The Dirt-Simple Path to $10K Monthly Land Income

What if I told you that reaching $10,000 in monthly land income isn't about secret strategies or insider connections, but instead follows a predictable mathematical formula that anyone can replicate? There's a straightforward path to land vesting success that boils down to simple numbers. Send a thousand mailers, get a 3 to 5% response rate, convert 10 to 15% of those into purchases, and sell those properties for 300% returns, or create notes paying 200 to $500 per month. And in today's episode, we are breaking down this entire process into a dirt simple roadmap and showing you exactly how many deals it takes to hit that $10,000 monthly milestone, including real examples from students who've done it in under 12 months. Whether you're struggling to see how the math works in your current real estate strategy, or you're just looking for a clear, no nonsense path to creating significant passive income, these land investing numbers don't lie. It's nightcap, fellas.

Cheers.

It's nightcap. Cheers. Scott, you had me worried you disappeared there.

I was a little worried myself. I don't know what happened, but I'm back. I'm just glad you guys were not also banished at the same time.

Yeah. So on today's Nightcap podcast, Art of Passive Income podcast, I am joined by none other than John Burnett, otherwise known as Handsome Rob. John, how are you?

I'm doing great. And sipping some Evan Williams barrel proof. It's great. It's the good l. It's the good Evan Williams. There's a lot of not good Evan Williams. This is the good Evan Williams.

There's. There's like variations of Evan Williams.

There is. Yeah. It's kind of the bottom shelf whiskey, but this is the nice bottom shelf whiskey.

Oh, that's.

That's over on the right side.

I mean, do you think Evan Williams looks down on Jim Beam? Like, is there like a thing between those two. Those two names?

Oh, there's. There's things between all the bourbon people down there in Kentucky. They're. They all think they're the best.

So.

Okay. That could be a whole Nightcap episode. Oh, yeah.

Bourbon. For sure.

For sure.

We need to get Eric Peterson and Landon on here.

Absolutely. Yeah. You know, if you don't know who the guy is in the hat and the grit shirt, it's. Dude, Buddy, the nightcap OG Scott.

Bossman.

Scott, how are things in Alaska?

Things are great. I'm a little nervous, though, tonight. Like. Like Mike Zano says, there are. There are three kinds of mathematicians, those that can add and those that can't. And you're expecting me to do math tonight on this call? I'm a little nervous.

We're not doing a whole lot of math. We're going to do simple.

Simple, Ma. Okay. All right.

You know, we don't want to lose listeners either, or watchers, whatever it is.

Yeah, right.

They have their eyes glaze over, and then you just, you know, you carry the one.

Get my whiteboard out here.

So let's do some math, though, right? How. How, like, you know, we have examples.

Like.

Like recent examples I did with podcast interviews with Kim Sumner. You know, she got the $10,000 a month in passive income in less than 12 months triangle and do $10,000 a month in less than 12 months. We typically say, you know, maybe they're outliers. Right. I would say it's more realistic. If your head's down in this business, it's 18 months. What do you guys think about that?

I would agree. I think. I think heads down. I think. I think we're two times better than we were 10 years ago. I think 10 years ago, it was kind of, you know, the pie in the sky goal was to get to 10 grand in three years, and now people are blowing that out of the water. So I think 18 to 24 months is very realistic.

Right. And by the way, does it even matter, really, technically speaking? Like, because, like, that time's happening either way. Like, you're going to have 10,000 hours a month.

You won't. Yeah.

You might as well do something to get there.

Well, and I mean, who's. If you're. If you're having a conversation with somebody and you say, hey, you're going to be upset if you hit $10,000 a month passive income in two years rather than one year? I mean, come on.

Right. Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's like that. But, you know, when's the best time to plant a tree? Yeah, right.

Ten years ago today.

Yeah, but if you plant the tree today, you're gonna have a tree, and in this case, you'll have a nice passive income money tree if you do the work.

Exactly.

So let's break down how that works and what people need to do.

So.

That they have a sort of like this roadmap, and we really set the expectations pretty clearly. So, John, we'll start with you because you're.

What.

What do you think is sort of the mathematical equation to get to $10,000 a month in investment?

So I would say in terms of. So in terms of the mathematical equation, I guess I'll cheat a little bit here and give you kind of my thoughts with regards to kind of the time side of things as well when it comes to hitting that 10k. So on the math side, like, we will dig into that as far as, like, the amount that you'll need to invest in order to get that amount of. Amount of monthly recurring. The other thing that's really important is just focusing on the right things. Like, it's so easy to get distracted. Focus here or focus there. But I think it's important to keep your nose to the grindstone. And with the limited time that you have to build your business, it's important that you're focusing that time on the right. The right elements, right? Like the thing that Scott Boss. Not Scott Bossman Scott, Todd Greater Scott.

The thing that he kept.

The.

The thing that he, like, kept on beating into our heads when Val and I went through flight school is mailing and marketing, right? You just gotta do it over and over and over again. And this. The people that I see hitting, like, hitting that number A. There's a persistence requirement, and if you want to hit it fast, then you kind of have to react, right? Like, you gotta like, oh, my marketing's not working. Like, what do I do now? What do I do? Like, you're constantly reacting, pivoting, and putting your attention on the most important thing. So I think it's important to focus and focus on the right things. And then in terms of, you know, in terms of the amount of money to invest, like, when I, when I jumped in, I would buy a property for $1,000, and I'd sell that same property for about $100 a month. And that was kind of my rough equation. I'd be like, all right, how much did I pay? Divide it by 10.

