The Land Geek Podcast #9

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 going to help you do that. The Land Geek.

Hey, it's Mark Podolski again with, with thelandgeek.com, frontier Properties, usa.com, 3 Fatal Land, buyingmistakes.com and I don't know what other websites I've set up, but I'm with the incomparable Joran Frazier. Reserveland.com Duran, what's up on this fine day today? How you doing, buddy?

I'm doing great. You know what's up is the surf.

The.

The surf is up today. I think it's about 15, well, 10 to 15 foot faces. We have a south swell coming from about 210 degrees directly south of New Zealand and Australia. So excited about that one. We just hit our beaches today and it's very large out there.

That sounds great. Although I don't understand anything you just said, except for beach. That sounded good. Wave and beach, I understood. The rest of it was completely foreign to me.

Okay.

All right. So we were just talking before we got on the call, and what were you saying to me, Dran, you wanted to get more stuff done?

Yes, yes. I struggle every day with the one assistant here. So as everybody knows, there's a specialty when we hire somebody that they're good at, whether it's SEO, whether it's being a virtual assistant, whether it's being and doing, you know, some of the small things that we need done, whether it's doing some programming work. So I always sort of struggle finding the right person to sort of. Which is why I make. Which is why I'm not a great CEO. I make a better manager than a CEO, I guess. So anyways, no, I'm having a hard time with that. So I think, Mark, you kind of have a little bit better. And I do have some really good assistants that work for me and with me, some live, some not live in person assistants. But again, as I'm getting back into the land game a little bit, I'm challenged a little bit because I'm looking for the right people.

Right, right. Okay. So this is what I think most people get stuck on when they kind of get to that point where they know they can't do everything themselves and they shouldn't be doing everything themselves. What should they Be focusing on marketing and deal flow. Right? Everything else is secondary. But those secondary things still need to get done. And when you first start a business, who's the cheapest person to hire? Yourself. You don't want to spend money on anybody, and I get that. But then you've got yourself a job. You've got the job of updating your website or the job of putting an article out, or the job of even just writing copy. Nobody wants these jobs. There's other people in the world that can do those jobs better than you. As a CEO, you're the leader. So you're going to lead your marketing team. You've got to lead your deal flow team. You have teams and you have projects and you set up these systems so that you're working on the business and not in the business. And I get it, you don't want to spend money on these people. But you're going to have to once you start. Let's say you're bringing in 10, $15,000 a month on your first few sales. Don't take your wife to Hawaii. Spend some money on some really good virtual assistants. And I'm going to talk to you today about my definition of a really good virtual assistant and how I get these people to be super productive and help me grow my business to that next level. So first thing is, where do you start? Where do you even find them? You know, I love fiverr.com for five bucks, but if you have big projects, you can go to elance.com I prefer odesk.com and you can even go to guru.com even craigslist you could do. These people are very talented. Some are US based. I don't recommend US Based, they're more expensive. But I personally like using people overseas in countries where they speak English very well. I personally love the Philippines. They speak English. And for whatever reason, I just had very good luck with Filipino vas. But India, fantastic as well. And it sounds like I'm just picking like that's it. The rest of the world's no good. That's not true at all. This is just my experience. And I would have any problem hiring somebody in the uk for example, my web guy is actually based in Mauritius. Port Louis, Mauritius. He's British, but he lives on this tiny island and it works out great. So first things first is you got to know where to go. And then you've got to again, you've got to sell now. You've got to sell yourself. So the way that you're going to separate yourself from Everyone else is. You're going to talk about what's in it for them when you write up an ad, let's say on odesk.com so you want to be specific. You want to be specific about what their qualifications are, what the deadlines are, and you want to see their past work. All these sites will allow you to see their history and those types of things. So that's how I get started. So how do I hire a players only? I do a test. So what I might do is when I create my ad, I'll ask them to complete a very simple test. 90% of them won't even do the test. I mean, quickly eliminate them. Then let's say out of 100 VAs, 10 will do the test. And out of those 10, maybe three will do it really well and put in what I like to call emotional labor. Right. So they're not just completing the task, they're putting themselves into it. They're making that task even better. So out of those three, I'll hire all three. All three right out of the gate and I'll give them the project. Out of those three, two of them are going to stumble. I'll cut those two. I've got my va. That's my A player VA system. Hire three, cut two.

