The Land Geek Podcast #44

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 going to help you do that. The Land Geek.

Hey, this is Mark Podolski, the lane geek from thelanegeek.com and I'm really excited, I hope you're sitting down because I have pulled strings, I have made phone calls. I have gotten one of the busiest, most influential men in real estate on the podcast. I'm kind of actually impressed with myself. And if you haven't heard of them, you, you're going to be absolutely blown away by what he's going to share with us this morning. Larry Goins from South Carolina. And this guy is big, big. He's a member of the North Carolina association of Mortgage Professionals. He's a member of the national association of or. He was half friend of the Metrolina Real Estate Investors association in Charlotte, North Carolina. He's an active real estate investor. He travels all over the country training people at conventions, expos, real estate investment associations. And this is why he's such a big deal. He buys 10 to 15 properties per month without ever leaving his office. I am privileged, I am pleased, excited to introduce the man, the myth legend, Larry Goins. Larry, how are you?

What's up? How you doing?

I'm busy, I gotta tell you, I'm busy. I'm, I'm buying and selling raw land every day. And so I'm curious though, because, you know, out here in Scottsdale, the housing market is super hot. It's competitive and flipping houses like they're all complaining they can't get a deal to save their life. And I know you're buying properties left and right and I know we're going to have a webinar, which we'll talk about a little bit later, where you're going to explain how you do all this to everybody. But, man, are you still getting deals? Are you, are you having issues in this market?

No, man, I don't have any issues, man. Everybody has issues. Everybody has issues. But we are doing 10 to 20 deals a month. And, and I probably work in the business about maybe five hours a week.

I got maybe five hours a week.

Yeah, maybe five. Maybe one a day.

Yeah, I can vouch for that, by the way, because I called your office yesterday just to confirm this podcast and Candace is like, yeah, Larry's gone.

It was like.

It was like after lunch, like, oh, that's nice.

Well, I was at the US National Whitewater Olympic, whatever they call that place up there. There's a place that they built about four year. Four or five years ago. Or no, maybe it's about eight years ago. Anyway, the US Whitewater Olympic practice center or training center up above Charlotte. And, you know, went up there with, you know, with my family and hung out for the afternoon and, you know, got in the canoe and did some rock climbing and it was just a lot of fun. Did some ziplining. So we had a good time.

That's fantastic. That's fantastic. So let me ask you, how did you get into real estate anyways? Like.

Well, you know, unless you have some people on here that they've been around a while that are maybe chronologically challenged, like me, I'm 53 years old. But the very first. First infomercial I saw was a guy named Tom Vu Vu. And, yeah, he was the guy that had an infomercial on TV of him, little short guy. And he used to be on the front of a yacht with a bunch of girls around him in bikinis and say, I learned how to make millions of dollars in real estate and you can, too, come to my free seminar this weekend. And I went to his seminar and I signed up for the three day.

And.

And then I eventually got my license, got into doing mortgages, started flipping houses, and, you know, I never stopped learning, though. I mean, I'm always. I read. I read an entire book last night.

And would you read.

And it was a book by Dan Sullivan called the Question. And it was. It's a very short book. And it was all. It's all about how to help other people reach their goals. And, yeah, it was really cool. It was really cool. So it was a very short read. And actually, I said it was not last night. It was night before last. Because the reason it took me a little longer than normal. My wife was watching the Bachelor. She had to see what happened with Juan Pablo. So I was reading in between, you know, taking a peek at Juan Pablo and what's going on with all the bachelorettes and stuff. It cracks me up. See, that's a sign of a good.

Marriage when both parties can get their needs met and neither one of them kind of shames the other. Like, you know, but you can. You can read and then you can look up and be like, oh, yeah, did she. Did she go with, what do you do? Or pop up?

Yeah, who did he pick?

Who did he pick Right.

Girl needs to dump him. He's a dog. Oh, that's great.

