our Facebook marketplace ads.

Fantastic. Fantastic. And those are good numbers. What, what's, what's the yield on that?

I haven't calculated the yield on it.

Okay, those are really good numbers.

I have to run it through the. Run it through the. The HP calculator.

Wow.

Wow. Now, if you're listening to this and you haven't done a deal like that, don't worry, you will. But you know, comparison is a thief of happiness. So not every deal is. Is great like that. So let's talk about maybe a more pedestrian deal. Maybe. Landon, do you have a more recent deal that's more pedestrian?

I do. I was actually just looking at my numbers again. So we sold a two acre property. This one just happened a week ago. It. We purchased it for 3, 700 and then we sold it for 17, 8, 3779.

That's a pedestrian deal.

That's a pedestrian. But while I say it's pedestrian and it. So like our yield was. If I remember, I hadn't looked at the yield in a while, but the Yield originally was over 76. But this was a return property, so it's a. The heel just goes up. So because we got this one back off a default, it took us about two months. We marketed on like land century and popped up, picked that up and moved on real quick. Got it done and moved forward.

Yeah.

Pedestrian.

Wow.

And you know what's. But you know what's great about these deals? And Kirk, I'm gonna just go back to you. How much time did you personally spend on that sale?

Kind of like zero.

So you. So, so no time for you. This is a team. This is the machine running? Yes.

100.

Right? 100. Landon, how much time did you personally spend on your deal?

Personal time spent on this deal. It's almost negative at this point. Spent no time doing it. None.

So you spend no time?

No, no time. I don't even think we talked about it. Just roll through automation.

So just through the automation, just through the machine?

That's correct.

Fantastic. Fantastic. Dude. Buddy. Nightcap. OG These are two deals that are hard to follow. But what is your most recent deal?

I mean, if I'm going to be honest, my most recent deal is more of a, you know, zain What I call them minnows, dolphins, and whales. It's more of a like a dolphin. Right? Like, buy for.

Okay.

Actually, like, I bought this property for 7,500. That's not a typical land geek deal.

Right.

When I look at my average purchase price on a property, my average purchase price in the last quarter is like, 2700 bucks. But this is one I bought, you know, six months ago. We just sold it yesterday for 3000 down and like, 279amonth for 72 months. So the yield on it is.

Yeah, 73%. And you almost got. Yeah. You get your money out quick. Yeah, yeah. And, yeah, that's a nice down payment that. They're not going to default on that if they do. What a gift.

Exactly.

And.

And the cool thing is we were marketing this for 2000 down, and if he put 2000 down, our annualized yield would have been 60%. But we asked that question that Mark Drolsky teaches us at boot camp.

Right.

How much do you want to put down? And he put down another thousand, and that brought our yield up to 72%.

Yeah.

So again, that's not our.

I have to give Scott Todd the credit on that one. That is definitely a Scott Todd innovation there. But. But we. We definitely teach it, and we definitely use it, but. Absolutely. How much do you want to put down? Is so powerful. And so now you got more down, you got a better buyer. And what's the. Are you charging interest on that?

We're not charging interest on that one. No.

Okay. And so. And that took. And where did you sell that.

That was from? Well, the guy joined us. Joined our buyers list six months ago.

Okay.

From Facebook. And then he's been. He's been keeping track. So I'd say my buyer's list at this point.

So your buyer's list. And how much personal time did you spend selling that. Buying and selling that deal?

Probably 15 minutes.

15 minutes. Okay. So the machine did its. Its part. What. What were your 15 minutes involvement?

I did enter it. I had a conversation with him last night because my sales manager was off, so I spoke with him, and then I set him up on the Geek Pay loan this morning, so.

Nice. Nice. And I, you know, I appreciate the shameless plug of Geek Pay. You're welcome. Fantastic. Eric Peterson. Speaking of Geek Pay, are you enjoying the new ui? We're working very hard on this.

It's getting better. It's getting better.

It's. Yeah, yeah, it's getting better. I know. I know it's slow. Slow. But it's going to get there. It's going to get to the point where it's just a delight to use. Just joyful. I'm looking forward to. That's the goal. Yeah. Okay. You got some really tough deals now to follow. What. What's your most recent deal? All right, so I was thinking someone's just gonna be like, oh, yeah, a double. Right. You know. Yeah, we.