You know what that's called, Mark? You know what that's called?

What?

That's called crowdsourcing at its best.

See, I knew you'd love that. Juan loves that system. So. And then, you know what we want to do then is we want to eliminate, systematize and delegate and get to the point where your VAs are even creating your own systems for other VAs. So, yeah, that's what I do. It's worked out really well. Eric, if you're listening to this, Eric is my VA that actually scrubs these podcasts. He's in the Philippines. That's how you got hired, buddy. So just so you know, there are 200 people working on this, but you were the best, and you're still the best, and I love you. All right, so what makes somebody an effective leader?

Well, first off, let me just touch on a couple of things that you talked on a minute ago. You brought up some really good points. Working on the business, not in the business kind of thing. The interesting thing is when you're a CEO of your company, when you are the one who's come up with a concept, putting it together, you have to realize that you are an employee of the business. And when you are an employee and let's Say you're a project manager, you need to find ways to make it run more efficiently. So as the CEO, you have to implement everything in place to make it run efficiently. And it's not easy. And that's one of the biggest struggles is owning, you know, running a startup and why so many fail is you have to figure out where your, where your highest rate of return is. Now one of the things that some of these listeners may be going, oh, why don't you hire people in America? Well, to be honest with you, the problem is it's very difficult to find someone who's willing to work for eight to ten dollars an hour, who's capable and willing to take the job and to go and do. And I do this often, I put an ad on Craigslist because I don't like to go outside the US because it's more of like a moral thing. I think Mark's kind of lost his moral character.

That's not it at all. You know what it is that I don't want to have to pay? Health insurance.

No, you're right.

Payroll taxes. If I could find a great US based employee. I have a US based employee, but she's a virtual assistant. Her name's Janie and she does all my Craigslist stuff. She does a lot of my images. When I really need something done quickly because of the time change, I'll go to Janie. And she's great.

Mark, I'm totally joking you that you're.

So hard on me.

I'm so, I'm just teasing. I. So it does. And Mark just explained several points as to why it's difficult to hire someone in the States, especially for what we're doing. There are certain things that you may want to consider when working in the us which is one, if you're working on a development project, whether you need someone who's advanced in PHP or some other development work on a site you're doing or some work, it may not be a bad thing to stay within the US to someone that you have, you know, there's no real language barrier going on. But when you need stuff done, whether it's something small, you know, creating an ad or some basic SEO work or whatever you're looking, some videos, whatever it is. There are so many talented people that are literally taught in school to do, to work for us in the US because they know that this is a need for us. So it's pretty interesting how it's all done. You know, in Eastern Europe they do this, they raise these high School kids and college kids to come out and work for Americans because they know that there's so much work here. Same thing goes for the Philippines, same thing goes for India. So it's really interesting and something that everyone should consider because it does, it saves a lot on the cost side. And you can visualize the ROI by utilizing something that costs you 8 bucks or 10 bucks an hour and not 25 bucks an hour.

Right. I think the biggest problem with international VAS is just being understood. And I actually create programs that shows them step by step, exactly what I want so that it does take a little bit more of my time, but it saves me so much time in the long run. And if someone had just told me this when I first started hiring VAs, I would have saved so much money, so many hours of frustration, so much time if I just spent that extra half hour putting together this step by step blueprint, if you will, of exactly what I wanted them to do. And I'm on a Mac, I use a program called clarify.com so for everybody on a Mac out there, and I'm sure there's something Windows based that does the same thing. But basically what it does is it creates a PDF and I'll give them an instruction and. And then I'll take a screenshot of it and more instructions on the screenshot and then I'll have another instruction and another screenshot and just shows them visually and in English exactly what I want. And it's been great. I even do it with my US based VAs for everybody. I create these programs and then I have them. So if something happens and I lose that VA that is doing that project, I can just quickly send a new VA that PDF and they can get up to speed within 5, 10 minutes. So it's great. So being understood is really, really important. So I can't stress that enough. Spend that extra time just to make sure you're really clear on exactly what you want. But you know, to give you an example of the price differences between a VA and somebody us based on, I got a marketing quote for a squeeze page that I wanted done. And I've been using this marketing company just 10 minutes from my office. And they're great and they're really creative, they create beautiful work. They did my website, they said, oh, no problem. Hundred dollars to create this squeeze page. Same exact thing, $5 on fiverr. So that's a huge, huge, huge difference. And they probably couldn't have done it, done it as quickly either as this guy did. I don't even know what country he was from. But it was on fiverr, and he did a great job. It was five bucks. And, you know, it's the market's the market. If somebody in the US can do the same job for the same price as someone in, say, Czechoslovakia, hey, I'll hire them right away. But because of the. Unfortunately, the cost of living so much less than Czechoslovakia, it's hard to compete. So it's a global, global economy now. All right, so what other questions do you have for me, Duran? Get stuff done.

