The Land Geek Podcast #71

Welcome to the Land Geek Podcast, your resource for information and tips to making money by buying and selling money. 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, AKA the Land Geek, from your favorite, favorite niche real estate website, www.thelandgeek.com. and today is really special. I was able to get the busiest guy. He's not really the busiest guy in land. One of the busiest guys in land because he is my star pupil, my star student. This guy went from zero to, I think it's almost like $2,500 a month in only four months. I am so proud that I thought, you know what, let's just have a podcast with this guy so he can share with everybody that this stuff really can happen. And the land business can be really, really lucrative if all you do is act like my guest. He is Bob Anderson from Phoenix, Arizona. Crazylanddeals.com Bob Anderson, how are you, buddy?

I'm good, thank you. Nice introduction.

You like that?

Yeah.

All right, Bob, tell us what's going on, man. How are you doing what you're doing? Like, walk us through your journey from land newbie to land. So, superstar.

Okay, well, the biggest thing is you. Just after I purchased your material, then you and I had did some coaching, and then you got to put in action what you're taught. And, you know, my philosophy is live and learn. And it's been very exciting to do this. I can't believe. Honestly, I can't believe where I'm at at this point. Within four months of advertising. Let me back up first. My whole goal was just to buy. It's like, okay, I got that part down. Now I'm gonna start advertising. So in four months of advertising, I've sold a total of 14 properties. I just sold one yesterday to a guy that he just sent me an email out of the blue with the information that I was going to put in the documents. I sold it on terms, and I talked to him for one minute in the afternoon. He signed the paperwork, gave me the down payment, and we're all good to go.

Yeah, and your margins are ridiculous, right?

I mean, you're averaging what I'm averaging, about 1,000%.

Wow.

Like, on this guy. I bought the property for $95. The taxes that are due by the end of this month, $447. Right. Okay. So that's total investment, say $542. I sold it on a five year note for just a little over $6,000, which means the. That's 1,109%.

Unbelievable. Unbelievable. And you've done 14 of those deals in just four months. So you're averaging about what, two a week now in sales or one a week? What are you doing?

Yeah. Well, what happened? At first, I sold one a week when I first started this and I was like, wow, this is beautiful. And then all of a sudden I hit a dry spell for whatever reason. And then now people are just wanting land. I'm getting interest every single day from multiple people.

And you're not doing anything special with your marketing?

All I'm doing is I'm advertising on Craigslist and also doing the renewing of the ads every couple of days. Land Watch.

Right.

And land and farm.

Land and farm. Unbelievable. So let me ask you, when you first got started, what was your biggest challenge with this business?

The biggest challenge is, like most people, when you get the list, just trying to figure out what do you do with that list? How do you scrub the list? What information is necessary?

Right, Right.

Yeah.

You know, it's so funny because people that join the Gold Mastermind, it all starts with the list. How do I get the list? How much I pay for the list? How do I scrub the list? And Paul Mandel is so funny about it. He's like, please scroll down and read what everybody else's comments were first before asking these questions.

Yeah, exactly.

And then Tory today on the Mastermind, he's like, you know what, I'll jump in after we talk about the list. He didn't even want to be on the call until after we talked about the list. So that's. I'm going to do an FAQ for the students that are new because they always have those same three questions about the list. Although I think it is in the Investors Toolkit DVDs. I have that in the FAQ section, but I'm going to just write it out so it's just super, super clear. So that was the biggest challenge.

And then the thing is, you just gotta act. I mean, throughout the numbers, whether they're high or low, it's irrelevant. Just, you know, act and let the phone ring.

Right, right. And what's your background? I mean, what were you doing before you got into land and what made you want to even get in the land? I don't even know how you found me.

I found you in a Roundabout way. My background is transportation operations for shipping companies. And back when the, in 2005 I actually got my real estate license. And I solely got that not because I wanted to be a realtor per se, it was because I wanted to buy rental properties.

Okay, so you've always had, I mean since 2005, you had an interest in real estate, but that was, that was just like a part time thing.

That was a part time thing. And I made gobs of money in a very short amount of time. But then the market crashed and, and so did my employer. I worked for a billion dollar a year company that went bankrupt.

Oh my God. So 2008 hit you very hard.

That was 2006 that the employer went bankrupt.

I thought things were roaring in 2006. 2006, they were like two years before the crash.

That was just before. Huh. And then I was also working for real estate investor here in Phoenix. He would advertise on the radio and TV that we buy houses for cash. And I would go out and meet with the homeowners. And my very first deal, I spent a total of three and a half hours and I bought it for smoking price and I made 3,500 bucks.