Right?

Now, if you do that math right, then if you want to get to 10,000, then for me, that. That would have been $100,000 and property acquired would equal 10,000 and monthly recurring. And then. But at the same time, like, you know, you hit roadblocks. You're like, oh, I. I don't. Like, I'm. I'm selling well, but I don't. I want to be able to invest more in property acquisition. And so I would just get creative. I just wanted to maintain my momentum. I wanted to keep going, keep going. And so I did a lot of land arb. I've done some investor split deals and stuff like that. So to utilize that hundred thousand dollars, it doesn't have to be all your capital, right? There are ways to get creative and build irregardless of your funding status.

Yeah, absolutely. So Scott, did your eyes glaze over on that math? I feel like Zato should have been taking notes. He was like dividing like wait by 100.

See you next week. John covered it all. We got it all covered.

Thank you all. Great. It was a great episode.

Yeah, I mean it's, it's honestly, it's honestly simple math. You know, you need, you need. If you're selling properties at 100 bucks a month, you need 100 properties. If you're selling properties at 200 bucks a month, you need 50 properties. Right, right.

And by the way, not, not to cut you off mid thought, but I'm going to.

Please.

I, I think that's a really great place to start is just 50 properties. That's one a week. I'm going to take two weeks off and that gets me to 10,000 hours a month and it gives me enough variability. Right. Because now I know. Well, if you know, I'm giving myself six months learning curve and then in 18 months I'm there. And to John's point in between, as I'm getting my reps in and I'm building my confidence, I'm doing deals, I'm creating this track record and I can go out to an investor like you, Scott Bossman, who has way more money than time and you're just like, here, I'll fund you. And now you got your 100 grand to go out and do deals. Okay, but go ahead. I'm sorry I cut you off.

No, it's okay. It's absolutely fine. I think that for some people hearing this, they may think that's a little bit daunting.

Right.

Well, if I need to sell 50 properties and I'm selling them at 200 bucks a pop, that's like looking at the average type of properties, most of US are buying $5,000 or less. How many of those properties do you need and how much capital am I going to need to outlay in order to get to those numbers? But you don't need that much. You don't need $100,000. You don't need $200,000 to do that. Actually you can get investor funds to do that to buy all the land that way. But there are other ways to create passive income. You know, you can land arb. We had a, we had a gentleman go, I don't know if you remember this, Mark. We had a gentleman go through our flight school training a few years ago and he actually didn't have a lot of money. So the recommendation to him was to buy, you know, five to ten properties, land arb. And he bought, I think he bought 10. So he bought 10 land our properties at 100 bucks a month. But then he sold them all in four months and doubled that. He sold them all for 200 bucks a month.

Right, right. So he's making a spread of $100 a month and he doesn't even come off the money. He says come up with the hundred dollars.

Yeah. To control the property. At four minutes he's at a thousand dollars a month passive income. And he's hardly any money invested into the, into the deal. So he didn't need a hundred, you know, he didn't need 10 grand or 20 grand to get started on those properties. So you have investor funding, you have land Arb. You have selling the note. You know, if John sells a property for 200 bucks a month to somebody, he can sell the partial note or the whole note to infuse more cash back into the business. So, you know, you just don't need 100 grand to start. I think you could start with 10 grand, 5 grand, 2 grand, like that gentleman did a few years ago and just get the momentum going and start doing deals.

Yeah. I mean, and think about that like as far as other real estate niches. That sounds insane. That sounds insane. Right. Like in Phoenix, a house to generate $200 a month in passive income.

It'S.

Probably a fixer upper. And I'm probably, maybe I'm buying 30 grand in the hood and I'm putting 20 grand in. And then after financing and hard money loans and all the rigmarole and the paying of the contractors and the real estate fees and all that, Maybe I'm netting 200amonth and then I'm going to bed every night praying the tenant doesn't call.

But the $200 a month mark that you're netting needs to go into an emergency fund, into an emergency fund for any, any pending emergency that's going to happen. So I think you're exactly right. I think it's, it's getting harder and harder and harder to cash flow from single family homes and duplexes. I had a friend that did duplexes for a really long time and it was tough. And they were dealing with emergencies all the time. House fires and furnace problems and AC problems. They had to go to court. We just don't have to do that.

Yeah, I mean, you know, your top operator. Top operator. This is, they're doing this Full time. They're not, they're not W2 side hustle. They're maybe yielding 16 on their money a year, right? Maybe, maybe 12%.

What are you yielding, Mark Podolski? Look at him. Look at him.

He's getting red. Are we live? It's more. A lot more than that. A lot more. Yeah, I mean, you know, we, we try to average 72%, so that means we're doubling our money every year, which sounds insane. I, and I actually don't think that that should be. If you're starting out your goal right, you know, we. Big margins. It's a, it's an inefficient market in a sense, like, know you're not going to go on Zillow and find out the comps, which is also part of the math. So, you know, I, I'm, I'm, I'm always getting a little sheepish about saying, like, what we, what we could do, because I don't want you to think, well, that should be the expectation. But I could tell you it's better than 30%, right? Yeah. I don't know, John. Where are you at?

Yeah, where am I at.

Now?

You're getting cheap.

I know.

