The Land Geek Podcast #17

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 is the man that's gonna help you do that. The Land Geek.

Hey, it's Mark Podolski, the Land Geek from. From your favorite website on all things land, www.thelandgeek.com, as well as your wholesale land connection, frontierpropertiesusa.com and he's older, he's wiser, he's even better looking than he was a few days ago. Joanne Frazier from Reserveland.com and RuralPropertyFinder.com I'm sitting in a laundry room right now after the most hellacious move ever. I know you're doing better than me. What's going on, buddy?

You know what? I. I probably did a little bit better. I'm still on the downturn from a 36 birthday, and I, you know, I don't feel 36, but I definitely look 36.

You think so?

Yeah, you know, I think all the, all the properties that I've sold over the years have given me a few gray hairs because it's been so easy that I just, you know, I think the gray hairs come for every property. If I, If I could count the gray hairs, I think it's every property I sold equals one gray hair, every.

That's a lot of gray hair.

Yeah, true.

You've moved a lot of land. I don't think you have that much hair.

That's true. I only have like four left follicles left.

So I wanted, I want to talk about my move because it was so hellish that no human being should ever have to endure what I had to endure. My move started at quarter nine and I had to kick. These are three movers, by the way, with a truck. I had to kick them out at 2 in the morning. They had to come back the next evening. Have you ever heard of anything like this?

You know, I've had a couple of bad experiences, but not that bad.

Yeah, I mean, it was unbelievable. And then I, you know, the kids had to go to school the next day. I got four hours sleep, absolutely exhausted. And. But look, look, I. Look at. I'm grateful that there are actually human beings in this world that would take money to move heavy stuff and risk hurting themselves just so that I can sit back and complain. So, you know, when I think about it like that, it was one Hard day. But in the big scheme of things, you know, I'm pretty fortunate to be able to do that, don't you think?

Well, I mean, you live in a, you haven't told the listeners yet that you live in a 15,000 square foot mansion now and that you have an extra office the back. That's 4,000 square feet. So, yes, they knew your living situation would be different.

I will videotape for everybody on my coffee talk YouTube videos because my backyard's really beautiful and the casita, which is gonna be my office, is nice. But everything's definitely an upgrade for sure. But the best thing is my location's fantastic. Paradise Valley is amazing. It's a little suburb outside, just outside Little Pocket in Scottsdale. And just very beautiful older homes. Really nice. All right, so let's not talk about me and my hellacious move, but I do want to talk about breaking point. I think it's important that when you start something, whether it's the land business, a new business, anything, it is, you've got to, when you start, I want you to hit your breaking point. Do you know what I mean by breaking point?

I, I, I want to hear it. I think I know what you mean. I want to hear exactly what you, what you, what you're referring to the.

Point where you feel like you can't go another minute, where you're so mentally fatigued from working so hard that you're about to break. You know, we're talking about 18 hour days maybe. I think it's important. I don't think you know, and this program is not meant to have, you know, 18 hour days. I mean, the whole point is work less and earn more, right? And work smart. But I think it's important that at least you know what your breaking point is like. I found my breaking point during this move and now I know, okay, this is how hard I can actually work and still survive and not get sick. So you don't obviously don't want to get sick because you're trying to, you know, be a hero. But what do you think? Have you ever worked so hard that you thought, okay, something's very wrong here. I can't, I can't continue doing this.

You know what? I actually, I have a very different mindset than you do, Mark. I think for me, my brain becomes so ADHD and I work on so many different things. Even if I could have a breaking point, I don't know if I'd ever get there. But that said, I have had times of emotion going, what am I doing, you know, feel like a point where it's just all coming to head and I'm going to. And I'm going to snap. So I think I've been at a couple points in my life going, is this what I should be doing? Is this the right thing? Is this. And so, you know, we all do our own sort of meditation. You know, I pray about it. Like, is this the right thing for me to do? And so. And so I'm learning. I'm learning now. And every day we learn about it. What is the point where we go, okay, this isn't working, or, I put too much effort in this. Let's try something else. So. And, you know, if I told you I knew how to correctly identify that breaking point, I'd be lying. And I don't know if anybody really does know, but I think we can all learn sort of our boundaries there.

Right? Right. But, you know, I think it's important that you push yourself, especially when you first start a new endeavor where you just think, okay, I can't do this anymore. You know, I'm looking at 50 deals, and I'm doing all this due diligence, and I'm managing this va and more deals are coming in. And now I'm working on the marketing, and now I'm working on the copywriting. And now I'm trying to do all this technical stuff. Like, where is it where you say, okay, now I'm at my. I've hit my point. I think. I think it's important that you just mentally can know that so that you can know, okay, I'm really capable of doing a lot more than I probably think I could if I just looked at it. You know what I mean?

