Nite Cap with The Land Geek Guys—Scaling The Business

Here we go. Rotate around slowly. There you are. That's a half roving swivel.

What are you talking about? I did it when the music was done.

I know, I, you know, we. I was already swiveled because, you know, I'm at the helm of the controls here. So I just like to watch you swivel. So that's exactly what I do. But hey, we're here.

How's it going, dude?

It's going phenomenal. How are you doing?

Mike Zano, Scott Bossman. Hold on. Yeah, mute that.

Nice. Yeah, you gotta mute the Facebook there on your phone. So you can take.

I got it, I got it.

But Scott, what are we. What's the name of my show? Give people. Maybe it's someone's first time watching us and they're wondering why these guys looking all funny in robes. Let's talk about it.

With the disorganized office and back. I'm getting a new office soon. I'm really excited. We are, we are the Land Geek guys. And this is Nightcap. This is our weekly show where we talk land investing over a drink. What do you got tonight?

Well, tonight Laura and I for our anniversary were up in Portland, Maine. And so I have the Hacienda, the Mexican lager. And I have. Is this called a grommet? I don't know.

Wait, wait, wait, wait. Can you say the word lager for me, please?

Mexican lager.

So. Lager. Who says lager?

Look at this thing. It's awesome. We had a great time and you know, it's. Yeah, I know, I'm killing you. But hey, it's great to be here. We actually have a nice topic for this evening. Have I told you the topic yet? I like to keep you up. It's kind of like the real the show becomes like the overall. You complete me. Because you like have no clue and I just get to throw it at you and then see your reaction.

I just had a crazy couple days. I got a lot of baseball games going on. It's just so yourself to prepare an agenda for tonight, a syllabus. It's very nice of you. I appreciate it.

Since you're the face, you're the Facebook guy here. How many viewers we got? We got people watching us right now. We got some live viewers.

We've got a few viewers. Some of our regulars are on Barbara Tiberdoll. She likes the pop collar. Did you notice? You didn't say anything. The other thing you didn't say anything about was my new AirPods. Huh?

I don't know, I wonder if the AirPods are causing Internet connection to be a little lagging because I seem it came to kind of flicker in and out. I think it's the AirPods. Do I seem if I frozen at all on you?

You're a little laggy. You're a little laggy sometimes with your lagger.

Oh, that's good. That's.

Yeah, that was a good one, huh? So let's see here. Barbara Thibodeau, she likes the pop collar. Andy Wellmers is here, as always, killing it. Mike Laga L A G A lega lega.

Yeah, look at this thing.

Professor Zano and Matthew Forbear the jitter as well. Well, I don't, I don't know what to say, guys. Hopefully hope that'll subside.

Was there a little bit someone else saying that you're getting a little frozen in and out there or is it me too? Maybe one of us or both of us.

Maybe a little bit of a. Yeah, maybe a little bit of a lag or whatnot. So.

Okay, well, let's see. Hopefully that'll balance out. So tonight's show, Scott. So, you know, is about scaling the business because, you know, I often call, you know, the land investing is a very unique niche. Right. But then there's the niche within the niche, as I like to say. And that's the fact that in the end we're not doing business. Right. Yes.

One sec. Okay, we're having some requests from the viewers. You have, you have it on speaker view right now and they would prefer the split screen.

Oh, I got you. Let me see if I can do that. No, that's not to interrupt you. No, no, no, no. How's that? Ask our view as if it's changed.

Let's see.

I think it's a better option. That's a good. That was good feedback. It's about 20 second lag on their end, but I think we got it.

Yes, I'm waiting. There it is. Yes, we're good. Please continue. Maybe start over now.

We're good.

Scaling the business. So the niche is the land investing. Right? That's the unit. You know, a very unique niche. But the niche within the niche is the fact that we automate, we delegate, we develop systems and we use all those to what we say is scale the business. So I think that tonight's show is going to be about scaling the business. So it's a really broad topic. Right. But there are some ways we can break it down. I think that. Yeah, keep popping that caller. Everybody sees it I think that's what's interesting is that at the beginning, it can seem kind of like, how the heck would I even scale this? How do I take myself? And as the E. Myth always talks about one of my favorite books, you know, you have that entrepreneurial seizure and you begin to work in your business, but you need to start to work on your business. Right. There's a big difference there between the two. And Mark always, you know, harps on that. And so that's what I'd like to talk about tonight, Scott. So initial reactions. So just let me just step back. Scaling the business. Initial reactions. I'll let you. You have the mic.

Scalability. I love the word.

Scalability.

Scalability. I love the word. I love the notion. Yeah, cheers. Yeah. So, you know, the powerful thing about this business is it is scalable. And you can go from, you know, as Matt Forbes says, I stole this from my. I love it. I use it all the time. It's a slow churn. You start out working in this business maybe 10 hours a week, you know, if you're really motivated, more 15 hours a week. But a couple years into it, when you're bringing in a lot of passive income and, you know, it just gets easier and easier and easier with the development of your systems, the time in your business goes down significantly. So as your income goes up and your time goes down, I mean, that's like nothing better than that, right?

Yeah. And you know what I think is interesting, too, when you start business out, you know, you say 10 hours a week, I think truly someone can move the needle in a couple hours a week. I think what happens, though, it's very exciting when you go into a new endeavor, right? And there's a lot of different areas that you begin to kind of think about things maybe you haven't thought about before, in particular to the land investing and all the different parts. So you can get caught in this kind of whirlwind, right? Where as was taught to me, you know, my first coach, you know, under the land geek, was Jeff Axton. And he would always say, there's the whirlwind, right? There's this whole idea of all these other processes that you can get involved in. But then there's the mailing and the marketing, the heart of it all. So in the beginning, you get very excited, and it's very easy to take your. Take your mind and just kind of basically lose your mind and go into all these different areas, Right. But really the focus. And so we talk about flight school a lot and this is not a flight school show. But one of the reasons why it's so good is that it keeps you focused, exactly what you need to do. Right. So you get that couple hours a week, you can truly move the needle forward. So you're right. And I love what you said about with Matt Forbes. And I was thinking, I think I said that's one of our roundtables, that it's like running a marathon. The only difference is at the end the miles are quicker because you actually have now created these systems and these automations. So yeah, so scalability, great work.

