The 5 Land Investing Mistakes That Keep Beginners Stuck And Confused.

Hey, everybody. Welcome to Land Geek Nightcap. Tonight we're diving into the five biggest land investing mistakes that keep beginners stuck and confused and overwhelmed. So if you feel like you're spinning your wheels or you don't know how to get started, this one is for you. And if you're catching the replay, we live in the rerun. So if you're catching the replay, don't forget we go live every Tuesday night at 9pm Eastern on Facebook and YouTube. So jump in next time so you can ask questions live and hang out with us in real time. Fellas, good to be back.

Good to be back.

As always. We're joined by John Eight is Enough. Burnett. Handsome Rob. How are you, sir?

I'm doing great. Yeah, it's like mid-70s Idaho. I know, it's great. It's dry, no humidity. It's the perfect weather. So.

Yeah.

Yeah. And we also have. Thanks for joining us, John. We also have Mike Zen Master Breathe in the mailing, Breathe out the marketing. Mike Zenmaster Zano. What's going on, buddy?

Not too much. Just playing a little piano this evening and drinking some wine.

Always tickling the keys. That's good. That's good. It's good to have you guys here. And I am Scott. Scott Boston. I don't want to give my like saying my own nickname is Weird. So I won't do that when he gets back.

Yeah, dude. Buddy.

But, but thanks everybody for, for tuning. Chiming in, Tuning in, connecting here with the, with, with Land Geek Nation. The hive mind. You love that term, don't you?

Like, I get the heebie jeebies when he says that.

It's like we should have a Stranger Things night. Be like the Land Geek hive mind. Stranger Things night. It'd be so fun. But let's see. Daniel Bryan is here. Don Thrasher, Billy Swinton. Thank you guys for tuning in. Rick C. Nice to see you. So we have a great topic tonight, but I think what would be fun first, guys, before we get into the topic is because people love hearing about this stuff. Are you guys doing land deals right now? And could you give us an example or two or what's of what's happening? Like what's the state of the market? Are we buying? Are we selling? What's going on? Because I think a lot of people out there maybe, I don't know, they're like this, this whole thing sounds a little nerve wracking. Like I don't want to, I don't know if I want to invest in land right now. There's some economic uncertainty in the. So we'll keep it real brief.

Economics.

I really know the answer, but Don Burnett, are you doing deals? Are you buying it? Are you selling?

Yeah, I still buy and I still sell. I got deeds out for seven properties and another one that I'm buying right now and still marketing and selling.

So yeah, consistency, right? Awesome. Mike Zanel, are you buying and are you selling?

Yes, to both. Just actually had a, actually had a cash sale go through. We got the money today was a five thousand dollar purchase that sold for just, you know, over ten thousand is what we brought back. So it was not bad.

Awesome. Awesome. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we're, we're buying a lot of land right now, right? A lot of the deals to be had. You know, my business partner there, Mike and I were on the verge of a big bulk deal purchasing, what is it like 65 properties? 64. 65 properties, yep. 64 at a big, at a deep discount, which is pretty awesome. And then in, in my land business also we're having, you know, we've had a couple, couple nice sales here in the last. We sold, you know, multiple on probably two on terms here in the last few days and, and also nice cash deal. So I think the bottom line is deals are being done. We're buying land like crazy. We're still selling land there. You know, we've had some cash deals in the last month which those kind of go up and down and. But the terms deals are pretty steady. So I think for the beginners out there, which we're about to touch on, it's a great time to get started if you can. You guys agree?

I concur.

You got to concur right off the bat.

Right from the beginning. Five minutes in. All right, so let's get to our topic, the five land investing mistakes that keep beginners stuck and confused. We were all beginners. We felt stuck and confused at one point or another. So John, I'll let you take number one. We came up with a plan before we came in. We're very organized. So we have all five. Five mistakes ready to go. So John, take it away. What's mistake number one for the, for the audience.

So mistake number one is analysis paralysis. Ooh, too much learning and not enough doing right.

So tell me more, John.

Yeah, so I am naturally Mr. Analysis by. Wait, Paralysis by analysis. I always get it wrong, but that is, that is my proclivity and I.

Yeah, worthy Scrabble worthy.

Yeah, but a lot less now than it used to be. But I could just Overanalyze any given aspect of the business. But especially, like, if a property comes in, you can just look at it. You could be like, is this right? Is this wrong? What is this line that's running across the property? How do I think about this? How do I think about that?

And.

And you can overthink it to death. And like, for me, I just talked to people who knew better than I did. Right. And I would raise those questions and give myself no excuse to not move forward. And that was. That was helpful. But you can. There are various points in this business where you can feel that sense of overwhelm. Right? Because you're thinking about all these what ifs, and you just need to lean on somebody for support and get through that, you know?

Awesome. Yeah. I mean, there's so much information out there, and some of us are information junkies to the point where we'll learn for months and months or even years and years. We'll just learn one thing, and then we'll go to the next topic and the next topic, or maybe we'll stay on one topic for years without taking action.

It's a good point. Like, I remember especially, like, when. When Valerie and I. Valerie is a massive action taker. And so. Which is. Which I'm extremely grateful for. And so, like, we'll. We'll sit down in the morning and I'll be like, hey, I had this idea the other day. She's like, I just texted five people. It's happening tomorrow. Right? Like, so she's like, she just, like, gets things done. But we had this vision of getting into real estate investing, you know, Red Kiyosaki, listen to all the podcasts. You could hang out in that space for years, you know, And I remember just running into people who had, like, they had been wanting to invest in real estate, and they've been listening to podcasts for years and years and years and had never actually taken any action. And so, like, taking that first step is just so helpful, you know, just putting yourself in a position where you're actually doing something.

That's awesome. Mike, what. What are your recommendations for the first step? You. You've done the learning now what?