Totally. I agree with you 100%. I think. I think that we definitely all have, you know, boundaries that we can go across at some point, but we also need to understand that if we get close to them and we. And we. And we keep going, we could. I mean, it's human nature to snap. It's human nature to go beyond our boundaries and push ourselves, but it's also human nature to reflect and look back and see how you can fix it for the next time. But we have to control that and we have to learn because. And we can also. Those batteries can extend sometimes. Right? Like, you go, you know what? I got an extra hour here. I can work it. I can sleep. You know, you just kind of work around it. So especially as an entrepreneur and as a land buyer, you are an entrepreneur. You're sort of creating new boundaries. You're in a new territory.

Right? Right. Yeah. I mean, you're really good at that stuff. As far as the creative side of it, I've seen that where you'll look at a deal, you look at it very differently than me and you push the boundaries of what you can do with the deal. As far as, you know, can I development, can I do development? Can I do a joint venture with some other group, you know, can we, you know, do something with mineral rights? I'm trying to become more flexible and more creative with my deal, But I'll say, you know, I'm struggling with that.

Yeah. And just to give you an idea as to where boundaries go, in fact, I'm at a point today on one of my deals. So for the listeners that don't listen very often, I run a 4400 acre mining project in Nevada. It's called Corral Canyon. And basically this project's been going on for about a year. And it's pre development stage, meaning it's pre drilling stage project. But we're right there at the drilling stage when we have to go out and we have to raise several million doll to drill. And we have a handful of investors involved in the project. And we're at a point now where it's literally, for me, it's breaking point. Because now I put in a lot of time, I put a lot of money, and I've got four other guys that have put in, that have put in less money and less time. But we're on equal, we're equal partners. And it's. And I wouldn't say less money, let's just say less time. And so for me, I'm learning how to sort of manage that frustration or breaking point. For me to go, I'm done, I'm just letting go. I will go find an investor to solve the problem of, you know, and I, and eventually I dilute myself out of the equation on this project. But not, not out of the equation. I mean, I'm still an equity owner, but I dilute myself a bit.

You're not the controlling partner of that project anymore.

I am, but I'm. But I'm. We're taking more money and so we'll have another partner, meaning we'll all come down. I mean, I don't own 51%. No, there's too much money involved. It's a very large, it's a very large project. So it's very interesting. But as you say that, I can say that I get these moments of Frustration. And another for instance is I spend time mentoring companies, and on Friday, I had to listen to a company pitch about their business model, which made absolutely no sense. Yet there was 12 guys in a room that spent an hour, hour and a half at a time doing Q and A with these guys. And I'm thinking to myself, how on earth did this company get in front of us like this? They're intelligent, but they have no real business model. So I got frustrated, and I kind of let the guy have it. And I said, you know what? Like, what are you doing here?

You know, you pulled a Shark tank on the guy.

I. I did. I did. You know, I'm not a jerk. I'm not a jerk, but I. I just go, come on. It's. It's common sense. Like. Like, think about the people's time that you're wasting before you sit in this room with them.

You know what, though? Honestly, though, I don't think, like, when I think of, like, American Idol or Shark Tank, the real Jerky guys that are like, you know, in a way, I almost think they're doing the people a favor because they're being so direct. There's no possible other way to interpret what they're saying other than you're wasting your time, go on to something else. When someone can. It's almost like a wonderful thing to do for another human being. It's just few people have the courage to. To really go that. Be that direct.

And here's what's funny, Marcus, for me, I am the youngest guy in the room, I think, by, I don't know, between five and 10 years, right? And so. And a lot of the other guys are just more concerned. They're very nice, and I've been nice, but I've been there for two years. So I feel like in that room, I can sit there and I can kind of be honest. But there's. There's one guy that we have. He is exact. He's like the Simon. I call him Simon Cowell of, like, the startups. Like, he is, like, he'll grind everybody. Um, and there's. There's no, you know, there's no stopping what comes out of this guy's mouth. It's hilarious, but it's real, it's intelligent. And so we don't. We kind of, like, you'd be nice, but at the same time, it's like, let these people know. So it's interesting. But I. But I have. So that. That, you know, bring this all back to head. It's like, there's a breaking point when it comes to certain things where I'm like, come on, did you waste my time or come on, like I don't like think about it before you waste our time. So, so yeah, I'm, I'm, I see it with different ventures and different things that I'm working on because I am a type A, always working on something new or different. And I am, I'm kind of honing that back a little bit and focusing on, on Real Property Finder, which will now morph into something new, which I'll explain to you soon. It's going to be a new domain name and a new website. Not new website, but a new domain name. And we're rebranding a little bit. So the cool thing is like I, I can come back and go, okay, focus time. And now I can sort of again, those boundaries are extended a little further now because I'm bringing a lot of the time that I'm wasting here and putting it there.

