The Land Geek Roundtable Podcast- A Live and Exciting Bootcamp Q&A Special

Hey, it's Mark Podolski, the Land Geek. Their favorite niche real estate website, thelandgeek.com and this is the first time we are actually doing a live Boot camp podcast. And we don't have all the usual suspects on the roundtable today. Scott Todd is not feeling well. Mike Zano is saving lives at the firehouse. But we do have the nightcap OG dude buddy, Scott Bossen. Scott, how are you?

I'm great. This is really exciting.

Mark.

The first podcast from Boot Camp.

I know, I know. We've got the technician, Eric Peterson. Eric, are you excited? This is your brainchild.

I'm excited. We'll see how it goes.

We'll see how it goes. We've got Terea putting in the rep Terris Trea, how you feeling?

I'm great. How are you?

I'm great. I'm great. And last but not least, I love it when you call me Big Papa Terr. Tate Litchfield. You know, it'd be great, Tate, if we could watch you work. Go to thelandgeek.com lots. Look over Tate's shoulder. Tate, are you ready for this?

Yeah, I'm really excited. Thanks for having me.

So the way we're going to work this is people in boot camp are going to put in the chat their question. We're going to then unmute them and they're going to ask that question that they put in the chat, and then we are going to roundtable it. So who has a question? Go ahead and write it in the chat. Let's see. Roberto said Craigslist is pretty slow right now. Is this the one we want to do?

Yeah.

Okay. Craigslist is pretty slow right now. All right, so let's go to Mr. Sinkovich. Can we unmute you? This is a good one, John. Go ahead and ask your question.

Hi, can you guys hear me?

Yeah.

Yeah. Just after the last section when Roberto was talking about how he's been here for three years now and Craigslist has been slowing down. It used to be the hot thing. And Tere has been doing a lot of tinkering and getting thrown in Facebook jail and getting out of it. And it just seems like there's for spending two hours a day, every day. It sounds like there's a lot of, like, hands on work that needs to be done in order to make sure Facebook's algorithms don't kick you off or push people away from your ads. What I wanted to know was, since Facebook seems to be the hot, new most traffic site, how has the foot traffic Been on the land websites compared to Facebook. I remember you saying yesterday that you need at least 50 to 60 views per ad to really get a sale. Are you getting that same foot traffic at the land websites and is it actually paying off in comparison? Like, I just want to know the difference between the two and what the foot traffic relates to per sale and turnover.

Okay, great question. Scott Bossman, let's start with you.

So I'd agree we're getting most of our sales on Facebook right now. We're getting steady leads from some of the land selling platforms like Landslip, Land, Moto Land, Century are the ones we're on primarily. I would say, though, that what's been most hot for us lately is our buyers list. We've had a lot of repeat buyers the first quarter of this year, so that's a platform you definitely want to be hitting up very consistently as well. No matter how many people are on that buyers list, you need to be engaging with them one or two times a week and hitting them up because you never know when you're going to get a repeat buyer. So that's kind of how it looks like as far as where we're doing our sales. Facebook first, I would say buyers list next recently, and then the other landslide platforms are coming in behind that.

Okay, Eric.

Yeah, I think I want to focus on the idea of number of leads to a sale. So that really differs per platform. When we're hitting what you might consider colder traffic on a place like Facebook or Craigslist, it takes more of those leads to actually get a sale. But when we're talking about warmer traffic, in other words, they're out there looking for land already on places like Land, Moto Land, flip lane, century, etc. Those leads tend to convert a lot sooner and a lot more frequently. So we might get less of those leads, but maybe it only takes five of those leads to get a sale as an example, versus 40 or 50 on Facebook. So the platforms you're marketing on do make a difference in the conversion rate, but it's also really important to be everywhere you can be. If you can be in Facebook, on Craigslist, on Land, Flip On, Landmodo, et cetera, do them all because you're going to reach different audiences on those various platforms.

I love it. I love it. Terea, what are your thoughts?

I was thinking along the same lines as Eric, quality over quantity. And while we may get a substantial more leads on Facebook, there are a lot of tire kickers. You know, there. There are a lot of people who Again, were just on their Facebook, saw the ad, thought it was cool, but not necessarily in the market to buy. Whereas the land sites that we're on, we do well on the land sites as well, but it does take a smaller amount of leads because they're more targeted. They come to us already. You know, most of them have done a little bit of their own due diligence, so we're not having to warm them up as a lead. We give them the information. If the property works for them, you know, they're happy to buy. Whereas a lot of the Facebook leads, we have to spend time nurturing those leads in order to get them in a position where they're ready to actually buy. So I agree with Eric.

All right, Tate, we'll give you the last word on this.

Yeah, not much else to add here. I mean, certain platforms are going to produce better leads. If your goal is to just generate a ton of leads, there's no better platform than Facebook right now. However, I do have a soft spot for Craigslist. It hasn't been performing as well as it has, I don't know, in the past years, but I do believe that it's coming back. It's starting to get easier to get ads to stick. We're starting to see a response. Eric and I are actually testing it once again, and we're seeing more mixed results right now. But we're die hard Craigslist fans. We're going to be on there till the day Craigslist disappears, because at one point, I built most of my passive income off Craigslist, so I can't walk away from it.

