Nite Cap is Back!

Sam, Here we are.

We're live.

All right.

This is the number one passive income strategy you're not using yet. Are you tired of the grind? What if I told you there's a hidden asset class that wealthy investors use to build recession proof passive income and almost no one is talking about it. Join us tonight live as we break down exactly how land investing works, how to start with little money, and why this beats rental properties every time. Drop your questions in the chat. Let's make some money together. Hit that reminder. This is the one live stream you can't afford to miss. Welcome to the Land Geek. Guys, nightcap. I feel like it's like as an SNL intro.

Live from everywhere. It's Tuesday night.

Exactly, exactly, exactly. So, all right, what is Nightcap?

Right?

So we're a bunch of land investors. We each have a story, right? And I'm trying to. I lost my stream, by the way. I don't even know where it is. That's okay, I'll figure it out. So I want to just quickly tell my story. For those of you that don't know who I am, Mark Podolski, also known as the Land Geek. I've been a professional land investor for 25 years. And the way that I got started was I was a miserable, micromanaged 45 minute commute to work and back investment banker specializing in mergers and acquisitions with private equity groups. And I hated it. Hated it. And it got so bad for me that I wouldn't get like the Sunday blues anticipating Monday coming around. I get the Friday blues anticipating the weekend going by really fast and having be back at work on Monday. So my firm hires this guy, he's telling me as a side hustle, he's buying up raw land, pennies on the dollar, he's flipping them online and he's making a 300% margin and a 3% return on his money. And I'm, I'm from St. Louis, I'm from the show me state, Missouri. I don't believe him. I've got three grand saved up for car repairs. I go with him to New Mexico. I do exactly what he tells me to do. I buy 10 half acre parcels, an average price of 300 each. I flip them online, I sell them for an average price of 1200 each. It worked. So I took all that money with another auction in Arizona. And Again, this is 2000. There's no one in the room. I'm buying lots and acreage for nothing.

And.

I made over $90,000 on that one auction. So I go to my wife and she's pregnant. I said, honey, I'm going to quit my job and become a full time land investor. And she said, absolutely not. So I said, okay, okay, okay. So it took 18 months for land investing income to exceed the investment banking income. And then I quit. I've done over 6, 500 land deals and counting. I absolutely love it. But the strategy that I use, I want to walk you guys through it really quickly.

So.

Before I do that, let me just properly introduce the, the hosts of Nightcap. We've got Dude Buddy, the Nightcap.

Oh gee.

Scott Bossman. Scott, how are you?

I'm great, Mark. Good to be here.

Good to see you. We've got the Zen master Mike Zano from Havril Close. Mike, how are you? There's no, er, I don't know, whatever. It's Boston.

Boston.

Yeah.

And I, by the way, I just want to apologize to everybody in Massachusetts right now for my terrible accent. I'm trying to sound wicked smart. And we got Handsome Rob John Burnett in the house from Idaho. We're all professional land investors. We're all going to tell our stories. So I just want to quickly walk everybody through the model so you can replicate it yourself. So we're going to use Dude Buddy, the Nightcap OG Scott as our case study. So Scott, where do you live?

I live in Onalaska, Wisconsin. A Midwest guy.

Midwest guy. I'm so sorry. Anyways, when let's assume that Scott owns five acres of raw land in a place that people actually want to live. Where I live in Arizona. Right. But he owes $200 in back taxes. So essentially he's advertising two important things. I mean, number one, he's no emotional attachment to the raw land he's in Wisconsin, properties in Arizona. And number two, he's financially distressed in some weird way because he hasn't paid his property taxes. And when we don't pay our property taxes, we don't value that asset in the same way. As a result, the kind of treasurer keeps sending Scott notices. Scott, if you don't pay your property taxes, you're going to lose that property to a tax deed or tax lien investor. So all I'm going to do is look at the comparable sales on Scott's five acre parcel the last 12 to 18 months. I'm going to take the lowest comparable sale. Let's say it's $10,000 and divide by four. And that's going to give me what Warren Buffet would call a 300 margin of safety. So I'm going To send Scott an actual offer of $2,500. Now he accepts it.

Why?

Because for him, $2500 is better than nothing. In reality, 3 to 5% of people are going to accept my quote unquote top dollar offer. But now that Scott's accepted it, I have to go through due diligence or in depth research. I have to confirm back taxes are only $200. I have to make sure there's been no breaks in the chain of title, no liens or encumbrances. So I have this whole large property due diligence checklist I outsource to my team in jamaica. Costs about $11 and they are interfaced with an American title company so they have connections. Now, if I was investing, say more than $5,000, I'm not going to mess around with any title risk. I would go traditionally through an American title company, but it's only $2500. There's typically not that long a chain of title. And so I'll take a little bit of risk. I send Scott a, we'll see. Everything checks out. I'll send Scott a check for twenty three hundred dollars. The treasurer checked for two hundred. I own it free and clear. And now I'm going to sell this property 30 days or less. I'm gonna make a cash flow like a rental home. So I have a built in best buyer. And for those of you live, if anyone is live, put in the chat who that best buyer is. I can't see the chat, by the way, but hopefully Scott, you can see it.

It may be a little delayed, but yeah, throw, throw in the chat there. Who you think the, the, the best buyer would be for? For my property that I just bought? Neighbor Baylor. Neighbors.

The neighbors, right. So we're gonna send out a neighbor letter, say, hey, here's your opportunity. Protect your privacy, protect your views, know your neighbor. Oftentimes the neighbor will buy. Now if they pass, go to my buyers list buyers list passes. I'll go to a little website most of you may have heard of called meta or Facebook Buy sell groups in the marketplace. And then I'll go to the lands land.com landmoto.com land farm.com landsamerica.com land flip.com land up.com these are platforms where people buy and sell raw land every day. But the secret is in the pricing. So all I'm going to ask for is a $2,500 down payment. So when I get my money out on the down, I could go six to 10 months out and Then I get a car payment, let's say 329amonth and 9% interest for the next 84 months. So it's a one time sale. We'll get our money out on the down or 6 to 10 months out. And now we're getting 329amonth and 9% interest for the next 84 months, fellas. No renters, no rehabs, no renovations, no rodents. And so it's a simple game. Can we create enough land notes where our passive income exceeds our fixed expenses? And then we're working because we want to, not because we have to. And so with that, I'd love to pass the talking stick over to the Zen master, Mike Zano. And Mike, what is your story? Tell everybody your story and your origin story and how you got into land investing.

