The Land Geek Podcast #32

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 your favorite land website, www.thelandgeek.com. and I am privileged, honored. And I didn't even have to bribe him this time to get Jeff Axton from Tamiland.com back on the podcast. Jeff, how's it going this morning?

Oh, great. Great, Mark. How are you?

I'm great. I'm great. Unlike you, I'm real comfortable here because I think the high is going to be like 60. I see. I always want to haze Jeff and he's like, can we talk about something else besides the weather? But I just love the fact that he's so cold.

Yeah. We start. Yeah, exactly. Ski areas are open. I told you, Mark.

I know, I know. Look, I can still drive up an hour. No, no. Two hours of Flagstaff and ski.

I know.

So let me. Let me ask you. So I know it's not related to land, but you're a real fit guy. Do you find it hard to wake up and work out in the morning?

Yeah, I don't do that. I used to.

Oh, you used to. Okay. So when you work out now?

I work out in the afternoons or in the evenings. I just. It just fits me better. I used to work out in the morning and I just couldn't stay motivated. It just wasn't. Once in a while I'll go for a run, but I just don't like doing it in the morning. So why do it? You know, I do it afternoons or in the evening.

How often do you do it during the morning?

I used to go to the gym all the time. And then I used to run. And lately I've been doing P90X and a few other ones, and I just started T25, which is Sean T. And that's a. You just follow the schedule. It's 25 minutes a day, and six out of seven days I'm working out. So it's. But it's quick. It's 25 minutes.

That's crazy. I told you what I'm doing, right? I'm doing the seven minute workout. Seven minutes, seven minutes and I'm done. It's quick. It's intense. I'll tell you what I feel Pretty good. It's that, you know, I use it on the iPhone app. I've got like a little yoga mat and it's just quick. It's squats. It's all compound exercise, but real, real quick. So you do like a plank, you do squats, you do lunges, you do push ups, sit ups, step ups, that kind of stuff.

Wow. Seven minutes.

That's in seven. And I'm sweating.

Really?

Yeah, yeah, it's great. So they sit. Like, the whole thing about it is if you do it real intensely and you're sweating, it's as good as a 45 minute workout. I mean, it's not for like, you know, really athletic people that are doing, you know. You know, it's for like average Joe's. It's like the average Joe workout.

Yeah. Wow. I thought 25 was, was, was low.

Yeah, I mean, but yeah, but you feel good, right?

Oh, I feel great. No, no. I get just as much sweat out of a 25 minute as I did before because there's no breaks. There is no breaks at all.

Right.

You know, there's no time. There is a little stretching, but anyways.

Yeah. So, you know, but you know, the reason I bring it up and what I'm. The way I'm going to segue this is that, you know, working on the land business and working out to me are kind of the same thing. Right. You know, one is for your physical well being and one is for your financial well being. Right?

Yeah.

But the people that are successful financially and successful physically, they do the same things, right? They're. They're consistent. So you're working out six days a week, I'm working out five days a week. You're sending out offers every week? I'm sending out offers every week. We don't take week off necessarily. The difference is, you know, in our business, someone else can be kind of doing, helping us do that work as opposed to working out, which is so hard. But, you know, there's always that force that's acting on us. You know, I think the word would be like entropy that I've heard before or resistance. That little voice that's saying, you know, there's something better to do than what you're doing. Right. We can always kind of rationalize not working out or, you know, it's just one donut. You know, I've got something else to do besides make these offers. Right. So how do you stay motivated? Like, how do you. Because you got to have both. You've got to have the knowledge how to do this business number one. But then you also have to have that, that fire, that passion every day, that professionalism to show up and do it right. So what do you do?

Well, I mean the end product for me is always in my mind. So I always, after I work out, I always, I think that's the best time I feel all day is after you work out. And I think with the land, the same thing. After you make a sale or a profit or you're successful at it, you feel good about yourself. So I think that just that in your inside makes you drive forward to do more, I think.

Okay, but you know, you're not one of those guys that has like, you know, the, the quotes up all over their office. That's, you know, that's the inspirational quotes to you know, live for today or you know, I can't even think of them on top of my head. But you know, you miss all the shots, you don't take kind of thing. You don't have that around.

