I've Never Seen 90% of My Land Properties: How to Invest from Anywhere

Welcome, everybody, to Land Geek Nightcap. We're live. It's live here on Tuesday night, 9pm Eastern. And if you're watching the replay, just know that we do this live every Tuesday at 9pm Eastern. We'd love to see you in the chat next time, bring your questions about land investing, and hopefully we can espouse you with a little bit of knowledge regarding the subject.

Oh, that's a good word.

Spouse. That's a big word for nightcap.

We will espouse you with knowledge.

So tonight, fellows, we have a good topic. The title of the podcast is I've never seen 90% of my land Properties. How to Invest from Anywhere. Right. And really what it comes down to is, you know, most real estate investors think you need boots on the ground to succeed. You need to drive neighborhoods. Right? You need to drive for dollars, walk your properties, stay local. But we've seen people build six and seven figure land businesses without seeing 100% of the properties.

Right?

So tonight we're going to talk about what it looks like, what that looks like, why remote land investing might just be the smartest way to escape the grind and give you some freedom. How's that sound, fellas?

I think it's a little low. I think it's like 99.9 of my land properties I've never seen.

Right, we're gonna get into that. By the way, we got to introduce this guy, Mike Zano, the Zen master. What's up, buddy? Cheers.

Cheers to you. Cheers to you, John. Nice to see you guys.

And we have John. Eight is enough Burnett, Handsome Rob. Cheers. Good to see you, sir.

Cheers. Good to see you both.

And I'm Scott Bossman. I'm the dude, buddy.

Yeah. Guys, my two best virtual friends. I'm not even sure you guys really exist. I was just saying that before we started sort of AI fabrication. Are these my best friends? Are they real? I don't know, but they're great.

Is it real or is it member virtual friends?

I'll accept that. Yeah.

Well, we'll have to run into each other live at the Dirt Rich Summit in November.

Yes. Yes.

Right.

That's one of the first.

Right.

First weekend in August in Austin.

Yeah.

Wait a minute.

November 1st. First weekend in November. That's what I meant.

My travel plan.

Rewind.

Come on. I'm gonna start calling you guys, by the way, my vbs, My virtual best friends.

I want to see a vbff. Oh, yeah.

Scott Christensen wants to know, John, are you even old enough to know 8 is enough? Probably not.

I'M not Scott. I have no idea what he's talking about. It's, it's just an inside joke for all of you old people.

Awesome. That probably makes you feel great, Scott. So, well, fellas, let's, let's get to the topic, but let's, let's encourage everybody who's watching to engage. Feel free to, feel free to throw comments in the chat, tell us what you're drinking, introduce where you know, tell us where you're from, and let's talk. Let's talk remote land investing. So, Mike, I want to come to you with this first part because we hear about this a lot, right. Like when you first hear land investing, a lot of people think, oh, okay, well, I'm going to start maybe doing this in my backyard. But really, what's the truth of it?

Yeah, you know, people do think that, and you know, I live in Massachusetts. It's not really going to work very well in my backyard. You know, you get comfortable. You want to begin where you're comfortable. It's natural inclination, right? Hey, I know this area. Let me start there. And truth be told, there are some people out there that do live in an area where in the quote unquote backyard, it could work very well. However, most of us, I would say don't. And it's just a foreign concept in the beginning, but you just become very comfortable with it. You know, how we can self close on properties that we never see, that we've never been to. That's just the real trick of it.

All.

Right. How do you become that comfortable with the information you've gathered that you will pull the trigger? You will buy that property and sell that property. It's, it's, it's one big part of this business.

No, I love that. Yeah, I mean, you know, I never did. I think being here in Wisconsin, I'd be doing deals, you know, thousands of miles away. Right. Never having been to a property and that sounds a little bit daunting to some people, but in today's day and age, it's definitely doable. What are your thoughts, John?

Yeah, I mean, like I got into this specifically so I didn't have to do things in my backyard when I. So when, yeah, when, when Valerie and I started, we were living in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and this was a number of years ago, but back then, like the median home price was 1.5 million. Like, you know, it's crazy. Like a dumpy little, you know, two bed, one bath condo was going for 750, $800,000. Like it's crazy. Right. And so we were sold on real estate investing, but we just kind of knew that it wasn't going to be there. Right, right. And so that's kind of where that's like, for us, the big thing was we needed something that we could do remotely. Right. That would work in other markets, because we were looking at wholesaling homes. You know, we were looking at buy and hold single family. But it was. And we were committed to doing it, but it was becoming apparent to us that to do that remotely was going to be extremely challenging. And in a way that this isn't right, because the variables are so consistent, and it's just a far more simple product. So.

Yeah, for sure. Simple product. It's easy to learn these areas on your computer. I love Daniel's comment. 400,000 in Massachusetts is 400 square feet. $400,000 in Georgia is like 400 acres.