I mean, I've gotten some pretty fantastic returns on some of these deals. Like. Yeah, especially lately I've gotten some defaults this year that have turned and that's been, those have been the really, really, really big ones, you know.

But. Well, and that's the thing is, like, it's hard when you, when you calculate the defaults, the returns are just insane because now somebody's lowered our cost basis. We keep doing it and they, you know, there's another default. They keep doing it and just return. Our ROI just keeps going higher and higher. It's, it's kind of a nutty niche.

It's a fun thing to say. It's a nutty niche. I want that on a T shirt. Scott's got grit. I want nutty niche.

Nutty.

Yeah, yeah, like that. But, you know, it's. The math is there. The math is there. So if we, if we break it down and we say we're going to send out 30 offers a day and we get to 100 offers, we're getting a 3 to 5% response rate. That means 3 to 5% of people are responding to our offer and accepting it. We go through due diligence and let's just be conservative, say we close 1%. So for every hundred offers, we're getting one deal, and in that one deal, then we're cash flowing at just say 100 to $200 a month, then we need to get 100 to 50 deals in some time period to get to $10,000 a month. And then, you know, let's just use easy math. Let's just say it's a buck an offer letter, right. So 30 bucks a day is going to be your, your mailing costs. And then I don't know, what do you think your overhead is virtually, I mean, as you scale your land business, you gotta have that software. But yeah, it's actually a profit center, so that doesn't really cost you anything.

Yeah, I think it's one of the best, one of the best businesses though, Mark, when you look at operating expenses compared to revenue you're bringing in, because you can keep this at a thousand bucks, you can keep your operating expenses at a thousand bucks. Right. For the first year of the business. Right. You know what's could. What if you're, you know, what if your operating expenses end up being 20% of your revenue, but then you take care of that with one or two cash deals a month.

Right?

You wipe out those operating expenses with cash deals. Yeah, it's.

It's crazy. It's crazy. So you gotta. So you got a business that you don't need a lot of money to start. You've low fixed overhead, you have almost no competition in the sense that there's billions of acres of land for sale and all these little niches within the niches in raw land. I don't know. I think it's the best passive income model. But I'd be open to you, dear viewer. What do you think? Let us know. Engage. Put in the comments, please.

Engage all of our hundreds of viewers. Yeah, you often hear that saying. You hear the saying, the math ain't mathing, right? Well, that. The math is mathing. With this. That's gonna be my T shirt. The math is math.

The math is mathing.

Exactly. The math is math, I think was that Tony Robbins line. I love numbers and numbers love me. Yeah, yeah. It seems so far right now for me, but yeah, for sure. Is that. I think it's that Devin Ruiz. Is it Darren? I think. Is it Darren or. Yeah, Darren.

Yeah.

Sorry, Darren or Devin? I think it's Darren.

Darren.

You got Ruiz, right, Star? Yeah, Trust me. Yeah, but you know, it's interesting like that, that great Dan Sullivan, Ben Hardy book the gap in the game, right.

So.

So Darren's looking at the gap, right. The gap's the horizon. It looks like it's so Far away. But when you're in the business and you're doing it every day, you go into the game, you just see how far you've come. It's like, oh, I started here, now I'm here. And I've got, you know, a thousand dollars a month in passive income. I've done five deals. So, yeah, like, let's celebrate that. Not, not the horizon, which seems so far away. It's like, oh, well, I'm $9,000 a month away from that goal. You gotta, you gotta celebrate the, the, the milestones of what you're doing. And of course, it's easy for me to say because I probably live in the, the gap about three times a day. Honestly, it's like. Yeah, you know, but it's true. But it's a good reminder.

Yeah. We can't all live in the gain all the time.

No. Yeah. I mean, it's hard. I don't think we're wired to live in the game.

I think John does.

John, do you?

I don't know. I just live. That's great.

I just live. Look at him. He's just, just instead of present every day.

Yeah, that's great.

Yeah.

Yeah. I think, I think, though, too, like, we've talked about this so many times. If you can, if you can just try to take your emotion out of it a little bit and just be consistent, like John says, and just do what you have to do in this business, these, these golden nuggets are going.

To come right, right.

With, with cons. The consistency brings results, and every once in a while, the consistency is going to bring a really amazing result. Right? You're gonna, you're gonna buy a property for a thousand and you're gonna sell it for a thousand, down 200amonth for five years, right? Or you're gonna buy a, you know, you're gonna come into a bulk deal. How many people have we seen do that, Mark, where they come into the opportunity to buy 50 properties and they can wholesale them all right away and make 50 grand.

Right, right. Yeah.

Or more. Yeah.

No, no, 100. And it's interesting. I was reading this, this article today on LinkedIn about a guy who's like one of the top traders ever. He took like $5,000 and made like $5,000,000 and something crazy. He's like, you know, this like, legendary trader and he, and he broke it down and he wrote us even a song about it. Like, it's like very simple. Six principles to be a great trader. But at the core of it was just Staying emotionally sound. And he would say that he would see people who would make money, and then they would literally sabotage themselves. And he. His guess was that they were doing it because they were getting something from it. Like, they. They got, like, they were more comfortable in sabotage. And so I think it's. It's interesting when you.

When I.

When I read that, like, oh, my gosh, it's. It. You know, I can see that in my own life, where emotionally I feel uncomfortable and I'll end up maybe sabotaging myself where, you know, I need to have an important conversation, and I've just procrastinated.

