Virtual Assistants Assistance—Should You Buy Or Rent Your Team?

Hey, it's Mark Podolski, the land Geek with your favorite niche real estate website, www.thelandgeek.com. and on today's Roundtable podcast, we've got a large group. We got the nightcapmeister Scott Bossman. Scott, how are you?

I'm great, Mark, how are you?

I'm great. I'm great. The technician, the garrulous Eric Peterson. Eric, how are you?

I'm doing good. Getting excited for boot camp. I think by the time this comes out, Boot camp. Boot camp will be in just a couple days.

That's right. That's right. Bearland. Aaron. How are you? Bear Land?

I'm doing well, thanks.

Good to see you. We've got the breathe in, the mailing, breathe out, the marketing. The zen master, Mike Zano. Mike, how are you?

I'm doing very well. Glad to be here.

Good to see you. Good to see you. And then, of course, I love it when you call me Big Papa. The Big Papa himself, Tate Litchfield. Tate, how are you?

Doing so well, Mark, So well.

And of course, last but not least, Scott Todd from Scott todd.net landmodo.com and most importantly, if you're not automating your Craigslist and your Facebook postings, postingdomination.com thelandgeek Scott, I'm great.

How are you?

I'm great. Because you know what? We're taking flight school, and we're compressing it into three magical days. May 17. May 18. May 19. Today's podcast is sponsored by Flight School Live. Be with Scott in the room. Be with Tate in the room. Get trained in three days. Do a deal in three days. You'll be mailing, you'll be marketing, you'll be. You'll be up and running in three freaking days. I'm really excited about it.

Can I tell you, like, can I tell you what's planned?

Yes.

All right, here we go.

Don't give too much away, Scott. Don't give too much away.

Friday, we're showing up. We're in the room. We're talking about county research. Bam. We're researching the county. Right off the bat, we're choosing a county. We're getting the list. We have our magic ways of getting lists and getting them fast. We're getting lists. You're using the land geek knowledge to, like, slice through that. You're getting list by noon.

Noon.

On day number one, guess what you're mailing an LG pass. Well, maybe not noon. Maybe a little past noon. Maybe just after lunch. You're mailing in LG pass, you're using lob. You're all for letters through LG pass. They're going out that same day. Guess what? We then transition quickly into due diligence. Bam. You're going to learn everything you need to know about due diligence.

Boom.

You're going to get that solid the next day, Saturday, you're coming back. Guess what we're doing, Mark? We're doing marketing. Marketing, man. We're punching out ads, we're getting them out there and then you know what we're doing then hopefully, because I believe that flight School Live includes a property. So you're going to have a property to sell. We're hoping that you get the sale on Saturday. And then Saturday afternoon we're talking about building a VA team. We're talking about automation, we're talking about on Sunday, we're talking about financial management, capital intensive business. And then finally on Sunday we're talking about how my entire business is laid out. And, and we leave Sunday by noon. And you know what? It's not over with yet because then you're going to have follow up calls with land geek coaches to make sure that you continue to execute on what you learned. That's fast.

I love it. Scott Ball, I got questions. How do I learn more?

Mark, you need to schedule a call@thelanegeek.com training with either Zaino or myself and we can tell you all about.

All right, we'll get on that, folks, because the virtual class is starting up next month. But that's 14 weeks. But who wants to wait 14 weeks? Plus it's virtual. Don't you want to be in the room? Don't you want to like actually go up to Tate and be like, what's up, big papa? Nothing better. That's worth it alone. So learn more go tolandgeek.com training but what Scott said there was really important because on Saturday we don't want to build a job for ourselves. We want to build a business, right? And to build a business, we have to have a team. We can't do everything ourselves. Now in the beginning, sure, the cheapest person you could hire is yourself. But at some point in time, you're going to need to start building your team and outsourcing. The question Bearland. Aaron, what is the question? What's the best way to do this? Right? What do you think?

Right. I was having a discussion with somebody the other day and we were talking about it and when I started in the business, you know, kind of the, the way you did it was you. You found some VAS through various sources and you maybe made videos for them. You made maybe made some instruction sets for them. You trained them up and it took quite a while depending on what the job is, but you trained them exactly how you wanted for your business and it was good. However, since then there's been some changes in the industry. Some businesses have come up, including the Land Geek vas as well as maybe some other companies where they have ready made VAs that all you have to do is tell them what you want. They're already knowledgeable in the real estate business in our specific niche and they do the work for you. So you know, is it worth it to still train them how you want or is it a better use of your time to just have a service do it for you? That's the question I bring forth today.