Nice.

So let me, let me kick in to. And also so you all know we're on a little bit. We start a little bit later tonight. Hopefully we, you know, gave some people on the West Coast a little bit time to chill down a little bit because we know that, you know, there's a big three hour difference. So we were thinking of them tonight. Right. We wanted to give them some time to, you know, relax a little bit, get the nightcap drink ready. So you know, it's all good on this end.

Mixing it up. We're always mixing it up around here. Yeah.

And I like to burn the midnight oil, so. And that's the thing about it. I think Scott Todd brought this up one time, people like. Yeah, you know, he's like, who says you have to do this during the day? You know, you could literally take the whole day off. If someone wants to work at night, do it. And you can work this at any hour. It's really got that adaptability. Right. So and I think that plays into the scalability. Ah, adaptability, scalability. Couple abilities there, huhabilities? Yeah, Let me pause. I don't get to see comments. We got any comments? Let me pause.

See. So, well, Andy's asking We start at 9:30 Eastern next week. Andy's just, you know, it's how we are. We're a little bit, we're gonna leave earlier. Yeah, I don't know, I don't know what he wants necessarily. He might want us to start a little later but Barbara Thibodeau says she's dying. It's so late where she is, so she doesn't like it.

You know, we were just trying to help out those west Coasters, you know, and we'll have a quote about the Yankees later. I can't show that now when it comes to. I love that.

And then one more comment. I gotta give a shout out to my beautiful, smart, amazingly funny wife. She's at the baseball game watching Nightcap.

Awesome.

That's dedication right there.

She's like, that's my husband right there in the robe.

That's right. Showing everybody, showing all the fans. Look at this idiot.

So let me talk a little bit about scaling and I want to throw some. It's gonna be basically a long, drawn out, you complete me episode. But I like that. Yeah. You know, so, Scott, one of the things I like to talk about, the business and the reason why. Yeah, there it is. There's that famous sport movie. What's it. Are you called a drama? What do you call that movie?

It's a love movie. Love movie.

Love story.

It's a love story.

You complete me, Jerry.

Yes.

So it's a repeatable, redundant process, AKA boring. I mean, so I always tell people when they come in the good news, the bad news about our business, it's boring. And why is that the good news, too? Because I didn't like buying several houses in an area, right?

And you could.

They're all built in the same year. It'd be like, you know, you can't just say they're all going to be the same. Different use, different care, different, you know, different. You know, all these different things about it. The land, If I buy 30 lots in New Mexico, it's imaginary lines, dirt. It's effectively the same. A few bushes, a tree here and there. So that boring component allows it to be put into a system. So there's the good news and bad news, everybody. It's boring. But the boring brings the excitement because you pull yourself out of it very quickly. So what do you think of that, Scott? This is the. You complete your thoughts on that. This repeatable, redundant process, also known as boring. What do you think?

Yeah, and it's boring in the sense that, I mean, when you look at a deal from beginning to end, it's almost easy. You know, it's a very. It's not to say that developing your land buying and land selling machines is easy per se, but when you look at the process of, you know, from beginning to end, purchasing and selling a property, and you lay it all in a number of. Lay it all out in a number of steps. You kind of look at it on paper, you're like, man, that doesn't really look that difficult, right? You're buying 5 or 10 acres of land, and I mean, everybody's bought a house or a lot of people bought a house or a condo or a townhouse or whatever. I mean, how difficult a process is that? How stressful is it? That's something That I wouldn't want to do every day. But when you look at buying and selling a piece of property and you lay it all out there, it is boring. It's somewhat easy, it is redundant, it's repeatable. And that allows you to really perfect your systems. As you say, in the micro environment, you do it yourself first and then you are able to easily pass it off to somebody else. And swivel.

There he goes with the swivel. I love it. The swivel. Hey, Scott, I figured out how I can see the comments. So you don't have all the power anymore. I see comments. I figured it out. I do. And how come you didn't? Jeannie's on here and she said she loves it on the West Coast. Jeannie, I agree.

I can't say all the comments when you're talking so much. All right.

But I won't peek over there. But anyway, I have to give a shout out to Jeanne. She frequently joins us on the round table. She's awesome. Her and her husband Kurt. Kurt just won a weightlifting competition. So shout out to Kurt.

Oh, no kidding.

Yeah, yeah. Very cool. Very. So good for him. So let's talk a little bit more about the scalability. Or do you. Do you want to move into our first segment? Because we are. What would you like to do?

We can do our first segment. It's up to you.

What's the first segment anyway? Today? Well, today's first.

Well, the first segment is typically the Facebook quote of the week or question of the week.

Why don't we do that and then we could. Yeah, go ahead.

Yeah. Facebook question or quote of the week? I got a couple. I got a couple questions this week actually.

All right, let's hear them.

One from our very own Matt Forbes. The refill guy.

The refill guy, yeah.

So let me pull that up here. A technical advisor, Matt had a good question actually tonight and he said, any good suggestions on how to have an out of country seller get a notary to sign the deed? So the sellers out of country needs to notarize the deed over to Matt. And we had a good answer from Barbara Tippetto. She said, let's see. And Annie Wilmers, Annie Wellmer said lawyers should be able to notarize any deed. 20 to $40, plus a little bit of running around. We don't have public notaries in Canada, so I need to find other options. But Barbara Thibodeau had a very good answer. Find your local consulate, if there happens to be one, and you can get documents. Notarized in that fashion. Assuming they're a US Citizen, which, Matt, I'm not quite sure if that's the case or not, but Mike, ever had a situation like that?

