ROUND TABLE—San Antonio Bootcamp Nuggets

Hey, it's Mark Podolski, the land geek with your favorite niche real estate website, www.thelandgeek.com. and on today's roundtable podcast, we have Eric no nickname Peterson. Second day of his kids having to be home from school. Eric, how are you doing?

Good.

Just trying to keep focused here with the kids running around in and out enjoying the snow here.

So is it a snow day?

Yes, it's a snow day today.

I never had one of those.

Not global warming, it's global weirding. Yeah, yeah. We got Bearland. Aaron Williams, Bear Land Aaron, how are you?

Pretty good. We only had a two hour delay, so not quite as bad as Eric.

That's not bad at all. And then of course, the Big Papa himself. I love it when you call me Big Papa. Tate Litchfield. Tate, how are you? Good.

Finally feeling recovered since. Since boot camp. So.

Okay, seriously, because like, Eric and I are still dragging. How are you recovered?

Well, I'm tired, don't get me wrong. I had to take naps yesterday because I was exhausted. I came home Sunday night and I slept. I went to bed at like 8:30 and I slept till 8 in the morning. I was exhausted.

And you didn't get any. In any trouble with the wife?

No, she was pretty. She was understand, understanding of the whole situation. I mean, we worked.

No, we worked. It was, it's work. It's hard work.

It's like the most stressful part of my, my life right now is boot camp prep. That's a lot of work.

It is a lot of work. It's, it's a lot of talk, it's a lot of energy. And you know, the older I get, the longer it takes me to recover. Like it used to be like, you know, I remember like the first few boot camps, I would actually have a few things going on on Monday. And like now, like, Monday's total day off.

Yeah.

And then I come to Tuesday, it's like, oh, gosh, I got stuff to do. Like, there's no energy. They're so tired. But Eric, you're a young guy. How you feeling?

I'm tired still. I, you know, I got in late on Sunday. By the time I got home, it was after nine. So, you know, I didn't get to bed till 10 and I slept in the next day. Trying to catch up a little bit, but still feeling it a little bit.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So on the topic of boot camp, it was our largest boot camp. We had like what, 90 people in the room at one time, including all of us. Yeah, so it was big, but didn't feel too big. It still felt intimate, didn't it?

Yeah, Yeah, I think. I think the room accommodated everybody very well. And, yeah, it. It felt good. It was big, but. But I think it was good.

Well, let's talk about the boot camp takeaways. What were the biggest boot camp takeaways for you? Let's start with you, Eric Peterson.

For me, you know, oftentimes, it's. It's just about kind of meeting people in the business putting, you know, I guess you can't say a face to the name because we see each other a lot and mastermind calls and things like that, but actually being able to shake someone's hand or meet them in person, you know, it just adds another kind of level to those. Those people we see on a regular basis. And then, of course, all the new faces as well.

That's.

That's typically a big takeaway for me. On top of that, you know, there's always something that I walk away from boot camp and I kind of set myself to accomplish in my business over the next month or two. And for me, this time, it's really focusing on the acquisition side and systematizing a lot of that and bringing in an acquisition manager and stepping out of a big portion of that part of my business.

Yeah, that's huge. That's huge. Barely. And, Aaron, I think it's unfair to ask you what your biggest boot camp takeaway was from San Antonio, but you. How many boot camps you've been to?

Two.

Two. Okay, so from the two that you. Or three. I think it's two. Wait, three. Orlando and Scottsdale. Scottsdale. So what were your biggest takeaways at boot camp?

Well, the first one's always huge just because it's all new. So you're trying to assimilate all of that information. You know, the second one was really cool because you get to reinforce the things that you've learned previously at a previous one or, you know, through coaching, through mastermind calls, that sort of thing. But you always get those things that kind of can help bring you back to basics that you forgot, you know, obviously not the main parts of the system, the mailing and marketing and that sort of thing. I mean, that's an obvious. But those little things, you're like, oh, yeah, if we do this, it will, you know, help us with that. That kind of thing. I totally forgot about that and bringing those little things home. Then, of course, you know, you always get the nuggets that Scott talks about. The boot Camp is just amazing experience. No matter which time you go, I think.

Yeah, yeah. How about for you, Tate?

