The Land Geek Podcast #1

Welcome to the Land Geek podcast, your resource for information and tips to making money by buying and selling land. Let the Land Geek show you how to make a passive income by working smart, not working hard. Learn strategies and tricks to make money buying and selling raw land today. And here's the man that's gonna help you do that. The Land Geek.

Hey, it's mark podolsky of thelandgeek.com and frontierpropertiesusa.com and I'm really excited. This is my first attempt at podcasting and I've got with me, hopefully I'm going to make him commit to this, my regular partner on this podcast, Joanne Frazier of Reserve Land management. His website's reserveland.com and Duran and I got in this business together in 2001 and we're going to talk about our stories in just a second. But I do want to introduce Duran properly because just to pigeonhole him as a land guy would be incorrect. He is a serial entrepreneur and his story is fascinating because he got started when he was 21 years old. So he's six years younger than me. It's just incredible. So, Duran, how's it going, buddy?

I'm doing great. You know, I'm really upset that I missed your 40th birthday, Mark. I didn't even realize you turned 40. So congratulations, you old man.

That's because I'm completely ignoring the fact that I'm now 41. I'm just gonna start doing counting backwards now. But look, we all can't be as young and as good looking as you, Jaran.

It's pretty hard, let me tell you. It's pretty hard going bald and gray at 35. But I will say that what's brought me here to today, all the fun, enjoyment and everything else that goes along with being a serial entrepreneur, I'll take it. I'll take the bald hair, I'll take the gray beard and the gray hair that I'm starting to see that really makes me sad. But anyway, yeah, I do have a pretty cool little backstory, but it wouldn't be the same if I didn't have you, buddy. So. So you want to talk a little bit about the story or you want to go into some other details?

Yeah, I mean, tell us how you started from this 21 year old punk kid who knew nothing about real estate and now you're living off the ocean in Carlsbad and you work at land six hours a week. Is that what you told me?

Yeah. You know, that's kind of maybe pushing a little Bit. I may be exaggerating a little bit. Maybe a little bit more like five hours a week. But, yeah, I got into the land business at the ripe age of 21 years old. My grandfather gave me a quitclaim deed to a piece of land that he thought was worthless and he had traded gemstones for in the 1970s in a little town outside. A little town called Taos, New Mexico. At that ripe age of 21, I thought Taos, New Mexico, was actually the country of Mexico. I wasn't quite sure geographically. I wasn't very intelligent at that point in time. So I didn't know what to do with this piece of land. I decided, you know, what if. If I could sell this thing, maybe I could put a little money in the bank and continue my dream of trying to be a professional surfer, which at that point in time, I was already. I didn't have the athletic ability to barely stand up on a board, but I had dreams. So, anyway, I took the piece of land, went on ebay, sold this piece of land, and $800 later, I thought I was Donald Trump.

$800 on your first transaction, correct?

Correct. And I didn't even know, to be honest with you. It's hilarious. I didn't know what to do with the. With the deed. I had no clue how to transfer the sale. I just was like, 800 bucks sounded awesome. I'll figure it out. So now, had I gotten back to my grandpa and told him I sold this piece of land and made 800 bucks, he'd probably make me give him 795 back just because I know how cheap my grandfather is. But nothing bad to say about him, but he was just. That's just the way he rolled. And. And there's nothing wrong with that. So I took the first piece of land, I sold it, and then my next question was, which kind of leads me to, like, you know, how do you become an entrepreneur? What? You know, the mindset of entrepreneur, you kind of open your brain a little bit, get creative, and go, how do I do it again? What's next? And so I decided to research this and find out exactly where this place was, because obviously, I hadn't been there. I spotted out on a map, you know, probably after I sold it, and. And then I realized, hey, I need to get back out there and see if I can find some more. So it just so happened that three months later was the next auction. So I took my $800, and I borrowed 500 from my mom and 500 from my sister, promised them both a 35% return on investment after six weeks.

That's very generous.

