Student Success—Making The Most Of Time Freedom

Hey, it's Mark Podolski, the Land Geek, with your favorite niche real estate website, www.thelandgeek.com. and we are super excited for our guest today because he is a former Land Geek client and a current Land Geek investor, and he's doing something else. But before we talk to our guest, I'd be remiss. I didn't properly introduce my co hosts. You know him, you love him. Scott. Todd. Scott todd.netlandmodo.com if you're not automating your Craigslist and your facing Facebook postings, posting domination.com thelandgeek and he's dropping knowledge bombs. Knowledge bombs, baby. Investor ninjas.com check it out. Learn everything you want to learn. Scott. Todd. How are you, Mark?

I'm great.

How are you?

I'm great. I'm great. Just a little reminder. Today's podcast is sponsored by flight school. Learn how to take your land investing to the next level. Schedule a call, go to landgeek.com training Today's guest is Kyle Knapp. If you don't know about Kyle, Kyle came to us in his. How old are you, Kyle? You're, like, super young.

25. Just turned 25.

He started at 25, got into coaching. And how long did it take for you to quit your job?

I would say a year. Just about a year.

A year. Okay. And now you're still doing your land investing. Tell us your last deal.

I just had a nice wholesale deal this morning. Low return, only 100%. But I profited $2,500 off it. So it was a pretty nice quick.

I love when everybody's like, it's a low return, only 100%. I know we won't make fun of that return, Kyle.

All right, thanks.

So, Kyle, so you're making all this money, but most importantly, I would argue you've gained a lot of time. So kind of walk us through your journey and what your day's like now and what are you doing with yourself?

Yeah. So when I first started, I was a waiter for a local Olive Garden, struggling to get by and stumbled upon you and your coaching system. I went through coaching, and it was an amazing experience. I think halfway through, I was able to quit my job and do this full time. I work closely with Tate. He was a huge help. Turned me on to wholesaling. Talked a little with Mike Zaino about that as well. That's really what kicked it off for me. And now I'm just making passive income and have everything automated with your system. And it's amazing. I have so much time on my hands now.

So how many hours a week do you work in land?

I try to at least commit about two hours a day. So about 14 hours a week. Probably 10 to 14.

10 to 14.

And that's really just phone calls and answering some important emails and that's really about it. Some new market research.

Phenomenal. Phenomenal. So now what are you doing with this extra time?

So I like to be busy. I don't like having all the free time and all of my friends are working full time jobs. So I don't really have anything to do when I have this free time. So I decided to start another business in web development and programming. Someone told me to learn to code. I think I heard it somewhere. So I learned how. And there was a problem on my mind with land investors paying a ton of money for these websites or paying a service fee for a monthly fee for their websites or just having not so good of a website and there's no real good template out there for a good land investing website. So I decided to jump in and build a nice land investor website template as a side project. And it turned out to be really nice and we have an interest for them.

Nice, nice. Scott, Todd, what are your thoughts?

You know Mark, that's the cool thing is like we, you go through this process like, you know, like I know Kyle was one of them, I was one of them. Man, you're like, you're doing your day job, right? Like you're, you're like, how do I get out of this thing? How do I get out of this day job? And then you think like man, when I get out of this day, when I get out of this day job, I'm not going to do anything. Like anything. I'm just going to like be a bum. And that's cool for like maybe, I don't know, the first couple months, maybe that long. I don't know. Like you did it, Mark. Like Kyle did it, I did it and there's other people did. And then all of a sudden what happens is you start to realize exactly what Kyle just said is, man, all of a sudden I got all this free time on my hands and what am I going to do with the free time? Well then you start to work on, you know, like these side projects, these things that you know that they, they bring you joy in some aspect that it's not about the money. Right? Like we go to our day jobs and we work. You see what Kyle's doing there is he's Doing something that he loves, okay? For fun. And all of a sudden, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if he's got customers that need his services or not. It doesn't matter if it pays the bills, because all of a sudden his land business is paying the bills. He's just got a hobby, okay, that he can make more money on. And I think that's really what a lot of people miss out. And if Kyle. If Kyle really wanted to be smooth, what he could do is he could use the same principles that we taught him in the Landgate coaching to, like, begin to outsource that work. And then all of a sudden, he's onto his next project. So he's got this project and that project. The next thing you know, he's got more websites than I do.

