Time Versus Money—What Is Your Time Worth?

Hey, it's Mark Podolski, the land geek with your favorite niche real estate website, www.thelandgeek.com. and we get the usual suspects. Today on this week's Roundtable, we've got the technician, Eric Peterson. Eric, how are you?

I'm good.

It's great to see you. It's been hours since.

I know.

Been hours. We've got Bearland. Aaron Bearland. How are you? Hey.

I'm doing great.

Sorry I missed you all. Excited to hear how it went.

You were there in the room for sure.

I felt it.

You felt the light.

Yeah.

We've got the most feared woman in the country, the terrorist hunter, Mimi Schmidt. Mimi, how are you?

Hi, Mark. I'm doing great. Running on caffeine, keeping me alert, awake.

I don't. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I'd say half my life is being run that way now, so. Good on you. And then we've got. I love it when you call me Big Papa. Tate Litchfield. The big Papa. How are you, Tate?

I'm good. Dealing with the boot camp hangover, but happy to be on the call.

Yeah. It's a good hangover, though, right?

Yeah. I mean, it's just drinking lots of water, you know, trying to get back on schedule. Naps, lots of nap.

Lots of naps.

But good.

And then, of course, last but not least, you know you love them. Scott. Todd. Scott todd.netlandmodo.com and most importantly, automating your Craigslist Facebook postings, posting domination.com forward/the landing. Scott. Todd. How are you, Mark? I'm great.

How are you?

I'm good. I'm good.

I have no boot camp hangover. Do you know why?

Why?

Because I slept it off. Like, I didn't race out like you guys did. I stayed there. I. I was in bed that Sunday night by like, 9:30. I was able to sleep until, like, 7. Got it all out of me. And I didn't have to worry about the. I think the travel is the double whammy. I don't know. I feel refreshed. Great. Like, I feel like you guys are slacking now. Like, come on.

I'm definitely slacking. I'll just be honest.

I'm having Tate send me some of that Vegas hangover tonic that you get. Just not some alcohol.

Isn't it eating, like, just raw eggs or something? Like, isn't that what you do?

I don't know. I Just sleeping.

I have to tell you, though, it was. It was an amazing room. It was an amazing boot camp. Everyone there was so great, so cool to hang out with. There wasn't anybody there I wouldn't hang out with, honestly.

You know, what's really. What was really cool is. Is, like, really seeing, like, everybody, like, come together. And, like, they're. They're all so motivated. Everybody that's there is motivated. Like, they really want to make a change in their lives. They really want to change things up. And, like, everybody that comes there that brings that energy is so much easier to teach in that room or to lead the room when the room has that, as opposed to, you know, like, people who don't believe or the people who are skeptical, because then that creates a negativity in the room. So it's really kind of cool that this room had, like, more of that feel.

I felt like, oh, yeah, it was really cool. I mean, it's really cool. Like, at the break, like, Jeff Detmer's coming in and talking about his case study, how he closed the deal in real time at boot camp. John Burnett did the same thing. Of course, you know, Mimi's in the background. How many deals you close at boot camp, Mimi?

I have three, but I have two that are super close. That came out of that, too. So three.

So wait, almost five.

Yeah.

So there is boot camp Magic, and then the land duo, Jen and Tyler Kelly. They closed how many deals they closed today?

5 in the 5 cents. Boot camp ended.

5 since boot camp ended. And then there's Roberto in the background. Hey, Tate, I got the 12,000amonth. Passive, right?

Like, well, and not only that, it's.

Nothing like, pass the potatoes, Mark.

He's doing a deal right now where he's going to pay off all of his student loans in one go.

That's awesome.

I mean, one go, and he's an attorney.

He probably has some substantial student loans.

Yeah, he does. Yeah, that's right. It's not like it's not undergraduate community college.

Yeah.

It's law school.

Yeah. One go. I mean, we talked about it today. We came up a game plan, and we kind of came to this conclusion that once those are gone, he's free. They'll probably be retiring.