Yeah. Just to everyone's point, I think what everybody said was great. Again, with marketing, it's going to be 80, 20. So 20% of your ads are going to produce 80% of your leads.

And.

And I am completely agnostic as to what platform that gives me 80% of those leads, so. But I want to be on all of them to see which one is producing in that time. Which is why we are doing the roundtable podcasts every week to keep everybody up to date. Hey, this is where Tate's getting most of his leads.

Now.

This is where Eric's getting his leads, and this is where Tria is getting her. Her leads. Scott and Mike and Scott. Todd. It might be all different for all of us, but generally speaking, we want to see a trend. We also want to know where are we going to get our biggest bang for our buck as far as time, if it's going to be a whole headache for you to get going into Facebook and crack that algorithm? Well, go to the easier platform. It might be Facebook. Nothing wrong with it. What do you think, Tate?

No, that's totally fair. I mean, you want to go and use the platforms that you have the best results on, whatever that is. Results will vary based on your property, your ads, your pictures, your ad copy. So, yeah, play around with it.

Yeah, I think this is a good question. I'm going to go to Seth and ask him to. To unmute and ask his question about Facebook.

It's actually Bam Land. I was just.

Bam Land.

Hi, how's it going?

Hi, Bam Land.

Good, good.

Hi.

So I'm a Facebook jail, and Tate said at one time, Facebook jail is just kind of a reality in this business.

Any tips on how to get out of it?

How to get out of Facebook jail? Scott Bossman, what are your thoughts?

You're right. It happens to all of us. I don't know if there's any hard, exact, fast rule for getting out of Facebook jail. I've been in Facebook jail for a few days. I've been in Facebook jail for a week. I've had one of my accounts. I was not able to post on Marketplace for a year, and then all of a sudden they let me back on. I think the key is having multiple accounts, honestly, and using multiple accounts in a way that is not going to put you on Facebook's radar. So season the account slowly. Maybe start with two ads a week per account. Work your way up from there. Don't over post. Engage in the marketplace with people who are commenting and engage in the chat with people who are asking you questions so Facebook knows you're real. So I don't know if I have a hard and fast answer for how to get out of Facebook jail. We have tried in the past also to delete ads that maybe were not performing or delete ads that maybe. It came to our attention that there was a term in there we shouldn't be using, like hunting or fishing or that type of thing, because you're not supposed to use those type of terms. But I think unless anybody else knows better, it's kind of a wait and see approach.

All right, Eric Peterson, you have anything to add?

I guess what I would add is that there is a limit on how many times you can go to Facebook jail. If you lose access to Marketplace three times, you're done. You're never getting it back for that account.

So.

In terms of going to Facebook jail, how do you get out? I think it's really Just a matter of time. You have to go through the process.

You have to appeal for your access.

Back, and so on. But there's no way to reach out to Facebook other than through this little support inbox. And you just have to be patient. It might take a week, it might take three weeks.

Tate, what do you think?

Do the crime, pay the time, right at this point, you can't do anything. It's a waiting game. Unfortunately, the worst part about it is you have no clue what you did wrong, and you probably will never get an explanation as to what Facebook didn't like about your ad. So I would tell you, be patient. Do absolutely nothing. Don't dispute it. Just let it happen. And check in regularly, and you'll be out in no time.

All right, let's give our resident Facebook expert Taria Harris the last word.

I agree with everything everyone said. There's no hard, fast. Do this and you're out. So it is. You're at the mercy of Facebook at this point. I have tried to, like, develop relationships with the people who are, like, on the back end, support, like, you know, hey, just. Can you tell me what they. They're not helpful. Nothing will help you in terms of helping speed up the process, and nothing's out there that will give you any indication as to how long it may last. Like Scott Bossman said, I've been locked out for a day. I've been locked out for, you know, a week. One of my accounts, my own personal account, they locked me completely out of Facebook. They told me I'd gone through the three. Three strike rule there, and they locked me out. And then a year later, they opened it back up to me. That's happened once, and I've gone through tons of accounts, so I don't know what or why, but if you just stay consistent, even when you're, you know, in Facebook jail, stay consistent with posting on your personal account. It doesn't have to be every day. Make a couple times a week, post something. Like something scroll. Make sure you kind of scroll through so Facebook can see that you're scrolling through the pages. And ultimately, when they're ready, they'll let you out. I wish there was. It's an art, not a science there with Facebook.

Yeah, I mean, true. But we can all agree, though, the juice is worth the squeeze.

Oh, I agree. I mean, it's a free platform that helps you sell a lot of land if they allow you to post your ads. But it's worth it. It's also worth. I can't remember which one of the geeks said it? But just having multiple accounts so that even if one goes down, your marketing doesn't have to tank. I think when you have a single point of failure, just that one account you're relying on, that's kind of a dangerous place to be.

