The Land Geek Podcast #35

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 Podolski, the lane geek from your favorite real estate niche website, www.thelandgeek.com. and it's a new year, 2014. And to start the new year, I thought it would be pretty cool to bring back Paul from upstate New York. Paul, how are you?

I'm good. I'm good, Mark, how about yourself?

I'm great. Happy New Year.

Thank you.

Are you hungover?

I'm not. I was good this year.

All right. But you are cold.

I am freezing. It's like negative five here.

Wow. I mean, do people even. Do you even go outside when it's negative 5? What do you do?

I've made excuses to stay home and talk to you all day.

That's great. That's great. Well, I appreciate you coming on the podcast again. I do think, you know, it's important that it's not just, you know, me and Duran all the time talking about whatever it is we talk about, because we've been doing this for so long. I really like getting the newbie perspective. And, Paul, how long have you been working? You acquired the investors toolkit a couple months ago.

Yeah. Mid October, I think.

Okay. And you had some great deal flow, and now you're on your way to closing your first deal. So what's your experience been like? And let's just kind of talk about that if, you know, so we get the newbie perspective. You've gone through it and you've. You've made your offers now you've got your accepted offers, and now you close. Like, what did you do? How'd it go?

Well, you know, obviously I spent my first month setting up some branding and getting legal, as I like to put it, you know, opening up an LLC so that everything wasn't in necessarily my name. From there, I did some lists down in Florida. I did a small one in New York I did some learning curve on. I had to tighten up on the offers that I was making. I think I was a little just offering on everything, and I didn't really. Probably shouldn't have did that at first. So I wasted some time with that. So I learned a little bit about cleaning my lists up a little bit better from There I sent out a bunch of offers. I got about four or five back down in Florida that I chose not to move on. I did get one back that I just got a signed copy of a deed back in Western New York. That's a half an acre lot that I bought for about $300. Wow. Yeah, it's worth a good 5,000. So to get it for 300 was definitely a great deal. And now I'm just getting situated to start marketing that lot. I'm working on getting some new lists to send out some more, some more offers, but, yeah, that's where I'm at.

That's unbelievable. That's fantastic. Let me ask you this. You're part of the Platinum Mastermind Group. What do you think of the Masterminds?

It's definitely great.

Yeah. Because last time we talked, you were like, it's a little advanced. So do you like the pace of it now?

It's certainly changed up a lot. It was similar to you and Joanne's. We've been doing this for years and we're awesome at it. And you brought a lot more newer people on, so there's a lot more current trends and learning curve with different people. And it certainly adds to the value of that and helping the growing. And it's a lot more educational. Definitely more educational.

Right, right. I mean, yeah, exactly. I mean, do you think it's. It's. It's the needed support that someone would need after going through the investor's toolkit, or is it. Maybe you need it, maybe you don't. It just depends on you.

You know, I think I went into it a little stubborn thinking that I didn't need it. And, you know, I think the. The way you've changed it up and brought, you know, a bunch more people on board and have it a little bit more on day to day tasks and day to day thinking versus, you know, explanations of older deals. Certainly helps a lot with, you know, how useful it is and, you know, wanting to. Waiting for the next week to come to hear, hopefully, you know, something is current with me as well.

Right, right. Okay, Great, Great. So it's the New Year 2014. Everybody talks about New Year's resolutions. I did a YouTube coffee talk video on, you know, New Year's resolutions and setting up a vision board. Do you do anything like that? What do you typically do when you start the New Year?

I'd have to say I think I've tried to stay away from my New Year's resolutions because they always tend to be too lofty. And they fall apart and I never keep them. But, you know, I have my own little mental vision board. I probably should actually make one. But, you know, it's that vision board stuff. It definitely helps you think about it and you look at it and every day you keep telling yourself it's coming and it's going to happen. And, you know, I've had good success with the few things that I've actually really put on my mental vision board or I've printed and left on my desk and I look at it every day and I go, I definitely have to work on that today. So I do do things like that. I leave myself little reminders everywhere. My task manager is probably my best vision board.