You know, one of the things that I found really interesting was the fact that in the VIP room, somebody mentioned that when they have that initial contact with a seller, one of the things that they do is they walk them through the closing process ahead of time and they say, listen, here's how we're going to close the deal. And they tell them, they don't even give them the option to, you know, look at using a third party for the deed or recording or anything like that. They would just say simply, mark, when we decide, when we agree upon a price, I'm going to email you a deed, you're going to print it, you're going to take it to the nearest bank near you, you're going to send it back to me, and I'm going to record it. And I thought, that's really, really good advice right there. Because how many times have people gone all the way through the due diligence process only to find out that their seller won't sign a deed unless they get paid ahead of time? Right? And they run into these hiccups with one simple phrase on the initial contact. All of a sudden, you know, if that person's willing to play ball with you according to your rules, and you can decide right then and there if it's worth your time or not.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You know, you know, I had an observation and then I had a takeaway My, my big observation that was different from this boot camp, from, from previous boot camps are the flight school people. And the flight school people, there's a different dynamic because their level of knowledge coming in is like, crazy deep. And then they're getting reinforced with the fundamentals at boot camp. And there's like that different feel at. In the room now where it's. They're kind of like, yeah, now let's go a level, you know, a little faster, a little deeper here and in, sort of like into the deal flow and, you know, getting the list scrubbing. The list where it used to be, like the big pain point that everybody would have, like these questions about the list, the list of lists. The flight school people don't have that. Their. Their questions are more, you know, more macro now about just, you know, the systems and the automation and the delegation and, you know, the closing. And it's. It's really interesting to see how that has evolved. Like, pain points are evolving after bringing in flight school people and doing all that. And then my biggest Takeaway, I think, was just how much money is to be made in this little niche, Right? Because, like, the Ewan brothers are like, oh, yeah, we're gonna make about $200,000 on this one deal. And then bae's like, yeah, yeah, you know, like, she's closing, like, these big $30,000 flips. And John Montero's like, yeah, you know, I'm doing, like, a million dollars on eight deals this year. And, like, so you've got people who are, like, the bread and butter deals, like, the wholesale deals, and then people doing, like, these bigger deals. And it's just really interesting to see how that's sort of evolved, where there's something really for everyone, as long as they'll execute. Right. Which is kind of like the bottom line there. Did you see that, guys? Do you feel that at all in the room?

Yeah, for sure.

Absolutely.

There's so much opportunity in this business, it's ridiculous.

Yeah, it's kind of, like, overwhelming at some points. Like, some of the stories, like, you know, Lygia comes up to me. She's like, we closed six deals this week. Like, six deals. She's like, I love tape. Like, what's going on? And then, you know, I'm like, we didn't close six deals this week. Comparison is the theme of happiness.

Yeah, I think, you know, the one thing I noticed in terms of the room, like, you were talking about flight school and stuff. I mean, I was very impressed with the knowledge of the room. I mean, thinking about the interactive sessions that we go through and the presentations that were made and how thorough and thoughtful they were, you know, I mean, they did a great job.

Yeah. Elisa Rip here. And Brian, Rip here. I like big lots, and I cannot lie. So here, this is, like, on the. On the Saturday interactive session that was, like, the winning headline. It was awesome.

I love that little sir mix a lot.

Sir mix a lot. Yeah. Yeah. But everybody else, you know, the depth of knowledge in there was, like, crazy. And it was almost like we saw in the surveys, the interactive sessions, we need to kind of, like, make tougher for them, and we need to kind of do that differently, because the flight school people need something even just a little bit tougher. It sounded like. Like it was too basic for them, which in past boot camps, we haven't had that issue. Like, people love the interactive sessions, and it reinforces all this information that they're learning throughout the weekend. But flight school, they're. They already kind of have it.

So now you're going to have interesting. You're going to have to balance that between people who are coming to boot camp with, you know, very little knowledge compared to people that have been through flight school. You know, will, will, you'll start to lose the people who are just beginning and that sort of thing.