No. Well, sort of. We bought from someone who is overseas and we needed to get the notary seal. So they ended up. Actually, that is what they did. They went to, you know, to a. To a consulate, you know, so I would have probably said the same thing. We did have that one time. I don't do a lot of transactions, you know, with people, but they happen to be overseas. And so, yeah, one time that happened this one time at bandcamp, I. I had an overseas notary.

All right. Okay, excellent. Onto the next. Onto the next. On. On to the next page.

Probably because you remind me of you, of your musician with that pop collar. That's what got me thinking that.

Yeah. Really? Okay, here's the other. This is a very simple question, but there are. There may be some people that are not aware what this means. I thought I would bring it up. So we. A question from KT Lit. Catherine is her name. She's new to the community. She has just purchased the Investor toolkit and she posted a question on June 2, my 43rd birthday. What is happy birthday?

Wait a minute. Happy belated birthday. I didn't know about this.

You knew. You knew. Anyway, what is weekly office hours? Mike, you hear that term a lot in the community, so explain to the Investor Toolkit people weekly office hours.

Okay. Hopefully I'm not. They're getting a little lag with you there. Did you see like I'm. Do I feel like I'm freezing up in it? You all. Is it just on the other end.

Hopefully it's probably me.

That's okay. Hey, I forgive you. Just so you know, office hours are phenomenal. So they come in a few different ways. Coaching clients get them, but they're separate from the flight school. Flight school office hours are. After you go through those 10 pre programmed calls with Scott Todd, you have this reactive period where you probably be buying land or you'll be dealing with some, you know, some sort of part of the business that you want to have clarity on. And one of the land geek coaches will coach will host the office hours and you can ask questions. So it's really a great asset. And then we have one separate for coaching clients. So it's just something that's. It's just really helpful, you know, because it gives you. Even if you don't have questions, you go on. Because other. Listen, we're all doing the same business model, you're going to be able to, you know, learn from everybody else's questions, so it's really good. Great question, by the way.

Yeah, awesome. All right, there's our Facebook questions of the week. Hopefully that helps.

I think it's time to bring up a special guest before we get on to our. Before we go on and on to our topic of scaling. Can we bring them up? I mean, I think we kept them waiting long enough.

Yeah, let's do that.

All right.

Yeah, for sure.

I'm about to promote him from an attendee to a panelist because I have the power to do so. So as I do that, maybe you'd like to say who it is or. Here we go.

Yeah, I can do that. All right, Ready, everybody? Okay, I'm ready, everybody. Tonight, our special guest is Larry. Alumni around for a few years. Want to touch base with Larry, see how he's doing. And he is actually on the precipice of a very exciting journey in his life, which I'll let him talk about here in a minute. But, Larry Orstreet, nice to have you. Nice to see you. Thank you.

It's good to be here, guys. Always enjoy listening into the nightcaps, so it's fun to be on the side of the screen.

And you make us jealous with that mic you have there. We're about to upgrade to those. That's incredible. I really like that.

It's a nice mic. It's a blue Yeti mic. I use it for a little bit of radio work that I do and also for some podcasting.

All right.

You got a nice radio.

Yeah, I've got a face made for radio, too.

That's awesome.

It is very. It's a very good voice. I like that. So. So anyway, I interrupted your interview.

No, you're fine, Larry. You've been. You've been in the Landing community quite a while. So tell us how you found Mark and kind of how you got.

Did he freeze on you, Larry?

He did. So I'll just start in.

Yeah.

So I think I found Mark on the original Land Geek podcast, probably in 2014, and I believe that was as a result of him being on an interview. Kevin Buff's podcast. And you know, how the podcasters, you know, have each other on their shows. So eventually, you don't know quite how you figured out that somebody was, you know, out there but started listening in, and the whole business model just made sense. I could understand why people would want to get rid of land that they were tired of, and would be willing to sell it at a discount. I could understand why other people would.

Have.

Dreams about how they might want to buy it. You know, and if you can get in there and be the person who facilitates all of that and finances it, that seems like a good thing. So I bought the toolkit, and I was looking back at my first deal. It was January of 2015, so I probably bought the toolkit right at the end of 2014, read it, and kind of dove in. At that time, we didn't have some of the things that are available now, including flight school that you mentioned a few minutes ago. And so I dove in on my own and tried to make sense out of it and had listened to all the back episodes of the podcast, but that was about what I had to run with right at that moment. I was looking forward to going to boot camp, but just hadn't had a chance to be there yet. By the time I got to boot camp, I had bought 12 properties and sold none. And I was scared out of my.

Mind.

Because I didn't know if I could actually sell property or not. The buying part seemed easier than the selling part. So I put the brakes on the buying part until I got to boot camp. And then I kind of got a kick out of hearing everybody else's stories that were really similar, that everybody just about makes that same mistake of hitting the brake pedal right at the wrong time. So I did kind of make it through that period. That first boot camp that I went to was. It would have been 2015 Orlando. And Mike, you were there. Jeff Axton was there, Eric Peterson was there. Scott, I don't know if you were there or not, Scott. Todd was there, but I'm not sure if you were there for that.

Before my time.