Yeah. And the way to eliminate any single point of failure is again, every day you should be building your buyers list. That is the main focus because at the end of the day we don't own these platforms. And so we really want to be getting every lead from every platform into our buyers list. But Seth or Seth. Bam land. Good question. Bam Land. Daniel Larson, I'm gonna unmute you, I think. Here we go. Go ahead and ask your question. Yeah.

Thank you. You sign up for generic buy sell groups throughout the U.S. i know when we were looking at Rachel's example, she had some buy sell group that were like USA land for sale. Or do you try to target within a certain radius of your county and then when you get a new Facebook account, do you have to like re sign up for all those Facebook groups? Because I know that can take time and sometimes there's like qualifying questions in order to like be input. I was curious if you clarify that.

Good question. Tate, should we start with you?

Yeah. The answer for us is we don't do anything with groups. And if we create a new Facebook account. Yeah, you would have to go sign up for those groups again. So I don't do anything with groups. I only post in marketplace.

Scott Bossman, Eric Peterson.

Sorry about that.

Oh, there you are.

Are you going to skip me now?

No, I'm not going to skip you. But look, this is our live podcast. We can't have dead air.

Okay, guys, we actually do use groups. That's back. Back when we first started selling land on Facebook, we used groups. I think primarily now we use an approach where we'll post a marketplace first. If that ads getting some views and some traction, we will share it over to groups. So for groups we join a ton of them. Don't join too many at once. Join maybe two, three a day. You don't want to be picked up, you know, you don't want to be perceived by Facebook as joining too many groups, I don't think. But we join very large groups within maybe a three hour radius of our property. We join special groups like the man cave group or maybe off road atving groups, that type of thing. Off grid homesteading groups were members of and you know, a lot of our ads we cast far and wide. It's interesting to see. You know, I'm up here in the great, the great north and it's very cold up here. I've sold a lot of land, a lot of Arizona land to people in Minneapolis. Groups, Wisconsin groups. So we cast far and wide when we're, when we're marketing some of these properties.

And that totally makes sense. But I really like Scott, what you brought up about the specific groups and we'll get to Tria. There are groups you don't want to join, which we're going to talk about. But Eric, what do you think our philosophy is?

Much like Tate's, we just post in Marketplace. We don't post to groups. You know, it, it's easier to manage when you're just posting the marketplace. You start posting the groups. There's. There's quite a bit more management that has to happen. You have to make sure you can be posting your advertisements in those groups. You need to deal with the haters like Rachel had to this morning. So we just prefer to stay in marketplace.

Okay, Sharia, we'll give you the last word on this.

Yeah, I concur. We don't post to groups at all. We started off posting in groups and we found that we just spent more time trying to defend our ad and actually answering good questions and getting good leads from the groups. With that said, I know investors who post in groups and they do well for us. Trying to determine which group was appropriate for us and which group was. Wasn't appropriate was a big task because some groups, like Scott says he wants to post in groups that are in Michigan or Arizona. But if your land isn't there, oftentimes even the groups will begin to report you. So you have to be careful when you start joining these groups, understanding what they will and won't allow. I'm not anti groups. I think if you're putting it out there and it's producing leads, then I think it's a good thing sometimes with the groups. For a lot of us, it's just too much of a hassle trying to go in and manage it. When all of your messages from Marketplace come right to your messenger, it's an easier place for our bas to go in and respond.

So, Treea, follow up question. Which group should we avoid?

I don't know if they're. Well, avoid the groups that have like the crazy admins. I don't know if you know this up front, but we avoided the ones where we had to jump through a million hoops just to get in because then the admins would even tell us what our ads could and couldn't have. And so those groups we avoided, I'd say pick groups that have, obviously that are in whatever demographic that you're trying to sell the land in or allow you to post in their groups. But I don't know if I have a specific. Avoid this group, that group. I don't know.

Yeah, yeah, but you know, like the land for sale groups, should we even be going in there? Because it's all bunch of land sellers.

Typically don't go in those because it's me marketing to everyone else and then they know my prices. And so.

Right.

Those land groups, I generally. We avoided those because they were just a bunch of land investors in there.

Right, right. So you want to, you want to go to those like, you know, the local, like what Scott would say, you know, the local Madison Craigslist group where they're selling other things, not just real estate. Because if it's just real estate, it's all just real estate people. So we want to generate leads from people that want, you know, we're solving their pain point. And the Scott's point, you know, if you're in Minneapolis and you're freezing, well, Arizona land sounds really good. So go to those groups for sure. Which leads to a whole other number of questions. Just to Scott Bossman, why he lives where he lives, but we don't have time to get into that. Nick, you had a really good question. It's kind of niche, so I'm going to skip it for now because it really only applies to international investors, which we should probably do a whole podcast on in it of itself and talking about how to set that up. So I'm gonna go to Jim Adkins. Jim, go ahead and ask your question. Jim Atkins, are you still there? Okay, I'm gonna skip Jim. I'm gonna go to Charlie and Molly Jones and go ahead and ask your question.