I mean, let's not go crazy, Scott. I know, like, while you're talking, you probably just registered a new domain, but Kyle, you know, I know you know how to code and you know how to develop, but you really aren't doing the work right.

No, I have a. I have a partner that handles most of it. And we also. We outsource a ton to bas, and we use upwork and fiverr a ton as well. I work on all the updates to our sites, all the improvements we make. I write the code for all the cool features that we have and all of that. But for the most part, a lot of that is beginning to be automated as well. I know our marketing is. And we're working on a couple more things to be outsourced.

All right, let's just get into it. Convince me. Trevor Mock was on the podcast talking about investor carrot.com. these guys specialize in real estate websites. They've been doing it a while. Why? Why you know your service and not Investor Carrot or something similar?

All right, I'm going to start off by telling everyone you don't need a website. Definitely don't need one. If you're just starting off, you haven't done a deal yet. Don't build a website, don't buy a website. Just do what you guys teach, make a couple sales, and then once you're rolling and you have extra time and money, then. Then that's the time you're gonna want to get a website. And the main difference is between Carrot and Lead Propeller and all those guys is we. I don't believe. I believe in, like, monthly payments for certain services, but for a website, for something that you own that's yours. I don't like the monthly payments that they do, because you never really own your website. If you stop paying them, it's not yours, they'll take it away. And with us it's just a one time fee and it's yours for life. It's built custom to exactly the specifications you want. And it's very land specific, where the other ones can kind of be a little mixed in with real estate, housing and stuff like that.

So how is the website structured so that it is land specific? Can you give us some examples?

Yeah, absolutely. So when we build them, we have a specific area for your down payment, your monthly payments, a link to send you to geek pay where they can pay. Right there. It's all plug and play. We make easy custom fields in the back end. They specify what you're supposed to type in there, like property description, pictures of your land. You plug them right in and post some really nicely. We have a nice property detail sheet that says everything from does it have a well or sewer on the property all the way to the property address, elevation, all the way, all kinds of stuff. And we can customize that to exactly what each individual person wants on their website. And it's also the best thing is it's a custom website. We build it with WordPress's. It's a WordPress site, but it's built custom from scratch. So you actually use the WordPress back end, which makes it very user friendly when you're editing your site.

Very, very cool. So I could understand like, you know, is it a template? Because we don't, we wouldn't want everyone site to look the same. For example. It's very, very important to me that my site look way more beautiful than Eric Peterson's@landopia.com right. So how do you, how do you, how do you make sure, like if I hire you to build my site with the sole focus being just make it look better than Eric's, how do you guys do that?

So some things, some parts of it is a template. But the cool thing about coding and stuff like that is there's this thing called CSS and it can really change the color, the design, the layout. We really make every site look different. In the beginning. I wasn't really thinking of that. I thought, you know, let's make every listing page the same. My business partner actually told me that's probably a bad idea. And I mean, I agreed. We don't want every website to look the same. So we decided to go with a full custom design from the beginning. Every homepage is different. We usually go off the person's logo if you have one. Or we can give you a logo based on your business name. You pick the colors that you want to go with and we basically build you a custom website. You tell us what you think. If you like it, you like it. If you don't, redesign it for you an unlimited amount of times until you're satisfied. Each listing page can be different. We never use the same colors, we never use the same layout. Everyone's website is going to look different, but the main key features and details are going to be the same and easy to edit and customize.

Awesome. Scott. Todd.

You know, I think, I mean that's the thing is like, you know, like people like to do things themselves, right? Like we all like to do things ourselves. And you know when you're starting a business and that's what you're doing when you start a land investing business is you're starting a business, right? Like you're going from zero infrastructure to infrastructure needed. Well, the wrong time in my opinion, the wrong time to go worry about a website when you get going, right? Like too many people are worried about the logo. Oh, I got to make my logo look good. I got to tell you something like the logo is the last thing that people care about because they don't really care about your company being polished. What they care about is you being you. They want to work with individuals, not companies. That's why they shy away from the brokers and the big firms and whatever. They don't want to deal with a bank or a polished company. They want to deal with Bob down the street and you know, so once you get going like then you can try to learn all this stuff. You can try to learn all this stuff, how to code and everything. But why, why, why do that when you can just go to somebody, that one is a lot better at it than you are. And you know, like if you want to start to get polished, well great, go get polished. But in the beginning, don't even worry about getting polished until, man, until you've got some deal flow going and you've got some, some passive income coming in, that's the last thing I think you need to worry about. So then what you do is you go and you get, you get polished at the right time. But use somebody that knows what they're doing. Like you're not, unless you're a graphic artist. Like Eric is a graphic artist. Well man, he enjoys it. He's going to go do it. But I'm not a graphic artist and like Mark, I don't think you are either. For us to spend our time to try to figure something out, it's a train wreck. Let somebody else do it who's better at it than you are.