Okay. But a lot of folks who are still in the community today, it was a lot of fun to just meet people in person, build some relationships there. Unfortunately, some of the boot camps happen in hot places in the hot time of the year. And, you know, so it's not really my idea of fun to go to Scottsdale in August, but we'll get back to one here pretty soon, one place or another. Maybe back in Orlando. That one's pretty nice. Anyhow, so I kind of got a little bit more balance worked out and figured out how to sell a few things. I was posting a few ads on Craigslist at the time, probably one per property, and then just kept renewing it without any idea of what you could do with posting, nomination or any of that kind of stuff. Either just some of these, again, some of these supports that have come along, whether they're processes or software or the VAS or whatever, all of that stuff just wasn't there two or three years ago. And so it's fun to see how the community has grown. Anyhow, at the time I was also an owner of an IT consulting company and that was my day job. And that, you know, rightly deserved to have the bulk of my attention, but at a certain point it was sort of getting in the way of my land business and we had other, you know, rainbows we wanted to chase. Anyway, my wife and I, our young child is just about to leave the nest and she's 20 and looking for her own apartment. So we're getting ready to kind of launch into that next adventure that you were talking about a moment ago. And I think the land business is really just about perfectly cut out for what we have in mind, which is to sell our house. We got an offer on it today, so hopefully that will all work out well. And then we're moving out of our house and into our driveway, not exactly, but into the RV that's in our driveway. And then hitting the road as full time RVers. And I'm not retiring, I'm just switching careers into full time land business. And we're in the process now, and have been for the last couple of months of hitting the gas pedal more strongly and ramping the business up. But you can do it from anywhere.

That's awesome, Scott. I want to make sure. Scott, there you are. You're there.

I'm really, I notice I'm really lagging.

Oh, that's good, Larry. That's great. Yeah, it was great meeting you back in time. Flies, huh?

Yeah, it sure does. It sure does.

So talk about that brake pedal. Sorry, I wanted to just ask about the brake pedal. You brought up the. You know, in fact, you know, you have properties and you get a little nervous and you put that brakes on. Some people who knew coming in may not understand exactly the reference of what you, what you. The point you're making with that.

Sure. So, you know, you end up hopefully doing your marketing and mailing, and through the mailing you get to buy out there who want to sell it, and then you start marketing that property. And for whatever reason, and I don't know why, but everybody seems to have this experience. You end up with more land than you think you can sell. You know, I think it's a confidence thing. It's where your head is at, not necessarily reality, but you Put, you know, if you're buying properties for 500 or 1,000 bucks a piece, and you buy six or eight or 10 or 12 of them, you know, all of a sudden you'd like to see some of that money coming back, and maybe your spouse would like to see some of that money coming back, too, you know, and so the temptation is to stop mailing, which dries up the source of, you know, the deal flow. The funnel? Yeah, the deal flow in the funnel of new properties coming in. And then, you know, you turn around and sell them in the most bizarre ways. And sometimes in a week, you can sell a bunch of property and maybe you didn't sell anything for a month or two, you know, as you're just getting started, you know, you don't quite know what you're doing and kind of floundering around a little bit. You won't flounder around if you're in flight school, and you won't flounder around if you're in coaching, but if you're doing it on your own, I floundered around, you know, and so it's.

Just.

I think, a natural tendency to want to say, you know, whoa, maybe I'm getting too far over my ski tips here. You know, when you're just learning how to buy property and you haven't quite learned how to sell it yet.

Yeah, no, that's a. That's a great point. I think there's a lot of people that probably can relate to what you're saying right now in terms of, you know, because in the beginning, that's the first thing you focus on is the acquisition. So of course it comes. You begin to get better at that than the marketing, because it's the first thing you're focusing on. So it's a very good point, boss man.

And one of the. One of the things that came out of boot camp that really had an impact on me was the importance of building a mailing list. And you just, you know, I didn't think about that. That wasn't part of what was in my head as far as the important things to go do. And so I, you know, I think now if you buy the toolkit, you get like, a whole set of emails to send out a responder list or something like that, you know, and we didn't have that back a few years back, you know, and so I decided, okay, I'll put together an email list. And so I hooked it up to my website so that they subscribe in mailchimp and all that, and Then, dang it, somebody subscribed. And I ended up with this guy on my email list and I had to send him something and I hadn't wrote anything to send him yet. And so I was almost embarrassed, you know, what are you going to send out to one guy? And then it occurred to me, he doesn't know that he's the only one. I think this has happened to other people along the way too. But I wrote my first marketing email and I sent it out and lo and behold, the guy bought a piece of property from me. He was the only one on the list. It was the very first mailing I sent out. I know I'm not alone in that. I think other people in the community have had that happen too. But that mailing list really is important. You just let it build slowly over time and pretty soon you've got, you know, 50 and then 100 and then 500 names and just kind of keep going on.

Yeah. Not. Not only is the number of people on that list important, but the frequency with which you hit them, hit them up.

Yes, yes. The correct answer to that would be more frequent than I do.

That's something you're going to work on in your next venture, living in your RV and working this business, which I think is just awesome if you could tell people about the community you belong to. Because I think this is really cool. I went and joined it earlier on Facebook.

Larry.

Yeah.

Oh, you bet.

So, you know, the Land business has built this really cool community with around Land Geek where we share ideas and help each other and all that. I'm in a different group called the RV Entrepreneur. And Nat, who is on the, he was interviewed on the podcast here just, I don't know, a couple weeks ago, something like that. He is also over in that other community as well, the RV Entrepreneur. And it's a community on Facebook and also in the real world. They also get together a time or two a year where it's designed for people who are not retired, but they are full time RVers who run businesses from their RVs. And so, you know, it's the Land Geek land business is just such a nice fit for that because you can do it from anywhere, you know, as long as you've got good connectivity, that's really about all you need. And everything else you can, you can make, you can make happen through either systems or delegating or whatever. And Nat did a great job of talking about that, so I won't rehash everything he said. But there's at least two of us out there now who are crazy enough to go live in an RV type vehicle and do the land business.

