Talking Temptation: Buying Land in Fun and Exotic Locations

Hey, it's Mark Podolski at the Land Geek with your favorite niche real estate website, thelandgeek.com and on this week's Roundtable podcast, we have almost all the usual suspects. We've got the Zen master, Breathe in, the mailing, Breathe out, the marketing, Mike Zano. Mike, how are you doing?

Wonderful. Thanks for asking.

Well, we'll talk about this later, but I've got some crazy story for you, Mike. Okay, we've got the technician, Eric Peterson. Eric, how are you?

I'm well. Happy to be here.

Mark.

It's great to see you. I love it when you call me Big Papa. Tate Litchfield from Sin City. What's going on?

It's all good, man. All good. Happy to be on the show.

Good to see you. And last but not least, you know you love him. The brain, the professor, your flight school Sherpa, Scott Todd. Scott Todd.net, landmodo.com, learn anything about anything. Investorninjas.com Scott Todd. How are you, Mark?

I'm great.

How are you?

I'm great. I'm great. Let's just skip the pleasantries and get right into it. I bet if I had to guess in the past, let's say 24 months, maybe 36 months because of COVID when you guys are on some kind of vacation or you're at a dinner party, you're talking to a friend somebody mentioned to you when you told them, oh, you buy and sell raw land. Oh, have you guys ever bought in xyz? Let's just throw out some cool spots. Costa Rica, Mexico, Belize, Canada. Right. Where else would somebody mention at a party, oh, would you buy land?

Australia.

Australia.

So any island.

Any island. Let's delve deep into this topic. And because he loves going first and is an avid traveler, let's start with the Zen master, Mike Zano. Mike Zano, have you ever considered buying internationally? And if so, would you buy internationally?

Most recently, we were in Aruba, and I'll tell you, I'd like to buy some land there. I was questioning some of the people. We were walking on the beach one night. We happened to come across a group of people, and one guy ran the casino. A couple people own restaurants, and there was a realtor there. So we were talking to them. I guess they were indicating that we, as Americans could do it. And so I do love it there, but I don't think about buying it in a sense of buying it and flipping it. I wouldn't mind to have a piece of it for myself. So there's one I, I've had an opportunity in the past to do some investing in Mexico and I did look into it a little bit, but it just started to get layered upon. Layered upon, layered. It was like. And then they were like some local tribes involved that you had, and it was just like, it was just. So the quickly changed my mind and I, and I very quickly retreated back to the USA and just continue to do business. So, I mean, I love the idea. I think that there's definitely some, some good money to be made there. It's sort of, to me, like a unique niche. Like, you know, we always look at the low lying fruit when we buy land. We don't look for people that have properties in probate or there's issues like that. We want the simple. One person owns it or two people, they're alive. But if you want to go the probate route and separate yourself from other investors and learn all about that, I'm sure you get a lot of deals, but we usually like the quick and efficient deal. So I guess I'm relating that to the complexities of investing overseas or in another country. So although I've looked at it, I quickly retreated due to the perceived complexities. And maybe that's me not being very, I don't know, dedicated to it, but there's so much money to be made here and what we do that I'm content right now.

Okay, okay. That was a thorough answer. And there's something about you saying retreating to the US that made me think of, you know, your Boston roots, of, you know, retreat.

I'm missing the pen. I must be slow on the curve today, no?

The American Revolution, like we had to retreat.

Oh, I see what you're saying. Yes, yes, yes, yes.

Yeah.

Okay, I'm sorry.

I know there's a Paul Revere joke in there somewhere. I just don't have it.

Yeah, the land investors are coming. I don't know.

There it is. There it is. All right, Eric the Technician Peterson, have you ever been tempted and have you ever bought land internationally? Would you ever buy land internationally?

Yeah, I don't know. I think I'm kind of with Mike on this one. It's, it's attractive, right, because the world's big, you know, it's so much more than the United States, but what we're able to do right here in our own country is, I mean, for me right now, honestly, it's, it's more than enough. Like, we've got plenty of land to buy. We've got plenty of land to sell. So, you know, I'm not going to say that they're going to Canada, going to Mexico, going to some other country would be a bad decision. But certainly it's. It's just a different process.

Right.