All right. Well, 10 years ago I was a little over was actually over 10 years ago now. Over a decade I've known you, Mark. I was forty plus thousand dollars in debt and you know, working just wasn't going to. My W2 job as a firefighter was. No way I was going to catch up on that. A friend of mine fortunately had started and had met you Mark and started investing on over his house. He already had a couple thousand dollars a month. Passive income seemed pretty authentic to me. I went out to Arizona, met you. You seemed authentic and transparent and I said I'm going to give this a go. I focused on a little micro niche within the niche market. I bought properties about four or five hundred dollars in Arizona and I would sell them to another investor. Since I bought a 25 cents on the dollar, sometimes even more aggressive than that, I was able to sometimes double, sometimes more, sometimes less, but it didn't matter. I was making good money flipping it wholesale and I got a couple investors that just really loved those properties. So the more I bought, the more I sold. And I paid off my debt in the first year and it was really an eye opening moment for me. I mean to have the weight, the crushing weight of that debt removed in a year and opened up a whole new window of opportunity to me a decade later. I'm just, you know, I'm just blasting out land deals left and right. My whole life has been dramatically changed. I, I always tell everybody the one word that comes to mind for this business is I'm grateful. Grateful. Very grateful to have met you, Mark. Very grateful to have found land investing and this community and it has literally changed my life.

Amazing, amazing. Handsome Rob John Burnett. What's your story, brother?

Yeah.

So I've been doing this since 2017, so seven and a half years now. Val and I, so my wife, Valerie, we have six kids. We're extremely tall, tired, but life is very good, very chaotic. We, when we started, we had two and living in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, working in the hospitality and tourism industry and just, you know, you work in when everybody else is playing, you know, weekends, holidays, all that kind of stuff. And I, I had a point where my son, my, my oldest, who's sleeping a lot and I've seen him for like a half hour to an hour a day and just didn't like that, didn't want that. And that like, that really motivated us to try to seek something that would give us time, freedom, right? And so read Kiyosaki, right. Like everybody else. And that set us onto the idea of like a real estate investment in general. And then we settled on things single family, long, long term, buy and hold rentals. That was what we were going to do. Invested in a program and we're living in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. And so we invested in this program and then looked around and we were like, well, but we're not going to do it here. It was like, it's crazy there. It's millions and millions and millions of dollars to buy a home. It's just nuts. And so we were looking at other markets, trying to figure out how to do it remotely. It was becoming a parent and talking to other people in that industry that was going to be really chall to do that remotely in the way that we wanted to. And that's when I heard Mark on a podcast. And I still remember I was going through a McDonald's drive through getting an egg McMuffin and Mark comes on the podcast. My daughter is like two weeks old at this point. And then I came home, I listened to it made a lot of sense. A, just because of the simplicity, like it just didn't have all the variables you're dealing with with homes and B, because we needed something we could do remotely. We're like, whatever we do and like, it ain't in Jackson Hole. We got to have something that we can do somewhere else. And so I took it home, I showed it to my, to my wife and I'm like, this is really interesting. Like we should take a look at this. And she's like, we need to do this right now. And so we hopped on the phone and just jumped straight into it and then have not looked back. I quit my job, you know, at this point, years and years ago. And this is you know, this is what I do to put food on the table for my family. And it. We have time, freedom now, right? And so it's been. It's been great. And I think I echo Mike, and for us, it's been a massive blessing. I know, Mark, you probably get a voxer message from me every three to four months just of me saying, I'm so grateful, but I really am.

Yeah, yeah, it's. And for me, it's the most gratifying thing I've done professionally. I mean, when you. When you help people solve that, just their money problems, but their time problems so they can go and live their best lives. And I get to hear those stories about what people are doing with that time and that money. It's. It's so gratifying.

It's.

It's hard to sort of put into words. It's this ineffable feeling, and it is. It is one of the few things in life that I think is truly transformative, but it's a simple model. And for those of you that start following us each week on Nightcap and the Art of Passive Income podcast, which will repurpose this as well and create the podcast. We're going to give you value each week in the land business, but also have some fun as well in Nightcap. But you'll find that these stories are absolutely transformative. And, you know, only person I think that like is special is, you know, like, my mom thinks I'm special, but none of us are really special like anyone. I think with grit and resilience and determination can. Can be successful in the land business. But I'm talking a lot. I should give the talking stick to Dude. Buddy, the nightcap og what is your story?

What is my story? You fell into my lap, Mark, by accident. Just one day. Just God sent you to me. I was on a path of discovery. I felt I was truly in the rat race. I'm a physical therapist. I was working a ton of hours. I liked my job in the sense that I was really helping people. I didn't like my job in a few other senses. I felt underpaid.

Right.