That's really great. It's honestly a goal of mine. After my boys are out and about. I've always dreamed of getting in an RV and just going around the country. And now, now that I have this business, to be able to potentially work on the road in this business. I don't know. I love it. I love it a lot.

So yeah, yeah, you can do it. You know, try it sometime. Rent an RV for a month.

You can start small. My wife and I do it on our fold up bikes. So we just go around the, you know, local New England area. But it's a small step towards the rv. Right. We just do it with the bikes.

Awesome.

Hey, as long as you're fun, that's really what matters.

Exactly. Mike, we got a bunch of comments for Larry. I think you should read off since you can see the comments.

I really can't anymore. I thought it was bad that I did that I didn't want to take it from you. So comments, they're all okay.

Well I just. Larry got some shout outs. I think we should read those. So let's hear them. This is from Jim Lala. Larry was a huge help. Huge as you say, a huge help to me with a Craigslist question. I had great fella. And then I love this. What what Barbara said again, a faithful viewer, a lovely commentator. Barbara Thibodeau. Team Barbara loves the pop up collar. Yay. She says she loves. I love how some of us have been following Mark for years. It really is a lifestyle which you know, I've only been, it's only been two and a half years for me, almost three years for me. And I honestly, I can't imagine my life now without the community and without being involved to some degree. So she's absolutely right. This thing can become a lifestyle. And it's a lifestyle that reaches not just the financial aspect of your life but your, your personal growth and your well being and leaving a legacy for your family and experiencing time, freedom and I mean the list goes on and on and on. Friendship, networking, business, it really goes on and on. So I think that's awesome. And then let's see, let's see. Andy Wellmer said, more land than you think you can sell or the land is taking longer than you expect it to take or the funds you have allocated is getting capped out.

Yeah, that's another area that we have options today that we didn't have three years ago. And that is people who are in the community that understand the business, who will buy notes. And that's a way to turn cash around more frequently, able to continue to buy properties as they're coming in. And that just didn't exist three years ago. Very, very good piece.

You know, you meet people at the boot camp, you become very kind of connected. There's people that partner on deals. Somebody may have an excess amount of capital. Someone may just have a great few deals they have coming in, they merge together and it's a win, win. So there's a lot of ways to kind of, you know, assist and if you have that situation. But that's great. Awesome comments. There any other questions? Anything?

Barbara? Everybody's just got great things to say about Larry. I think we're all excited for him. I mean, Larry, I think we need to have a, we need to have a follow up visit with you six months down the road here. When you're on the road, when you're.

Oh, that would be fun.

Why do I have beat the Fockers in my mind? That's all. You know.

Man, if you come to.

Massachusetts, make sure you say hello. I don't. Are you gonna go?

I just might. You never know.

New England, Maine, you know, coastal Maine is beautiful this time of year.

Is spring or fall better?

Well, the fall, you know, you got the leaf peeper.

You got the colors, you could be a leaf.

Colors.

You got the colors.

Yeah, they all turn colors. We call them leaf peepers.

You know what, you know what time, But I think it is, Mike, it is that time.

I'm gonna bring them up.

I think it's time to bring our good friend, the inventor of the refill segment, onto the show.

I'm promoting him to a panelist because I have the power.

And here he comes, the panelist, Matt Forbes. Still awake?

Still awake.

I made it. I made it. How we doing, gents?

Doing great.

You've been up since Wednesday.

Looks like you're doing great.

Yeah, I just am delusional now. I got home from the airport at 3 this morning, so they're like, yeah, 10:30 Eastern. Barbara, where are you? You're right, it's so late. Unbelievable. Let's have a cocktail though. Why not? So I got my makers. Is that Bos? Is that what you're drinking? Oh, someone's been drinking more than you, though. That's a problem. So here's how this goes. It's not hard. Take your alcohol, take your glass, pour it in. You deserve it. You're working hard. There's some left in here, I swear to God. Don't mind me. I'll be over here in the corner. But, Larry, great podcast man. You're an inspiration.

Cheers.

Cheers.

Thank you. Cheers, everyone.

Awesome. Thank you very much.

Matt, one thing. Summer. Summer now. Summer. It's summer now. Just saying. Sweatshirt on backdrop. Oh, the backdrop. Yeah. It's not like a change. It doesn't change. It's. It's gonna, you know, it's gonna be like that, I think, all the way through. I don't know. You know, I don't know. Bosman. I'll go sell some land and I'll go get a scenic. Scenic view of, like, Hawaii with some lava flow. And then the background, it'll. It'll be lovely. I'll remind you next week.

All right, perfect. I'm gonna bring you back up for the outro if you're still awake. So we'll see. It's gonna be shortly. Don't worry. But, Matt, thank you so much, as always. Technical advisor, refill specialist, Matt Forbes, Refill specialist.

Oh, my God. Put that on a business card. I'm the refill specialist. How are you? Yeah, it's great.

I'll pull you back up to a panelist shortly. Thanks, Matt.

You bet.

Larry, thank you so much. I really do appreciate you coming on.

Thank you, guys. It's been. It's been fun to be here.

Hopefully your RV went to one of the boot camps we could see in person when you're out there cruising around, you know. You know, obviously not one. I can tell it's not going to be August in Arizona, but maybe Orlando in October might be one.

That one works way better.

Yeah. So it'd be great to get an update from you, and it's just. It's just great. I really enjoy talking to you and hope to see you again soon.

You guys, too, take care.

Thanks a lot, Larry.

Thank you, Larry.

See you later. Goodbye.

Take care.

Mike. That was great.

That was great. Larry's a great guy. I think a lot of people have a lot of big takeaways from that, and it's. Yeah, very good. So. Wow. I shows cranking along tonight. You know, it's ten past the hour. Let me just talk a little bit more about scaling. I want some more. You complete me. Is that all right?