I, Well, I do, I have a, I have a folder of visions based things that I once in a while I come across a magazine or something or something that I want to get someday. I do have a full, I don't have it posted all over the place, but I have a folder. So once in a while when I need a motivation, I'll pull that folder out and I'll just look at the stuff, you know, and it's just things that I either quotes or things that I cut out or I'll just throw it in that folder. I'll have it all year long. Then I just pull it out once in a while. So yeah, I use that and then I use that. I think I've said it before, that simpleology.com, which is great, it's free and it gets your life in order and it integrates goals in there too. So every day I see my goals and so I'm looking at my short term which is within a month. What am I going to do within a month? And I see every day how my progress is going to and then my three month and my six month goal. So I do, I do look at it every day and then, but yeah. And of course, you know, everything in life keeps you motivated. I mean, you know, you want to send your kids to good schools, you want to, you know, the long, the overall picture, you know, financially that's the reason I do this business.

Right, right. And you're doing great. So share, share what happened this week because I'm a little Jealous of this sale?

Well, I had a couple sales, a couple seller financing deals. Those are great. You know, I had two of those and then I had, I had a good sale this week. I piece of land in Nevada. It was a 40 acre and I bought it for 2,500 and then I had it listed for 15,000, which I was getting a little interest. I've had it listed for about two, three weeks. And then someone offered me 8,000 cash and I said, okay, yeah, sure, I'll take that as long as you put a deposit on my website. And the deposit was there and within an hour and we're gonna be closing it up in a week. So. Nice Christmas present.

That's a nice Christmas present. That's a nice quick sale. And you used Craigslist.

Yes, I got that. I had that advertised on Craigslist and of course he emailed me and then I, I emailed him back, we talked for a little bit on the phone and bang, sold. I wish it happened like that every day.

No, I mean it's on. Yeah, it's Fantastic. I had two sales this week. I sold two 40 acre parcels for cash and then I sold a 5 acre yesterday on terms actually to another one of my customers that already owns a five out in that same area. And he just wanted more. So, you know, this time of year, you know, December, it's typically slower, but you never know. I mean, you got to keep pushing, you gotta stay out there. But what I usually run the last two weeks of December, I notice things kind of slow down and I kind of slow down a bit and, and take those two weeks off. But I'm still marketing, you know, I'm still doing something every day as far as, you know, pushing the marketing because you just never know. It's, it can be a great Christmas gift or for some people to give. And I'm definitely going to hit my list with a special promotion. How'd you go with your, how did it go with your promotions?

It's been going well. I usually get one or two people. I mean, currently I have four or five hundred on my list, so it's growing. But I usually get one or two people interested and it usually turns out to be a sale. So. And I send out tips every month on land and I also get a couple people usually respond to that as well. So that's kind of nice, you know, when they say, hey, thanks for the tip, you know, or whatever. But yeah, so that's working out good. I'm gonna do a Christmas promotion as well. I'll do something for Christmas. And like you said, that December slowed down, but two weeks ago was the busiest week of my year. I couldn't believe it. Yeah, it was. I sold, I think I sold five or six pieces and I think three of them were seller financing.

But.

And then last week was pretty busy. And then the last couple days have slowed down. But as for slowing down, it hasn't. You know, I was surprised. I figured, same as you always figured, oh, well, it'll slow down until the spring and, you know, pick it back up.

Right, right. But, you know, but if we do the math, I mean, it's really exciting when we do the math and we look at, you know, what you've done with your business. So if you can just do one, you know, cash sale a month, just one a month part time. Right. And you make $6,000. That just that one sale, I mean, that's $72,000 just in cash flips. Right. And then you do a couple, you know, how many sales are you doing a month on terms?

Yeah, I'm doing probably, I'm guessing about five or six, maybe more. Maybe five to 10, somewhere in that range.

Right. So, so how long before you're at, you know, 10,000amonth passive income?

Right.

It's not going to be long, right?

No, no, it's, no, it's, it's every, every, every month it's getting bigger.

Right, Right. So I mean, think about that. Like that's an extra $16,000 a month that you're making actively and passively working part time. Right. You're full time fireman.

