We Built a 7 Figure Land Empire With Just $5000

Sam. All right, we're live. In tonight's Nightcap episode and our passive income podcast, we're going to talk about going from hustler to CEO how to scale your land business. You started out grinding, hustling deals, wearing every hat, doing all the things. But at some point, that grind becomes a bottleneck. If you're doing everything, you're limiting your growth. Tonight on Land Geek Nightcap, we're talking about how to break free from the freelancer trap and scale your land business into a real machine. How do you transition from solo operator to business owner? I'm joined tonight by Handsome Rob John Burnett, professional land investor, land investing expert. John, where are you, man? It's beautiful out there.

Yeah. I'm on a ranch in Southern Idaho. It is beautiful out here. So it's, I'm connected via Starlink. So there's, it's, it's great. We're very peaceful.

Yeah. Fantastic. And of course, the nightcap OG dude, buddy, land investing expert Scott Bossman. Scott, how are things in own Alaska?

Things are. Things are great. It's on Alaska, but I like how you say it. I like how you say own Alaska. It's. It's kind of cute. Yeah, things are going great here. Glad to be here.

If you don't know me, I'm Mark Podolski, also known as the land geek from thelandgeek.com and what do we specialize in, fellas? How to make passive income without renters, rehabs, renovations, or rodents. Total freedom. But let's talk about going from hustler to CEO how to scale your land business. So story time, I guess. Let's start with Handsome Rob. Jb.

You're. Yeah.

When you first started out, what were all the things you're doing? How'd you, how'd you find your freedom?

I mean, I feel like when I started, we were doing even more things than people have to do now when they start. Like, we were, I mean, we were stuffing envelopes and doing meal merge and Microsoft Word. We were, I had, I think, 15 Craigslist accounts that I was managing and, like, posting in all of these accounts and like, managing phone numbers for all of them and all kinds of stuff. You know, it's a lot. And, and Val and I, we were, we would get up early in the morning and have, have time together, and then we get in the land business. And then I'd work on it during lunch break. But she would handle kind of the interactive side with people. So she would, she would interact with people interested in selling their Property that responded to our offers and people who were interested in buying our property. And then I did everything else basically in terms of identifying markets, sending out mail, doing due diligence, all that kind of stuff. And so that's kind of what it looked like for us in those early months of land investing.

So you're hustling.

Yeah, it was a grind. It was, it was. And we had like, I mean, we would work and we turned it all off at 8 o' clock and we had no land times. But, you know, we, we had to commit to it consistently in those early months. So I love it.

Dude. Buddy, how about you? How, how'd you start as the hustler?

Yeah, I think it was just, it was a different time back then, right? It was, it was 10 years ago already. And I would just say that the tools were not as good and we were doing more work at the time. Right. And I have a favorite story about this, Mark. When I went into coaching in 2015, Scott Todd was my coach.

Right.

And I still did a lot of deals, but I was doing most of the work with everything. There just wasn't, there just wasn't as big of a push to outsource. There weren't as many tools to outsource. There weren't, you know, as many software platforms. I mean, as John said, we were licking and sticking and stuffing our own envelopes, right. Because we didn't have a data tree at the time. And we would start with these county lists that were 30,000 line items long and you'd have to scrub them down to 100 line items. Would take you hours to do that. But, but when I went through coaching and I give Scott Todd a hard time about this all the time, Scott Todd's first recommendation to me to become more efficient in the land business and to automate was to. Was to use a letter folding machine in the corner of my office. And honestly that's. That took away so much that, that saved me so much time because I was no longer trifolding all of these envelopes. I throw 100 envelope, 100 letters in there and get the machine. And the machine was so loud, Mark, like you could hear it across the the house. And that was my first automated tool in the land business. So things have just changed so much in the last 10 years where we don't have to monkey around with that stuff anymore. We can send out mailers matter of rather than five hours. And we're so spoiled nowadays, we, you know, uphill both ways to school and back.

