The Land Geek Podcast #59

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 with your friends favorite niche real estate website, www.thelandgeek.com. and today I'm really excited for this guest because he doesn't have a shirt on. This morning, Living the dream in Carlsbad, California. He's your favorite. He used to be my favorite until he started telling me about what he's doing on Facebook. Everybody from landhub.com Duran, Frazier, Duran. What's going on, buddy?

Mark, I just wanted to let you know because you just made fun of my no shirt. I just put on a scarf. Yes. So now I have a scarf on so you feel more comfortable. Hello, sir. You know, I was thinking, because I'm such a regular on your show, are you ever gonna make me a maybe, like a permanent fixture? Do I.

Do I get that you are a permanent fixture?

I mean, I'm kind of. Not really. You make it sound like I'm a guest, and it's kind of frustrating. You know, I've been a guest.

You. I mean, I do have other guests, so I don't want it to seem like you're just always going to be on because, look, you're a busy guy. Sometimes you're not on. I don't want the listeners to get all excited like I do when I email you and say, hey, are we going to podcast today? And they're like, yeah. And then you're like, oh, I can't.

That does happen quite often. I apologize. Yes, I agree. Actually, I could never be a permanent fixture because I'm not always here. And when I'm at pools or oceans, my cell phone doesn't work too well.

Right. By the way, I have an ODESK campaign right now for somebody with a good voice and real estate knowledge to be my permanent podcast partner.

Oh, awesome.

Yeah, it's not going real well.

Yeah, no, I would. That would be. An odesk would be a tough one. I bet you you have about 19 offers from people in Pakistan, though.

I do. Bangladesh is very popular for podcasting right now.

I'll bet it is. So, Mark, tell me a little bit about your week. You got some properties out this week?

All right, so I'm looking at a deal in Northern Arizona, about an hour from Vegas. And this is an interesting deal. It's a wholesale deal. We're looking at 20 lots, 1.25 acres. Seller wants. This is the deal I've negotiated. He's got 20 lots, right? And I took a look at him. Six of the lots were like going through it with a wash. So I went back to him, I said, look, I can't buy those six lots. So for the bulk deal he wants, should I even say it, he wants 10 grand, right. For the 20 lots. So that's a pretty good deal.

That is pretty good.

Now there, now there are some back taxes on the lots, but I, I'm not going to pay them until I get my money down. So I'm really only out 10 and then we're getting another 10 that we can pay off in 24 months. So I'm working.

So it's a $20,000.

So it's 20,000. Right. But only 10 up front. And then two years. So basically, you know, the risk is mitigated on those. You have two years to sell the other 10.

And the lots of.

Because my complaint was these take too long to sell compared to other properties I'm looking at. He's like, fine, just pay me in two years.

And where the properties at?

They're near Kingman, Arizona.

Got it. Okay.

So about an hour from Vegas.

Okay, got it. And you think they're pretty good? They're pretty good properties.

Well, they're selling right now on terms for about 14, 15.

So it's 15,000.

15,000.

For one lot?

For one lot. So you know, we're looking at targeting preppers and I put together a nice ad and nice flyer and one of the people in my partnership program, I'm going to actually be working with him on those properties. So I'm going to put the money in and then he's going to take the other 10 lots and then we're going to split those 5050 or just.

Let the listeners know that, that obviously when you, when you have a, and I think, I mean in terms of how the contract structured, I'm assuming there's a, there's a non binding, there's no deed of trust in the property. So there's nothing. But you have an agreement in place that anytime you sell a property or deed over a property that you will obviously pay that property off. Correct. Are these separate contracts per property?

No, I mean we have no agreement in place yet. I have a lot of trust with the seller, so I'm sure we'll put Something in place. Basically, you know, it's not going to be like the deal that we had where if you sell one, you've got to pay off a deed of trust. There's not going to be a deed of trust on the properties.

Why not do that?

Why? Because it's going to kill cash flow.

Well, here's why I say that, because the seller, the seller, if you, if you. Well, if you sell a property for cash, let's say you sell it for 10 cash, the seller is going to not. He's not going to deed you over a property because I'm assuming unless you have a contract in place, he's not going to give you one property of the 10 or 20 properties, is he?