Well, yeah, you definitely got to take some action, but I think even the wrong action can trump no action, you know, because you can correct something if it's a mistake, but if you don't have anything, what are you going to correct? And I think you guys sit upon some really great points. You know, one of them, we're in an information age, right? There's so much information out there, not just on land investing, but on how to be fit, how to eat right, how to do this, how to do that, that we can just become consumers. Like the Doom scroll and they call it, you know, just looking at option after option after option and feeling like that's moving us forward, but it's really moving us, I would say, even backwards. Right. Because it's just information overload. So to sort of put all that aside, find something that was that my end.

Oh, that was me.

I don't know what that was.

Find something that speaks to you. Right. Joseph Campbell, I love that guy. If you ever listen to Power of Myth, it's very. It's old now. He's been gone for a while, but he would say, follow your bliss. Find something that speaks to you, sings to you, and follow. Now, it could be this. If it's land investing, then now you need to get your first step out. And what that is is like, where are you going to actually work this business? Like, where are you going? Where out of all the 3,000 counties are you going to actually do this business? You have to make a decision, right? So I think that's step number one, right. And is just make a decision that, first of all, you're going to actually do some land investing. But then it's like, where am I going to do it? You know? But you can become a podcast junkie. I think that's what you were just referring to, John. Right. You know, like people that maybe go to Tony Robbins and continue to go back to get that recharge, but maybe don't really do anything with it. They just get excited and charged up. I often joke to Mark, I said, mark, you're more powerful than Tony Robbins. You know, And I was kind of joking, kind of serious. He's like, what do you mean? I'm like, well, you don't just get people excited. You give them an action plan, something to actually execute upon. It's not just like, hey, you know, all jazzed up, now go. And like, what? Go where? Like, where do I go? Left, right, straight back, back. We're talking a very specific niche, and if you follow this, you can have success. So, number one, to avoid analysis, paralysis, decide you're going to do land investing and then just pick an area. Now, there's a. There is. There is some thing that goes into that. Right. And so we're not digging into that today. But that's the first task you have.

Yeah.

I think also you touched on something important too, Mike, which Is that like. Like something that, that Scott Todd says a lot is dumbbeats perfect. Right. It's something that we talk a lot. It's more important to do something than to do the perfect thing. And, and then also, you learn by doing, too. Right? It's, it's tempting to try to fit everything into your brain before you actually do something. And I mean, you want to understand it at a high level, but you don't need to understand every granular aspect. Right. You build it as you learn as you go, and you learn by. By building, by doing.

Yeah. You know, I think of people in the beginning. I tell them when they start their journey into flight school or into land investing. Excuse me, you have to be like an investigative reporter. I joke. It's like, is it Peter Parker that has the guy with the cigar, he works for Scott? Is it Peter Parker? Is it. Yeah. The Daily Planet? Or is that Superman? I get them all confused here.

That's Superman. It's the. What is it the Daily Bugle Bugle.

One chomping on the cigar that yells at him all the time in the comic?

That's the Jonas. What is it John Jones?

Like Jay Jonasan?

Yeah.

So, yeah, you see, Peter Parker goes in the office and he's like chomping on us. The guys, like, listen, there's land deals happening out there. I need you to go find out where, how, and how to get some of those right. That's your, that's your first thing. You have to be that type of. You have to uncover every stone. You have to dig in. Like, we, you know, you hear us talking about land deals. You can listen to other podcasts where we have other people doing land deals. Like, where are we doing these? Like, you'd have to be very curious and you have to take failure is not an option and investigate and find where we're going to do this Peter Parker.

I mean, we'll just do the, we'll, we'll do the Boston LEGO segment in. In reverse here. It's our favorite segment at Land Geek, when Mike, When Mike says a word completely wrong and Scott spells it right. I'm not gonna spell Peter Parker. You all know how to spell Peter Parker, but Peter Parker, that Peter Parker, that's a pretty good Boston legacy segment.

And you need to, you need to figure out whether you best scary porter. You have to dig in, dig your heels in and say, this is what I'm going to do. I know there's deals being done. Let me figure out where they're going. That's Step one. Step one.

Yeah. Love it, man. Love it. Mallory Famous is here. Mallory, what's going on? She says, yeah, it's hard for someone who wants to have everything figured out in the beginning, like me.

Haha.

It's definitely day by day. Yeah, you're exactly right. There are a lot of people out there who, they feel like they need to have all the info before they take action. Right. Just lean on the community, just go on the Facebook group and just ask questions and lean on people. You get, you get. Go, go into our online community where I think you get a little bit better advice, actually.

Yeah.

And you know, just ask, don't be afraid to ask questions and do that investigative reporting. And while you're doing the reporting, take a little bit of imperfect action. Right.

Can you imagine day one, you go into, I don't know, medical school. It's like I can't start until I know how to do a surgery. You know, it's like you get all excited like, no, you need to figure out the basic human anatomy first. Maybe. I'm guessing, Scott, you've been to these school, but you need to, you need to figure some things out before you get to the point of actually cutting someone open and doing a surgery. Right. You don't have to have all the answers. You need to start with the fundamentals.

Love it, man. Well, you are on fire tonight.

That a mic drop?

That was a mic drop.

It's the Pinot noir. I can't lie in the right mindset. Little Pinot neon, the pinot the pinot and the piano.

That's awesome. Well, thank you guys for that. I, I think that, I think that rounds out, closes out mistake number one that beginning land investors make. Right. So we move on to. Well, and, and for those of you out there watching, all 31 of you, I mean, we're, we're, we're gaining some, we're getting some viewers here. Some viewers.

I mean, I'm pretty sure 30 of them are my mom, so the other one, we're proud. Thank you.

But for those of you out there, what would be, you know, do you have any experiences with this? Did you, did you, you know, doom scroll podcasts for years before you took action? What would be your advice to somebody who's on the verge of doing this, but love to hear any comments that you guys have. Mike Zano, let's go on to mistake number two, that maybe newbie land investors make that keep them stuck.

