Nite Cap with The Land Geek Guys—It’s A Numbers Game

Life. Here we go. Look at that slow. That slow swivel. What's going on, Scott?

How you doing, Mike Zano.

I went. I'm on beach week vacation times two. Meaning we had one week, we extended to another just because the opportunity presented itself. And so I didn't have my robe. I apologize.

Yeah, I know. I'm a wee bit disappointed that you don't have the robe. I always have my robe. I never leave home without it.

I feel like you did that just to show up your style war shirt.

Oh, yeah. I mean, I'm a total geek with my Star wars shirt. Right. Hey, I have to say, you are so tan.

Really?

Really? Yeah. I mean, I'm very impressed. And you know what? I don't think that a few years ago, without land investing, you would have been able to afford two weeks at the beach.

No, no, I wouldn't be able to. I wouldn't be able to take the time off the fight apartment. It's just, hey, what can I say? This business changes everything. Right? And we're doing land deals for the beach. It's just. I shouldn't say we. That's a lie. My team, our team. But I always say, what?

Land investing is a team sport.

You complete me section. Check it off.

You complete me.

For those of you are new to our show, we have a few segments, and one of them is, you complete me. And sometimes it just kind of sneaks up on you. And that was it right there kind of came live. Scott, People are looking at us saying, okay, night, capital geek, guys, what's going on? Why are they here live on Facebook? You tell them, what are we doing here?

So the reason we started the show and we're on, like, what, episode 199 now. Yeah.

Netflix has already approached us. We're going into.

The reason we started this show is because we felt that there just wasn't enough going on in the evening hours. But that's when a lot of people work. They burn the midnight oil. They're maybe having a cocktail at their computer, making money on the Internet. And we thought, what better time to have a discussion and a drink about land investing? Right?

Right.

So it's a way to reach out to those people who maybe are working during the day and are kicking back at home at night. And here we go. We're talking land investing. So we encourage everybody who's watching to send us your comments and questions. You know, it's an open forum. We generally try to have a topic. We try not to take ourselves too seriously.

But we do a good job with that.

Yeah.

You know that. And that's our community, the people we work with. Right. I always tell people it's ethical, it's transparent. You know, it's very refreshing when it comes to real estate. Like, we, this is just a very open process, but we take our business very serious. Ourselves, not so much. Right. I mean, and plus, it's 10:30 on the East Coast. 9:30 where Scott is, and some people it's even 7:30 right. On the out in California and whatnot. So. But this is a night we bring a lot of fun and a lot of content. Right. So we've had some great guests on here. And what's so funny? What are you laughing at?

A lot of fun. A lot of fun.

Yeah.

Yeah. Hey, so are we split screen? Yeah. Never mind. We're good. Sorry.

I got you. I know the deal. I've had the complaint before and I always go right to it.

We're split screen. We're good.

We don't want to, like, look like one of us is occupying more screen space than the other, you know, we don't want. We want to be equal opportunity here.

That's how it looks on my end. You're larger than life and I'm just this little thing.

Well, listen, tonight is all about numbers. And I always say, you know, I love numbers, I love math. And there's, you know, I always say the three kinds of mathematicians, right? Those who can add and those who can't. So that's. I said that once at a conference at a training for the fire department lady was like, what's the third kind? And I'm like, that's the joke, but it doesn't matter.

My gosh, that's.

So what numbers are we talking about tonight, Scott? We have a. I don't know if we actually threw them out there. Did we throw them out on a Facebook group that tonight was going to be a numbers type of.

And now. We didn't. We didn't. I mean, about 15 minutes ago I said to the community, it's all about numbers tonight. So here we go.

Well, our business is all about numbers, right? I mean, look at that. Right from the get go, this is not one of our topics, but let's bring it out. 3 to 5% acceptance rate, 1 to 2% closing rate. What's that mean? We are a numbers business, right? You know, massive action, massive numbers brings massive deal flow.

How about mailings, Mike? Hoping to buy one property for every hundred mailings.