We closed on this one yesterday. We bought the property for 1550, collected 100 down with the 250 DOC fee, and then 100amonth for 84 months. So our annual yield on this Property is about 82.0.7% overall return is about 550%. But that's. That's actually not taken into the. To account the fact that this was already purchased previously and defaulted on. So it's even better then. Yeah.

Is even lower.

Yeah. And this was a. This was a return customer, so he actually bought the neighboring property. When this one came back on the market, sales team reached out to him, said, hey, it's available. And he acted right away and. And made the purchase.

Okay, so we've got a Facebook sale, we got a Land Century sale. We got a buyer's list sale. And then yours is just picking up the phone call. So I pick up the phone sale. Yeah. Not even an email. How much time did Eric Peterson, the technician, personally spend to make that yield?

Maybe about five.

Over 82%. Five or ten minutes.

And that's. That's in setting up the note in Geek Pay. It's probably closer to five minutes. It goes pretty quick.

Wait, you're setting up the note?

Oh, yeah. I love doing that.

Oh, my gosh.

That's one of my favorite parts of the day.

Mark. Eric Peterson, that five minutes can be spent so much more productively.

Yeah.

I'm not saying it's not a joyful feel that win.

If I'm not entering it into Geek Pay.

I. I gotta agree with Eric on this one. It's one of my favorite things is to just sit down and enter a note into Geek Pay.

It just.

That's. It's awesome.

If I'm doing like 10 of these.

A day, I had no idea. Maybe.

Maybe I'm not doing it anymore, but.

Okay.

You know, I mean, it's. It's not that kind of volume that I'm setting these up, so it's. It's fun.

How long does it take?

About five minutes. It goes pretty quick.

Five minutes. Okay. Okay. Landon, are you. Are you guys doing your own setup in Geek Pay or Is that outsourced?

We outsource most of it, but occasionally we'll have to go in. We had some changeover in va, so we have to do some sometimes. So.

But you know, Mark.

But it's.

Yeah, once. Once we have the ability to add additional users to Geek pay with permission levels, I think a lot of us will be a lot more willing to have a VA in there doing this.

I like it.

I like it.

I promise you we are going to get that done.

I know it's on the road map, but it's not there now.

It is on the roadmap and. And we have made a. Another key hire. It's gonna happen. It's gonna happen. So the development team has grown and, and so, you know what? Seems like it's taken very long time. It's going to start. You're going to start seeing these, these changes very quickly. So. Absolutely. And now that's going to be even a higher priority because I'm just going to say for the record that it's not passive income if you're having to go in yourself and log in, even though it's a joyful exercise. That's not what the whole strategy of Land Geek is. It should be, you build the machine and the machine runs and you're just the CEO making sure that it's running well and looking for ways to optimize it. So that's on me. That's my dad. I owe you all that time back. I'll get it back for you, no problem. I love it when you call me big Papa. You've just heard some amazing deals and these are just recent deals. You've seen how much time they've spent to close these deals.

Yeah.

What's your most recent deal? All right, so I know you're going to. I know you're. I know you've got a lot of deals. I know you're just looking for a drop the mic deal.

I know. Look, I'm going to do it fair, because to be honest, I had an amazing deal that I was going to share with you guys, but it's not my most recent because I logged into LG Pass right now and I had a sale this morning. I didn't even know about it. So that tells you how many. How much work I'm doing. And on top of it, it tends to be the most, like, lackluster numbers of the entire group here today. So it is what it is. I'm just going to share it because what do I care, right? It happened.

Look, you're in a safe space. You're in a safe space. Share. Yeah. We're all here to support. We're not. No one's judging. No one's judging. A win's a win.

A win is a win.

For the numbers.

I bought this property two weeks ago for $188.

Nice. What? That's like a dollar skittle deal. What? It's 188. What are the back taxes? Nothing.

At least not according to the notes. Like, this is just. It's just 188 lot. We sold it today.

Honestly, I can't go to the grocery store for less than $180.

You're telling me. We sold it today, two weeks later, for 750 cash plus 100 or 249 doc fee. Thousand bucks. I don't know.

That's a win.

Look that spends. And that's a big win. That's a huge return on your money. Massive yield.

It's a. It's getting right. Like, as much as I. I had such an amazing deal. I was gonna flex so hard on everybody. This is the one.