Yeah, you guys are so spoiled. When I started, yeah, right. There was nothing. I was doing everything. And, and I remember, I remember going, I actually write about this in Dirt Rich too, about scaling a land business. I remember meeting my buddy Ori for coffee and he sold his company for like over $360 million. And he's mentoring me and I'm, and I'm kind of like, kind of humble, bragging about my business. And I'm telling him, you know, I'm going, I'm doing this and I'm going to that. And then I'm going to Kinko's and I'm printing out the map and I'm, and I'm FedExing them their buyer package and it looks great. And then in the afternoon I'm taking buyer calls and I'm closing deals and then I'm going to, you guys are probably going to remember this like daylight software. And I'm creating, you know, these, these, these purchase sale agreements and the promissory note and the land seal contract. I'm like, man, I'm killing it. I'm like, this business is fantastic. He's like, stop. I'm like, what do you mean? He's like, first of all, you're not an entrepreneur. You don't have a business. I'm like, what do you mean? He's like, you're, he's like, you're telling me you're doing all these things. He's like, what happens if you stop?

What happens?

Your so called business? He's like, you got a job and if something happens to you, your family, that's gone. I'm like, oh, well, what do I do? He's like, well, you got to systematically get yourself out of all these jobs and create a real business. He's like, a business is something bigger than you. It's going to survive beyond you. And so it took five years. Five years. It was like flipping on a switch to, to start systematically doing this. And I remember hiring my first VA Janie from South Carolina. And I remember giving her like, like, I don't know if it's a credit card or I forgot how I did it. But she was able to buy paper and envelopes and she hand wrote all the offers on the envelopes. And that was like my first taste of due diligence. Before like we, you know, there's no LG pass and automation and all that. So it's, it's a thing, right? Like today, to scale, it's so much easier. There's already ready trained virtual assistants around the world that understand that business. There's already software out there that can automate so much of this. Like, you just upload a list and LG Pass and does your mailing for you. It's incredible. So let's talk about Handsome Rob. The first thing that you outsourced, what did that feel like?

Yeah, the first thing. I mean, the first thing I outsourced was just. It was like a single project, and I can't remember exactly what it was, but it had something to do with. With data, like, going in and getting some data for me from a county. And it felt great. Like, I did it because Scott told me to. But the first role that I really outsourced was was intake manager for me, and that was, like, transformative.

Can you describe what an intake manager does?

Yeah. So intake manager is somebody who effectively manages the like. So when we send out our offer letters and those come back, the intake manager manages the deal from the point of response to the point of acquisition. So they're engaging with the property owner. They're negotiating on my behalf. They are. They are doing basic due diligence, and they're escalating things to me if, like, if they're unsure about something, but they're trained enough where, for the most part, they're able to just kind of push through without me. And so that was enormously beneficial. I hit a point in my own business where I was just starting to burn out, and I came to a boot camp, and we did a round table at that boot camp, and everyone at that roundtable just, like, beat me over the head one by one and said, you have to outsource. You have to outsource. And so I left and I outsourced, and it was definitely a massive transformative moment for me.

Amazing. Amazing. Would you say that colors were more vibrant, food tasted better?

Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I mean, there's, like. There are those. When you. When you delegate a large chunk of the business, like, there are just portions. I don't know. Like, for me, I remember when the big one for me was, was sales, when I delegated sales and then, like, continued to sell. I remember sitting down on a date with Valerie, and I was like, I feel like I just, like, retired. Like, I don't know what I do anymore. It's like office space. Like, what would you say you do here? And I was like, I don't even know anymore. You know, it was. It was crazy. It is like, each. Each of those things that you hand off, it just makes your life a little bit lighter. Yeah.

That, that's amazing. That, that's, that is the dream of scaling is what do I do?

Yeah.

And that's something we can talk about. But dude, buddy, for you, what was the first thing that you outsourced?

