The Right Mindset To Have When Venturing Into Something New

Mark J. Podolsky and five land investors discuss the mindset needed to start investing. They emphasize beginner's mind, avoiding comparison to others, and building sustainable habits like mailings and follow-ups that you can scale later.
Questions this video answers
November 3, 2020
January 2021 (next bootcamp)
16 weeks
www.thelandgeek.com
slab.com
Chapters
Hey, it's Mark Podolski, the land geek with your favorite niche real estate website, www.thelandgeek.com. and on this week's roundtable, we have the usual suspects. We got Dude Buddy, the nightcap OG Scott Bossman. Scott. How are you?
I am great, Mark. Saw my first snowflakes today in Wisconsin.
Okay. So I've read up on snowflakes. I don't know exactly what those are, but. Nice.
How can that be a good thing?
No, it's not. It's brutal. It's horrible.
I mean, Tate, Scott and I are so tired of shoveling sun. We've got the Zen master, Mike Zano. Mike, how are you?
I'm doing great. I'm happy to be here. How are you?
Good, good. Good to see you. We got the technician, Eric Peterson. Eric, how are you? Good.
No snowflakes here. 75 degrees today. All is well.
Nice. And I assume you're not gonna enter into all you can eat rib competition.
No.
No.
Okay.
Not at all. I love it when you call me big Papa. Tate Litchfield, how are you?
I'm excited because we have boot camp coming up in, what, T minus four days? Three days.
Three days. Yeah. Three days.
And I know this is going to come out after the. After bootcamp actually happened, so it was so good. Everybody who didn't attend missed out so much.
Yeah. For those of you who missed out, go to langeek.combootcamp and start registering for the next one in January 2021. This is our last one of the year. Kind of crazy, you know, It'd be great, Tate, if we could just look over your shoulder, watch your work. Go to thelandgeek.com lots get on that sort of Netflix Y series, watch tape, work. And of course, we got the brain, the professor. Your flights go Sherpa. Scott, Todd. Scott. Todd.net, landmodo.com Learn anything about anything. Investorninjas.com Scott. Todd. How are you, Mark?
I'm great. How are you?
I'm mad at you. Very mad at you. All right. Oh, so a lot of you. I don't know if everybody knows, but Scott has been voxing us the last month. Is it maybe month or two? Hey, guys, I'm out on the golf course. He's taking up golf, right? And so I went and visited my son for parents weekend in Tucson at U of A. And he is getting into golf, and he's playing golf with his friends. So I thought, oh, I'm going to get into golf, too. So we go to this Beautiful course. And we're just going to go on the driving range, just going to practice, and the putting range and what's it called? Like, the short game, putting and chipping range. So we go out there and we start hitting balls. And my son gets up there first. First swing. Swing in. A miss, right? He looks at me and starts smiling. Goes up again. Swing and a miss. Completely unfazed by this, by the way. Then he hits it, and he duffs it. He's like, dad, you want to take a few hits? So I go up there. My first hit's perfect. Now, remember, I haven't played, like, in 10 years or something, but it was just beautiful. And I look at him. I have, like, this cocky grin on my face. He's like, do it again. Second hit, like, just duffed. Third hit. Terrible. Fourth hit. I'm, like, hurting myself now. Fifth hit. Slice. I'm getting so mad and so frustrated. I'm like, how is this even fun? And then we keep switching off. He's having a great time. I'm completely miserable. Which leads me to mindset, because I can imagine that for people starting something like land investing, they can go either one of those two mindsets. And so I want to talk about it. Eric Peterson, what are your thoughts? Oh, wait, I'm sorry, Eric. I didn't want to start with you. We've had this talk. Scott Bossman, what are your thoughts?