Yeah. People look and say, what are My fixed costs. Right. When I start this business, what can I look at? And obviously one of them, I call it the lifeblood of what our business. It's the lifeline. It's the mailing. But one deal will make up for any mailing, right? One deal is, it's just how we do. It's a volume game. Even if you get one deal out of every hundred mailings, you are going to, well, you know, more than pay for the mailing and also all the other expenses and make a nice profit. So it's definitely a numbers game. Right. We need. And that's why we go to areas where there's lots of what, volume. Right. Lots of land. We just had, we were doing a little webinar and it's a great, great talk, great topic to kind of segue into. Scott, I live in Massachusetts. I'm brand new to the business. I think I'm going to start with Boston. What do you think? Good idea?

Yeah, probably not. I don't think you can get land for 25 cents on the dollar in Boston.

But I know the area really well. I mean, this is my. I grew up here. I mean, I can go take the pictures. I mean, these other areas, I have to go visit them. How am I going to go see them? Scott? I can't even. I mean, it's so far away. Do I have to go there?

You do not have to go there. You, you never have to visit. You know. Mike, would you be happy with buying a piece of land in New Mexico for 100 bucks and selling it for 750?

I only do that about how many hundred times? Yes. I love that. That's, that's great. It brings another point. We're in a micro environment. Right. All I love real estate in general is incredible. Right. So we're definitely not here to talk down about any form of real estate. Just ours is a very un niche where can you buy land literally for $100 or less, up to a few thousand, turn around and sell it and make some passive income or make a quick cash flip. It's just we deal in a micro environment. It's a very unique model that we have.

Yeah, that's for sure. And you know, the startup costs are very low. I mean, you could start making a profit very quickly. You can scale it up very quickly. So, you know, I have a lot of, lot of friends in real estate investing, you know, buying duplexes and renting them out and they're doing well. I see that as kind of a longer term, almost retirement Plan. You know, these people are going to be doing very well in a few years, but this is a profession where we can do very well very quickly. So it's pretty awesome.

Nice. Any initial questions? We got any viewers? It's just you and I chat, people watching?

No, we got some viewers. We got a number of viewers. My son Ben is watching. He's in the airport. Ben, nice to see you. My friend has been taking a little.

Foothold in the business.

Ben and Ethan, actually Ben is my 13 year old and Ethan is my 17 year old. They are taking a little foothold in the business this summer. So it's pretty awesome. Yeah, yeah, they're excited. Ethan, they both want to come to boot camp. So we'll, we'll maybe consider that in the future, but we'll see what happens. They're, they're actually learning to, to scrub some lists and create some lists and that type of thing. So I thought we would maybe take them through the anatomy of an entire land deal. So right now we're starting with scrubbing the lists and next week we're gonna mailings, show them how we do that.

Well, you know, I love about that Scott. I always talk about, there's a local supermarket near where I live and you know, they got, there's a few of them that's a decent sized chain. I'm sure there's some good, some good, you know, churn, some good money made there by the family that runs these. But anybody that's gonna take over this, you know, the next generation, so to speak, they have to start pushing the carts, working in the cashier line, stocking in the produce, they, they learn every functional aspect of that business. So then later on they can be great managers. Right. So what you're doing with your, with your children, with the boys. Perfect, right? You need to know every single aspect. Because Mark calls it the word he likes use abdicate. Right. Rather than, you know, you just can't take something and delegate it right away, get it off your plate. You need to understand what it is, why you do it, what's the time involved, why is it, you know, does it take 5 hours, 10 hours, 2 hours, 45 minutes? You need to know these things so that you can, when you delegate it or automate it, whatever it may be, you know what to expect. So I think you're doing the exact, doing the right thing. And that's awesome.

I mean it's pretty exciting to see the excitement in their eyes when they talk about it. When they look at me and say, dad, you made how much money from this land deal and how much work did you do? Just a couple hours. That's awesome. Yeah, it is really awesome. So to see the excitement in their eyes and then also to know that you know, it, it takes training to learn to know what to do. But like, I don't, I don't want to oversimplify it, but, but it's possible to teach your 13 year old how to do this. And that's just the most phenomenal thing to me. I mean, if he walks away and my 17 year old walks away after the summer, coming away with the notion of how to buy and sell a piece of property, I mean, that's just phenomenal to me. So anyway.