Yeah, Daniel, didn't he.

And we could probably take it one notch further. Like $400,000 out west, maybe.

Yeah.

I mean, are we talking thousands of.

Acres depending on where you go.

Depending on where you go. Right.

Yeah. Yep.

Which is. Which is pretty crazy. So. No, that's awesome. So, you know, you know, John, you talk. John and Mike, you guys talk about, you know, buying and selling land, really, in any market across the United States. That makes sense. According to our recipe, there's. There's freedom through that. Right. Like, one of the cool things I love about land is we don't have to go walk properties. Right. How many real. How many real estate investor friends do you guys have? They have to. They have to go to the property. I was talking to a guy this week. He invests in properties three hours away from him. So when there's an issue, he has to drive three hours away to deal with the issue, drive three hours back home.

Right.

When you're flipping homes, you got to be on site inspecting or doing the work yourself. There's some freedom in that, right, Mike?

Oh, absolutely. I mean, that's one of the core tenets of what we do. We want to have location freedom, time freedom, location, where you want, when you want, with who you want. It'll kind of fall apart if you have to be on site somewhere. Right. How are you going to travel the world, how you're going to live in wherever you want to be. And, you know, it would just break the whole model. So this model is predicated on not having to visit your properties. That's just one of the core tenants.

Yeah. Awesome. And then along with that when people are visiting their properties, they have the renovation and the, the maintenance and. John, we don't. We don't have to do that in land, right?

Nope. Zero maintenance. I've never maintained things.

Never maintain things. John, you probably had. Go ahead, Mike. What'd you say?

You want to rake the dirt? You don't go out there.

Just. Yeah, it's very. My properties are very Feng shui. Is that the word for all those leaves? They're pointed the right direction. Everything's great.

Yeah.

Oh, my gosh. Oh, that's awesome. I was gonna say something. I forgot what it was. I hate it when that happens.

It'll come back.

It'll come back. It'll come back.

Yeah.

So for so checking in with the community here, everyone say hello. We got Don Thrasher, Chris Smith. What's up, Chris? Mike is back this week. He's very excited you're back this week because somebody was on a hoity toity trip to. To Maine last week. Well, well, John and I were here.

Oh, mad. Wasn't me.

Oh, yeah, sorry, sorry. Oh, yeah, sorry. I didn't mean to blow up. My bad. My mistake. It was Maa's Vineyard. Math's Vineyard. Yeah. Scott Christensen is here. Don Thrasher, good to see you. Daniel Bryant bringing. He brought some good questions last week. And Daniel Barberi, he says, go Mike. So you get a lot of fan. A lot of Zano fans on the show tonight.

Everyone likes Mike.

Everyone likes Daniels.

Yeah. Daniel is someone who's going to crush this business someday. So.

All right, awesome.

Thanks for being here, Daniel.

Very cool. So. So guys, I guess should we get into. We're not going to get into like the exact mechanics because we'd be here for hours and hours. But Mike, let's get into the technical details a little bit more. Like how do we do this from the comfort of our home, sitting on a sofa with a laptop.

Yeah, well, geez. It starts with just sort of understanding where we invest, right. So, you know, there's a whole process of identifying. We always say there's over 3, 000 counties out there. Which, you know, which ones will work best. What's the criteria for the ones that work best? You know, and once you identify those, you know, we collect the data, we mail and so on and so forth. We might. We find some interested sellers. But this is the point of real. Some people might get uncomfortable. They're not used to our model. Now we're going to buy the property and we're, you know, typically, as you said, you'd go. Most people's real estate models, they'll go visit the house or look at the property or so on and so forth. But, you know, I think part of the reason why we get so comfortable is that we build our business, our book of business, in areas where there's just a tremendous amount of land. So we're going to be buying land in the same areas over and over and over again. John, we've heard you talk about how you're still in the same county that you started with originally. So you develop this real confidence like you. You start to understand. Yeah. In the first ones, you have to dig a little deeper, understand more. But as you go along, rinse and repeat, you're buying literally dozens of hundreds of these properties in this area. You begin to really understand it very well. So that alone is going to lead you to the ability to not have to stress over not visiting them. So I just think, you know, starting right from the beginning, Scott, you know, it's just if you dial into a very specific area and you begin to become an expert in that area, you begin to understand all the nuances of. Of where the good areas are, where they aren't. So this is part of the beginning process.

Okay, so Mike Dell's advocate, you mean to tell me that you. You think you can become an expert.

Yeah.

In a certain geographical area with never going there?