I think it's an interesting question. Now the other company out there, and I've never heard a bad word about them, so I'm assuming they're very good, is Landmasters us. Now of course we have our own trained land geek VAs that are trained on our method. I'm not exactly sure what Landmasters does, but these are Philippine based VAs that understand and know our business. And, and so the question, Scott Bossman, is do you rent or do you buy? Do you have your own person dedicated that you work with or do you just pay a little bit of a premium and save yourself the time and the headache of actually training?

Yeah, it's a good question. I think it depends on the service. It may depend on the individual, but looking back at my experience, I would have paid an arm and a leg for a Land Geek due diligence VA to present to me a very thorough due diligence report where I didn't have to go into the GIS website and get the GPS coordinates and go to the assessor website and get the zoning information and go to the treasurer website or call the treasurer to get back taxes. So in my opinion, the land geek VA's for due diligence. They're going to contribute to your velocity in this business and getting more done more quickly. And they're very reliable. So that service in my opinion is very reliable. And we have a deal right now in flight school where you get 10 free deals or 20 free deals depending on what flight school package you go with. If you get those 10 deals and aren't satisfied and need to modify or tweak, you go ahead and modify or tweak and maybe train your own va but that service for me has been very valuable in leveraging my time as far as some of the other services go. I'm not familiar with any of the other. The other. The Landmaster's program that you had talked about. I know that for me, it's been a lot of training of intake managers and people helping with marketing and things. You know, you're going to find different VAs with different strengths and capabilities as well. So it all comes down to what you need, what they're capable of, and trying to match it.

All right, Eric Peterson, how about you?

Well, I think that it really does come down to the individual. I will say that ultimately, just getting started in this business, having a team or a resource that you can go to like the Land Geek vas to do due diligence or something like that is really gonna accelerate your progress. It's gonna help you kind of skip over the whole, you know, mapping out your system and your process for doing the due diligence, because they already know how to do it. You're just like, you know, hey, here's my property. This is the apn. A few days later, you're going to get a report back with all the pertinent information. I think, you know, I. Where it depends on the person is really kind of. It comes down to, at least in my eyes, you know, how customized or how personalized you might want the result to be. You know, if you have certain expectations or certain needs for your properties, you know, depending on what service you're working with, they may or may not accommodate you. So, you know, Maybe you want 15 maps of the property, and you want, you know, the distance from the property to the nearest town and the nearest major city and all these other things. And maybe the service that you're working with won't do that for you, or maybe they will. But at any rate, you're probably going to need to train them to do that in a certain way that you want it done. So there is some benefit to having kind of the knowledge of being able to train a va. But, you know, I think the biggest difference is between the two options really comes down to spending the time. And if you need kind of that customized service, spending the time to. To build that process and do all the work to create the videos, work with that va, you're going to have a lot more, let's say, interaction and management if you're training your own VA versus using a service. So, you know, as I think about it, those are some of the things that I would say you would have to consider.

All right, Zen Master Magazino, what are your thoughts?

So just so I'm clear, we're talking about basically, you know, do I want to use a service or train someone to do that job for myself?

Right.

Get my own private. Right. Well, I think it may depend on particular, what particular aspect of the business. I mean, we are, we're learning here, high level managing a team. Right. We're all entrepreneurs.

We learned.

So these are all intricate parts of it. But you know, if it's something that can be, you know, like a due diligence or something like that, then yeah, I mean, I don't have. It's just a tool, right? It's just something that you're going to use. But if it's interacting with maybe a client on the buy side of the sell side. So intake manager versus a sales agent, that might be something you might want to specialize because there might be a certain way you want to have your people interact like with the people that you're dealing with on the buy and sell side. So but the other stuff, it's like, yeah, find something that's effective and use it. I mean, you need to understand it. Mark, you always talk about don't abdicate, right? Don't just hand it off before you understand it. Understand what it's all about. But if it's a tool that works, use it. I mean, at the end of the day, we're looking for a certain set of information on a due diligence report. So if I can give someone like the Land Geek Va, the county and the APN that comes back to me, that's awesome. It's what you do with it that matters, right? I mean, that's. So I say go for it. That's a no brainer if you ask me. The due diligence. Do you really want to train someone to call and ask a bunch of questions or put it on an Excel sheet and get some photos, or do you want to have a team that's in place ready to go that'll just crush it for you. That's not even. I wouldn't think about that for a second. I'm going with the land geek VA's all day long. It's what you do with that information after you get it. I mean, so there it is right in front of you, right? You have what are you going to do with it now that's important, right? And how's your team going to handle that? How are you going to interact with the person you're Buying from. Based on that information, how are you going? So I think it all depends on the task. But overall, I think, you know, some of these services that we offer at the Lane Geek, I don't know about the other ones and because I don't need to know about them because what I have works, the Lane Geek VA team works really well. So I don't need to, you know, you know, kind of play that against another system. So I would be able to speak with the other one. But I think some things, it's definitely worth just going with a setup process that works.