There's going to be different legal issues you're going to encounter. You know, maybe. Maybe you can't do a land contract in Canada or in Mexico or wherever. Maybe, you know, there's different issues with how you take ownership of the property and so on and so forth. So there's most definitely a big learning curve there, almost to the extent of kind of starting over in land.

Right.

Like in this new place. But I do think that for the right person that wants to go down that path and invest the time to. To learn and kind of work through all that stuff, you could certainly carve out a very reasonable niche, I'm sure. But it just hasn't been something I've gone after because I think, like I said, I think we've got plenty of land here, and everything is. Is working well under that strategy. So, you know, maybe someday in the future that'll change. But for now, I'm just sticking with the U.S. okay.

All right. I love it when they call me Big Papa Tate Litchfield. Ever been tempted?

All the time. All the time. You know, I like to travel, and like you said, every time I come back from these trips, I think it's pretty normal. I mean, you go spend a week in Hawaii, and by the end of that week, you're going to be on Zillow, right? You're going to be looking at, hey, what can I buy? What can I afford out here? And if you're looking in that state, you're going to be disappointed, regardless of where you're visiting from, because your dollar doesn't go very far. But you start looking at Mexico, being close to the border there. We spent a lot of time, a lot of summers down there, and I still go down there frequently with my family, and we enjoy vacationing. It's a slower pace of life. And every single time we're down there, I come home and I think, I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. Maybe not land. You know, I wouldn't be necessarily the same approach that I have with the properties that we own in the United States, but I think to myself, yeah, I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this. And I haven't said that I won't do it. It's just every time it comes down to Actually pulling the trigger, something else comes up, and I realized that, you know, maybe I just want to rent a place or stay in the nice hotels and do that twice a year instead of actually owning something. So I like to move around, and that's kind of been my philosophy on it. But to say that I'm not interested would be a lie. Like Eric and like Mike, I don't know what I'm doing when it comes to international properties. And I try to stay in my lane. And if I were to try to apply this business model to something that, you know, goes into a different country, I need help. And so for that, I'd need to do some research, and I'd have to expand my knowledge and my education. And so right now, as far as looking to maybe branch out into a new country for my business purposes, the answer is I'd love to, but I don't see it ever happening, because we are experts at one thing, and that's staying in our lane, doing what we do really well.

I really love that phrase, too. Staying in your lane. In fact, if I ever mentioned investing outside of my expertise, we just. I wish I have a bumper sticker or something on my desk to just scream at me, stay in your lane.

Yeah, we got to put the blinders on.

Put the blinders on, because it makes so much sense, but we're so easily distracted. And I 100% agree with you. And there's really no advantage. Typically. Like, if we're looking at property in Mexico, wouldn't the locals have a huge advantage? Like, why are we seeing that deal?

It's just complexity. Right. Does our process work down there?

Right. Right.

The one thing that we've become really good at is following a recipe. Right. Doing things in a repetitive way, motion. And the moment we start to introduce complexity, we. We start to introduce new variables. That system will break. And if that system breaks, you know what that means? Means I got to do more work. And am I willing to do more work simply to say that I own land in a different country, or should I just stay in my lane and do what I do that doesn't break, that doesn't have excitement or any sort of surprises attached to it? So for the most part, I'm staying put.

Yeah. And by the way, we might need to help Scott Todd understand what it means to stay in your lane. He's probably like, what is this thing you're talking about a lane? So as a pilot, she would just say, you know, Scott, you need to.

Stay in your airspace, your designated altitude.

Yeah, Scott, you stay in your designated altitude, but, you know, being in the exotic area, you're almost in a foreign country in Florida. What are you tempted ever.

A foreign country? You know, like, I get lots of requests on through land Moto for like, are you guys in Canada? Can I do this? And can I owner finance land in wherever? And I'm not talking about, like, can you. Can you do what we do. I'm talking about people that are looking for land in other countries, Europe and all this other stuff. And I think that what everybody else said on here is relevant because.

Yeah.