Wow.

But that was short lived. Then the investor asked me to actually focus on foreclosures and that's when the banks weren't even responding to the offers. So anyway, then let's fast forward to a couple years ago. I remembered somebody mentioning tax liens.

Okay.

So I started, I purchased a course and I was all into, you know, I was going to move forward with the tax liens. And I was like, you know, this, I could get high interest, but that's not what I want. I wanted even more. So then you had a little section on Joanne Musa's the tax lien lady, right.

So she brought you to me. Uh huh.

So that's how it happened. And I said, you know, after seeing after you and I talking and talking about 300% and 1,000%, I said, that's a lot better than just 18%.

You know what's interesting is that coming from house flipping, you weren't skeptical of the returns. You were kind of all in. You're like, yeah, I can do this. Most people are like, those returns are ludicrous and they don't believe me. But you're living proof of it.

Exactly.

So that's incredible. All right, so walk us through your very first deal. Soup to nuts. How did you get it? How'd you sell it? What'd you sell it for? How Exciting. Was it? Kind of. Walk us through it.

Okay. My very first deal was just doing the low ball offers on taxes that are owed that particular property. I paid the owner $57 for a little over one acre.

Bob, why weren't you calling me and saying, mark, I got a deal split with you if you could just help me come up with half of the 57. 50. You didn't need any capital? No hard money on that one?

No, not on $57.

Okay. Just checking.

That's what's really good about this program is that you can have very little money to get started.

I know. Duran started with $800, by the way. I started with 3,000. Your first deal was 57 bucks. Okay. Sorry. I'm okay.

Yeah. And. And the taxes that were owed on that property. $273. So the total was 330 bucks.

330. But you didn't pay the taxes right away, correct?

I did not.

Okay.

As a matter of fact, I paid them just last month.

Oh, okay.

So what, what happened is I sold it. This one I put on postlets because it actually had a site address.

Okay. That's a great site.

And then a guy found me off of that and I sold it on a three year note. And the percent that I made was 1,260.

1260%. So I sold steel.

So I sold it for over $4,000.

And you're into it for 57 bucks. Plus the taxes of 273, which you didn't come out of pocket. So you're. Your returns. Ridiculous. I couldn't.

Yeah. And on that, you know what I do is like on this one, I want to say that the down payment was $149. And then what I do for everyone that I'm selling on notes, adding on a $75 note setup fee.

Okay. So that helps too.

So I got $224 immediately.

That's great.

That's great then.

Now, are you using virtual assistants at all or are you doing all this yourself?

I have two virtual assistants. One that does the list scrubbing for me. I'm sorry, the data entry.

Data entry. Okay.

And then I also have one that does the website for me.

And how are they working out? Where do you find them? What are you paying them?

Working out.

Great.

I found them on both of them on Fiverr. When it came to the data entry, it took me a while to find the right one. I had to go through probably 10 people, I want to say. And then I found this guy and he just. He's always asking me for more and more work.

I love it. You know what I love? When the VAs are like now, what else? It forces you to almost work harder just to keep them happy.

Yeah, he just sent me an email last night as a matter of fact.

Yeah, Yeah, I love that. Where's the next project then?

The next, like I said, the lady that does my website, I found her on Fiverr as well. So like for the data entry, let's go back to him. I pay the equivalent of like $1.67 an hour and I've done this stuff myself. I've done like 100 lines and after that I say no more. But I wanted to experience it and see what they have to go through. Then the lady from my website, I initially paid her maybe $60 and then now I also just recently had her set it up where it's mobile friendly because I notice a lot of people are sending me messages off of their cell phones and that was like maybe an extra $15. And then whenever I have some changes that I need to my site, it's you know, 5, 10, $15. I mean that's nothing.

It's nothing, nothing.

And years ago I learned how to do my own website and I was like, okay. I had to spend countless hours to learn the program. I had to do the initial investment in the software. I didn't like the first software so I bought a second software. Then it ended up I didn't have a captcha for filling out the fields on my website. So I was getting spammed and the host was shutting me down. So I said from now on I'm just going to pay this lady next to nothing. Wow.

You know what, your site looks nice. She did a nice job for a free WordPress theme, I think. Yeah, it's clean, it's nice. Now are you building your list? Are you doing anything with your list?

Yeah, well, what I have, Mark, is when you go to my site there is supposed to be a pop up.

Yeah, there is.

