ROUND TABLE—Is Selling VIA Text The New Preferred Method?

Hey, it's Mark Podolski, the Land Geek with their favorite niche real estate website, www.thelandgeek.com. and the roundtable podcast has been very popular. So we are going to continue doing this every single Tuesday, So stay tuned. I do want to just remind the listeners, today's podcast is sponsored by GeekPay. IO can always make more money, can't get more time. A set and forget it Financial system. It's automated. It's the only automated financial CRM in the country. Geek Pay IO. All right, let's talk to our panel. We got Tate Litchfield with FrontierPropertiesUSA.com Scott Todd, Six Sigma Scott Todd with Landomoto.com Scott Todd.net and most importantly, automating your Craigslist and your Facebook postings. Posting domination.com thelandgeek Eric Peterson from landopia.com how are you, Eric?

Pretty good, pretty good.

And last but not least, the land guru himself, Zen master Mike Zado. Mike, how are you doing?

Fantastic.

Well, we got, we got a few things to talk about. Let's, let's just get into it because before the podcast, Tate was kind of bragging about selling via text. Tate, what's the story with that?

You know, people love to text message. And if you were at boot camp recently, we talked a little bit about this in our VIP room, Scott and I did, and how, you know, some people don't want to be on the phone, and it's kind of contrary to what we want to do as sellers is the first time I get a response on Craigslist. The number one thing that I always try to do is pick up that phone and get them on the phone.

Right.

Don't you always say, mark, the best way to make money on the Internet is pick up the phone? Well, I agree with that 100%. But I'm noticing a trend recently in text messages. People will, I'll call somebody back after a response, and after I hang up, I'll often shoot them a text message just saying, hey, it's Tate, I got your email, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And my phone will just start blocking, blowing up. And I think it might go back to that whole stranger danger thing that for some reason talking via text message is less threatening than it is on the phone.

It could be that you millennials don't even know how to use a phone anymore.

You know, we prefer it, we prefer not to use the phone. Right? That's kind of our style. But in the last two weeks, we've had two, and we're going to close another one today. We via text message, where I haven't ever spoken with the seller or the buyer. So it's just, I don't know, it's kind of, kind of crazy. It's one of those new things that I'm seeing and I know Scott's been implementing this in his posting domination platform for a while now. What are you doing with it, Scott? How are you making that happen?

So basically every Craigslist account that we have has its own separate phone number. And what we'll do is we will kind of do texting through that phone number and we bring in all of the text into one, one email chain and then we'll text back through a Google voice. So we'll have. The numbers will come into multiple accounts, but then we'll go back and we'll just have one account that we work off of. That way we can, we can still do text in our Craigslist ads, you know, unique phone number for that specific area. But then when we start having the conversations with people, we just change over to another number. They don't even care. And life goes on. We do close sales off of, off of text. So it's a good thing.

Eric Peterson, you know, you look like you're in your 20s.

But I'm not.

But you're not. But I mean, so what are you doing with your. How. What's your sales process like, your closing process? Are you more on the phone, are you more email or you more texting or something?

It really depends on the customer. I kind of tailor to meet their needs or how it seems they prefer to communicate. So if they start by emailing me and they, you know, they don't give me their phone number, well, you know, I'm going to communicate with them via email. Sometimes I'll get a phone number and I don't always call, but sometimes I will. I don't know that I was trying to think as we were talking here if I've really ever only spoken via text with somebody and closed the deal. And I may have, but not recently. Over the past couple weeks I haven't anyways. But it is sometimes a part of the way I communicate with people is via text. It just, it really depends on how they want to correspond with me. I, I'm flexible and, you know, I'll work with them any way they want, so.

Very cool, very cool. Zen master Mike Zaino.

Yeah, I'd say more than 50% are by text. We do a lot by text. And that's even that's even on the buy side, a lot of texting, and I would include even Facebook Messenger. That's texting. I mean, texting is. Is huge. We do. I'd say more than half our deals are text messaging. So, yeah, I think that's definitely way to go. I think it is a sign of the fact that people text all day long to their friends, to everybody else. It's just the way it goes right now, that's the preferred mode of communication most people is text.