You know, I often say, breathe in the mailing, breathe out the marketing, the Opposite is inconsistent, right? It's like holding your breath, right? You're holding your breath. You're not mailing, you're not marketing, and nothing is really happening. You mail a couple hundred letters or so, a couple Facebook ads. You know, this is ironic. I just, I saw it, I always reference here, which you guys have both heard the, the parades, right? And I just went to one. There's up in, in a little town called Newburyport, a coastal town, they had a Yankee parade, hanky homecoming. And in this parade, you know, there they were, the people with the push carts with the balloons and the popcorn and the, you know, the pretzels and everything's overpriced. And they walk down popcorn balloons. Now they walk 5ft, 10ft, 20ft. It's like one ad, one mailing, right? What do they do? They go back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. And eventually they weigh you down, they wear you down. You buy that stale popcorn for five bucks, you know, you could get a whole case of popcorn at home, but you buy it. You buy that blow up balloon, that's probably worth 10 cents. You speak $10 because your kid really wants it or thing that makes all the noise, you know, all that stuff. But why do they do that? Because they walk the whole parade back and forth. Now if you were to just walk a couple feet, how many things would they sell? Nothing, right? So this is the same thing here. If you're not consistent with your mailing, you're not consistent with your marketing, you're walking like 10ft in the parade with your push cart. You're not going to sell any of your stale popcorn, none of your, you know, none of your pretzels, none of your balloons, none of your Bugles. You're not going to sell any of that. So you got to be consistent. You gotta, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a little trick here. Unlike the Pushka people, we get somebody else to push the cut for us, right? And I think I'll, I'll let maybe you guys talk about that, right? We don't have to push the cut.

How do we follow this guy up tonight? John, I was just waiting.

I was like, how are the place where it's connected to mailing?

And then you did it.

It was beautiful. I love it.

It's the truth. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you just gotta, you gotta show up. You gotta show up over and over, right? And sometimes to the same people over and over and you can't stop, you can't Stop the cart. Which is the big mistake that a lot of people make. And they, sorry, I gotta fly over here or something. Fruit fly. But. But they, but they maybe, maybe they have a successful mailing campaign and they get some offers back, and then they get nervous. They're like, oh, my gosh, what do I do? I'm not mailing anymore until I figure this out.

Right? Right. We deal with these first.

They put the brakes on the mailing when really you make the money with the mailing. Right. So don't stop the mailing even when you might be a little bit overwhelmed with, hey, what do I do next? Right. Well, you, John, what do you think?

Yeah, I agree. I think it kind of ties to the. I mean, like, maybe a different flavor of analysis paralysis, like where you just kind of. I don't know, like, I guess maybe it's not analysis paralysis, but you can kind of freeze up in moments like that. Right. You know, you post an ad, somebody responds, and you're like, oh, my goodness. Like, you can just kind of. I don't know, you just have to keep on pushing through and you have to be consistent. Consistency is key. Right. And, you know, once a day is better than five, you know, once a week. Right. All in a block or something like that. If. If you can do something with some level of consistency, it'll churn results. But like you were saying, Scott, like, I mean, I had one point in my business, I probably talked about it before where I remember early on, I had this stack of offers that have been returned to me. I think I went on a trip or something, and then I had this stack, and they were like, there were accepted offers, there were countered offers. And every time I looked at, I just got this pit in my gut and I just had to sit down and I had to work my way from the top of the list to the bottom of the list, and then I could start churning through the other ones that were coming through as well. And. And it was great. Right. Like, I made a ton of money off of that stack, you know, but you just have to be consistent. You have to keep on pushing through in order to see results.

Yeah.

And just. And just do. Don't think, just do. Right. We're bringing in. I mean, I'm channeling Yoda. I'm channeling Tom Cruise here, who ripped off Yoda in Top Gun, too. Right. Like, just, Just, Just do. Right. And. And when it comes to marketing, just, Just sit down every day. If you've got a property in inventory, you need to do Something today to market the property. It doesn't need to be perfect, but you need to do something today, right?

Yeah.

And don't stop the mark. The marketing cat, either.

Well, you know, very fortunate. You know, on the mailing side, it's super simple LG Pass. So if you're not familiar what we're talking about, LG Pass is software that was created by Land Geek specifically for this business. And you can upload just a ton of, you know, information for mailers and drip out 20 a day or whatever number it wants. You hit a button, and then that's it. Consistency created with one push of a button. Very simple.

Look at the. Look at this amazing advice from Kenneth Green. What's up, Ken? Daniel son and Mr. Miyagi. Walk right is good. Walk left is good. Walked like paper. Don't mail.

I love Kenneth Green. What's up, brother? My karate brother.

Awesome. Thank you, Ken. So thank you guys for. For chiming in with all of your comments on point number two. We'll go back to get to. Some of you have questions. We'll go back to those. Daniel Bryan had a comment about point number one. The time between getting your first mailers out and when they come back is enough to learn how to do the next step, and so on and so forth. You're exactly right. There's some ebbs and flows in the business where maybe there's a little bit less activity today. So if there's a little bit less activity today, what are you going to do to become a better land investor? Yeah, there's a ton of learning we can do. Right? There's a ton of networking you can do while you're waiting for things to hit. So that's awesome. Don Thrasher said, mike, you are in fuego. But I need to say, Don, a little birdie told me that you had your first sale, so I think I'd flip it around and say, you are in fuego.

Let's see the details.

So, Don, if you want to throw the details in the chat, that's always fun for people in the community to see if you want to tell us what you bought it for, what you sold it for, Perfect. If not, no worries. But. But, yeah, congrats to you. And I think he just started flight school not long ago, so, yeah, a couple. Couple weeks ago, maybe. So that's pretty awesome. So, Don, congrats.

Great job, Don.

All right, we'll get to some of the other questions. Like I said, we'll come back after. After we get to the. If we get through the five common mistakes people make. So, all right, I take number three here. Since you guys, we're doing a little round robin here.

Yeah, let's do it.

All right, so mistake number three. In the beginning, we're all excited.

We.