That's. Yeah. What do you do to manage your tasks? Do you have any kind of software program?

You know, I'm using an app that is for Android cell phones. I don't know if it's available for iPhones. I'd imagine it probably is. And it's. It's a simple, very clean. It's called any do. And that's the website as well.

I know any dot do that's supposed to be unbelievable.

I'm.

You know what, can I steal that for my tip of the day? Yes. Or my tip of the week? No, I'm kidding.

It's mine. Yeah.

That. Any dot do is fantastic.

It's. It's just so lean, you know, every task manager out there is so cumbersome and clunky and wants to link to this and link to that and connect to this and, you know, I get lost in the mess. So I really like it because it's very simple. It's. You put in notes, it reminds you. You could put in times and it just keep popping up on your screen like, hey, you didn't do this yet. And then, you know, it automatically pushes things that you don't complete today to the next day. You can schedule them out. So, I mean, I like it. It's very, very lean and that's what I like about it.

It's fantastic. What do you think? How's it going with Ringcentral? You know, because I like the way that you, you did your branding and your marketing with Ringcentral, sort of bifurcating the two sides of buying and selling. Are you seeing any results with that? I mean, it's. It's tremendous. I'm doing it. I love it.

But, yeah, you know, I mean, I wish my phone rang more, I guess I could say. But that's again, my own fault for kind of Slacking off on doing some campaigns the last month. But, you know, it's definitely great. It keeps people from really bothering you. I have so much going on, which, again, is why I kind of love this little side niche business that you can really do on your own time. And using the power ring central to keep my phone from ringing when I'm already getting calls from tenants and my job and my consulting and, you know, my phone rings so much as it is the last thing I want to do is get caught in the middle of the day, you know, getting yelled at because I wanted to buy someone's land for nothing. What they feel is extremely too low.

Right, right, right. Yeah, yeah. Let me. Let me ask you, how many hours a week are you working on the business?

When I first started, I was definitely doing like, you know, an hour or two a day. I've been very, very bad lately. But again, I just got this deed in the mail, and it's kind of breathed some life back into me. You know, I'm sure with most people, you get a little frustrated and you start thinking it's not the miracle money thing that was posted on the Internet. But at the end of the day, it's all about your own diligence. And if you're not working at it and you're not investing at least some time, obviously you're not going to get rich. So, you know, now that I got something real in my hand, I actually bought a piece of property using your system, you know, for cheap. You know, it's kind of got me motivated. I've been moving today, sending out, trying to get some new lists from some new counties and to kind of move forward with doing more offers.

Right, right. I mean, the thing is that you're doing this, you know, part time. You just got your first deal. It's a phenomenal deal. You're gonna make 4700 bucks. Right. I mean, if you did one of those a month, that would move the needle, I would think. If you made $56,400 your first year doing this part time, like, does that move the needle for you in your life and your lifestyle, or is it kind of like. Well, I don't know.

Absolutely. You know, I was. I was just talking about how my heat went out on one of my apartments today. And it being negative five, you know, it really racks your brain when you're dealing with those kind of investments versus you don't really care if there's nothing going on on a vacant piece of land. So it certainly adds a peace of mind as well when it comes to, you know, being in the real estate game. Quote unquote.

Right. No tenants, no termites. Right.

No toilets.

No toilets, no trash. That's the four T's. Yeah, the three T's. Yeah. I mean, I love it. We're spoiled. I have to tell you, these guys that flip houses, that's rough. But you know how it is.

Yeah, I couldn't do it.

But you're not flipping. You buy and you rent.

