The Land Investor’s Lifestyle: Why Time Freedom Beats 10 Rentals

I once dined on steak with a candle's soft glow. But the bill left my savings despairingly low. Now wisdom has taught me so simple, so grand. Eat baloney, buy land. Eat baloney, buy land. Play the fork for the team in your hand. If the fillet let the sandwiches stand. Your fortune will grow when you buy your own land.

Welcome to Land Geek Nightcap, everybody. The Art of Passive Income podcast. Nice to see everybody here. Tonight we're talking rentals versus land. Most real estate investors think freedom comes from owning 10 rentals or 20 doors. But nobody talks about the second job that comes with it. Late night calls, broken toilets, tenant drama, repairs, vacancies. It's a hamster wheel in disguise. What if instead of chasing more doors, you built a business that quietly paid you without tenants, toilets, or 2am emergencies? That's the land investors lifestyle, simple deals, scalable systems, and real time freedom. Join us live every Tuesday night at 9pm Eastern on YouTube and Facebook as we break down why time Freedom with land beats rentals and how you can start building that freedom yourself. Sup, guys?

What's up, beers?

As always, I'm joined by Mike Zano, the Zen master. Breathe in. Mailing. Breathe out. The marketing. What's up, brother?

Not much. I'm just super excited to be here. Missing John. John, we miss you. I know that you're at a. I think it's a fam. One of his children, kids, is having a concert, right? A concert tonight, so.

Kids, concert tonight. He gets a pass. Yeah, he gets a pass tonight. So I'm Scott Boston. I've been a land investor for 10 years myself. And we're joined by. By none other than the Godfather himself, Mark the Land Geek Podolsky. Cheers, brother. Thanks.

Cheers, guys.

Yes.

Good to see you.

Good to see you. Great to be here. We got a great topic. I love this topic.

All right.

Yeah, it is a great topic. And I think we're gonna. We're even gonna do a little math tonight. Mike Zano loves math.

Oh, yeah.

What's your favorite saying, Mike?

Yeah, there's three kinds of mathematicians. Those who can add and those who can.

There you go. Nice to see everybody tuning in. Here we have Daniel McCallum, as always, good to see you. Sean Davis, Mike Cavier, Dr. Lauren Grauwert, Oliver Group Enterprises. Johnny Tapp. And some of these folks were just on our live Q and A. We had a live Q and A tonight featuring Sam and. And Samantha. Right, Samantha. Yes, Tollefson, who started their land investing journey about a year ago. And Mike, you Did an amazing interview with those guys tonight, and I think they had a lot of great insight into the business and what this business can do for folks.

Yeah, they're pretty awesome. The anniversary of land investing is in January. They've sold a ton of properties, they've had a ton of personal growth, and they were just ecstatic. And I love the fact that they're inspiring other people now to take that brave step and become an entrepreneur.

Yeah, for sure.

Mark.

That's gotta be just so amazing for you to see, you know, all of the success. They're just. They're another data point. But each data point is special, right?

It is. I mean, it's not a data point to me. It's. It's so gratifying. It's hard to put into words. It's. Yeah, I mean, I can't. I. I honestly can't even put into words. So it's. Yeah, it's just, you know, a big bowl of proud, like, pride. Like, I'm just so proud that they are taking action and. And doing the work. Like, I can't take any credit for it. They're the ones that did the work, but it's. But when you see the results, you see Sam. Sam, you know, when it really moves the needle in their lives and they're not just solving their money problems, they're some of their time problems. It's. It's amazing. And that's why we do what you do.

I'm curious, Mark. You know, you had talked a little bit on the webinar about when you first decided that you would actually teach. Somebody really just kept asking you, did you ever envision that it would get to the point where dozens of people would retire themselves, their spouses, because of you? You know, did you even think of that at that point? Was that even a thought? I mean, it's really staggering, right, if you think about it, how many people have actually received. Achieved financial independence through investing in raw land because you decided to teach this to people. That's real.

Yeah. Thank you. It. When I think about it, and I don't often, because it's not about me, it's always about them.

Right.