Right.

So I mean, that's what, that's why I love this business. That's why it's so exciting, so fun for me is that, you know, these things really happen. I'll tell you a story about one of my coaching students I just met for an hour consultation. He went big. Most people don't do this, but he went really big. In one county in Northern Arizona, he spent like a thousand dollars sending out 800 good offers. And all of a sudden he calls you, he's like, Mark, you're not gonna believe this. He's like, I've got all these accepted offers. We did the math. And if, if we just looked at the comps, he's, he's got $150,000 in potential revenue right there in deal flow. Wow, $150,000. He's doing this part time? Yeah, I mean, it's a game changer for him. It's, it's incredible. So, yeah, it's. It's exciting. It's really exciting. But you know what's interesting about it is that he had to wake up. He had to do it just like you're doing it. And it took him a while. I mean, he bought the course several months ago, so he finally. I don't know what happened, but he got it out, he got it done, and he was real organized. Beautiful Excel spreadsheet, Everything was laid out. It was fantastic. I couldn't be more proud. So, Bob, if you're listening to this, you know, I'm proud of you. I'm very proud. So it's great. But. Yeah, I mean, it's fantastic. But what you were saying before about the, like the vision board or the vision folder, I think that's really important as well, to kind of have that fuel, that motivation and those goals. And we've talked about goals before, but when you sit, like, do you sit down with your wife? Do you guys have, like, family goals, business goals? And then how do you structure that? We.

I followed Dave Ramsey about. Geez, about five, six years ago. I think.

He'S the financial guy.

Right, right, right. And at the time, I was just starting this land business, and I was in a little bit of debt, and, you know, it just. I didn't have a financial advisor, so I was like, all right, I gotta do something here. Something's not working. You know, we didn't have any money in the savings, all this stuff. And so I bought his stuff and I just bought his book, it's 10 bucks or something, and just followed his teachings, basically, you know, and we budget every month. We have a budget ahead of time, so we have a ballpark idea how much we're going to be coming in, how much going out. And then he talks about baby steps, getting out of debt and building your businesses and everything like that. But yeah, so. So we.

We use.

We use him. And then, of course, it usually goes way out of whack at Christmas time, you know, I mean, we try to, you know, we look at the numbers and, you know, you don't want to spoil your kids, you know, but you, you know, you want to get them as much. It is like a fine line of how much you want to spend at Christmas time, you know? Right, right. So. So yeah, so we talk about that. My wife still works, so she has, you know, her goals at her work, you know, and she knows I do this, and she knows I love it, you know, so she's very supportive of it. Someday she's gonna Retire from there and help me with this. So that's great. I can't get her away from it, though. She loves her job. So it's like, all right, well, what are you gonna do?

No, I know she's happy.

I'm happy. Then just keep it going, you know?

I know I'm always hazing you about getting more virtual assistants to help you build.

Yes.

What's going on with that? Why aren't you. Why aren't you doing that?

Ah, you know what? It's. It's almost. You get in the. You get in this. I don't know if you call it a rut, I guess. I don't know. You get. You get in this. The habits, I guess, of.

It's.

My business is working and it's working and it's working and it's. And I'm. I'm happy with it. And so I guess that's probably why. It's probably procrastination. Just you get in. Like I said, you get in this mode. I have two virtual assistants now, and they. And they do a lot of my stuff that I don't want to do. And then. Yeah. And so. Yeah, I don't know. I guess that's one of my goals for 2014.

Yeah, that's gonna be your goal for 2014, because. Are you familiar with Seth Godin? He's like, a marketing guy.

Yes.

Yeah. Well, no, that's Rob. That's Gerber.

That's Gerber.