I have a kind of a small portfolio for starters, but you know, I actually buy and rent. I built and rent. So most of my property's new construction. So I don't tend to have a ton of maintenance, which, you know, is great. But you know, I certainly like the quick motion of the land flip. You know, assuming that you can sell the land quick. But yeah, it's a different, it's a different mindset. It's definitely less stressful than flips. You know, I've helped people on flips before and you know, there's so much more stress and you know, strict time constraints. The interests are going like crazy if you're not flipping it quick enough. And you know, there's a million problems that you can run into and, and that's all that you see on TV now. I think even A and E has its own flipping channel show now. Every single channel has a flipping show. The competition is just horrendous. You know, doesn't, doesn't excite me. Doesn't interest me at all.

Yeah, it's, yeah, it's, it's definitely, I mean, out here it's really tough. I mean, I've got a buddy, he owns like 25 homes now and he can't get inventory. I mean, it's just, it's just too tight. You can't, you can't get the short sale deals like you could before. And it's, it's tough. I mean, you know, everything's tough. But I think this is, you know, big, you know, bang for your buck time wise. I don't, I don't know what's better. And I just love the aspect of a one time sale and then just getting that passive income and for you, I mean, even for flips, you know, it's, it's just going to help you, you know, get like this, this war chest of cash to continue buying and selling, buying and selling and then you can transition into building your passive income portfolio with the buy and flip on terms deals. But I mean, do you, have you thought about that far into the future, like, okay, after I make this much cash and flips, and then I'm going to start doing, you know, longer term, you know, deals and start getting 3, 4, $5,000 a month coming in passively.

Absolutely. I mean, that's, that's really the goal. Even this one that I just bought, you know, I been busy, so I'm just sending out a letter to the next door neighbor and hoping that he bites. But, you know, I put a cash price and then I gave him three different financing terms as well. So I'd be more than happy if he bought it on terms, you know, I certainly don't need to completely cash out. It would be nice. So I had, you know, a little extra equity to, to go buy a couple more quicker, which, you know, I could do that anyway. But I, you know, I'm more than happy to accept terms. You know, that was in the letter. I gave him, you know, four different options, you know, 0% interest, 5%, and 10% for different years. So I'm, you know, I'm happy with terms. I'd love to do that and gain the passive income. Pretty much. The down payment on any of the scenarios covers my initial investment anyway.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, that, that deal gives you so much flexibility because you literally have almost nothing in it. At $300, I mean, that's crazy, but that's what it might be. You know, I say it's crazy what that happens every day. I mean, look at Bob Anderson story.

Yeah, $57.

$57. And he's gonna sell it for 12,000. Is that what he said it was, a 12,000?

I think, yes. I think it was like 10,000 somewhere in there. Yeah, something like that. But, yeah, I'm definitely looking in the wrong areas. I learned that today. I need to broaden my horizons a little bit and not be so dedicated to going where I want to be and go to where the money is instead.

Right, right. Yeah, I mean, yeah, exactly. Let the market dictate it also. All right, so let's make some New Year's resolutions for you so that you're completely focused. Right. So how should we do this? How do you make your New Year's resolutions? Do you use software or. I use a program called Everest. I don't know if they have it on Android.

I've heard of it, but I don't think I've ever used it. It's got like a. Does that have the, the elephant as the logo? Is that.

No, I know it's like a. It's Like a big mountain. But, I mean, it doesn't matter. You can just write it down. But I think, you know, for the, for the resolutions, you just start with like, you know, the big macro resolutions. So let's say, you know, it should be something that you, you personally believe that you can do. So how about if, you know, you make $75,000 cash extra in the land business for 2014, does that sound reasonable.

With. With how cheap I'm hearing people buying land? And I absolutely think that it could be definitely obtainable. I don't see why not. If you're spending, you know, enough, at least some time doing it. I know I haven't spent a ton of time, and I'm already seeing progress, so it's definitely doable.

So that's only. That's 62.50amonth in cash flips. Right. So that's, that's, that's might be a couple deals a month. Let's, let's say two to three deals a month to be conservative, because you're not, you're not always going to get, you know, these. A deal you're going to make $4700 on. Right?