No, he'll deed over when he gets his thousand dollars, whatever property that we want.

Okay. So there is a. There will be an agreement that is 1,000 bucks per property. Okay. That's all I was curious about because.

Right, but two years to pay it.

Yeah. So I'm just letting the listeners know that when you do these deals, you in a contract, you want to get creative at times. And in this situation, because Mark's got two years to pay it off, he's trying to structure something. When you're going through a title company and the property's being deeded to you and it's not a land contract, there's a deed of trust in the property. And the deed of trust basically keeps the person who is mortgaging the property and carrying back a note gives them, obviously, an instrument that gives them the ability to take the property back if it's not paid. So you can't technically the property to someone else if you haven't paid the property off. In this situation. In this situation with Mark, Mark's got a land contract in place.

Not.

And he's not going to go through title company, I'm assuming, correct, Mark?

Correct. Well, this is, this is a special deal because I have so much trust with the seller. So he's just going to deed over the properties to me. They're going to be in my name.

Oh, wow. Okay. So that's not. Folks, that's not normal.

That's not normal. That's. Yeah, it's not normal at all.

Okay, that's, that's. Then I won't even. I'm just trying to get the listeners to understand how that works.

Well, let's talk about what a normal deal would look like, because this is a. That's not normal. Yes.

I just think, I mean, a normal deal in this situation Mark would be, you know, you go to a seller who's got 20 lots, and you would structure basically an instrument for each individual lot as you sold, which Mark had expressed earlier what he could do. In this case, he's not doing that. But what you would do is you would just have an agreement in place that for every property you sold, you would pay $1,000. Or maybe you pay because he's doing this in separate contracts. Maybe you'd pay an extra 500. So $1,500 per lot that was sold that needed to be deeded over.

Correct? Correct. So this is referred to as a takedown transaction, which at the seminar, I created a program which I still need to send out to everybody about. It's called the Art of the Takedown and a different way of taking down a bulk deal, which I promised everyone I'm going to get out. And I'm still working on it, but.

It'S because you've asked me to put on my ninja outfit and the art of the takedown with my ninja samurai sword and my suit, but.

Exactly.

I can't track my samurai suit down.

That's true. That's true. So what's going on with you?

Just busy working on some different ad campaigns, pushing pretty hard. I've got a lot of good stuff happening on the land side. As most listeners know, over the last year and a half or two years of podcasting, I haven't been super focused on getting rid of my land just because there's properties. It's funny because Mark and I are different, but there's probably. I like to keep, and I'll just pay the property tax, and I'm in everything I own free and clear. So there's no real push for me on some properties, but I made a little push to get rid of stuff because I do have, you know, I do have probably around, you know, anywhere between 75 and 100 properties at any given time. And so for. For me, it's kind of silly to keep paying property tax on some of the stuff, and I'm never going to be able to visit and hang out on all 75 properties. And I'm always moving stuff, but now it's. Now it's time to kind of make a little push.

And.

And so I'm out there doing some different campaigns. And like we've discussed in the past, it's always about being creative and thinking outside the box. And that's right. And that's what I'm doing right now.

Okay, so let's talk about those different campaigns. Because what's interesting is that you were looking at three platforms to sell on, right? Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. And now you have three definitive opinions about each platform. Can we break down what you think of each one?

I mean, I'm not going to give an opinion that I put it this way. I haven't done enough research to give you a definitive conversion aspect of which one works best. But I will say that LinkedIn's just been. LinkedIn has never worked at all.

Now, why is that, do you think?

Because LinkedIn doesn't do. Doesn't do what Facebook does or what Twitter does. LinkedIn has a little ad box at the bottom. Basically, to me, LinkedIn was like what Facebook used to be. If you guys remember the ads on the side of the page that just never converted well, and they still don't convert well, and yet they're still there, which is funny. Maybe it's more of a branding play than anything else, but those boxes have never been successful for me. The ones that do well are the sponsored ones that end up in the middle of your page while you're scrolling through and looking at your friends and your pictures.

So they're in your newsfeed in Facebook.

Correct? Correct.

Right. Yeah, those work. People see those.