Yeah, yeah. So I make enough contacts, enough. I get enough data points, I get enough information. That's really what makes people comfortable. Right. Information. And we live in an age where information is abundant and accessible. If you know where to look. Years ago, I would say we probably would have to visit properties or, you know, be different. But now we're into this age of just information is everywhere. You just need to know what you're looking for and how to access it. So, yeah, absolutely. 100%. I feel very confident I could go to any area in this country and buy land and not visit it and feel very comfortable about that, knowing the process that I typically would follow.

Love it. John, any words of wisdom on that topic?

Yeah, I think that. I mean, it just comes down to the fact, like, what we were talking about, like, it's. It's just a lot simpler of a product. Right. It's dirt. There's a lot that you can validate just through satellite imagery. And then I do kind of have boots on the ground in my. My photographers. Right. So I'll have people go out and photograph the property. Talk to me about, like, hey, was it hard to drive out there? Like, what's. You know, just get. Get the basic information about the property and everything, but pretty much everything I need to know is available to me online. So I've never been to any of my properties. Right. I've never. Like, the only property that I have purchased that I put my feet on is the one that I'm standing on, I guess, sitting on right now. Right. So. But other than that, right. Like, all my properties I've been able to do remotely because I can validate everything online. So.

No, that's awesome. And I think it. I think it is important to establish some connections in the counties you're working in, like you guys have been talking about, Right. Not only do we have photographers, though, like, you can get to be the expert in a county by getting to know people that work at the county office. Right? Getting the people that. That getting to know people that work at the assessor's office, the treasurer's office, the clerk's office.

Yes.

Mike's a big fan of sending donuts to the clerk, you know, when they record a bunch of deeds for him.

Underappreciated. But you know, what a great point you're both making here is like, we think of typically, our team being the. The VAs that work with us on maybe intake or, you know, ad copy and so on and so forth, but our team members can also, with people that live in the area where we're buying land, the photographers, what a. You build, you know, a resource like that, somebody who knows the area that goes out and starts taking photos. You're going to learn so much from them, so much about, you know, the area and what's good and what's not good. So it's really just an extension of our team. Right. And the county, the people that work at the county are sort of an extension of our team, if we look at it that way. Right. So. And that's why we treat them with respect and we treat them in a way that we want to be treated. And if they're, you know, sending them donuts or muffins or any kind of thank you is, you know, it's so appreciated by them because you could think of most workers. I've been a city employee for 30 years. It's like, typically, it's not something that gets a lot of, you know, positive recognition. So when someone comes, gives them that, you really, you're going, it's going to pay dividends.

Yeah. I have a title company that used to refer to me as Brownie Guy, because I would. I'd send them brownies, like, every few months. They're like, oh, brownie guy's on the phone. So I got a lot of free advice from them for those brownies. So it was great. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, you can learn through title companies, you can learn through photographers, learn through county workers. We learn a lot of our information, too, from the property owners that we buy from. Right. It's very important when you're on the phone with a prospective seller to ask them questions. And a lot of them know absolutely nothing about the property, but a lot of them know a lot about the area, the features in the area. You know, how much it costs to bring power in or well or sewer or whatever. So. So that's another really great resource for us when we're doing property research, is those people on the phone. And then when you're talking to them and getting information about the area, what does that help with? Mike? Yeah, you complete me.

Yeah. Fail miserably here, but it helps with our due diligence. It helps us really understand what we're buying. But you make such a valid point that on the flip side, the people. There's so many people that there are those that know and those who don't. The ones who don't. When you become an expert, you'd be like, yeah, oh, yeah, Know, I've done a lot of deals in this area, and you can start to sort of devalue the property in the conversation. Like, you know, here's the thing. You got to watch out in these areas. I don't know about your property, but, you know, we've had some instances where X, Y, and Z. And you devalue it allows to. Allows you to buy it at a better price, too. So that experience comes full circle.

You're close with the you complete me segment.

Yeah, I don't feel. I didn't feel.

Oh, but I keep saying, I'm gonna get my cards out and all my cards. John, we used to have a picture of Tom Cruise because. Did you ever watch a movie, Jerry Maguire?

Yeah.

Is it supposed to be you have me at hello? Is that supposed to.

No, it was. So Mike and I used to have a segment called you complete me, and I would hold up a. A sign that said, you complete me, because, you know, when they said, anyway, whatever. Yeah, so. So Mike would have to complete my thought. And if. If he got it right, there were all sorts of, you know, exciting, you know, streamers and accolades and all that. And tonight, you got it wrong. What I was going to say, Mike, is Those conversations, ultimately, I think they do help with your due diligence, but they can also help with your marketing.

Yes, yes, yes, yes.

What do you think?

Absolutely. I mean, yeah, you're always building your knowledge base, and your knowledge base is going to play over into your marketing. 100%.

100%. 100%.

