The Land Geek Podcast #6

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 the Land Geek again. And this week I'm pleased to bring Duran Fraser from reserveland.com back into the mix. And this week, Duran, I've really got my feathers in a ruffle. Is that the correct cliche?

I'm not sure, but you did tell me you did eight push ups this morning, so if that has anything to do with it.

Yes, that's right. I'm pumped and ready. So we were just talking before the call. I've got a bunch of people getting started in the investors toolkit and they want to know, okay, where should you focus your time? And when you first get started in this business, where should you really, really. What's the first thing you should focus on? And I'll tell you a story. I had a consultation with one of my students a week ago and he just starts. And I said, okay, what have you done so far? So he watched the videos, got the PDF downloads. First thing he did was started spending money on a website. Second thing he did was started spending money getting an ein number, setting up an llc, getting his corporation in order. Third thing he did was he spent money on an accounting program. So, Duran, tell me. Yes, where are these. What is his fatal flaw? What's the first thing that anyone should be doing when they first start this business? All those things are important, don't get me wrong. But they're tertiary. What's the first thing he should be doing?

First of all, I love that word, tertiary. That's number one. It kind of reminds me of. It's such a good, good, good word. And it's not a, you know, it's going back to what you're saying. In terms of the fatal flaw, I thought that your program was what taught them to help solve that problem. So I'm a little curious as to know, did you teach this man how to buy, go buy a domain name and a website and put everything together? What happened here?

You're making this about me?

Yeah. I mean, come on, Mark. I mean, you're the one that's teaching these poor guys. I mean, here he is, these poor guys.

That's why we give out the consultation, to get them straightened out when they. Look, I provide the information, it should be clear. What's the first thing he should be focusing on?

Researching and buying a piece of land.

Buy a piece of land first. Pennies on the dollar. Start your ad campaign, go to a tax sale, auction. More importantly, more importantly than buying a piece of land and researching is what.

Mark.

Exactly. Mark Marketing. Exactly. I used to have a virtual assistant in Costa Rica. He'd say, it's not magic, it's Micah. His name is Micah and he's great. It's not magic, it's marketing. First thing you should do is set up an option offer, especially if you're concerned about your cash flow situation. Every business, I don't care what business it is. Land, paper clips, a startup. The first thing you need is marketing and you need to start selling now. Marketing is different than selling, right?

Correct.

Correct. Marketing is creating copy to get people to become interested in what you are selling. Selling is the process of establishing a relationship with your customer that provides them more value than what they're actually paying for. Right. We only buy a Starbucks cappuccino for $4 because to us that caffeine high is worth $6. So we don't mind paying $4. Same thing. When you start selling land, I don't care if it's $100,000 piece of property. If they think it's worth $200,000, they'll plunk down happily $100,000. So. But you need to have that mindset first is I'm going to acquire a piece of property, ideally lock up a piece of property and start selling that property while it's locked up. Gauge the market in practice. Some people are like, well, I'm not comfortable marketing or selling. And guess what? Get over it. You're going to have to practice it and practice it and practice it. Because if you're going to go from zero to a million dollars in this business, that's where your focus needs to be. Once you go from zero to a million, you can shift your focus a little bit away from the marketing, but not much. So when you start, I want your focus, 80% to be on marketing and selling, 20% on buying up the properties. Everything else is secondary. What do you think of that? I know I'm over 100%.

Yeah, I was saying you got 100%.

75, 25, 75, 24, 1%.

Everything else. I agree, 100%. Mark, I think you're exactly right there. The focus needs to be on marketing. You and I have never been able to sell land without a really good ad in Place. Let's be honest here. We could call. Mark and I have sold so many properties without having to talk to people. It's funny. I could probably tell you say 80% of my transactions have been email only, which is bizarre. I don't talk to very many of my buyers. But that's the neat part about it. I've got contracts in place with people. I've got hundreds of thousands of dollars in contracts with people that I have never once talked to on the phone. Now, you may say that's crazy, but no, that's marketing. That's the way you do your marketing. The way you tell your. Your buyers about the property. The more you tell them, the less time you spend on having to talk to them.

Right. It's an efficient process. And that's something I want to talk to is there's a way to automate your sales funnel. Nobody's going to come out from the cold and just buy from you right away. You need to have some point of contact, whether it's an email, an email series, something of value, so they get to know you. Now, if we're selling on ebay, do you know what that point of contact is? It's feedback. They can look and see, oh, my gosh, this guy's done all these transactions. I feel comfortable buying on ebay and.