He. Seth Godin wrote, like, Purple Cow and Linchpin, and he's got, like, a lot of books. He started several companies. He's a thing, you know. So I was listening to one of his podcasts and hope he'll have, like, these, you know, people spend, I don't know, 15, 20, $30,000 to spend a weekend with him, and then he'll record it, you know, these entrepreneurs, and he'll talk about. The entrepreneur's job is to break the business. It's very counterintuitive. So when things are going well, that's great. Right. But then it's your job to break it, make it better, because things are constantly changing. So, you know, if you're not feeling anxious every day, a little anxious about your business, about pushing it a little further, or, you know, trying something new or, you know, getting a new system in place, then that should be a signal to you that, you know, I'm getting complacent. And as soon as you get complacent, you know, no bad things happen in business. Right. Someone else Comes in and starts competing and all of a sudden you're like, whoa, what happened? So, you know, I'm such a big believer in working on that business and looking at it and saying, okay, where can I improve it here? Where can I improve it there? How can I make it more efficient? How can I lower my overhead or. And how can I increase my margins? How can I add more value? And just doing it and just doing a little bit every day. So that should be like a good signal to you. Like, oh, if things are going really well, I should be scared. Have you, have you heard that before?

I don't know. You know, we have this conversation all the time. You bust my chops in that.

I definitely do. I. I definitely do.

That'll be one of my goals this year.

How many VAs do you have right now?

I have two.

You have two. Okay. Are they local or are they overseas?

Overseas.

They're overseas. Okay. So do you have any kind of like, management system in place where they're accountable for doing this and this and they come back to you and say, this is what I did, Jeff?

No, no. I send them, I give them tasks and then they, when they're complete, they send them to me on email and then I give them another task.

Oh, okay.

So I don't have them report to a website or anything. I don't give them a daily schedule. I just, I do task by task. Okay, for instance, for instance, getting a, getting a list from the county, breaking it down and putting in an Excel form. Something like little small things like that. I'll give them something to do and then they'll get it done for me.

All right, that's great. I mean, I really think, like, you should just spend like an hour one day and just look at everything that you're doing and make a list. What can I eliminate? Like, I don't need to even be doing it all. What can I delegate? What can someone else be doing? And then what can I systematize? And I think it's really going to help you. Like, it's like, it's almost like you're going to go from, I don't know what you're doing this year, but I bet you can double the business next year. Like, that's, that's my goal for you next year, 2014. To double what you did in 2013. By, you know, by leverage. Yeah, I mean, just by leveraging other people and having them. Because you can only do so much, especially on a part time basis.

Oh, yeah, no, it's limited yeah, yeah.

So, you know, a lot of it is, like, a lot of the bottleneck is probably going to be processing deal flow and creating a wholesale side of it. So if you only have so much money to invest in the land that you're flipping in, if you're bringing 20 deals a month and you don't have, let's say, 20 grand a month to spend on land or whatever, then you can have a side business of just wholesaling out.

Yeah.

And building from there. So I don't know. I think it's exciting. But you're doing great. You're doing great. That's the thing. And that's the time when you really want to get even more motivated, is when things are really well, going really well, so that you're in that mode of abundance and not that fear mode. I got to do this. And it's kind of scrambling. You know, what's it. What's the old saying? No one buys from a hungry salesperson.

That's right.

So you're. You're getting. You're getting fat and happy.

Yeah. I think that's the problem.

Yeah. No, but it's not a problem.

But I mean.

Yeah, yeah, that's the best problem to have.

Right.

So that's great. So what else is going on?

Oh, geez. Just like I said, everything with this lane business is keeping me busy, so VA would help another VA, you know.

Right, right. And then how's. How's your. Your brother doing?

Oh, yeah, yeah. So I have my brother and one of the. One of my friends. I'm teaching them the land business, and he's doing well. He's right. He sold his piece. It was funny. His wife says to him, geez, you know, he bought a piece for $800, and he sold it for 400 down in five years, 50amonth. And she says, geez, you know, Phil, you know, you bought something for 800, you only get 400 back. It doesn't make sense. So she's a little ups. You know, they're very. You know, they're looking at their budget and saying, you know what? I don't understand this business. You bought four. You know, Phil's explaining to her, in half a year or a year, this will all be paid off, and then it's four years of free money, you know?

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

So sometimes, you know, it's a little bit hard to understand, but, you know, he knows where I'm coming from because he's all excited. He's like, yeah, Jeff, I want to have you know, in the next few months, I want to have 500 coming in each month. And I said, phil, you can easily do that.

Right, right.