Well, Mark, let's see. I got a little feedback there.

Oh, okay. It's okay.

Okay. Anyway, so when you do a listing, are you giving somebody all the information for them to input, or do you do most of your own listings?

Okay, so what I'll do again is I will create that program and clarify, and then I will send them in a zip file all the images and all the copy that I want them to do. So I will actually go and I'll create one listing, and let's say land and farm.com, create the screenshots, show them exactly what I want, and then I'll have them go on my website, and I'll have them grab the actual images that are already there, the actual maps and the copy, and I'll show them what to do. And then they know exactly, step by step, how to use Land in Farms listing system. And they have the price on the website as well. And my terms, all the copies there, all the images, all the maps, and then they just go through that form and they do it. So what I might have them do, though, is a test. Right. So I might have land and farm at one price, and I might have Land Watch at a different price. And we'll test it and we'll measure it, and we'll see on that site how many people came in at that price and looked at it. And on the other ad on Land Watch, how many people looked at it. And then we have to constantly be changing headlines as well as, you know, the headline is so critical for anybody to even click on that ad. So we might test that as well. And again, I set it up one time, show them exactly what I need them to do, and then they do it. Saves me a lot of time and energy, but it takes a lot of upfront work in the very beginning.

So you're taking one listing.

Correct.

You're inputting that listing into, let's say, Landwatch, Correct?

Right. So I'm taking screenshots of every little thing that I'm doing so that they know. Right.

Okay, then you were having them replicated on several other sites.

No, no, just on that site. I'm having them do it for that listing. Then I'll create another one for the new site. So there's a Landed watch, there's a landwatch.com instruction, there's a Land and Farm instruction, There's a Lands of America instruction, There's Eagle Star instructions, because each one's different. Okay. But then once they have that, then they need to go in. And then there's instructions on how to capture what I've already done on my website, how to grab those images, put them in, how to grab the copy, copy and paste. Because again, English isn't their first language. I don't want them writing anything and going forward. Does that make sense?

Okay, so let me start from the beginning. You bought a piece of property today, and you're going to list. You're listing the property. Do you initially list the property yourself somewhere once so that that information is somewhere for them to gather? Or do you send all of it and then show them what a Land Watch ad looks like and how to do it? Or do you always create one ad and then let them fix the rest of them?

Okay, so I just bought a piece of property. So what I'll do is I'll spend typically a half hour, 45 minutes, and I'll put up on my website. I'll write the copy, I'll put in the images that I want. I might make a YouTube video and do all that. So I'll do the initial work.

Got it.

For that ad. And then I want that ad dispersed everywhere. You know what else is a great platform? We're not talking about it. Besides, we haven't talked about Craigslist, and we also haven't talked about squidoo.com as well. You know, all these things are just to get leads and. And drive traffic to our site. So that's what I do. Got it. But you have an actual employee. You're not dealing with VAs. So how are you training that employee to get your stuff done?