Yeah, of course. Yeah.

And any other comments while I'm doing this? I want to make sure you keep.

Oh, yeah, we're getting some good comments.

Anything they need, let's make sure we help them.

I mean, Eric Peterson is watching, so we got to give him a shout out.

Eric Peterson. No country for old men.

Hey, Eric, did the Cubs win today? I know they had a great game yesterday. I know.

Like you're talking about baseball. Pretty shock.

Go Cubs. All right, let's see here. There. There's actually a long question, a long post from Carrie Sorensen. Sparks is her name.

I'll answer it. Go for it.

She said she just recently heard two podcasts with Land Geek and started following on Facebook. My husband and I have been buying, renovating and selling residential properties as well as a couple of rentals. Really like to get our feet wet in the raw land area of property investment. We are having difficulty finding an easy way to access the lists for each county of landowners. Is there a website that does these searches for you? I'm finding we spend 20 minutes on each county website which are not typically very user friendly and sometimes it only turns up maybe one property that fits the bill of tax delinquent and owner out of town. There has to be a better way to save so much wasted time. Tips, please.

Yes. Well, you're hitting. What was her name again? I don't have the.

Her name is Kerry.

Kerry, what you're hitting is what we call the first brick wall. We always talk about these brick walls in the business. BRICK Wall number one is like there's over 3,000. Where do you go?

Right.

How do you decide which county you're going to go to? And from there, once you decide the county, how you're going to build a list, there's actually a number of ways to do that. I'm not sure if you have access to the toolkit from what you're saying, if you've already become a toolkit member. But if you're not a toolkit member, I would advise you to. You can hook up with Scott or I. What's the. What's the link? Can I put it on?

Yeah, I'll put it in right now. So, Kerry, if you want to know more about the toolkit or about flight school, which are ways to get into land investing, you can go to www.thelandgeek.com training and schedule call with either Mike or myself. We'd be happy to talk to you about the training materials that we have available.

And so there is websites. I mean, you go to agentpro247. You can work that site. There's a few other sites out there. But more importantly than that is understanding the process. Right? So there's a number of ways to skin that proverbial cat as I say, you know, you could screen scrape. You can. Yeah, I know. That was pretty good, right? You can screen scrape. You can. You can use a VA to kind of build your own list if, you know there's really no. That really got you, huh? Skin the cat.

The proverbial.

Not only it is a proverbial, but there really is no. That is no wall. Once you understand how we do what we do, there's a number of ways to go around that, and it's actually very simple. But I would advise you to do a few things. One, schedule a call. Even if you're not going to buy the toolkit, talk to us. We'll talk to you a little bit more about it in person. That way we can give you exactly what you're looking for. And the other thing is just understand that there is a way to do this. This is not a brick wall that should knock you back. This is something that we can definitely help you work through. But great question. Anything else?

That's about it for now.

So scaling.

We'll get more.

We'll do a couple more of these and then we'll go to the next segment. How's that? You know, we're. I mean, we don't want to end at midnight, do we? So we'll go move it up a little bit.

Okay.

It's okay. All right. So scaling the business, right? How about this, Scott? Do I even really need. I don't really want to know about. I mean, there's five distinct aspects of the business. There's mailing, there's the whole due diligence, the closing, marketing, sales. Do I really need to know? I'm just going to hire a due diligence specialist. I don't even want to know about it. I'm just going to hire someone. Is that a good idea that I would just go before I even grasp it, just kind of hire somebody else? What do you think of that?

I think any business owner who is going to have a successful business needs to know how every single aspect of that business works and the components of all of these spinning plates that Scott Todd talks about. So although we may be tempted to outsource a lot of these things right away, we do need to go through these pain points ourselves and learn how to scrub a list and learn how to do due diligence on these properties, which honestly isn't that difficult. It takes time, but you need to go through it a few times on your own and feel the pain of doing it on your own so you can address any future Issues that may come up in the due diligence process after you hand that off to somebody else. So, you know, we're huge proponents in this community of continually documenting everything that you do, whether it's with like a screenflow type software, scalpel, we use a lot, or even, you know, taking videos of the process with which you do something and documenting everything that you do going forward to really perfect things in the end. So you can just hand them off to somebody else. But you really need to know the ins and outs of every aspect of this business before you hand it off. Now, the good thing is it doesn't take a ton of time to know all the ins and outs of due diligence, but you do need to do it.

That's a great point because I was going to say too, can you scale too early? And the reality is, yes, because you need to understand every fundamental aspect of the business. And as you were saying, screen recordings, you could use zoom, which we're using to help broadcast right now. I always tell people, just record every single thing you do and every time you do it, you get better. So it's a better version of what you're doing. And eventually you use that to train someone to help you do that process. It's really actually something that can be done in that kind of, you know, very methodology. What's the word? Method. You can follow this. Methodical. How come I couldn't even say it? You complete me.

Yeah, I do. I really do.

Let's do the next segment because I've been waiting to read this one. I've been waiting for this.

You've been waiting for. Oh, really? Are you ready for the shove it already?

Well, I mean, I've been holding on to this paper I got. I finally have my own shove it quote of the week.

I know, that's really. It's kind of exciting, isn't it, when you get your own shove it, you don't have to, you know, don't have to reach out to anybody else.

Rely on it, really. It's like very, like personally directed towards me. So it's really unique.

All right, so hold on one second, you Yankee. One sec.

Don't give it away.

I didn't. It's time for the shove it quote of the week.

Nice. So what is this all about? First time viewers? What's a shove it quarter of the week? What does this even. What is this all about, Scott?

All right, well, we work in a business where people love us and people hate us, right?

Right.

We deal in volume.