Should we be. Instead of doing deal of the week via, like, an email blast, should we be doing deal of the weeks through a text blast? Tate Litchfield.

Well, we did that once, and.

We.

Got kind of some unhappy response from it. Some people responded and said, hey, I never gave you permission to text me. And, you know, we found out that there's some other legal aspects associated with it. So I would say that if you can initiate the text, maybe one on one, kind of like I'm doing where I'll leave a voicemail and then follow up with a text message, that's a whole different scenario than just getting a text message saying, hey, buy this from me. Now, I don't know, maybe if you have a good VIP client that you work with regularly, it might work, but I don't know. I think it's a little bit of a risky approach to doing your deal of the week, in my opinion.

Scott Todd, have you ever tried to do a blast?

Legal issues have stopped me from doing that because there's a legal mandate that says that they have to give you permission and supposed to be kind of in writing or captured that they signed off on it. So if they've initiated a contact with me through text, what I've done is I've gone back and I've done text back out that says, hey, check out this property. It might be something you're looking for. So it's not necessarily like the sales thing. It's more like it's coming from me, but still, it's. It's. You got to be careful how you word those. Those texts.

Okay, so the league, there is legal issues. So, like, when I go to my local pizza place and I check out, and then they have me put in my cell number for a promotion, right? They say, put your cell number. We're gonna send you, you know, weekly discounts, coupons, promotions.

Yeah, I'm.

I'm giving them permission, right?

Well, technically, like, technically, they're supposed to have a box that you check off that says, yes, you have my permission. To do this. So just you giving them your phone number isn't enough? Technically, like when I was at Hertz, that was a big deal. We want to text to people like, hey, your car's ready and it's in this stall number. And basically we were told like, you can't do that unless they've signed off, that you can text them. So literally we had to go through an education process with customers to say, hey, log onto your profile and give us permission to text you. Otherwise we could face like FCC fines, FTC fines, or, yeah, FTC fines.

Wow. Okay, Eric Peterson, is it worth going through the trouble in our niche or do you think it's more like local based, kind of smaller type of sales, like your local pizza place, Five bucks off on Tuesdays?

Yeah. Well, it certainly works well and has become very prevalent in the kind of local small business arena for coupons and discounts. I definitely see that all the time. You know, you got an iPad or something and you punch in your phone number and you get a text that says, you know, confirm it and you say yes. And then you start getting coupons and stuff. So, I mean, it's definitely. It works in those scenarios. It's something to think about. I think for land, if there were a way to overcome some of those hurdles, it could be interesting. I think that it's a little bit more complicated, though. I mean, buying a piece of land isn't the same as getting $5 off a pizza. So, you know, there's. There's another hurdle there, I would say.

Mike, Zaina, what's your thoughts?

I think at this time, especially for. I think it's a personal thing. We, the personal conversation. It's one on one where they kind of know what's between you and them. It's not broadcast everybody else. It's nothing that's kind of generic. It's. It's very targeted this is towards you. It's between you and I and, and you know, that confidentiality is there. So I think that you only keep that when it's one on one. So that's how. That's how we approach it. And I think that's probably the right way at this time.

I like that. I like the way Mike sort of cultivates relationships, you know. So, yeah, I think it's. I think Eric's right. I don't think land selling. I think you're going to get more people who are unhappy about a text message from us versus an email or even Facebook messenger. There's something very intimate, personal about Getting a text message because we get them from our friends. Right. Or big companies that we can just opt out of. But when it's a small company doing it, I think it's. You can.

Yeah, we want to be their friends. We want them as friends and part of their, you know, close group of people that they commit, you know, so.

Yeah, yeah, it could. It could be seen as impersonal and taking advantage of that relationship little early on. That's. That's my thought. I don't know. Tate, what do you think?

I agree. I mean, I think one of the things that sets us apart is we have the ability to, you know, be mom and pop businesses. Right. And that's what people want to work with. And the minute you start sending out maybe mass text messages to them, it might turn them off a little bit and make them maybe not want to consider working with you again. I don't know. I like what. What Zaino said about keeping it personal. So for the time being, I think that we'll probably just stick with the deal of the week via email. And then if you have a couple key players that have asked to be notified in the future about property in that same area. Sure. Send them a text message. Let them know, like Scott does.