That's great. All right, so you're. You're flipping houses, you're doing mortgages. You're all in. At that point when you first started, like, did you have a mentor? I mean, how are you? What were you doing as far as education?

Well, you know, I really believe that the quickest, shortest, fastest way to become successful is to find somebody that's where you want to be and get as close as you can to them, whatever you have to do, even if you have to buy your way in. You know, I'm just a firm believer in that, and I'm involved and, you know, I mean, yes, I do, you know, all that stuff, but. But I have coaches and mentors and involved in masterminds and stuff, so I'm a firm believer in that. So when I first got started, there wasn't any way to do this. There wasn't even any local real estate investors associations. You couldn't find a group to go to. Now, I did my first deal back in the 80s, and, you know, like the early 80s, and you, you know, they didn't have read groups back then, so. So, yeah, but I think if you can find somebody, especially with the Internet and things like your podcast and stuff, I mean, there's all kind of free information and education and training and out there and.

And.

But then you got to find somebody, you know, like, and trust and then just get as close to them as you can and get out there and make it happen. That'll shorten your learning curve.

Yeah, yeah. You know. You know, the days of having any type of excuse are kind of gone. I mean, you can learn today anything you want. It doesn't matter what it is. You just really have to have the desire, the persistence to do it, because it's all there. It's unbelievable. I mean, we're living in the best time ever as far as education is concerned. Would you agree?

Absolutely. Absolutely. There's, you know, the smartest person on. I shouldn't even say person. Smartest thing on the Earth is Google. Google will tell you anything you don't you want that you want to know. In fact, Google will even let you know if you don't know how to spell, you know. Did you mean real estate?

Right, right. Yeah. No, it's true. It's true. Like, I get so angry when my kids come home and they're, you know, the teachers, like, you know, memorize these facts, like there's no need to know any Facts anymore. You just need to know how to type in some, you know, whatever you want to know. Like Google indexed it for you. Why do you need to memorize this anymore?

Yeah, it's like I was taking my son to school this morning and on the way he was calling out the states and their capital and the abbreviation, you know, and some of them, he was asking me, well, you know, I'm not really sure what the capital is of that one, you know, but hold on, I'll tell you in about three seconds. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Pull out my iPhone and type it in. You know.

Yeah, it's, it's crazy. You know, there's itunes, university. I mean, there's, there's so much out there and then there's, there's the training. I mean, I heard a great quote. If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.

That's really good.

Yeah, I forgot who said that, but.

I love that quote.

Yeah, here's one.

Here's what I like. Mark, you'll like this one. You know, real estate is not risky. Being uneducated is what's risky.

I love that. That's a great one. Can I, can I steal that?

You can borrow it.

I'll reference you. Yeah, okay. Yeah, exactly, exactly. All right, let's get back to you. So you're doing deals in the 80s now. Were you mainly doing mortgages or are you mainly flipping homes? Like, what was your.

Back in the 80s? I was really a stockbroker and I was just trying to do real estate on the side nights and weekends. You know, like most people, I was a stockbroker and, and then I got into the mortgage industry, it became a licensed realtor. And you know, like a lot of people, I'm just trying to do real estate nights and weekends. Okay. Yeah, trying to do real estate nights and weekends. And the problem is most people trying to do real estate have a full time job. So everything that everybody out there teaches you, you got to do real estate nights and weekends. You gotta, you know, you got to go out there and physically do it yourself. You know, you got to drive the streets, you got to meet the realtors, you got to get the inspections, go out and look at the property, drive the neighborhoods all that well, man, I don't know about you, but, you know, I didn't have time back then, so.

But I read this book, read this.

Book by Michael Gerber called the E. Myth. I know you've read that book.

I love that book. I love that.

It's a great book. And Michael Gerber says if you don't. If you have a business and it can't run without you, in other words, you can't take the afternoon off and go to the Whitewater center and hang out with your family.

If you.

If you have a business and it can't run without you, you don't really have a business. What you have is a job.

That's true. Yeah.