Scott, I can't even shop for myself. Like, if I. If I, like, go to my wife, like, what do you think of this shirt? She's like, no, I'm like. I, like. I've just given up essentially as far as anything aesthetic in my life. So it's great to have somebody.

You like it? You like this shirt?

I like the shirt. You pick that out? Yeah.

You want me to start picking you out some clothes?

Whatever. Christine picked that out. Don't.

No, no, no. I pick out all my own clothes. Swear, like, if you need me to help you, I can.

All right. Yeah, you know, next time. First of all, like, I don't. I don't. I don't like Tommy Bahama so much. It's like you're all about Tommy Bahama.

It's okay. We'll go to Nordstrom's. I'll find you to look.

Okay, fine.

Just don't tell your wife I did it, because I don't want her to hate me.

No, no, she'll be. She'll be so excited that she doesn't have to, you know, drag me around the mall with me complaining. So, Kyle, what I think is really the killer feature of your service that we haven't really even discussed is the fact it's a land investor that intimately knows the land business is working the land business that is also creating your website. So it's almost like the client doesn't have to explain to you what the important parts and features are of the website. In fact, you would know better than the newbies would. And I think that piece is so much more important than if I went to investor Carrot, let's say. Well, they don't know the land business. They know real estate, but they don't intimately know the land business. And they wouldn't know what's important, what's not important. It wouldn't convert the same way because you already know how to sell land. The big question, though, Kyle, is yes, now that we own our sites, it's a one time fee. But what about the hosting?

Yep. So the big thing is hosting. I've seen a lot of people have messaged me on Facebook asking me how much we charge for hosting, and a lot of people are overpaying by insane amounts. I've seen as high as $70 a month for their hosting packages, which is pretty insane for one website. We do the first year from the date we finish your development is completely free. We pay for the highest, fastest bluehost hosting package. So you know your site's gonna be fast, secure, backups every day. Nothing's ever gonna go wrong with it. Everything's updated automatically. And we're only charging, I believe, $25 a month for hosting starting the second year, which is, I think it's pretty affordable right now. I think carrot their cheapest package is $50 a month. I'm not sure if that includes hosting or not. I hope it does because it's pretty expensive to not own your site, but I think it's pretty affordable and a fair deal.

I do too. Scott. Todd, what do you think?

It's good.

It's good. So, Kyle, we're at that point in the podcast now where Scott and I are totally convinced in a custom website, as long as it looks nicer than Eric Peterson's.

Though, Mark, we do offer financing as well.

You can finance the website?

Absolutely.

Oh, my gosh, really?

Absolutely.

I've never heard of that. Scott, have you ever heard of maybe financing a website?

Look at what we taught him, Mark.

I'm a land investor. Land geek.

I'm so proud. Are you using Geek Pay to. To handle the payments?

I'm gonna set up some sort of a payment plan. We're gonna utilize Geek Pay and handle all the payments on there. We just need to set up ACH for auto payments, possibly. Or we might just go the route of stripe and just create some individual.

You can do both. You can do ach, and if the ACH fails, it'll hit stripe. Because why partner with stripe at 2.9% if you don't have to?

Absolutely.

ACH is cheap. So, Kyle, I think this has been a phenomenal podcast. Really informative, really helpful. I think for me, what's most gratifying is that you're giving back. You don't have to do this, but the fact that you're giving back to the community and providing a service that is not just better, but way cheaper is phenomenal. But we're still going to push you like every other guest for your tip of the week. A website, a resource, a book, something else actionable for the art of passive income listeners to improve their businesses, improve their lives. What have you got?

All right, so I'm going to suggest, since I did learn how to code myself, I would suggest doing what I did. Go to codeacademy.com it's completely free. You can learn the basics of coding, I would suggest HTML and CSS take about maybe four hours max and you'll have the basics of coding under your belt. And then you can actually speak with your developers and people that maybe you pay to write code for you or design things for you. And you could actually figure out if they know what they're talking about or if they're doing the right thing for you. Or maybe you just want to code for fun and design some things.