Yeah, I mean, you know, maybe you just, you pair up with a flight school person and like, you know, at networking times, like, you just talk to them and I don't know, I don't know how you, how you bridge that because, you know, we only have so much time. We can't, right, kind of, you know, meet, you know, we can't be like at flight school level, if you just got done with the toolkit, you'll be drinking from a fire hose and your eyes will start bleeding, you know, so. But you know, I do think that there's always value. We've heard it from the flight school people. Like it's always valuable to reinforce the fundamentals. The fundamentals. The fundamentals because they start getting into the weeds as they start growing their businesses and building the systems and automation. So one of the overarching questions that we kept seeing time and time again with the Grill the Geeks module where our business expenses, like, what are your business expenses? Like, yeah, I see how you know the gross numbers, but what are the net numbers in this business? So Eric Peterson, when you first started out, like, what were your biggest expenses?

When I first started, I mean, probably mailing and it probably is still one of the larger expenses today. You know, I mean, I think what a lot of people kind of begin to worry about or get, get cautious about in our business is that we use a whole lot of different subscription based services. You know, whether that's, you know, your lob for your mailings or you're using, you know, the various land sites or land Moto or you've got ConvertKit or Mailchimp or. I mean there's so many different arenas where, you know, we have to basically pay to play. Right. And those add up. So I think early on it gets a little bit hard to make some of those decisions as to which ones to use and which ones to wait on and things like that. But, but yeah, I mean, I think mailing tends to be one of the biggest expenses, but it's also, you know, one of the most important things. And on the marketing side, you know, we have lots of kind of small subscription fees for different pieces we use to, to be able to post to those Craigslist accounts.

Right.

So.

Right. So looking at your numbers, I mean, what are you like net 3%, you know.

Yeah, I don't.

40%.

I don't have a good answer for that right now. I don't have a. I don't have that in a way I can, I can give you an idea.

I can say because usually like an average company, like rents the biggest expense, right.

I can say that Outside of my VA's right now, my current monthly expenses are probably around 1700 bucks with all my subscriptions and mailing. So you know, I don't know what that works out to on a, on a net basis, but at least it's figure to look at.

No, I think that's a good, a good figure. How about you? Barren land, Aaron.

Expense wise, at the beginning it was definitely, you know, the mailing and the acquisition of the land itself. Now, you know, obviously land acquisition is still pretty big expense, if you really want to call it that. I don't know if you really want to call it that though, because I would say now our really, our largest kind of expense is our still actually mailing and the, you know, my VA's, those are, those are my two big ones. I was just, I pulled up my books here. Cost of goods sold, which is, you know, gonna be the land for the most part, maybe a little bit for paying back taxes when you purchase the land. That sort of thing. That's pretty big too. But that's, I mean that's the land. So that's, you know, I don't know, like Eric, I'm not really sure on, you know, percent wise. I don't have really that that information broke down. So. But, but yeah, I think, you know, we do have a lot of, you know, subscriptions and stuff. So VA's, the, the cost of goods sold and software as a service are, you know, what you're really looking at now depending on how much, how many boot camps you do, continuing ed and or travel can get up there from time to time. But you know, it, you can control that whether you go or not.

So that's an expense. Barely. Aaron. That's a huge investment. That's a 10x ROI. I know education is a great, you know, great investment, but I get it. I get it for sure. How about you, Tate?

You know, it's a good question.

I just want to tell everybody I stole Tate's name for his office now because I've. Now the two of us are working out of the Garage Mahal office. The Garage Mahal. I love that. I've got incense burning. I've got chicken tikka masala over Here, I mean, it's the garage Mahal.

Have you set up your zen den area, though?

No, no, I have not set up the zen den area.

You need to set up the zen den area. That. That completes the garage Mahal. Right, but I will, I will.

That's.

Yeah, it's a must have. It's a must have.

Yeah.

And it'll definitely increase productivity. I guarantee it. 10 exit.

Okay. I'm in it. I'm doing it.

So my business is that a beanbag and some curtains or beanbag. Maybe you want to have a little bonsai plant going on, a nice tranquil area with. I don't know, I'm gonna get like.

One of those little rock waterfalls.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Definitely a waterfall. Lots of plants. Plants, you know, calming colors. I think we could all take a page out of Scott's book and get some lights. You know those lights he has that change colors?

Yeah, yeah. Maybe that's the Phillips hue lights.

Yeah, maybe we need those in our zen den.

It's not a bad idea.