We Deal in volume. We send out purchase agreements to thousands of people. We get, you know, we get people that are thankful sending us thank you cards in the mail for taking this property off of their hands for pennies on the dollar. But then we get people who are slightly angry with which angry at us for the low amount that we offered.

Right. And I've actually converted some of these angry people, but that's another story because sometimes they just understand. So mine right here, I'm.

I'm just gonna see it, Just show it we're fine. It's Facebook. We're adults.

It says leap you F you and your offer, you Yankee mother effer, you Yankee Mike.

Mike does live in Massachusetts, everyone. So that's probably where that came from.

Yeah, probably so. Very interesting. But you know, let's see, how much should I offer this person? I mean, I'm sure it was a reasonable offer.

Let me see, give us some details on that.

That was a fifteen hundred dollar offer for a property down in Texas. Well, I've already, I know I've already got two or three other accepted offers. So I'll take one of these argumentative letters and you know, that's. Listen, what we do, we may. It's a, It's a game where we embrace massive action. So we mail out, we have a 3 to 5% acceptance rate, 1 to 2% closing. That leaves a large percentage of people that don't sell us their land. And some of them do get angry, but. So we poke fun at it. But the reality is some of these people can be converted. I've dealt with people, I don't do the intake anymore, but I call them back and I'd make a point to call this person back and be like, hey, I'm really sorry, I didn't mean to be offensive. Maybe I misjudged your land. Is there something unique about yours? Because typically I do buy land in the area for about that price and then they will tell me what's so unique and I'll say, well, maybe yours is worth more. Can I take a look at it? And then all of a sudden the conversation changes. So it's very interesting.

It is. I do have a comment that we need to, we need to read off here because this is a good one. Yeah, it's a good one. Here we go. It's from Jim Lala. He's a fellow Massachusetts native. What do you call, you know, I'm a whisk, I'm a, I'm a South Dakotan.

They call us Massholes.

Mass Holes. Okay. Excellent. He's a former. Geez Louise. He's a fellow masshole, all right. Pretty sure he is.

That refers to our driving, by the way.

He said, Zano knows how to charm the haters. I love it. That is hilarious. All right. Oh, that's funny stuff. Okay.

Told my wife when we got back from one of the boot camps, I think it was Arizona. I forget where. We came back, got in the car, and I'm like, you hear that? She's like, what? All the cars honking at us. I didn't hear that. We were. It's like. It's like music to my ears. It's like, yeah, we definitely take driving to another level around here.

Oh, man. Mike, what else do you have to say about scalability? What have we missed?

Well, what I want to know is, you know, let's. Let's cap it off. Like, what's the end game? Why we even scaling. What's.

What's.

You know, we talk a little bit about why we're doing that. What's the. What's the end game? Why Scale.

You know, the end game, Mike, is to be able to do whatever your why is. Right? So I don't know what your why is, but my why is to work a heck of a lot less, spend a lot more time with my wife and my boys, my four boys that are growing so quickly. It's crazy. Like, every time I turn around, I'm like, how the heck are they getting so big? Where is time going? Right? So my why is to work, to honestly work as little as I can, but still feel security, still feels financial stability, still feel freedom. And it's a journey, it's a process, but I'm getting there. Right? I see so much more clearly now than I did two and a half, three years ago that we're on this path to this. To this kind of. I think it's a continual journey, honestly. But we're getting to the point where I just feel so much more at ease and so much more peace knowing that I'm going to be able to go forward having this business that is growing, but my time in the business is decreasing substantially. So I think I've said that before on here. You know, you are successful in this if the revenue is improving and you're. Your time. Freedom is improving, but your time. The business is going down.

Yeah, that's a great point. You know, it's. My wife and I. I was joking. We do. We go for these bike rides every morning, and, you know, then we go and we get a little lunch and then come back. And the reality is that we're living a lifestyle now that I would think would be akin to what retirement would be for some people in their minds, you know, and it's just, it's just awesome. And the reality is this whole scaling process comes to this macro micro view in my mind where you build this process. It's like a box. And sometimes you're the entrepreneur, you got to jump in there and you got to fix things when they clog up. But then you step out and the best way to test a system, throw a few thousand office through it and watch what happens. That's a great test. And you'll find any inefficiencies and clogs at that point, right? And then you have, then you go back in as the entrepreneur and you fix it. But you're not going in and actually handling all of the minute details. You're fixing the problem that surface and you're, and you're putting something in place to take care of it. So whether it's, you know, you're going to turn a nut, screw a bolt, you know, talk to get another VA in there, make another automation, but you go in, you find it and you tweak it and you go back out and you continually do that and it's, it's remarkable. I mean the end game really is to, you know, and as my wife and I talking about, it's like, okay, well now once we have, you know, our life in order and everything's running smooth or our fixed expense is taken over by a passive income, what next? Like what can we do to help the community? It's like you start to think bigger and it's, it's really cool. I think that that's what I love about this community is that we're all kind of like minded like that. You know, again, we take our business very serious. Ourselves, not so much, right. We're ethical, we're transparent. So the end game is that enjoyment and that giving back because you have the time and the wherewithal to do so. So very cool. I think that's pretty cool summary of this whole scaling. I think we kind of, if I say so, nailed it on. Nail it on the head, right?

We did nail it on the head. I think, I think we do have another thing we need to do tonight. We do have a giveaway.

All right, let's do it right. What are we giving away? Let's keep away stuff.

Well, I, well I think we really need to give away the Amazon bestseller Dirt Rich.

Yes.

Signed copy of Dirt Rich, don't you think?

Absolutely. Absolutely. And I've been taught. Scott and I, we're fortunate. We talked to everybody that wants to come and learn more about the business. And a lot of people have been really saying, like, where'd you hear about the business? Well, I heard a podcast. I read this book, Dirt Rich. It's out there. People are loving it.