And when it comes to that, there's so much more. And Mark's been through it, I've been through it. Converting those and getting eyeballs. I mean, if you have a big campaign, you're spending a lot of money, you're going to get people clicking on it, but you want quality, not quantity. So you really want to really hone in on what is your call to action. What is your picture showing your customer?

Right, right. You think the picture's more important than the copy in Facebook? Correct.

Correct. I mean, that's the first thing that people see. And so for me, I believe that you've really got to challenge yourself to find what is the best picture. What am I going. Because a picture tells a thousand words. I mean, if you can create a collage of images that tell the story without even having them read the copy, that's huge.

Yeah. But okay, so when you're actually creating the ad in Facebook, the picture has to be a certain size.

Okay.

Right. Correct. So, I mean, do you farm that out? Do you find your own pictures? I mean, it's hard to find a good picture now.

You can there, isn't it?

That's gonna tell a thousand words within land. I mean, do you show a picture of land? You show a picture of a person no.

Okay, first off, on an image, you can actually write on an image. Right?

Right.

You can write text on an image. You can take half the image and take another image and put it right next to it. I'm not talking about in Facebook. You have a graphic designer to this. I've been blessed to be married to a very talented graphic designer who baffles me every day. She's unbelievably talented. She has no clue how talented she is. So we sit down and if I ask for something, she'll create something really neat, but I'll give her the idea and direction and she'll make it happen. Those are things that she can save in a PNG file, in a JPEG file, and then I can upload that image to Facebook.

Does Facebook want a JPEG file?

Sure.

Doesn't matter.

Doesn't matter.

They don't care.

Yeah.

No. No PDF file though.

No, not a PDF. You can't even. PDFs not an image. I mean, not an image file.

That's not an image file. Right.

So.

So there's tiff.

There's TIFF won't work either. TIFF is a high res resolution file.

Okay.

You just want to stick to a PNG or a, or a JPEG and, and going back to it, you can create colog. Like, you know, I was telling Mark, I mean, you know, tell the story like if you're selling, you know, if you're selling something niche, why, why that property? You know, maybe you take an image of a solar panel and put it on the land and say, this could be you, whatever, you know.

Right.

You know, you know, a then and now picture. Like what, what, what the probably looks like, you know, what it probably looks like now, what it probably could look like in five years from now.

Right, right. Yeah. I mean, it'd be cool to see like, you know, the raw land and then like a tiny house.

Exactly. And those can be altered and manipulated so quickly on, you know, you're not lying, you're just saying that the whole, the whole idea of marketing is painting a picture to somebody to sell a product. And in this case, this is what your land could be. So I just think that when people are out there looking to create, this doesn't just work for land folks. I mean, I'm sure, you know, it works for anything. Yeah. I mean, and I, and I, you know, funny enough again, you know, marketing is sort of my, you know, I think right in my wheelhouse of what I do and what I do best. And so I've Been, you know, I've been taking on some of these campaigns just on the side because they're not hard to structure. It just you have to be creative and then going in and sort of managing the campaign. So.

Right. And I'm actually going to be working with Duran to do this for myself because I don't have time to do it. So I'm a big believer in hiring someone better than yourself. Right. And having that self discipline because yeah, it'd be cheaper for me to do it myself. But if I'm, if I'm doing that, then I'm not working on other aspects of the business that are going to grow the business. Growth completely stalls when I'm making an ad in Facebook.

Correct. Now the difference between Mark and I is growth doesn't stall for me because for me, the understanding of what I'm trying to create doesn't take me all day. In fact, I farm out what I don't want to handle and I just take on what I do because I can manage these campaigns in a time effective manner that allows me to get other stuff done and continue to grow.

My business, which is great, which is ideal.

And you have. Mark has qualities that I don't have that, that allow him to grow business that I wouldn't touch, that I would farm out myself. So.

Yeah. Yeah.

And I can't farm out to Mark because he's so busy, but I'd make.

An exception for you.

Thanks, buddy.

You know I would.

Yeah, I appreciate it.

So. All right, so let's talk about. You don't like LinkedIn, but just right now you've just, just a sample advertising that you've done on there. You don't think anyone sees those ads or demographically, LinkedIn's not the real audience for what we're doing. Is that correct? The jury's still out.