I felt overworked. I felt overstressed. I felt like I didn't have freedom. I was frustrated with some things, like if I wanted time off, I'd have to go through committee and plan three months ahead of time. And I wasn't seeing my family and having four boys felt like I was living paycheck to paycheck. And I'm like, I really shouldn't be Feeling this way. So there was this kind of feeling of unease for a really long time. So I went on a journey of self discovery for a long time, just learning, learning, learning about different passive income models and real estate and that type of thing. And, you know, listened to. First I was Dave Ramsey guy, and then I was a Robert Kiyosaki guy. And then I was, I was listening to Get Rich, Get Rich Education and with Keith Weinhold. And I listened to every single episode until it got to land investing. And I'm like, that sounds really boring. I'm skipping it. And I skipped it. And for whatever reason, I went back probably a month or two later because it was the only episode I hadn't listened to. And I thought I'd better go back and listen to it. And I went back and listened to it and I was hooked. And I came home that night and I said to Aaron, I said, this is what we need to do. We had thought about getting into single family homes. We had actually formed an llc. We were on the verge of buying a duplex when. When I learned of this. And part of it was because I had a friend who was buying duplexes and. But she, but more I think about it, like, she was always complaining about something, right? There were all these emergencies all the time. There were tenant problems, there were mechanical problems. There were like, she had to go to court, right? And I'm like, do we want to do this or do we want to do like, land investing? And so I learned more. I got on the phone with you, Mark. You just struck me as being very authentic. And you said, this is how we do it and you can do it. And I did it. I worked hard at it for the first couple years, but you're exactly right, Mark. When your passive income from land exceeds your fixed expenses in life, there's this huge paradigm shift in your life where you become more in control, right? So then I became the captain of my fate, is what I say, right? And I'm. I'm forever grateful. Forever.

No, I. I love it. I love it. And I'm super grateful to you guys as well, because, you know, we're putting the fun back in land in land investing, right? Like, yeah, we're going to help people learn about land vesting discovered for themselves. But we're going to have some fun doing it. We're going to be geeky about it. And let's kind of walk everybody through what nightcap is and what they can expect every Tuesday night.

What's nightcap? Well, okay, so I think it's. I think we should talk about where this idea evolved from. Right. Because. Yeah, Mark.

Because, like, first of all, I was.

Like, what do you mean Nightcap is back? Like, that was back.

Yeah, we took a little hiatus, but so Mark used to do a coffee talk. Right. Back in the day, 2016, 2017. You get online, what, once or twice a week, Mark in the morning and.

Yeah.

And have a coffee backyard and have a terrible coffee, by the way. I was drinking like an espresso and then I became a coffee snob. There's no way I would drink that now.

Yeah. And we. I think we all went live on, you know, coffee Talk with the Land Geek. And it was a. It was a really good time. You know, we were going live at a time when people. Not. Not a lot of people were going live on Facebook. And so. So then we talked. You know, what if we bring it to the nighttime crowd? There are a lot of people out there that burn the midnight oil who like to stay up late. So we decided to. To give Nightcap with the Land Heat guys a shot and did it for a number of years. And it was a lot of fun. We talk all things land investing. We had successful coaching clients on. John and Valerie Burnett were one of our first guests on nightcap back in 2018 or whenever that was. And, you know, we've had. I don't know, it's just a lot of fun. I think it's a really great opportunity to engage with the community and to help anybody along where they're at in their journey. So I'm looking forward to it. Being back.

Yeah, no, I. I love it. And for sure, it's. It's going to be a regular thing. And again, the format is going to be an hour. The first 30 minutes I'm going to be on. It's going to be more of a podcast style. We're gonna have a. A topic that will go around. It's kind of like a round table type of pod for the ankle biter Land investors who are just learning.

Right.

And then I will unceremoniously drop off. And I don't know what's going to happen after that because I quit drinking. I'm drinking a joy burst.

What is a joy burst?

Joy burst. Yeah.

So I'm drinking something, but it's not alcohol. So I quit drinking years ago. I'm a sleep nerd. I'm not drinking. But this is a. It's delicious. It's a premium hydration beverage. Electrolytes plus vitamins, plus focus. It's got lion's mane in it.

Oh.

And lots of other things that I'm sure absolutely worthless. And it's an overpriced type of thing. And I hope Joey burst doesn't sue me for this, but.

I don't know.

It's probably a placebo, but I figured it's nightcap. I'll drink it instead of water.

Mocktail.

It's a mocktail.

Yeah.

Cocktails, mocktails. It doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter.

Just bring yourself and we'll talk land investing. That's. That's the fun part, right?

Absolutely.

So while we have a few more minutes, I just think it'd be really interesting for the listeners to hear what's been your favorite deal in 2025. We just started the year. Let's have a little deal time. Handsome Rob, you want to start?

So, I mean, today I closed, man. It was 20. About 26 grand in cash sales. So. Which I mean, by the way, when you say.

When you say, like I did, like, just so. Just so the. The listeners understand.

Yeah, I didn't.

The last thing anybody build a job for themselves. We're going to teach you how to build a team so that you are not the one doing this. You should be able to travel around the world and your passive income just continues to grow as your team is the one actually doing the majority of the work. So you are the CEO of your land business, and we're all CEOs of our land business, but we can travel. And that mailbox money keeps coming in every single month. That is the goal. Now, it's not like flipping on a switch. Right. Doesn't. You know, it takes a while to build it, but then once you build it, then it's passive. So go ahead, John. I'm sorry to.

Yeah, no, I mean, like, for me, like, at this point, you know. Well, I'll say the most meaningful moments in my land business are the times when, like, I've been hanging out with my family, I've been traveling, I'm at the playground with my kids, and I get the ding on my phone, and it's a sale and I have no idea who it is. Right. And. And that's effectively what happened with each of these. Right. Like, I don't. I didn't interact with these people. Right. And so today, I mean, I signed the deeds, which I probably should delegate, but. But it was great.

Yeah. And so, you know, just to coach John, what you want to do is give somebody limited power of attorney and they can go and sign and notarize those deeds on your behalf. That's what I. Yeah, awesome Zen Master.