And then it gets bigger and bigger.

And then it gets worse, and it, like, blows up, and it's just terrible, right? But in. In business, oftentimes, you know, we'll see people who will start the land business, and it's like, they'll come into it just to prove to us that it works for everyone but them. And then they get to be, like, the victim, and. And they're, like, more comfortable in that space. And I think psychologically, it's kind of an interesting thing to see where there's other people that they. They're like, I'm just gonna be successful and have just tremendous confidence, and no roadblock is getting in their way. And they get there like, you know, like a Stephanie Dean, she quit her job in five months. Like, it was insane. She's like, I just have total belief.

Yeah.

You know, that was a great podcast with her. So it's interesting how you. How. How some people. It's. It's just a mental game.

I think, like, one book that I've read that's had a big impact on me is Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink, which is the idea that, like, when something's going wrong, like, regardless of whether or not it's your fault, you take ownership of it, right? You're like, this is mine. Right? But it's so easy when things are hard because you go through depths in this business, right? You send out a mailer and it doesn't click, and you're waiting for those responses to come back. You are marketing, and the lead flow isn't coming that you expect. And it's so easy to just. To just externalize that, right? And just say, well, it's. It's because of all these external factors, instead of just taking ownership and say, what do I need to pivot? What do I need to change to make this happen? And, I mean, that's one big thing. Like, when you think about the People who hit it in 12 months. Like, those are the people I see. Like, not. They're not making excuses. They're just like, what do we do now? What do we do now? What do we do now? Right. And so they're just taking a ton of action.

Yeah, I love that. I love, like, those Jocko Willink podcasts. And he's like, it's got that deep voice, and he's just the most intimidating Cuban in the planet.

Right?

And it's like, you know, this happened. That happened.

Good. Yeah.

Right?

Good. That's something I say to myself all the time. Like today, something went wrong and I'm just like, good.

Like, it's. Yeah.

You know, the universe is challenging me. Good.

Yeah, but.

But it's true. I mean, it is mental. Like, if that's your attitude, take extreme ownership. You don't blame the market. You don't blame, you know, this. You don't say, oh, you know, bossman is grit, shirt, whatever. Right? You just. You're just like, I'm gonna do what I need to do. Because clearly, if. If, you know, these jokers can do it, I can do it. You're just like, all right, I'll figure it out.

Well, speaking of consistency, I want to give a shout out to Jared because I'm on Facebook a lot for whatever reason, and, like, his ads are everywhere. He's everywhere. He's posting ads on his land, and they're so creative and they're so attention getting. And like, he's. He's holding for sale, signs up with this face mark in front of his land, and I just have to like. And he says here that he was in a slump for a couple months.

Right.

But he just kept pushing through and marketing relentlessly. And because he's marketed relentlessly now, which I doubt had traction initially.

Right.

Takes a while to gain the traction. Now he's being overwhelmed by responses to ads. So it's been pretty neat to see Jared. I. I've watched, man, I see all these ads. I'm. I'm liking them. Like, it's. It's. There's a lot of good stuff going on there, which is pretty cool.

Jared Bell. That's amazing. If I wasn't locked out of my Facebook account, I'd like your ads too.

You're still locked down. It's been like four years.

I've been out. Yeah. I mean, I can't get a hold of them. Like, every time I think I get close, they're like, that page just has technical problems. There's no One to contact. If anyone's listening to this from you from Facebook, can you help me get my. Like, my team's in there. Like, we have ads. I personally just can't get on, so.

Oh, my gosh.

I would definitely like all your posts.

Yeah, that's awesome.

Awesome.

Oh.

Dear Ruiz. I got tickets to November Summit. See you in Texas. The Dirt Ridge Summit. Let's go. We're gonna be in Austin, Texas. It's going to be an amazing, amazing event and it's capped at 250 people. So if you haven't gotten your ticket yet, go get your ticket.

Can you tell us more about the. The summit, Mark? What's. What's happening?

Yeah, yeah. So it's still. We're still. Still forming it, but there will be lots of content, so at all different levels. So if you're in Toolkit, Derbert Starter Kit, Flight School, you have content just for you. If you're in coaching or unfair Advantage, you have advanced content just for you. And if you've never heard of land investing, you can buy a ticket and learn at the Dirt Rich Summit. And then we're gonna have networking with everybody at every different level. There's gonna be masterminding. There's going to be speakers and sponsors. It's going to be Bossman and Zano and John Burnett are going to be there. Like, the celebrities will be there. You get to get to meet them. It's going to be amazing.

Scott's gonna be signing grit shirts.

It'll be great.

So live events change lives.

I. I still agree. I still. Live events change lives. That's where I met you, Mark. And I went in. I went into that weekend pretty skeptical. Sat there like this, but I was just. This is my thinking pose. But. But I've realized now that that's. That's not. That's not good body language.

So it wasn't. It was very frightening. And thank God for Aaron. Scott's a big dude. I don't know if you guys can tell how big he is, but he's a big, intimidating guy sitting there like this. And I'm thinking to myself, is this resonating? Oh, no, but it was great.