Right.

So let's, let's say two to three a month. So, so then your act, your. Your action per week is you need to make how many offers then per week to get that deal. So how many offers did you have to make to find that great deal that you found?

I'd probably say around under 250.

Under 250?

Yeah.

Okay. And see, that's a lot of offers to only get one deal, though. You should be getting more than that.

Well, again, I got four that I chose not to move on.

Okay.

So. So, you know, I did get some good responses on, actually I should say on that campaign on that county that I bought the one in. I think I only sent out 50 letters. Okay.

Okay. All right. So how many letters do you think you need to send out a week to get three deals a month?

I'd like to do at least 100 a week.

So let's write that down. 100 offers week. And our goal is our. So that's. Our action goal is 100 offers a week. And we know we're doing, we know we're. We're succeeding when we get three deals a month. So there you go. And then those three deals you're gonna make, you're gonna average out, you know, making a little more than $2,000 per deal, which is doable. It's not, it's not pie in the sky numbers?

No, again, I think it sounds like it until you actually get into it and realize how, how quick the process really works once you get going.

Right, right. Have you ever done another, you know, take home study course type of thing in real estate before?

You know what? I haven't. And that's why I think I was so skeptical of, of buying into your, your toolkit. It really took a lot out of me to make the commitment because I, I usually look at everything as it's. It's just another scam. So I've always been too skeptical to actually buy into one. So this would be my first, actually.

Oh, wow. Well, that's, that's great.

I'm, I'm good marketing.

I kind of, I'm kind of honored that, that you, you would take that step. I mean, were you scared though, or. I mean, like, because I, you know, I'll tell you, I get a lot of emails like, everyone's just scared. It feel, I feel a lot of fear out there as opposed to. It's not laziness. Everyone wants to do it. They're just scared that it's not going to work kind of thing. Like, I'm gonna spend all this money, I'm spend all this time and then it's just gonna be, it's not gonna work.

I think it's more of. There's just so many out there right now. I mean, everywhere you go, every time you scroll down Facebook, there's a million get rich templates that people are trying to get you to buy. You know, I just refreshed Facebook right now and I got the funnel experts make $30 million profit blueprint. I mean, it's the real estate training quote unquotes that are out there. So, you know, it's, you got to believe that they obviously can't all work. You know, this guy's not going to give me the $30 million profit blueprint for free like he says. So, you know, it's just, it's everywhere and it's hard to, you know, believe that it's actually going to work. And I'm sure a lot of people have bought into, you know, bought into them that, that didn't really get results. But a lot of times, you know, you have to actually do something as well. You're not actually doing it, then you're never going to get anything. Yeah, yeah.

And you didn't have any type of paralysis by analysis with the program, did you? I mean, did you feel like it was just an overwhelming amount of information? Because I really tried to keep it, you know, in chunks.

I think, like I said in the. In our first podcast, that there. There's certainly a lot of information to digest, and I kind of did it a little bit slower. I decided to sit, do half of it, really get to the buying part of it, and then once I really start acquiring land, then get into the selling it. And I don't even want to go near the automating it yet, because I really want to get the systems intact before I try automating it. Which, you know, you have a ton of great information on how to almost take yourself out of the puzzle completely. Right.

Which, yeah, I'm a big believer in. I mean, but, you know, I do like. I do like the way you're doing it. I do like the fact that you're getting involved, you're getting your hands dirty, and you're intimately familiar with every aspect of the business. And, you know, I just hope that you're, you know, writing it all down, taking screenshots of everything you're doing so that you can hand it off easily when you're ready for that part. Are you doing that?

Obviously not.

All right. No, Paul, start doing that.

Yeah, I know. You know, because I really haven't found a real specific system yet. I think I've been kind of learning from my own mistakes. You know, every time I do something and then I go back and I say, you know, I could have did that better. I could have did that different, and next time I will. And that's where I got to with the last one that I actually ended up buying. And now I'm kind of working on a new stuff now that I think I'll probably document down a little bit better now that I really have a better idea of what I'm doing than just kind of swinging blind.