Oh, wait, yeah. Some of them play music.

Are we even talking about zen den? What are we talking about right now?

No, no, we're talking about your expenses. What's your biggest expense?

Well, I mean, the zen den doesn't cost. No, I'm kidding. My biggest expense would be mailing still. You know, we were mailing around a thousand offers a month. And I'm set up through a plan on lob that I think it costs $800 monthly. But I don't even view it as an expense anymore, Mark, because I just know that it's something that has to happen in order for the business to grow. And all I need to do is get one deal out of that, and I'm going to make my money back. Right. My VAs are expensive.

Yeah, yeah, I think. Yeah. I mean, I think the answer is for everybody to go through Scott Todd's accounting course where he kind of walks you through this profit first method of. Here's what he allocates to reinvestment. Here's what he allocates to fixed expenses which are going to be your mailing. Right. Everyone's going to have to have some type of Internet connection. Right. But otherwise, like, there'll be other variable expenses. Like, you know, if you do. If you've got more than two notes, you might have a Geek Pay subscription of 49 bucks a month.

You should have.

Yeah, but that's automating it that you. Now you're not. You're saving yourself time and actually geek pay. If you do it right, it's a profit center. So that's not even an expense. But if you have, let's say, you know, convertkit, right, or aweber, that would be a monthly expense. So your SaaS expenses could, you know, get up there in the beginning and then you've got to figure out your owner's pay so you can take money out of the business as well and then profit.

Another expense could be simply requesting deeds from the county. Right. That's $5 here, $5 there. And depending on the volume that you're doing, that can add up and it's something people forget. But I don't know, it's a mindset, right? If you go into it knowing that, yeah, I'm going to have to spend a little bit of money, it's still cheaper than closing through title. But ultimately it'll be in my best interest, I'm okay doing it. In fact, I'm looking for ways to simplify my life. And if that means another subscription, bring it on. Right. I've got no problem with it.

Yeah. I mean, what's great about this business is that it has such high margins, such really low fixed overhead because you can do it from anywhere in the world. You need an inexpensive laptop, you need an Internet connection, and really that's about it. You don't want to mail, you don't have to mail. You go buy wholesale deals, right. If you didn't want to. So there's lots of ways to do it, but I think ultimately you need to kind of like look at it from a profit first perspective for long term planning. But I'm like, tate, now I'm like, I'll buy almost anything that'll save me time. I can always make more money. I can't get more time. And what's interesting is like you look at a note like, I was having a conversation last night with my buddy who's like sort of in the Mr. Money mustache mode of just like having like no expenses in his life, right. Like he wants to pay off his house as fast as possible. He wants to have like, you know, no car and like no expenses. I'm like, man, my customers who are paying on my notes for my land, they pay everything in my life. I don't pay for cable. John smith, who's paying 199 bucks a month for this five acre parcel is paying my cable bill. And so once you have that kind of in a good place, you see things kind of differently. Does that make sense or am I just rambling? Nope.

Perfect sense.

Eric's like, zippy the Lippy. Let's get to tips of the week. So that brings us to tips of the week. And Eric, what's your tip of the week? Oh, by. Oh, before I go to the tips of the week, Philip Ma had a great suggestion at boot camp. He's like, no more tips of the week. No more new tips of the week. It's too many. It's overwhelming. I'm in the car and. And there's five or six tips of the week. I can't even write them down fast enough. I'm overwhelmed enough. So I think we should reinforce our favorite tips and stop giving all these tips and maybe once a month give a new tip of the week. If you disagree with this, email us@supportthelandgeek.com with the subject line, you know, new tips, please. Okay, Eric, what's a. If you say jot not pro, man, what's a favorite tip?

Actually, I think our theme this week is going to be quotes. So I am not going to bring back an old tip. However, I'll be prepared for that next week. Jot not pro. Okay, but, so my quote today is, it is better to conquer yourself than to win a thousand battles. Then victory is yours. So to me, you know that, that speaks to just establishing good habits, right? So, you know, conquering the battle of distractions and, you know, all the other things we have going on and establishing good habits that enable us to make progress in our businesses. So that's what I got today.

I love it. I love it. Bear land. Aaron, what's your tip of the week? A wise quote.