Yeah. I mean, you know, the funny thing is, though, like, we always say, comparison is a thief of happiness. And it is fun to throw out these numbers, but if you're not doing those numbers, so what? This is a marathon, not a sprint. As long as you're mailing and marketing, you're doing the business. You'll get there. So there's. There's no, you know, don't. Don't beat yourself up. And. And I think that was also sort of the theme of the weekend as well, was how much is enough, Right? And it was really special to just be there and feed off that energy and see everyone's success and excitement. And even Lamar Bunce was great. Like, he voxed me after the weekend. He's like, I made the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle. That being said, I'm still more excited about land than I am being on the front page of the newspaper. Like, that's cool. That was really cool. So our roundtable topic, because we could talk about boot camp the entire time, is something that I think is so important for people to really kind of nail down mentally, which is the importance of time versus money. And a lot of people, I think, don't even realize how valuable their time is or if they might have some kind of general idea about it. So, Eric Peterson, what is your take on time versus money?

I was just sitting here thinking, oh, Mark's gonna start with me, and I don't want to go first. I'll go first. So, you know, in this business, especially getting started, I think that it's very easy to look at all these tasks that have to be accomplished, you know, and let's. Let's say you're past the point of knowing how to do them, so you've done them. You know, how it's supposed to work. In theory, you could hire it out and have someone else do that for you so you've got more time for other things. But I think so often what we see in new students especially, is that, you know, they don't want to spend that money, even though it might be just a few dollars a week to a VA to scrub a list or to get a list. Instead, they're like, well, it's only going to take me an hour or a half hour to do that particular task, and I'll just keep doing it for now, and I'll wait till, you know, I have more revenue coming in or whatever that that time is. But the reality is, if they really look at it, their time is worth much more than that. If they can do the task or get the task done for $10, and it's going to take them a half hour or an hour to do their time is very likely worth more than $10 an hour. So, you know, that's. That's kind of what we're talking about when we're talking about the time value of money. But that's that's kind of my thought on it. Just to start us off.

All right, Bearland. Aaron, you want to piggyback on that?

Yeah. You know, I guess it becomes a mindset issue when you're bootstrapping. You know, it's a necessity that you do a lot of stuff yourself. And then once you have some income coming, you know, you need to switch your mindset to the other direction and let go of a little bit of cash to free up your time. But it's a really hard thing to do. And I think it really, it depends on maybe like, how long you've been doing something yourself or your past experiences in life, maybe another job or another business where, you know, that entrepreneurial kind of attitude is, you know, get it done, do it yourself, move on, you know, that sort of thing. You need to begin to think different way, because when your mindset is saving money, doing it yourself, you're into that scarcity mindset, you know, and it's like, I don't think you can truly get into that other mindset of abundance until you can learn how to value your time correctly and get. Get tasks that don't give you that, that high. I don't mean reward, but you know, that, that dollar for per minute kind of reward, you need to get those off so that you can kind of shift over into that abundance mindset and create something abundant. Otherwise you'll, oh, it'll always be scarce. You're going to do it yourself. You're not going to pay somebody. You know, that's definitely a real thing.

So.

No, absolutely. We talk a lot about that at boot camp. Mimi Schmidt, time versus money. What are your thoughts?

Well, even though monthly, I sit down and I look at what I need to automate or delegate, in my mind, I had, you know, we've been told that the sales part is the last part you get rid of. And so I, in my mind, I thought I wasn't ready for that yet. And this past boot camp was. It was a. It was an awakening for me too, because I was so busy with leads and I was so grateful. Tate and Eric said to me, mimi, you need to hire someone to help you with these leads. And it's true. I have so many leads that truly can't manage them all. And I feel like a lobster in a pot where I was fine, you know, it was thinning my days and I'd set my habits and was trying to keep to those, you know, my mailing Monday, da, da, da, da. And it was getting where I couldn't get to the other things because I was chasing so many leads and it become painful and I didn't even realize it. So I need to not wait a month. I need to just. If something is painful, I need to start thinking about how am I going to automate or delegate that. Right. And I also had a coaching student go to a conference recently just about success and home businesses and he heard this quote, I don't know who said it, that if you're not delegating your work or automating your work, you're either in the beginning of your business or you're failing at your business. I mean, it's understandable that when you're building your business, a lot of it you're going to do yourself because you want to learn it. But if you're all in, you're, you know, you got to delegate that or you're going to be failing at your business. There's not a lot of gray there.