Here you go.

You give them this information, you get back this boom. It's a no brainer, Mark. I go with that type of stuff. I go with all day long.

I think we have a podcast title. It's a no brainer. There you go. Tate, how about you? You want to play devil's advocate?

Sure, sure, sure, I'll play devil's advocate. It's gonna be hard, but I think I could come up with something. I guess the downside is how do we know this Mark Podolski guy isn't gonna just disappear on us and we won't have any VA's or you'll have built the Land Geek team or a VA team around a guy who is now in Tahiti drinking Mai Tai's all day. You know, how do we know that's not going to happen other than that? I mean, the guy's been in business for what, 20 years? I don't think Mark's going anywhere. But this is where something like flight school really comes into play. Because in flight school, you learn how to do this. It's not like you're going to be left high and dry if the land gig VA is closed shop, you still know what to do, you know what to look for. You've seen enough due diligence reports that you can prepare and eventually train your own va. I've done it both ways, right? I've trained people, I've taught them exactly what I wanted and it takes a lot of time. And those same people that I've trained are now the ones that are working with The Land Geek VAs. And they're fantastic and we get nothing but five star reviews from them. But it kind of blows my mind when people want to make this business more complicated than it needs to be, right? And by doing it all on yourself, by not seeking out expert advice, by not getting good training and good fundamentals, you're making it harder on yourself. For what? To save a little bit of money. You can always make more of that.

Yeah, but even if I die, which hopefully I won't, but no, no, we're.

Prepared for that, people.

Yeah, I mean, we are prepared. I mean, we have office in the Philippines. We've got really good Internet, and I don't even manage it, so.

No, and that's just it, you know, it's not like this is a test drive. Right? We're established. We're not going anywhere. As long as I need due diligence reports done. The land gig vas can't disappear. Right. Because I'm gonna keep you busy. So I know Scott's the same way. I know, you know, Zaino and everybody else on this call, it's like we do enough due diligence report to justify keeping the office open over there. So if you're listening to this podcast, you got nothing to worry about.

Yeah, I think we've got 11 or 12 people now. I mean, it's really grown and they're all great and well trained and hard working and experts in their areas. So I don't want to make this a land geek va sort of commercial, but I do think that there is a lot to be said about having somebody ready to go and not having to spend the time, which is ultimately money going on to upwork, creating an ad, you know, creating tests, training, you know, and continually kind of going through that when you have somebody right there. Now, Scott Todd, whom never overpays compared to myself, might have a different angle on this as far as is it worth the investment of going through that so that in the long term, ultimately you will be paying less.

I do overpay, by the way. I overpay on certain things and I'm just like, duh. But that said, Mark, I disagree that I don't agree with the con. I hear what you're saying. I hear what everybody's saying. I do. But I don't like the concept of leveraging other people's businesses. I don't like that concept. And the reason is, is because I don't want to be dependent on somebody else. I want to build a team that's responsive to me and not to build a team that is reliant on someone else's company. To me, it's. And like, I'm not trying to be offensive when I say this. It could be polarizing, but I think it's the lazy way out. Okay, no problem. It's the easy way out. It's the easy button. Boom. And what I mean by that is when you don't control the team, you have no leverage. Meaning, like, I know that there's not too many times where I need something back right now, but man, if I give it to somebody else and they go and they do the due diligence, well, I'm at their beck and call. I can't say, hey, priority, I need this one back now. So now I can't control it. I can only react to what they can do. I can't tell them this is the way that I want to operate. They can try to, but then when you're working with an agency that's doing all this stuff, you're never going to get the same person. There's no guarantee you're going to have the same person. And when you don't have the same, it's always going to be done differently. That said, you know, I want to, I want to be able to control the process. I want to be able to control the thing. Now. I don't. You don't need to go through and create all these tests. I teach them in flight school. I talk about teaching these tests. Well, guess what? You've already done the work. Most likely you've already done a due diligence package. Give them what you have here. Go do due diligence on this particular property. You don't need to create a formal test. Just give them, hey, here's a property, go do. Here's a list, go scrub. And you know the results because you did it. And it really isn't that complicated. What, what does become complicated? A little bit is the time investment. I'm going to spend some time to go do the, you know, to train these people to do it the way that I want it done. But if you don't really care how it's done and you don't really care about controlling that component of the process, take the easy button way out. But I don't want to build my business on somebody else.