Right, right. That's great. That's great. So we kind of touched a lot there. You know, it's funny about, you know, like sometimes I'll have a land consultation with somebody on the investors toolkit. You know, I do those free 30 minute consultations and I always ask everybody, you know, what's your background? Have you ever bought and sold real estate? Have you ever been an entrepreneur? And you know, sometimes, you know, I think, you know, but I'm nice about it. But there are, there are certain skill sets I think it's going to be more helpful to get started in this business and other skill sets. Like I just met a guy, he owns his own marketing company. That's a phenomenal skill set. You don't need to have any real estate background to be successful in buying and selling land. But if you have marketing background, that's a, don't you think that's a huge leg up 100%?

I mean obviously marketing is what sells the land. Understanding what a buyer is looking for and solving that buyer's need, that's, that's exactly what you need. So as a, as a seller. So I think that, that having that in place of a guy who's an engineer or you know, anything that maybe that doesn't involve an understanding computers or you know, like, and there are, I mean a lot of people will come in and go, I don't really know how to work computer. Well, it doesn't, it doesn't mean you can't sell that. It just makes it a little bit more challenging Right.

So you've got to be able to manage that side of it either. Find somebody that knows how to do like, like the tech piece of my business. I don't, I don't handle it all. I mean that's all outsourced. So you know, I don't, I don't want to learn HTML or how to handle, how to manage, you know, these backend programs or WordPress. You're a WordPress guy, but I don't know how to do any of that.

Yeah. And being that that's how I am, it's easier for me to kind of go in when I'm looking at different things or, or new ideas and strategies. Like I'm, I kind of like software. And being, being that I'm, you know, I guess I was gonna say 35, but 36. Now being 36, I, I kind of get a good, I have a good understanding of everything. Right. I can, I can build a website, but I don't build websites. I can, I can, I can write HTML, but I don't do it. I just hire someone else to do it because it's a waste of my time. In my, in my mind I can just tell I can do it a lot faster than I can. Like if there was a gross words per minute with HTML, I'm at like one where some guy can do it like 70 or 80 and I'll pay him to do it. So that's kind of the strategy is that understanding that you can sort of fix and solve those problems when you're at a breaking point and look outside of your realm and go, hey, that guy can do this and I can pay him a little bit of money to help me and it's not going to cost me a ton of money and it's going to help me kind of extend my boundary. So extend that breaking point.

Would you remember when you first started out, like, did you, did you do any 10 hour days, 12 hour days, 14 hour days trying to figure all this out.

You know what, Mark, to be dead honest with you, I did not. If there was a four hour work week, that was me. I really didn't. I just happened to fall in to a place where it wasn't as hard. And even now like because of all the resources we have on the Internet, it makes it simple to do. And when I, when I kind of finished my land hub concept, I think that's the goal is to make everybody that's listening give them a, give them a very easy way to basically list a piece of property and syndicate it out to all the other sites because it should be basically a one stop shop to basically go, hey, I can market my land everywhere. And I can go to Craigslist, I can go to YouTube, I can go. And that's the idea. And that we don't have that as land sellers. We spend a lot of time creating ads for ebay, creating ads for Land Watch, creating ads for lands in America. And so as a seller, I know exactly what's missing and I want to fill that void.

So that's gonna be huge, by the way. It's gonna be such a huge time saver. Yeah, you have no idea. I can't wait.

I've got a team of four or five developers right now working full time. And so that's the idea. I mean, we're spending some money, but the idea is to create the concept that, I mean, honestly, it's money that I'm spending to help my life, make it easier, make it simpler. I don't have to go hire employees to solve my problem of listing property.

Right. You know, it's funny, this is what all you were doing though when you started. See, I had a full time job, so I would work a full time job, come home, hang out with the kids. My son, actually I only had one child at that time, so my son was a baby and put the baby to bed. And then I'd work another five, six hours, you know, doing deals and researching land. But the great thing about this is, you know, you can do it from anywhere. All you need is an inexpensive computer. And now the tools are so much better than when we first started, don't you think?