All right, Our question is, when using LGPass, is there a maximum number of letters you can send out of lab for the month?

For the month? Eric Peterson, is there a maximum?

Not that I'm aware of. And we send a lot of mail.

We send a lot of mail. I think you're good, Tate. Is there a max?

I mean, the software will mail whatever you put into it. Now, whether or not that's a good idea, that's, I guess, another topic for you. The reason I say that is we have a general idea, if your pricing is correct, what your response rate is going to be. And I've had coaching students who say, I'm so impatient, I'm just going to mail 500 offers a day until I see the volume that I want. And it's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Pump the brakes. I would never mail 500 offers in a single day for multiple days in a row. And I have a team of people who do this for me. The reason being I don't want to overwhelm them. So unless you've got an intake manager in place, you know, keep it, keep it reasonable, whatever that number is. But remember, you're going to see a 3 to 5% response rate from all of your mailing, and then you're going to have to sort through all of those, those accepted offers or rejected offers or counteroffers to define the 1 to 2% buy rate. So if you're mailing out 10,000 offers in a month, do the math there. How much time do you want to spend on the phone just qualifying people to see if they can actually sell the property? So that's all I would say. But now, Mark, I don't think there's a limit, is there?

I don't believe there's a limit. But I would say to Charles and Molly Jones, don't test it. Listen to what Tate just said. You're not ready. You're not ready. Tate has a whole team. He doesn't send out that many offers.

We don't know how many offers she's talking. Maybe she's just saying, like, can I get away with 100 a day? Or something like that.

Yeah, let's reverse the question to make it a more reasonable question. Scott Bossman, if you're just starting out, what's the maximum number of offers you should make a week? Would you say.

You know, we. We really teach you to go with 20 a day to start. It's like, I like saying, it's like Grandma's Sunday roast. You want to start low and slow with your mailings. And there's a reason for that, because I've spoken to people, Mark, on the phone, who they've literally. They've literally sent out 10,000 mailers as a beginner, and they have not purchased one property out of that mailing. That is an expensive initial investment in your mailing, in your business. The reason we take the low and slow approach is because with that 20 a day, you're really able to gauge the market you're in. In a few weeks, you're able to start tracking metrics, tracking response rates. And if your sponse rate, if your response rate is that 3 to 5%. Like we talked about, if your purchase rate is 1%, you know you're spot on with your pricing. But if you're not getting that, then you have to tweak your pricing. And the low and slow mailings allow you to do that.

Yeah. I don't know anyone that doesn't like that slow cooker. It just makes everything better. Right. Don't you love the slow cooker every week?

I'm on the slow cooker every week.

Yeah. Low and slow. Do you agree with Scott Tate? Go ahead.

Oh, I was just going to say the other thing that is great right now about LGPASS and where it's at is you can get a big list of, say, a thousand names. You can upload that Entire list into LGPass and you can choose how many you want to drip out or be mailed on a daily basis without having to push any buttons. The reason I like doing this approach is I can mail, say, 500 offers at one price point. Look at my response. Right. Look at the feedback that I get from those sellers potentially.

And.

And then adjust my pricing accordingly. It's super easy to do. So I love what Scott Bossman says. Yeah. But instead of the slow cooker, I'm going to take the Eric Peterson rack. A rib approach. Right. Like, we know Eric Peterson. He likes his ribs. And so low, slow heat, heavy smoke all day long.

Right.

Yeah. I feel like there's a Cheesecake Factory joke in here somewhere. Don't go there to get boomerang too.

Early in the morning for that. It's too early for that.

Yesterday take took offense to that.

Yeah, that's right.

You are. But I will find you.

That got personal real fast. Let's. Let's unmute Sam Whelan. Sam, are you there?

Yes, I am.

So if you're at a point that.

You want to boost capital, how do.

You decide between wholesaling your property or selling it to a cash buyer?

Okay, Treya, what do you think? You're trying to boost capital, and you don't know if you want to wholesale or sell cash to a buyer. What are your thoughts?

I think it would depend on how quickly you need the money. Putting it out for wholesale. You have a better chance of getting it sold quicker than waiting around for a cash buyer. So if you have the ability to hold off, then the cash buyer obviously, is the better way to go. You get more capital, more bang for your buck. But if I need it now, I don't really have the time to sit around and wait. Then you can always put it up for wholesale, and typically, within a short amount of time, you can sell it.

Okay, Ari Peterson, what do you think?

I don't really think it's a choice. If you need capital in your business, wholesaling is a great answer. We can't go out to the retail market and say we just want cash for our property. I mean, that might take six months, it might take 12 months if that's the only option we're going to give. So if we need capital, wholesaling is the answer.

Tate, that's perfect. Nothing to add.

Scott Bossman.

Scott, you're on mute.

Scott Bossman.

All right, agreed on all points.

Okay, well, I completely disagree on all the points.

I knew you were gonna disagree.

You know, you know. You guys know why I'm disagreeing.

Let me.