You know, of 2025, I think the favorite deal for me is the fact that, you know, so I actually have Scott and I actually have a company together in also our own companies individually. And the fact that we were able to, we secured a while back close to, well, geez, over 100 properties in Arizona in, in one deal. And what I think is exciting is that not only we selling these retail, but also doing something unique to help other investors who are getting involved with doing some land arbitrage. So I, I like the fact that we're able to offer these deals not only to the general public and make a nice return retail, but we're working with other investors where they can actually pay us a very small amount of money per month and they can try out a new area, try out the model. So I think there's some really. It just makes me feel good in that regard, right that we're not only are we, we are making money, but we're also providing opportunities for people that are trying to figure out this business. And there's a kind of a low cost way, something that you actually brought to this whole market like an innovated, innovative turn, right. The land arbitrage where you can control a property for just, you know, a very small payment. You don't have to buy the whole asset, then you can turn around, sell it and make the spread, which I think is so unique and it's really helped. So I mean I've done a lot of this over the years. I've seen people make crazy money where they make one payment, then they sell the property and they pay us off and they make a great return. So. And if you were to calculate the yield of the return, I think it's somewhat infinite for them. So I think that's my favorite deal in the sense of that, you know, yes, we're making a good return. We're also offering the opportunity for other people who have been really taking advantage of that and making a good return themselves, but with a small payment? That whole land arbitrage is something that's quite overlooked by people and really has tremendous power.

Do you guys think it'd be a good idea to actually do a nightcap segment, maybe the first half on land arbitrage, what it is, how we execute on it. I'd love to see from the people who are live and the millions of you right now who are, who are listening, a million put in the chat if you'd like to learn more about land arbitrage.

It's so powerful, Mark. Like, it is.

It is powerful.

Understand this. It's like, why wouldn't you do it?

Yeah, exactly.

But we have to.

I think we have to go more in depth in it.

Yes.

Dude.

Buddy, what's been your favorite deal of 2025? And by the way, Handsome Rob, Is it just me, but when you hear like that Mike and Scott have a. A company together, do you feel like there's like a. Like an in group in an outgroup already?

I kind of do. I kind of feel like I'm thinking that you and I should start our own business. That's kind of what I'm taking out.

Of this, but, yeah, I do. Yeah.

Okay.

All right. Yeah, it'll be called, you know, no Scott and Mike Properties.

Ah, I love it. Yeah, that's great. No, Scott, Mike, no S and M. No S and M Properties.

No S Properties.

I mean, I just. Okay. Yeah, I just said okay. Okay, bye. But my favorite. Okay, this is a good one. So I bought a property in 2018, and I sold it and the guy defaulted. And then I sold it and the guy defaulted.

Okay. So now when did they default? You get your down payment, you get the monthly payments, but you keep lowering your cost basis. We'll talk a little bit more about that for those.

And we can get into the weeds on that. Right. But basically I bought the property for $2,000, and then two years later, my cost basis on the property was essentially zero. Yeah. Then I sold it in 2020 on terms. And the. The. The lady completed her payments last month, but she. She emailed me back and said, scott, I. I really love that you financed this land for me. It has. Something has come up in my life where I'm not going to be able to use it anymore. Would you buy it back for me? So this is before I had deeded her the property.

Right.

So she's paid me for four. Well, 2020. She's paying me for five years right. On the land. So I've made a lot of profit on this land. So I decided. So I actually bought it back from her. I didn't deed her the property. Right. Just bought it back from her. Just create a little addendum to the land contract that she. That she had originally signed. And now I get to go turn around and sell it again. So now my cost base is a little bit higher on this particular property. But, I mean, I don't know. This is kind of an interesting deal, right? Like, I've sold it now three times, and she paid for five years. So of course I'm going to give her a little something for the property.

Right, sure.

So that's kind of a fun deal that came across the desk here this week.

That's a. That's a great deal. I call that a jeweler deal.

Yeah.

When you. When you buy jewelry and then, you know, something happens in life and you go back to the jeweler and they're like, you're gonna give me that for it? Like, yeah, I gotta make money. Yeah, sure. You get it?

Yeah, I love it.

I love it. Amazing. Well, I'm so excited that Nightcap is back. So for those who stick on Nightcap, what can they look forward to? Are we gonna give anything away?

Yeah, we're gonna have giveaways. You know, John Burnett's gonna sing a song every now and then.

Every time.

Every time. Every time. Yeah. Yeah. We're. We're. We're getting engaged with the community. Right. So one of the reasons we love Land Geek before is because people would come and bring their questions, and it didn't matter where they were in the journey. They just found us yesterday. Or maybe they're a coaching client like Vin, who I see watching tonight, or Matt Nunn is watching tonight.

Matt Nunn, by the way, Matt Nunn is not a coaching client anymore. He's an alumni, and he's actually our newest coach.

He is. He is.

He. Well, we haven't onboarded him yet.

I didn't even know that.

I know. Love, Matt Nun.

That is awesome.

That guy's going to be giving back. You know, he's got hundreds of deals. He has so much knowledge, so much land of wisdom to give that he's now our newest lanky coach. But we are in the onboarding stage, so he hasn't even joined Slack yet.

It's amazing. Congrats, Matt Nunn. Laney Beck is here watching. She says you guys are hilarious. Jeff Storley is watching.

Jeff Storley.

Yeah. So thank you guys all for coming, but we just love engaging with community. Right. So we're going to have successful clients on.

Right?

I think we already have, like, a top 10 list in our heads about who we want to come on this podcast. We want to bring coaches, you know, Tate Litchfield, Eric Peterson, Teria Harris, and we want to get some folks on to help educate the world about land investing. And, I mean, the market's so big, Mark. Like, are we worried? No.

This market is massive. And that's. That's the Thing that nobody really understands is that you couldn't. First of all, you couldn't think of a more boring real estate niche, right? It's not going to be on the DIY network or hgtv. Flip this land number four, pictures while land. The after pictures are all land, right? And so if you go to a real meeting, a real estate Investment association meeting, 100 people in the room, 99 of them are house slippers, landlords and wholesalers. You and I would be only land guys. And so you've got this massive market. There's billions of acres of land for sale, just the United States. It's boring and it is an inefficient market. So what does that mean? Well, I'm not even going to talk about it because I'm at time, but.

You are at time.

I'm at time, but this is one that's inefficient market. And Lanny Beck, you're watching. How you doing?