Yeah. As you can tell with the kids in the background, I mean, literally, I mean, Mark and I could ship because we both work out of the home offices and it's a lot. It's, it's really simple for us to work out of the house because all we need is a computer and in this case it's a microphone. So.

Yeah, no, it's, it's unbelievable. So what's, what's gonna be your tip of the week? You're not gonna yell at me this week, are you?

If you give me a reason to, I will. Why don't you go ahead and start? Why don't you give me your tip of the week and I'll yell at you for that.

Have I talked about optimized press?

You have not. Not yet.

Okay, so OptimizePress is a, it's like a WordPress theme or a WordPress plugin and it makes, it helps you make landing pages, sales pages really easily. And it's 99 bucks for 10 sites. And I think it's 197. Or maybe it's more than that. I don't know. Maybe I got a special deal. I'll have to go. But they just came out with a new version. It looks really nice. Plug and play, very easy. And it can really help you with your marketing.

You know, I was hoping you'd go for like one more, one more second so I can just figure out what my tip of the day was because I really don't have one today. Mark, this is the format.

There's always a tip.

Okay. You know, I do have a great tip. Okay.

And I just had to push you.

I have a great tip, folks. There's a great tip here. In fact, it's just a resource. It's a tool you can use. It's free. There's a website called forwardmetrics.com I have.

To check this out at least. It's not. What is that site we were talking about? Earth Clinic.

It's way better than Earth Clinic. Actually, it's way worse than Earth Clinic. Forwardmeasures.com is basically, it's a visual planning, an execution software, like a goal setting software. And if you go on that website and you go to. I just gotta find. While I'm, while I'm here, there's a, there's a, there's amazing blogs and I. Let me just see here. It's called FM Connect and Connect. Okay. And I'll tell you guys that this, this company I'm invested in, I'm on the board of. But it's actually, I've written several articles under, under entrepreneurship. And you guys can read what goes on in my brain. There's some stuff in there I don't actually, I go on an entrepreneur. I don't see my articles. But you'll check. You click it. You can search my name. But there's great articles that I've written. But it's just giving you ideas on how to solve problems. Strategic planning, goal setting kind of helps you. It's just, it's free tools.

It's free.

People just write. So. And they're really, really talented people on this website.

So this looks really cool.

Yeah, so I'm. Yeah, it's pretty neat. I think if you go in the search bar, you can search my name under Duran and probably pull up my articles. We'll find out. I'm doing it right now. Yeah, there's, there's Several articles that I'll pull up once you. Once you search my name. So, so that's, that's something that you guys can utilize. You know, like, I've got articles there from Spontaneous Entrepreneurship, the importance of goal setting for entrepreneurs. And remember, no matter what you say, you're. By taking this, this risk of buying and selling land, like, that's, that's what you are. You're an entrepreneur. So you're definitely trouble.

I'm looking at your pictures. You. You stole my. My slides.

Where? From what?

I don't know what slide. My things.

Oh, these are all from. From. Istockphoto, buddy.

Yeah, istockphoto. I use the same exact slides.

That's, that's fine. These are, these are. Yeah, they. They use these, not me. But anyway, genius, genius, genius, genius entrepreneurship.

This is great. This is great. I apologize to everybody. I'm in a laundry room. I apologize for the background noise. I promise the next podcast is going to be much smoother than this one, so stick with us. And you know, this is, you know, moving is just tough. It's been miserable. So, Duran, you got any last minute thoughts?

You know what? That the listeners realize that we are, we're here to help you guys. We're here. I mean, you know, I get emails on LinkedIn from people that listen to our podcast, which is really neat. You know, for me, it's, you know, I'm on this planet to make a ton of money and to die rich. I'm on this planet to help people and then making money is kind of a, you know, just means to sort of enjoy and help more people. So I enjoy helping and listening and getting emails from you people. So please, as listeners continue to listen and ask questions, that's what we're here for.

Yeah. You know, and leave us some feedback on itunes or on the blog as well. Let us know what you want to hear about and listen to. I'm going to get back into the Coffee Talk segment and I'll be doing it from my new office and out in the backyard. So I appreciate you guys listening. So learn more. Download for free the passive income blueprint@thelandgeek.com get some wholesale land. Go to frontierpropertiesusa.com give Duran a little love, won't you? Go to reserveland.com and of course, rural propertyfinder.com landhub.com and make it an extraordinarily productive week. And you know what? Do something this week to stretch yourself. I'm not saying hit your breaking point this week, but I do think at some point in time, it's good to know that you can really stretch. And you'd be surprised at how much you can really do. This is Mark Podolski, the Land Geek. I'll see you next time. Thanks, Trent.

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 thelandgeek.