Off of ebay, Mark, just to interrupt real quick, and I apologize, but off of ebay, if you're really trying to build that aura around your ability to close deals or to be successful or be someone that your buyer can trust, you need to put a LinkedIn account together because people need to know who you are, what your past is. You don't necessarily have to have an amazing past to sell property, but you need to be trusted in order to be trusted. I've got several buyers of mine that are connected with me on LinkedIn. So it's one of those things where that's your offline, although it's not offline. Your feedback off of ebay would be something like a LinkedIn, just so that they can get an idea of who you are and what you're all about. Now, sure, you can utilize a Facebook page or, you know, Mark, you. I think you broadcast your personal Facebook page to people.

No, I don't. I have a company Facebook page.

Oh, you do? Okay.

Yeah, yeah, I do front. I did. I have Frontier Properties, Facebook, and I have the Land Geek Facebook.

Got it. Got it.

And I. And I have been working on my social media strategy. I mean, it's been what, a week? But I'm working it. So marketing then. The number one thing I want you to start doing, though, is marketing that property. And once you sell that property, I want that relationship to become solidified. Because once you have a customer, that customer knows you, trusts you, likes you, they voted for you. And if your main goal in life, which if you're in business should only be one thing, that is to provide value and exceed your customer's expectations. The customer comes first. Nothing else comes first except the customer. If your VAs don't understand this and you don't create that culture, you will make money. Don't get me wrong, you can make money for a year or two doing this. At year 10, you're out because you haven't kept a customer first and foremost in your mind.

And this goes back to. If we touch on the subject of getting into ebay, back in the late, for me, the late 1990s, early 2000s, really heavily getting in the land game. There were about 15 of us that were buying and selling land. And then about three or four years into it, 2005, 2006, there was probably about 100 land sellers that were buying more than just one tax auction or one area of the country. Today, there's probably no more than, I would say eight to 10 successful people in the business, of which only a handful still utilize ebay, but still a great marketing place to sell land. But unfortunately, the costs and the flakes on the website make it a little bit more challenging. But at the end of the day, if you approach the business with integrity, with honesty, as Mark said, you add value to your customer, they're going to want to do business with you and more business with you. And of course they're going to want to refer clients to you in the future.

Right? Right. So I set up a sales funnel, if you will, that's automated. And I spend a lot of time creating these emails so that I keep building rapport, keep building rapport, keep adding something, something I can give them. Right. So this weekend I'm doing a promotion. One of my best properties, one of my last properties. Typically when you have property that's your last one, you jack up the prices like this is the last one. Supply, demand. Right. I'm going the opposite way. I'm lowering the price so that I can provide more value to my existing customer base. And I'm selling a five acre piece now for only $2,000. My last one in the subdivision, it's got a creek view, it's beautiful. Right. It's a promotion you should be constantly hitting your list with value, provide them information that pertains to them and what they want to hear. So if your list is. They like land, talk about land, the value of land, how you buy land, tips. And then so it's like a one. If you do five emails, maybe out of those five, for providing valuable information, one of them is going to ask them to do something, whether it's buy from you, refer someone to you, get into another funnel. What do you think of that?

I think, do you want to give.

Away something like that?

You know what, Mark, I'll be honest with you. I'm going to have to start taking a lot of tips from you. In fact, I might have to take your course because as I slowly get back into the land game and as the listeners have heard over the last several podcasts, I'm getting back into land and I have a very interesting system that I use that's a little different than you. I'm a very good communicator. I get a lot of leads on a daily basis and I respond to those leads and I actively pursue these leads, but not through a funnel system of marketing, which, again, having that in place is a lot more successful than something that I have. But at the end of the day, I need to be doing more and I need to do more of everything that I'm doing if I'm going to become successful back. I mean, look, I'm in land buying and selling 102. I passed the 101 course over the last eight to 10 years, but I actually pulled out. I guess you could say I'm a dropout. I mean, I was successful at it, but I pulled out of the game because for me, I wasn't intrigued by the way prices were in 2008, 2009. So. So having that structure in place for me now is something that I need to focus on. So as you're focusing on social media, I need to put. And I'm working on putting this in place, amongst other things. But with the acquisition, I just picked up, I think, 50 to 60 properties over the last couple of months. I have some work to do.