Oh, yeah. But, yeah, it's crazy. Yeah. I mean, I've been to, like, I've been to an obscene amount of live events just for my own choice and for my own business and. But it's crazy. Like, I think for me, like, the first live event I went to, I think effectively saved my business. And then, oh, wow. I just kept coming ever since. Yeah, I was like, I was really burning out. I was a good chunk in and I just hadn't delegated anything. And so we did the, we did the big circle and we all gave our pain points and then we all gave advice to each other one by one. Everybody just lambasted me and was like, you need to delegate, John. You need to delegate, John. And then I had an intake manager by the, you know, within a week and, and everything, everything changed. But it was, it's just so energizing. It's so energizing to be around people that are going through what you're going through. And man, like I've, I've got so many good friendships out of that. I've got people I meet with every week. I've got people I've been meeting with every week for six, more than six years just out of these events. Like, it's crazy.

Yeah, the community is amazing. And, and really like, like our last coaching live, I, I said this to.

The, to the room.

Like, there's not one person in this room and there's like 70 people in the room. There's not one of them that didn't pass the airport test. Like, if I was stuck in an airport with them, I would have been just fine. Like, just really good people. And there's some big hitters in that room. I mean, people making, you know, 40, 50, 60,000amonth of passive income. You would have no idea. They, they are not, you know, sitting on their passive income perch looking down at you like they're there to help and share and give and they want you to succeed as well. And it's, it's great. And just, you know, it's rare to be in a room like that. Don Thrasher. What's Don saying?

Well done. Do you know Don, John?

I know Don. Hi, Don. It's good, good to have you here.

Yeah, welcome, Don. So Don, is a great question. We obviously need to reinvest in more purchases with the cash flow we create. At what point do we start to pay ourselves?

Oh, Don, you never pay for yourself. This is that kind of business. You just keep compounding and growing, growing. Congratulations. It's a great business. Oh, no, it's a really good question. It's a really good question. Let's, let's go through the math. John, should I just put you on the spot on this or why do.

I ask why am I the math person all of a sudden? I want to be the feelings person. I'll give the feelings.

I can do the math. Nobody wants to do it.

Well, you know, I think we get into some of this number stuff in our, in our different trainings, right. It's, it's a lot to go over in just a few minutes. But number one, everybody's situation is different, right? Like some people getting into this, they, they maybe have a corporate job and they may maybe make a really great living, but they're tired and they want out in three years. So they start this and they can grow quickly without pulling any money out. Maybe they don't need to pull any money out. And if you don't even need to pull any money out of your business, you can grow it quickly and then start pulling from it later. Like last week we were talking about, you know, maybe create a personal pension fund for yourself, right. With this business, other people like myself, I was more in the rat race with debt and bills and lots of kids and things I needed to pay off and not a very good salary. So as I went forward, looking back, I wish I would have had more of a systematic approach to it. But you know, if I got a cash deal, I'd pay myself a little bonus, right. I wanted to grow that passive income nest egg. But if I made five grand cash on a property, I was paying myself maybe 40% of that and you know, putting the rest back toward buying more land, toward taxes, that type of thing. I think 40% is a good, is a good number that people kind of rely on as they grow their businesses. So if you're bringing in, you know, 20,000 month passive, you can pay yourself 8 per month, but then maybe a little bit more on top of it when you get a cash deal, you know, and some of the cash deals, they can be quite life changing. You know, when you do that first deal, I mean the first deal where you buy for one and sell for five, that's, that's exciting. But John, I know you all the time, like every week I'm talking to you, I bought for five, sold for 20.

Right?

Like those, those deals are, those deals are crazy. So. And that again comes with the consistency. If you're consistent and you mail, you're going to find these deals. And if you're consistent and you market, you're going to sell for cash 20% of the time.

Yeah, I like that too. Like, sorry, Mark, you have a better thing to say, I know.

No, I don't, I don't, I don't know what you're gonna say. You might say the most profound thing ever.

We'll find out. But I, yeah, I think it's important to not pay yourself too late. Like, there's something psychologically beneficial about just pulling money, like benefiting personally from your business. And if you like, it's easy to burn out. If you're taking three, four years and you've never taken a penny out of your business, it can kind of feel like monopoly money. Right. It's like this thing that I'm building, but like, it's never, it's not really like benefiting you personally in your personal life. And so I think that it is important to, to pay yourself just to, to stay motivated, to feel the wins and, you know, just to start, you know, experiencing the benefit that you've actually created.

Yeah, I love that. And Don, I would pick up Profit first by Mike Michalowicz as well. It's going to kind of walk you through every business, whether it's a land business or, you know, any other business that you would want to start and how to sort of allocate your cash flow into these different buckets. So you've got your OPEX bucket, which would be a certain percentage. You've got your, your tax bucket. You've got to pay the IRS as you make a profit. You've got your payroll bucket. So that's your. What you're going to pay, and you have your profit bucket. And so of course you're going to pay your profit first. And then you go in and you have these percentages. And then as you grow and you change the, you're going to have a bigger profit percentage once you start using other people's money as well, because you're, you're actually reinvesting all of your profit back into more land. But what if you were taking investor money and using that for more land? Now you're putting fuel on that fire in that machine. Now that's really where you want to get to. But obviously when you first start, you've got to build the machine to a point. You have to get enough deals in a track record to, to attract investor money, number one. Or maybe you can go out and do debt in various ways. You can use a home equity line of credit. You can, you know, do a family debt deal where they're, they'll let you borrow it, you know, 8 to 12%. And you can structure it that way, but it's, you're playing that cash flow game so that you're able to keep pouring more fuel onto the, the land fire, if you will, and keep growing in your no portfolio, which as you grow your node portfolio, you have even more flexibility as far as financing, getting the maths of that, because then you can sell your note, a partial or a full note, to another investor, take that cash and reinvest it and also pay yourself as well. So that's so a long answer, Don, but hopefully it was a satisfying one, I hope.