Absolutely. So any questions there? You're the one that runs the. I can't even see these comments. Drives me crazy.

I run something. Yes, I do in on your show. Here's my show.

Would you stop at least. Did I say something I shouldn't have? Here we go.

No, no, that was on episode two. You said welcome to my show. No, I'm kidding. Here's my island. Here's a question from Con Conway Truman. How about Florida? Is it already saturated with investors?

All right, first off, no, we do a number of deal. We still do deals there all the time. And no, it's not. Florida actually is an area where there's a ton of subdivisions with a ton of land and you can buy land down there cheaper than you think. So actually Florida is a great area.

And then he has a follow up question. He's gearing up for a 2000 piece mailing next week. Good for you for taking massive action, by the way. But I need to pick a county this weekend. I want to net maybe $20,000 or more by September. I need to pick the right, I need to pick the right target county.

So I would say Conway, first of all, I use my toolkit because in the toolkit there's a more geeky tool section. In the downloadable section, Mark has a secret county list. And a lot of people. I've seen some talk on Facebook. What's up with the secret county list is there's no secrets? Well, in a way there is. It's actually in secret, you know, call it what you want to call it. This is an area where other land investors such as Scott and myself, Mark Tate, Eric, Mimi, we're all in these areas. This is where we are doing deals. And it may be counterintuitive to a lot of people coming to this business model and say, well, people are Working there. Why do I want to go there? Because where we work there's tons of land, it's an established market. So you need to go into the toolkit and you need to actually look into that section. Now if you really want to deepen your understanding, right, you go to flight school. And here's lucky for you, Conway, if you're looking to bring about that kind of return by September, flight school is something I think that would serve you well. Now a lot of people have asked me over the years and used to Scott, and well, if you have a toolkit, why do you have to have flight school? Why flight school? Wide toolkit. Well, the toolkit. Do you need flight school? No, you don't need a flight school, but you should want the flight school. The flight school is something that exponentially, this is a bet, right? Exponentially decreases the time it'll take you to increase your passive income. I'll say that. Little slow, I love it.

Very good.

Exponentially decreases the time it takes you to increase your passive income. So what that means is that you're not going to make the mistakes that people make when they start out in this business. What we have is a business model that works very well. It just, you have to get up and running. So there's a lot of initial mistakes people make. The paralysis by over analysis. Work with Scott Todd, work with a genius in this business who's going to take you from 0 to 100 like that. And the investment that you would make on the land in the flight school, it represents one or two land deals. So do yourself a favor checking that if you don't know about it. But go ahead. What else we got Scott?

That's about it for now. So I think we should continue talking about numbers. It's all about, it's all about numbers tonight, right?

Three sets of three. I know we had three kind of groupings. What's the first one, Scott?

80, 20. Mike. Talk about 80, 20 for me.

Pareto's law, I think is what they call it. This, you know, there's a lot of talk about this out there, right? I think it started in my best estimation from what I've read is that you know, somebody once basically talked about a farmer or somebody out there and he has all this, these crops, right? And he realized that however he determined it, that 80% of his yield came for 20% of his of the seeds, right. So basically, you know, we all are doing a lot of work in our day to day life, right? If you look at your life in total Right. In whatever area you're in, whether it's, it could be in the fire ground, 80% of our efforts, 20 or 20% of our efforts going to bring about 8% of the results are going to knock that fire down, right? So it's basically highlighting what is actually going to bring about the massive action, the massive results, you know, And I'll use firefighting as an example again. I know my buddy Rob's on here. Like there's things that happen on the fire ground. It used to be when I first got on, people were like, just do something, get out there. Right? We, we do a lot of things like we'll open up windows or break windows or cut holes and roofs to reduce the smoke or the heat. But you don't want to just go ripping open every window because you want to go crazy. You want to be very targeted. You can actually slow down and take your time and be very decisive and use less effort to bring about bigger results. Now in the land investing, it's the same thing, right? How would that work in our world, Scott? So I can put a whole bunch of effort out there or I can minimize my effort and bring about bigger results.