Yeah, they were, they actually thought they knew they had written that money off. But I, for me, I thought there's a chance this could happen. It was slight, but it was a slim chance. But I figured that we could do something with it. So take my $1,800 to jump southwest plane to Albuquerque, take the drive up there, have no clue what I'm in for. Get the auction. And I noticed there's about seven or eight people that don't belong there. And I just, it just didn't feel right. Gosh, where are these people coming from? They don't look like they're from Taos, New Mexico. So at, at the, they. It was a two day auction. @ lunchtime we all go out and we, we. I go out and me being sort of a, you know, obviously I'm not a, I'm not a, you know, introvert. I went and said, let's go do some lunch, guys. Let's all chat, let's see what's going on. So I sit down and I happen to sit down with five other people that are doing ebay auctions and they are all pretty, pretty wealthy people that are doing well in this business. And they had just all sort of started at the same time, except for they had already been to four or five or six different auctions together. So we all just sort of chatted to see what, you know, what was going on. And you know, lo and behold, we all made friends. And to this day, most of them are still friends of mine, which is pretty crazy. It's almost been, you know, whatever 14 or 15 years later. So it's interesting for me to, you know, to look back on that. But in any case, I picked up about five or six parcels at this auction and I ended up selling them for probably between 6 and 8,000. I don't recall the total number, but of course you can figure out return wise, it was pretty.

Good. It was a huge return. Yeah. And you and I met at that. My first auction, which was in Deming, New Mexico and I had $3,000. I mean, I was freaking out. I remember telling my wife that I was going to do this and I'm going to try to buy land. And she's like, at this time I was doing investment banking. I was doing mergers and acquisitions with this little boutique firm that I was completely miserable with at that time. But a buddy of mine said, hey, come do this with me. And he had been doing really well. So I remember going, and I'm freaking out. I don't know what I'm doing. And I bought, I think, 10 pieces at that auction at an average price of $100. And I remember making. And I had like. Or something like that. And I remember spending all 3,000. I forgot what it was. But then I made like a 300% return on that auction. And then the next one was Arizona in Southern Arizona. You and I went to that one, and you and I, we picked up property for like a dollar and five dollars. And I remember that was the big auction where I think I spent all the money I made on Deming and ended up making over $90,000 over the next six months, which allowed me to really think about quitting my job. I quit my job 18 months.

After.

That, and it was just phenomenal. So this business is weird. It's this niche. It's land. It's not houses. It's not flipping houses. And you've been involved in a lot of different businesses. But why do you like land so.

Much? Well, you know, it's one of those things where looking at land from a creative aspect on a sales side, marketing side, acquisition side. What. What can I buy? Where can I buy it? The unique part about owning a piece of land compared to a piece of paper, there's just so much more intrigue in stepping on a piece of land and saying, this is my land. So going back to that Arizona auction you were talking about, I had one of those auctions prior to it. It was Valencia county auction, where I actually had an average purchase price, I think was $33 a lot and sale price of $1,000 a lot. And I think that was kind of my catapult. So Arizona was a great auction for me, but I actually think the Valencia auction for me was enormous. I spent about three or 4,000, maybe 5,000 at that auction. And I think I made a return in like maybe 12 weeks of about 60,000 to $70,000. So it was big. And those numbers don't reflect what's going to happen on your everyday occurrence at an.

Auction. Right, Right. Yeah. I mean, you should be listening to this and expecting, oh, I'm going to go to an auction tomorrow and make these kinds of returns. I mean, this was back when no one knew about this, before John Beck started doing infomercials late at night, telling people how to go to these auctions. So it's a much more complex business now because you really have to diversify as far as getting deal flow. You can't Just be tax auctions anymore. I do a letter campaign. I do bulk sales with distressed individuals and companies. So it's much more involved now than what it was when we got started. But it's much more exciting because Duran and I have already made all mistakes and can really help other people now avoid those mistakes. And, you know, it's really gotten down to where we have it systematized. And I think that's what this podcast is going to be about, is that, you know, the bottom line is, you know, I started with $3,000. Duran started with a piece of property, and really that gave him, like, $800 to play with. You don't need hundreds of thousands of dollars to start buying and selling raw land. You really just need a little bit of knowledge and courage, really to go out and do it. Would you.

Agree? 100%, Mark? 100%. I think that's where people need to realize that. And the difference between 2000, 2000 and 2001 and 2013 is there are so many more advantages in the terms of the Internet, in terms of how to market your land that we didn't have back then. We only had one place to go, and that was ebay. Now, these sellers can go anywhere and market, and they can still use direct marketing campaigns. There's so many ways to market now that it gives the seller an upper.