Let me answer for Mark, okay? Mark's gonna say there's no reason on this good earth why you should ever hold wholesale anything when you can make 300 to 800% return on your money. But, Mark, what if you need money?

That's not true.

Okay, I know the answer.

Sell the note.

Eric, what's the answer?

Sell the note. Scott said it, but we still.

No, that's not even the answer. Okay, he's saying, okay, do I wholesale or do I sell cash flow? First of all, I'm going to go back to Tate's point. Sell the land. I don't care how you sell it. Give the market what it wants. Number one, your capital issues are your capital issues. Solve that another way. Either raise debt, get a partner, but don't mess with your marketing because of your personal capital constraints. Never. And also, I'm going to get on a soapbox here. Never pass on a deal because of capital. The hard part of this business is locking up a deal. 25, 30 cents a dollar. There's someone else on the other end of that deal. Flip it to me, mark it up 50, 100%, you get quick cash, Right? Sell it to anyone in the community except for Eric Peterson. It will be fine. But don't leave limit yourself because of a rigid viewpoint on capital constraints. There is so much money out there, Sam. Go to your friends, go to your family, show them your track record. Say, hey, I'll make you 8, 10, 12% on your money. I'll pay you quarterly, and that's all the money you're going to need. And that's going to give you all the flexibility you need to sell the way the market wants you to sell. If you want to sell wholesale, because that land needs to move quick because you got tape in your ear now saying sell the land, you'll sell it wholesale. If the market wants cash because somebody just got a big stimulus check, sell it for cash. If I'm chirping in your ear and say this is a great retail deal, sell it retail, but have the flexibility in this business. So I hope that helps. All right, Tree is laughing. Was that too much?

No, no, that was good. That was a great point. That's what this is all about. You get to hear everyone's viewpoint and then he can take it and do what he wants to do with it. That was good.

All right, Tom and Arlette, they watch a lot of Nightcap and Land Geek podcasts yet haven't watched the roundtable. Is there a schedule? When is it out? So yeah, tomorrow I believe the roundtable comes out every Tuesday and it's just on your everywhere. You like to listen to podcasts. It's everywhere. Let's go to Elmo and let him ask his question. Elmo, you're on. Elmo. Maybe he's not there. Let's go to Rachel and Lucas. Rachel and Lucas, you're on.

Awesome. Okay, so I am wanting to get your perspective on what you do in your business with conversations with lead. So basically I've experimented with asking people if what they're looking for and getting them in a phone call. I've also experimented with asking people if they can send me their email address and I'll send them more information. I'm just wondering what specifically you do in your business. I would like to not keep experimenting and I would like to use what is currently working.

Okay, let's start with Scott Bossman.

Well, I'm fortunate to have a person helping me with sales who is at his computer all day long and he's very happy to hop on leads as they come in during the day. Now not everybody has that luxury, but what he does is he starts engaging them in conversation, asking them open ended questions about what they're looking for property for and depending on their response, we'll steer them toward the right property we think we have for them. And we're going to have a conversation with them in the chat. It may go over to email. We do want to get their email, their phone number right away, as soon as possible so they can go into follow up boss. So we can track that conversation so we can get them on the phone if possible. We really meet them where they're at. Not everybody wants to get on the phone. We find that sometimes Steering people to email, we will lose where we will lose the conversation. So he stays in the conversation in Facebook messenger and we do it that way. So I think it really depends on the conversation you're having. It depends on how people want to communicate. But I think the key for us is the timely response. So if you can figure out a way to do that, to jump on these leads in a timely fashion, that for us is helpful.

Awesome Tree Harris.

So we also have a sales manager who prefers to get on a phone call with you. So that's the route we initially tried to go with. Like, hey, you know, can we please get on a phone call with you? Some people resist be like, no, here's my email. So we begin to communicate with them on whatever mode they give us. Preferably if we have a phone number and an email, we're going to choose the phone number. She prefers to get on a phone call and speak with you. We've had some people who, you know, no, I just want you to text me. Like they'll give us the number. So we use whatever platform they give us to work with. But getting on a phone call with them, it has proven to turn to a quicker sale for us than trying to communicate via email.

All right, all right. Eric Peterson.

Yeah, I mean much like has already been said, we're going to push for a phone number. If we can get it. We're going to get on the phone with those leads, we're going to text them, we're going to do things like that. We're going to try and have conversations, build relationship, we're going to ask those open ended questions along the way. Timing is important. If we can get on the phone with them soon after they inquire, it does make a difference, especially if that lead is coming from maybe a warmer source like Landmodo or one of the other land selling websites. When we can get those people on the phone quickly, I would say we're far more likely to convert those into sales. If we wait a few hours or a day, we're less likely to convert those. So it is important to be proactive with those leads. But you know, the leads coming in from Facebook, our whole goal is to get an email address or a phone number. We move them into follow up boss and we communicate with them from there.

I love it. I love it. Tate, you want the last word on this?