Well, I mean, for me, it's a few things, right? Usually when I take on something new, I like to be excited about that thing. So your son's excited, obviously. And even though he's definite here and there, he's probably over swinging. He's missing here and there. There's obviously something about the game that excites him, and he's got a vision for the future to continue playing that game and maybe get better. That's how it was for me with land investing. So when I have my eyes on something like that, that speaks to me. It's all about the action. It's all about the reps. It's all about the discipline and the frequency with which you apply yourself to those things. And, you know, you go out there every single day, and it's going to go from duffing it and, you know, missing it to eventually connecting more regularly with it, and you're just going to get better and better. But to me, it's all about the action. It's all about showing up. And I think in our. In this business, it's so much about that, right? We all get Worried about losing money. I put all this money toward this piece of land. I talked to somebody the other day. They own 10 properties. They haven't sold any yet, but they've only been marketing them for, like, one week. And they were all nervous. And I'm like, you have to remember, you bought 10 properties at 25 cents on the dollar. Let's do the math here. You invested $10,000 in these properties. You are now sitting on a land portfolio worth $40,000 or more. So it's about perspective in that regard as well, but it's just about the actions. It's about taking the action and putting faith in those actions that it's going to produce the results down the way.
Yeah, no, absolutely. Absolutely. How about you, Zen Master?
Well, if I think mindset, I guess probably what would come to me right now is rhythm in our business. I've been talking to a lot of people that I think what happens is when they first come in, they set the expectations too high. So I don't know if that relates to the golf, like, thinking you're going to, like, nail it every time and get it in. So they have these expectations. I mean, they hear stories, too, because I think the magic is there. They hear about. Maybe they hear Scott Todd's story or your story or one of our stories, and they hear about. And so they set these expectations that they need to sell so much land, do so much. And I think that. I don't think. I know it leads some people to feeling a bit overwhelmed because they develop these very grand expectations. And I try to tell them, I said, really what I think is important in this business, the mindset you should have, is to build a rhythm, a rhythm that can be maintained and then later on scaled. So this is why it's, you know, it's common in the flight school to be taught 20 mailers a day, it's a rhythm. Why not send out a thousand? Well, that's not a very good rhythm.
Right.
It's going to lead to things in the future that are going to be difficult to deal with. So when it comes to setting ads, people like, well, I'm trying to set up, like 10 Facebook accounts. I'm like, well, just start with one. Build a rhythm. Post an ad. A couple of days later, post another ad.
Keep.
So I think that our business does have all of these rhythms, and I think the expectation you should have is to build a model that you can sort of scale later. But in the beginning, just. Just get a rhythm. You have your mailings going out Click, click, click, right? And then you're coming back in, you're doing your due diligence, right? You're working the clothes, you just going full cycle. Then when it comes to marketing, you're putting an ad out, you're putting another ad, you develop a process. Maybe you go on and you go into invest in Ninjas and you get Eric's airtable follow up boss sort of process, and you build a rhythm. And maybe it's you doing all the parts, but it's okay because you're developing a rhythm. So to me, the mindset, my advice for people in terms of our business would be to, you know, think about more in terms of developing a rhythm in a slow pace. You know, just, just go through, make sure the action get done. Because if you can do them and you can define what those actions are, you can define what the deliverables are and what the positions are within the business that you know, then you can build scale. So that's why I think that I've just encountered a few people, Mark, recently that they seem overwhelmed and I feel really bad. I talk to them like, listen, you're putting too much pressure on yourself. You're thinking that you have to do all of this, which is great. It'd be like, hey, I'm going to get up today, do an hour of Pilates, which I do love, and then I'm going to do a mild jog and then I'm going to ride the peloton and like, man, what a great day, right? But if you think you can maintain that rhythm every day or three days a week, it's highly unlikely you burn out. And so to prevent burnout in this business, develop a rhythm and something that's small and manageable, and then grow it.
No, I really agree with everything you've said. Big Papa Tate Litchfield, what are your thoughts?
Mental fortitude is something that you gotta have. You gotta have it to be good at just about anything in life, whether it's riding a bike, starting a business, or learning golf, right? You got to be able to say, you know what, there's a reason somebody else is better than me at X thing. And that's because they've put in 10,000 hours worth of time to it, right? And if you expect to pick up a golf club and I don't, I've never played golf a day in my life, so I don't even know what the right term and all it hit a hole in one on your first go. I think that's probably, probably very Unrealistic, right?
If I were fly fishing with you, you catch a fish every 10 casts or 20 casts. Who do I think I am that if I've never fly fished that I would catch anything?