This is the one. To hear that deal.

The most recent deal. I'm a man of integrity, and I'm.

Gonna just tell it as it is.

This was my most recent deal. We made, you know, basically 800 bucks on the deal. But here's what I'll say. If you do this twice a week, you're on the right track.

Right.

Like, these are not standard for us, But I'm not above it. I'll stop and do one of these every single chance I get the opportunity to.

Right.

So. And it took none of your time.

I didn't even know it happened.

So. Yeah, that's cool. Yeah, I mean. I mean, I think that's something we don't. We don't talk enough about at Land Geek. It's like, the whole idea is to solve your money problems and solve your time problems, and we're creating and helping you create the processes, the systems, the automation, the team, the strategy to create this machine. And we're just using land as the method to do it, because at the end of the day, we just think this is the best asset to create passive income, because you don't have to deal with any renters, rehabs, renovations, rodents. But if you're listening to this, you're like, oh, I'm not excited about making these numbers. You can apply the same systems and processes and team and strategy to doing bigger deals. You absolutely can. There's nothing wrong with it. But if you're built yourself a job of house flipping or, you know, doing, you know, development deals, and you're spending all your time doing it because you're like, oh, this is way sexier, and I'm making more actual dollars doing it. Well, you're. You're still missing the point of it all. It would be my argument. Those are amazing deals. Yeah.

We as land investors should not be picky. And the reason we're all on this panel here today is because we're not. We're smart people who go where there's money to be made. And if it's buy at $188 or buy at $7000, the margins make sense. We go in there. But if the margins make sense at buy at 30,000, none of us have any objection to that.

Right. We're.

We just cater to what the demand is, and we've all kind of developed this ability to know where the demand is and how to apply it at any different price range within the business.

It's cool. Yeah. No, absolutely. I mean, it's like saying, oh, you know, I don't want to own a McDonald's franchise. They sell cheap burgers. Right. I'd rather have a. A steakhouse selling $80 filet. Well, if you're the one in the. If you're in the kitchen making those fillets and you're managing the wait staff and you're doing all that. Yeah, you might make more per customer, but I'd personally rather own the McDonald's franchise because it's. It's this. It's the system, it's the machine, and they're just cranking it out. Right. Although, obviously, I got to get Kirk and Eric back their time in geek pay. We'll do it. I don't know why you guys don't trust the. Oh, I know why. Never mind. I don't want. I wouldn't want my VA seeing all the notes either. We got to get permissions in there, for sure. Tate, do you want to just tease us on what your. Your mic drop deal was? Oh, yeah. And. And. And so the sales team just sold it. So you don't even know where they sold it? Oh, yeah.

I mean, I have the metrics. That property was sold. Lead came from Land Moto. Looks like first interaction with them was last night around 10:30 at night, so. 10:30 last night, land Moto sold between now and then, so.

Yeah, big deal. Big deal. Thanks.

All right, well, here's the numbers on the ones that. The one that I was really excited about this Actually sold yesterday as well. Lead came from.

Where is it?

Lead came from land and farm, actually. Purchase price was $17,000.

Ouch.

We collected on this one. Logging into Geek Pay, we collected $495 as a DOC fee, another $1500 down. It is being sold for 9.9% interest over 180 months, which works out to be $689 a month for the next 180 months. So without interest factored into that, you're looking at 65,000.

Even. Even Landon would take that deal. Not bad. He's picky.

Not bad.

I was excited. I mean, that's a we're going out to dinner kind of a deal.

That was. That's a good deal.

That's a sweet deal.

That's a good deal.

700 bucks a month for the next 180 months. I mean, jeez.

Yeah, that works. Nice down. And that works. Yeah, that's. That's what it's all about, that mailbox money without any of the headaches because no one's calling you at three in the morning, then your delay is leaking.

So it's a happy customer too, right?

Yeah, it's a happy customer. And. And you're wondering, well, how can I do this? Well, today's podcast is sponsored by flight school. Learn how you can learn how to do this in 16 weeks. And I know you're thinking, well, what about the investment? It 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 landgeek.com forward/training the langee.com forward/training Schedule A call. All right, well, we're at that point now in the podcast where we're going to put Landon on the spot. Although technically we should put Kirk on the spot, but Landon on the spot, and ask him for his tip of the week. A website, a resource, a book, something else actionable for the art of passing for listeners. Go. Improve their businesses, improve their lives. Landon, what do you got?