No, no, there's, there's really not. There's really not. Big Papa, what do you want to add to this discussion?

I would say this like I'm a cheap guy and it is hard for me sometimes to realize that I don't have to do something and I can find somebody else to do it for me for less. And some of it comes down to maybe I still enjoy it, but the reality is my time is better off spent helping out with my family than it is doing certain things. It doesn't necessarily mean that I have to work on my business while somebody else is doing something for me. I mean, I'll outsource things all the time. That just allow me to have a little bit more freedom and not think about things. And everybody's time is worth way more than what you think it's worth. And I was chatting with somebody this past weekend and he said, oh, I've got a. One of my to do's from boot camp is I need to learn this new program. I said, why do you have to learn that? I mean, don't you understand the basic concept of how it works? He said, yeah, yeah, yeah. I go, alright, so go hire somebody. We looked online and we found somebody who was an expert in this field for $7 an hour. And we hired them right there on the spot and they're going to work an hour a week for them and boom, we just removed one pain point. So it's kind of interesting and I've said it many, many times. I'm not an expert at anything except hiring experts and I think this is where that concept of time versus money comes in really heavily in my life, is there are people out there who are the best at certain tasks, and they will do it for me for a very, very fair price.

No, absolutely. Absolutely. And, I mean, I'm going to give Scott Todd his take, but I've got a few opinions I want to share.

Well, Mark, I would say that, you know, a lot of people don't know what their time is worth.

Right?

Like, you know, they. They really struggle with that piece, and it's really kind of a. It really. It really is kind of an ego thing. When you stop and think about, like, oh, well, my time is worth. You hear people, like, say this all the time. Oh, my time is worth $2,000 an hour.

You'll.

You'll hear, like, fancy attorneys say that when they're talking down to the car dealership or whatever it is. And so you hear this thing and you're like, oh, well, that guy's just being pompous. Well, he's not being pompous. He truly is somebody that understands the value of his time. And it's not. Sometimes people think like, oh, let me do my billable rate. Well, your billable rate or what you earn per hour, that is not what your time is worth. I think a lot of people get stuck with that because they're like, oh, well, I make a lot of money at my job, $25 an hour at my job, or $50 an hour at my job. And they think, well, that's what my rate is worth or my time is worth. And it's worth what? Way more than that. Honestly. Your time is worth what you say it's worth. Like, that's because that's how you're valuing it. And so what I always say is, like, find the amount of money that you want to make, divide by the number of hours a year that you want to work, and that's your hourly rate. Now, anything that's less than that in terms of that, you can hire somebody for. For less than that, well, then you're making money there. And anybody that's over that will then maybe figure out how to do it yourself. But what you'll find is that very few people are over what you think that your time is worth when you stop and put it in that formula. So now go down the path. You'll find that the crazy things that we do, sometimes we get in our own way. Hey, let me go wash my car. As opposed to getting on sales calls and calling people because honestly, the salespeople, that's where all the money is in this business. So that's where you should be spending all your time. Not let me go wash my car or let me go create a logo or oh, let me go work on my website. All of that is crap. Because none of it, none of it makes the cash register ring. It might one day. But the reality is, is that that stuff is the stuff that really, you should be focusing on the sales piece. Right? Like the money make the cash register ring, and that's where you're going to earn your money. But you need to really come to grips with what your time is worth and how much money you're truly losing by, oh, let me go work on my logo, or oh, let me go do the easy work, or oh, let me go scrub my list. That's ridiculous.

Yeah, I mean, I think one of the more tragic things that happen for people is the entrepreneurial paradox where they quit their 40 hour a week job to work 80 hours a week in their own business. How is that a good trade off? Okay, so you got rid of your boss and now what you're not. I mean, that's kind of unsustainable for a long period of time now.

Yeah.

If you're in your 20s and you're, you're starting up, you know, a company and you got to do what you got to do. Like, there's nothing wrong with bootstrapping, but you need to be able to have this mindset of what is my time worth? How do I delegate, automate, systematize, eliminate, so that I can really enjoy my life, which is the ultimate sort of endgame of doing all this anyways. Nobody has any passion for the raw land. They have passion for the business, provides them and their family, which is more freedom, more flexibility, more time, the elimination of money stress so they can do what they really want to do in life. And I think not having that sort of awareness of why you're doing this and working systematically to get there is nothing short of tragic, honestly. All right, I'll get off my soapbox. Let's go to our tip of the week. Does anyone have any final thing they want to say? I'll say one more time and that's it. You can always make more money. You can't get more time.