Yeah, I think that has a lot of value what you just said. Bearland. Aaron, what are your final thoughts on this?

Yeah, I agree. I think it depends on where you're at and what your goal is. I agree with a lot of what everybody said, including Scott. I'm person that likes to control my process the way I've done some things when I had to do them myself. Now there's kind of systems maybe built around that. So I need somebody to fit my system, not me fit theirs. On the other hand, there is that convenience aspect where, you know, especially if you're getting up and going, and you know, you need a, to start doing a lot of work without putting in a lot of work. Then the services are pretty handy, you know, and they're already trained and ready to go. And honestly, I don't see really why you couldn't do both as well. Due diligence, for instance, you might have a due diligence VA that really knows you and works with you how you want, like Scott was talking. But then, you know, you come across a group of properties and all of a sudden you have to do, you know, 20 or 30 maybe you're doing a big bulk deal and that's gonna really bog down your one or two people. You might need to go to a service and say, hey, we need to, you know, I need you to do 20 of these. And you know, you can have your people do 10 of them. And you know, it gives you a way to also cross check results and that sort of thing to make sure everybody's, you know, everything looks good. But it seems that there's definitely a place for both ways.

Yeah, I mean, I think that's really the right answer. And Eric, you know, so eloquently stated that it really just depends on you. So are you a complete, total, you know, insane control freak like Scott Todd, or are you a reasonable person that looks at their business and really wants to just focus on the things that are really going to move the needle in their business long term, which is ultimately, you know, making money on sales? It just depends on you. I don't think there's a wrong answer, you know, in the same sense, freak.

I'm not a control freak.

I mean, let's just say, like, let's just say, for example, you're a plumber, right? Whose house would you rather go to? Mine, where I let you do your work because I know you're an expert at it. Any years experience or Scott's where he's hovering over your shoulder saying, no, that probably isn't right. You know, we're going to need a ball bearing for this. And you know, this or that. And a certain.

I can totally see Scott being very hoverish, right? Like, just like, what are you doing? Yeah, especially now that he's got passive income. You know, he's like, the plumber comes over and his wife's like, what are you doing today? I'm hanging out with the plumber. I'm working, observing.

Well, you guys might need to wrap up this podcast because the pool guys come in to clean here shortly and I got to go out there and Supervise them. But you just want to make sure.

You skim in the right way.

Listen, that said, Mark, I have a question for you. What type of plumbing job do you know of where they use ball bearings? I'm confused.

That's very true.

It's because he doesn't watch over their shoulder. He doesn't know.

I don't know. You know, is there someone in the.

Audience who can tell us for sure if there's any type of plumbing parts that have ball bearings in them? I mean, I think the toilet. Simple concept, no ball bearings required. Have you lubricated the ball bearings in your toilet lately?

Oh, wow.

This has gone. This has gone different directions real quick.

I thought we were talking about VAs.

But you know what? Ultimately though, but I think the real answer though is that you're not doing it yourself. Right? Because you have the cognizance that hey, this is not an activity that I should personally be doing because it's a three to six dollar an hour task. Right. So I think back to Bearlands, you know, final answer. You can do both ultimately. And I don't think there's anything wrong with the. It was a ball valve. That's right. That's what I meant. Not a ball bearing ball valve. It's a valve. And what is that?

What is the ball valve?

It's a, you know.

Your name's not Mark. Your name's not Mark.

Oh, Mark. Oh, okay. We'll let Mark answer.

I'm a trifle death in my left ear. I want to thank the listeners by.

The.

You know, I just want to remind them, share the podcast and you know, certainly don't feel badly about yourself if you are using the land. Geek Vas. It's not being lazy, it's ultimately being smart.

What's better than doing nothing?