One thing that's like, I don't know if this has hit you guys a lot, but have you guys ever been surprised by power poles? Those are my favorite surprises. Yeah, you buy a property and it's easy to miss the fact that it has power poles because, I mean, a lot of the property I buy is. Is off grid. And, like, when you're looking at the gis, you recognize power poles because you'll see kind of a little streak, right? You're like a little shadow, a little line, and running in the same direction. You look a little bit further down the road and you see that same line again. They can be easy to miss. Right. When you're buying a property, when you're checking over it. And you can also kind of psych yourself up just like, staring at the thing and being like, is that a line? Is that a line? But I've had. I've had multiple properties that I purchased where. Where I get a photographer out there and the pictures come back and I'm like, oh, my goodness, it has power poles. Right. And that bumps up the value a good bit. Right. So it's nice.

Agreed. Agreed. It's. You get really good at finding those little. Those little notches on Google Earth, don't you?

Yeah, yeah.

No, that's awesome. That is awesome. We got some questions coming in, fellas. It's exciting. All right, so let's see what we've got here. First of all, a comment from Daniel. Yeah, that's the word of the night espouse. Daniel recommended that we recommended. We did, John. We're good recommend. We're good recommenders. We recommended Zamplo last week. They provide an amazing service. Great, Great customer service, too. I think we're gonna have the guys from Zamplo on a. On one of the Land Geek night caps here soon. So that'll be fun.

Great.

Mike. Mike doesn't like Zamplo. I guess he. He just. He's gone. Scott Christensen, what are the types of boots on the ground? Do you have? Okay, so we just talked about this. Yeah, definitely talked about that. Oh, I think we missed one, though. Here's another helpful. Here's another helpful person that can be boots on the ground for you, John. We do this with everybody.

It's.

If somebody's going to see our property, we ask them to answer some questions for us. Exactly. Like your photographer. Right. We tell us, please let us know, like, how easy is it to get to the property? Right. And is there anything special in that area that you can tell us about? And would you mind just taking a few pictures of the property and maybe the road leading up to it or maybe some 360 views? Just because, you know, we don't get out there any. We don't get out there very often, and we want to see what's going on. Right. So that's another great source of. Or another great, I guess, source of boots on the ground. Right. Is to send your prospective buyers out there and they're also a good resource for you.

That's a good idea. I've never done that.

You've never done that? Yeah.

No.

Yeah, yeah.

I like that.

My. Our sales assistant asks everybody if they're going to see the property. She's like, hey, can you just get a few pictures? Because we want to see what's going on out there. And then a lot of times we'll say, hey, we'll. We'll happily reimburse you for some pictures if we don't already have some. Right. And most people just turn it down. They're like, ah, don't worry about it. We had fun going out there. So that's awesome. Another. Another hack for the night. Another tip of the. Tip of the night bike. Where'd you go, man?

I. I just had to get another glass of wine, but I think you just answered Scott's question. Other boots in the ground and Is that what you were doing?

That's what we were talking about. Yeah. When you were gone, getting your red wine.

Red. Red wine.

I'm watching my kids right now.

Yeah. How's that going?

They.

They have dug a hole in the front yard and have turned on the hose and are filling it with water.

Yes.

Resourceful.

Yes.

Yeah, they're creating. They're creating mosquito pits. It's going to be great. Yeah, that's great.

That's awesome. All right, another question. Where do we get photographers? That's a great question. Get that one every now and then. All sorts of areas, really. But, John, let's start with you. You brought up the photographers, so, I.

Mean, one great place to go is other people in the community. Right. That's like my first place to go. If there's somebody that I know work in the area that's a friend. Sometimes I'll just reach out and ask if there's a good photographer they'd recommend. And so that's kind of the first place I go to. Outside of that, I'd say, like we do a lot on Craigslist. I've also done like, they're like photographer websites. Bark.com is one that I think maybe I'm remembering vaguely, but there's other ones where it's just like you can search for photographers in a specific area. But I think that I found the best success off of Craigslist personally. And then word of mouth recommendation, just talking to other people in the community and saying, does anybody have a good photographer in XYZ county they would recommend? So.

Love it. Anything to add, Mike, or did John cover it?

I think cover Craigslist, I think, is one of the staples. Right. You go right there very quickly, you'll find somebody. There's always someone looking to make a couple of bucks, you know, taking some photos or whatnot. For sure.

We like the buy sell trade groups on Facebook too. Go in there and just say, hey, I need a photographer in this area. And normally you get a lot of people raising their hand to help you out with pictures. So. Awesome. Good question, Scott Christensen. Do you hire and pay local resources? I assume you just look up contacts and call them. But how do you go about paying them? Just basic Venmo PayPal payments. Do you run into 1099 requirements?

Well, you know what, that, Scott, is. Years ago, I was paying some guy in this thing I never heard of called bitcoin.

Oh, I know that's something.