How you doing? All right, Laney, Mark's coming to you. Here he comes.

Watching Laney.

Oh, my Mark. Let freedom ring, though.

Oh, yeah. Let freedom ring.

Mark's out of here, man. He's out. Now the fun begins. This is where the fun begins. Mike Zanel, what are you drinking tonight, buddy?

I can't hear you on mute.

I'm about to have an Old Fashioned delivered.

An Old Fashioned delivered?

Yeah.

I want that delivery service, right? That doordash service.

Oh, my gosh. So half past the hour, Mark goes away, and that's when we start having fun here. All right, so this is where I'm sure the viewership will increase tenfold because.

What's that?

You zipping up?

I'm zipping up. Yeah. Here we go. John Burnett, your sweatsito's coming. But I think what everybody. What everybody needs to realize about this business, right, Is that. Oh, yeah, Mike Zano, this is a tracksuit business, right?

Like velour.

Nothing like velour. So this is when Podolski goes away. The tracksuits come out, the drinks come out. Look at Burnett. He's like Jedi Master Burnett over there.

I know, it's great. I've got a lightsaber, right? Actually, I have a lot of lightsabers. I have a lot of suns.

A lot of lightsabers.

That's so awesome.

All right.

Oh, I feel better already.

Yeah, I do, too. I feel. We're back, buddy. Cheers to you. Here, wait, let me pour a drink. Burnett, what do you got over there?

You know, I think I am going to go grab a Little bit of Evan Williams barrel. Yeah, it's barrel proof. Let me get it. Let me get it.

Yeah, I think you should get it. I think you should get it. I have a little bottle of Maker's Mark here that I got down at the Maker's Mark distillery last fall, which I would highly recommend. A bourbon tour for everyone and their brother. I went with my brother. Bourbon tours are fun. We had a lot of fun down in Kentucky. And. Yeah. So this is where we get down to brass tacks. Right? This is where we want to. We want to engage with the community. We want to know questions.

Are they asking questions yet?

Yeah, we want to know what questions you guys have about land investing, about Mark Podolsky, about Mike Zano.

Right.

But really, we want to engage with you. We. You know, Mike, I think you can agree, this business changed your life. This business changed my life, without a doubt. I look at where I was 10 years ago, and it's absolutely amazing to see the difference in my life. Right. What have I gained in 10 years? I've gained time freedom, I've gained financial security, I've gained location freedom because I can put my laptop in my backpack now and go wherever I want.

Right.

And I've gained amazing friends that have helped me become a better person and a better land investor. That's what happens. That's what's happened in 10 years.

I just got a virtual hug.

You did get a virtual hug.

It's crazy. Like, you know, Val and I, we were on Mark's podcast like, six, seven years ago, and then again like four or five months ago, we, like. I watched that original podcast a while ago, and I can hardly recognize myself. Like, it's crazy. It's crazy just how much this business has. Has built me up and grown me. Yeah.

Just.

I don't know, as a.

As a person, you feel like you're more stressed or what's that? You're more stressed back. Then when you look back, what do you say?

I think so. Like, I like. I like to tell people that I have the spiritual gift of freaking out. Like, I would. I would. Anytime there was any kind of an issue that would come up with. With a property, I would always. My brain would think about all the potential issues and all the what ifs and all these things. And I don't know, I just came to realize it was. It was helpful. I leaned on Eric Peterson a lot in those. In those early months, as he can attest to, and just realize that none of the worry was ever really was. Was ever Justified. Right. And I don't know at this point, like I, I feel like I grew a lot just in terms of, I don't know, my ability to run a business and all kinds of stuff.

I think that's a great point though. A lot of people in the beginning, what about this? What about that? What? You know, there's a lot of these what ifs that can keep people out of the, you know, just getting in and, and doing the business. They get really over concerned with the possibilities of things going wrong. You guys notice that?

Yeah, yeah, I think, I mean, it's intimidating to start something new. Right. And a lot of us that get into this, we have no background in real estate or business. So there's a little fear associated with, with moving forward in a direction that you've never known.

Right.

But that's where you rely on the community. Right. That's where I think this podcast is going to help. I think, you know, Mike, John, myself, were available anytime anybody wants to get on a call to talk about land investing. You know, Mark puts a ton of content out there. You know, he's got a bazillion YouTube videos, he's got amazing podcasts, he's got two, you know, best selling books. Right. Oh, by the way, we have a giveaway tonight. So if you guys go in, in the description of the event tonight, there's a link that'll take you to a Google form where you can win two signed copies or you can win signed copies of Dirt Rich one and Dirt Rich two, which is pretty exciting. And there are going to be three winners that we will announce then next week. And so I encourage all of you who are watching, go to the form, fill out the Google form there for your giveaway.

You know, it's a great idea I think, Scott, when you're, when you start something new like land investing, you go find some of your friends and you say, guess what I'm going to do? I'm going to go invest in raw land and I'm going to sell it to people and owner financing. I want to be the bank. Isn't that great? What do they always tell you? What are you out of here?

What are you doing, man?

Do you remember trying to explain to people in the beginning, like when you're, you're still trying to get your feet under you, then you start talking to other people like they're know nothing about it. You're like, I got this great idea to like, ah, yeah, that's a great idea. Why don't you go do that, oh, come on in.

Oh, delivery people still, people say, still say that. I think my one, my mom still wonders what I do. John Burnett. I quit my job, quit my job five years ago. And she's, she's still nervous that I quit my job five years ago. Anyway, we do have some questions coming in.

Why is that guy who's walking around in a sweatsuito and slip is going to the mailbox? What's up with that?

It's another old fashioned.

Yeah, exactly. All right, so we got a bunch of questions. We got a bunch of questions coming in, guys. So, so, so let me throw, let me throw a couple out here. Brooke and Allison, thank you guys for tuning in. Oh, this is a good question. I'm giving it to you. John Burnett. What are the downsides of land investing?