I knew it was coming.

I knew it was it.

I thought if he makes it through this entire soapbox speech without saying it, I'm gonna have to never show up on this roundtable again.

But it's true.

But I just knew you were gonna say it.

It is.

When are you gonna die? Tell me. What day are you going to die?

Unlike you guys, I don't have a death calculator or death or something. I'm still in my 20s, man. My life is good.

Yeah. I mean, if you want to, you know, work on your gratitude journal, read the newspaper. Like it's just pure luck. Right? These random things can happen to you. Terrible luck. Right. Like every precious moment. Every moment is precious. Every single moment.

How's your smell, Mark? Can you smell? Well, Is your sense of smell really good?

Yeah.

Okay, well, as long as your sense of smell is good, study shows that those people with weakened or lower sense of smells have a 50, 50 chance of not making it 10 years. I think you might be good, man.

Are you left handed? People that are left handed have a 10 year less life expectancy than the righties. I'm a left.

Are you serious? That's not a thing.

No, that's a fact.

That's a fact. You know what it is?

It's the stress of dealing with like right hand cameras and right hand everything for all you people. It lessens our lifespan.

Tate's worried now.

I mean, I'm not like super worried, but I am gonna go to the Oracle and see if this is actually true.

It's true.

Do.

It'S true.

Have a shorter life.

All right, well, Tatiana's looking that up. Let's go to Schmidt for our week. A website, a resource, a book. Something actionable to our businesses, improve our lives.

It's called Avocado, but it's. It's spelled A B O C H E O dot com. And it's a slack integration that allows you to text. I had my first text sale this weekend and I honestly get a better response from texting than I do from emails, so. And I do think that it's a more current way of communication, texting versus emailing. But I think once you join, you can get a free trial. Once you join, I think it's the lowest subscription is 50 bucks a month.

That's pretty cool. I got on Luke Harris's text stream and it was. He still texted me if I want to buy land like I think I did or so, yeah, buy land. I think I do want to buy it. Yeah, I love getting those texts.

Yeah. I got a guy this weekend, a Land Moto guy send me the Land Moto thing and said he, you know, text me a payment link. Well, I couldn't do that, but I could text in my website. It's so easy to text from your laptop too. Because I used to text somebody and look at my CRM and type it in my phone, right. If I can do it right from the CRM, you know, paste a website link or a Google Drive folder for people to flip through pictures on their phone, then that can engage them more readily. I see your face there.

What am I thinking? I really like it, but I don't like the price.

Yeah, I'm with you. 50 bucks a month.

Yeah, I mean it's, it's pretty expensive. And then if you want Zapier integration, it's like 200 bucks a month if you're on. And so, I mean, I love the idea and I'm just like, there's got to be a cheaper option.

If 50 bucks a month, you only get 1250 messages.

How do we make this cheaper? I know there's a way to do it.

I don't know, but I love the idea of tying it into Slack because you all know I love Slack. So I mean, I'm all about that. But.

But there's a site you can go to that integrates to all this. It's. It's Twilio. Right? Scott, why don't we integrate Twilio into LGPass?

I think that's a fabulous idea.

Scott's not answering me.

So that we can get text in there.

I don't think we want that in LG Pass.

We don't.

I don't.

Like there's a. Was it. I think it's called call fire. Callfire.com might be a better solution that you could integrate into Slack potentially. And if not, you could do it through Zapier, but you could also do a zap through Twilio there too.

All right, so. So there's a way to do it.

There's a way. Might not have to think about. This is like an easy done for you kind of a thing. If you value your time and you want to go create that. Recreate the wheel Mark.

No, you're right, and I apologize for even, you know, saying that. But that being said, Twilio is already out there. It's not like I'm gonna create my own SMS service. The service is already there. I'm just trying to be. Look, there's difference between being resourceful and in saving time, right? I mean, look, I'm not out here spending an hour clipping coupons. Like I understand the value of my time in that regard, but if I could take three seconds and do a little Google search, I Think I didn't get the memo?