Somebody like a whole bunch of bitcoin to take some photos. I was like, really? You want bitcoin? Okay, whatever that is. And I went and got some and. Oh my goodness.

So anyway, so you paid who? Like a property owner, a photographer. A photographer in bitcoin. Smart photographer, ahead of his time, man.

It had been 10 years ago, if not more, but yeah, it was ridiculous. I tried to. I just remembered that like a while back. I'm like, what account did I buy that on? Did I buy extra?

I had a. I had a guy pay for part of a property in bitcoin once. And don't ask me how we book kept for that. I don't really remember, but. But it was like a $15,000 cash deal and he gave us like 5,000 in Bitcoin, which I thought was pretty cool at the time.

I had someone mail me gold once.

Yeah, I think Eric Peterson. Eric Peterson's done a precious metal deal. I think he.

He Helped me with that one. I was like, eric, what do I do? And he is telling me all about, like, the different ways to value gold and like, because he just, he had done it himself. So it was great.

I think his first deal ever. Mike, have you heard Eric talk about this? I think his first deal ever, he accepted precious metals. Really? For a land sale.

Wow.

But. But anyway, we digress. So how do we pay the local resources? So. So yeah, pay. The great news is there's so many ways to Pay people nowadays. PayPal, Venmo Cash app for the teenagers. Right. Like, yeah, I think those are all great ways. Facebook, Facebook. You used to feel the pay through pay people through Facebook. Even like Facebook pay Now. I don't know if they're. Yeah, I don't know if there's any other ones, but that's typically how we pay with people. And then 1099 requirements, not with just like vendors on a one off thing. I think there, I think there's like a 1099 if like you can pay somebody up to a certain amount right before you have to give them a 1099 and it's like.

Something.

600 bucks or something like that.

Yeah, yeah. Don't quote us on that.

If you don't put us on that.

Tax fraud, it's not enough.

Disclaimer. We don't know what we're talking about. Especially with bourbon. Don Thrasher, you complete me. Was also from Austin Powers. Oh, I don't remember that part.

But great movie series. Wow.

Great movie series. Very appropriate for the children. That's a big N.

All right.

M mory, I'm gonna say that's. It's probably Mark Morrison. Matt Morrison bought the book. Thanks for the suggestion. You're very welcome. Which book? KURT R. Did we recommend a book?

We always recommend things.

Yeah, we're recommending books a lot. A question from Daniel. Are do not trespass signs ever needed? So, Mike, you own land.

Yeah.

What are your thoughts on that?

I never used one. No, I never, I've never put up a do not trespass sign. So I. I guess my answer is no. Unless there's some real specific reason. I've just never ran into it.

Yeah, yeah, I think I agree. I mean, well. And Mike's sitting in his recliner in Massachusetts. He's not very emotionally attached to his land out in New Mexico. So now if he was the neighbor next door and he didn't want people on the lawn, might be throwing the do not trespass sign out there. But. But I. Maybe he's Getting at, like, do we need to be worried that people start. That people maybe take residence on our land or that type of thing? So, guys, we've all done a lot of deals. We're probably, what, 10 plus 12, plus 8? We're like 30 years combined here. Land investors.

Right.

So I kind of wanted to ask this, actually, John. How many times have you had somebody maybe on your lands that shouldn't be there?

Three.

Three times in eight years?

Yep. My theory is that it's like once you've done a hundred, like, my. My theory is 1 in 100. So it might be higher, but that's kind of been my experience. And it's always been like, the first time it happens, you're like, oh, my goodness, this is crazy. And then, I don't know, like, it resolved itself. It was fine. Right. It's not. It's not been enormously challenging for me to take care of.

Yeah, I think, you know, these. These headaches that we talk about in traditional real estate. If you had 100 rental properties, how many headaches would you have with those 100 properties?

Right? 100, yes.

Versus if you have 100 land parcels, you're looking at one. And yeah, I would agree with that too, John. It seems like one out of every hundred deals there might be a small issue. And then one out of every couple hundred deals, maybe there's a little bit bigger issue. Like I'm trying to think. Like, I've had. I bought a property site unseen one time, and it had dead cows on it.

Right.

I bought a property sight unseen one time, and it had an old abandoned camper on it. I bought a property sight unseen one time, and this is when I didn't get boots on the ground because I kind of know the areas. So I bought the property first, then I got the photographer instead of, you know, getting photos first and then buying the property. I had some old tires and junk on the property.

Right.

That stuff happens. Those, I'd say, are the minor things that, you know, take a couple hundred bucks to clean up.

Right.

And then I've had two headaches, I guess, where people started living on the land when we didn't want them to. And in 10 years. Right. That's not bad.

No.

Mike, what about you?