The downsides of land investing. I mean, so the way I think of it is with the way that this model works, we're building out essentially a river of base hits. Right. It's small deals that are consistent that require very little of your time. Right. And so it's generally like you're not making hundreds of thousands of dollars in a deal.

Right.

Like, generally you're seeing, like I mentioned, I had two cash sales closed today. I cleared my account. It was, you know, it was two deals.

Right.

Like, and so one was, one was 12 grand. One was 13, nine. Right. And those are, those are great deals for me. Like, I'm really happy with those, but I'm not making like a hundred grand. But I mean, the benefit is that I obviously, like, it just doesn't take enormous amount of my time. Yeah. I mean, I'm trying to think of other things.

Downsides. There aren't many downsides.

Well, I think.

What about you think?

I think that, you know, like anything, if you don't stay consistent, there's going to be dips. There's going to be times where there's going to be struggles. And I think that downside is if you don't have a really powerful reason why you're doing it, you could just fall off the wayside. Right. So I think it's really important to have a reason, a why, why are you doing this? Because there's, honestly, you're building a business and there are going to be times where through building this business, there's going to be dips. You know, and we talk about that, right? When people go into the dip and you, you have to be ready for that. And what powers you through that is why are you doing it in the first place? What motivated you to start investing in land? What problem are you trying to solve? Is it that important that you're willing to stick it out? So not just land investing, but that's any, any business you're going to try to start up, any process you're going to put in place to better your life, there are going to be times where it's sort of tough to grind through it. But the only reason you're going to grind through it is because you're trying to accomplish something really important. So I think the downside of land investing could be that you just, you know, you just don't stay consistent. And if you're not consistent, then your results are, you know, it just kind of spirals you. Right. It could literally spiral you right out of it. Right. You're not consistent mailing and then you're not consistent with your marketing. And that's just like, oh, this isn't working for me. And rather than double down and go to the basics, you could unwind yourself from it. Something that could literally change your life. So that to me is a downside.

Yeah, I feel like, you know, with, with this business, I mean, generally like, like none of us are getting into it with an immediate dependence on this for our day to day income. Right. Like you've got a salary you're providing for, so on any given day, like you don't, you don't do anything and it's. Nothing immediately happens. Right. That's bad. But you take a break after like a hard week of work or something happens and, and then that just slowly balloons and gets bigger and bigger and bigger and then eventually you're out.

Yeah. You know, as time goes on, you'll sell properties quicker, but in the beginning you got to get some traction going. Right. We talked, Mark talked earlier about the buyers list. Most of you listening might know what that is, but if you don't, it's like you advertise your properties, people respond. And since we tend to buy in the same areas over and over again, we tell people, hey, this may not be the property for you, but why don't you give me your email? Every week we literally buy new properties and we'll send them to you on our special buyers list and you can get first, look, maybe we'll give them half off the dock fee, no down payment, we'll give them a special. So we'll start to move property very quickly in that regard. But in the beginning, you know, you don't have that in place. So it's going to take a Little extra effort and you're going to start building these things, you know. So again, it's just a matter of consistency and staying the course and following a proven method that you know is going to deliver. So I think it's important, I think. Did you mention, Scott, maybe both earlier? Just surrounding yourself with people that are successful, coming into a community of people that are doing this is really going to help you with that. Those slides that are going to possibly could take you off track and derail your success.

Yeah, I think I would say there are a lot of moving parts in this business. Right. They're not altogether complicated, but there are a lot of moving parts that if you do all of those moving parts, you will create another job for yourself and this will become overwhelming and you will burn out. Right. So that's why Mark and the people in our community really emphasize systems. We're buying and selling land on our computer. Right. That lends itself to systems. We can create, systems we can automate, we can delegate, we can systematize to get so much of this stuff off of our plate so that we're not drowning in all of the. The details of everything.

Right.

So I think that's a downside in that if you don't have the foresight or the strategy to outsource and automate, I think you can get lost in all the nuts and bolts of the business.

Right?

Yeah.

So that's where I think Landgate excels and the community helps in that. If you decide to learn how to do this through us, we push you to get the stuff off your plate because we don't want to create another job for you, like Mark says. Right.

I think you're pointing out something that I feel is something. Is something that Land Geek really, really takes to a high level. There's two books out there, right. One of them is the 12 week year. The other one is who, not how. I think the two of those together is how we really generate success. In short, 12 week year, can you imagine that you could do as much. You could do as much as it would take in a month. In a week. So then in 12 weeks, you could do what typically you might think you could. It would take you a year, but you couldn't do it in 12 weeks. How do you do that? The who, not how you actually bring people in that will, you know, exponentially increase your success. Right. So how do you do as much in a week as in a month where you have other people come in and do these tasks for you so you actually can do much more than you think you would be able to do initially. So when you put those two together, the 12 week year and the who, not how, that's really how we're doing all this. Right. That's the secret to this whole land gate process. Right. We're setting major goals. We're taking the timeline and we're shorting it. Shortening it drastically by bringing people in to handle all these repetitive tasks.

Love it. Dude. Dude. Huh? That's what we do.

And we drink old fashions.

We drink whiskey. Whiskey is not required, by the way. Mocktails, Cocktails, Tea, coffee. What's that, John?

Oh, joy verse. Isn't that what Mark was drinking?

Yeah, joy verse.

I was telling Scott we need to. We're going to create before this is done, our own nightcap drink, our own original drink.

I love it.

We're gonna create.

I love it.

So stay tuned.

All right, awesome. Let's get to another question. Mike Zano from Marine Walsh, who's been through our flight land geek flight school program. Very simple question, very complex answer. The best way to market consistently. Ah, the Eminem's man.