So here's the thing. Especially when you're first starting out, right, you have all of these tasks, you have 20 tasks that you want to accomplish, okay. If you concentrate on the 20% of those tasks that are most important, they will result in more yield for you in the end. So we talk a lot about this, Mark, when you. Mike, when you're first. Mac. Sorry, you know, it is, yeah, we talk a lot about this. When you're first starting the business, try not to get distracted, right? Trying not to become paralyzed by over analysis. I think that the most important things to start with, that in the 20%, right? That the 20% of your activities that are most important for you, that will result in 80% of your yield is mailing and marketing. Mailing and marketing. So many people get tied up in all the other stuff. Should I set up my llc? Should I get my website up and running? Should I get this, that and the other thing going? It's just one of those things where if you focus your time on those 20%, on that 20%, you will experience greater yield in the long run.

Yeah, I agree wholeheartedly. I mean, it's a matter of putting the focus where it belongs, right? Putting the effort where it belongs, Putting, putting it all in perspective, right?

So, so make a, like make a list, right? Make a list and ask yourself, is this, is this Action item in the top 20% of my list or is it in the lower 80% of my list? Make it in the, you know, what you're going to act, what you're going to take action on today should be in the top 20% of your list.

Right. And you know, when I first started out, you know, my first coach through the land geek was Jeff Axon. And we talked about, we talked about the whirlwind. The whirlwind is the 80%. So basically mailing and marketing moves the needle. But there's all this other stuff that attracts our attention, right. That brings us, you know, it brings us, you know, all this kind of parts or my website going this, that, the other thing, mailing and marketing. Right. That's the, what 20% is 80% we call whirlwind. That 80%. Put it aside. Focus on the 20%, focus on what's going to move the needle. So it's true, really, if you put, if you hyper focus on that 20%, you're going to move the needle. And Mark talks about that all the time. Right. Like two things you can control, Mark says mailing and marketing. But the rest you have to deal with. But that, that's where the systems and the automation, the delegation come in. Again, not to, I mean, this is something that if you really want to learn and you want to learn very quickly and in a very efficient manner, than flight school. Scott, when's the next flight school start anyway?

The next flight school for anybody watching starts next Wednesday night, July 18th at 9pm Eastern. We still have spots available. If you have been thinking about this business for a long time, if you are on the verge of making a leap of faith, taking a leap of faith in your life because you need to change something, like I did three years ago when I was 40 years old and hit kind of a midlife crisis and just thought I needed something different. Now is the time to take action. So July 18, Wednesday nights, 9 Eastern with Scott Todd. For 11 modules, he breaks down his business, his own business for you. He shows you how to formulate your own land business. And you know, this is a good analogy, Mike, because I think that the investor toolkit is awesome. Like we always talk about, there's no lack of intel in the investor toolkit.

Right, Right.

But There are like 40 modules in there, right. That teach you all aspects of this.

There's a lot of content.

Yeah, a lot of content. So I think what maybe Scott Todd does with flight school is he takes it down to that 20%. Like what do you need to focus on? And he really. He really talks about what you need to be doing in order to move the needle forward right away.

Yeah, no, it's very true. It's, it's. It's really. You're learning from the past mistakes that we've all made. You're learning something that's very streamlined, very efficient. It's gonna. You know what's gonna happen, though, with the flight school. It's effectively gonna get you into the land investing very quickly. And that's something about our business. We talk about the efficiency, but you gotta be effective first. Right? You can learn how to do what we do. Learn the flow, learn the deal flow, process. Become very effective. But he'll give you all the keys to efficiency as well. So. Yeah. What's the next set of numbers, Scott? We said 80, 20, what else we got?

Next set of numbers. 20 to 40 to 2 to 4. Drop the zero.

Drop the zero. You just dropped the mic, I think is what you did there. So what are you saying? So 20 to 40. We talking hours, right? Sounds like we're talking, like, this must be hours, right?

This is ours. We are talking hours. So I want you to. This reminds me of the Chicago song 25 or 6, 2, 4. I'm not gonna sing it to you. I could.