I. I do. I do feel a sense of. Of overwhelm. And I think I'm. And I'm also just super grateful that I found this vocation, this purpose, this mission, and it's just to do every day. And I'm greedy to help more people do it because. And I talked about this on the webinar. We have a massive market. It's not like if we have more people join in the land geek community that it's going to hurt our personal businesses. It's, we have this abundance mentality. There's just plenty of deals for everyone. Like we're all going to run out of money before we run out of deal flow. Maybe not Sam and Sam, but most.

I think it's, you know, I often think it's, and I've said this to you before, like you think of someone, you got these big Tony Robbins, all these people, and they do wonderful things. Right? But you come not only with inspiration, but you come with an actual method. Right. It's not like you just get inspired and need to keep going back to the source to get inspired. You actually come with something that's a deliverable that can change lives. And I think I, I have, you probably retired more people than they have, Mark, because you bring something real to the equation. I'm not saying that I love Tony, he's inspiring and all that, but I'm saying you have an inspiration, but you also have a vehicle that can, it can, you can apply that inspiration into. And that I think is super unique.

Yeah, no, no, thank you. I, I, yeah, I, I appreciate it. And I do think that from a coaching model, Tony Robbins has a way better model. Like, Right. It's just a bigger market to do. But to your point, like, this is a niche. It's not for everybody. I think it takes a lot of education, it takes a lot of hard work from us to actually teach people to expand their minds. Like, wait a second, I can buy a piece of raw land for 2,500 to $5,000 and then I can flip it and you know, get $500,000 down and then get $400 a month of passive income every single month. And using software. 90% of this is automated. That's like, wait a second. Like it seems too good to be true. Or it's like, wait, wait, who's buying this? And so it takes a lot of us consistently showing up, which, you know, I have a lot of gratitude for you guys. John, you're not here, but I have a lot of gratitude for John too. Like, it takes so much work for us to educate people on. Okay, yeah, we can do this, but you can do it. And this is why, and this is why it makes sense. And so it's, it's harder right, to do. But I think it's to your point, like, it's just so much more gratifying because it's not just motivational. It's like, okay, yeah, you, you know, you guys are inspirational. But then here's the thing to do and here's the recipe to follow. And then when, like, Sam and Sam do it, we get to witness it and witness that growth and that journey. It's just words kind of fail me at that point.

Well, so great.

That's an olive.

It's very inspiring. It's very inspiring. It's just constant inspiration. That's why I love this community.

Yeah, I love the community. But, you know, getting back to the topic, like, it's all about freedom.

Yeah, yeah, we'll definitely get. Well, let's get into freedom. And by the way, Mike, you got your first shout out tonight, so, ha, you know, kudos to you. Bye. I got a shout out too. So it's. We're tied one to one.

One to one. Oh, I like it. We should have a little tick board.

Yeah, we should have a tick board. Yeah. And Mark got a shout out, so it's actually one to one to one. So, I mean, Mark, Mark doesn't count because he gets all the shout outs, but yeah. Sheena, nice to see you. I spoke with Sheena last night. Very fun to chat with you last night, get to know you and looking forward to you joining our community as well. So. All right, well, should we get on to the topic? So why. Why land beats rentals?

Yeah.

Well, I would say the first thing is, you know, back when I was looking at real estate, different real estate models, what it inspired me to look at different real estate models was the passive income mindset, Right. And, you know, that was after reading Robert Kiyosaki and listening to podcasts and that type of thing. And I had this notion that rental homes would provide passive income for me. And I think back then maybe the market was a little bit better. But when you look at the, you know, when you look at the rental market in the system, right. They're just not passive, in my opinion. I mean, you're dealing, you're dealing with tenants, termites, toilets, as Mark says, rodents, rehabs, renovations. You have a lot of expensive things to maintain these properties, let alone insurance. Right. Unexpected bills that come along, emergencies that come along, and, you know, property management. You know, if you get into a lot of rentals, you have to hire a property manager. You're paying a lot of people, and, you know, there's just a lot of stuff. And when you look at it, I just don't think it's very passive in that regard. Drew.

Agree.