I mean, you go somewhere and you're like, oh, it'd be kind of cool to own some land here. I mean, I went to Mexico once, and was it Cozumel? I'm on Cozumel there, and we're driving, and I'm looking at all this open land there, and I'm wondering, who owns this land, right? Like, how come it's not developed? It's all vacant land? What gives? Like, this is. This is what we do. And then you think about it. You're like, all right, well, then I got to go find the people, and I got to create systems for all that stuff. And my systems work well here. And you know what? I got all this land in America I can deal with. And so you take the path of least resistance. And would I make more money doing Cozumel? I don't know.

Right?

It's just like, am I struggling with what I'm doing here? I'm not. So why shake it up? And, Mark, I think that that's also one of the things that you and I and I know, Tate, we're always getting offers for, hey, partner with me on this multifamily deal or put money in for multifamily. And then I look at the yields, and I'm like, yeah, I'm not loving it, right? Like, you know, someone's like, oh, you're gonna make, you know, 20%, you know, return on your money, cash on cash. And I'm like, okay. Like, aren't you impressed? I'm like, not. Not really. You know, we had. You and I were on a call once where a guy's like, you know, we make 30%. We'll pay you 30%. And we're like, okay. I mean, you know, I can do 70 over here or 30 with you. Which one do I want to do? So I think that if you have something that works, why try to change it up if it's not working or if it's dying? Well, maybe look for something different. But if what you're doing is working for you, stay in your lane.

Stay in your lane. Stay in your airspace. Stay at your defined altitude. It's true. And I think that if you're listening to this, you've got to understand how big the US Land market is. I mean, it's massive. It's just billions of acres. In the same way that if you invest in the stock market, there's so many US Companies, why wouldn't you invest in Starbucks if you're a coffee drinker, why would you start looking at what's the hottest coffee place in China if you're not always in China, observing the market, so to speak? Well, you could say, you could make lots of arguments for it. We can make lots of arguments why raw land would be a great investment in some of these more exotic areas. But at the end of the day, we're just not there all the time. We don't know the players, we don't know the laws. We don't know the interests. And do I want to create another job for myself, learning all of it when I've already created enough systems and processes to buy in the United States, which has, as of right now, as of this recording, a stable government. So we're not taking government risk, legal risk, all those types of things.

Mark, 1.9 million. You know what that is?

What?

Billions, right? 1.9 billion. Apologize. 1.9 billion.

The big number, I would assume that is the debt of this country per.

Second is the acreage in the continental United States.

Oh, okay.

That's 1.9 billion acres. So trust me, we can't buy it all. And only about 6% of America is developed, by the way, guys. 6%. So I'll tell you, 6% of the land is raw land. What does that tell you? I'm sorry, Is developed land, right? So 94% is raw land, is vacant land in this country. That's a lot of vacant land.

Guys, even Zano cannot buy all that land. Like, at some point, he would run out of money.

That's phenomenal. That mean that when people ask us, oh, are we gonna buy all the land? You know, are you afraid? We train people. They billions. No way.

Yeah. It's impossible. Yeah, absolutely. I was on a call the other day. I've never done this before, but I got invited to speak at intel virtually. And so there's a zoom call with a bunch of intel engineers who knew nothing about raw land. And I just kind of went through the model, like, do I Have the best passive income model or do we have the best passive income model? I'm like, put in the chat. And I'm like, anyone disagree? It's Scott's point. No one did. And so I was kind of shocked that no one was like, well, what about something like buying in the Metaverse? Which, by the way, I think that could be a roundtable podcast. As far as buying in the Metaverse, what do you guys think? Can we do that next time?

Terrible investment. We already did something like that.

Stand in my lane.

What's that?

Didn't we talk about that one time?

Yeah, we talked about something like that.

I'm staying in my lane.

Yeah, we've already nixed that topic. That's a no deal.

It's not good. I mean, it could be an interesting topic, especially. Who here's got an Oculus? Do you guys have an Oculus? Nope. Oh, that hurt.

Mark's driving over the cliff, man. He really is.

Just ask Tate to remind you. There it is.

I mean, I prefer to stay in my lane instead of the, you know.

No, you got no slap.