You don't know the jury's still out. Because here's the thing. And then people all have to understand this. These platforms are evolving. Not even daily anymore, it's like hourly. Hourly. These platforms are evolving so fast that you really do. I mean, you know, you have to understand and know and be involved. Like, you know, I have a friend, I have several friends who aren't on Facebook as you do as well, Mark. And I really, I really understand their perspective. Their perspective is I don't want to have my ex girlfriends contacting me. And I tell my friends, dude, you're almost 40. You don't look as good as you used to when you were 21. Don't worry about it. Then I have my. Then I have my other friends who just are like, yeah, you know, they're. They're against the grain, you know, like, I don't need Facebook, you know, I've got my real friends. But for me, it's funny because it's not like I'm a social guy. I like keeping contact with my friends, but at the same time, this is where everyone is, right?

There's a billion people on Facebook.

If you're going to show up to the party, you got to know what the party's for, right? And I think the dilemma is that you got people in the real world who are, you know, a lot of business guys, you know, I mean, the people that are, you know, 35, 37 and younger, like my age demographics was like, I think that, like the peak age, like right now I'm 36. The guy a couple years ahead of me aren't big on Facebook. Everyone under me, you know, age wise, everyone uses it, understands it, knows it. Okay, Right. And so the interesting dynamic is like, you get these people that go, gosh, I don't get it, but I want to get on there so they'll get on Facebook, go, hey, I'm trying to learn it. I'm like, gosh, you haven't been involved with Facebook and you don't understand it, so how are you going to learn it in three weeks? You don't know what these news feeds do now, what they did three months ago and six months ago, and how this whole entire advertising component has changed. So you really do have to understand it, have to immerse yourself in it to understand and you. And to just go throw up a campaign and see if it converts. Generally it's smarter to have someone handle it in a cost effective manner to go and take your campaign.

Right? So when someone handles it, like, what exactly are they doing? Are they trying to get the cost down per click? Are they trying to do that? And they're trying to increase your conversions.

Correct. And Facebook is now, I mean, over the last, I don't even know how I think it's been six months or a year are giving you the ability to see what pictures convert best. So as you convert or as you advertise, you have five picture sets and images and you can see which converts best. So you can sort of a B test on your own. They'll help you. A B test because they're going to kind of rotate and they're going to post which one converts the best. So it's really interesting how this works. But as this platform evolves, I mean, to me right now, Facebook is your primary platform to advertise. I think everyone knows that. Right, because that's where everyone is.

Yeah. It's so interesting that we're talking about Facebook, Facebook, Facebook. We haven't mentioned in 20 something minutes Google. That is unbelievable to me because three months ago we're not even talking about that. We're talking about Google and AdWords and AdSense.

Well, here's why, Mark. And it's not that we didn't think Facebook was an option, but I think that the dynamic is that if you're able to take a specific property, like if you told me, if you told me you had a property in Kingman that you could sell for 15 grand, if you found a specific niche, let's say that you knew people in Flagstaff, Arizona went to Kingman on the weekends and they were all preppers and all they did is they brought food from their local cannery to their place in Kingman. And maybe you, maybe you create this, right?

Well, yeah, exactly.

And so you're targeting a specific group of people. And not just people in Flagstaff, people in Flagstaff that are preppers or that like the prepper show.

And I can drill down to those people in Facebook.

Correct.

Not in Google.

Correct. And that's where you can really, really find a high converting source. And so that's where I've sort of come in. Looked at creatively how to target specific demographics and specific markets. And that's really, I mean, it's not easy to do, but when you do that and when you can find out what converts the best. And again, just so, just so everybody knows. I'm not saying that everybody needs to go learn Facebook advertising. In fact, I'm creating a little something for people like Mark and other people to come bring because me and my team are able to do this. So if you guys want this, contact Mark and then Mark can contact me. And I'll put you in touch with the right people to get you involved in the program. But the idea is to really figure out what is your niche if you're buying a piece of property somewhere. It's so funny because again, it's not just land, it's everything. We've got lots of listeners that are, that are doing stuff that are probably already entrepreneurs that have a product and that want to sell a product. They don't understand how to market. But Facebook has an ability. The difference between Google and Facebook is you have an image and an image that goes in the newsfeed that people can see. And if that's a very good image and you've got some money to spend and see what converts, the potential is very large.