We're. We're craving that first deal, right? And we get a response, and we're like, this is it. I'm gonna buy it.

And.

And we chase it. And because maybe we're a little bit inexperienced, sometimes early on, we chase things when we shouldn't, right? So when you get that first mailer, that first accepted offer that comes in, obviously you're going to get that dopamine hit. It's going to be really exciting. But sit down with the offer, take a deep breath, do a little bit of careful analysis of the deal, and don't be afraid to say no on the first deal, Right? You need to. You need to be picky on the first deal. We say it all the time. We want to avoid the dreaded disease or the dreaded condition that many of us have when we first start, and that is got to have landitis.

Well, that would you complete me. I thought you'd just give me that layup.

Oh, I should have. I should have. So, yeah. And actually, I have a real world example from this today. I had a coaching call today with a flight school client, and he got on the call, he was all excited about the deal. He's like, I'm gonna buy this thing. And I'm like, hold on, hold on. Because he actually shared the screen with me, talked to me about the deal, and I'm like, hold on. Now, is everybody that's able to sign right now on the current deed? He's like, no. Oh, actually, no. The parents are on the deed, and they're deceased. Like, oh, well, you can't buy this, right? And that's just a technical detail. But sometimes we get so excited that we're going to move forward and take action when we got to make sure that we get all our ducks in a row. T's crossed, I's dotted before we do a deal. Don, any thoughts on this subject?

Yeah, I mean, I probably told this story as well, but, like, when Valerie and I, we got our first response to a mailer, and it was a counter, and we were, like, so excited, right? Like, oh, my goodness, it's crazy. And we. We booked a coaching call. We were like, we need to talk to you right now. It's an emergency. Drop everything. We need to talk, right?

And.

And we got a coaching call. Booked and sat down with them, and they looked at it and they were like, I don't think I would do this. You know, and there were more deals to come, you know, So I think that it's. There's this, you know, we talk about the scarcity mindset. You could have a scarcity mindset just in the sense of, like, feeling like. I mean, it's fear of missing out, too, right? Like, it's just like this is. You get an opportunity, it's your first one, and you think that there's not any more coming, right? And so you have to be careful about that. But then I think on the flip side, coming back to the paralysis by analysis kind of a thing too, you know, recognize the type of person you are. You're going to put yourself in one ditch or another. Are you in the, like, let's do it, bucket, like, ditch, or are you in the, like, I'm never going to do anything ditch. Right, because you also don't want to. You don't want to analyze the deal to death. And if you feel like you're in that category, get some help. Or if you're in either, get some help, talk to somebody, show them the property, and ask them what they think. And if it looks like a good. A good deal.

Love it. All right, let's hear it, Zen master. You're on a roll tonight.

Yeah, I think. Yes. You got to follow the numbers, and let me tell you, you don't want to sound strange. You don't want to date the deal. Okay. You don't want to date the deal. I mean, you want to date the deal. I'm sorry, take it back. You don't want to do is go. You meet a girl on the first date and say, will you marry me? That's not good. You don't know if you get along, you know, if it's good fit. Same with the deal. You don't look at the deal right away, say, I want to buy it. You have to date the deal. You have to look through and see what are the components of this. You know, is it good pricing? Is there good use, is there good access? All these different things have to come through. Am I talking. You just brought up something really key at the beginning, Scott. You know, somebody was looking to buy a property, and they couldn't. Person they were talking to couldn't convey title to them, right? So these are the things you need to do. So you definitely don't want to just jump right in and make a decision. The numbers have to make Sense the gotta have landitis is real. The real problem arises when you go back to mistake number two and you don't mail enough. Now you only have a few options, right? And you just might pick one because you feel like you have deal. Right. And that deal is good deal.

And I think people overpay sometimes when that's the case too. You know, you. When you get an accepted offer in, you gotta check and recheck your numbers. This is all a numbers game. You could have been wrong the first time. Go back and you know, you might.

Neutral mindset, right? Yeah. You gotta be cold and analytical about this.

Yep. Gotta be analytical when you get the. When you get the deal coming across your desk. You gotta be analytical when you buy property wholesale from another land investor because some land investors like Mike Vane will give you a great deal. But every once in a while you find somebody out there who's like, boy, that looks overpriced.

Boy, it looks like retail.

Yeah, boy, that looks like retail. And hopefully we have a solution coming for that in the land geek community here soon. But you got to do your due diligence on the wholesale deals too. Even when you're buying from another land investor, make sure you're getting it at a good price, that there's enough meat left on the bone for you to make a nice profit on it.

100.

Yep. All right, awesome. I think we covered that. Number three. Let's see, we got Daniel Bryan had two of those deals this week. All he could do is call the county for them and help provide advice for getting the deed fixed. And. And that's exactly right. Sometimes we point people in the right direction. Right. Maybe it's a probate issue, which sometimes isn't a lot of work, but I'm not necessarily going to help them do that just because it's not a good return on my time. Billy Swinton. We'll talk about that in a minute. That's a pricing thing. Okay, here's Don Thrasher's in fuego results. You ready?

Okay.

He's in week five of his 16 week flight school experience. He bought four properties wholesale when he had the dirt restarticate marketed on Facebook, Marketplace and Craigslist. Bought one property for a thousand. Buyer initially said no. Asked her a bunch of questions. Sold on terms for 2,500.

That's great.

There you go. Buyer initially. So this is. This is cool. The buyer initially said no, but he stayed on the phone with her. He stayed in communication with her. He asked her some questions. He got to know her.

Yeah.

Don was pushy with his sales technique, which none of us really are. We're just having conversations with people. And then he ended up selling the property. So those conversations mean a lot. So Don throw in the chat. Wasn't a phone conversation. I assume it was, or maybe zoom, but. But I think it's hard to hard change the mind when it's text or email. But. But that's pretty cool. That's a pretty cool first sales story.

Congratulations.

Congrats, Tom. Awesome. So we're coming up on number four, the fourth biggest mistake, John Burnett. All right, New land investors make that keep them stuck.