Yeah, I mean pretty much echo what everybody else said. Our goal with Facebook primarily is to take the conversation away from Facebook as quickly as possible. I don't want to pay somebody to sit there and chat all day. I want them to talk to the lead, see if they're serious. If they're serious, they're willing to jump on a phone call or give an email address out, and we can take the conversation outside of Facebook because Facebook is a very intense platform. You've got to be fully committed to it, and people want that instant response. And so we're all busy. We have other things going on. So we like to get them on the phone, gauge their interest immediately, and proceed that way.

Tate, would you ever have your salespeople look at their Facebook profile and find a common point of interest to get to know them better and maybe build rapport just getting that little bit of insider information?

I don't think it's a bad idea. But with the amount of leads that you can generate off that platform, I could see it being a tactic. And so I think the best approach for that would be ask the questions, right? Anybody who's ever driven through, like, the Salt Lake corridor, there's a car dealership there, and their whole advertising platform is we listen. And I think that's really, really interesting. If you take that same approach and you apply it to the land business. Your job as a land investor is not to convince anyone to buy land. It's to simply ask the right questions that help them decide that what you're selling is what they want. And so be a listener. And the only way to be a good listener is to have a list of qualified or prefabricated questions that are going to help steer your conversation in the right direction. So, for example, Mark, if I'm selling you land in Colorado, I might say, mark, tell me about yourself. What do you like to do on the weekends? What kind of activities do you like enjoy? Oh, the reason you're going to love this property is because it's a gateway to the outdoors. You mentioned you like to spend outside. Do you hunt? No. Well, I'm sure you like to fish, because, you know, if you like to fish, we're going to be best friends. All right? And then we can go along there. And I know you like to crash your mountain bike, Mark. So let's talk about that, right? We can go on and on and on because I've figured out who you are and what you like to do.

Too soon? Too soon. Let's go to Tyson Anderson.

My question is more, what do you guys focus on? You being the pros for your two hours. I know your times might change, but two hours a day and then what should it look like for us new up and coming?

Okay, great question. So, as the Land Geek pros, what are we focusing on? What are we paying attention to when we're working our two hours a day? Scott Bossman, what are you focused on?

Yeah, I would say generally a review of where we're at in the intake process with some of our properties, and a review of where we're at with the marketing and sales. And then there may be certain days of the week that are targeted toward other things. A meeting with the intake manager, meeting with a bookkeeper, that type of thing. But for where we're at right now, that's kind of. Kind of what we're doing. You know, we may talk about county research or, you know, I may spend a little bit of focus time on county research during, during the week too, on one of those days.

Okay. Treea.

So we generally allow what we get out of, like our metrics or whatever we will. The pain points of the previous week. I'll say that any pain points we had the previous week, we'll kind of spend the next week trying to plan out and figure out how to overcome them. So if it's a dip in leads now, we'll spend time trying to figure out what was it, was it the ads? And we'll work with our VAs to do that. But I don't know if there's a regimented set schedule that we use. It's kind of fluid. And if nothing needs to be done, then we take those two hours off.

All right, fantastic. Eric Peterson.

Yeah.

I guess it's really reviewing metrics, so that allows me to, you know, look at numbers for different portions of the business and make sure things are running as they should be. So that will highlight any problems that may be going on in the business that have to be addressed. But I'm going to meet with my sales manager once a week. And other than that, I mean, I would say one of the things I enjoy doing most is in the business today is just exploring other things, like where can we take marketing, what new technologies are out there, what's going on in this area of the business, what can we try differently? So it's more kind of focusing on the business and research and potential future growth than it is tons of time in the business. So, I mean, I still review deals, but, you know, I mean, it's. There's not a whole lot that I have to do anymore. I mean, the team is more or less running the business.

Fantastic. CEO Eric Peterson, Tate Litchfield do you want the last word.

Sure. A majority of my days are themed. So when I wake up on Tuesday morning, I know exactly what I'm going to do. And that's because I try to eliminate doing the same job multiple times throughout the week. So much like Eric and Teria and Scott and everybody else, certain days of the week I meet with certain people. Some of those responsibilities that I have are, you know, for example, money. Mondays I go in and I make sure I'm getting paid, make sure I'm getting my money right. Right. So I'll log into Geek Pay Review accounts. Fridays, I typically don't work, so a majority of my time is done Monday through Thursday. But on Fridays, I will do the occasional call. And you know what? I'll be honest. I love selling. So I got nothing against jumping on the phone and selling anything at any given time. I think that's the same with every single other person in the land. Geek family is the end of the day. We want to sell property, so we'll do whatever it takes to sell property.

I love it. I love it. And you know, Tyson, the whole goal is to get to that point where you've built your team so that you can work when you want, where you want, and with whom you want. You don't want to build another job for yourself. So, you know, when you're starting out, your two hours a day need to be focused on building that machine. But given what Tate said, the last two things you should ever outsource are going to be your county research and sales, because that's what makes you the money. We've got time for one last question before we go to our tip of the week. We're going to give this one to Nick in Australia. Nick, what's your question?