Yeah. Or it's better than.

Absolutely. It's better than you owning it. Right. But like, I don't know, I like.

To build a team.

No, I, and I, and I agree. I mean I look, you know, we did our own proprietary software program. We could have done three different services, patched together and built it on someone else's, you know, land, so to speak. And be completely dependent to Scott's point on those three services. Not a great long term business strategy. Same thing with Geek pay. Right. That being said, I think in the beginning, nothing wrong with it as you're. But ultimately I think Scott's right. I think the long term best investment is don't build your business on somebody else's land, so to speak. Right. Who's got the tip of the week this week? Do I have the tip of the week?

Yep, yep, yep.

What's my tip? I'll tell you my tip. It's a no brainer tip. It's a book I just read titled Atomic Habits by. Did I talk about this as a tip? If I haven't, I should have Atomic Habits by James Clear. Tiny changes, remarkable results. An easy and proven way to build good habits and break bad ones. It's a really great book. Check that one out. That is my tip of the week. So hopefully everyone's getting value from the Roundtable podcast again. Please share this with a friend. Subscribe rate Review the podcast. Send us a screenshot of that review to supportlandelandique.com we're going to send you for free the $97 passive income launch kit again. Today's podcast is sponsored by Flight School live. Coming up May 17th, 18th and 19th, start getting your business. Really? Launched in three days. Learn more the landgeek.com training all right, are we ready to do this?

Let's go, Mark.

One, two, three.

Let freedom ring.

That we need to outsource. I'd actually prefer a British voice. Let free ring. No, that's terrible. I mean, I just lost all our British listeners.

Wait, are they still upset because we did let freedom ring? Like America? I don't know.

We still recording?

We're still recording. I'm a huge Hamilton fan, by the way.

You're a huge what?

Hamilton fan? Yeah, the musical.

Only Scott Todd could antagonize the Brits.

Well, I do have to laugh. Like, I saw a thing the other day that said, what's her name? Princess Megan or whatever, you know, American in the royal family. We're winning. I don't know.

You know what show I started watching on Netflix. It was very well done. I didn't think I would like it because my wife's like, let's watch this together. Like, really? Okay. No one's getting killed or, you know, kidnapped or anything like that. She's like, no, it's just good. The crown is really good crown.

My wife and I, we were cruising through Netflix the other day and I just. She's like, I can't find anything here. She gives me the remote. I just, like, go over, like two notches. I'm just like, boom, start playing. And I noticed I took the Tate Litchfield rule. How many episodes and how many seasons? And there was five episodes and two seasons. And it was five and five. And I'm like, beautiful. I'm only committed now for 10 hours. Let's go. Let's roll. And you know what? It was really a really good show, Mark. And we got to the end and we're like, is there a third one coming out? What? It's been a while. I forgot what it was called. It was an English show. That was really good.

Yeah.

I mean, the wisdom of Tate Litchfield is really. I mean, just throw that gems. This is why boot camp is so special. Is that that networking break? You can just ask Tate, like, what are your rules for life again? And he'll tell you.

Yeah, I'll give you the Commandments.

The Taylor Commandments.

Netflix series need to be two seasons or less. Right? That's a good one. You know, donuts daily. Yeah, yeah. Ride your bike every day. Yeah, there's all kinds of things. Donuts on a daily basis. Stick to the food group. Right? Bikes and donuts. I don't know.

Food Group 1.

Yep. Just Food group. Well, if you get some that have, like, fillings. Right. You can get, you know, your fruit.

Yeah.

Is any of this discussed in lots or is that on the second season?

That might be second season, depending on how lots. Season one goes over with everybody, and it's now available, actually.

Where do you access lots?

What is it, markets?

Is it the landgeek.com lots?

Yeah, the landgeek.com forward slash lots. You know, depending on the feedback we get, production quality will go up and we'll be able to do some more fun stuff in episode or season two. So, you know, I broke my own rule, though, on season two or season one, because it is nine episodes, but they're. They're only 20 minute episodes, so I think Scott probably watch it. I don't know.

By the way, if you heard that in the background, Scott Boston has not been viciously attacked.

I think that's like, Scott Boston's got the doghouse like Arsenio Hall. He's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. That's Rudin.

That dog got real excited about lots. What's that link again?

The land geek.com los. That one?

I think so. There it is.

So welcome back. Right. Like, because you weren't back last week, you're fishing.

Mm.