Not knowing their numbers or avoiding the math. So. And that. That applies to a number of different things, right? So are you pricing your offers? Do you understand the return on your margins on your properties? But also things like marketing, right? If you're marketing on a platform and you're spending $1,000 a month and it gives you one sale a month, then you're paying $1,000 a sale, right? And so that squeezes your margins, right? So it's important to know how much you're paying. It's also important, I think so, from the dollars and cents, right? Like that's. That's a really important thing for you to be aware of, but also thinking about the output of your team, right? So you can go set it and forget it, right? And I've done this, I'm sure we've all done this at one point or another where you hire a virtual assistant and you let things go and you come back a few weeks or a month later and you're like, what happened to this part of my business? Right? Like, why is it. Why is it in decline? And you look at it and you're like, oh, that's why, Right? And I had one instance where I hired somebody to do a bunch of Craigslist ads for me. We had all of our leads funneling into an airtable base, and we were following up with all of them and all this stuff. And, and we were doing some good sales and stuff. And only like at some point later did I actually delineate ad how many leads we were getting from each individual source. What I found out was that I was paying, like, I think I was paying $500 a lead from this guy. Like, I paid him a thousand dollars over like the course of, I don't know, two, three months or something like that. And the lead flow just wasn't there for his ads. And so it's just a clear, like, okay, this is. This was a Clear mistake that I made. I need to be keeping my finger on the pulse here. So I think knowing your numbers across every area of your business, you know, not. Not overthinking it, but making sure that, you know, if you don't keep tabs on things, things will naturally start declining and start bloating. And so you have to make sure that you're aware of where things are at.

That's awesome advice for beginner, for sure. Mike Zaino, you're a numbers guy, your favorite mathematician.

Three kinds of mathematicians. Those who can add and those who can't.

There we go.

I'd have to concur with John. I mean, he nailed it from every angle there. I'd have to confer.

Maybe you need to confer before you.

Concur with you about the. Concur for me.

So especially on the VA side of things, you know, if you don't understand. That's the dangerous part about outsourcing is before you truly understand the deliverable, and if you were to outsource it and not know what it really cost or you've never done it yourself, you could overpay you, you know, if you don't have. If you don't just have a clear idea of you. What you want them to do, and you let them sort of take the lead. Well, Vas just want to work. Right. You know, and they're amazing, many of them, right. But they just want to work. So if you leave them to their own accords, their own devices, they're going to work and they're going to work and they're going to work and they're going to build, build, build, build. And it doesn't mean they're necessarily doing what you want them to do. So you really got to be tight with that. You got to understand the deliverable. You got to understand the numbers in that sense. So I think that was a great. I would just highlight what John mentioned there because I think that's very real, especially in the beginning. John, right. That. That could happen to somebody. Oh, see, sure.

Hi.

Is he fake? A real frozen.

Who? John. John looks. John looks real frozen. At first I thought he was fake frozen too.

I think he leaned into what I'm saying and was giving me some look at this condescending look that he's frozen on.

He's entranced.

I can't even.

Gosh, you gotta block him out. He's looking at me like, what? There he is.

There we go.

Yeah. Sorry, Michael, we just hopped off for a minute.

So you leaned right in I'm like, okay, what's going on here?

Oh, man. Yeah. I think I would say one thing about numbers too, and that is you both alluded to this, but when you're first starting out, just, just really know what you're spending, right? Just keep a spreadsheet or something and, and go through your expenses month to month and look at what you're spending. And you know, I'm a, I'm a believer that a few months into this, after you've learned how to do it, you know, you should hopefully be able to cover your expenses with cash. Right? So, so figure out a way to do that. And the best way to do that is by wholesaling to another land investor because that's kind of a quick deal. Quick deal. But, but keep your operating expenses low and a few months in, try to cover your expenses. Okay. And that'll make you, put you on the path for, for faster growth, I think, financially.

Yeah.

All right, awesome. So let's see other comments coming in here. I think Don was laughing at John's frozen, frozen face there, which was all good. That's a question we're gonna take here in a little bit. All right, awesome. That's another question I'll take here in a minute. So, Mike Zano.

Yes, sir.

How are you doing over there, buddy? You doing all right?

I'm doing good. I got plenty of wine.

It's getting late over there on the east coast.

Yeah, it is. What time is it right now? Oh, it's 9:39.

9:39. All right. We have one more common mistake that newbie land investors make that we want to talk about. And I think, I think you're up, Mike. Think it's your turn.

All right, Mistake number five. Doing everything themselves for too long. Delay hiring a VA automating. Delay. Automating with tools like LG Pass, Geek Pay, etc leads, they fall through the cracks. Sellers and buyers go cold. Burnout kicks in. Delegate before you're drowning is what we're saying here. You don't need to do it all. And Scott, you must have come up with this here, this pro chip. If you do a ten dollar task on day long, you probably have a ten dollar an hour business. That sounds like a Scott Bossman quote.

Yeah, that was definitely me.

Yeah, but the message is real here. You know, you have to take advantage. If you want to scale, you have to take advantage of tools, right? And the thing is, there's tools. LG Pass alone. Remember before that we were take. Let's just go before that. You have tools like Zamplo. Before that, we were getting these cryptic. This cryptic data from the county and we were trying to Frankenstein a list. Remember those words, Frankensteining a list. Got to always spend hours at boot camp teaching people how to do this. Now we do that a snap of a finger with some software. Right. So you embrace that. We used to have to hand mail. Now LG pass mails for us. You know, we used to have to mail merge deeds and documents and that was a pain. But now the. So the software alone will scale you. But when you see how we bring in the virtual assistants with user access to that software and create the workflows, now you're starting to work on the business and not. Not in it. So that's a, that's a big part of avoiding mistake number five, right. Is get the correct software built for the business that you're running. Right. You know, the software was built for the LGpass is not something that we just took in. You know, sort of form fitted. It's. It's actually built for this business. Right. True and true. So it does exactly what we need it to do. So start with some things like that. Basic tools.