Yeah, so you mentioned just now that we're outsourcing pretty much as much as we can, except for the county research and sales, which is, you know, makes total sense. But when we are Talking about our VAs doing the intake. So the acquisitions side, I was wondering when we're getting to that point that we were talking about just a little bit earlier, when you've maybe allocated all your capital to buying just outright cash, what should we be saying to our va? So, like, okay, when I reach this specific point, we've got to change up the conversations a little bit. What is kind of that process where we want to then kind of switch to those kind of longer settlement kind of deals?

I guess, okay, so we're out of money. We've got to give instructions to our intake VA on how to adjust this so that we can still buy property, but just not as quickly. Is that correct?

Yes.

All right, Scott Bossman, what do you think?

Well, I would just encourage you to remember that even though you may not have all the money in the account you want for purchasing property, that doesn't mean you should not be mailing. You should still be mailing because when you get a signed purchase agreement in the mail, you control that deal and you will be able to find ways to acquire that property utilizing the resources in our community. So don't stop mailing. And then, you know, there are, there are strategies also to acquire properties we've talked a lot about this weekend with relatively little money. Land Arb is an option for doing that. But don't stop mailing. There are ways you're going to be able to find the money. As Mark was. As Mark pointed out earlier, there's a lot of money out there. You're going to be able to find the money to acquire deals. So just don't stop that part of your machine.

Fantastic. Taria.

So we have been in a situation where, yep, capital was getting really low and we just, we spoke with our intake VA and we're like, hey, okay, we won't have the ability for you to send out checks, you know, as rapidly as we have been. So kind of slow it down. And like Scott said, we control the process from the moment we get the accepted offer. We kind of control how quickly or how slow the process will go. We try not to drag it on too long where, you know, our seller may interest. Keep in mind they're getting other offers. Right. So we don't want to lose the deal. But there's been once or twice where we've had to kind of delay it a couple days until we could find the resources to get in the account so that we could make the purchase. But it's a juggling act. Sometimes, I think just clear communication with your VA is important.

Fantastic. Eric Peterson, I don't imagine you've ever been capital constrained, but maybe, Maybe I'm wrong.

Yeah, I think.

I don't know. Two things come to mind immediately. And one is to just kind of push out those closing dates. Right. Extend your due diligence period. I think Mark talked about this on the first day, but that's a pretty simple solution. The one thing I would caution you about in this market is to make sure you're staying in communication with that seller because there's so much activity. You want to build that relationship so they continue to Kind of wait for you and just let them know what's going on and help them be aware of that. But alternatively, if you've already got some properties that you've sold in the retail market and they're on terms, it would be a great time to consider selling some of those notes. If you're not relying on this business for your income yet, you can take some of that passive cash flow coming in and sell off 12 months of that and get an influx of capital back into your business to go reinvest in land and continue to move forward.

I love that. And Eric, to your point, it's one of those odd things. It's such a great strategy to sell your note or a partial note, 12 months of it. But so many people, even though the math is so compelling, the returns are so big, they don't want to part with that passive income. It's a tough pill to swallow, despite it's completely irrational because the math is so compelling. You get two bites of the apple, you solve your problem, but no one wants to do it. Sharia, do you have any idea why that would be? Is it just emotional?

I think it is. I think we work so hard to get our passive number up. Who wants to see it go down? So it's kind of a paradigm shift for us. Well, yeah, it's gonna go down a little bit, but I'm gonna have more capital to be able to do, you know, keep the business moving forward as opposed to looking at it as a loss. We look at it as. No, it's a necessity right now so that I can keep it moving.

Tate Litchfield. Where is the best place to sell notes? That's from Matt Hubert. Tlfolio.com tlfolio.com which does not mean. Tatelitchfieldfolio.com Right.

That's for another day. Mark, I want to add something to Nick's question. I'm working with a coaching client right now, and he's out of money. In fact, he just got an accepted offer on a bulk deal in an area that he no longer is targeting. And he mailed to this county in flight school, and somebody responded and said, hey, yes, I'll sell you my property for $2,000. However, I have five of them and I want to do an all or nothing deal. So he calls me up and he says, hey, Tate, what should I do here? I know you work in this county. Do you want it? And I said, well, yeah, I want this deal, but the correct approach for you is to do almost a double close in this situation. So remember, he's got no money. It's all tied up in other inventory. And so I said, call the buyer, or, excuse me, call the seller. Tell them you're going to start the due diligence process and that you'd like to proceed assuming there's no issues with the properties. He goes through and he says, all right, I committed. Now what do I do? I said, well, how much are these worth wholesale? He said, I think I can sell them for about $3,000 a piece. I go, fantastic. Who do you want to sell them to? He goes, well, don't you want them? I was like, well, yeah. He's like, but you know how much I paid for him? I go, well, that's just the way the cookie crumbles. So said, yes, I'll commit to buying all five of them from you at $3,000 each. I wrote him a check for $15,000. He then took that money deposited into his account, waited for the funds to clear, and then use that same money to pay for his properties. Once he paid for them, he neat notarized and signed the deed over to me. We recorded it. It went from the original owner to him and then to me, and he spent exactly $0 and just came out of it $5,000 richer.