Right, right. How are you feeling about the overall market? You know, I'm sitting out here on the west coast, and, you know, it's funny because, like, in my little bubble, in my little world, I think things are going great out here, but the rest of the country, it's hard to gauge, like, what's going on on the East Coast. What's. What's, like, the general feeling as far.

As land investing or as far as.

The macro economy, and as far as real estate is concerned.

You know, I'm in New York, so real estate's always pretty good. We never really had the massive, massive downturn like everybody else did. Right. But, you know, I think it's, you know, it's literally Specific location based. I think that one of the biggest challenges now is with the fact that there's so many foreclosures out there and short sales are stacking up. You know, it has a lot of people scared to move forward or it hurts a lot of people that want to grow. You know, when you bought something and you expected a large appreciation and now it's kind of stagnant, or you're now competing with foreclosure pricing. You know, it prevents a lot of people from forward growth, I think as well.

Right, Yeah, I would agree with that. How's the feeling of the. Just the general economy overall? I mean, what's the mood on in New York and the east coast that you're seeing? I know people, I know they're cold.

Yeah, we're all freezing. You know, I know New York's biggest problem is the taxes are just overwhelming. New York is like, just got ranked like the fastest depopulating state or something like that. I was reading, you know, people are vacating New York like crazy because, I mean, the taxes are out outrageous here.

Yeah.

But, you know, I don't know. It's a hard and hard answer. I think it's very location almost city specific.

Yeah, yeah, no, that is a tough question. I do, I do like your, your strategy though, of going after Florida. Because now you've got a state, there's no state tax, no state income tax. And, you know, the people in New York flock to Florida typically. And I know that's a stereotype, but is that still the case?

Yeah, I think, you know, a lot of New Yorkers still go down to Florida. I got family that lives in Florida and every time I go down there, all I do is meet people that are from New York, you know, so Florida will always be, I think, the New York state. I think that's kind of the West Coast. Everybody from big cities in California go to Arizona and everybody in New York and New Jersey end up in Florida.

Right, right. And those deals you passed up in Florida, why'd you pass up on those?

You know, it's what I, what I found was that their, their back taxes ended up being almost more, sometimes triple what the property value was worth, the actual real value. Like, so there'd be a property worth say 10,000 and they owed $30,000 in taxes where it was so backwards that the people that have the tax liens didn't even want to foreclose on them. And, you know, so the people just thought they were going to get lucky and take my offer and Then I realized that after doing my due diligence, you know, the numbers just were too far from working. Some of them were in more depressed areas than I realized, and they really weren't big enough. I didn't really do, like a minimum size. Right, which is one of the biggest things that I've changed. You know, I realized that I made a bunch of offers on like, you know, 30 by 100 foot lots that made no sense at all. So, you know, I backed off a little bit, and. And I don't think I'd move forward on anything under an acre at this point.

Okay. So, yes, you see, made some rookie mistakes. That's good.

That's absolutely.

I mean, look, that's the only way you're going to learn. Right? I love that. I mean, it. Look, it takes a lot of courage to step out of your comfort zone and make offers in an area that you're not that familiar with and just sort of have this faith that someone's going to bite on this deal. But look, you're getting results. I mean, that first deal, $300 is unbelievable. And I mean, you're gonna make $4,700 in your first deal. I mean, that's. That's tremendous. You should feel pretty good. How do you feel about it?

I feel good, but I'll feel even better once I have the check.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And you're gonna give me a, you know, a copy of it. Video testimonial. I can't wait.

Absolutely.

Yeah. So. All right, no worries. All right, so we're kind of getting to that point where we want to talk about our tip of the week. And Paul, you know, I love putting people on the spot. So you already said any dot. Do you have another tip of the week? Because you're, you're. I mean, look, you're a tech savvy guy. I know you're tech savvy.