I mean, you gotta pay your dues. And it's no different than the land business, right? People come into this business and maybe this is partly our fault. We talk about our success and how once your business is up and running, how things just happen. You just sell property, you're just at lunch and it's like, boom, woo hoo, I got a down payment. This happens. And it happens, honestly, frequently for some of us, and that's really cool. But when we talk about it, we make it seem like, oh, we didn't really do anything to achieve that or to earn that. And that's not the case at all. We've put in the hours, we've come up with the systems, we've done the homework, we've done the hard part ahead of time. So that when we are out at lunch and we do get that ding, ding, ding, new property soldier, it's almost an expectation, right? It's like, yes, of course, we sold a piece of property. Why? Because I'm prepared, right? I showed up with a game plan. I've got a VA team, they're working, I pay them well, they do their job. So there's a lot of things you can overcomplicate in the business, right? And it can be as simple as making your processes extremely in depth, extremely complicated. And sometimes the easiest way to train somebody is simply jump on a phone call with them and say, look, here's how I want you to do things. Now you can always outsource and say, great, I want to outsource it now. I want to have a script read up written up for this, etc. Or something else that a lot of people get upset with or frustrated with is the offer letter. Yeah, absolutely. LGPASS allows you to edit your own offer letter. Do any of us have an edited offer letter? Probably not. And mine's simple. The godfather of Land told me this is the one to use and that's the one I'm using. Mark, you haven't told me to change it, so I haven't changed it. It's my mental fortitude, right? It's like, okay, I'm following the process, so that's my thoughts on it.
Yeah. No, it's so true. It's so true. The technician, Eric Peterson, what are your thoughts?
Well, I think you know, Mark, there's a short little quote that you often cite, and that is comparison is the thief of all happiness. And that's a lot of what I'm hearing as we're kind of talking about this idea of mindset. And, you know, I think a lot of us are going towards new students coming into the business, learning how to do this and maybe feeling like they can't do it, or they haven't had the success that they anticipated as quickly as they anticipated or things of that nature. And I think that just comes down to this idea of comparison, because if you go out in the community, you go to Facebook or you're listening to the podcast, and like Tate was saying, you know, you hear about someone, you know, selling a property on the beach or while they're at dinner or what have you, and, you know, you've got couple properties in inventory, and you. You've had them for two months, three months, and you've been unable to sell them. And you start to look around and say, well, why is this not working for me? And I would go back to, I guess, you know, relating back to the golf thing. I mean, you can't go out and be a professional golfer, right? You could study books, you could, you know, watch videos, all this stuff. But without actual practice in real life, like, you're probably not going to be any good. You know, one person might be a little better than another, naturally, but, you know, the likelihood of you being a professional is pretty much slim to none, right? So it takes practice. You've got to go out there, you've got to do the reps, as Mike was saying. You've got to send out your offers, you got to put your ads out there on Facebook, on Craigslist, on Lanmodo, and you've got to reply to those and follow up with those people consistently, because it doesn't just fall into your lap most of the time. It takes work and effort and consistent work and effort. And, you know, over time, you can refine those efforts and processes in your. In your business and begin to remove yourself from some of that, build systems, delegate, etc. And, you know, really build the business. But it doesn't come overnight. It doesn't come by, you know, just going through the investors toolkit and being like, all right, I'm a land investor, I'm gonna go out and, I don't know, sell 100 properties this year or whatever. Like, it takes work.
Yeah, no, absolutely. Absolutely. Scott. Todd, what about you? What do you think?