It's really awesome. Yeah, I mean, I've spoken to one. I spoke to one guy this week who he had never heard of. Mark heard him on a podcast this week, ordered Dirt Rich and read all 200 pages in about a day. And he was on the phone talking to me. And it was just. It was really neat to hear how in just a very short period of time, you know, 48 hours earlier, he had never heard of Mark Kudolski. And now he is motivated to potentially take some steps forward in this community, to change his life. I mean, that's just. That's awesome. I mean, Mark, that shows right there that what you did with this book, I mean, if it touches one person, that's amazing. But, you know, it's going to touch a lot of people. So I don't know, it's pretty awesome.

That's usually what happens. People, when they come to us, first thing, they need to realize this isn't some kind of crazy information commercial, right? This is a real business model. It just takes dedication to the process, right? There's fundamental things that have to happen every day, and you have to do them, and eventually you have other people do them and other processes in place. So once you realize it and you're like, whoa, I see the ability to leverage my time and my money, and then it's like, how do I get involved? And the people who take that massive action are the people that reap the benefits. So. And again, taking massive action means you might make a mistake or two. But you know what? You can recover from that. If you just sit on the sidelines and think about it. There's really no recovery from non action. Right? Other than action. Right. You have to take action. But if it's wrong, right, wrong or indifferent, you can recover from it. So it's kind of, you know, that's the way you should approach it, I believe.

That's awesome. That's awesome advice, dude. Buddy. All right, so without further ado, we have a giveaway to do.

That was pretty good. You're like, you know, what was it like? Remember Sesame street with the, the. With the count? What Was his name. Didn't he rhyme a lot?

The count. Yeah, the count.

Didn't he rhyme a lot?

He counted a lot. I knew that.

Have one book. Two books.

Wow. Ever thought we'd be talking about Sesame street on this show?

Great show. A lot of good points.

Yeah. Yeah. All right, so here we go. You ready? One giveaway, two giveaways. Here we go. Free copy of Dirt Rich.

Wait, is it gonna be signed? All right, good. We signed.

Yep, it's gonna be signed. You ready? Oh, my gosh. That is very well deserved. Are you ready? Here we go.

Slow it down. Can't see it. Can't see it. Can't see. Andy Wombers.

Andy Wombers.

And the crowd goes wild.

Our most faithful viewer besides Barbara Thibodeau gets a signed copy of Dirt Rich.

Awesome. Congratulations. That's. That's phenomenal, Scott.

All right, so let's, let's say one last thing here. I would just recommend to anyone who has never seen the show before and they're watching this and they might be inspired to take some.

Oh, they might be thinking, why are these guys wearing robes?

Right, right, right.

That's another story.

That's another story for another time. But if you happen to be someone who, like myself a few years ago, was kind of at a crossroads in life. I had just turned 40. I did. I was not happy with where I was in life. I did not feel the security I needed. And I was looking for something.

No robe, right?

Yeah, the robe brought it.

You had no robe that time.

I had no robe.

There's no robe.

The Land Geek community did it for me. If any of you are interested, Mike and I would love to talk to you about it at any time. Thelangie.com training we can talk about the business model, we can talk about the programs Mark has in getting started in this business. Mike.

And you too can get a letter like this.

And you too can be part of.

The shovel flip side. So, you know, there's like 10 more deals I'm closing on, so this is, this is just. It's a numbers game, so.

But you can make a 95 year old lady happy as can be too by taking her land from her. So.

That didn't sound right. She's taking the land, she's selling it.

That's not what I meant.

I know. I want to make sure the viewers don't miss it. I'm gonna take old ladies land now. Come on.

That's not what I meant. I love little ladies. They're my favorite.

No, actually, the best because you get. Sometimes you get these letters and come back and it's just so meticulously written. And, you know, you're dealing with somebody that's in the 90s. And those deals, you know what, you close them via, like a mobile notary or something, and it's just, it takes a little longer. But they close so well because, you know, these people, they mean what they say and what they write and they're easy to work with.

Yeah, for sure.

And they are happy to get rid of the land.

All right, are we ready for a toast? Are you going to bring Matt Forbes back up?

Yeah, let me see if I can bring them both up. I don't know if Larry's still there. Let's see. I'm going to bring. I'm going to bring Matt up and let's see if. Hope we don't get him on a whiz. We'll bring. We'll bring Larry Forbes back up. Hopefully we don't catch him unaware. It's like, oh, I didn't know it was coming back on.

It beeps pretty loud. It's tough to miss.

All right, there you are, Larry. You are there.

I was paying attention.

All right, so, boss man, what's the toast?

Well, I would actually like to wish Larry well. And this is a toast to Larry and good luck to you, your new venture and traveling down a road you've never been down, so to speak. I think it's awesome. I think it's inspirational. I think I would love to do it someday, and I'm excited to hear how it goes. So make sure to let us know. But good luck to you and keep in touch. Cheers.

Thank you. Cheers, guys.

Cheers.

Cheers. Skol. Matt, Mike, you gonna drink or not?

Yeah, I'm sorry. Yeah, I was getting the outro ready.

Yeah. Zayno, start drinking. My God, man.

You see the screen? Here we go, the outro. You guys see the screen, right? It's ready to go?

We do, yeah.

Matt. Thank you, Larry. Thank you, Scott. Bossman, you complete me. Thank you, everybody. See you next week.

Pop that collar, bossman.

Pop it, pop it, pop it like it's hot.

Generating.

Everybody. Come on, Scott.

Shouldn't you be doing this?

All right. Oh, he did the row. Thanks, guys. I'm gonna try to. I'm gonna end the meeting. I think that's gonna end the live broadcast. Have a great night.