Yeah, I agree. So moving on to a new topic. Buying land that you don't even want. Scott, Todd, tell us that story.

All right, so I just got done doing a deal with. With a. With a trust, and the guy had some property in the county that I wanted, and so I bought it. And that transaction went flawlessly. And he circled back to me yesterday and said, hey, I have got one more property in this trust that we would love to sell. It's in this county, which is probably about like four counties over from where. Where I was. Would you like it? It's. The assessed value is $1,200. You know, we'll give you a super good deal. So I don't even work in this county. I don't even want to be in that county. Right. Like, it's. It's almost like shiny object syndrome. I mean, I've done this too many times to where I try to go like, oh, yeah, I'll do that deal. And I end up in this county that I hate because I only like my own little counties. So I looked at the property, and there's some negatives to the property. One, it's got, like, the found the soil is very sandy. Okay. So it's great for ATV riding. It's not so good. If you want to build a house.

There also, or grow anything.

Or grow anything. If you want to build something there, you've got to cart in fill dirt to fill the, you know, to pack this, the soil. So, you know, I'm looking at it, and it's 0.37 acres. And it's also not easy to get to because the roads have not been bladed. You can see where the roads will be. They're just not there yet. It's like that, like we're early to the party kind of a deal. When they blade the roads, it will be a beautiful thing. And that's if they ever blade the roads right, like, it'll be a beautiful property. But until then, it's only use is for like riding an ATV around back there and saying, I own property, unless you want to speculate. So I said to the guy, said, look, here's, here's. I don't work in that county. And the reason I don't work in that county is because the sand issue, it's going to cost me, you know, money to fill in the ground if I buy it. This is. I got this from Mike Zano. If I buy it, I'm going to have to wholesale it, so the most I can pay is like $100. And he came back to me, said, okay, let's do it. So, you know, I'm thinking, like, from now on, I don't want any of the land. Like, I'll renegotiate everything, like down to $100. I mean, what could that hurt?

Eric Peterson, what do you think?

You know, I've done that occasionally. Maybe not to that. That extent, but, you know, it seems pretty common when you're. You're buying a piece of property, it comes up that, you know, they've got another property and it's, you know, in this county and you haven't worked there and. But they want to sell it to you because you're buying, you know, one or multiple already. So oftentimes I'll go ahead and do those deals. I do try to discount those properties that are in the areas I don't know that well pretty significantly. But then, yeah, I mean, you do kind of end up with the property you don't want. And either, either you go ahead and try to sell it and market it yourself and, you know, kind of deal with all the headaches of kind of building up buyers in that area, or, you know, you just wholesale it and move on.

So I'm gonna do the Zaino. I'm gonna take it to ebay.

Right.

I'm gonna. I'm gonna do a doc fee of 495. I'm gonna list it for 99 cents. When it sells, I make five.

Yeah, over 300%.

I made 400. $400 on my little sale here, and, you know, I don't know, have a nice dinner somewhere.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, you know, it's so funny. Like, Tate Litchfield's, like, smiling like, you overpaid.

Maybe.

Maybe I did.

Tate, did I overpay?

You know, for 100 bucks. You can't get much for 100 bucks in this world. But, I mean, that's always my number. I'm always like, listen, I don't want this. It seems like a burden. I'll give you something, but it's not going to make you rich. How about a hundred bucks? And, you know, like you said, nine times out of ten, people are like, yeah, let's just get it gone. All right, you can have it. It's your problem now. And it's like, yes, right? Like, I know what you were thinking. You were thinking, oh, I didn't want this at first. And then it's. And then you. It clicked, and you were like, eBay, eBay, 500 bucks. I'll do that all day long.

I mean, but isn't that. Isn't that part of, like, what you get from, like, experience? Like, okay, I'm going to do this, and here's my exit strategy. I mean, begin with the end in mind, right? Like, always have the exit strategy, Mike, Is that what you do? Like, when you're buying a property, don't you have an exit strategy in place?