So what I did, I sat for about a month and a half, and I showed her sort of the ins and the outs of both my website and all the marketing platforms available, which is eaglestar.net, land and farm Land Watch, Lands of America. And I think I used one other one, and I'm not sure. Rural Property Finder. Of course, Rural Property Finder being one of my favorite websites. And I just have. I have my assistant Go in and understand the process of utilizing that site, putting in the information, and then I actually have her build the main ad and then syndicate those ads. Now, what it may be easier is that for Bill, that first ad, have somebody else syndicate the ads to the other platforms by training a virtual assistant. So have her. Have her manage the virtual assistant. And then what I'll do is I'll just give her the deal flow of constant new properties. She can do the one, and then she can focus on, you know, Craigslist syndication, YouTube syndication, that kind of stuff.

Right, right. Yeah. That's great. And then do you talk to your employee about, you know, your goals and what the goal is? Because I think that's really important so that they have this view of the business from 10,000ft, and they're not just doing these tasks, but they understand the ultimate goal of why they're doing what they're doing. Do you do that?

I think I do.

I may not do it the right.

Way, but we obviously discussed that the end goal is to generate leads and to get email addresses and to eventually sell the property.

Okay, right. Okay, good, good. So, yeah, I mean, but I explained that to them. For example, like, I just bought this property in Colorado, right? And I had Janie go on to the assessor's website in Cossea county, and she had to make screenshots of each map on the site. So there's the GIS map. Then from that GIS map, she got the coordinates, and I wanted to go to Google Earth. So she's doing a Google Earth map. She was doing a GIS map, and then she was giving me driving directions from there. So she's creating all these files for me, and I want her to understand exactly why she was doing this. So, number one is that this property is going to be sold to a customer. This customer clearly needs to understand what exactly where they're buying property and what's compelling about that property. So let's label stuff for them and make it really easy. Show them where the road is. Show them how far they are from the nearest town that has actual services that they will eventually be using. Show them where the compelling stuff is by their property. Point out the peaks and the mountains. What's the name of those mountains? Show them where water sources are, if there's creeks, if there's rivers. This property happened to be near the Rio Grande River. Find me a general map as well. And then ultimately we're going to sell this property. So I can actually end up paying you for your work. So you got to make it really clear to them so they understand, okay, what's the goal of why I'm doing this? So that they're able then to take what you want and make it even better and do things for you that you never even thought of, which is great. And that's how you know you've got an A player. An A player puts themselves into the work and really takes it seriously and makes it better than what you wanted. A B player just follows its directions. I have no interest in somebody just following my directions. I need somebody who can think independently, make it better, and that's why they're an A player. If I'm not getting an email from them saying, hey, have you thought of this? Then I know right away their heart's not really into it. It's just a job and that's fine. But for long term, va, I want somebody who's going to be an A player. If it's just one little task or one little project that I just need to get done that week, then I don't really care. But if it's a long term project, then I want them to make it even better. Eric is a great example of that. When I give him one of my video projects, he just makes it unbelievable. He just goes with it because that's what he does. And I don't have to tell him and he wouldn't want me to tell him what I want step by step because he's better at it than I am. But I need him to understand that's what I expect and he does it. So. Yeah, I know. I kind of went on there.

You just woke me up. Thank you.

I love the sound of my own voice.

Yes, you do. Yes, you do. I'm just kidding. You know what? You're bringing some very viable points, which I agree 100%. And that's kind of where a lot of it has to do with not just the employee, but you. So the communication between you and your employee and explaining to them, this is what I need done, this is what I want from you. I'd love if you brought me new ideas because I want to innovate, I want to be creative. So it is hard. But the responsibility also falls on the employer because the employer needs to teach the employee how to work. And that doesn't always happen. The nine to five person that's looking for the job doesn't necessarily know how to do it, but doesn't mean that he can't or she can't do it. They just need Your help.

Right, right. And speaking of that, when they first start, you need to set from the very outset. And when I say you, I mean the listener needs to have this expectation from the very outset is that you're not going to take the monkey. So there's this great article from Harvard Business Review called who's got the Monkey? So I'll give you an example. Duran gives me a project. He says, mark, I want you to go on this website and do this research for 40 acre parcels in Nevada. I want to know which properties have the best access. So I start looking it up and I get stuck. So what do I do? I emailed Duran my question. Hey, Duran, I was doing our project and I got stuck here. What should Duran do at this point? Duran, what would you do?

You know, Mark, that's a tough.