Yeah. Some people have told me that they don't, that they don't see it. And I don't know if it's maybe because they have a pop up locker on their computers or maybe it's through the cell phone or something, I don't know. But yeah, I'm getting a lot of people that are opting in just off of that. Most of them I think are coming from not. I think I know they're coming from Land Watch or Land and Farm.

Okay, that's great. So you're driving traffic to the site and then you're building your audience from there and selling land right away.

Because every single ad, I put my website on there.

Yeah, no, it's great.

And I say, go sign up for the VIP list. It's great. At this point, I have probably about 80 people on the list in the last few months.

Yeah. So it's a slow drip. Just a couple every day, right? Yep. Yeah. I mean, that's how you build. That's how you start. And you know, the results really speak for themselves because you're, you know, you're just doing it. It's not like you're messing around. I'll get people who are asking me about their logo. Should I set up an llc? Like you just went into it, you know, just like, okay, I'm gonna start making lowball offers. Got a bunch of deals in like, okay, now I'm gonna sell it. I mean, did you even set up an llc?

No.

No.

As a matter of fact, last week I spoke with my CPA regarding setting up an llc, and, and he was telling me, you know, tax wise, at this moment, there, there's no purpose for me.

Right. Yeah, I mean, there's really, there's not that. That huge of an advantage. I mean, I would argue, you know, you can certainly have some tax advantages because you can run expenses through the company pre tax. But I'm not sure exactly how things are going with you and your personal tax situation, so.

Right.

It may not have any personal bearing, but in general, in this business, that's really more advantageous than the actual corporate protection. Because at the end of the day, I'm not sure how safe an LLC is. If somebody wants to sue you, they're going to sue you. And if a clever attorney wants to pierce the corporate veil and go after you, they probably could anyways.

Yeah, I agree.

Really? My philosophy is happy customers guaranteed. You know, I've been doing this since 2001. No lawsuits. Knock on wood. And you know, the old saying in real estate is it's not a matter of if you'll be sued, it's when. And if you. Just because we're not doing these huge multimillion dollar deals where somebody should go out and sue you. You know what I mean? Just give them their money back. They're not happy.

I also think that when you're. At least when I'm talking with the customers is I'm up front. If they ask me a question, I don't know the answer, I'll just tell them I don't know the answer, or I'll say, you know what? Maybe you should contact the county and, you know, they can hopefully answer your question. But just be truthful. Don't. Don't do anything. Don't say things just to get the sale right.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And people respect that.

Exactly.

When you say, I don't know, they respect it. Did I tell you about this study done with, like, kids? I was watching. I was watching. I was listening to a Freakonomics podcast, and it turns out. I think I talked about this with Duran. It turns out the three hardest words in the English language are, I don't know, like, from when we're real small. And the person doing the experiment would say to the child, you know, you can say, I don't know. But they would come up with these elaborate stories to, you know, to just kind of skirt having to say, I don't know. It was really interesting. So, yeah, there's nothing wrong with it at all. All right, so you did your first deal. Let me ask you, I mean, what's your. You know, the list part was the most challenging part of the business. What's your favorite part of this business?

Well, when you and I first got on the phone here, I received a payment.

Right? Yeah. That feels good. Hey, I just got paid.

Yeah, but, no, seriously. I mean, of course that's important, but my favorite part is not having to go to an office. You know, I can do this from anywhere that I have Internet and a cell phone.

Yeah. No one telling you what to do. No, boss.

My favorite part is the freedom.

The freedom. Okay.

Yeah. The freedom where I don't have to go to an office and be there at certain times, and I can do this anywhere. You know that I have Internet access and a cell phone.

Yeah, yeah, it's great. It's great. When you're on vacation, you're making sales, too. It just feels so good. You know what I mean? Have you.

Have you.

Have you done this on vacation yet?

No.

No. Okay. Yeah, I was just in Palm Springs with my son, and, you know, it was great. Like, we'd get back from, like, a big dinner and, like, oh, yeah, I just got paid. There's a couple. No payments. That's nice.

Yeah.

Check on things. It's great. It's great. Yeah. I mean, the freedom is really so, so great. No, boss, no commute. And how many hours a day are you working, doing this business, I would say.

And I'm doing a lot of the stuff myself that I could actually have somebody else do by that for example, if I'm doing mailings, I'm the one printing the paper, stuffing the envelope, supplying the stamp. But when it's all said and done in a week's time, maybe 15 hours.

Fifteen hours a week. So about. Maybe two hours a day. Two to three hours a day.

Two to 3 hours a day.

Okay. That's pretty good.

Yeah. And, you know, in the short amount of time where I see the monthly income, it's like, I just say, okay, if I did that in four months, if I did a couple thousand in four months, then what can I do? In a year's time, I can have 6,000amonth, and in two years time, I can have 12,000amonth. You know what I mean?