I don't think I've ever heard. I thought you're the meaning in my life. You're the inspiration. Is that Chicago?

Have you never heard of 25 or 6 to 4 have to play that?

Let me explain.

Larry Oakstreet, are you watching? You've heard that song. He is watching.

So 20 to 40 is like, typically. I know what you're referencing. Right? So how can we, in two to four hours, create the same income that somebody would work 20 to 40 hours for? Is that what we're talking about?

That's. That's exactly what we're talking about. So how can I do that?

How can I do that? How can I drop the zero effectively?

I. You know what? It just. It's. How can you do that? You know what? Three years ago, I never thought that I would ever be able to do something like that. But you need to take action. You need to move forward. You need to take a chance. You need to take a leap of faith with the investor toolkit or with flight school, because just three years later, you can be doing that. You know, to think that three years ago, you know, if somebody would have told me that I would be bringing in more income than my physical therapist salary with just Four hours a week. I would have told them they were crazy.

Right?

But that's what's happened now. Did it start out that way? No, it started out with 10 to 15 hours a week. Now I'm a coaching student of old. Three years ago, we didn't have systems, right? So things have changed significantly. The coach, the flight school students today, and the coaching students today move more quickly. But even still, that's what you need to do in order to get to the point where you can drop the zero. You can make as much income with two to four hours a week as you do with 20 to 40 hours a week.

You know why that now people have to work less. And what these systems do is they focus on the 20%. These systems that have been created, LG Pass, the land Key proprietary automated software system, Geek pay. These systems, they, they, they take that 20% and they just, they just, just crank it, they make it work, that 20% at a high level. So the results come. That means. So you're absolutely right, though, that this is not something. This is a very unique niche. It's a very small niche. This is where you're basically at the beginning of it. Like, this is software that was created over the last few years. Didn't exist. It did not exist. And this is something that can scale your business exponentially, could take you and your team and. And then again, that's how you drop the zero to. Lana Bassing of Scott said, in the beginning is a team sport. So you, you automate, you delegate, you take these things off your plate so you can mail out 3,000, 4,000, 5,000 offers. Boom, they go out and you know, like Conway's talking about sending out 2,000 offers. Well, it's kind of, it's a massive action. I love it. In the beginning, you gotta be careful. You don't want to overwhelm yourself. Right? Because what's going to happen is 3 or 5% of those people going to contact you back if you have the time, when you're ready, perfect, you're good to go. Other than that, you may be bogged down with phone calls and intake. So we always recommend starting at a micro level. What's that mean? Hundred mailings a week, 200 mailings a week. That way you get a deal flow coming, you can deal with it, you learn the process, and you begin to delegate that to somebody else. And once somebody else takes the intake off your plate, you can mail at a super high level. So it's a gradual process. And we always say land investing is Like a marathon. But the only difference is that the last few miles are quicker than your first. Right. Because you're getting more effective and efficient. Any other questions in the group?

Yeah, we do have a question from Carl Webb. Carl Webb is doing well. Cheers to you, Carl. He said, how much cash did you guys start with to invest? Buying property right now, but haven't really mastered the marketing piece yet. I'm wondering if wholesaling is a good strategy to start with to build up cash reserves before trying to get retail sales. What was the percentage of wholesale versus retail sales in your business starting out?

Yeah, I started in. First of all, I started negative. I had 40 grand debt. We've all talked, I've probably talked about that story. I don't want to blow that out there again. I've talked about it a lot, but I was negative. I didn't have any money, which was kind of weird. Look like my buddy Jeff was who had met Mark and was blown away. And Mark took Jeff's business and just, just propelled it forward at expense, exponential rate. Like you got to meet this Mark, but also guy. I'm like, I'm gonna invest money. I'm 40 grand in debt. He's like, no, seriously, come to Arizona, meet him. And I did. And I'm telling you that that first year I paid that debt off because I bought land. I bought it cheap. 4 or $500. I double my money. Now that wasn't quite wholesale. Some of it was, but it's just I bought land so cheap that I could quickly sell it at. You know, you can sell someone a piece of land for under a thousand dollars. It's going to move quickly. Wholesale. It's a great avenue. The secret to wholesale, Buy cheap. Right? What's that mean? Mail a lot of letters, be aggressive. And there it is. You don't make low ball offers. And then when you buy the land, you have enough room to double, triple your money. Allow the next investor to, to make 4 or 500%. So that, that, Carl, is a great idea. I like it. I embrace it. I think you should embrace it. If you want to talk about it in depth, call me.