All right, so I'm gonna save Kurt on this one. So I think what I went. I went back and I actually started doing something. Actually, it's more about four or five weeks ago. Have you heard of the pomodoro technique?

I have. All technique, yeah. Yeah.

And I just started reapplying it. If you don't know what a pomodoro technique, it's basically, you work for 25 minutes, take five minutes off, come back, you refocus, refresh you can kind of have a clearer focus towards working better, smarter, more efficiently. And then after four rounds of that, you take like a 15 minute break, come back and do the same. So I've actually started doing that and applying that a little bit more. Just kind of in my day to day, things have been running a lot smoother. So that's my tip. I do have a link that kind of explains it a little bit. I look for one that would kind of spell it out a little bit for some of the viewers. So. But anyway, just put that in the chat. But yeah, it's like I said, it's a pretty good technique that it's helping me out a little bit. So maybe that helps somebody out there.

I love it. I love it. I used to be kind of like a productivity junkie and then I started reading more like Oliver Berkman type stuff and I just kind of let it all go. I'm like, okay, completely different. I'm just gonna let it go and, and really just. I kind of like more manage my energy than, than anything else. But since you brought it up, I'd be curious if we just quickly go around. Eric, what's your favorite productivity technique?

I guess mine's pretty basic. I always kind of go back to this and that's just. I just keep a little task list, whether it's on my remarkable or on. In an app somewhere. Just I've always kind of done that and I'll just keep a running list of these little tasks I gotta do and I just kind of use that. I've kind of played around with the Pomodoro thing before. I guess maybe the only one different thing I might do beyond that task list is I tend to have one day a week where I kind of set aside those deeper work type tasks and save it for that day and try to really focus in and make headway on those tasks on that day.

You know what? I changed my mind. I don't think we should go around. I think this is actually a podcast episode. We could actually go a whole episode on our favorite productivity techniques and how we manage our energy. And if we're more productive in the morning, we're more productive in the afternoon, we're productive at night. I think I'm really curious about all this, so I want to do. I want to actually give it its full due. Dude, buddy, I know you're. What are your thoughts on this?

No, I wanted to share my. My newest, my newest productivity tool, but I guess I have to wait. Now you're going to get a kick out.

Fine, share, but then bring it up again in the next podcast. All right.

I don't know what it is, but this gets me in the flow and I love it. Like, if I need to sit down for a half hour to an hour and just focus, my phone's staying in the other room and I just play this on my computer. One of two things I play on my computer. The first one is become unstoppable with three hours of ambient Batman vibes. Ambient music on Batman with or on YouTube with like a Batman esque feel, you know, like you're in the bat cave.

Yeah. The other one, I'm feeling it.

There's another one that I love. It's. It's a compilation of four hours of Hans Zimmer soundtrack music. Yeah, it's amazing. I put that on and like hour goes by, I get so much done. Like, let's go hang out. I love using music.

Yeah, that's fantastic. Okay. This is a full podcast for sure. I'm. I'm almost upset that I even brought it up and digressed for sure. But great pomodoro technique tip. I want to thank the listeners and remind you that the only way that we're going to be able to keep roping in Eric Peterson and Kirk to the roundtable is if you do three little favors. Follow rate, review the podcast. Send a screenshot of that review Support@the Langeeek.com I'm going to send you for free a signed copy of Dirt Rich. And by the way, Dirt Rich too is still working its way through the process, so be on the lookout for how to scale your land business. Without missing a beat, Durbidge to the plot thickens. It's coming out 2024. All right, Eric, are we good? We're good. Landon?

Good.

Good. Kirk? Yeah.

100.

We're good. Good, buddy. Good. Big papa. Yep, all good. Awesome. All right, let's do this. 1, 2, 3. Let's let let freedom. By the way, for those of you on a Mac, I have like, I can't wait for this podcast because I have like the productivity tip. It. It is so geeky and so cool and it eats so many different apps. It's awesome. But yeah, that. It's. It's. I can't wait to share it. I'm very excited. I don't know if this cause Hans Zimmer and Batcave type music, it's geekier. I don't know, it's probably not cooler. Yeah, for sure. But for another day. All right. See you guys see. Thanks for listening to the Art of Passive Income Podcast.

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