Well, here's the thing. The example I often give people is this. You know, I don't know where you guys live, but where I live, we have a Christmas parade every year, right? And what's unique about this parade, we get these people. Have you guys ever seen them? They have carts, like shopping carts, and they have these stale pretzels under a flame and they have these balloons, overpriced toy. And they walk down and you try to shield your eyes, the kids eyes of the popcorn, candy, toys. And you're like, with the kids eyes. Now they will walk. Say the, say the, say the parade is a. A mile long. They're gonna walk all the way down and all the way back and all the way down all. Guess what happens? They wear you down eventually. Like, fine, we'll take the pretzel, we'll take the overpriced toy and we'll take the damn balloon. We'll take it. All right, but what happens if that guy with the card only walked 100ft and stopped? How many balloons is he gonna sell? How many toys is he going to sell? How many pretzels is he going to sell? Hardly anything. But he goes back and forth and back and forth. So the marketing is no different. If you just put a couple ads out there, you literally walked 100ft and you're like, how come no one's buying my pretzels? Why is nobody buying my balloons? Or these toys. But if you keep putting the ads out, it's the equivalent of going back and forth, back and forth. And here's the big thing. You don't have to put all those ads out. It'd be like this guy had somebody out there and he's sitting and they're pushing him around and he's just sitting there. Hey, popcorn. So that's what we do when we have our, you know, the different VAs come in, right? They're pushing the cart, they're putting all the products out there, they're advertising. But it has to. That, it has to happen consistently. So that's the secret to marketing really is being consistent and having somebody. Because you may not feel like showing up the next day or the day after that, but if somebody's doing it for you, they're going to show up and it's going to get done.

I love it. John Burnett, Best way to market.

I mean, I echo what, what Mike said. You know, I think the most important thing is consistency. I find like, I've got a buyer's list and I hit them with emails every single week. And I find that people like, effectively what you're doing there is you're just building trust, like, over time. And so when people think about buying land, they're thinking about you, right? And so I find people buying property from me that have been on my buyers list for years, right. And the reason, and they're not even necessarily, like, I would offer a deal of the week and they're not buying the deal of the week, they're buying something else. But I'm just showing up, I'm in front of them every, every single week. So I think just keeping that list warm and just maintaining that group of people and has been especially helpful for me.

Nice.

The buyers list is so important, right. We tell people the first email address you collect who, who is a potential lead or a qualified lead, put them in a mailchimp or put it in some type of email campaign tool, right? And start to grow your Rolodex of buyers. Because over time, that Rolodex becomes very powerful for you, right? Almost 10 years into this, we have thousands of people on our buyers list and a good percentage of our buyers come from that list. They either come from repeat buyers or they come from people who've been on our list for years who have never taken action until today for some reason, right. I've gotten emails from people who say, we love your emails.

Right.

You look at where when they signed up, 2017 have they bought anything? No. Are they going to buy something? Someday, hopefully. But they're opening the emails every day since 2017, which is pretty cool. So collect the email addresses, put them in your Rolodex, engage with your Rolodex and that.

I love it.

That little black book, Sam Alone, right? Oh, that's not appropriate.

How about this, Scott? You know the, the buyers list can create FOMO fear of missing out, right? But you can do that with one person. We've seen that over the years where someone has one person but they don't. That one person doesn't know they're the only one on the list. So when you send out the ad, like get this now before it's too late. And you price it and you price it correctly and you put an incentive there, they're like, they're gonna snatch it up but not knowing that they're the only one that received it. We've seen that happen time and time again when people are new, they get one person that buys us like send out the deal of the week. Send it out. They don't know they're the only one. And then they sell the property.

I love it. I love it. Here's another question. Mike Zaino, are you guys leveraging AI in this business?

We are, yes, at leveraging AI. But I think you know one thing that is important and I know that Scott Todd has been writing about this quite a bit lately. He actually has a newsletter now too. Scott Todd, if you're an investor ninjas, you get access to that. He's done some great ads, some great articles on using AI, but very specifically, right? Very specifically. So there's ways to use AI, but not in a general way, but most certainly we are utilizing it.

It. John, how are you utilizing AI in your business?

I use it for content. So I do. And I've done like content marketing. So I do, you know, for my buyers, I'll send them out something that's land related every single week and I get a high open rate on that. And again like building trust with my buyers list, it's been really valuable for that. So I use it for that. I've used it to generate ad copy. You have to be careful with that and you have to build your prompts, right? So you get good ad copy out of it. And then I also just use it for like man, like chatgpt, the little voice thing where you can like have the conversation. I'll spitball like ideas. I'll use it. I'll have it like running in the Side and I'll like work on a project and just talk to it and have it take notes for me and like build out. Like I've had a build out business proposals for me on the marketing side of my business and stuff like that. And it's been really powerful. It's crazy. It's crazy.

You just give something away there now. So I'm curious, you said, do you send out something valuable that isn't trying to sell a property to your buyers list? Is that what you're saying? That's the key little nugget I think people might have missed.

Yeah, yeah, it's. I, I do. And so I just do it once a week, but I get a higher open rate off of that. And again, like, it's basically just something like the goal is to build trust. And then at the end of that article I want to link to my properties and so I want them to come away with value irregardless. And then, you know, I just advertise my properties at the end of that article.

Wow. Very nice. There's a takeaway.

There's a takeaway. I love it. Question from Layla. What websites do you use for marketing? So when we market our land, we sell on free sites, right? Facebook, Marketplace, Craigslist. There are some land sites where you can list for free, like Land Search. There are some paying websites, landmodo, land, flip, land.com, land search, land, Century. Right. But it's, it's honestly pretty amazing how much traction we gain from the free sites, wouldn't you say, Mike?

Yeah, absolutely. You know, again, it's just taking a wide net and putting it out there. Right. You know, just being consistent and using all the different platforms at your disposal. And I think they all can produce. As long as you're consistent.

Yeah. And I think, you know, there are free email tools out there too, like Mailchimp is free, up to maybe 2,000 subscribers, something like that.

Yep.

I mean that, that's, that's pretty amazing. Right? You're able to send out weekly emails, one or two emails a week for free to up to 2,000 people. That's, that's pretty awesome. So. All right, awesome. Let me see here. Got a lot of people chiming in.