That's all I do on Sundays is just cut out those coupons. Is that wrong?

That is so wrong. With your hourly rate, you should be doing nothing else. Yeah, absolutely.

Look, whatever you do, do not do this. Do not. When your wife asks you to do something like, hey, will you clean? Will you take the garbage out? Do not go ninja style, honor and say, do you know what my hourly rate is? That does not end well. That's probably less than mine. Does not end well. Don't do it.

No.

See that?

Absolutely not. Because basically, that hourly rate goes. Divides by two real fast.

For life. For life.

Life for life. Yeah.

And if it goes up, it's still divided by two.

Yeah, it's still divided by two. Better just to take the garbage out with a big smile and just, you know, feel so grateful that you even have a garbage to take out.

Yes, honey, on it.

Cheaper than the alternative.

This sounds like a negative hourly rate.

Yes, that's what it would be.

Negative hourly. Negative hourly rate. All right, well, I thought this podcast was. Was very enlightening, and I hope the listeners are finding that to be the case. And if you want to help us out, send the podcast to a friend, email to them, put it on. On the interwebs, the social media sites. I don't know what the cool kids are using these days. The Instagrams, the Facebooks, the Twitters. Whatever it is, please share it. Also, subscribe rate, review the podcast. Send us a screenshot of that review to supportlandgeek.com and if you truly, truly understand, like truly deep in the bowels of your soul, the value of your time, you have an ethical obligation to learn more about how we can help you get. Get to the next level in your land investing business to make more money with less time by learning about flight school. Live in flight school. Go to thelandgeek.com training. Get on a call with the nightcap meister, the nightcap OG Scott Bossman, the Zen master, Mike Zaino, and they will walk you through exactly the ROI that you are going to get on your time on your money in these. Really? I mean, I don't think I'm. This is hyperbole. Revolutionary programs. Mimi doesn't like the word no. Yeah. Good.

Yes.

Eric. Is it an exaggeration? No, no. We had over a quarter million dollars of passive income at boot camp this weekend. That was so gratifying to see. Really.

I mean, honestly, I think it's more because there was money in the room that we didn't even count. Like, there was money in the. In the audience that we either didn't know or could capitalize on. Or to capture, I should say once a day. There was more. There was more. That was low.

How many? We didn't even calculate the money in the VIP room right, either. We only calculated maybe.

We just looked around the room at that snapshot. Right. Then we didn't count everybody down in the other room either.

Wow.

Pretty cool.

Real money in the room is what it was.

I'll tell you where a lot of money is, is right on this roundtable.

I can't believe it's free, honestly.

You know, my hourly rate is.

Mark.

I'm just right here.

I'll tell you what, you're losing a lot of money right now. But you know what, though? You can't put a price on this kind of fun. Honestly. Like, what else are you gonna do?

As long as we call it fun and not work, right?

Yeah. I mean, Tate's losing a lot of money on the bike. He loves it.

Yeah.

I tell my wife, I'm like, hey, listen, I gotta get on. I gotta get on another roundtable. And it's like the most fun I have all week.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, Eric's, like, telling his wife, look, I can't practice the Gita. I got a. On the roundtable. Right? She's like, do you realize how much it's all good, Mark. Barely. And Aaron. I mean, barely and Aaron. I don't even want to know. But you know what's funny is that he's not even able to even process this for a couple minutes anyways.

Yeah, it's coming to him. He'll start laughing real loud in a few minutes.

Yeah.

I was in my county two weeks ago for my.

There he goes.

Did you see that?

And we drove by a carriage, a horse drawn carriage. And I was trying to get pictures of it so I could send them to you, Aaron, but my husband was driving too fast.

But I thought, by the way, we converted a new land geek in Dave Schmidt. That was pretty exciting.

Yes, it was fun.

That was really. That was really fun.

Yeah. He enjoyed meeting all of you guys.

Mimi, I gotta ask you, like, when. When, because he's a pilot, when you're driving down the road, does he, like, say, like, I feel the need, the need for speed and then take off?