Right, right. And the way that I've been doubling my revenue each month is employing an and then strategy. So I'll give you an example. When I was in college, I worked at a suit shop called Harry Levinson's in Indiana. And so when someone would come in and we'd try to sell them a suit, they came in, they wanted a suit, then what did we sell them? Right. They needed a shirt. So we put a shirt out with that suit then. Oh, that's nice. How about a tie? We put a tie out with that suit. Oh, how about some socks? We throw a sock in. So when you added it all up psychologically, yeah, they came in for maybe a $400 suit. But what's another $150 when you're going to spend $400 and you're getting all this value? So the same concept applies to land. So when I buy a piece of land from Duran, I'm already in that buying mode. So what does Duran say to me? Okay, so you just bought 40 acres in Nevada. You know what's interesting? I just bought another 20 acre piece just three miles down the road from there. And because you're existing customer, I can do this for you. Oh, really now? Okay, that's great. Oh, and by the way, I don't know if you're interested in this area of the country, but I just bought this as well.

So.

And this is what I've been doing. So instead of selling maybe one 40 acre piece, I'm selling that same person a 40 acre piece, a 10 acre piece, a 5 acre piece until there's just no more money.

And then, wow, Mark.

They're really happy about it.

Do you sleep at night?

No, no, no. And that's the difference is that psychologically people keep thinking about needs and wants and, and this is where people get tripped up on selling and marketing. It's like, well, nobody needs another piece of land. How do I know? You don't know. And don't prejudge anyone in their pocketbook. If they come to you, they're buying from you because they're enjoying the experience of buying from you. They're enjoying the value they're getting. And they value land. It's the only asset that, that lasts forever. Everything else goes away. Everything except for that piece of land. This can be their legacy. So feel proud to keep offering that value to your customer. Don't just stop at one. So people are like, oh, he doesn't need it. We don't need anything in life. We're human beings. We need very simple things, right? Food, clothing, a little bit of shelter.

And of course your Maserati, Mark.

Exactly. So I don't need a fancy car, I don't need. You don't need to live in Carlsbad off the beach.

I'm moving, I'm moving next to you.

So. But I'm saying is like, if you really look at our lives, I mean, look, I Have an iPhone. I don't need an iPhone. I could have bought a. I could have got a free phone, right? But I tell myself I'm getting more value. I like the way that this, what this does for me. So 99% of what we get in life, we don't really need, but we want it. So we need, as a marketing company to keep stoking that flame and creating this buying frenzy. And it makes me crazy when my students don't do this. It makes me absolutely nuts when they stop. So it's really, really important. And I know this is more Mastermind stuff that we really get into. And Joanne and I, when we talk about some of my other students, when we talk about the details of a deal, we really get into the Mastermind stuff. This is where I really start becoming more Socratic. Like, did you do this? Did you do that? Did you think of this? And as far as marketing platforms as well, you can't stick to one Mac marketing platform. Ebay is great when you first start and you start building up your customer list, but then you need to start really developing other channels because everyone needs a plan B. What happens if the ebay market becomes saturated? Right. So we always have to have a plan B. And these are more Mastermind type of discussions. But I think it's important in this podcast that you're thinking about that. And I don't care what business you're in. That's business, it's marketing. It's selling. Every successful business does it. When you walk into the grocery store, what do they have right before you check out? They've got the gum, they've got the candy, they got the kid stuff. Right. That's another sales channel for them because they know you're already at the end of your buying purchase, and you pretty much got everything that you needed and wanted, everything in that line there. Nobody needs another breath mint or piece of gum or a piece of candy, but those kids want it and that's why they have it there. And that's really where they get their margin from. So it's something to think about.

Yeah. Mark, touching on your plan B, we can kind of look back at some of the things that we've done together as a team. One of them being that we actually evolved from buying and selling land to actually buying a very large chunk of land, 40,000 plus acres in Nevada, and actually doing our own subdivision work, which nobody was doing at the time. So we, we went and we evolved because we knew that ebay wasn't going to do it we knew that the other sites that we used at that time bid for assets, wasn't going to do it. So what we did is we went in a pattern that was evolving and how are we going to make money that was different than everybody else? And that was, well, we're going to subdivide our own land and we're going to make money that way. So it's always in your mind. And again, from a marketing aspect, from every aspect, you've always got to evolve the brain and think differently creatively. How am I going to sell this property? How am I going to market it differently? So that's really important.