You know, there's a lot of good advice here, right? But one of the things that always amazes me. And I'm gonna go to golf for a minute and then I'll come back to land. What amazes me is that when you're trying to do something, you want to learn how to play golf? No problem. You can look at this all day long. You can go to a golf professional, hire that golf professional to help you refine your swing. Like, it's amazing. You go to, you go to somebody that this is their professional at this, and guess what? They can tell you like that, well, if you do this, then this is gonna happen, right? Or this is why you're messing up. Or do this instead of that. And then you go to these golf professionals and you listen to them and then you're like, that's a good idea. I'm gonna start doing it. And then you leave their presence and then you go to somebody that's on the golf course with you. Another, it'd be like me going to you, right? I hire a, I hire a golf professional, teach me how to play golf. And then you and I are out there on the golf course and guess what? Let's just say that you have a better shot than me on this one. I go, wait a minute, how did you do that? And then you start telling me how you did it. And all of a sudden I'm like, I'm going to try to do it like he did it. And I'm going to ignore what the professional told me to do, right? And we see this happen a lot too. And what I mean by that is we like, there's people here that do this full time. There are people here that, this is their full time living. Like this is us on this call. And there's others. And if you're gonna take advice from somebody, well, then you better take advice from people that actually know what they're doing and not some high handicapper that's worse than you are or want to be like you are. And this happens a lot on the Internet. Go figure, right? And I've seen situations where, and you see this on some of the other real estate boards a lot is somebody just post a lot. They just post, post, post like they have no life. They just post. They may know practically how to do it, but when it comes to execution, they're terrible. So my advice is listen to what everybody on this call said. Go out and go through the reps. Go slow in the beginning. Get your foundation. I always like to say it's a lot like learning how to walk. We all remember how we how we learned how to walk, Right? No, you don't remember, like we all fell down multiple times and we got back up and today we walk around like it's no, no big deal. We got it. Okay. And that's the same way it is in this business. Go through the motions, practice, don't overthink it. Trust in the system. And then what will happen is you will start to stand up more on your own. The next thing you know, you'll be running around. Next thing you know, you'll be running 5Ks. But also when somebody says something to you and gives you advice, if I were you, I would look at the person who's given me the advice that weigh it like somebody else who's doing this full time. You know, advice is worth its weight in gold. Somebody that's just posting on the Internet or they're two months older than you are. In this business. Be careful. That's all I'm saying. Be careful who you take advice from as well.
Yeah. And it's true. When I was out on that course, the whole time I was frustrated and miserable. I kept saying to my son, I need to get, I need to get lessons. I need to get lessons. You know, this is just, you know, not fun. I need to get lessons. And so you're right. Like I need to go to that golf pro and shorten my learning curve. Which bring us to our sponsor for the podcast this week, which is flight school. Wouldn't it be great to have Scott Todd as your instructor and take you up that mountain of land, vesting quickly, safely and efficiently? 16 weeks, you start building passive income.
Learn more.
Go to landgeek.com training schedule, call with the Zen master Mike zano or the NetCap OG Scott Bossman and figure out, is this going to be the right path for you to start building passive income at a one time sale? Recurring income every single month, no renters, rehabs, renovations or rodents. So getting back to that analogy with me on the golf course, my son right next to me doing the exact same thing. One of us is miserable, one of us is joyful. And it all comes down to beginner's mind. My son had no expectations. He's just happy to be there. He just had this beginner's mind. He knew the more he goes out there, he's going to get better. He didn't have any ego with it. There's no expectations. In the back of my mind, I'm like, oh, if Scott Todd were here, he'd be laughing at me. I can't hit the ball. This is miserable. I'd be shooting in the 2002 if this were a real thing. I kept having all these crazy thoughts, and I literally was sabotaging myself instead of just going out there and being in nature and enjoying time, learning something that is hard to do and just having that beginner's mind. So I think what everybody said was great, but expectations, ego, they can SAP the joy out of this business for you if you're new and if you have the Matt Forbes approach, where I'm just going to put my head down the next three years, and I'm just going to do what these guys tell me to do and see what happens. That's all he did. He had his ups, he had his downs. Three years later, he's kind of at that point, he hit his goal and he talks about it in the group. That's like, what if I just did that? What if I just went out there? It's like, okay, I'm give myself three years. I'm going to get instruction, and I'm going to go out three times a week, and I'm really going to dedicate myself to just enjoying this game. Not a certain score, not beating Scott Todd, just the mental aspect of learning something and improving over time, it would have been a completely different experience. Right. Anyways, I feel like I'm talking a lot. Tate, what do you think?
Oh, I think it's good. I just. I mean, at the end of the day, everybody, you just gotta. You gotta persevere. It's not easy, right?
It's.
It's hard. Doesn't mean it's complicated, but you gotta put in the work. And that's something that if somebody's telling you it's easy or it's fast, it's quick, you know, take away a grain of salt. I really like what Scott Todd said about being careful who you listen to. And, you know, I think the best people you can surround yourself with are the ones who are living the lifestyle that you want. Right. If you could see yourself in their shoes, pay attention. Because they got it figured out to a certain degree. Doesn't mean they know everything. But be careful who you take your wisdom from.