Right, right. Which you're on track to do.

Yeah.

So, yeah. I mean, and that's the question is, you know, when you look at your fixed expenses, you can say, okay, at this point, I don't know what your fixed expenses are, but you could probably say, at this point, I have complete, total freedom. And your total financial freedom in the sense that your passive income now exceeds your fixed expenses. Yeah, I mean, that's. That's really special. And I was saying to Duran that, you know, when you're at $10,000 a month, that's literally like saving $2.4 million, literally at a 4% yield. I mean, I don't. I mean, that's really hard to do. It's hard to do. And in four years, let alone, you know, two years or whatever you're on. You're on track about in two years. So to save $2.4 million to generate that kind of income in two years is astounding. Astounding. I mean, I don't. I think the average American doesn't have over a million dollars even saved. I don't even. I don't. I don't know if they have any saved, actually.

Exactly.

I mean, so that's a big number, and that's really, really fast.

And the thing that I love, too is, you know, I sit there and I look at, okay, this is what my income is now. But if I stopped, which I'm not going to, but if I stop this business today, I still have money for years to come.

Right.

Just because I'm selling on notes.

Right, Right. I mean, and then let me ask you, like, it's fun, right? I mean, what do you enjoy aspects of it, other aspects you don't enjoy? Is there any drudgery of this business? Or, like, for me, it's like pure fun.

Yeah. For me, it's fun, too.

So, like, my wife's like, you know, when are you gonna retire? We're gonna slow down. I'm like, why would I? It's not. It doesn't feel like work.

Right.

It's just. It's hustling for deals. Yep. Have you always been kind of a deal guy? Have you always wanted to get a good deal and, you know, been kind of a deal junkie?

To be honest? No.

You haven't? No.

No.

That's. That's funny. Yeah.

But when I, you know, like I said, back when I was doing real estate, I was just. Just cleaning up. But that. That was. I truly believe that. It's because I'm honest. I'm honest with people.

You just. You've got that. That. Those Midwestern ethics.

Exactly.

Yeah. Now, you're originally from Chicago, Wisconsin, but.

It'S close to Chicago.

Well, my wife's from Wisconsin. And it's like every person who's born in Wisconsin's dream to live in the Chicago suburbs, it's like, that's making it. One day I'm gonna get out of here and I'm gonna live in, you know, Highland park or. Or was it Deer? Deer. What's it called?

Deer? Parker?

Dearborn, or. I forget the. One of those Brooks. I forget. I don't know my. My Chicago suburbs as well as I should, but. Yeah, that's funny. So. So you're from Wisconsin.

What part of Wisconsin it's called? Well, I grew up in Elkhorn and Delavan, which is really close to the Illinois border.

Okay. Okay.

So when I was growing up, I was always a Bears fan. Bulls fan.

Okay, great. And did your parents have any kind of real estate background? Is this all new to you?

No, this is all new to me.

Okay. And how different is land as opposed to houses?

You say that there's no teas, Which is true. I did not. Did not like having rental properties. I'm done with it.

You have any stories?

Just when somebody would move out, it would cost me thousands of dollars to get it back into rental shape. And I had this one guy, I held onto him for too long. He was always late, but he always came up with the money, so I kid you not, on a continuous basis. I was driving to Surprise, which is a good half an hour drive to the courthouse and doing my going in front of the judge for the eviction process. Anyway, yeah, he eventually, like I said, he always came up with the money, but I had to go through that exercise, and I just didn't like it?

Yeah, that's. That's never any fun. For sure. So if you were, if you were somebody that was on the fence about investing in the investors toolkit or getting into the land business or maybe even doing coaching, what would be your advice?

Do it. Get the investor toolkit. Sign up for coaching. I met with Mark a couple of times with the coaching and it worked wonders. I mean, look, today, Mark, I've sold. I can't believe it. But with yesterday's sell, I've sold over $103,000 worth.

That's pretty fast. Your return is ridiculous. Just ridiculous.

Like, my highest return was on a property. And I know when I first got it, I was like, this is too good to be true. I paid $466. The taxes were 1148, so. Which by the way, I just paid the taxes off last month as well.

Okay.

So my total investment. And that was because I did receive a letter from an attorney saying that they were going to begin the tax lien, the foreclosure, on it.

Oh, okay.