We can end up bringing back some of the old segments. Scott, what do you think about that? You know?

Yeah, I mean, I think, yeah, we definitely have some segments.

My favorite, can I say was when you used to like, do it was like the Letterman where you just like with the cards, like, I mean, I.

Gotta get the Cards. I gotta get the cards so I can throw them at the glass wall back here. We'll have some sound effects. But yeah, we had segments. We had segments land related and just fun segments like the Boston Legacy segment, which I was actually looking. I was going to try to find my Boston Legacy segment sign. I can't find it. But I think we should do one. I think we should do one. Yeah, I think we should do a Boston Legacy segment. So the Boston Legate segment is where Scott spells a word, right? And Mike Zaino pronounces the word horribly.

Correctly. Correctly.

And we all get a good laugh out of it. So the word for the night is. Mike, you ready?

The word for the night is.

D R A W E R. Draw.

Draw.

Draw. Yeah. The word for the night is drawer.

How would you say that, John?

Let me put that in the comments. And we're gonna put that on the. On. Yeah, we're put that on the overlay. The text overlay.

They say that in Idaho.

How would you say that? Night home, John? D R A W E R. I go drawer.

D R. I mean, yeah. D R A W E R drawer from.

I can't even.

Yeah, that's probably the worst pronunciation of a word I've ever heard out of Mike Zato. That was horrendous.

Spot on.

It's spot on. Yeah. So that's the Boston leggy segment, which we enjoy because we always get a good laugh. And there are other segments, one we should have done earlier, Mike, which I'm going to ask you to do right now. Explain. Because I still think there are probably some people chiming in, like first time viewers, right? They're like, who are these guys? What, what attire are they wearing? They're wearing like tracksuits and sweatshirts. Mike Zanel, explain. We're coming up on an hour here. Explain the land investing business in 30 seconds or less. Ready?

Oh, okay. You're going to put a set watch on.

Yeah, the 32nd. The 32nd fast is what we call it here.

Hold on.

30 seconds fast. Okay, ready?

Yes.

Here we go.

Target and buy off market vacant land properties, Sell them on super attractive owner financing terms and build a note portfolio so you can quit your job.

Dude, that's 11 seconds less than 13 seconds. You described the business.

I have an idea for a new segment in order of. John, can we do potato potatoes?

I mean, sure. What, what's your idea?

I just know, I don't know what it's going to be, but I know that's what I want to call It, Idaho, Right?

I mean, John Bourbon.

Potato, potato. That's going to be the name of the. That's going to be the name of the segment. I'm not sure what's going to be, but it's going to be potato, potato.

Oh, well done, Mike Zano. Well done. That was, that was a record. I, I think the record was at least 25 seconds before that was 13 seconds. It was spot on. It was spot on.

All right.

We're being disconnected from our. Some from a few of our platforms because we set the buy or something time to an hour. Hey, hopefully this was fun for everybody. I would encourage you again to go to the comments or go to the. Go to the description of Tonight's call on YouTube, Facebook or Instagram. And there's a link to a Google form where you can sign up to be a winner of signed copies of Dirt Rich one and Dirt Rich two.

Winner, winner, chicken dinner.

And for those who haven't read Dirt, which run Dirt Rich one or Dirt Rich two. Yeah, right. Order them on Amazon. Dirt Rich one is just a great overview of the business. Mark talks about his story. Kind of a 30,000 foot view of what we do. Dirt Rich 2 is all about like, how do we blow this thing up, like El Chapo, like Mark says. Right. How do we, we don't want to create another job for you. How do we create a business for you over time? How do we automate, delegate, systematize, eliminate things that we don't want you to be doing?

Right.

So fill out the form. We'll announce three winners next week and next week we actually will come prepared with a topic.

Oh, do we already know the topic?

I, I mean, if I dug around, I'd probably be able to find it, but it's, it's coming. We're gonna have a topic. I don't know exactly what it is, but. And I think you know. Zaino, do you have a, do you have a toast for us to exit?

Oh, I was just looking at the topic. I know what it is, but I don't know.

Oh, you do? Well, tell us.

You sure? I could say it. It's not like a giveaway.

Yeah, it's not a secret.

It's going to be Passive Income Myths versus Reality in Land Investing.

Okay. I like it. Passive and commiss versus reality. Next week. Next Tuesday night.

Okay, so you want me to give a toast?

Yeah, give a toast, man.

Yeah. But you, you do those so well. You always have a little story. I feel like if any one of us had ever gone to. Isn't it, like, an organization called Toastmasters? I feel like you would have belonged because you have the best toast. Like, you are, like. My toast would be, like, probably like, you know, white bread. Yours would be, like, multigrain or rye or sourdough. My toast is very lame.

All right?

I have butter on my toast. You probably have Marble Aid or margarine or jelly. Mine is just dry toast. Do you want my toast or your toast?

We were talking about. Okay, we're going to end here. We were talking about AI earlier. I'm. I. Brain cells are dead right now. But. But listen to this. I just. I just typed this in. And this is. This is what AI gave us for the toast. You ready?

Ready.

Here's to the dreamers, the doers, and those daring enough to invest in their future. May your deals be smooth, your land abundant, and your passive income flow like a river. Until next time. Keep planting those seeds and watch your land of opportunity grow. Cheers to your success. Good night, and we'll see you at the next nightcap. Wow. I wish I had written that.

You orchestrated it. You're an orchestrator. You're a conductor.

Cheers to that. To the next nightcap. I like that. Next week, Live from Everywhere. It's Tuesday night. I like that new slogan.

That is the new Live from Everywhere.

Tuesday night.

All right, see you, everybody. Have a good night. Thank you.

See you.

Bye Bye.

Bye.

Bye.

Oh, we supposed to hang up, John? We're still live.

Oh, there we go.

I'm the only one here. What do I do? Hope you all have a good night.