Yeah. And everybody who wants to get into real estate already has a job. But. But the problem is everything everybody teaches them, they end up with two jobs. The one they don't want and the one they thought they wanted.

Right? No, it's true, it's true.

But after reading Michael Gerber's book, I came up with systems and processes and procedures. And I got to tell you, man, now we have a business. We have operations manual. We have a business. We got SOPs, standard operating procedures, you know, we have daily huddles, weekly meetings, quarterly meetings, quarterly goals, you know, and that's the things I'm in, I'm involved in.

Yeah, you got a big operation. How many employees do you have now, Larry?

How many employees do I have working for me? Yeah, about half of them.

Now.

We have just under 30.

Yeah. Okay. I mean, that's a big operation. That's a. That's a big.

Well, now that. Now that's between the real estate and the education side, I think we have. I think we have. I don't know, we have about 10 or 11 people on the real estate side and the rest on the education side.

Okay.

Because I got like full time webmaster, systems administrator. I've got full time cfo, a coo, a JV manager, got course consultants that, you know, when people who get our education, we really do want them to, you know, to run with it and to really do well with the training. So I've hired people that are in my office on salary that, you know, they answer students questions and help get them up and running and take the training.

You know what's so funny about that is I was talking to, you know, Joanne Musa, the tax me lady.

Yeah, yeah, I know her.

Yeah, yeah.

She's one of my students. She's one. She got my training.

Yeah, I know, I know. So she's. So I'm like trying to figure out, okay, how do I get a hold of Larry going, you're. Because by the way, Larry's a very tough guy to get a hold of. So I'm like, you know, how do I do this? What do I do? And she's. We're talking about, I Forgot which, which program of it, which program she was talking about. She's like, but of all the other home study courses, Larry's people are the only ones that follow up with me. Like they really cared. Like it wasn't, you know what I mean? Like they thought like a shock and.

That'S like a shock, right?

Yeah, no, it's. But that's what that is. It's like a huge differentiator. It's like this unique thing going on that no one's doing that it's so simple to do, like, hey, how's it going? And you know, an actual physical human being making a phone call instead of just, you know, like an autoresponder kind of thing. Yeah. Which is, which is very impressive. So she was like, yeah, you got to talk to Larry. I'm like, all right, I tried to talk to Larry. I think, you know, 120 days later I was able to figure it out. But which is, which is great. Which is great because look, you know your times. Valuable, right, exactly, exactly.

You got to do the highest payoff task.

The highest what?

Payoff task.

Yeah, right.

You got to spend your time with the highest payoff test. And you know, listen, it's just like you doing the podcast and us on here providing information and content, you know, it's. But by providing people with a lot of information and education and content, it makes them want more and it makes them want to buy houses from us, sell houses to us. You know, we fund their deals, all kind of stuff. They just learn who we are and what we do and that we really care.

So you, so you're like a one stop shop. I can get the education I can do. I can actually get funding from you even if I've never used. Fund a newbie.

Yeah.

I have no money, I have no credit and I'm doing a deal and I can call you. Yeah.

Doesn't mean I'm gonna approve you, but yeah, you should call.

Yeah. So if you like the deal.

Yeah, you gotta like the deal. I'm more concerned about the deal than I am the borrower. But yeah, you know, I mean, what kind of comfort is that? Knowing you got somebody who's literally done thousands of deals looking over your shoulder to say, now I wouldn't put my money in this deal. You know, that's a good feeling.

That's great. That's how you sleep well at night in real estate, especially when you're starting out. Exactly, exactly.

Yeah.

That's great. That's great. Alright, so you're doing deals in the beginning. And how did you. How did you get to the point where you didn't create yourself a job with the email? Like, how did you first do. Because let's face it, this is a tough transition to make, right? Because the cheapest person you can hire is always yourself. So at what point do you say, okay, I can afford the next person in the chain, so to speak?

Well, you could do that day one. And you can afford them by hiring them. On commission only.

On commission only.