Yeah, absolutely. And you know what I love about the idea of golf? Because right now, I can't stand golf. But you know what I love about the idea of it? It's the fact that on any given shot, if I get lucky enough, I can hit the ball as well as any professional on any given shot. The only difference is I can't do it consistently, but when you really hit the ball well, you can hit it just as well as any professional. I'll never be able to dunk a basketball ever. Never. But on any given day, I could probably hit the ball as well as any pro could on a round, and that's an amazing feeling. And the same thing in business. On any given day, you can close a deal just like us. It's just, can you do it consistently? And that's the difference between somebody who is an amateur and someone who's a professional is doing it consistently, taking the time and dedicating yourself to that craft or building that business, which is what we're doing. Right. We don't want to build another job for ourselves. So I wouldn't call it land investing necessarily a craft, but in the beginning, it is. I mean, Eric, what do you think?
Yeah, I mean, to me, it just comes down to consistency.
Right.
Consistent effort over time will equal a positive result.
Yeah. All right, well, I'm gonna give the Zen master the last, last word on mindset, because he is the Zen master, and I did bring up beginner's mind.
Well, how about I leave us with a quote from Elvis Presley? I know you all love my quotes.
Sure.
All right. It says, rhythm is what? No, I'm not gonna sing it. It says, he says or he said. Rhythm is something you either have or you don't have, but when you have it, you have it all over. So, you know, this business built. I just think that's talking about that relate to us, is put a rhythm into your whole business. And the way to do that is to build it in a way that can be scaled. So why you go into flight school? Because you build a model that has inside of that model, has all of the elements to be scaled. Right. And then in that model, you can build a rhythm. And so then your whole business develops a rhythm. And you do that in a micro environment. You push a few deals through, and then you just start growing. You just start growing. But you do it at a pace that works for you. Some people, they really want. They don't like their job or they have some imminent. So they may push that rhythm faster than others. Right. But it's all personal. But, you know, just do it in a way that's manageable, in a way that, you know, can be replicated day after day. Not one time mailing a thousand letters one time is putting out 100 ads in a day. It's all, I guess, good, Right? But if you can't do it Consistently. What's the point? You know, like you said, go out and have one great shot, but then you never do that again. I mean, what's the point? You know, you want to develop a rhythm and then allow yourself to get, you know, just getting better and better at what you're doing. So.
Yeah.
Thanks, Elvis.
All right. I love it. Does that count as the tip of the week? Eric Peterson does.
I was thinking it was an excellent.
Tip of the week.
I feel like the listeners are not going to accept that because it was during the roundtable conversation. We didn't make that segue. We're at that point in the podcast where we're gonna ask Eric Peterson for a tip of the week. A website, a resource, a book, something actionable for the art of passive income listeners to go improve their businesses, improve their lives. Eric or Tate, give us that credit.
What do you got?
I got it.
You got it?
Yeah.
It better not be a surface tip.
Unless you guys want it. Eric, you want it?
No.
You can do it, Scott. We'll let you have this one. That's fine. I was prepared. But that's okay. I mean, that's fine. You do it.
Okay, go ahead.
No, no, no, no, no, Scott, I don't want to take away from your thunder. I know. You have. Obviously something really exciting. My tip can wait. Fine. No problem.
Go ahead.
I was just here to bail out Eric. No, no, no, no, no, Scott, I don't want to do this to you. Do it. Go ahead. I'll. I was just here to bail out Eric, but go ahead.
Time that Tate gave the terrible tip of the week. But we won't rehash that episode, right?
Because you gave this tip. You just tip. You gave that same week eight weeks ago.
That's right. Yeah. Wow. You know, eight weeks ago.
Because I've been doing it for eight weeks.
The mic on tape.
All right. Wow.
Check out slab.com, guys. Slab.com/com. Why? Because what better way to take knowledge from here, your brain, and put it into a knowledge base that your team can work off of. It's all about taking information from your brain and putting it in helping other people's brain, right? Like that's what teams do. So if you're struggling to come up with a knowledge based system for your business, check out slab.com.