I love it. Mike, as you're talking about that, there's this app on my Mac that I used back in 2015. It's called Pages Data Merge. It was my mailing merge app that I used on my Mac. I still have a loaded. I don't know why you probably.

Macros guy. Why do I think that was you?

No, that was John Macros guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, the little stick. We'd like, I'd set it up and like I'd run it and I'd go to bed and wake up, it's like Christmas morning. I'm like, where's my list? And then. Yeah, man, it was crazy. Like, I think I was using Microsoft Word and doing mail merge, printing out. Like, I just remember the printers just running and like, you know, you might.

Have a buy new toner Newtona every week.

Yeah. You guys remember those, like, did you guys ever get those, like burner phones? Oh, yeah, I remember I had like all these phones and like all this Craigslist whatnot. Yeah, yeah. Talk about a tech stack. It's great.

Exactly. Exactly.

Yeah.

Oh, man. Yeah. No, I love it.

It's interesting too. Something that, that you talked about, Mike, with just the, the idea.

Oh, there it is again.

The lean was again.

The Starlink. Man, this is not reliable tonight.

Is that what he's using?

Yeah. I mean, no, he's Back. Are you on Starlink?

No, I'm not on Starlink. This is just Idaho data. So it's great. We can only have one person on the Internet in the town at a time, right?

Well, everybody was hanging on the edge of the seat, particularly me, because you were referencing something I said and now.

We know what it was. So I was talking about burnout, right? Like using tools or not using enough tools and not using people. Like, for me, there was a. There was a point where I kind of jumped in with both feet and I had more time than the average person. And so my. My thought was like, well, it's free. Like, my time is free. I'm just going to do this stuff. And when you're doing these highly repetitive tasks over and over and over and over again, you really start burning out, right? And that was a pretty pivotal point for me is just getting feedback from other investors. You know, I. We did a mastermind and everybody just reamed me on this and they were like, you gotta delegate, you gotta delegate, you gotta delegate. And I delegated. And it was a turning point in my business. Like, I think both in doing a lot of deals, but also just for me, like, being able to manage that effectively without burnout. So I think that's. I think it is an important thing to take things off of your plate. Even if you've got all the time in the world, you want to be focusing on the most pivotal tasks.

Ken, you're right. Maybe not as much anymore. But land geeks have always gotten buried in apps that have apps. Mike Zaino's an app guy. He'll go from one app to app to app to app to CRM to CRM to CRM. I love him. Planner to planner to planner.

Backpack to backpack to backpack.

Backpack to backpack.

Notebook.

Notebook to notebook.

Email man service.

The email management service. The email management service.

Quit doom scrolling the apps. Mike, enough. Keep it simple, man. Oh, did you freeze now for me, Mike? Did Mike freeze now?

Is it.

Oh, no.

Good one. That was a good one.

Yeah.

Okay.

That would be a great. Like, at some point, Mike, you and I should just randomly freeze and we should just see what Scott does.

We'll have to call that something. That'd be good. That'd be good. Awesome. Well, any comments from the peanut gallery tonight on any of the five mistakes we talked about? Otherwise, we'll go back and let's.

They're probably never going to show up again now.

I mean, what's wrong with the peanut gallery? Is that a derogative?

Is that A derogatory origin of that. What is the origin of the peanut gallery? That's probably a good topic for the nightcap.

It's probably some Shakespearean thing, like back when they were doing plays in the dome. John's. John's on it. I can tell. I can tell. I can tell. What? He's got his research face on. He's looking it up.

Oh.

Peanut gallery. Let's see here what we got.

I found out what it is.

What is it, Jim?

So it refer to the cheapest and rowdiest seats, typically located upper balcony of a theater.

Well, they would have peanuts, right?

Yeah. So they were quick. They were vocal, critical, and quick to heckle performers they didn't like.

Well, you're not saying our audience heckles us, Scott. They can't be the peanut gallery.

Yeah.

On us.

All right. Sorry. I didn't mean it in a derogatory way.

Our.

Our wonderful fans. How's that?

Okay.

All right. Daniel Bryan has a question for John. Sometimes it's 27 kids, then it's 22. That's 23. Do you just disown some?

Every week we just trade him. It's great.

I love it. Okay, let's get into some technical questions, guys. We got a few minutes left. Yeah, let's help out the community.

You ready.

Daniel Bryan? This darn bug over here, I'm telling you. How long do you estimate does it take on average, for a dirt square, my favorite term, a dirt square, to sell once you've listed it. I'm on the selling side of my first nine properties now. Who wants to take that, fellas?

Well, it's really. It. It's. It depends, right? Because if you're new, it's going to take a little longer. You don't one of the, you know, sell a property a week on a good buyer's list, right? So the turnover be very quick. And a buyer's list for all you. Those you don't know is very simple. And people responding to ads, they're interested in our property, they may not want to buy that property from us, but we always tell them we acquire new properties every week. We collect their email on some sort of platform like mailchimp. And then every week we send out a blast and say, hey, you're on our buyers list. You get a special deal, maybe no down payment, half off the dock fee, whatever. So once you build up a substantial amount of people on that list, you're going to start moving property quick. But in the beginning, it might take you a few weeks, might Take you a month, who knows? You know, you could get, you could get a good lead right out of the gate, but either way, just stay consistent with it. But I, I, it's going to get shorter over time, but it could be quick or it could take a few weeks. But it, the, the good news is they all sell. We repeatedly say that no matter what property it is, they all sell.

Yeah. I think there's also a little bit of seasonality to take into play or take into account, too. So, you know, if you've got a property, property up on the top of a mountain that's not winter accessible, you know, that'll be a tougher one to sell in January.

Right.

And a lot easier in August. Right. And so I think there's an element of that to take into account as well. You know, same thing with, like, if you've got something in a really hot area of Arizona, it'll sell better in January and a little bit tougher in August. Right. And so I think just bear that in mind as you're, as you're going to. But yeah, you just gotta plug away and be consistent.