Carl. That, that is, that is an awesome, that is an awesome philosophy for, for starting out in your first year or two of this business to, to purchase, to purchase a parcel of land and sell it for less than market value. You will move it more quickly. Money loves speed. And that's how I got through my first year in this business. We did a lot of cash deals. You know, buy, buy for A thousand and sell for 3,000. When the market value is 5,000, those lots sell quickly and they really. It really helps move the needle. Now, you know, for the first 15 months, I did more cash deals than terms deals. At 15 months I decided, hey, let's flip it around. Let's do more terms deals and cash deals. And that's where we really built our passive income. So I think that's a great. I think that's a great philosophy to start with. And I think, Carl, you'll do well if you start out that way. Yeah, definitely. All right, so.

Hey, any other questions?

I think we need. I think we need a segment because I'm. I'm empty. Okay. You look sleepy over there.

No, I just look at.

Does anybody else think Mike looks sleepy?

I usually have my webcam. I'm on my. I'm on my laptop, so it's giving me a bad angle. Okay. The camera's not not do me any justice tonight.

Uh huh. Yeah. Any other questions from the community, please let us know. But we're gonna stop here for a minute. We're gonna have a refresh.

What is that?

What is what?

What are you drinking?

It's Maker's Mark.

That's the biggest bottle. Maybe it's the angle. It's like the biggest bottle of Maker's Mark I've ever seen.

It's the angle.

I got some Basil Hayden right here.

So Matt Forbes can't be.

Throws on me. Well, Scott's trying to say the Matt Forbes can't be with us unless you can hear him because I can't. Let's see what happens here. Cheers to the refill segment. Let me see if he's still live here. Hold on one second, folks. Refill your drinks. Well, just a momentary pause. Yeah. I just confirmed that Scott is frozen and I am live. What that means is I have the show completely to myself. So cheers to everybody. We do have one more set of numbers to talk about as well, but we'll see if Scott logs back on, then we'll go from there. So basically, let me see if I can log on and see if there's any questions. To community. Hold on a second. Typically Scott handles that. Let me take a peek. Aaron. Oh, there it is. Scott Boston wrote. Hold on. Aaron Williams. Cheers. Chris Grassman. Hannah. That sounds good. So to recap tonight, we've talked about a couple sets of numbers. The first one being Pareto's Law 80, 20, and then also drop the zero, which I love. How do you go from working 20 to 40 hours to working two to four. Really, the secret there is you learn the process and you automate and you delegate. But you have to go through the process of learning first, right? You have to learn how this business model works, how we do what we do, get the. Get the fundamentals down. And the good news is there's only a few things you have to do every day. There's only a few things that have to happen every day. And when you do them consistently, the needle moves forward. And then you can at that point outsource them, somebody else, and you're good to go. Scott Bossman says power went out. Wow. Okay, Noah, I love it. I got a question here. What one change made the biggest difference for your business in the first year? That's a good question, Noah. You know what? If I think back to my first year, one of the first things that really kind of held me up was sending out my mailings. In fact, offer prices. To me, that was something that really kind of I just couldn't understand, really. I knew the dynamics of it, the fundamentals, but really what happened was I realized that was fuzzy math. And Scott Todd said, done is better than perfect, meaning just take action and recover. So I thought that my offer prices had to be spot on perfect. And if they weren't spot on perfect, that, you know, I was gonna waste my money. And really, that pull over thinking, you know, it just paralyzed me. The reality was it's a quick thinking process. It's fuzzy math. You make your offers the best you can based on the information you have. When someone calls back and answers you and says, hey, I'd like to sell you my land, that's where the due diligence begins in earnest. That's when you can actually begin to look at the property in depth and make sure that you made the right offer price. And it's so easy. If somebody.