So that's why I paid it off. But my total investment was $1,600. Now I found the perfect buyer because there's only like two dozen of these properties in this area right off of a highway. And the rest is all government land. It's mountains. So I was like, I can't believe that I bought this thing for so cheap when I was looking at the comps and it turned out where I sent a mailing to the neighbors. And this guy, his parents lived there and his brother has a property there, so of course he wanted one as well. So I sold it on a 10 year note for about $32,000. That was almost 2,000%.

That's crazy. That's crazy.

And in my opinion, he was the only one that could have bought it, you know what I mean? Or would have bought it.

Right? Yeah. I mean, they're the perfect buyer. Which is another reason land is so great, is you already have this perfect buyer already in place because the neighbors want it. The neighbors want it. Yeah, typically, yeah.

And you know, like the other day you and I were talking about. I was kind of embarrassed, I guess, I guess I could say to say that I was only gonna get, you know, like 500% a deal.

Right? You were a little disappointed.

I was, yeah.

No, it. No, I'm telling you, this business screws you up. I know. It totally screws you up mentally in that sense. Yeah, yeah. You only made 540%, I remember. And like only made and like, I'm like, repeat what you just said to me. Think about that. You only made 540%. But I feel the same way when I, when I do that too. I'm like, oh, gosh, it's terrible. It's only, you know, I only made 600% on this deal. It's like, you know, the market's tough, so. All right, well, we're at that.

But I have, I have noticed an upswing in the market. How about you?

No, I definitely have. The market's much more fun than it was even six months ago. I mean, it's definitely a lot more fun. As Jeff Axton would say, he doesn't want it to get any better, he doesn't want to get any worse. Just nice equilibrium where it's easy to buy, easy to sell.

Sure.

All right, so, Bob Anderson, student extraordinaire, what is your tip the week?

Well, I was going to mention one before we actually got on the podcast, but you said that's only for the Mastermind students.

Yeah, exactly, because I'm the one that gave you that. And I'm like, no, that one's too good. That's a paid tip. So if you want the really good tips, you got to join the Mastermind.

Okay, so my tip is, it's called iTouchmap, all1word.com lat long for latitude long longitude.HTML and this, this website, if you have a site address, you can plug it in there and then it, what it'll do is it'll actually tell you what is the latitude and longitude.

Nice, nice. All right, well, I'm going to link to that because I'm not going to remember that, that site for sure. But that's a great one. That's great for due diligence. Alright, so my tip of the week is going to be a little techy. It is spot S P O T. Like you got a spot on your shirt. Im like I for igloo, M as in Mary. And what it is, you host live conversations on your site and it's free and you can really connect with your community, your people increase the time on your site and promote. It's cool. And I think I told you the story about my Google Hangout and how I set up four pieces of property on a Google hangout. You could do the same thing with this just on your website. And it's really easy. It's just simple copy and paste. And again, it's free. So check it out, spot.im and see if you can utilize it on your website, on your land site and whatever it may be. So, Bob, how do you feel about the podcast?

I feel good.

It was good, right?

Yeah.

You were a little nervous.

Exactly.

But it went by fast.

But you know, when I wasn't nervous was to actually follow through and make things happen.

That's right.

Like I said, don't just sit idle. You got to act.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's so true. I mean, it's really about taking action. And even if, even if things don't go as smoothly as they did, like for you. Right. I mean, you're going to hit a wall at some point. I'm sure you hit a wall, but you kept taking action and the right kind of action, you know, money making action, sending out low ball offers and then selling the property and marketing the property. It's like you stuck to the right elements of this business and didn't get sidetracked with something, you know, that really would, I would consider ancillary to the business.

Right.

Which is great. It's great. So. Well, thanks. You know, you come back on another time and tell us some more success stories. All right.

Sounds good.

But yeah, Bob, I'm so proud of you. You're just crushing it. Crushing it.

Thank you.

Anyways, if you guys want more tips, tricks, techniques on how to become just like Bob Anderson and start building up a passive income, get to $2,500. Actually beat Bob exceed $2,500 in four months of passive income, go to www.thelandgeek.com. download for free the passive income Blueprint. Get the ebook how to Avoid the three Fatal Land Buying Mistakes. And of course, get this always informative and engaging podcast delivered each week to your email inbox. And if you want to acquire some raw land, check out Bob's site, go to www.crazylanddeals.com. watch how Bob makes this magic happen. And if Bob doesn't have anything you want, check out my site, go to frontierpropertiesusa.com, get some wholesale land there. And Land Geek Community, I appreciate everyone taking time out of your day to listen to the podcast and learn more about our lucrative niche. And Bob, thanks again. You'll come back. Yes. All right, fantastic. All right, well, thanks everybody. See you next time.

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.