I love it. And, you know, these properties catch, they're gonna catch somebody's eye. Right, Right. It's the, it's the COVID picture that catches their eye, or it's the ad copy or it's the price. Right. Like, like how much, how much money do we waste on coffee every month, Mike? I won't ask you. I know.

Well, I've been recently doing the decaf latte.

Yeah. How much is that?

Seven per lot, including the tip. $7.

$7 for coffee?

Now, it's not even coffee at decaf, but yes.

Let's just, let's just say Mike bought one of those. One of those a day for, for a month. That's 210 bucks. 200 bucks a month.

I could own two properties.

You could own two properties for 200 bucks a month. If you just drop the coffee. If you just go to McDonald's one time, you know, a couple times less a month. Right. Eat some baloney, buy some land.

Eat some bologna, Buy some land.

You remember, I don't know about you guys, when I was a kid, we go on field shows. We brown bagged it. It was always white bread and baloney.

With butter?

Yeah, with some butter or some mustard, whatever it might be. No refrigeration. We'd be on trips going, you know, all day long. There's no refrigeration. That brown bag just kept it the.

Right temperature, kept the mayonnaise perfectly fine. Yes.

Mayonnaise is inherently a coolant.

It's a baloney coolant.

That's what mayonnaise is.

And this is why Mike got botulism.

You're fine. There's mayonnaise on it. Keep the baloney cool.

Oh my gosh. We digress.

What did you say about baloney? That brought that up.

Oh, eat baloney violin.

Eat baloney by land.

Yes. For the dirt rich summit. Can we eat baloney by land? That would be a great T shirt.

I love it. I love it. All right, a couple other questions here coming in. Let's see, questions or comments. I love Stacy's comment here about mailing. Farmers plant seeds and have to wait until they get to harvest. Letters are seeds. I love that we are planting seeds with our mailers for sure. Every time we go to the. Every time we go to the. The mailbox, we're like crop dusting kind of. Anyway. What, why, why did you just hang your head in shame? Let's see what else we got here. Okay. From Billy Swinton. Priced a few pieces of mailing wrong. He's at about 55%. So 55 cents on the dollar. Maybe two of the neighbors aren't interested in buying. Is 55 cents on the dollar.

Loan for 2750 and sell for six grand. That's a great deal. All day long. Just make sure you're values. You know, if that's a cash flip, I, I don't see anything wrong with that.

Yeah, well, and I think that, I mean at 27.50, buy and sell it 6K. That's less than 50. What is that? Let me.

Yeah, it's like 45 cents on the dollar.

Yeah.

44.6, 45.83.

I don't.

Okay.

I don't think the so called peanut gallery likes when we correct their math.

Yeah.

Sorry, Billy, I apologize for John calling you out on your math.

Oh, man alive. Here's a question from Rick. Can an investor sell at a price too low because they can't wait for their first sale? So that's like. So. So he's off. So. So the investor's offloading it, right?

No, you can wholesale it for a couple hundred bucks and you know, be happy it's your. How much time you put into it?

I would say wholesale it though. To a land investor. Don't. Don't sell to somebody in the market at a deep discount. Right.

You know what this reminds me of my old sign, which I wish I had in the office still. It said wholesale Retail, Holiday Inn.

Yeah. Where's that sign go?

I know, I just. I redid the office, took it down, but wholesale. Retail, Holiday Inn.

That and deal flow solves everything. I love that sign. You gotta get those back up, dude.

How about the. The horse with the fly? Come on. You didn't like that one?

Oh, yeah, we loved that one. So did Scott Todd.

I had this horse, and on my sister, I made it for me on the end. A little fly on its tail. Because the saying is, even a fly can travel a thousand miles on a horse's tail. You don't have to be great. You have to follow greatness. And you can be. And you can. You can have some of that greatness as well. So I told that to Scott Todd, and he was like, you call me a jackass? I'm like, no, I said, you're stallion. You're stallion. He didn't get it. He didn't like it. I had to give him a compliment.

Oh, man, that's a great. That's a great quote, Mike. Sal, great quote. This is from Jeff. Trying to get going again after being evacuated. Oh, Jeff. Yeah, I heard about that, man. And I hope that. Hope everything's okay. Trying to get going again after being evacuated for a major wildfire in the backyard. I should buy a property by now, but it feels overwhelming. We were evacuated for over a week. I mean, yeah, Jeff, take care of yourself. Right? The land will always be there. And don't. Don't feel too discouraged that you're a week behind.

Yeah. That is not procrastination. That is not over analysis. That's like safety. And you know what? When you have them, when. When time allows, get back on that treadmill and you'll. It'll happen.

Yep, for sure. And it's going to be like when you. When you pull away from the business for a little bit, especially when you're waiting to, like, buy a property, it can be hard to jump back in. Like, it's that same thing. You get that little pet in your gut. Right? And so the key is, like, when. When it's time to jump back in, you're going to have to push yourself and. And jump back into the swing of things, but you'll do it. And, yeah, don't feel bad.

So you got this. You. You got this, Jeff. Hang in there and just keep showing up from now on. Now. All right, this is a big topic, probably the topic for another podcast, but, like, what's the most pivotal VA to bring in first? Let's just give a quick Answer, John.

So I gave. Last time I gave this answer to. Well, I gave an answer to Mark Badolski.

And he told me he slapped him on the wrist, didn't he?

Slapped me on the wrist. And it still hurts. I still have Mark.

But think of the first ever va. The first ever va, John, you're not a year into this. So three, two, one. First ever va.

So my first VA was for like. I mean, it was kind of. It was a different era, right. So for me to cleanup, right. Was where I was hiring a va, But I think it's wherever. Wherever you're feeling the most pain, you know, Right. Is. Is where you want to. Where you want to hire a va, but also. And then you're also looking for something that's. That's really repeatable, that's just taking up your time. So I feel like this was.