Hand. Oh, yeah. I mean, the analytics now are crazy. I mean, I can go on a website now and I can say I want males who have income of, you know, 60 to $120,000. They subscribe to these magazines, which are typically outdoor magazines. You know, maybe they like, you know, something that has to do with raw land. Like, I already know so much about them, and I can just send a direct marketing piece to them very easily. And I know, okay, I'm going to get this many sales out of this one marketing piece. It's tremendous what technology can do for your business today. We're going to talk in the next few months and weeks weekly about how we do this in our systems and why we love land so much. I love land so much because I feel like I can't lose. And that's what I told my wife was like, even if I can't sell the property, I own land. I have an asset. And from an investment banking standpoint, which I came from, I saw that most companies are run by management for management. They're not running these companies for the investors. So if you buy a stock, you have no idea what management's doing. I mean, if I Buy Apple Computer tomorrow. Yeah, I like the iPhone. I like Macs. I like them, but I don't know how they're running their business. I don't know what their strategy is. And honestly, their financials are so complicated now, I can't even understand it. But a piece of land is very simple to understand, and I can control every aspect of it. I can improve it. I can change the zoning, I can build on it, or I can, you know, just use it recreationally, and it's great. What do you think, Dran? Stock market or real.

Estate? Yeah, I put all my marbles in the stock market because I believe truly that, like throwing darts at a dart board, eventually something's just going to pop and I'm going to be a gazillionaire. No, I'm with you, Mark. I totally believe that the stock market is manipulated. I mean, let's be honest with you. They've created these algorithms, the banks create these algorithms that are a millisecond faster than the average investor, and they'll make a quarter of a penny on a particular stock and make These trades of 5, 10,000,000 shares and make money when the average investor can't make a dime. And again, it all comes down to control. What control do you have of the stock? What control do you have of your land? So for me, it's control. It's complete control of everything. The control that I make, just like you, Mark, I make the decisions. When I get to hang out with my family, I love the fact that I can wake up in the morning and I don't have to go into an office with a bunch of employees and listen to a boss or sometimes be the boss. I mean, I have employees, but when I talk with my employees, they respect me and I write their paychecks. But at the same time, it's a friend. It's a friend, friend, relationship. We're all in a fun environment. We're talking about land. So it's really neat to be able to talk about and work with land and not have to deal with something we can't.

Control. Yeah, yeah, I agree. I mean, I love our lifestyle. I work. I have an office. I don't work out of the house. I used to work out of the house. I have three kids. And they've gotten to the point now they're just. They're too loud. Duran's so much younger than me. He's got two young boys. But, yeah, I mean, it's unbelievable. The lifestyle is phenomenal because you can do this from a computer you don't have to travel and you can decide when you work, how you work, where you work. And let's get back to that five hours a week thing. I know the Tim Ferriss book, the four Hour Work week. You're really living this, this four hour work week thing. How are you doing.

It? First of all, let's go back to Mr. Ferris. Nothing bad about Mr. Ferris, but I'm pretty sure that he made his money by writing a book. He didn't really have a four.

Hour. That's true. He is the best self promoter out there. You got to respect the guy. He's.

Amazing. He should actually change his name of his book to A four Hour Self Promoter. Anyway, I didn't spend a whole lot of time in the college days going to college. We had a school right on the ocean. I went to college at a little small college in San Diego called Point Loma. And we called it surf school, not college because basically we would basically get up every morning and check the surf. And it was good. We'd skip class. It was that simple. And I really, for whatever reason, didn't want to go to school. I didn't feel like I need a school. And I look back and go, man, you know, the education was great, but I felt like it was always 13th grade. I felt like I was learning something that, you know, was, was one degree from, from my senior year in high school that just didn't make sense to me. So I always wanted to work for myself. I knew I did. And at 19, 20, 21, when you're trying to figure it out, it's hard. And as a young boy I had to work because my mom didn't have any money. So I'd wake up at four in the morning, had a paper route and I remember, I remember every morning I'd take $5 and I put it on my mom's counter and say, here you go mom, this is for lunch. It was such a neat feeling to know that I'm helping my mom and then I understand the value of money and it's sort of like it's not a position you're, I mean, you're put there and it's just a circumstance you have to deal with in life. And so for me, I come to that transition at 19, 20, 21 and go, what am I going to do? How am I going to do it? And I always had a plan of working smart and not hard. And obviously the Internet gave us that, you know, that platform to do that. So I came out of college I knew what I wanted to do. I knew if I could figure out the sweet spot, which, you know, whether I put myself in that position, I always say I'm blessed to be where I'm at. So I don't think I put myself there. But that option was given to me and I just kind of went after it. But as an entrepreneur, you go after these ideas and you chase them and you try to work efficiently and smart and not hard. And then if you're working five hours a week and you're making good money, that's just the way it is that you don't, you try, you try to keep that lifestyle. And I was able to do it for, gosh, I don't know how many years. Six, six to eight years. And then I started getting, I had that. I've always had a passion to get involved in the startup community and here in San Diego I've done that. So I work a lot more than five hours a week. But on land itself, I'm still a probably about a five to six hour a week.