Mike Zanel.

I would concur I mean, I think all real estate's great. I think what's unique about the land investing compared to the, you know, the housing market is just the cost of the investment in the asset and the cash flow that it produces. Produces. That's what's significant to me. We said this before, I think the average, you know, after vacancy rates and expenses, positive cash flow from some sort of a rental, maybe one to $400 a month. And I always say, I know there's a potential appreciation. I know you have depreciation for your taxes, but from pure cash flow, 400, $300 per month, I can buy a three or $4,000 property and create that same amount of cash flow. Isn't that really significant? That's why when people say why don't you buy these small parts of land like, but the power that is contained within these properties but for the inexpensive cost that they have and the cash flow they generate is just crazy. Like, I don't know how anything could like compare to that in terms of cash flow.

Yeah, Mark, I mean not only is there, there's quicker cash flow with land, but there's, there's no overhead with land.

No, it's so, it's so funny because know to your point Mike, like, yeah, we don't get depreciation because land lasts forever. And all my, you know, flipping buddies or multif family buddies who don't pay taxes, they're jealous of me and I'm jealous of them. Like you don't pay taxes. Like, yeah, but you don't get to call at 3 in the morning, right? Like they have a job and you know, there are headaches. Like we have nothing physical that, that breaks. Like that's why they get depreciation. There is a lifespan to that house. That roof will last maybe 30 years. And if let's say you're cash flowing 300amonth, well, you don't get that 300. You get a percentage of that 300 because you got to save for Capex. And so when you start doing the math and we get watch like you know, HGTV and they show like these flips, right? You start doing the math like, oh my gosh, they made like 16 and they spent months and they had to put like $500,000 into the shack and they didn't meet the contractors and the contractors don't show up and they've got a sledgehammer themselves. There's nothing passive about it. It's a freaking job. And unless you love that stuff, it's, it's terrible. Now, that being said, look, I don't like the word passive because even what we do isn't really passive. There's nothing really passive. It's a stupid marketing word. I would define passive as it's a one time thing and then you don't have to do anything else to keep getting money.

Right.

That's how I would define passive. But you've got to do the thing and you got to build the machine to keep getting more money in. That would be passive. Like it's like, like a business. But if you're running a business and you're the bottleneck, it's a job. You're not, you're not even running a good business in that sense.

Right, right, right. Yeah. I, I, I, I like to tell people that the good and bad news about our business model is it's boring, it's repetitive, it's redundant. I mean, the returns are not boring and all of the passive income, but, but the boring, the freedom's not boring. Right, right. Because boring brings the ability to automate, to systematize. Huh? To get it right, Scott. System.

Got it.

All right. Learning things here in the nightcap, the boring nature of it allows it to be put into something that we can control with and manage. Right. And so that's the good news as well to that whole part of it. I mean, I think it's just very unique.

Yeah. Scott, what's, what's your argument? Like, why not? Here's the argument for housing. It's forever. No one, like, I can get that cash flow forever. I own that house, I get forever cash. Make your counter argument.

Oh, that's a good one. Well, I mean, it's forever cash, but you know, what return is that at? Right. And you know, I often think of, you know, if I have $25,000 and I decide to purchase a rental with $25,000 down and I finance that home over time, but I pay monthly property taxes and I pay a property manager and I have all these repairs and everything else. Like you could do a simple calculation. You're making anywhere from 2 to 9% per year, depending on the property and what you're charging. So you're just not making very much land. I mean, what I love about land is we deal in high volumes. So I literally, I have hundreds of properties paying me every month. Right. And I've created a system to where I'm not feeling the stress with the management of those hundreds of properties. I have some overhead, but my overhead is very low because we leverage Virtual assistants in different parts of the country, in different parts of the world, where five to ten dollars an hour for them is a lot of money or a good living, but it helps us keep our operating expenses low and run a business that cash flows. And some of these land parcels, Mark, they may not last forever, but they keep giving me returns over time because if a person defaults on a land note, I take the property back and sell it again. So I had two defaults come across my desk today, and one property, I've made all my money back, and I've actually made $2,000 on it, and now I get to go sell it again for $15,000. So what do you think, Mark? What were you gonna say?