So, yeah. So he's loving it. He's ready to buy. He's ready to close on another one. Actually, Saturday we're meeting. We meet once a month and we discuss our strategies. It's nice that.

See, isn't that nice, brother? Brothers bonding over the land business.

It is, it's. It's great. And I give him. I don't do partners with him. I give him the piece of land, I let him go. It's so much better.

What do you mean you give him the piece of land?

Well, I mean, I don't give.

He buys a piece of land, wait a second, you're. You're doing the deal flow and he's just buying it from you?

I am giving him two pieces of land. This is the second piece. I'm just helping him out, getting started. So I have probably in this one area, about 10 parcels and I'm going to have him buy one basically for what I paid for it.

Okay, that's very sweet.

Yeah, well, he's my brother, you know.

Yeah, yeah. But, you know, give a man a fish, you feed him for a day, right?

I know, I know.

Well, teach the man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime.

That's the next step. That's the next step. I'm going to teach him how to do the mailings. Next.

Why don't you have him get the investor's toolkit?

Yes, I'll have him do that too. This is the beginning. He didn't even know if he wanted any part of this. And so we just started three weeks ago, and he bought a piece and he sold it. And then we're going to do one more, and then I'll start teaching him the business and giving him your investors toolkit and teaching them the mailings and, you know, get them going from there.

Yeah, I want Phil on the Gold Mastermind.

I could do that.

You think he could do it? That'd be really interesting.

Oh, it'd be great. Yeah. But the only thing is, he's so green. I mean, he took this piece of land, he put it on Facebook and he sold it like in a day or two. And so he has no idea.

He thinks he's going to sell land every other day.

I don't know what it is. But he immediately just sold it to someone, one of the guys he knew that. Knew that loved that land out there. And he's like, Jeff, I sold it. I said, you got to be kidding me. So, you know, he, he hasn't gone through the Craigslist route, he hasn't gone through Land Watch, Land Hop, any of that stuff. And yes, really, really green.

Yeah, that's great. You know, I've, I've got a guy, he's in Kentucky and he's got like over a thousand Facebook friends and I've never seen that. Like, how do you have a thousand Facebook friends?

Wow.

I mean, it was like mind boggling. And he was thinking about getting into this business, but, you know, his biggest thing was he's been climbing out of debt. And so for him to actually invest in the course, he'd have to go into debt. And I was like, oh man, I don't want you to go into debt debt. And then I was talking to another one of my colleagues about it and, and she was like, absolutely not. Have him tell him to go into debt for education. You know, he should definitely do it because that's what you do, you know, it's good debt. There's good debt and there's bad debt. If he's going in debt for big screen tv, then yeah, that's not so, so smart. But if he's going to do it for education, it's going to give him a huge return on his investment. She's like, I would tell him to do it. What do you think about that?

I know. Well, that's my other friend that's doing this business. He has a lot of bills and same thing. The only thing that bothers me, he's like, okay, I'm going to sell this piece of land and the profit I'm going to use is to pay my oil bill and this and that. And then it's just so much better when you're all your bills are paid and you do this business or at least you're breaking even or something close to that where you can, when there's no stress. I don't have any stress with this business, you know, I don't. It's just extra and that, and that feeling is so much better. And I think, you know, people, when they're buying a piece of land from you, they'll probably sense that feeling too, you know, I hope you buy my land, you know, but if you don't, that's okay. I'll just go find someone else. You know, that's kind of the attitude I have with it.

Right, right. Yeah. I mean, you know, when I started, I was, I was dirt broke. I mean, I had $3,000 in my name, and I put it all on black to buy land. My wife was not happy, to say the least. So I kind of started out a little bit more desperate, you know, but, you know, I say that, you know, but I'm still living month to month. I mean, I wasn't, you know, I wasn't putting anything away, but I also wasn't deep in debt, so I might have not had that same type of, I don't know, fear, I guess, that you could have. If, you know, you. If you don't get that sale, it's really bad. Like, you know, because I. I made the argument. My wife, like, look, if I can't sell this land, at least we own land. It's an asset.

Right?