Very satisfying. We step away. We always have book recommendations on the call. And there's your book recommendation for tonight.

There you go. There you go. It's a classic.

It's classic.

It's a classic.

This is classic.

One of those awkward silences where I see the orange banner and we're all reading it and then it's like, okay, now what do we talk about? We've done the math. We've answered some questions. Dear listener, you gotta ask us some more questions. Otherwise we're gonna have to pivot into something else. Off topic maybe. I don't know. I don't want to go off topic. Maybe I want a little bit.

I mean, it never hurts to go off topic. I mean, sometimes hurts maybe, but yeah, people are quiet. Well, wait, we got a new comment. Let's see what it is. Oh, nothing, nothing. No question. Just a comment. Darren said, Mark, have you read this book or have you. Have you heard of T. Harv Ecker's Money Jars? I've never heard of them.

Okay, but not the money jars.

Sounds similar to Profit First.

It science. Yeah, the profit first. But I mean, I can tell you when I first started land investing, if you guys haven't read. And this is a shameless plug. Dirt rich. I talk about my story. I had Parkinson's wall of money. So the more money I made, the more money I spent and I created this huge lifestyle for myself. Don't do that. Do the Money Jars or Profit first because inevitably something's going to happen. I don't know what's going to happen. I don't know if it's going to be a great recession or if it's going to be tariffs or if it's going to be another pandemic, but there's going to be something that inevitably happens. And so you want to be prepared for that.

For sure.

I, you know, I had to learn the hard way, but you don't have to.

No, I love that. Yeah, I think that that's one of, you know, one of the most. Your money mindset module at our, at our live boot camps is always really motivating, Mark, because you, you take us through that journey. Right. And that's another thing. I think we should just Remind people of is we do have a live boot camp coming up, a virtual boot camp coming up. June 5th, 6th, and 7th.

That's right. That's right. If you haven't registered, register ASAP. Virtual boot camps are great because we do those breakout rooms and get to meet people, even virtually.

Yeah. Virtual boot camp. Three days. Three days of content and learning and proof that this works.

Yeah. Yeah.

It's not just these three yahoos on here talking to you.

Exactly.

I like to. I mean, bootcamp is like. It's very information heavy, and I still find, like, I come away with takeaways and action items, and I'm, you know, coming up on eight years in to my business.

Right.

And, like, I mean, we bring in guest speakers, we do breakout sessions, we think about quarterly planning. You know, we talk about the state of the market, what's working, what's not working. It's great. It's really, really good.

Yeah. And then I. I love the.

The.

The focus finder at the end where we take you through. It's like, okay, here's your next thing you should do after three days of all this content. And it's like, okay, now there's no ambiguity. This is what you tackle next.

Yeah.

So you just. You leave with so much momentum.

Yeah.

After that boot camp and. Yeah. I mean, there's always. Even if you've been in eight years, 10 years, there's always a gem in there because you're different. Your business is different. You take something away and it's. It's always valuable, for sure.

And there's always boot camp magic. There's always people doing deals, and we talk about those deals, which is motivating. Yeah.

We break down the deals. Like, how'd you get the deal? Right. What was your. What was your ad like? It's. There's. There's a lot there.

It's fun to see how that's evolved, too, Mark. When we used to do the live weekends, you know, seven, eight, ten years ago, there'd be like, one deal a day.

Right.

Right now there's like. Like ten deals a day.

It's crazy.

I know.

I know. It is crazy.

Yeah. It's fun stuff.

It's so fun. Yeah. You know, it's so funny. Like, Covid kind of changed everything. Like, oh, for sure. We never thought of doing a virtual boot camp, but what we found is, like, more people can actually attend.

Right.

And. And really benefit from it.

Yeah. Sorry, my dog is crying. Probably.

Wisdom equals learn from other people's pain, not directly from your own.

Yeah, it's true, it's true.

I, yeah, I wish I had some of that wisdom when I was younger.

I mean, it's good to learn from your own pain, too, but I'd rather learn from other people.

I'd rather learn from other people's pain, for sure. Yeah. It's interesting because, like, if you have teenagers or young kids, like, yeah, they don't have, like, they have to go through the pain, I think.

Yeah.

To really, to really learn the lesson. I could be wrong, maybe. Depends on the kid. But, yeah, I might be projecting. I know for myself, it's like, I.

Mean, for my six kids, I just didn't listen. Yeah, I mean, I've got six, you've got four, so that's 10. And I agree with you, for all of my kids. Yeah, they're very little, though.

Yeah. Give them, give them 10 years, John, and then. Yeah, yeah, lots happens, Lots happens in those, those late teenage years.

Yeah.

Yeah, for sure. Like, would it be great if we could just read like a biography a day and just learn from other people's life stories and, and get the wisdom and all the lessons? You absolutely can, but I, I just think, like, for whatever reason, we, yeah.

But John John's got a whole thing for this mark. He, John John, you know, he's getting smarter. He reads. So he reads five books a day.