I mean, the first minor thing was just due diligence. Actually. No, the first thing I outsourced was compiling a list. And back then again, we didn't have tools like DataTree. So I hired a VA over in the Philippines to screen scrape for me, right. Go to the county GIS website and just click on every parcel to get me all the parcel information I would need for mailing that VA still works with me to this day. Mark 10 years later, she was a rock star. She would get me a hundred names in an hour for $5 an hour back in the day. Yeah. So she was my list compiler and she organized my list right from the get go. So that was the first thing I outsourced, which was amazing. And it's pretty neat because she's been with us now for 10 years doing different things in the business. And it's, it's fun because you, you know, you, you bring people on your team, you establish relationships with them. She's over in the Philippines. She has impeccable English. Right. She's a motivated worker. And yeah, so that was my first, that was my first thing I outsourced. And, and to this day she's, she's still hanging out with us, which is fun.

That's incredible. So would you say after you got that off your plate, food tasted better, colors more vibrant or. Wait, what, what are you drinking? Would you say that is, is better?

Without a doubt, yes. Colors were more vibrant. Yes.

So yeah.

So I'm having a bourbon tonight.

Nice, nice. What kind of bourbon?

Give it.

It's a plug.

It's an 18 year knob creek. I've had it in the past on nightcap. So it's. Yeah. Very, very smooth. Nice soft Kentucky hug on the way down.

Yeah. Jb Handsome Rob. What are you drinking?

I am starting with spin drift here. Fresh squeezed fruit juice in seltzer water. And then when things get crazy, we're going to Fresh Squeeze non alcoholic ipa, so. Oh, those are good.

They are good.

Good.

Aren't they athletic?

Athletic? No, I like these better than athletic. Like they're. I like it because I like I can have a beer at lunch and not be tired. It actually tastes good. It's full bodied. It's an adult drink. It's not sweet. It's not like a Lacroix. It's Great. I recommend it. There's the plug Deschutes Fresh squeeze non alcoholic ipa.

Get it today. I like it.

Get it today. I love it. I'm drinking Rocky Mountain water. Most done. If I start dehydrating, I'm going to drop off anyways. Let's talk about the freelancer trap, right? And how often do we see people struggling from being a hustler to CEO? And, and what do they, what do they need to do? What's the mindset shift that they need to take, would you say? Dude, buddy, should we start with you?

Sure. Well, the mindset shift, I mean we talk about this all the time. I think for, for and for those of us who are maybe a little bit of a control freak when it comes to processes and how things should be implemented and how things feel like.

You'Re talking like directly to me, not John.

No, I'm talking.

When you said control freak like that really hurt for a second, but okay.

You're not a control freak, Mark. No, I'm talking about myself.

I used to be.

Yeah.

I'm a recovering control freak.

Yeah, it's, it's hard to let stuff go when, when you feel like you need to have your, have your hands and everything. Right. Because you just have this fear that things are not going to work as well if you're not doing them. And there's a little bit of a leap of faith that you need to take with a new person or with a new tool. Usually it's people, right. Where you're going to just kind of let them take the reins. And it may not be done perfectly, but the more reps you go through doing all of these different processes, what I've come to find out is that things kind of become a little bit more fine tuned over time with repetition and frequent meetings and feedback from me to them and them to me. Right. And it's just kind of a, it becomes a well oiled machine over time when maybe it's a little bit squeaky and rusty to begin with. So there, there's a, there's a little bit of a leap of faith there. Just giving them the reins on something and you know, having that mindset that getting something done is better than it being perfect like we talk about all.

The time, done is better than perfect.

Yeah.

I mean I say that 80 if they can do it as 80 as well as you.

Yeah.

And you get back your time good enough. Like that's, that's my metric because I mean, humbly speaking, no one's going to do it as well as me.

Very true.

By the way, that's, I'm totally joking. What you, what you discover is that you'll find people that can do way better than you. And because they're getting their reps in, you would never want to go back into that, that role. But when you don't have that perspective, you think because you've been doing it that no one's going to care as much as you. No one's going to do it as well as you. And I'm telling you that's, that's completely false. But you have to experience it for yourself. John Burnett, how about you?