A couple, you know, mostly because one time, not because they didn't belong there, because I went outside the model one time and I bought a whole bunch of property in an hoa, but they had. You could move right in and put your trailer on there, your rv, it had water hookups. And so on and so forth. And so it was kind of outside the traditional model. And I had a couple of people that did end up, like, defaulting and was staying there. And they brought some junk on the property. But like John said, they all resolve one way or another. And I still made a bunch of money, so.

Yeah.

Really nothing that would deter me in any way, shape or form.

Yeah. Awesome. Don Thrasher. I do Remember now when Dr. Evil says to Mini Me, Mini Me, you complete me. I do remember that now. It came back. Great show. I gotta watch. I gotta re. Watch those.

Who's Dr. Evil? Who's Mini Me in this scenario?

What do you mean in this scenario?

Yeah, I guess I'd be Mini Me.

Well, I'm not gonna play. Not Mini Me.

Yeah, you're talking.

I'll be Dr. Evil. John can be the. The guy that gets ejected through the floor into the shark pit. I'm gonna hit my eject button.

Yeah.

John falls out of the floor.

I'll just. Yeah. Where this happens.

Exactly. Exactly. Oh, man. All right. This is from Calling Sick Outdoors. I like that name. Maybe that's a business name or nickname. I don't know. Do you buy very many lots without access that you need to get permission to access the property or have to pay for access? That's a good question.

It's a good question. But that's like, one of the things we look for in due diligence is physical access. Right. We want to. We don't want landlocked properties. Although I've known people that have made a lot of money on landlocked properties. That's one of the things that we try to avoid. So in our typical model, you would not need to look for someone to give you permission or have to pay for any type of access? No, not at all.

Awesome. It's Jeff Moore. Jeff, good to see you. I talked to Jeff a couple days ago.

Welcome, Jeff.

Welcome, Jeff. Any other questions out there, folks? We're talking land investing tonight. We're talking, you know, kind of doing our due diligence from the comfort of our home. What. What questions might you have? What concerns might you have with that whole process? Is anybody intimidated by it? I know I was initially, but it's just one of those things, right? The more you. The more you ride the bike, the easier it becomes, Right.

So you're mapping out new territory, like, literally. And, you know, in the beginning, it's foreign to you. You know, you. But the more that you go around and around that same area buying properties and selling them you're going to become more and more comfortable, but you can certainly even out of the gate with your first property. It's just going to take a little bit more effort than it will before you on your 10th property and a lot more effort than on your 100th property. Right. But you can still get all the answers you need remotely. It's just in the beginning, it's going to take more effort, but it's totally possible.

That was a very zen like few moments with you, Mike Zaino.

It's very good.

That's the thing.

It's the. Oh, it is, yeah. Good. John, what are you drinking tonight? Hop water?

Yeah, no, I have a non alcoholic trail pass. Hazy ipa. Yes, non alcoholic trail pass Brew Vasa Double fisting.

What's going.

I know it's, it's a party night. It's a non alcoholic party.

Going out in the front yard after and jumping in those holes full of water.

Oh, man, he's gonna be out there with him. That's funny. That is funny. Mike. Mike's at the Pinot Noir. All right. I, I got a little, I got a little Elijah Clegg. Elijah Craig, small batch bourbon tonight. Eliza click. Eliza click. Yeah.

Excuse my little accent on it.

This was a birthday gift. I'm a recent birthday boy and so is Mike. Happy late birthday, Michael.

Birthday.

Thank you, John.

You're a May birthday guy, aren't you?

Yeah, I did just have my 10 year anniversary, so.

Oh, there you go.

That counts.

Yeah, I get to celebrate with these.

High school.

Wait, how do you, how do you have 15 kids and you're only married 10 years?

Oh, 10 year marriage. I was like, wait a minute, there's no way.

You've only been out of school.

Horrible. Oh, Ned.

Well, happy anniversary. Yeah. Okay.

Yeah, yeah.

Happy. And Mikey, Mike, you just had an anniversary as well. Happy anniversary to you, Lara.

Yeah. Lucky Laura, as we call her over here.

Yeah, well, she's so lucky. She's so lucky. Daniel, do. Daniel, the question, do you make any effort to buy properties that are zoned commercial or do you just pass them up entirely? That's a great question. I'd say it's not really our focus, but you might fall into one every now and then.

Sure.

What do you think, John? Do you make any effort to do it?

I don't commercially. Well, I think it kind of branches out from the model like for us generally. Our. Like at least my end buyer is looking to buy something to put a home on at some point, recreate. Right. Something for an investment and Commercial.

It.

It branches out, and then it's. It just is valued way differently. Like, the value on commercial property is just really challenging, and it's hard. They tend to not be kind of, like, repeatable as well. And so it's like there's. It's not that there's not money to be made with commercial properties. It's just going to take probably a whole lot more of you to, you know, to get a deal done. So.