Right? Right. And I hate to compliment Duran because it just hurts me inside. But I have to tell you, the reason Duran is so successful is not. I mean, he's got grit and determination, persistence, all those things are really important. But he's innovative. He looks out at the marketplace and he puts his own spin on it. Right. So everybody at that time was buying property here and there. Dran looked at the market and said, oh, well, here's a big opportunity, here's the way that we can do this, we can create our own subdivisions. But he doesn't just stop there. He's always doing that. And it's really, really helped him as far as getting his business to the next level because he's constantly innovating. And once you get after, once you hit that million dollar mark in your business, that's what you and your team really need to spend time on as well. And again, this is more mastermind stuff, is innovating. So your marketing needs to become innovative, your selling needs to become innovative. Your buying strategies, where you buy needs to become more innovative. You need to be this constantly moving target so you don't get Samsung. Right. You know what I mean by Samsung? Apple comes out with the iPhone. What does Samsung do? They copy it. And now Samsung is innovating. Now they have the phablets and they're taking market share from Apple. Fantastic job. When you first start on the investors toolkit, that's what I want you to do with me and Duran is I want you to Samsung us. Right? You're going to start, you're going to copy our approach because you know it's successful. But then once you start getting the sales in, I want you to become innovative and that's more mastermind stuff and will help you do that. But something to think about.

Yep. Mark, I totally agree with you. And first off, thank you for making my head bigger because, gosh, well, I'm.

Not doing that again.

By the way, I could barely fit through the bathroom door this morning, so I'm glad. Just kidding. I'm not a person who. I do appreciate that, and I try to be as humble as possible, and I am. You know, what's funny is as big as my mouth is sometimes and as verbal as I am, I actually, I think I'm a humble guy and I don't ever think about the past. I know a lot of people go, oh, it's so cool you own thousands of acres in Nevada. You know, it's all a widget to me. It was all just fun. It's the art of the deal that makes me happy and excites me, just like you, Mark. So I think people should know that, you know, going back to the innovative side of things, right now, I'm in a very innovative mindset with Land. I'm very, very, very attracted to doing different things that are not the norm for land. And I will change the land game, which Mark knows. I'm working on a very large real estate platform right now, which is going to cost me probably several hundred thousand dollars to do, but I believe it's a game changer. Now. There's a lot of things that need to be done before I get there, and I need to do a lot of research. As Mark pointed out to me in a phone call the other day, hey.

That'S a mastermind thing. We're going to talk about total market analysis and how you really look at your marketplace first before you jump into any type of new venture. Duran knows a lot about total market analysis because he's a startup guy. But even in land, when we look at a different type of innovative area, or maybe a different product line, if you will, no one likes to do it, but you've got to do it. We have to do a total market analysis. And that's for a different conversation, but it's so important.

Yeah. And Mark, I was just going to add. So one of the, you know, one of the interesting things that's going on right now with. With the Internet and with crowdfunding and all these different new aspects. And although startup and land are sort of never really. I mean, they've never really paralleled each other, right now is such an interesting and intriguing time because there's a lot of different ideas that are coming into mind, and I think a lot of other people are thinking about it, one being crowdfunding real estate. And I'll tell you, this may help. And this is where my brain Sort of gone the last few weeks. But there's several platforms that are out there right now that are crowdfunding commercial concepts. So going out building a building and having 55 or 555 people involved in funding that commercial project and then taking an equity piece of that project. Okay, so let's say they want to build an office building and it's right in the heart of New York City and they need, you know, it's a 30 million dollar project and everybody chips in 100 grand, whatever. I'm just throwing out numbers. So what these crowdfunding projects do is, and what the Internet's allowing to do is to go and find a different marketing channel for people to get involved in an idea that maybe you've put together. And it's not, it's not rocket science, it's just creativity. And you have to be creative to make it work. And so for me, right now I'm looking at these different crowdfunding platforms and thinking of ways that I could leverage some of my ideas within my projects. Now remember, I'm a mining developer, I'm an alternative energy developer, and of course, at the end of the day, I'm a land salesman. But I buy and sell land, or my company does and my employees help me do that. That's what I do. But I want to find ways to continue to sell land. And I don't like the stagnation of the, you know, the basic sites like Land Watch, Lands of America, because they don't really help you innovate, they just allow you to advertise. At the end of the day, they are trying to make money themselves. So they're not very buyer friendly.

Right, right. But I think it's important. What you're saying is that you can create a syndicate now online. I mean, that's really what you're doing is you're getting a group of people together to invest money in your project. That's a syndicate. But you're doing it without the friction of having to go door to door, friend to friend, and make that presentation individually or in a group setting yourself. You can go out now and expand that net to thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people who are interested in investing in real estate. But even if they don't know you, that's a tough sell. Which is, I mean, any kind of syndicate is tough to do because you have to have that trust. But if you can put together a presentation, show somebody the roi, your past history. Yeah, I think it's a great idea. It's kickstarter for real estate.