You want to do some math? You know what his return on investment was that on that infinite. It's not bad.

I love it. But that's the cool thing about the land business. And how can you stretch this out? That's one of the common questions in the comments. And, well, the key in the entire business, whether it be buying land or selling land, comes to communication. As long as you are constantly communicating with the person you're dealing with, they're going to understand that this is real estate and real estate can take time. So if I run out of money, I'm telling my intake manager, we want to buy all this land. I just got to free up some cash. So extend the closing period 90 days, but I want you to call these sellers every three days and just let them know, hey, we're still waiting on the county. You know, the county research is going to take time because we have to get in touch with the assessor and the assessor is a government employee and that takes time.

Right.

So bear with us. And normally that solves all problem. Communication is key in this.

It's such a good piece of advice. It's, dare I say, sagacious because you want to keep over communicating with your sellers so they don't go to an Eric Peterson and be like, well, I haven't heard from Tate.

Exactly. I get Eric Peterson's clients. Yeah.

Eric, are you still going to let me haze you with all this? So angry about that Colorado deal.

It's all good.

Mark, didn't you have that one lady who was super hesitant to. To sell you property? Right. And you had to send her videos.

I had to send videos, yeah. I over communicate. Yeah. Daily. Daily.

You were. I remember you were like, we were together and you're like, I gotta drive to the bank. And you were like, film. I was filming you and you're like, all right, we're going to the bank. I'm going into the bank. Here's your check. Smile at the bank teller, you know, and then you're like walking out to the mailbox. You dropped it in the mail. And at the end, she was like, 10 out of 10 would recommend. Right. Like, she was so excited to do business with you, but communication was all that she needed.

Yeah, exactly. And make it fun, too. We're fun, as you all can tell. So I think this is a great inaugural live Boot Camp podcast. However, we're at that point in the podcast, we were going to ask our all the Boot Camp attendees for their tip of the week. But instead of their tip of the week, how about their biggest takeaways from boot camp? But then maybe that'll be easier. So go ahead and type in the chat your biggest takeaways from boot camp. We'll read a bunch. And while that's going on, we might as well talk about our sponsor for boot camp this week, which is flight school. Learn how the next 16 weeks can literally transform your life. Go up that mountain of land investing with Scott Todd, who's done it thousands of times, quickly, safely, and efficiently. It's one of those few things, like, you're going to start building passive income right away. You're going to take action with your class. And tuition ain't going to cost you nothing. We guarantee you're going to make back that money. 180 or less. Just show us your work. Learn more. Go to landgeek.com training. Get on a call with Scott Bossman, the Nightcap OG Dude Buddy or Mike Zano, the Zen master. All right, so here's our biggest takeaways from boot camp. Well, first of all, Matthew Iandoli gave us a tip. Textexpander. Great software to create keyboard shortcuts for commonly used phrases or things you type out. Integrates well with your computer and phone, will save you thousands of keystrokes and only costs $30 a year. Matt Huber Constantly mail and adjust Peter Peterson Mailer and Facebook Charles and Molly Jones ABC Always be closing. Isaac Carrier Sell your land today. Nicole Tate this is a real business. Peter Peterson Sell the land. Daniel Larson's best way to make money on the Internet is by the phone. Rachel Marshall Mark Sales process to keep selling to the buyer and then convert them into a sales assistant. Nick Best takeaway so far. Keep mailing the money is there for the deals. Tom and Arlette that I have to listen to. Flight school Matthew Iandoli ABCDE Always be closing to envelopes. Ross I've loved all the tips about Facebook ads. Zip Communication is the key. Stephen Virginia Carlin There's a pick for every bar. And Jim put the systems in place. Work on the business, not in the business. Dan Shepp if you're marketing to everybody, then you're marketing to no one. Rob Mailing is key. Dan Shepp Always be closing envelope Samuel Mark Tips on scaling the business. Matthew T. Mailing and marketing Demetrius Jones Automate and scale and invest in yourself. These are all fantastic. Nick Listen to October Rage on Spotify. We got to end on that. That is a fantastic tip of the week. And yeah, so thanks everyone for doing this. And as we typically like to end, I'm just going to ask Tate, are we good?

We're good.

Jerry are we good?

All good.

Scott Bossman Excellent. Eric Peterson Know we're great. Well, I want to thank all the listeners. I want to thank Eric Peterson for this fantastic idea. I want to thank everyone for attending boot camp and all their engagement, the phenomenal questions. And just a reminder, learn more. Go to thelandgeek.com and get our course how to Double youe Money 30 days or less for free. Just go to landgeek.com wholetailing start there. All right, let's do this. One, two, three. Let's let freedom ring. Not bad, not bad.

Thanks for listening to the Art of Passive Income podcast. Start your journey at www.thelandgeek.com and www.scotttod.net. rate and review the podcast and email support. The landgeek.com your screenshot for a free.

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