Well, first, first I have to tell everybody that after my irreverence towards Mark last week, I used his tip of the week, which was this, the unsubscribe robot on particularly unruly email account I've had since college. And I would get about 20 emails a day in there, mostly junk. It would become my. My junk mailbox. And I started using that and now there's like, crickets in just a week. So it's. I, I think I've recovered a mailbox that is now usable for, for good stuff. So kudos, Mark.

Thank you, thank you. I really, you know what? I really appreciate it because so often I get mocked and rarely does anyone come back and be like, you know what? That little tip was actually useful. So thank you. I appreciate it. It's too bad Mike Zaino's not on this podcast.

I know, I know. They needed to hear.

He's usually the one doing the Mocking. Hey, mock. Great tip last week.

Yeah.

Really, really wasted two hours of my life.

Thanks.

By the way, everyone in my. I apologize to everyone in Massachusetts.

Okay, so my quote, it was actually something from Reader's Digest. A lady, Laura Vanderkom, who wrote Mosaic and 168 Hours, she had this little thing on there on time management. And this is the quote. I once interviewed a woman named Teresa Daytner, who owns a construction company and has six kids, including twins. She told me that she never tells herself, I don't have time. Instead, she says, it's not a priority. I could say, I don't have time to make handmade Valentine's for my children's classmates, but if you offered me $100,000, do it quickly, since that's not going to happen, I can acknowledge that this is a matter of priority, not time. So I thought that was really useful because a lot of things that we do, we say, I don't have time to do that. Well, it's really just a matter of priorities. So get your priorities. Decide what they are.

You.

You know, and we talked about it in a previous podcast about the 12 week year and the one thing and, you know, getting the priorities right in your life or in your business, and then decide what you're going to give your time to, because you do have time. You just have priorities. So that was my quote.

Great quote. I love it. I love it. Tate wants to, like, jump on you. Carolina. Aaron, but are you gonna do it? Tate, give it. Tate, are you gonna attack the quote?

No, I actually like that quote. I think it's really true. I think that we can do anything we want to do. It's just whether or not we want to do it right. You know, I kind of have a mindset approach to today's tip of the week. And it's the mind is everything. What you think you become. Right. That plays in perfectly to what kind of everyone said thus far. And if you want to become something, you know, start telling yourself that you're that way. You know, start telling yourself that you can do anything, and I guarantee that success will follow. I know it. So that's kind of my tip, and I'm feeling that way after Bootcamp. There's some changes that I want to make and some things that I want to do better. And it's not that it's too difficult or it's too time consuming. It's just I need to do it. And it starts up, up here, up top. Right. Mindset shift.

Yeah, I love that. I love that my tip of the week is going to be from Mark Manson, the subtle art of not giving an F. And in there he talks about most people wait for, like, inspiration, then motivation and then taking action. And he's like, that's not really how things work. Because really it's action leads to inspiration, which leads to motivation. So my tip of the week is take action now and give yourself. Set a timer, five minutes. Taking action, right? Like, I can imagine Eric Peterson's like, okay, I want to edit my website. But when he starts thinking about all the things he has to do, he's like, I don't want to do it. And he procrastinates, right? Where if he just like, okay, I'm going to take action just on the header. Only going to work on the header. Once he starts taking action, it leads to an inspiration like, oh, wait, that only took a minute. Now I can see this little sidebar here. Like, I'll work on that. And that leads the inspiration and motivation and becomes, you know, an interesting thing. So I would say start with the action and the inspiration, the motivation to follow. Don't wait to when you feel like doing it, because it ain't gonna happen. Right? Tim Ferriss talked about this guy who wrote like 57 novels. He's like, All I write is 200 crappy words a day. And next thing you know, it like, leads to, you know, beautiful, prolific novels. So you like that? Tip of the week? Yeah. No mocking Tate?

No, you're good.