Mike, nowadays, if you were to start nowadays, Mike, what would be your first va?

Well, I would probably hire a VA service for due diligence. I don't know if I would even train my own VA because there's so many services out there you can choose from. Alicotta, do your due diligence. For me, in the beginning, I'd pick my area. I probably put my. I would pull my list from the data. I think the first thing that I would probably outsource would be intake manager. I'll take the risk of the slap on the wrist. I will go with intake manager because intake managers for 500. What is the first pivotal VA you outsource? Intake man.

That was Mark. That was Marks. That was Marks, was it, wasn't it, John?

No, that was mine. I was at intake. And then Mark, what did he slap.

Me on the wrist for?

Well, the thing that you, you delegate is the thing that you don't enjoy.

All right. Yeah.

So, but yeah, intake manager for me was.

This sounds like a really safe answer. Mark, Come on. That's like almost a non answer. Let's. He's not here, so we can call him out.

You can call him out.

I think intake manager, because the GAS title in your business, his mailings, how many mailings you do is going to be directly correlated to how many conversations you're able to have. If you can increase your ability to have conversations, you can increase your mail list. So I will say final answer, intake manager.

See, I disagree. I think that mailing nowadays is easier than marketing. So nowadays, if I was going to get started nowadays, I would probably hire a VA for a couple hours to write me like 20 ads for a particular property. That way I wouldn't have to come up with the ad copy and I could just mark it.

It's not a bad answer.

Not a bad answer.

It's not a bad answer. I. I wouldn't say it's my first answer, but. Not a bad answer.

Yeah, no concurrence. God.

Oh, okay, fine. Whatever. All right, we're coming up on the hour, but I do have one of these. A Facebook quote or question of the week. You can't see it very well. I gotta figure out a way perfectly, actually. I gotta figure out. I gotta share my. This is. This is too low tech.

I could read that.

This is too low tech. I gotta. I gotta digitize these and I should be able to share my screen and throw. Throw some stuff up. So that's what I'm gonna work on next week. Digit. Digitization. But anyway, this is a comment in the Facebook group this week, and I thought we should address it here because a lot of people come here, they've never heard of land investing. And then one of the first resources we point them to is Mark's book, Dirt Rich, right. Which is a really amazing kind of overview of the business. So there was a comment this week about Dirt Rich in the Facebook group and basically said, where are the PDFs mentioned in the book? The websites I tried to find or used from the book are either Land Geek owned or no longer working. And then a comment about creating a lot of buzz for these things with 2018 books. So here's what I'd say. Just keep in mind, everybody, Mark doesn't care that this is the case. He probably wrote that book, Mike and John, in 2016, and he published it in 2018. And times, they are changing and they change fast in this business. Right? So if you guys read Dirt Rich one, just know that all of the tools and things mentioned in there may not be in the book or may not be available anymore just because times change, tools change, technology changes. What I love about Dirt Rich, though, is you still get the overall basis of what we do and why we do it, and Mark's story, right? And then you just fill in the gaps with joining our group and asking questions like on this podcast or asking questions in the Facebook group and that type of thing. And if you're missing a particular thing that you want or you think that would be really helpful to you. Email supporthelandgeek.com and they can help you. But I think. Go ahead, Mike.

I was just saying many people think they're going to read that book and be totally equipped to do land investing, which, if you're very astute, possibly. But I think most importantly, what he's conveying to you is a mindset of. He entered into something that he wasn't sure was going to work and all the fears, the uncertainties and doubts that he had and how we power through that. So start looking at Dirt Rich as a mindset book. And it makes total sense.

I love it. Oh, I love that. It's a mindset book.

Mindset book.

Mindset book.

And Dirt Rich too. Gets into a little bit more of the technical stuff.

Nitty gritty. Nitty gritty. But if you want the most current things, come every Tuesday night and talk to us.

Talk to us.

We'll give you the most currents advice, the most current. Today's advice.

Today's.

Because we are the hostess. We are the hosts with the mostest.

We are. Yes. Eat baloney. Violence.

What'd you think of that, Mike?

Emojis. Remember I had the emojis going. I don't know what happened. There's nothing.

I just want to make like. I want to make like an AI video ad of just a guy eating a bologna sandwich in silence on a piece of land. And then, like, as he's eating the sandwich, like a slogan pops up and it just says, eat bologna by land.

Oh, my God, that's gonna work.

Oh, man, that'd be a. It'd be a catchy title for an ad, wouldn't it?

It is.

If they click on it, be like, what the heck? All right, look at that.

Last sip right at 10 o'. Clock.

I'll pour myself another little light cap here as we sign off. But everybody, thanks for coming.

Or a nightcap. I thought you said I have a.

Nightcap after the nightcap. And let's. Let's tell them what we're talking about next week. One second.

Next week.

Oh, let's see. Oh, I forgot to hit that button. I've been charging too many things over here. Nightcap next week, August 12th. Well, the year's flying, fellas. August 12th, 2025. The topic next week is the land. Oh, we're getting. We're getting techie. Next week. The land income. The land income calculator. How to make money every time you buy land. Mike, you're in charge of that one, buddy. Calculator. I didn't know we're doing math on nightcap.

I'm bringing my T100. It's gonna be great. Yeah, yeah.

10B, double I. Is that what we're doing?

Oh, yeah.

I don't know. Maybe. I guess I got to figure out how to share my screen, so. All right, guys, thank you very much. Cheers to you. Cheers to all. Let freedom ring. Mark, we miss you. Come back soon. And don't forget, Dirt Rich Summit, first weekend in November. It's coming up. It's, like, three months away.

Do it. We'll be there.

You can meet us in person. We'll sign your baloney shirts. It's gonna be great.

I'll bring the baloney.

And I'll keep in my suitcase fine pieces of baloney.

I'll be in the corner making sandwiches. Yeah. All right. Thanks, everybody. Have a good night. We'll see you next week.

All right.