Wow, this is great. I hate when Scott Todd gives an amazing tip. That's fantastic. That is a really good tip. Even if you didn't like our content today, it's worth it. Just for the tip of the week. Slab.com Fantastic. Well, I want to, you know, thank the listeners and remind them that the only way that we're going to be able to, you know, put Eric on the spot and then have Tate or Scott bail him out is if you do us three little favors. You got to subscribe, you got to rate, you got to review the podcast. Send us a screenshot of that review to supporthelandgeek.com we're going to send you the $97 wholetailing course for free. Eric, are we good?
We are great, dude.
Buddy.
Excellent.
Tate, I love it. Zen master.
Very good.
Scathod. Good. All right, let's do this. One, two, three. Let freedom ring. Not bad, not bad.
So.
Scott, are you taking golf lessons?
No.
However, not currently. However, I have thought about it, and, you know, man, there's a. There's a guy. See, you have a little bit of advantage for me. Like, if you Google, like, best golf coaches in America, there's, like, three of them right there in Scottsdale.
Like, literally three.
Like, you could probably be there in minutes from your house. Right, right. The best ones in Florida are a little bit of a drive for me, and I'm like, you know, I can go get a local guy, but you want the best. Like, you don't learn the fast, Go get the best. That's what I'm thinking. So I might have to explore that and really make an investment in it.
No, I. I definitely want to start doing it. Not even just for. Not that I love golf, because I've never really loved it because my frustration tolerance is so low, but just the mental aspect of it and to see, like, can I increase my frustration tolerance? Can I, you know, just quiet my mind on these shots? And ever since that terrible experience with my son, I've been meditating now and an hour a day, as opposed to 20 minutes, and just being more calm, more at peace, because clearly, something. My ego just went off the rails and really just took what should have been an idyllic time with my son and derailed it. And it was all about me. It was just not great, you know, just to watch these thoughts and, like, this is not fun.
It's. It's funny because I always joke with my daughter, like, well, in one year, I can join the. The Senior Golf Tour, Professional Golf Tour. So I tell her, like, I got a year to practice, and she's like, dad, you're never gonna make it. And so then, you know, the other day I came home from playing golf. It's like, how'd you do. I'm, like, not sure I'm gonna make this senior tour.
Yeah. But there is something about it. Like, you know, Tate and fly fishing, golf, you know, Boston, being on the lake. You know, I guess fighting fires is nature. You know, Eric's in, you know, beautiful part of Tennessee. Like, we're all kind of doing stuff in nature and getting out, which is nice, especially during COVID It's kind of. It's a Covid safe activity.
I thought you were gonna say that Eric got out and ate ribs or something.
Yeah, I was waiting for that, too.
Come on, man.
You know what? Let's give Eric some props. How much money did you raise, Eric?
Almost 600 bucks.
I think.
Just under 600?
Yeah. So not bad. But how was that bike race? Was it a race or just. You just went out?
Well, it was supposed to be like, a big, giant group ride, but with COVID they. They kind of did away with that. They were supposed to. Everybody was supposed to ride to Lynchburg, Tennessee, to go to Jack Daniels, and then come back the next day. They decided not to do that. So the team I signed up with just did a local ride. You could also just ride yourself or ride inside or something like that.
But.
But I did this group ride with the team I joined with, and we rode 60 miles on Saturday.
Wow. Yeah. For Ms. Is amazing. Amazing charity event. But did you feel like the Peloton prepared you?
I think it did, because I didn't do any outdoor riding prior to that, so the first 40 miles was actually not bad. The last maybe 5 miles were a little bit tough because I've never ridden 60 miles on Peloton. The most I've done is maybe 30, so. But it was good. It was a little slower the next day. A little tired, but it was good.
Yeah. So, Tate, do you just internally laugh when you hear 60 miles? Like, how does it. What's your reaction to that?
Bravo, man. That's good. I'm all about more people on bikes. I mean, I don't care. 60 miles is a long way to pedal. And telling Eric, sitting down on a saddle for three, four hours, I mean, that takes courage. That's not pleasant. So good on him. And hopefully next year, he's doing the hundred version. Century.
Let's see.
It's for a good cause.
I love it. Yeah, that's great.
All right, and on that, we'll see everybody next week. Thanks, everybody.
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