Let me ask you this now. Is Facebook good for leads, or is it good for sales? Or is it good for both?

It's giving. Gosh, it's good for just about anything now. I mean, they're really. They're really. I mean, that. That platform in the last six months is just. It's. It's very, very interesting how. How large it's grown and how they're focusing on specific demographic.

You can.

It could be used for events, it could be used for leads. It could be used to straight convert or track conversions. So they're giving you multiple tools on how to do that.

Okay. When I was reading somewhere that Facebook was changing their algorithm in the sense that some people's news feeds weren't going to show up, like, you couldn't game the system. Some people were paying nothing per click, and now they're paying a lot more per click to be seen. Something like that. Have you heard anything about that? Facebook.

Okay, so I know a lot about Facebook's algorithm, Mark. I think we've talked about this before, but if you post something in Facebook, there's an interesting video I watched. If you post something in Facebook, I'm cutting onions, and you put a picture of an onion. You're cutting an onion, and you're wondering why there was one, like, on your post in two days, but you had 600 friends on your Facebook page. You're like, well, gosh, I'm cutting onions. I thought people liked me. Right. How Facebook works now is your post is shown based on the virality of the post. Meaning if. If six people saw it and four people clicked it, it's going to send it to more people in your. Of your friends on the newsfeed. Does that make sense?

That makes sense.

So the algorithm is the more vi. The more viral your picture or your post is or the more value it has.

Can you do video?

What's that?

Can you add a video on there instead of a picture or. No, of course. Oh, okay. That could go viral.

But not your videos, Mark.

Yours. No, no, not my videos. No. No one wants to see me with a cup of coffee.

Yeah, it's funny. Yes.

No, that's how you lose friends.

Yes, exactly. No, You. You can. You can do video again. It's. You know, what, what goes viral. I mean, images go viral, right? Like the stories of images go viral and no one Knows why certain things do go viral. But on the other hand, we know why certain things go viral. So by creating something like, for me, I'm not posting. I don't post and care what I post. That goes to my friends and seen. I'll have some posts that I'll get one like. And I'll have some posts that have 150 likes. It's bizarre. But that's just the way it is. And that is.

These are social posts, these are business posts.

These are business posts. Correct. Within my friends. And I don't post anything political. I don't. Just so you all know, I have a lot of my Facebook friends that love when I used to post political stuff because I would have a banter of about 90 comments with people in all different aspects politically. And so I. So I remember I would. And I always have the last word.

Yeah. You know what's funny about that is that at the seminar and I didn't even think about this, we had Wayne Allen root as the guest speaker. Now he did. He didn't speak anything politically at all. Didn't say one word about his politics. But in his video he was talking.

About he ran for president. Right?

What's that? Yeah, he ran for the 2008 Libertarian vice president. And he wrote a book about, you know, surviving Obama, Obamageddon right. Now, half my group right away was turned off by this guy. Couldn't hear a word he said, even though he's only talking about branding.

Oh, he did?

What's that?

He did bring it up.

No, he never. No, he brought up branding. He never brought up his politics. But he's known for being anti Obama. So if you're an Obama supporter in the room right away you're like, this guy's terrible. Even though he was a great speaker. So, you know, lesson learned is politics and business don't really mix.

They don't.

Yeah. I lost a customer based on one speaker.

Oh, you did?

Yeah. Guy was, he was upset. He's like, I can't believe you had this guy speak.

Okay, give him back. Give the customer email address to me and I'll take.

Yeah, exactly. That'll be an interesting conversation.

So anyways, you know, going back to politics, I'll be honest with you, for me, like, I don't even. I don't talk politics at all anymore. At all. But because I think we've all come to the conclusion that all our politicians are pretty corrupt.

Yeah. I mean, you'd be hard pressed to be like, I love my politicians.

Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, they're doing such a great job.

Yeah. Don't tell me.

Represent me.

Please don't ever tell me your party's better than the other one. Cuz they're not.

Look, I'm apolitical. Honestly, I don't like any of them. I can't even tell the difference between the two parties anymore. You've got your two extremes on each side. If I had to pull the majority of Americans, I'd say most Americans are fiscally conservative and socially liberal for the most part. You're not, but most people are. I think that's if you had to pull people.

Yeah.