Okay, on commission only. And Wendy in our office, she has a term for commission only. You eat what you kill. So as long as you're productive, you know, don't confuse activity with productivity. But as long as you're productive and you get out there and do some deals, you're going to make some money. And quite frankly, you know, you could. You can do this. Whether you have employees that come to your house or to your office or. Or you can do it with virtual assistants. It doesn't really matter.

But no, who cares?

I mean, we got. We got people in our office. We got a VA or two, but we literally make about 2 to 3,000 offers a week. And we do that. A lot of it is virtual, the way we do it, right? But yeah, I mean, it's just a lot of fun. We have a lot of fun. We make money. We have contests, we have outings. We do a lot of stuff together and, you know, have monthly luncheons. And, you know, it's just. It's really kind of a team spirit. And we have our. We have our. We have our mission statement hanging up on the wall. And anytime somebody comes in for an interview, we set them down in the lobby and facing that mission statement. And when they come in for an interview, the very first thing I ask them is, so what is our mission statement here? And we even put it in our ads, too. If we run ads on Craigslist and here's a good ad that you can run, our ads basically say, learn to flip houses using my money. I will train you. And then it goes on to talk about, yeah, you like that it goes on. It's commission only. Working full time in my office, I'm not looking for somebody who's looking for some free training for a few months and then go out on their own. I'm looking for somebody who wants to be a part of a bigger organization, a part of a team camaraderie and gets along well and has fun and makes money together. When I bring them in, I ask them about the mission statement. Another thing I ask them is, so what do we do here? If they can't tell me what we do, if they haven't at least done a little bit of research? Because I guarantee you, if I got somebody coming in for an interview, I got somebody in the office here has gone and checked out their Facebook page, their LinkedIn page, checked and see what kind of stuff they're liking and posting about on Facebook. And if they're just. If you can tell that they're a motivational, inspirational type person who's a positive person, then, man, I'm all for that. I'm into that. But if they're just talking about, you know, partying and this and that and that, and that's pretty much it, you know, that's not the kind of person we're looking for. That makes sense.

That makes a lot of sense. Yeah, I thought I always talk about hiring a players only and I only use virtual assistants. I don't have anybody that I physically work with. Although I'm thinking I need to get somebody now.

How many VAs do you have?

I have seven VA's.

So. Oh my gosh. What do they do?

Oh my gosh. You know, I've got marketing va, I've got my tech va, I've got my, my offers va. I've got my VA that, you know, handles my calendar. Who else? I've got the Craigslist va. So we're always putting up Craigslist ads. We're selling our land. I've got a copywriter and forgetting. I think that's. I think that's it for now.

So where do you like to hire your VA's from? You know what?

I like odesk.com as opposed.

I do too. I love Odesk.

I'd like Odesk in. We and I talked about this before. For whatever reason, I don't know why. I can't tell you why. I have better luck with people from the Philippines than I do any other country.

And that's how you know why. And do you know why that is?

Why I just have good luck?

No, I'm gonna tell you my reasoning. I don't know if it's true or not, but I'm gonna tell you what my theory is, is people in the Philippines, and it doesn't mean people in other countries aren't what I'm getting ready to say. But I'm just saying, as a general rule, I have found people in the Philippines. They're dedicated, they're motivated, they're humble, and when you hire them, you can hire them literally dirt cheap. One, two, three dollars an hour. But if they've been with you for two, three weeks, what I do is I double their income. If they're at a buck fifty, I take them on up to three dollars. Now, it doesn't sound like very much, but if they were willing to work for a buck 50 an hour and all of a sudden a few weeks later, you've doubled their income. I mean, think about it. Think about it, Mark. If you were in the states and going to get a job and you got a job paying 60,000 a year, what's the likelihood of the boss calling you into the office in three weeks saying, you know, I know you're pretty new, but you're doing a great job. We're going to go ahead and bump you on up to 120 grand a year. That's not going to happen, is it?

It's never going to happen.