Yeah, the worst case scenario, which is ebay. I mean, ebay is great, but it's also the worst. It's the least amount of cash you're gonna get. So if you. If you were able to make 2,300% on eBay, then you've got a good buy, because then you're gonna sell it for a lot more via, you know, Craigslist or other buyers. Listen, and what we're talking about today is really interesting. I think it comes to, like, after you close a deal with somebody, it's like when you buy a car and you go to the next step as you go in and they want to give you all the extras, the warranties and all that stuff, They've already got your trust. They broke you down. You made the big fight already, right? You negotiated, you thought you won the battle, and now your guards down. Now you sit down with the next guy and he's like, okay, well, how about some insurance? How about this? And you're like, oh, man. All right. You know, it's like you've already spent all this money, so it's. So I think the same thing happens when we're buying property as when we're selling. You develop that trust with the person, and then they bring up another property. And it's like, like Tate said, this is like, yes, I love when they do that. Because at this point, you talk frank with them because now you've established a relationship with them. You say, geez, Paul, whatever it may be, that's great. You have that. It's not really in my wheel well. But I don't want to insult you. And you just prime them, you keep priming them. I don't want to be insulting, but, you know, I'd like to take a look at. It's not really. I do work up there. And then they're, no, no, no, don't worry about it. Just make me an offer. And you're like, yes, I bought just, you know, for a hundred dollars for your time. I do it all the time. It works because you've broken that barrier.

Yeah. You know, speaking of breaking barriers, the whole thing is insane, right? And when I first started, right, And I didn't. And I was just doing this on my own, there was no Roger Bannister out there, right? Like, we just didn't know what we were doing. We didn't have a. Any kind of, you know, metric. Like, oh, you can buy property this low. Like, you would just like, okay, I'd be buying fives in Colorado, and, you know, on average, I'd be paying, let's say, you know, 1200 A5. All of a sudden we start building this community, and then I see, oh, Mike Zando's wholesaling those things for 1200. I'm like, what does he pay for those? And like, all of a sudden, like, you realize, holy cow, I could get those fives for 800, 900. It's like when Roger Bannister broke the four minute mile. You didn't know anybody could do it. Like, he didn't know any better. Like, oh, well, Mark. So it's like, you know, and you see that time and again. Like, Scott Todd's like, okay, well, I'll pay a hundred bucks. Like, I would never offer that. Like, I wouldn't be comfortable doing it here.

Okay, here's the kicker. I left this out, though. This is the kicker. It's. I mean, as I'm. As I'm replaying this in my mind. I'm like, man, I can't believe I even left this out. It's in Florida. I bought a 0.38 acre property in Florida for 100 bucks.

It's insane. It's absolutely insane. I think that mindset plays such an important role in this business when you're buying and when you're selling. I remember Mimi Schmidt at bootcamp. She felt uncomfortable marking up a property 600% or 700%. And we're all looking around the room, like, why? But it's an inefficient market, and that's. You have a buyer and a seller, and it's what they agree to. What's wrong with that? But I can see, like, you know, I have a harder time on the other way, like, offering, you know, like, Tate offered. Like, oh, you know what? I'll just take it. I'll give you a buck. Like, he's comfortable doing that, right? Like, I'm doing you a favor. I won't charge you for doing the doc fee. Like, I'll just take it off your hands for a dollar, and we'll go. And, like, so, like, it's. It's crazy what's. What. What people can do. Once you kind of wrap your mind about. About this and, you know, do it like, you know, Scott, what are you thinking?

Well, I'm thinking like, you. You brought up Mimi, right? Like, last night on coaching hours, Mimi told. Told us that this area that she was working in, she decided, like, I want to see how low I can go. Okay. This is a. This is a great area. So she was buying properties, I think, for, like, $3,000 there. She decided to go low, and she's now offering, like, 1500. And for two months, she didn't get an accepted offer. She just kept mailing. Two months. And then in the last two weeks, she's had 10 accepted offers at the new low price, half price of what she was paying. And she's like, this is insane. So you don't know how low they'll go until you try it.

Yeah. Eric Peterson, what do you think? Like, does this happen with you?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, I. I can think of at least a handful of properties that I bought for a hundred bucks, you know, easy. So it's. It's a common occurrence.

I mean, that's.

That's actually a very common question that people will ask me when I tell them about what I do. Well, you know, how cheap can you really buy property? And I'll say, yeah, 100 bucks. Maybe a couple hundred bucks. And they're just like, no, you can't.