I got the no slap. So I want to go now and transition to Scott Todd for his tip of the week. A website, a resource, a book, something else actionable for the autopasses and income listeners to go improve their businesses, improve their lives. But before he does that, let's just give a shout out to Flight School, who is our sponsor this week. Learn to start investing in raw, undeveloped land. Start building a passive income with as little as $1,000. Go up that mountain of land, investing quickly, safely, efficiently with Scott Todd. And as your Sherpa who's done it thousands of times. Oh, yeah, and that tuition ain't going to cost you nothing. Guaranteed you're going to make it back 180 days or less. Just show us your work. Learn more. Go to the landgeek.com training. Thelandgeek.com training. Scott Todd. What's your tip of the week? No, we can't hear you, Scott. You're on mute.

That's by design.

I think he's.

And that's how you do it, guys.

For those of you listening, Scott literally put himself on mute and gave a worded tip of the week and then put himself off of mute. It's much funnier on video.

Okay, actually, I'll pull it out now. So, look, do yourself a favor. This is. This is going to sound very simple when I say it, and you're going to be like, well, yeah, no, duh. But you know what? In the long term, it really, really is hard. It's a hard thing to do. And I'm speaking from experience, personally. I know other people on this call, the coaches would agree with me. And that is stay laser focused on what you're doing. You got to tune out the shiny object syndrome. It's always going to be there. You're going to hear people say, oh, man, I'm selling properties right and left. Okay. I used to do that on the, on the, the Mastermind call, right, that Tate runs every Wednesday for the coaching clients. I'd hear people say, oh, man, I sold six properties this week. And I'm like, well, where are they? You know? And so then you get shiny object syndrome even on the areas that you're working and you start to see like other people are having success and maybe you've had a terrible run. I mean, there was about six week period back a while ago where I made no sales. I'm like, I'm talking about, like in 2015, I was like, depressed. Like everybody else around me was making sales and I'm thinking like, oh, I'm in the wrong area. I went a six week stretch with no sales at all. I was embarrassed. I felt defeated, all of these things. And you know what? I just kept marketing. I'm like, I can't control this. All I can control is my marketing. So I just kept marketing. And then what happened was they just popped out of something. Just popped. And next thing you know, I'm pulling out like, you know, 10 sales in a week. It's like, wow, where, where have all you people been? So don't get discouraged. Stay focused on your strategy. I'm not saying that you shouldn't. Like, if something's not working, try to figure out what's not working, but not major changes. And just stay true to what you're trying to do. And when you do that, everything will pop. Just trust the process, trust what you're doing and have faith. And if you're going to make changes, small tweaks, that's all you gotta do.

It's a great tip of the week and I think this has been a very valuable roundtable podcast. I want to thank the listeners and remind them the only way that we're going to be able to cajole Scott Todd to continue giving out tips of the week is if you do those three favors. Follow rate, Review the podcast, Send us a screenshot of that review. Supportlantic.com, gonna send you for free a signed copy of Dirt Rich. So please do it. It really helps us out. So anyways, to end, Mike Zano, just want you to know I'm loving doing the cold plunge. Three minutes? Actually, no. Seven minutes total in 39 degrees.

Nice.

It was fantastic. I felt great.

Afterwards you go in hot water after you just get out and be done.

So I do, I do. I start in the sauna, then I cold plunge. After the cold plunge, I go to the hot tub. After the hot tub, about six minutes and then I end with about three minutes in the cold plunge.

So do you have the ice? Did you get the one that you can digest the temperature of the water or do you have to put ice in it?

No, Eric Peterson told me I should not do it and I actually go to a place here and they have all the equipment so I don't have to.

Oh, even better.

Yeah, yeah. Because they've got the infrared sauna, they've got the hot tub. For those of you in Phoenix, it's called Optimize.

That's awesome.

It's awesome. It's really cool.

Now I'm jealous. You got the whole. Everything laid out for you in sequence.

Yeah. And so when you come to visit, we'll. We'll do it. I don't think they have it in Tampa, actually. Anything like that. It's not, it's not real cutting edge there. You might be able to find some, some warm gator filled water, but nothing real cold.

That's awesome.

All right, are we ready to do this? 1, 2, 3, let's freedom. Thanks, everybody.

Thanks for listening to the Art of Passive Income podcast. Are you ready to learn how you can start building a passive income without renters, rehabs, renovations or rodents? Schedule a free consultation at at thelandgeek.com forward/training. Let freedom ring.