Yeah, I would agree. I think I've done one commercial deal in 10 years just because it kind of fell into my lap and looks like a good deal and did it. Mike, any commercial properties?

Not that I can recall, no. You know, we typically are targeting rural vacant land, so that wouldn't just typically fall in our plate. It could be like you're buying from somebody. And this is a whole other topic. But make sure you always, you know, you're mailing some for properties in New Mexico, and you always got to ask, do you own property anywhere else? Because I can't tell you. Someone said, oh, I didn't know you were interested in other areas. I have 30 acres here or 20 properties. You know, so. Whole other topic. But you could end up with that type of situation and maybe, but we don't. We don't target them. It's not part of our focus.

Yep.

Yeah. Very good. Don Thrashers headed to Fort. Fort Liquerdale tomorrow. I like that.

I haven't heard of that place.

Laptop on the beach. Well, Don, congrats to you. Have fun.

And down there, dawn, right on the. On the beach there.

Be careful drinking and laptopping down there. John. John. And here's a question from Rom. So this is a good question. Ram and his wife are full time travelers and digital nomads. Can you explain how this would work for someone with a remote slash nomadic lifestyle?

Wow. Very well.

Yeah. Very well, I would say. I mean, now, with starlink, you can get Internet everywhere, right? I'd say you do need an Internet.

This is my Starlink. I just. I've just bought starlink.

You did? Yeah. I can work anywhere.

What the heck?

I don't know. It's like a Russian nesting doll box. It's. Look at this thing. It's giant.

I feel like you have a satellite in there. You're gonna launch.

It. Kind of feels like work on that unit. So you just got it today?

Actually, I just have it open. I'm unboxing it right now.

You should have that on the nightcap. An unboxing segment.

I love this all right, so in this giant box, we have two much smaller boxes. So this is my motor, the like a little router. And then this is my Starlink mini. So it's.

So is that like a dish? The dish that goes on your house or what? Yeah, yeah.

No, this one you can do anywhere. So this is like, it's more compact. You can buy them refurbished for $349. And the plans, you can get 50 gigs for, I think 50 bucks a month, which is enough to do a lot, right. Unless you're like binging Netflix or something like that. And then you get unlimited for 165amonth, which is a good chunk of money. But, I mean, if you can work from a campsite, it's kind of worth it. Perfect. And then you can.

Go ahead. I'm sorry.

Yeah. Oh, you can get these power banks that, like, you know, I can. You get a power bank off of Amazon, it's like 250 bucks. And I can take this laptop and charge it and run it like nine, ten times. Right. Just off of that power bank. And then you can plug the Internet in and, like, I mean, you're good to go. So that's great.

That's amazing. John, how's the Internet at the coffee house? Are you going to be bringing that with you and just set it next to you? Just setting it up.

I'll be like, I'm not satisfied with the Internet. And so I brought Starlink with me. It's like the most passive aggressive thing that you could possibly do.

Oh, man.

Yeah.

So rom Internet signal number one. Right. You know what the. The rest of this business, I'd say, I'd say 100. It can be done remotely in some counties.

Right.

Because now you can e record in most counties and you can also e notarize. So what other reasons, Mike, do you need to. To do this in an area where you need amenities?

I think the answer is how this would work with the same way it works for you, me and John. No different. You know, if you have an integrated connection, it doesn't matter where you are. Literally does not matter. You know, I was saying. I was. I was. Didn't mean to interrupt, John, but I was like, we got a boat I'm gonna be working off now and up in the. Up in the seaport in Boston. It's like. So I might. I gotta get the information, John, to get the style. Like, I'm gonna do it on my boat and I'm gonna cruise around the harbor. Doesn't matter.

We didn't even have to do the. The Boston Lego segment. It's just. It's just one thing after the other. Tonight, Ma's Vineyard, the Haba.

I may have, after one of the last segments, talked to ChatGPT and asked for the best possible sentence that Mike could say, which I do have.

Yeah, I think we might need to post that at the end on a banner across the screen and have Mike read it.

All right.

I think that could be fun.

The info on where to get all that. I want the power bank.

Just message Elon. Mike, you got this?

Yeah.

Elon. I thought he was gonna pop out of that box.

We should have him on sometime. We'll bring him on.

He'd be honored. I think. One.

Oh, go ahead, John.

Oh. One thing that I think is really helpful with this business and with the day and age that we're operating as well, is that you can do digital mailboxes. Right. And so basically, you know, as far as, like, I use a mail service, my company has a mailbox, but the mail all goes to this service. It's automatically scanned and uploaded and then I immediately have access to it. And so that really enables me to be anywhere. Right. I can send checks. There are services that'll send checks for me. There are, you know, we use digital phone numbers as well. Like, there's basically everything that you can think of that is in a traditional office you can operate off of remotely. Right. And so that enables us to. To really be anywhere.