Odacademy.com I love it. My son actually does that because he's in robotics and has to learn how to code. But unfortunately for me, I've got to pay 40 bucks a month for the Pro package. But it's worth it. I do think software is like the new oil. It's really important for everybody to know some software development. Scott Todd, what's your tip of the week? Mark?

My tip is I think everybody needs to go check out this website Inc. Like, you know, ink, ink for all.com, inkforall.com it is AI for web content optimization. It's just for writers. You put your stuff in there and ink goes in there and massages it and gets it nice and and tight for your content, for Google, for all the stuff. Works with WordPress. Kind of what Kyle was talking about. Take a look at it, see if it. See if it has impact for you guys.

All right, I just downloaded it. Now I'm putting it on the Mac and not the WordPress plugin. I want to ask Kyle, how many plugins should you have? Because isn't it true that if you have too many plugins it slows the site down? Is that still a thing?

Plugins are huge. They can take up some space. You don't want to overload your WordPress site with plugins. The other thing is images. You wouldn't think it, but if you download full size images, it can really, really take up a lot of space and really slow your website down. You want to make sure you're uploading the right sized image. You should never have to go over 2000 by 2000.

That's really important for our business too because it is so image heavy as well.

Yeah, I mean you could have a lot. You could have anywhere from 5 to 30 images of your property. And if you think you got 50 properties, that's a pretty big amount of space on your website.

I think it would be cool if you have a.

Imagine how much space a platform like Lanmoto uses.

Yeah, you. I don't know how you guys do. You gotta be really careful.

Like there's almost 3,000 properties up there and the, the data usage is mind boggling. Like it, the way it expands every day, it's like, oh, man, it is incredible.

So Scott, how do you do it?

We keep, we keep working with the infrastructure team and to keep the web hosting going and growing.

You do an API with Kyle. So if I put my, my listing on my website, then it automatically goes to Lanmoto.

We actually have something that we're looking at. Maybe we should talk to Kyle. But we are looking at that where it would just link over and send it. So that. And also through LGPass.

Huh?

Yeah. I think in the future we could probably work something out where LGPass can send information right to your website and build a listing automatically for you. And then you could probably press a button and launch it right over to Landmodo as well.

Let's do that. I love that. Wow. Fantastic. Well, my tip of the week, as great as these tips are, guys, really going to be the one that moves the needle in your business when you're ready, like what Kyle said. And that is going to be queen cityweb.com queen cityweb.com we'll have a link to it and we'll also have in the future a special Land Geek promotional link as well, so you can get a discount. I beat up Kyle very, very hard as far as getting our people a great price on their website. I made him cry. I'm not proud of it. But he did buy into the fact that I said, look, charge retail for everybody else because all those investor care people that are not involved with Land Geek, they can pay full price. The Land Geek people, we got to give them some love. So he has agreed to do it. And of course, it was a very, you know, Kyle, I'm not fun to negotiate with, am I?

No, you're, you're, you're a tough negotiator.

You think, you think Tate's tough, right?

Well, I know where he gets it from now.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. So, but that's great. And queencityweb.com I want to remind the listeners that if you're getting value from the podcast, the three biggest favors you can do, it's so important to us, especially our fragile egos, is you got to subscribe, you got to rate, you got to review the podcast. Send us a screenshot of the review to supportlandgeek.com we're going to send you for free the $97 passive income launch kit. We're also going to add the new wholetailing course as well. How to double your money, 30 days or less. And we really appreciate that, Kyle. Nab. Are we good?

I think we're good. If anyone wants to reach out to me, you can contact me on Facebook as well. I'm always up to answer any questions anyone has.

Awesome. Awesome. Scott, Todd, Are we good?

We're good, Mark.

All right, are we ready to do this? One. One, two, three. Let freedom ring. Kyle's good. That's pretty good. Try was good. All right, Kyle, so what are you doing after this? Are you gonna do some more wholesale deals?

I am actually going to. I have to go record this deed. When I'm in the process of buying a nice property in Colorado, I think I'm gonna get a nice return on, but I gotta go to Panera Bread and get some lunch.

Oh, no. Don't say Panera around, Scott. Seriously. Oh, no. All right, well, thanks again, Kyle. And thanks again, listeners. We'll see everybody next time.