No, no, you're absolutely right. I mean, to your point, like, the real value is the. The McDonald's ing of land. That's the forever cash flow. That's your legacy. It's not the particular asset. Now, the asset we're buying is fantastic because we're in an inefficient market, and so we've got low competition. You've. You've got incredible margins, and we have no headaches, and we have to deal with any of the renters, rehabs, renovations of roads. So we have freedom. But to your point, when you have the automation and the systems and the processes and they're running it without you, you're, you know, you're snow blowing and Mike's doing jiu jitsu, and I'm snow, you know, hiking all day, doing whatever we want to do out there, you know, hanging out with our families. But the machine continues to work.

Yeah.

Rubbing it in now.

You know, we'll die, and yet that machine will continue to go because the land lasts forever. Yeah, we were creating a. A machine that lasts forever.

Yeah, I was. I was.

Oh, go ahead. Go ahead, Mike.

I was gonna say. But when Mike was describing it, when you were talking, Scott, I just envisioned the machine when you put one in and two comes out, one in and three comes out, one in and four comes out over and over. This machine, which is taking this dollar and multiplying it. Multiplying it, multiplying it.

And.

And so that's what really we're talking about here, right, Is this machine that we built, and it's got low overhead and it's easy to manage.

That's.

That's different.

I was arguing with. With Russ the other day from wealth without Wall street, because I always say. I didn't say in the book, the best passive income model is life insurance.

Right.

But we're the second best passive income model. He's like, mark, you have no idea what it takes. So they've. There, there's headaches in that business. Because I'm like, oh, it's just an idea. You have to go out and buy anything. But then there's so much friction in getting a policy. Like, you know, I mean, you know, John's out here, so let's just pick on him. Like, he's, you know, he's got to get a blood test. You know, after having 18 kids, we don't know how healthy. Think of the stress, Right? So they've done all this work, and then he might not even get a policy. My thing, be able to do it.

Very good point.

Well, you know, and, and another thing, Mark, this kind of goes along with what you're saying is, you know, when we talk about 100 land deals, like, you can scale that and you can have a very small team to do that for you and keep your operating expenses real low. Try to scale 10 rentals. I mean, the capital needed for that, the insurance needed for that, you know, the constant tenant headaches and the emergencies that you're dealing with all the time. I mean, you know, the other thing I really love about this business is our. Our stress is really low with land. I mean, every once in a while there's a headache, right? Like, Mike and I have a headache right now. We keep, like, sweeping it under the rug. Mike, we gotta come back to that one, that one down in Texas. But every once in a while, you get a. You get a. Right. Look at us. We're not really stressed about it. Like, it's not like it's keeping us up at night. We're just sweeping it on the rug. It'll come back later down the road, but it's fine. But with rentals, you just can't do that. I have a friend who, you know, she owns like five or six duplexes with her brother, right. And they bring home a little bit every month. Not a lot, but she's just always stressed. She's just always dealing with something. Buyers and court dates and evictions and problems with her brother running the business and, you know, just. That's a lot.

Yeah. I'd much rather have 10 land notes than 10 rentals, right? There's 10. That's 10 people. That's 10 serious potential headaches that could occur at any point in time. And I'm still getting less cash flow. And think of the money, like, think about the money that to put out for 10 rentals, like $25,000 down. I'm like in the Bronx in today's market, right? And I'm fighting for that deal. Like there's 50 other people that are fighting for that deal, right?

Insane.

Yeah. And your total profit on it, right, is a few thousand bucks a year.

Probably if you're lucky if something bad didn't happen.

Right, but, but, but, but you know, if we buy, you know, let's, let's keep it simple. Like if we buy 25 $1,000 properties, which there are a lot of areas out there, you can still do that, right? And we sell them for 100 down. 100amonth for 60 months. You know, I, I just, I quickly, I did a calculation earlier before the show. Like if, if you're doing, if you do 25 land deals, right, and you, you finance, spend a hundred bucks a month, like your cash on cash return for that over 60 years is like over 500%.