Yeah, you just chatgpt. I'm like, I go on chat GPT walks every day. You just say, like, yeah, so you tell it, you tell it to be the author. You say, okay, you're the author of this book, and I want you to give me all the core principles of this book. And then if you're using chat GPT and it's built a memory, or if it's built a memory base off of you and your situation, your business, you can then say, how would I then apply these principles into my life? And so then you move from a, just absorbing the information into having effectively a Socratic dialogue back and forth. And so it actually internalizes more. And you can, like, you can absorb a ton of information. It's crazy.

I mean, why don't we do that? Like. Yeah, live. Let's do a whole chat GPT session live. Yeah, that'd be so fun.

Yeah, that sounds good.

Absolutely. Yeah. I, I, I love chat GBT for, for getting my thinking, my reasoning. I love it. I honestly love it. Like, contracts, like, I'm saving so much money in contract review right now. It's crazy.

It's helping my parenting.

Is it helping the parenting Tell me more.

It totally is helping my parenting. They're just. They're just every once in a while, there's some situations that come across that, like, how do I handle this without. I don't know, I don't want to be overbearing or I don't want to be, you know, seem like, yeah, I'll go to chat GPT and I'll explain the situation and say, hey, you know, give me. Give me some. Give me some. Some recommendations on how I communicate with this kid and how I might give them advice on how to move forward with whatever issue they're dealing with. And it's honestly been really helpful.

Yeah, it's really helpful, too, if you tie that to a role. So if you say, I want you to step into this particular role, you're this person, and then I want you to speak as them into this specific situation. And I found it's really good at, like, at adopting that. That framework. It's pretty powerful.

Yeah.

I love it. I love it. I can't. I kind of get a little scared that I'm going to forget how to think for myself.

Right.

Because I kind of default to it a little too much.

Yeah.

You know, it's right there. It's like, well, you know, you can just talk into it and to your point, like, you get really good at prompting it and then it kind of knows you really well and it's like, it just says, like, the smartest stuff. They're like, oh, it's so good.

It is.

It's so good. But, yeah, what my fear is that I think that, you know, and tell me, tell me if you think I'm wrong. We're all kind of making it up as we go along. Like Steve Jobs was kind of making it up, too. And, you know, all. All like these really great figures.

Right.

Like, they were great at certain things, but at other things, like, they were just like, you know, like, no one's perfect.

Right.

And so it's. It always sort of. I always sort of hesitate, like, when, you know, I want to be as smart as that person that I admire in this situation, but also know no situation is exactly the same. And even they couldn't tell you why they're successful. They don't know. And there's so many different things that go into it. I really just think that it's in the doing, it's in the experiencing that, and it's. It's in. Most of the time we're making mistakes and it's just like to Scott's Shirt.

Right.

It's just that grit to keep going. And I think ChatGPT might be helpful in having that resilience and that grit and giving you sort of that, that wisdom and that knowledge in unlocking certain parts that maybe you're not as strong in to help you. But ultimately, Chat GPT is not going to make your offers. CHAT GPT is not going to close a deal for you. CHAT GPT is not going to manage your VA team. Chat GBT will do the math of what we're talking about for sure, which is super cool. So it's just going to save you time, but it's not going to do the thing that you need to do.

It's also not gonna, it's also not gonna cannibalize this business.

No, it's not gonna cannibalize this business.

Yeah, yeah, I know, it's crazy. Like, I, I've talked to folks about that. Like, it's really disrupted a lot of industries. Right. There are whole industries and whole professions that have effectively just been made redundant by AI in the last five years. Like, it's crazy. But, yeah, you get, I mean, in a business like this, like, you're not going to sell your land to a computer.

Right.

There's an element of trust and relationship that is required that, you know, there's a lot that we could delegate to AI. Like, it's really powerful in, I think, supercharging our business, but there are elements that cannot be effectively delegated to a computer, you know?

Right, right. And I, I do think there is something to be said about being with other people in business. Ray Dalio has that great phrase of meaningful work and meaningful relationships. Well, I want to have meaningful work and meaningful relationships, but if I fire my whole team and make them AI bots, those meaningful relationships are gone, essentially. And I'd rather have the, the people that work with me using AI to supercharge them.

Yeah.

And, and we can all sort of grow our businesses together.

Yeah, for sure.

And, and do that.

I don't know.

I just think it'd be lonely to have this sort of one man, one woman, one person business.

I agree. And I, I think it's going to, it's going to provide a lot of momentum to this community. So I think, you know, John and I have a unique perspective because we started eight to 10 years ago. Things were just a little bit slower back then. Right now the training is better, the systems are better, we're delegating better, we're doing all things better. But now we're on the forefront of AI in this business. So I'm excited to see what's going to happen in 10 years. I think people are going to get to bring it back to our original topic of 10,000amonth passive. I think people are going to get to 10,000 month passive now faster than they ever have because we are going to be able to supercharge with AI. We are going to be able to leverage AI in, in our business, in creating processes, in, in training our VAs, in teaching them how to use chat GPT in our business so we don't have to do it. It's going to go so much faster now than it did even in the last few years. And I think, I think, you know, Mark, you talked earlier about how they're, you know, try and quinn got to 10,000amonth pass them in a year. Ken Sumner got 10,000 month pass from a year. We're going to see, we're going to see that more and more and more now.