Yeah, I think that's really good. Like there's, I think people have a temptation to try to over engineer the perfect system before they actually effectively delegate or launch the system itself. And like I'm a big fan of. There's a book called Anti Fragile by Nassim Taleb and it's great. I mean it's just like basically the idea is like you create a system and then there's pressure and things break and then you just adjust the system to react to that the next time it happens and your systems get stronger and stronger and stronger and your people get stronger and stronger and stronger. So it's a process and that's important. I think the other thing is, you know, something that I had to realize in my own business in order to effectively delegate and I took too long to delegate, was that I viewed my time as free. Right. And that was a mistake because I was like, well, I have the time, so why would I, why would I delegate this? And then I also didn't recognize the fact that me doing repeatable tasks over and over and over again that I didn't particularly enjoy wasn't actually beneficial to my business. It was burning me out. And as a result, my business was not going in a positive direction. Right. And so to delegate actually puts you in a position where you can scale even if you have the time to focus on those tasks.

Yeah, no 100%. And I think what the, the scary thing is when you're scaling and why most entrepreneurs struggle with it is the temporary dip in your income. You have to stomach it for a temporary amount of time as team begins to pay, not only pay for themselves, actually give you a huge return on time and money and energy. Because if I'm not doing the $5 or $10 or 20 or 50 or 100 an hour task someone else's and I can focus my time on 5000, 10,000 $100,000 tasks. Well, the business begins to scale and skyrocket, but I have to be able to temporarily, like it just doesn't happen overnight do that. And so to your point, like the processes and the systems and the playbooks or the standard operating procedures are so important because what you'll happen like to like Scott and I have long term virtual assistants and I'm sure he's woken up in a cold sweat like I have. Like what happens, God forbid if that person quits or dies.

Right.

We just don't know. Like there's inherent existential risk if you are really fully putting all your eggs into the person basket instead of the system. And for someone to run that playbook or run that SOP that they've built. So that's also a big challenge in scaling is making sure that you have that infrastructure in place and that it's always about the system and not the person. Even though you need to find, entertain great talent. Don't get me wrong, right? We're not building a McDonald's franchise, we're building a business. And people have to, you know, be able to think as well. And so does that make sense? I feel like I've been talking too much. Dude, buddy, why don't you interrupt me?

No, no, I, I love, I love, I love it all. I think we've, I think we've hit that top. I think we've covered that topic. Right? Like you, you, you make some short term sacrifices with maybe your confidence and maybe your business even takes a slight dip while these efficiencies, while these things become a little bit more efficient.

Right?

Right.

I'm curious, Mark, though. We see people on the other side of the spectrum who try to scale more quickly, right? So I think we should talk a little bit about that because I think there's a fine balance. I think that along the spectrum of scaling, you can scale way too slow like I did, or you can try to scale way too fast by paying for every tool in the book and automating every single task and hiring all these people when maybe you're not doing any land deals yet.

Yeah, that, that part is really frustrating to watch as well. Where they are, they don't have the fundamental pieces in place yet to even begin to scale. So slow is smooth, smooth is fast. And what happens is you start scaling if you're not, if you don't have those pieces in place, it's like being on a motorcycle, 120 miles per hour. A little pebble can kill you. And in business there's Always little pebbles. So you don't want to be going too fast. Like, growing too slow is a problem, but growing too fast is also a problem. And overspending on tools and people is. Is not good either if the business can't support it. The business needs cash. It needs cash flow. And so you need to be able to reinvest that as well, which I'll give Mike McCallow. It's a big plug on profit first. Fantastic book to manage your cash flow. Jb, what are your thoughts on this?

Yeah, I think that that's really important. Like, you want to. You want to scale at the right pace, right?

You.

You want to do it in line with the actual growth that's happening. And you shouldn't be. You shouldn't be pushing forward radically when you don't have. You don't have the experience to effectively justify that. So I think that that makes a lot of sense.

No, for sure. So here. Here's the question. And we teach this in flight school, but what is the first thing you should outsource?

John. Me. Me, John.

Either way, whoever's not drinking.

Mine'S not alcoholic, so. Okay, I'll go. Okay. I'd say intake manager.

Why do you say that?

Because that it, like, for me, that is the piece that can be, I don't know, it's, I guess, the two big things in my mind. Well, I guess there's three things. There's intake, there's marketing, and then there's sales. Right? So those are the things. Three, three core pieces. Of the three of those, intake for me was the one that was the most repetitive. You've got extremely consistent variables that you're dealing with. And so. And then it frees up your time to focus more effectively on marketing and sales. And so I guess. And then for me, it just drove me crazy. And so I don't know. I don't have as good of an answer. Let's go to Scott the bourbon drinker for the better answer.