Most everyone's in the middle.

Yeah. Do you say I'm not?

You're not.

Dude, come on.

You, you, you know, whatever. We're not gonna talk about it anyways. Look, we got, okay, look, we're running out of time here. We're gonna, we're gonna do another podcast. I want to continue the conversation about Facebook because I think it's important, but. All right, I'm gonna put you on the spot, as I always do. Come on, man. What's your tip of the week?

My tip of the week? Oh, man. You know, there's a website, which I'm sure I've already brought up before, but it's got a wealth of real estate knowledge. And there's agents, brokers, people just talk. It's just real estate professionals around the world. And the website is called active rain.com. we talked about that before.

No, let me check it out.

Activrain.

I don't think so.

Which is now owned by Truvia, but it's basically.

Oh, I did read about truly buying these guys. Maybe we did talk about Active Rain.

If we did, it was about a year ago or a year and a half ago, but it's just, it's just a wealth of knowledge for, for, for people. I, you know, I, I, you'll, you'll write in, you know, a, you know, you'll type in something on Google asking a question. And, and if it's about real estate, this, this company, you know, this website might come up.

Are these guys competing with bigger pockets?

Ah, yes, sort of. Sort of. I wouldn't say it's a little bit different niche. Like, I think bigger pockets is more the creative niche of real estate investing. And this is more of just, you know, residential, A lot, A lot more residential focus than bigger pockets would be.

Right, okay. Well, that's interesting. That's interesting. All right, I like it. All right, all right. My tip of the week is it Just came up, by the way, because I was working with my team, and one of the guys on my team, Brian, is like an Excel ninja. Right. He's amazing with Excel. And so when we're doing all our flow charts, he does everything in Excel, and other members of the team don't necessarily think in spreadsheets. Right. So we were introduced to this program called Gliffy G L I f f y.com diagrams made easy. Create professional quality flowcharts, org charts, UML diagrams, network diagrams, wireframes, technical drawings, and more. And Gliffy works directly in your browser. You know, I like to use mind maps a lot when I'm working with clients, but this is pretty interesting, and I do believe that it's free to start. So check out gliffy.com if you're working with your team or your. Or whoever you're. Whoever you're working with, you're making an org chart. You even have an idea, and you just want to see it. Visually, Glyphy's pretty cool. So, Duran, let's do another podcast for next week, and we're going to continue our conversation on Facebook. Any last comments before we close for today?

Yeah, if we haven't discussed it, we'll probably open up the next podcast with the statement. But we finally, to Mark's clients, we have a special coupon code for landhub.com, so that's ready. They're personalized, so you need to email Mark and get that from him. He'll have a list of coupon codes for each customer. So just to let you guys know that.

Yeah, and by the way, you won't get the coupon code unless you leave a review on itunes. Perfect. Yeah, I'm hijacking it.

Yeah, I like that.

That's how I roll. Yeah, we need feedback, people.

Yeah, well, we know how many people listen because we can see, and we know there's hundreds of listeners. And Mark and I don't get paid for this. I mean, well, Mark does. I don't. The difference is that, you know, for me, at least, you know, a little feedback or a little love to show that you're. That I'm somewhat appreciated.

You got so much love in Vegas, Dan. Are you needy?

Yes. Look, I am needy. I am.

Folks, I'm more needy than Duran is. We got to get some reviews up on itunes. It really helps us. If you like. If you like the podcast, please support us and. And leave a positive review. We'd really appreciate it. And if you don't like the podcast, give us shoot us an email. Let us know what you'd like to hear. I did get a review this week. We'll talk about it as well because I thought it was pretty interesting. But anyways, if you want more tips, tricks, techniques, Please go to www.thelandgeek.com Download the Passive Income Blueprint, get the ebook how to Avoid the three Fatal Land Buying Mistakes and of course get this podcast delivered each week to your email inbox. Give Duran some love, buy some wholesale land from him reserveland.com and certainly start checking out landhub.com email me for your coupon code to start getting your listings out. Everywhere, everywhere. So it really saves time and ultimately time is money. So Duran, thanks again.

Thank you.

I want to thank all the listeners for spending your valuable time with us and we'll see everybody next week.

Thank you for listening to another episode of the Land Keep. 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.