You know? Yeah. So, Tate, how did you get in that mindset where you're just not. You're just fearless in offering this? Like, what's. What's your mindset?

I don't know. I mean, my thing is, what's the worst that could happen? They tell me no, then they're still stuck with it, right? Like, they want to get rid of this property or else they wouldn't have, you know, quit paying the taxes on it and those kind of things, too. So I think you just have to go into it with a mindset of, like, listen, this. Take it or leave it. I'm here to give you. Get you out of a headache, and I'll take responsibility from here on out. Or, you know, you can't hurt my feelings anymore. Like, I've been doing this business enough. I've been told no every which way to Sunday. So, I mean, I don't really care. And I know that if they don't take it, somebody else will. Eventually, somebody else will.

Mike Zaina, what's your mindset?

Well, mindset is I tell people straight out, I said, listen, I'm gonna send you an offer. When I start negotiating with somebody or finding out they have other properties, and I say one of three things is gonna happen. One, you're gonna accept it. Two, you're gonna counter it, or three, you're gonna tell me to take a hike. I said, and either one's fine with me. I always tell them, and exactly, just like this, I say, I'm always happy to meet a new friend and talk to somebody. So it's no harm, no foul. Let me just throw an offer out. If we can make it work, we'll make it work. And they're like, okay, that sounds fair. They're prepped. They're ready, and if it works, it works. If it does. You know what's great about this business, too, is you can cut your teeth on properties that are $100, $200. What a better way to learn a business model. Like, when you're in college and you. And you pick stocks out and you see how they go up and down, you know, let's just pretend. But here, you can literally buy properties for dollars. In practice, the model of buying and selling, going through the whole pipeline, and then once you perfect that, add a couple zeros, keep rolling. So this is. It's incredible, this business, that you can do things like that.

Yeah, I mean, traditional real estate people don't even understand. I was on a podcast today, and the guy was like, who's buying this stuff? I would never buy property that inexpensive. Like, that's a fair question. I'm like, there's a lust for land in this country. I've never been stuck with a piece of property. Over 5,200 deals. I've never been stuck. Scott Todd, you've been stuck?

They come and go. Sometimes it's property that I bought a long time ago, and it sells for a few months. The people stop paying, I get it back. I mean, stuck, that's kind of. I think it's all the way that you look at it, right? Like, I've never had a piece of property that just did not sell flat out. It doesn't mean I don't get it back.

Right? Right. No, I mean, but that's even better for us. We just keep reselling it. Reselling. It becomes like this bond that never matures. Eric Peterson, what about. You ever get stuck?

I wouldn't say stuck. I feel like there's always an exit strategy if the default marketing techniques don't work. And that might be Craigslist or Facebook or your website, your mailing list, et cetera.

Don't forget the neighbors.

Yeah, you got neighbors, you got ebay. I mean, there's. There's so many different ways to. To get it sold. It's. I think I have a property that I have had for over a year, and I don't consider it stuck. You know, I feel like I can sell it, but it's a matter of finding that buyer. And I just. I haven't found him yet. Now, I could just bite the bullet, put it on ebay, and it'll go. I'm certain of it. But I just. I haven't made that. That decision yet, but.

Well, be careful telling that story around Tate, because he'll offer you, like, 25 bucks for it.

I was gonna say, I'll make an offer right now.

Tate, you ever been stuck?

No. Same situation. Like, sometimes there's ways to get rid of stuff quick if you want to, but sometimes, you know, it's a good property and you bought it at the right price. And so you say, you know what? I'll wait it out. Right. I mean, I'm not in any rush. I'm not going to cut my margins in half just because I've had it for a month or two or six. Right. Like, I know what it's worth and I can sit on it. I'm patient. I'm in this for the long run. So yeah, I'm in the same situation as, you know, Eric here. But realistically, everything sells everything. I've sold properties that were terrible but they sold and you know, somebody was really happy to pay me for it.

Mike Zaino?