Bourbon drinker, good buddy. The only guy on the show.

Yeah, we need Zano back to like. Nobody wants to drink alone. By the way, this is. This is 100 proof vodka. This is ever clear.

Not water.

We're drinking, man. Nightcap.

Well, so here's. Here's what I think about scaling, and I think this is in line with what we teach in flight school. But, you know, intake wasn't John's thing, but intake could be somebody else's thing, right? Or maybe, you know, marketing wasn't my thing, but marketing could be somebody else's. Thing. So I think it's more like maybe in the beginning stages. It's. I think it's helpful to outsource the things that you just hate to do. So you didn't get. You don't get burnt out. That would probably be my recommendation. And then, you know, but with the notion that, okay, like a year out or two years out, there are all of these things that we want outsourced. Right. Like intake manager should be outsourced. A chief marketing officer, sales assistant, bookkeeper, list, you know, list gatherer. Like to move forward with the notion that, okay, in a year or two, all of these things are going to be outsourced. So I have a. So I have a machine. So I think just to go from one thing to the next to the next to the next and maybe, you know, priority list of pain.

Yeah, I mean, when John was talking Scott, I. I really was going to channel John McLaughlin. I'm really aging myself now. From the McLaughlin Group.

He like, wrong.

It's not intake manager Scott Bossman. It's what you hate doing the most. That's what you have outsourced first. Eleanor J. I think you're swelling all. Anyways, like, literally, like two people are gonna get this joke.

Yeah, I think so. Yeah, I think so. Yeah.

Yeah. Anyways, besides the bad jokes, but what Scott was saying is really true and for John. And John was just highlighting what he hated to do the most.

Yeah.

But I think most people, after you've heard the 22nd story from that seller, why they bought the property, what they were going to do with the property, why they're selling those property, you're like, I get it. Okay, Someone else. This is someone else's time that's better spent than mine. And I could be doing more productive things. You want to do that. Intake manager. But there are some people that love connecting with sellers and they might hate marketing and they might even hate sales and say they would outsource that first. So I didn't want to shame JB with his answer because he's partially correct.

Yeah.

But Scott, you are absolutely correct.

Oh, thank you.

Yeah, no problem. I learned John's like, I'm going to a shame spiral right now.

It's okay. Yeah, no, it's pulling out stream. I'm pulling out the bourbon now. Mark, I've got a.

No, no. There's 10 million people live right now.

When you, when you see John stand up and walk into the lake, Mark, you've done too much.

I've gone too far.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Prevent that from happening.

So, yeah, how about. How about managing a remote team? What are the challenges doing that? How do you guys think about that? And what sort of communication cadence or things you do in place to make this team feel like a team, even though they might be all around the world in different time zones. Jb, let's start with you, because whatever you say then Scott and I can actually. One up.

Yeah, I'll go. I'll give the bad answer, and then we're going to move to Scott. So whatever. That'll be the process.

By the way, don't tell Val I said any of this.

I don't want. She's gonna agree with you. She's gonna be like, well, what did Scott say?

Yeah, right.

Right. Now, I. Let's say I'm trying to remember the question now. This point, I'm just thinking about how bad my answers are. Oh, the challenges of communicating with.

The challenge of communicating with the team.