Guy. Yeah, and the reason you can do that and the reason, you know, our lifestyle is so amazing now is because we built up enough of a cash base by buying and flipping raw land that then we started buying property that we could sell on land contracts. And now we're getting passive income in every single month, which is kind of the insurance method. Nothing's better than insurance because you don't even have to buy a piece of physical inventory. But nobody wants to talk about insurance. We all need it. But it's not as fun as buying land. But you buy a piece of land, you sell it one time and then get monthly payments. And it's not like with a rental house where they're calling you at 2 in the morning. I've got termites, the toilets out, the roof is leaking, and it becomes this huge maintenance headache. Raw land needs no maintenance. And because of that you have this passive income coming in and as a result it affords a tremendous lifestyle. Once you get to that point, that critical point where the income coming in passively exceeds your monthly expenses and once you hit that point, I mean there's, there's really nothing.

Better. Yeah, you nailed it, Mark. I mean, passive income is, we all, we all dream of it. And some people dream that a multi level marketing campaign is going to take them there. Unfortunately we don't agree with that. But hey, that's to each their own. But there are, I mean, an ethical idea of passive income in my mind and I'm not putting down any MLMs because there are some that are okay out there, but I just. It gives everyone the false impression that money can be made easily and passively with land. You don't have to screw your friend to make.

Money. You're giving them an.

Asset. Right, exactly. So you nailed it. I mean, it's just the life, the ability to wake up in the morning, go, you know, get your mail in your mailbox, open up and realize there's. There's a couple of checks there that, that you received and you're on a, you know, a 10 year note and that you can simply take your iPhone and take a picture of this check and there you go. I mean, you literally don't have to leave your house anymore. You can sell land on the Internet. I mean, of course when you buy the land, you have to be there and take some pictures, make it look good. But when the time comes and you're getting those checks and you're a year into it, you realize, go, I spent one day, two days to buy this land, maybe a week to put the marketing campaign together, maybe a month to sell it, and then boom, 10 years, you got a check every single month. It just, it's flawless. It's a flawless.

Concept. Yeah, I agree. I agree. So let me ask you this. If you could do it all over again, you're 21. Is there anything you would have.

Changed? No, you know what? Looking back, I don't think so. I actually, the entire road, the entire journey of Lance has been so amazing. I mean, gosh, from, from 21, buying a lot in Taos, New Mexico, to, to our, our acquisition of 40,000 acres that we made when I was.

25. Yeah, that was a big deal. We should talk about that in other podcasts and break that down. The Nevada.

Acquisition. Yeah, that, that would be an interesting conversation. But you know, it's all, it's all about taking risks. It's all about forward thinking and the mindset that, that you can do anything you put your mind to. You just you to take some.

Risks. Right, Right. Yeah. I mean, if your risk. I mean, the thing is, I'm very risk averse. Much more than I think you are. I'm very conservative, very risk averse, yet somehow I have no problem buying a piece of land because when I'm buying it, I know, you know, the old adage in real estate, you make money on the buy and not the sell. So if I'm not, if I know I'm buying an asset, $0.30 on the dollar, $0.40 on the dollar. Well, where's the risk in that? And then the fact that, okay, what if I can't sell it? And let me be clear, in 12 years, I've lost money on only one parcel of land out of, I think, 5,000 deals that I've done. I've lost money on one. So I've gotten really, really good at.

This. Mark, you're lucky. I actually had. I haven't had any losers. But what I do is if I know I have a loser, I don't sell it. So I can't say that. That I have a loss to this day. And we've probably done the same amount of transactions, but I do have one that I. And I have to. This is a funny story, but I did have one that I accidentally bought. I didn't do my research, and it was underwater, and so I just didn't want to sell it because I felt.

So. What do you mean it was.

Underwater? Well, I bought some property. I went to an Imperial county auction in California. I didn't do. And I was not paying attention, which, again, if you get in this business, you got to pay attention. Attention. Detail is very.

Important. You know. You know what our podcast. Our next podcast should be is on due diligence. Just due.

Diligence. Yes. Because if you don't follow a strategy or a structure, you're in trouble. But I remember going to this auction. It was my. Probably my 10th auction, 11th auction show up, and they. They had the. They had the list of redemptions on, you know, where they. They cut the, you know, the. The auction number out of the list, and I'm not paying attention. And next thing you know, I have my hand up. I'm buying this property. No one's bidding against me. I'm. I'm going, what the heck's going on? This is amazing. I go to the county office, realize what I buy, and I find out this. This piece of property is underwater. Well, I still pay the property taxes each. Each year. It's not a lot of money. And I did spend some money on this property, but I realized that it's not a loser if I still own.