Why you got to put me on.

The spot like that?

Because I just gave you the monkey. Now you've got the monkey, right? You're a busy guy.

Why I don't want the monkey.

Yeah, you don't want to have to go back and, and do my work, do you? But that's what we do is we instinctively say, oh, well, what's the big deal? I'll take, you know, five minutes out of my day and I'll answer my VA or my employee's question and get it done. Only answer that question if you can readily get it done and you just know it right away. Otherwise you've got the monkey now. So what I will do is typically with those questions, I might email them back. That's a really good question. What do you think we should do about it now? I give them back the monkey question mark. Now they have it. Now they've got it figured out 90% of the time. I hate to say this, but I don't even respond. And then an hour or two later I'll get an email. Nevermind, I figured it out. So they feel really anxious, right? They can't figure it out right away. They want to get you involved because they know that you know more than they do because you've been doing it. But that's not your job. That's their job is to figure it out. So I'll send you the link to who's Got the Monkey? It's a great article on management.

You know, it's really funny because I'm actually, you know, I love my employee and she'll probably listen to this one day and be like, you know, I heard your podcast and I can't believe you said that about me. But not to be mean, rude, but she would call me. Go. Well, I can't figure out how to get access to the website. Well, gosh, there's a number on the bottom of the website. Why don't you call them and tell me you're my employee and tell them, hey, this is. I mean, because it's your job to figure it out. So. And I.

And I.

But I don't. So what I do, being the caring human that I am, I write an email back going, hey, I'll take care of it when I can. So I'm. I've got 842 monkeys on my shoulder right now. And I always do that. Maybe it's because I enjoy the monkey.

So that's the thing is you feel important right now. Oh, I've got another project to do. But now. But you're right, you can't handle more than two monkeys, typically in a day. You just can't. And your monkey, well, maybe you can, but, you know, the only monkeys that should be on your back are, you know, the wildly important goals that you've set for that day, which, if we again need to reiterate, should be marketing and deal flow. The other goals are what we call the whirlwind. The whirlwind is stuff that happens every day just to stay afloat. Our whirlwind. Our contracts, our deeds. If we don't get those done for our customers, they're gonna not be happy about it because they just spent money with us. They need to get their paperwork right. That's the whirlwind. Those things important. No, they're not important. The goals are important. That stuff is just urgent. So we don't want the VA to give us urgent stuff. We want them to handle the whirlwind. And we want to stay working on just our goals. But the problem is we can't ignore the whirlwind, otherwise we're going to be in really big trouble. I mean, we can't ignore getting our deeds recorded or our contracts processed or our customer service issues with questions. But again, those things aren't important. They're just urgent. And so we need to manage that and not take those monkeys on and try to outsource as much of that as possible so we can really focus on the wigs, the wildly important goals. What do you think of that, man?

I'll tell you, I learned a lot from you, Mark. It's unbelievable. You've. You know, what. What was that? What was that coin term? I think it was in Anchorman You've changed. You've changed.

Yeah.

I'm actually very proud of you, buddy. I, I, I see you've done a lot of reading. You obviously know what you're talking about. I, I obviously don't. We've gone different directions. I've gone the, the more delusions of grandeur direction and you've gone the more focused direction. But the cool part is we meet again and we can kind of both utilize each other to kind of help teach other people how to do this stuff.

Yeah, exactly. I mean, I'm benefiting from you and you're benefiting from me. It's a mutually beneficial relationship. And again, I mean, you're only spending maybe five hours a week buying and selling land. I mean, I know you've got other projects going on, but I think this still applies even to those projects. Because even though you've got startup projects and you've got your mining thing, and I know you're working on rural propertyfinder.com which is another startup. Again, when you're the leader of all these projects, man, you're going to have so many monkeys if you aren't real focused on keeping those goals in mind and all the other urgent stuff, you know, getting it off to somebody else that can hopefully do it better than you can. I mean, and that's, and that's also another, you know, issue where people get stuck is like, you know, just in parenting, you know, like, oh, it's so much easier for me just to do it. You know, I'm sure your employee, when she asks you a question, it's just so much easier for you to get it done instead of, instead of making her think about it and do it. But if you spend that extra 20 or 30 seconds, you know, take a deep breath and be like, is this really something I should be doing? You're gonna feel so much better with your day and your productivity. So, you know, we started with VAs, but now we kind of transitioned into just general productivity. It's been about, has it been about 30 minutes?