So what's, you know, what's the problem here? You know, one day you'll be glad I bought this. But, um. But obviously we did sell it, and. And here we are today, podcasting. But, yeah, I mean, I don't know. I go back and forth on it. I think that you. You've got. You've got to get out of. Outside your comfort zone at some point, don't you think?

Yeah.

And take a chance and just do your homework. Make sure that it's, you know, I mean, obviously, don't be impulsive about it. Don't do it out of desperation, but do it out of excitement and out of a sense of, you know, here's a solution to a problem, and if I just take action, I'm going to be better today, I'm going to be better tomorrow than I am today. I mean, because you've got to do something, right? I don't know. It's better than working a second job, don't you think?

Yeah. And it's your way out. If you don't like your job now, you know, if you could just say, you know, what if I. If I bring in so much money a month, you know, I could probably leave my job.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah, it took me 18 months, but I did it. And I haven't worked for somebody since. And that's. Yeah, it's. Yeah, it's been great. It's been great. So we're at that point where we've got to talk about the tip of the week. And I know I'm putting you on the spot, as I always love to do, but. Jeff, what's your tip of the week?

All right. I. I thought of this because I knew you'd ask Me and Ben Verified.com B E N V E R I.

F I e d.com yeah Ben verified dot com. Yeah, like you've been verified.

Yeah.

There.

It's a great resource for contacting people, whether you get mail returned and you want to. It's not, it's not as good. It's better than white pages. It's not a skip tracing service or anything but it will give you a percentage of good addresses if you're looking for a bad address and their phone number. So I know when I start, just started this I was hungry for deals and I would just call people directly and just say, hey, I know you have a piece of land out in Colorado. Would you want to sell it? And I'd get a couple deals that way. So when I'm looking for somebody, I use Ben verified dot com. It's not too expensive. They might have a free trial, I'm not sure. But I do use them once in a while.

That's great. That's great. And I use. This is gonna be my tip of the week. I use a different site but it's similar. I think Bin Verified might be better. I think it's less expensive. Well, how much is it a year?

I don't know what the last it was cheap. It was under a hundred dollars. I know that it was 50 or 60 bucks for the year in it provided pretty good phone numbers. So.

All right. Yeah, it's a nice looking site. I use spokeo.com s p o k e o.com and you know, there'll be, you know, like for my letter writing campaigns if I need a better address, I'll have you know, we'll send out to them especially if, you know, if it's, if I get. Maybe if I'm sending out a hundred, I might get 10 back. Right. I'll look at that list of whom came back and if they own multiple properties then I'll spend the extra money and send them a new offer and hopefully get the right address. But do you ever go to Facebook and try to find them?

I have, I've tried. I haven't been successful with it but I've, I've the owner and I've emailed them and they never email me back. Done it two or three times.

Okay.

Okay. But I haven't been successful with it. Have you?

Yeah, for a couple things. Yeah. But it's, it's a little creepy.

Yeah, I mean I forget. I don't know who was telling us. It's like a, it's like you go into a party, you know, and it's a social gathering and yeah, and you start talking business and asking them questions, they think, who are you? You know. Right, right.

I'm hearing some reverb here, so I apologize for this. But anyways, Jeff, do you want to sign off? Because I'm hearing reverb on my end.

Okay, thanks a lot, Mark. We'll see you later.

So I had some reverb there at the end with Jeff. I do want to thank Jeff from Tammieland.com and appreciate his time for being on the podcast this morning. I do want to remind everybody that if they want to learn more, go to www.thelandgeek.com download for free the Passive Income Blueprint. Don't forget that included in that is going to be our ebook, how to Avoid the Three Fatal Land Buying Mistakes I See the Average Investor Making every single Day. And of course, get this podcast delivered each week to your inbox. And if you're interested in learning more about the Investors Toolkit, we are going to be launching a webinar. It's a long one 90 minute webinar and it really discusses every facet of this business in significant detail. So be on the lookout for that. I'll be emailing you more information. And of course, if you're interested in acquiring wholesale land, look me up@frontierpropertiesusa.com Give Jeff some love@tammieland.com Anyways, this is Mark Podolski, the Land Geek. Thanks so much for taking some time out of your busy day to learn more about the land business. We'll see you next week. Thanks a lot.

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