Love it. Love it. Rom if you want to learn more, message us. Mike@thelandgeek.com Scott@thelandgeek.com Johnathan Geek.com and happy to chat with you about it. John Noach.

John no H Joh Awesome.

For all you want to know, Jon.

From Sandy, what do you look for in potential tax accountants to find one to help support the business set up and all the detail, all the deals. Who wants to take that one, fellas?

I would say you just ask other investors who they're using and follow that. That's a simple way to do it for sure, because there are some nuances about our business. Right. Which is why there's a great course that Scott Todd does. Accounting for land investors allows you to have that conversation with your accountant, you know, where you're not going to do your taxes, but you can speak in an on, in an educated way to them about what you're doing. But go on the Facebook group and just ask people, hey, who are you using for your, you know, for your taxes? And you're going to get a enough answers to dig into and find the right person for you.

Yeah. Awesome. And then we're. We're, you know, we're essentially dealers. So you need to have. You need to find an accountant who's familiar with, like, the installment method of accounting. And that's something that you're just going to want to make sure to ask your accountant. Hey, are you familiar with this method of accounting? This is what we do when we're holding this land inventory. But, I mean, I found my bookkeeper local. Actually, I found her in a local buy sell trade group that worked real well for a long time. Now we're in the process of hiring a new one just because she's stepping away to different things. John, where'd you find a bookkeeper?

Other land investors. So they recommended them? Yeah.

Awesome. Using Lloyd.

No, I'm not using Lloyd. I'm pre Lloyd. I'm a big fan of Lloyd is amazing.

Yeah. We have bookkeepers in our community actually, as well. So. Yeah, the Facebook group is a great place for that. You know, go post questions in the Facebook group or if you are in our online community, Mighty Networks. It's another great place to ask those type of questions.

I agree. It's just the right way you say it.

Yeah, it's exactly how it's spelled right there. H A B A H. Any other questions out there before we throw up John's sentence of the week for Mike on the screen. John, do you have access. Access to the banners over there on your side? Probably not, huh?

I don't think I do. I don't think I'm trusted.

If you put it in the chat, I could probably paste it on the screen here.

Let's see.

Oh, you already did this.

Okay, here we go. All right, so normally. Normally we do what's called the Boston Legacy segment of the week where Scott. Scott spells a word correctly and Mike just hacks the death out of it in his Bostonian accent. We have a full sentence. Oh, he got a preview that we shouldn't have given him a preview, but I don't know how we would have done this. So tonight we're gonna do the. The Boston legacy sentence, and Mike's gonna read this sentence for us. Mike, you ready? Don't debelish now. Just be your normal. Your normal, you know, Bostonian self. Here, hold on. Here we go.

Oh, my God. The wicked child of loving lobster wrangler parked his car at the harbor.

Oh, my God. John, I would like you to read the same sentence.

Okay? The wicked Chowder loving lobster wrangler parked his car at the harbor.

There we have.

Sounds the same.

Yeah, it sounds completely the same.

Exactly what I said.

It's exactly right. Yes. Oh, man alive. Oh, thanks for sharing that, John. That was, that was well worth the wait. Well worth it. Well, we're coming up on an hour here. Let's see what topic we have for next week. I feel like tonight's topic wasn't very broad, but we filled in the time. Let's see here.

Yeah, brought up a lot of associated topics. That was good.

Yeah. So next week, July 1, 2025, halfway through 2025, we're going to talk land due diligence checklist, how to avoid every costly mistake in 30 minutes.

Every one, every cost you mistake, make.

Sure you show up because it's going to be a ton of value next week. Yeah. And every dollar you save needs to be.

Yeah, well, that one or the week after will be in the harbor.

Oh, you are gonna, you're gonna be.

In the haba either next week or the week after. One of the two.

So. Meaning you won't be here again.

No, because you're go from there from the boat.

You're all, oh, you're off doing your od toity haba vineyard from the boat.

I'm gonna bring, I'm gonna get the Elon Musk.

Get the Starlink. All right, awesome.

Yeah, I'll send it to you.

Yeah, Mike speaks perfect English.

Thank you, Jimmy. I believe you are correct.

All right, everybody. Well, thank you for joining us tonight. If there aren't any other questions, we'll sign off. But I do want to remember, I do want to remind. Sorry. I do want to make a reminder for all of you people who are watching us in the rerun, which is where we get our thousands of views. Remember, we do this live every week, 9pm Eastern on Tuesdays. So come bring your questions if you want a live answer from John Burnett and Mike Zano and myself.

Yeah. Come join the party.

The potty.

The party. We will espouse you with our information.

Yes, we will. Cheers, fellas. Have a good night. Talk to you guys later. See you Land geek community.