No. So, but the thing about it is it's all relative. If they were willing to work for A$50, $3 an hour is still double. Right? So that's what we do. That's what we do.

Yeah. Okay, so you do the same thing. So. But you got a lot of people in house, correct?

We do have a lot of people in the house. I want to tell you another secret about odesk. Your listeners are going to love this. Okay, say I'm getting ready to hire a VA and I want that VA to build my buyers list for me. Okay. Right. I will run an ad on o desk and I will say I'm looking for an experienced real estate investor VA to build my buyers list that convert into buyers. I will say I am not interested in training you. I want somebody who already knows what they're doing and has a track record of building a buyers list that can convert into real buyers. Send me an email and tell me exactly what you would do to build my buyers list and exactly how you would do it. Do not respond with a generic response as they will not be replied to. So now what happens, Mark, is I get all these people telling me how to build my buyers list and I'm like, wow, that's a great idea. I never thought about this. Wow, this is a good idea. I never thought about that. So they're teaching me stuff that I may not have known.

Oh, I love it. That's, that's genius. I'm stealing that one as well. I'm stealing.

It's a, it's a lot of fun. It's really good. I actually had One guy did that about maybe a year ago. Right. And I had. I had one. Well, actually I had two guys. Now that I think of it, two guys responded and said, I already have a buyer's list I have built. If you will hire me, I will give you my buyers list.

No kidding.

Yeah. On.

On Odesk. Oh, no desk.

Oh, no desk.

Fantastic. That's a great.

I actually found a guy in the States who lives in Ohio that responded to one of my ads on Odesky. I ended up hiring him on commission only to be an acquisition manager. And he's doing deals with me. Virtually.

He's virtually doing deals.

He's virtually doing deals with me. Yeah, we call him. We call him our Bam. Bam. Branch acquisition manager. Bam.

I'm feeling that one too. I like that. I like that. So let me ask you this. We're having a webinar next Wednesday and we're gonna learn about what in your program.

Why?

Why should we?

Are we doing. You're gonna have to refresh my memory.

We're doing day trading, real estate day.

Trading, Buying and the same day using the Internet. Yeah. So real estate day trading, that's. That's a phrase that I coined. It's all about how to buy and sell houses the same day using the Internet. Okay. And what we basically, it's what we do most of. For example, we'll buy a house at 10 o' clock and sell it at 10:30.

And you'll buy a house at 10 o' clock and you'll sell it at 10:30.

That's right.

Did I just hear that right?

That is right. Now don't get me wrong. I mean, it takes about three to four weeks to lead up to that day. But we're going to make offers, get deals under contract. We'll get a deal under contract, we'll do our due diligence, we'll get a buyer lined up. And the day we are supposed to close to buy it, that same day, we're going to turn around and sell it. And we already have our buyer lined up. So on the day we close on our buy, we're going to close on our sale the exact same day. Wow.

I'm sold. I'm sold. So I know you're new to this podcast, but we always, we kind of get to that point. Now we're going to talk about our tip of the week and I, if you don't mind, I'm going to take that tip. So my tip of the week is going to be jump on the webinar next Week next Wednesday, I'll send. There'll be a link in the podcast so you can register for it, so you can learn exactly how Larry does this working. How many hours a week?

Probably about five. In the real estate end of it.

Five hours a week, which is unbelievable. And I assume you're not. If you're. If you're day trading the house, you're not putting any money out, correct? Because the buyers.

Well, it kind of depends on the deal. I mean, we might put up the deposit or sometimes we might fund the deal. But I'm going to show everybody how they can do the deals with none of their own cash, none of their own credit. We show them every way to close, every way to fund on a deal.

The opm other people's money. Ope other people's effort. That right?

Got it, man. You got it.

I love it. I love it. Okay, so that's gonna be my tip of the week. There will be a link to register for the webinar. All right, Larry, I love putting people on the spot. I'm gonna put you on the spot. What is your tip of the week? You've already given us some great tips.