No, in fact the opposite. The properties that don't want to get rid of, they're so nice and you bought them so cheap. So and I always tell people, it's like, don't get attached to this property because you know you're going to get these probably, oh, I could keep that. And there's more, there's so many more to keep coming that keep coming down the pike. So I think it's more the opposite. You know, in the times that I have kind of rushed try to get a property and cut the price down as soon as I would sell it the next week I get four or five emails, someone wants to buy it. So it just teaches you over the long haul never to panic. People want these properties.

Wow. Alright, so our final topic for today before we get to the tip of the week. Creating scarcity. Creating scarcity. So Scott's on office hours last night. I'll let Scott tell the story.

So I'm on office hours last night. A coaching student basically asked, hey, how do you create scarcity on a property? They had a, they had somebody that had been telling them for I think about a week, like, oh yeah, we're do the doc fee, you know, but would never do it, never do it. And my advice flat out was to tell them, hey, sorry, the property's gone, take it off the market. And they were shocked. They were like, what? I could see the look on their face when I told them, like, just tell them it's no longer available, period, end of story. And then in about a week from now, you can't contact and say, hey, the deal fell through, it's back available, let's do it. And I said if you don't like that approach, well then contact them and tell them that beginning tomorrow it's going to be the deal of the week. It's going to get a major spotlight. It's going to be offered with, you know, half off the down or half off the dock fee or $100 off the dock fee or whatever. So you highly recommend that if he really wants the property, he should do it before that email goes out because otherwise there's a very high likelihood that it will go out and, you know, go off the market. And they did that. That's the advice that they took. And I Got an email this morning that basically says, hey, we contact them, thought it was going to be the deal of the week. And here's the words. Basically, guess what we told our buyer who was dragging his feet, we were going to send out an email blast deal the week tomorrow with half off the dock fee. Left them a message and he just paid the doc fee. Hallelujah. Thanks God, what it says. So there you go. That's how you create scarcity. Take it away.

Mike Zano, how do you create scarcity?

Similar, but also just in conversations with people. I like the, you know, I'll tell them some, you know, I want to make sure this is the right property for you. Like, sometimes I'll say to them, you.

Know, I'm not even sure if this.

Is the right property for you. You have somebody else that wants it. I think it's a better fit for them. I'm not even sure this is the right property for you. I want to make sure we have. And then they'll start telling me why that's the right property for them. So kind of along the same lines, but just more passively, you know, sometimes just the way you communicate with them. But, yeah, you know, that's one way just to kind of, when you're talking to them, just kind of allude to that, you know, that maybe this isn't the property for you. I'm not sure, you know, I got somebody. I mean, I don't know. Can you. Are you able to live in this area, like, off the grid? Oh, I can do that. You know, it's funny, you start taking it away from them, but gradually and not really. I would, you know, just kind of passively pull it back a little bit. And then they start telling me why they really could use the property. So similar, I guess.

Eric Peterson, how do you create scarcity?

I think fairly similar to what Scott described.

It doesn't.

It doesn't always work, but, you know, when it doesn't, I think that's often a way just to kind of weed out, you know, someone that was probably never going to buy anyways.

So.

All right, cool. Tate Litchfield. I know how Tate creates scarcity.

Yeah.

I mean, he starts counting down, like, literally on the phone. 10, 9.

You have 15 seconds before you never hear from me again. That's what I tell them.

Right?

This message will self destruct in five. Okay, okay, okay. Here's no. I was listening to Mike talk and I'm thinking, man, if he were selling me, I'm like, here, here, here, here, here. I Don't want to miss out, right? Like, here's my money, here's my money. But I do the same thing. The other thing that I do is I limit the amount of, you know, let's say you have five properties in the same area. Not marketing all five of those properties at the same time. Right. I'm focused exclusively on one. And if somebody asked me, what, do you have more properties available in that area at this time? No, I mean, the other ones aren't for sale. And yeah, maybe it will be for sale once this one sells, but for the most part, this is the property that's for sale. And so that creates a sense of scarcity in itself, too. I mean, you control the market. If you saturate it, you know, then there's. You lose that ability to control, you know, the outcome a little bit there.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And we talk about this a lot at boot camp, but when you pick up the phone, the first thing you do is you buy yourself some time. We actually talked about this at the Wes Schaefer selling podcast was. Hold on a second. I'm not sure if that's still available. And then the pause and it builds tension. You feel that?