He believes because he, you know, can Travel at Mach 1, that he has this expanded situational awareness that is above all of ours, so he can speed as fast as he wants. I'm like, well, honey, yes, you're probably the best driver on the East Coast. I'll give that to you. But not everyone around you is as good as driver as you, and you can't anticipate what they're gonna do. So, yes, we constantly have this issue.

Because I will tell you, like, he has a lot more hours of flying than I do. But I will tell you that I do believe that being a pilot does give you better. I agree with what he's saying about situational awareness, because, like, I feel like. I feel like I can keep the car rolling straight and still know what everything that's going around me and still look at little instruments, the car, cell phone, whatever. Like, oh, reading my wife's phone. Like, I got it. Like, yeah, yep, no problem. I still see it all, like, I don't know, like. And then other people freak me out when they do it, but, like, for me, I feel like I got it under control.

Same thing. And he's a tractor pilot, so he feels like he needs anytime he sits in the right hand seat that he needs to tell you what to do. So even today, driving Natalie to school, like, honey, you can sit there, but this is not an instructional drive. And sure enough, he started to. I said, this is not an instructional drive.

Backseat it, baby.

Yes. Agree with you, Scott.

Yeah. See?

All right, well, I want to thank all the listeners again, and we'll see everybody next week. All right, Tate, you got to come out here, man. I found a new Indian buffet, and it's not even a buffet. It's like. It's, like, really good. It's not like you go up and get your food. Like, they give you, like, seven different dishes. I think they're losing money. Nobody can go for, like, only six people in the last five months have been able to do round two. Four of them are teenagers. One was, like, a massive individual, and. And the other one was, like, this really diminutive woman who could just systematically eat really, a ton of food.

All right, I'm game.

Are you game?

I'm game. Let's do it, man. You just left good Indian. I mean, that's worth a trip. It's not far. It's a 45 minute flight for me.

What restaurant are we eating at the night before boot camp in Vegas? It's.

It depends. I gotta figure out where our hotel is. I don't even know.

It's on the Strip.

It's a different hotel this time, right?

Yes, the Westin on the Strip.

Ooh, the Westin's nice. On The Strip?

Yeah, like, yeah.

Oh, no.

It'S by the Flamingo.

Dan, you sent out the link today.

I think we're going to allow 200 people to register for the boot camp because I think 50% of them are not going to show up just from the Strip. They're just going to get lost in Vegas.

I will say it seemed like there were a lot more east coasters by about 20 than there were Midwesterners.

Yeah, it's a no brainer for them.

Mimi at the Phoenix Boot Camp.

Yeah, it's a no brainer. Remember, get out of the snow. It snowed.

Mark, you had everybody raise their hands. I was so impressed with how many East Coasters were representing when you guys.

Were at boot camp.

Yeah, I mean, we're doing this for the East Coasters so they can get out of that environment and get to a better environment. Like what a gift, right?

I see where we are.

Yeah. You see? Is it a good area?

Yeah, yeah. I mean it's downtown.

It's right behind the Flamingo.

Yeah.

Wow.

It'll be.

Oh, man, this is dangerous, man.

It's right by the Bellagio and.

Really good shit.

We hit the Bellagio buffet.

There's good shopping.

One of my favorites. There's right by the Link too, which is really cool. At night. Go up on the Ferris wheel, Mark.

They got a restaurant at the Bellagios. Down on the waterfront. Down on the fountains there.

I've eaten there.

I've eaten there too. It's great.

Yeah.

Really?

Have you eaten at the. I think it's a Picasso restaurant down there.

Oh, yeah, I've been in the Picasso.

I've eaten Habo Wabo's down there.

I feel like we need to expand Scott Todd's palette though.

Oh, I know where we should go to my favorite restaurant down there.

Giada's restaurant.

Giada.

Oh, man.

My wife and I went there. That was incredible.

Is there a Cheesecake Factory?

You know what? And there it is. The mic drop.

Bear land.

Aaron did it. All right, get out of here.

I guess we gave him the opening.

Anybody mentions that thing, they're dropped immediately. No good.

Yup, there it is. All right, on that note, I'm gonna go get myself some Oreo cheesecake and get on with my day. Because you know what? My time is super valuable as is all of yours. But thanks, everybody.

Thanks.

See ya.

Have a great one.