Is that good?

I think it's pretty decent when you're looking at single digit percentage with rentals, right?

Yeah, we make Warren Buffett blush.

Yes, yes we do. We got some people chiming in about rentals. Oliver Group Enterprises. Oliver, who are you? Because I think I should know you. I think maybe you're in flight school. Did not like all the work and headaches they had with purchasing houses. Aaron, who was at the dirt rich summit, that's the reason they shifted from short term rentals to going to the dirt rich summit and started their journey with the Landgate community. That's awesome.

Hey Aaron.

Good to see you. Aaron, Landgrind is here. Is that Shannon? Ready for church? She says.

Oh, I love it.

Preach brothers, preach. Awesome. Donna's here. New to land geek. Welcome Donna, nice to have you here.

Hi Donna.

Awesome. Oh, Daniel Bryan's got a great suggestion here. Mark could always use the infinite banking concept with life insurance to feed the land investing machine.

Yeah. Daniel Bryan, you're so right. And if you haven't listened to that podcast with Russ and Joey, we actually break it down. And how it's like the peanut butter to our jelly with the compounding aspects of what you can do. You be your own bank. Where'd Mike go?

Oh, it disappeared. Disappeared. Daniel, I love this. Daniel wonders Mark if we can get three words for every letter. Rodents, rehabs, renovations. We've got the tennis, termites, toilets, shingles, sewage, siding, asphalt, asbestos appliances.

Daniel McCallum, you're a genius. You are so good.

Great game.

It's a great game.

Yeah. And then and then, you know, Mark will turn it into a song because that's what he does. He's not very original with the songs anymore, but he turns them into songs.

What do you mean original?

That's amazing to me.

It's okay.

I created GPT.

You created the GPT?

Yeah.

Okay, how long did that take you?

I mean, is it really about the time or is it about the outcome?

Isn't about. Is there a lot of originality in that process?

No, no.

I'm just saying with AI originality.

I know. I. I get it. I mean, you know, you're not using AI with.

Do you guys remember this? B A bay B E B B I bicky by B O. Boo. Remember that?

Yeah.

We should do that with the land investing somehow. That would be good.

That would be good.

That would be good. That's got a project.

That's awesome. Oh, here we go. Chantelle Daniel's other half says it will be their next road trip game. I love that. Yeah. You guys ever played ABC Game on. On the road?

Well, you mean you find like an A in a license plate?

Our signs. You got to find a word that starts with A, a word that starts with B, so on and so forth. Yeah. Let's create a land geek road game. Love it.

That would be fun.

Cool. Well, any questions out there, folks, about land investing in general or, you know, pick our brains. Pick Mark Podolski's brain. Pick Mike's brain.

Pick. Pick Mike's brain. The dude buddy's brain.

You know, they can pick your brain when they go into flight school. They get access to Mark AI and they can literally pick your brain. Isn't that true?

Yeah, it is. It is true. And it keeps getting updated every. Every day.

Talk about that. We talk about that enough. Mark, Tell us a little bit about Mark AI. I like that.

So I cloned myself and I took all the. The trainings, thousands and thousands of hours of. Of the books and the videos and the podcasts and all of our trainings and put it into AI and you can call me. It sounds just like me. You can text me and you can chat with me and you can literally ask almost. I mean, we have been stumped in. In a month now, because if you stump the AI, it actually I get an email and then I'll answer it and I can update it, but I haven't been stumped in a month. So it's. It's really comprehensive.

I love having it say nice things about me and it.

And it will say nice things about Mike, too. Because it's been trained on it. Like, I've said nice things publicly about Mike, and I'll say it.

Wake up in the morning, hear Mark. Mike, you're amazing. Have a great day. Thanks, Mark.

Okay, Mike, are you drinking the cacao?

Yes. I love it, but I do it special. My own, the cacao. And then I take protein powder, and I get a little bit of this. Like, it's a healthy creamer. And I put it in a blender, and I have it hot. It's the frothy. It's the most amazing morning beverage. Oh, my God. Unbelievable.

I. I'm gonna do.