I didn't feel it. What is it?

Tell me more about it.

It's attention. Oh, you know what? It is still available. What's your credit card number? How much you want to put down? Boom. Mark. Mark. That's advanced.

The last car I negotiated, it was for my daughter. And I remember sitting in the car dealership. Car dealership. And I was sitting there with the sales guy, and I said to him, I said, well, here's my price. My price is this. And he just looked at me, and we basically had a staring contest for about three minutes. I'm looking at him and he's looking at me. Not a word was said. My wife's, like, looking at her cell phone. And then I figured, like, okay, well, I'm just waiting on you, man. So then, I mean, because I have the offer out there, and he's waiting for me to crack, right? He's waiting for me to speak. And literally I just sat there. Then I pick up my cell phone and I had the calculator up, and I just started punching numbers on the calculator, like, random digits, like, I don't know, just sitting there waiting for him. And finally he said, I'll be right back. He comes back and he gets the deal done. Right? But, like, be quiet sometimes. That's it.

Yeah, Silence is golden. Silence is absolutely old. Not a Podcast so much, but, you know, in a sales.

We should try it. We should try it.

Yeah.

Silence Game.

The Silence Game. It's fun. We do a lot of boot camp. Yeah. Yeah. So I thought this was a great roundtable. We hit some, some, some important topics here. But now it's time to put the whole panel on the spot and ask you for your tip of the week. A website, a resource, a book, something actionable where the art of passive income listeners can go right now, improve their businesses, improve their lives. Tate, you need to buy some time.

No, I'm ready. I came prepared yet again, believe it.

Or not, I. Wow.

So.

One of the things that I'm constantly doing is trying to make my. The photos that I attach to my Craigslist ads unique and different. So I started using a website. Well, an app on my phone called. It's run by Adobe, it's called Adobe Lightroom. Basically allows you to upload an image. You have to email it to yourself or get it on your phone somehow. And then you can mess with the contrast, you can add filters, you can do a bunch of cool things on there. So I've been using that a lot to just mix it up and play with the saturation on some of my pictures. And, you know, I can't say that it's generating more leads than normal, but it is nice to have some unique photos out there that maybe are so saturated that they look horrible, but it's standing out. Right. So that's kind of my tip of the week. Adobe Lightroom.

Adobe Lightroom. All right, fantastic. Eric Peterson, what's your tip of the week?

All right, I've got write, tag, R, I, T, E, tag, tag.

It's.

It's a web app and there's also a Chrome extension, but essentially it's. It's for kind of looking at potential hashtags that you might use in, say, a Facebook post, or if you put stuff on Twitter, you can use it there too. But. So you can start to type in hashtags and see which ones are maybe kind of popular, which ones are basically useless, and so on. So just kind of helps you in picking decent hashtags if you're going to use them.

You know, it's so funny, we don't talk a lot about hashtags, but they are important as far as being seen getting found in the, you know, online media jungle, if you will, the social media jungle. That's a great tip, Eric Peterson. Pretty geeky.

Thanks.

I like that. Mike Zano, what's your tip of the Week.

It's a book I picked up at the airport on the way home from boot camp. See if I can get it. Can you read that, or is it backwards?

Something better. Charles Duhigg. I love Charles Duhigg.

Yeah. This is a brilliant distillation of the personal and organizational behaviors that produce extraordinary results. So he's, like, looked at all different people, from FBI agents to pilots, and distilled what creates massive productivity, so that. It's a pretty cool book.

What creates. Can you just tell us? So buy the book. I mean.

You have to read it yet.

Really crack it open. You know, you and Laura were hungover from Vegas. You're like, laura, I'm gonna go get this book.

Call me out.

Here's how to be productive. Open the book.

Mike, look at the bookmarks. Way in there, the bookmark I saw.

That looks like page 20. He's still.

He had it open over his face while he was on the plane sleeping.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. There's, like, I see the drool on it.

Sleeping, blushing on the podcast.

This is not good, Laura. Page 32 is where I last slept on the productivity.

It's a great book. I don't want to read the punchline.

Fine, don't tell us. That's fine. I'll get the book. I'll get the audiobook. Scott. Todd.