How was the Cheesecake Factory down there?

There was no cheesecake. I mean, Scott, you might as well have considered this a camping trip. It was like, a couple days before we left. We got an email from our. From our liaison over there, and they're like, yeah, the supply ship is like six months late, so you need to bring some food with you, it's like, wait, wait a second. There's no food. And they're like, well, there's plenty of rice and fish, but if you don't like rice and fish, bring some beef jerky and some granola and those kind of things. So every meal of every day we ate rice and fish. So I loved it. It was good. Fresh tuna, you know, hard to beat that, but it was a great trip. Tons of fish. Good times, you know, good company. It was fun.

Living the dream.

Trying. Trying to. What was that? It's called Christmas island, but it's in the nation of Kiribati. Kiribati. That's what it is. So you go to Honolulu and then fly directly south 15 or 1600 miles, and then you'll hit it. It's right there in the Line Islands.

Yeah. Scott did tell you the story about how he was almost stuck there for another week?

No.

Oh, I didn't tell you this. So there's only one flight a week there, and you're tropical place, so there's storms and it rains all the time. And we were flying out on Wednesday of last week, and then you cross the International date Line, and so you land in Hawaii on Tuesday. So it's really confusing. But Wednesday morning we got up and it was the craziest rain and thunder storm, tropical storm I've ever seen. And we get to the airport, we check in, and, you know, we're just kind of hanging around. Our flight leaves at 7:30. 6:00, comes on, no plane, no announcements. Okay. 6:45. No plane, no announcements. 7:15. No plane, no announcements. 07:30 comes on and they're like, hey, the plane is in the air. It's circling Christmas island, but due to the weather, it can't land right now. We'll be back to you in just a little bit. Fifteen minutes later, they come back on. They're like, yeah. So they still can't land. And if the plane can't land, your flight will be canceled and you'll be rebooked for next Wednesday. Wait, did you just say like seven days from now? I want to go home. I'm ready. And so everybody starts getting all worked up. And they got on the intercom again and they're like, the captain says he's gonna go for it, he's gonna land. We're like, great. Everybody starts cheering. The plane lands, landed on like one wheel, did like a wheelie for, I don't know, hundred feet or something like that. And they land and they get on the intercom. And say, all right, everybody get on the plane as fast as you can. They don't have a ton of fuel left, so we need to take off in the next 25 minutes. And it's like, wait, what? They're just letting us on the plane. They're not scanning boarding pass. They're not checking IDs. They just put us on the airplane.

They didn't.

They just said, sit down wherever you can. We got on the plane within, like, I don't know, 10 minutes. We're taxiing down the Runway. It's crazy. Lightning, rain. You can't even see out the window. And the pilot punches it. We take off really rough. We get up to 40,000ft, sunny, bright. He gets on. He says, all right, thank you, guys, for cooperating. We're assuming everybody who needed to be on this flight's on it. You know, take your seat, relax. Based on our estimations, we should have just enough fuel to get to Honolulu. And it's like, just enough.

Wait, this is not a place.

There is nowhere to land in between Christmas island and Honolulu. If you run out of gas, like, there's no emergency landings so you can.

Land in the water. I've seen it done.

You've seen it done.

The miracle on the Hudson, he did it.

Yeah. Well, let's just say this little Air Fiji flight was. It was not going to make it on the water. Like, there's no way that thing would have held together. But we land. Or it was funny. He's like, based on our estimations, we should have enough fuel to get to Honolulu. So sit back, relax, and have a good sleep. Like, nobody sleeping on that flight. After you say that, how do you keep an entire flight up? Tell them you think you have enough fuel to get there. But it was crazy. So I almost didn't make it out of there. And I would have had to stay an extra week, which I can think of worse things. But I was ready. And my dad was in panic mode. He's like, I've got clinic tomorrow. I have to get home.

How would your wife have handled that? Like, honey, I'm stuck here for another week. Sorry.

Well, I wouldn't have been able to call her.

Never showed up.

Yeah, great. Yeah. I mean, I wouldn't have been able to call her. They had, like, some crazy expensive WI FI out there. But I would have messaged her and just been like, christmas island has me. I'm lost. They took me. I can't get home. But I was. I told her when we landed in Hawaii, and she's like, I. I would not have been okay with that. You would have had to find a way out of there. It's like there's literally no way to get off this island.

What am I doing? Row in a boat?