All right, man. Well, I want to thank all the listeners. Want to remind everybody that today's podcast is sponsored by GeekPay IO, the only set it and forget it system to get paid automatically. Notifications automated. Can always make more money. Can't get more time. It's going to save you so much time. It eliminates all the headaches of collections, down payments. It is a true set it and forget it system. You can log in, your borrowers can log in, and it eliminates those two annoying headaches I used to always have. Hey, Mark, how to make a prepayment this month. They can do it. And also, hey, Mark, what's my current balance? They can do it and see is a phenomenal tool. GeekPay IO. And you know, please subscribe rate, review the podcast. It's all we ask. Three little favors. Subscribe rate and view the podcast. Send us a screenshot of your review. To support TheLangic.com we're gonna send you for free our $97 passive income launch kit. So thanks everybody. Guys, we're gonna try to do this.

Yep.

Actually. Hey, Mark, before we end, we should once again plug Scott's accounting for land investors webinar. That's coming up. Yeah, I took it last year, and it was amazing. I'm taking it again this year for the updates. If you haven't. If you haven't considered thought, or if you're on the edge, man, you need to do it. I got my book straightened out, you know, because of that program. I can talk to my accountant at a much higher level on my books in this business. It's just, you know, an amazing. An amazing program he's put together, and I can't say enough good things about it.

Yeah, I think if you go to scotttodd.net accounting, you can register for that. And I agree, especially the people that are sort of fuzzy about the actual expenses involved in this business. You can see how you can account for everything and what it's really looking like on a sort of Scott's profit first system. So that's a great plug. So scotttodd.net forward/accounting, I believe. Anything else? No. Eric and I need to go take a nap. One, two, three. Let freedom ring. Oh, my gosh.

Can we delete that?

We didn't have Scott counting us off. I don't know.

I know. I have a feeling we just lost a bunch of listeners for next week.

We need a metronome.

You know, it was really good at the end of boot camp, though, when we did it.

No, it was great. It was great. You know, the attendees do it.

You know, for how musically talented Eric is, he should have recorded it and had it plug in.

And I love when Mike Zano's at dinner is like. He's like everything. Eric's like, I'm playing my guitar.

I just sold 10 properties.

I just sold 10 properties. I'm just playing my guitar.

Where's Mike when we need him?

We're not doing that justice.

How about. How about Damian Lupo? Who wants to be Damian Lupo? That guy's like, oh, yeah, I was just in Japan, and the guy's like, the sushi chef's like, do you want fresh sushi? And like, he's like a real live shrimp. He chops the head off, chops the tail off, puts it on rice. Like the things. Like, the head's still moving. Damian Lupo is the most interesting man in the world. I never get tired of that guy's stories.

No, his stories are apt.

Who.

Who was he playing poker with the other night? Remember?

Some celebrity.

Yeah, he Was like, oh, yeah, it was for charity, so it's no big deal.

Yeah. Yeah. Like, he's like these endless cool stories. It's like, oh, yeah. Hanging out in Madagascar, like, what?

The most interesting man in the world, hands down.

Yeah, it's. Yeah. I mean, whatever. The only thing that, like, you know, gets me to sleep at night is knowing that I have three children. He has zero. My car. I win. Damien, while you're out doing, like, safari or, you know, some other crazy adventure, I get to, you know, have my teenagers completely ignore me. Ha. I win.

Hey, I know that.

Yeah. Yeah. Damian, how many eye rolls did you get today? Oh, that's right. Zero. Tate, you got this to look forward to. So do you, Eric.

You're selling me on it.

Eye rolls. You know what, though? They are fun. I have to say. Like, they are really fun. When they get to teenage years, it's really different.

Yeah, you have a lot better conversations with them. You know, you kind of get into that adult level, and you get to help them experience life and guide them at an adult kind of level. And it's. The conversations are. Make it definitely worth it, you know, and then. Then you go into dad mode and say something and get the eye roll. But it's all worth it.

Yeah, it really. It really is. It's. It's great. What are you gonna say, Eric?

I was just saying I have the eye rolls to look forward to.

Oh.

Yeah.

I mean, yeah, that's it. But that's normal. Like, when you're a teenager, you have to rebel. Like, it's otherwise. Like, why. Why would they ever leave the house? Right? Like, it's like, part of development, you know, oh, Mom's gonna do my laundry and make me. You know, all this food. It's like. It's like they're too comfortable. Like, they have to rebel. Otherwise they can't leave the nest. So I love it. I'm like, I only have to deal with this for another two years. That's great. So awesome. All right, well, thanks, guys. Alrighty. See you next week.

Thanks.