So I think that a few things are important. Like, one thing is you can't. It's tempting also to be set it and forget it with the team. You find somebody and somebody says, like, I know how to do this, and I'll just. I'll just set it up for you. And you're like, great. And then you talk to them three weeks later and realize that nothing good came of it. And you spent a lot of money, right? So you can't be set it and forget it. I found, like, a really helpful cadence for me is for core people to meet with them on a weekly basis. And I just do, like, messy delegation meetings where I'm like, all right, we are going to take an hour, and at the end of the hour, you're going to have more things on your plate than at the start of the hour. And we're gonna just build our SOPs while we go, right? And there's gonna be awkward pauses while I'm typing and figuring stuff out, but by the end, you're gonna do that. And then we come back and we revisit and see what's going well, what's not. But I think that's really helpful, communicating. Like, tools like slack are great just for being able to communicate with your team. Periodic. Just appreciation. You know, I have. I have somebody who's fantastic at customer service, and I. So, you know, I like to just. She's. She's one of those people where I. I never want her to leave. And so, you know, I'll send her a periodic bonus or something like that and just say how grateful I Am and those, those types of things go a long way. And so I think just communicating gratitude because it is easy, especially when people can, are working remotely for it to just kind of slowly drift to autopilot and the communication to wane. And it's important, like if you do appreciate somebody and what they're doing, you should let them know. Right?

Yeah. It doesn't make me a bad person that, that I really like to like, try to find something wrong in John's answer and I can't. And that was a really good, it was a really good, it was a really good answer.

That's great.

I think I, I really think that, you know, you playing the, the long game with your team and infusing into the culture this, this gratitude, catching people doing things right as opposed to catching them doing it wrong. And oftentimes I think that people do become, you know, you get used to it.

Right.

Or you assume erroneously that because I'm paying this person, they should just do a good job. And that's just part of the job. And we're, we're all motivated by different things. But when you find that person who has that intrinsic motivation, they want to do a good job for the sake of doing a good job and you recognize that and you bonus it, you give them gratitude. They see what you're seeing. They are that, that behavior just keeps getting reinforced again and again and again. And then when they, other people on the team see it in Slack, they want the, the accolades as well. So they're going to put emotional labor in. They're going to go above and beyond. So John, phenomenal answer. I'm so grateful that you're able to, to give us that wisdom.

I know. Now let's go to Scott and he'll give you the even better answer. It's gonna be no, no, I, I.

Can'T, I can't, I can't outdo that one. I love, I love what he had to say. I think, yes, gratitude is very important with these folks, helping them feel like they're part of the team. Right. And just frequent communication and however you choose to do that, I think it, I think it really depends. Sometimes it depends on the va. Like if you're hiring a new sales assistant, you may want to be on call a little bit more when you're first doing that.

Right.

So maybe Voxer is a better approach where you can shoot some messages back and forth really quickly. You know, if things are a little bit more streamlined and, and more finely tuned. You know, I think tool like Slack is a great tool for communicating with your, with your vas. So frequent and frequent communication and accolades given, I think are really important.

No, 100%. I think, you know, the Scott Todd rule of 30 to 1 ratio is really important to know where. If, let's say a task takes you five minutes to do, then you're willing to invest 150 minutes with that new team member to get them trained up to do it the way that you did it, so that it only takes them five minutes. And then if it takes them longer or they're still not getting it, you can go to bed at night, be like, okay, this person's just not in the right role and it's okay. But so often we get impatient and we think from day one, well, they should just be able to follow my sop. I don't need to give any more context or whatever it is, and they should be able to do the task in five minutes. And that's not the case. And so what's interesting is that what we've been working on with our team is as we've grown and we've scaled is, you know, number one, you need to have an org chart, like the person needs to know who they're reporting to, number one. Number two, there needs to be that visibility, that accountability. So depending on the role, either an end of day report with series of questions that they have to fill out, word, end of week report and, and what they did, and then give them feedback on it, show the gratitude, point out where they're, where they're, they're doing a great job and, and do that. But otherwise, if you're, if you're not doing that, you're not holding somebody accountable, then you've abdicated, you haven't delegated as well. And so it doesn't necessarily have to be you, right? But in the beginning it's you as the CEO. And even a daily stand up of 5, 10, 15 minutes with a team is a good idea. Hey, we're a team. What are you gonna, what are you gonna do today? What are the three things that you're gonna accomplish today? Great. How about you?

Great.

What about you? Great. At the end of the day, I want to see how far you got on those tasks. Fantastic break.

Right?

And, and that really creates this cohesive bond, but it also allows you as the CEO, the visibility into what everybody's doing day to day. And you can see the inefficiencies as well. Not doing that, you're kind of flying blind, especially as you're scaling jb, what are your thoughts?