Yeah. It's not like you can get a private jet to come pick you up either. It's like, one flight once a week. That's it.

They call me. I would have gotten you.

Yeah. I mean, I think the moral of the story for me is I have now a reverse bucket list of things I never want to do. Number one, fish with Tate in Christmas island and risk my life. That's. That's, like, on the top of the.

Hold on, Mark, before you say that, let me just. Let me just share a photo with everybody and. And you tell me if it's. You wouldn't want to do this. Hold on.

Eric just sent a picture in the. In the chat. It looks really cool. No, I want to do it. I just want to survive.

I mean, I did have. After we took off, I realized I had emergency evacuation insurance, but I don't know. That sounds kind of expensive to turn on, so I probably just would have had to stay an extra week, that's all. So I just sent you a picture.

Bearland. Aaron's running the podcast. He's like, tate and Mark are stuck in Christmas island another week due to inclement weather.

Scott's flying out to go get them.

So.

Yeah.

Yeah, I did read a. I read.

A.

Flight accident report about, like, so. So like, a plane that I could fly. Like, I'm not talking about, like, some big commercial jet. I'm just talking about some plane, you know, like a private plane. Right. It crashed. Like, they had to make an emergency landing in the middle of, like, the Pacific Ocean because the pilot had decided he was gonna fly from LA to Honolulu. Like, what are you thinking, man? Like, seriously, come on, get on a. Get on a real plane and fly that thing. I wouldn't do it.

I mean, I've spent some time now in the Pacific area, like, on these islands, fishing, and it is remote. Like, you're out there, man. I can't imagine going down out there. I mean, you can see how these big planes just disappear because there's so much water out there. I don't know.

Those pictures are gorgeous.

Incredible, man.

Yeah.

It's back on the bucket list, Mark.

It was. Maybe we should have a boot camp there. Rustic boot camp. It'd be a week long.

Week long?

Yeah.

Maybe two.

Yeah. Or book for one. Plan on two. Kind of thing.

Just bring. They got plenty of rice. You just gotta bring whatever else you want to eat.

Yeah, Scott, you would have hated it.

I feel like we have.

If you were on a deserted island, what would you take to eat? That's a good question mark.

Question.

Cheesecake Factory.

Cheesecake Factory.

I'd just uber. I'd Uber eats it. I'd take my phone.

I think, by the way, they. They probably have a Cheesecake Factory in Honolulu. So you did go through Honolulu, right?

What we could do is better yet, do this. Have. We'd have a boot camp in Honolulu, and then we could go fishing.

See, that's module for when you have financial freedom and the time. What do you do with it?

Yeah, we can do, like, land Geek Adventures. You know, fly with Scott, fish with Tate, you know, jam with Eric. Jam with Eric, Go in the dojo, you know, ride a motorcycle with Barryland. Aaron, survive Wisconsin with Scott. Bossman in the winter, Put on a fire with Zaina. Yeah, exactly. Just have dinner. Firehouses.

Mike, can you get the. Mike, can you get the. Like, maybe we should do a boot camp or something up near you. You get the fire truck out there, and we have, like, you know, like, wet and wild days, man. Like, you know, like, we have the. You let the hose go, and you gotta work together as a team to go out there, climb out there and control the hose. Like, teamwork and everything through the Land Geek Adventures.

Good work.

Have you ever done that, Mark? Have you ever, like, like, wrestled a fire hose?

I don't even know what a ball bearing is.

Okay, So I did that. Like, I went to this competition, Like, I was, like, on a team, and, like, you.

The.

The hose was loose, right? Like, it was loose. And so you had to, like, go to the, like, the base, like, where it starts, and you had to crawl out there. Zaino knows what I'm talking about. You know, we're kind of honorary firemen here. I had to crawl out there. Me and my team had a crawl out there, and you had to, like, control the, like, capture the hose. Because, remember, it's, like, going, like, crazy like this, right? So, like, we're crawling out there, and I'm, like, leading the way, Mark. I get to the end, and the. And we're wearing the helmets and the mask and everything. I get to the end, I go to grab the nozzle. I grab it, but when I did, it, like, shot back on me, and all the water goes up into my helmet. It's like, drowning me. I'm like, oh, I'm out. Somebody else get it. Oh, man. Hard to dig.

I don't even know what to say from that. All right, I'm running to Whole Foods. I'm making a salad. Just a salad. I got to be healthy for boot camp, so. See you guys.

See you.

Bye.