But, man, I got a bunch of tips for the week.

Concrete. Like, they can click on it and they can go, here's my best tip.

Of the week before I give out a link. Okay.

Okay.

My best tip of the week is buy low, sell high. That's weird.

I've never heard that one.

And really. And the next one is have fun and make money.

Have fun and make money. Have fun high. Have fun, make money.

And the third one is, if it's to be.

It's up to me, man.

I gotta be a ton of it. I got a ton of them.

But you're gonna have to come back. We'll have to do this again for sure.

Oh, man, I'll be glad to. Anytime. It's not a big deal. I'll be more than happy to. You know, I love teaching, I love sharing. And, you know, I've got. I guess if I had to give out any tip, it would be that on my website, I've got a ton of tips. I've got how to work with realtors, how to negotiate deals, how to buy a deal with no cash, credit, or experience, how to do a seller finance deal, all about Dodd Frank and the Safe Act. I've got articles, videos, audios, webinar replays, all that stuff@larrygowins.com so my tip of the week would be. If you go there, you'll find hundreds and hundreds of tips.

That's great. All right, fantastic. So I'll have a link to Larry's blog and get those tips as well. I also have another tip that I just found I thought was kind of cool. Larry, have you ever heard of PDF escape.com.

No.

Okay, so this is a free PDF editor and form filler. And what I like about it is you don't have to install a software. So on my Mac, I use a program called Formulate Pro and I just drag in the PDFs and I can go in and edit them and fill them out. And it's great, especially when I'm doing like, let's say an Arizona Affidavit of Property Value, something like that. I have the PDF and I've got to go in and fill it out or my VA has to do it and they've got to use this program. But now if this is all online and you can do it and it's pretty cool. So I'm have a link to that as well. PDFescape.com is going to also be my second tip of the week and Larry's got tons of tips. Anyways, Larry, before we close, any more sage wisdom you want to share?

I think probably the best tip is, guys, get on the webinar. I'm going to going to show you specific details, exactly what we do and how we do it in our office on a daily basis. And I don't care. I mean, I know I told you I have a lot of employees. I've got some VA's. I don't care if you're just brand new and getting started. It's okay. Don't worry about it. I'm going to show you how you can start right from where you are right now and you can build an organization whether you want to build a lifestyle business or. Or an enterprise business, if you don't know the difference. A lifestyle business is where you can run your business from Starbucks with an Internet connection and you can do what you want to when you want to. An enterprise business, you can still do the same, but you've got employees, you've got an office, you've got other things like that going on. So it's entirely up to you whether you want an enterprise business or lifestyle business. We have an enterprise business where we have an office that people come into and work every day. But we have a lot of fun and we make a lot of money. But you can have either one. A lifestyle or an enterprise business.

That's great. That's great. All right, well, listen, this is Mark Fedolski, the Land Geek with Larry Goins. I urge everybody to go and register for the webinar. The link will be below. And I think I know that we can only do so many, so get in there early so you don't get locked out. I think you only have 100 people on there. Is that right?

I'm not sure.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, but get in on there, register. It's going to be unbelievable and I'm really excited for it. And Larry, I can't thank you enough for spending time with me today and sharing all this really exciting information on real estate because it's. Look, it can be a game changer for somebody, right?

Yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely. So I'm really excited. Anyways, if you want to learn more, I'm going to have a link to Larry's blog as well with his tips. And look, go to www.delanegeek.com as well. Download the Passive Income Blueprint. Get the ebook how to Avoid three Fatal Land Buying Mistakes. Get this always fun, informative podcast delivered each week to your email inbox. Look, give me some love. If you want to buy some wholesale land, go to frontierpropertiesusa.com and Larry, thanks again. I'm honored that you were able to spend 3040 minutes of your valuable time with me today and share with my podcast listeners all your sage wisdom. And I can't wait to see everybody on the webinar next week.

Awesome.

Thanks, Larry.

Thanks a lot, everybody. Have a great day.

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.