Yeah, it has been.

All right, so should we get to our tips of the week?

We sure should.

All right, what's your tip of the week?

Well, we've already touched on a couple of times today. We all know that the tip of the week is going to be rural property finder.com rural property finder.com okay, tell us about it. Well, Rural Property Finder is a little baby that I've recently purchased. Not a real baby, but a little baby. A little Internet baby. I acquired the company this week. And the concept is to change, I like, to what, disrupt the land, the online land market a little bit because things are a little bit stagnant market. I know that it gets a little bit old when you have a couple of websites that do the same thing over and over again. And we have two land websites that have offered us absolutely nothing for the last five years except for the fact that I can list our property on there and then they can sell me additional. Well, I believe in order for a land website to evolve, you have to offer more. Like how do I syndicate to YouTube, how do I syndicate to Craigslist? So my baby is to take that concept and create a syndication platform for land sellers like yourself who are looking to syndicate land to other web sites a lot easier and more streamlined so that you don't have to get a virtual assistant. What do you think, Mark?

I think it's going to be huge. I can tell you right now that's, you know, you know why I can say that is that I would use that service and I would pay big money on that for that monthly because anything to make my life easier, more productive, drive more traffic and provide me ultimately more sales for my land is gold. I mean, it's fantastic idea. And if Duran lets me, I mean, I'm not begging him, I'm not on hands and knees, but if he lets me, I'd love to be a early investor in this project. But of course, knowing me, I'll probably negotiate with him for probably two or three weeks and then I won't have anybody to podcast with anymore because he's gonna get mad at me.

What's your tip of the day, Mark?

Yeah, so my tip of the week is Jaron and I are talking about this before we got on the call and we were talking about VAS and he was, you know, clearly and I would be the same way, a little bit anxious about, you know, sharing his username and password with a VA whom he's never met overseas. That makes me anxious as well. Luckily, my anxiety has created a solution. That solution is www.LastLastPass.com LastPass.com is fantastic. I don't know how they do it. I don't know the technology. I'm not privy to their high tech encrypted ways. I just know that it works and that's how I share all my information that's highly sensitive with my VA's. I just share it with them. They have to be of lastpass number as well. They never see my actual password. But they're able then to log in. I don't know how it works, but it just does so they can log into those sites and do the work that they need to do. If I have to fire them at some point, it's very easy just to change that password and lock them out. It's fantastic. I use it for WordPress. I use it for all my listing sites. I use it on ebay. I use it everywhere. So it's really the best way to share confidential information with your virtual assistants so that you can sleep well at night knowing that if you get a rogue va, they're not going to be able to access anything else besides that one service that you gave them information on. But they don't know your password anyways. They just know they can get in with that LastPass account. So, Duran, how do you feel about this week's podcast? You feel better?

Oh my gosh.

I feel like the 842 monkeys are off my shoulders now and I can move on with my life.

Don't you feel like this is going to be next week's the most productive week of your life?

I actually just bought a domain name called Lambductivity.

I love it. I love it. Yeah. Land Monkey off my back dot com. I'll send a link to that Harvard Business Review article as well for the podcast. But listen, do me a favor. Go to rural property finder.com Is that right?

Yes, sir.

Go to reserveland.com Send Duran a little comment thanking him for spending all this time with us. And of course, go to thelandgeek.com download the passive investors blueprint. It's free. Go to my Facebook page like me@thelandgeek.com I think it's. What is it? Facebook.com thelandgeek Go on my website. Hey, buy some wholesale land. Why not? Frontierpropertiesusa.com and you know, if you like this, subscribe on itunes. Leave us a comment. Leave us a review. It really helps us out and it's just nice to know that we're not talking to ourselves as well. So leave us a comment. We'd appreciate it. And we'll see you next week. It's Mark Podolsky with Duran Frazier, the Land Geek out. See you guys next week.

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.com thelandgeek.