I have no doubt, I agree and I just think it is the great accelerant of everything and I'm really bullish on it. I think it could be the greatest thing that we've ever seen in humanity and the abundance it's going to create. But to your point, we have to do it. Yeah, right. You have to learn it. You can't put your head in the sand. And as an entrepreneur, it is part of your SWOT analysis. What are your strengths? What are your weaknesses? What are the opportunities? What are the threats? And really have that wing Gretzky, that quote, I don't go where the puck is, I go where the puck is going and we need to go where that puck is going to as land entrepreneurs and definitely embracing ChatGPT and just making us and our team so much more effective than they are today.

Yeah, I think it's like, I mean it's like a really effective mentor, right? Like you can have an amazing mentor and not do a dang thing, right? Like, you know, you get all the advice but you don't actually take the action. And I mean I've been, I've been using AI a lot for just planning for my company and just, you know, processing kind of where things are at in the company, what needs attention, what doesn't. All those types of things, setting company direction. Then I have to do it right? Otherwise it just, nothing actually happens. But and I like what you said Mark, about like, it's not like, I think that AI is, is pretty augmented, like used effectively. It just in Enable. It's like you. You. You're given a superpower, right? Like, you're. You're able to do a lot more, a lot faster. And I like the idea. Like, I mean, I'm training my team on. On AI. Like, here's. Let's talk about prompting. Let's talk about all these. All these different things that you can use effectively, and then they're then able to utilize that in their own. In their own individual roles, you know, and so it. It compounds right across the business.

No 100%. And now there's those custom GPTs. You can see what other people have built and test it for yourself. So you don't even need to go down the rabbit hole yourself if you don't want to and do that. So I don't know how we went from the math of $10,000 a month passive income in land to AI and all the benefits. But that's the great thing about Nightcap, you know, you get John. Oh, good. And Scott a few drinks, and who knows where it goes?

We just rap and. Yeah, I mean, we. Singing songs here before you know it.

Exactly. Exactly.

Well, I think so next week we've come up on an. On an hour here, but I think next week we're gonna have a Land Geek spotlight. So we're gonna have a. We're gonna interview another successful Land Geek client, like we did a few weeks ago with Robert Belcher. So stay tuned for that. I don't know who it is yet.

No, I'm not gonna be there. Oh, you guys know where I'm gonna be?

No.

Oh.

Sleep Retreat. Darker. Darkness Retreat.

Dark Retreat. Sleep retreat. Sounds awesome.

I want to go on.

I have a feeling I will be sleeping quite a bit.

Yeah. Yeah. Darkness Retreat. Sorry?

The Darkness Retreat.

It's so funny.

Like, everyone, I. I'm like, it's so great. You just get to be. And it's such a great break from life, and you get all these, you know, benefits from it. No one I've told is like, yes, I want to spend a week in the dark. No one. Why?

I think you are an anomaly there, Mark. I think you are.

That's what my mom said. She's like, I don't know where you came from. She's like, you're like an alien. Like, Mom, I came from you.

Do you, like. Do you bump into things a lot? Do you, like, come back with bruises?

Yeah. Yeah. So you gotta walk gingerly in the room. You kind of learn the room and like.

Okay.

I'm like, yeah, like, 10 steps to the bathroom, you know, you're like kind of maneuver around and you know, you can feel on the floor, like there's like. You learn it. You learn the dark real fast. Yeah. And then like, you know, it's kind of fun. Like, you know, you don't know what you're gonna eat, but you open it up, you kind of smell it, you touch it, like, oh, okay, right. And. And like in the shapes, like. Because it's always sort of the same thing each. Each day. So you know, by the shape of the container, what it's going to be. And I'll tell you what. Food in the dark. Because, like, think about it. You got nothing to do. I mean, I remember maybe it was day four, day five. I took like 30 minutes to eat a hard boiled egg. Like, you just savor it, like every little bite. And you know, because there's nothing to do except be. So, like, eating is.

Is the best. Yeah.

What is.

What is like the. The moment, like when the retreat ends. Do they just like, turn on the lights?

Like, what do you.

What is it?

No, so they. You're, you know, you've got like your dark Sherpa and they say, okay, we're. We're gonna take you out. You put on a. What's it called? Sleep mask, right? And they guide you out, and you're in the middle of Oregon, this beautiful forest. You're a land person. You love it. And then they have a camera. You sit on a chair, they have a camera. You open the mask. You know, who knows how long it's been since you've seen light. And like, you see light for the first time and you get real emotional and you see the beauty and like, you're talking in front of. It's like, great marketing. So if you go to like, skycaveretreats.com you can see on YouTube these. These videos of people coming out of the darkness and it's. It's really great. And again, I say that and no one will sign up.

Well, maybe someday.

Exactly. Yeah. I know you're not gonna do it. I mean, like, oh, no.

Okay, now, I mean, if you challenge me, I. I might triple.

I triple dog dare you.

Okay. All right. I'll consider it.

Okay.

All right.

That was very nice, Darren. Let's end on this. What a nice guy. Never a waste to spend Tuesday nights with us. So awesome. Thank you, sir.

Aaron's the best.

Thank you.

Darren.

Darren, we'll meet you in November and the rest of you guys will see you next week. For a land Geek spotlight Matt. Mark will wing it without you.

I'll miss you guys.

Let you too.

Freedom.

Freedom.

Ring.

Ring.

Good night, everybody.

Good night.