And I, and I. What I'm trying to, what I'm trying to, I suppose, educate the crowd on here is simply that you don't. A lot of these people and all these listeners are from different backgrounds, different genres. Some are, some may be CEOs, some may be, you know, a 9 to 5, some may be a greeter at Walmart. Whatever they are, the fact of the matter is they have a background and they have a background in a certain field. That's probably not real estate, but it's probably something that's very helpful in educating and educating other people on what they'd like to do. Maybe they're farmers, maybe they want to grow a specific type of jatropha tree that produces something for. Whatever the case is, you're trying to create something that's not already on the market and it, the real estate may actually allow that opportunity. And that's all I'm saying. I'm not, I'm not trying to say, hey, it's. It just, to me, it's just a different route for you to go and a different way to think. And again, I'm always trying to sort of innovate in my brain a new, you know, concept of how to market real estate or what to do with the real estate.

Right, right. And yeah, so, yeah, it gets back down to that. That basic fundamental thing that we talked about in the beginning of the podcast is really you need to spend the majority of your time as CEO of your land business marketing. You can hire a copywriter, that's fine, but at the end of the day, you can't let your marketing team dictate to you what you're going to do with your land. You need to be the driving force. You need to be the one pushing your team to constantly be innovating, constantly be looking to market and look at different channels. That's really where I want your focus. When you first start, buy the land, pennies on the dollar, that part's easy. It's the marketing and it's the selling that is going to drive you from zero to a million dollars very, very quickly. So if you can picture it like an airplane, right? When you first start an airplane, it's going, it's going. It's taking all this energy. You hear the engine whirring. It takes all this energy. All of a sudden it picks up and it just soars. That's what it's going to take for you when you first get started. It is going to take a lot of that Energy in the beginning, buying land and then marketing that land. But as you put your team together and you have that money flowing in, then you can start soaring and you can start outsourcing. A lot of the tertiary duties of recording the deed, creating the contracts, your accounting, all those things are secondary in this business. You need to be the head salesperson from day one. So, so important. So I know I've been on my soapbox, this podcast. I typically am more open about asking questions to Joanne, but it just really got me going on that consultation call when my student starts completely doing the things that are secondary to the business. Because if you go through my investors toolkit, that's a reflection on me. You've got to be successful. I want that testimonial from you. So when you start, start the right way. Don't focus on anything secondary. Number one, buy it right and number two, sell it. Once the money starts coming in, that's the fuel to do the other things which are secondary. And that never, ever is going to end. You're always going to be the head marketing person of your company from a million to 10 million. Your focus is going to be on managing your marketing team as opposed to being the lead guy, but you're still the lead guy as the manager for that team and still driving that direction, still being the Duran innovator, if you will, of what channels and what ad campaigns you're going to be working on.

Yeah. So I just want to interject for a minute. I didn't take my medication today, hence all my crazy, crazy ideas. So please forgive me.

So, Duran, we've been talking a lot about marketing. What's your tip of the week?

My tip of the week is one of the easier templates or ways to put a template together for a piece of land is on a website called vflyr.com V as in Victor F L Y-E R.com and V Flyer basically allows you, it has a little syndicate with inside the system where once you publish your, your land ad, it can go to ebay, it can go to Oodle and all these other different, you know, various websites, Craigslist. And so it's basically you can build an ad. I think you can do up to 10 free, 5 or 10 free. I'm not sure exactly how it is, but it's a great little way to build a template without having to go really get or understand or learn HTML and build out something. This thing's there, you can blast it to Craigslist and you can already market your ad instantly for free on V Flyer.

I love it. I love it. So my tip of the week is not free. However, I think it's so, so important. And when you first get started, if you're going to spend money on anything, this is worth spending money on. And I have a link to it on the site. It's aweber.com and what AWeber allows you to do is automate your email sales funnel with your customers. So you bring leads in, you have touch points of rapport and value and then you ask them at some point to buy. It's really, really important for your marketing pieces to automate that. Aweber makes it really easy. They have templates and as we get more involved in my Mastermind sessions, I'll even give you my sales funnel templates that I actually use which again, so important to just Samsung me at this point and then you can innovate from there and make it more your own. So Duran, what are we going to talk about next week?

Memorial Day, what you did for Memorial Day, how good your social media campaign is going.

We'll catch up on my social media campaign, but we've got lots more to talk about. So I want to thank everybody for taking the time this week to listen to our podcast. If you want to learn more about Duran and his innovative land Solutions, go to reserveland.com and if you want to learn more about me, Please go to thelandgeek.com Download the the Investor's Passive Income Blueprint. And also like me now on the Facebook page, I think it's just facebook.com thelandgeek you can also look at my property@frontierpropertiesusa.com and everyone out there have an extraordinary week. Stay focused on marketing. It's not magic, it's marketing. This is Mark Podolski with Duran Fraser, the Lane Geek out. Thanks.

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.