It. So are you going to improve it? Maybe. Maybe you improve it and then it'll have more.

Value. Yeah, I did. I put a houseboat out there with an anchor, and so it is completely livable. No, I'm just kidding, Mark. I would never do something like that. No, I can't subject myself to losing on any land deals. So, yes, to this day, in 12 or 13 years, I've never lost a land.

Deal. Yeah, it's pretty crazy. It's a pretty crazy thing. So. All right. I think we should do a tip of the day and give people out there some type of tip or website they can go to to learn more about land or how we do this. So what's your tip of the day? I know I'm putting you on the spot here. You may not have even thought about it, but what do you.

Got? Two of my favorite websites. One just to kind of keep me updated on what's going on, auction.

Wise. Taxsale lists.com taxsale lists.com is that John Lane's.

Site? I have no clue. I don't even, I don't pay attention to whose site it is. All I use it for is a map to click on and find out when the auctions are coming. Because that, that site is helpful in knowing what's coming up. But you need to do a lot more due diligence. They don't really offer that on the site, which they should, but they don't. And they do offer like an extended package. And not all the auctions do, but if you go to the county website, generally you can get more information on the auction itself. So from there I go directly to a county auction website and then do my due diligence from there. And then one other site that I like a lot that I just kind of go to because I'm kind of an off grid guy when there's a chance, is off-grid.net, one of my other favorite little sites. There's always some good reading to do. You know, what, what, what you can do with the property and the ties and best use and, you know, take, take a property and whether you put solar panels on it or, you know, we can go in that, in another podcast. But I love that website, so take a peek at that website and.

You'Ll probably get off grid.net off grid is one word. No, off off-grid.net oh, off-grid.net. got.

It. Yep.

Yeah. Okay. You know, I've been on that site. It's, it's amazing what you can do now on raw land and how you can live off the grid. We're getting to the point where you can pretty much do anything anywhere where, you know, there's no such thing as a bad piece of property if you can access it, because you can, you can be there. It just takes us, you know, somebody equipped and with the right knowledge. All right, so I've got, I've got two websites, too, that I'm going to recommend. So taxsale lists.com is a great start to find out where the auctions are. I like that site, but they upcharge you for the actual tax sale list. So I go to naco.org n a c o naco.org and that has a list of all the counties and the email addresses and all the contact information for every county in the country. And you can quickly call the county treasurer directly or get to their website or email them and get the tax sale list. Usually much cheaper or for free than you can@taxsale lists.com and then the other website I want to recommend is a website to monitor pricing on ebay. So when we go to an auction, how do we know we're buying property 30 cents on the dollar? Well, we got to know what it's selling for first. And the way I do that is with a program called Terrapeak T E R A p e a k.com and you do a quick search and you can see, okay, five acres, Taos, New Mexico. It'll show me the past sales for the last 90 days. And I can say, okay, this is the floor on this property. So if they're all selling for $1,000 on eBay, I can probably get $2,000 or more marketing on other sites. I can get a lot more if I do a direct marketing campaign. But now I know, okay, $1,000 is the floor on ebay, Then I'm going to go, and I'm not going to bid any more than, say, $300 at the auction. If the minimum bid start at $50, I know what I can go up to. So I want to thank everybody for taking the time and listening to our first podcast. I'm sure as we continue to do this, it's going to get a lot better. But I want to thank Duran. You can learn more about Duran at his website@reserveland.com Duran, you got anything else you want to plug before we hang.

Up? No, I mean, I just, you know, I thank you all for listening. Mark and I have had a really neat journey together, and we look forward to chatting more about it with you guys over the next coming.

Week. All right, thanks, Dran. So we'll do this next week.

Then? Sounds good, Mark. We'll see you.

Soon. All right. And if everybody wants to learn more about me, go to my website, the landgeek.com and you can always get some more information there. And you can also check out my other website where we buy and sell land, which is frontierpropertiesusa.com and this is Mark and Duran saying, get back to work, go out there and buy an asset, pennies on the dollar, and make your life.

Extraordinary. Thank.

You. Thank you for listening to another episode of the Land Geek. Join us next time for more tips, secrets and information that will help you succeed. Stay connected with the Land Geek on facebook@facebook.com.