Tip of the week, Mike. This is what I deal with, like, every Tuesday, nonstop. Like, every tip of the week, I'm like, why is this better? What's so fancy about that book? Okay, here we go. Ready? Mine is notable. It's an app. It's called Unnotable. I just text it over to you guys. So basically, Tate, as you're using Lightroom to fancy up your pictures, and you want to call out the flaws in the picture with arrows and annotations and tags and everything, this is a cool way of doing that. And you can also do things like zoom in on something that you really want to focus in on. So maybe, you know, maybe there's something on the land that you want to zoom in on, and you can zoom in on it, and it breaks it out and puts it into its own, like, call out button as well. So you can really do some cool things to your images with a notable.

All right, so I'm downloading it right now, but, you know, they got a lot of in app stuff. Scott.

It purchases, you mean? Yeah, yeah.

Well, I can't just give it to us for, like, two bucks and be.

Done well, because freemium is the way to go.

Free, you know, What? Freemium is the way to go. So speaking of freemium, we still haven't figured out our geek pay model for pricing. Eric Peterson, help me. How much geek pay be.

Oh, I think there should be a free version where you could set up one note and test.

Ouch, that hurts. Not doing free. I'm not hanging out with maybe this thing. Very cheap.

Set up one note.

Fine.

One note.

Because I think, honestly, when someone tries it, I think they're gonna want to do more. So to make it easy for someone to test it out. I think there's a lot of benefit to that. I mean, how many people are really gonna just have one note?

Yeah, that's true. No, that's true.

So, I mean, and then I think it's gotta be tiered, you know, whether.

It'S.

I don't know, 1 to 50 notes and 50 to 100 or some kind of tiered, and then at some point, it's got to go to unlimited, I guess.

Yeah, I'll figure it out. Figure it out. No worries. We're going to make it irresistible. So I'm not. I'm not too concerned. All right, so my tip of the week, this book that I'm reading, I love it. Did I give this book tip of the week already? Homo deus. No. Great book. So it's one of my favorite authors, Yuval Noah Harari, who wrote Sapiens. And this is a. This is just. This book will blow your mind. It really will. I can't recommend it enough. Jason Gagne, I was talking to him about it. He's like, I love this book. He was at the Vegas boot camp. So. By the way, speaking of Vegas boot camp, we are halfway full, which is crazy because we're. We're in May, and this is until August. So if you have not booked yet, book now, before you get locked out, just go to the landgeek.com boot camp. Are we good, guys?

How do you spell your book?

How do I spell it?

Yeah, how do you spell the name of the book?

H O M O. Like Homo sapiens. So H O, M O and then Deus D, E, U, S. Okay. Homo deus. Great book. One of my favorites. Sapiens is one of my favorite books. That's like one of my, like, desert island books. Eric Peterson, Why the. Why the quizzical look?

Oh, I was doing a search. Sorry.

All right, all right, all right. So I want to thank everybody. I want to thank the listeners. Look, the only way. The only way we're going to be able to continue these roundtables is if you do us three little favors. You got to subscribe, you got to rate, you got to review the podcast, Send us a screenshot of your view. To support the landgeek.com we're going to send you for free the $97 Passive Income Launch Kit. $97 Passive Income Launch kit. You guys ready to do it?

Well, you don't have it queued up. I mean, like, I thought we were replaced by the automation here.

As it should be. As it should be. That's true. No, I don't have it queued up. Wow.

I guess we have to work today.

All right, ready? One, two, three. Let freedom ring. I'll tell you what, that wasn't so bad.

I did.

I think our timings off on it. It's like I want to go really fast. I want to be like, let freedom ring. And Mark you over there.

Let see, that's the problem is like Mark doesn't follow me. Like I'm doing this and he's not following. He's like dragging. I think it's Mark. It's all on mark.

All right, let's try it again. I'll do it with your thing left and ring that fast. Should we do a one second beat? Let freedom ring.

Freedom ring.

Okay, ready? One, two, three. Let freedom ring.

I don't know.

You have to say it. It's a mantra. Mantra only works when you say it. You can't record it. That's the way it has to be done.

My mantra is the Mike Zaynor mantra. Breathe in the mailing, breathe out the marketing. All right, thanks, everybody. See everybody next time.