Yes. Hold on. I'm panning through my messages because I just got. I was talking to a friend of mine that actually. And this might not necessarily be for your land flipping tips, but it's a great website for the house flippers, and I'm sure land eventually will get funneled into it. Well, there was that one link that I did send you earlier this week, too. So there's two of them. Give me 30 seconds to pull this stuff up. So the first one is the National Realtors association just is launching a new website just for Realtors to list land on a national platform. And what was that like, the land connection?

Yeah. You know, I showed that to Duran, he was like that. They're terrible. Yeah, but look, they're free.

Yeah. And I mean it's really more of a asset to probably realtors than to individual land flippers but you know, it might be a place to find things or you know, if you are a realtor to get it up there and you never know who might see it but it's one more place and the other one is. I got it right here. Hubzu. That's it. Hubzu.com H u b z u.com Hzu.com I'm going to take H u b.

Z u.com Hubzu.com all right, cool, let's take a look at this. Very cool. Homes for sale. The easy way to buy and sell homes online, start to finish. All right, very cool. I mean is there land on here?

I don't know if there's land yet. I just saw this literally like two days ago and I haven't dug into it too deep but you know, it's all auctions. It's mostly like short sales and foreclosures. I don't see why you couldn't list land on it. I don't know if anybody is. So you might be the first one doing it. Probably wouldn't be a bad thing. But I know like a lot of things are getting pumped into this right now.

Right.

So you know, it's definitely worth looking into.

All right, cool. Very cool. All right, well my tip of the week is going to be a customer relationship manager from the geniuses at 37 signals and it is. HighriseHQ.com HighriseHQ.com have you heard about this thing? No, I don't know. Let me see. See high rise plans and pricing says risk free 30 day trial, cancel anytime. But what's neat about this is it's a web based customer relationship manager. Save and organize notes and email conversations for up to 30,000 customers and contacts. Keep track of proposals and deals. Share status with your company, department or team. Never forget to follow up, get a text message or email so you never forget to make a call. Over 100 feature add ons. I personally use a Mac based one called Daylight which I love but you know a lot of people don't have Mac and actually Paul has disdain for the people in Cupertino.

Right. No thanks.

Yeah, he's so he's, you know, no thank you. So this would be great for Paul. So check out highrise hq.com because I think it's important like keep track of all your customers keep track of all your deals because eventually as you get going, it will become overwhelming if you don't have a plan in place. So from day one, have some type of system. I mean, Duran just uses Excel and no problem. But this looks really cool. And I know 37signals is a nice company in the software space. I think they're the guys that started Basecamp, which is a big project management program. So, Paul from New York, thanks so much for being on the Land Geek podcast today. Are we good? Any other issues? Anything?

No, thanks for having me.

Well, thanks so much for coming back. I love getting the newbie perspective. I hope it was helpful for everyone. And look, if you want more tips, tricks, techniques, go to www.thelanegeek.com download for free the Passive Income Blueprint. Get the three fatal land buying mistakes ebook. How to avoid them not here's how you make mistakes ebook and then get this podcast delivered each week into your email inbox. And look, give us some love. You want to buy some wholesale land? Go to frontierpropertiesusa.com Paul's got some property for sale. Paul, you got a website people can go to yet?

Not. Not for selling.

Not for selling. Okay. Pretty soon he will. We'll send that out to you. And yeah, so go there and look. Please leave a comment, let us know how we're doing, give us some topics that you want to hear about, and certainly rate us on itunes. It really helps keeps us motivated to continue doing this. And Paul's a really busy guy as well, so I can't thank you enough, Paul, again, for taking this time out of your busy schedule to be on the Land Geek podcast. So for Paul, keep warm and we'll see everybody next time. Thanks, everybody.

All right, thanks, Mark.

Thanks, Paul.

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.