Yeah, I think of that. I think that makes a lot of sense. I think reporting. I've really liked using Slack a lot. And so we'll have like when tasks come in, you know, we'll have them automatically thrown into Slack and people react with a checkbox or people react like just claiming certain tasks. And so there's just visibility. Like it's important, you know, you can get to this point where like, I don't know, people just naturally default to um. Like if, if you don't show care of whether or not they complete a task to the standard that, that you hold them to. If you don't show that you actually care about that, then people, even good people, like the quality of their output will gradually decline over time. And so it's important that there's visibility and communication throughout that. And yeah, I like that this, the daily standups, weekly meetings have been great for me. And just, just like we'll do a Google Doc and just have a checklist, like these are the items that you're are on your to do list for this week. And then we have that same Google Doc, we pull it up the next week and we just say like, did everything happen right? And so it just provides that accountability and an opportunity to just check in and identify any paved points.

No 100%. That's so good. And it's so simple. You don't have to be a tech geek. You can just open up a simple Google Doc and just keep adding to that doc and everyone's rowing in the same direction. Which is great. Which is great. Dude. Buddy. Should we pivot?

Well, I think we could get to some questions in the group and some comments and interact with some folks who, who maybe need some help or some guidance. How's that sound?

That sounds amazing. For sure. I mean, I can't see how many millions of people are on with us live gazillions.

Yeah, You know what? Week one, we gotta, we have a ton of people watching, so we gotta, we gotta build back up to that. But we do have a couple comments. Here's one comment that maybe we can help with this person. Time. Time is their name. That's probably not their name, but. But their statement is this. I honestly don't know where to start. Even after putting money into programs for help. Me and my husband have one property, but we're not sure where to go from here. So. You know, I think that's kind of a broad question because there could be a lot of things wrong. Right? I think when, when you see a question like that, we have to diagnose what's wrong, right?

So yeah, if I, if I had to guess right and speculate. So they put time in, they bought one property and they're working in their business. And I, I would say like, hey, embrace the sock. At this point in your juncture and in your journey where you've got to get the reps in, what's the, what's the expectation? Now if you told me you've been working your land business for a year and you've bought one property, why have a lot more questions. But if you just started, then you just started and you have one property, we're not sure to go go from here. I would say keep, keep your deal flow going and sell that property and market that property. And while you're doing that, start building infrastructure to get yourself out of the business. So you don't want to build yourself a job, you want to build yourself a business. And everything that you're doing, start creating standard operating procedures. So if you're going to get a county list, go to Loom and create a video of you doing the work. Now take that Loom and upload it into chat GPT and ask chatGPT. Watch this loom video and create a simple standard operating procedure. And pretend I'm in a write at a fifth grade level, right? And start from there and then start going through each process of the business to the point where you feel very confident that, okay, I've done the work, I know what it takes, and now I've created playbooks or standard operating procedures for each, each aspect of the business so I can start building team and get myself out of it. I don't think it's necessarily too early to start that. But if again, as you said, like, you don't want to scale too fast, you want to get your infrastructure and your fundamentals in place and, and you got to get your reps in, that would be my answer. Jb, do you disagree?

No, I think of that, I think that that makes a lot of sense and I think it's, it just kind of the other thing is just to do the next thing, you know, like, for me, every time I, like I remember jumping into this business and every time I did the next thing and jumped into a new phase of my business, there's like a pit in my gut, right, like you just, you're nervous about it. I remember standing by the mailbox, right, with the stack of mailers in my hand and throwing them in there. Was like the craziest thing. Right? And then you get a response and then you have to hop on the phone with somebody and the same thing, you get that pit in your gut. And you know, if you've got property, you know you need to market. Right. And so go on Facebook Marketplace and put out an ad. And I've got a friend who, he's new to the land investing business and he was in a similar spot, he had a property and he went to boot camp and asked Tate what he should do. And Tate said, you need to have an ad up by tomorrow. And so he stayed up super late and put out this ad and he sold the property. Right. Like, and, and you know, he did off of that ad. Right. Like, so that, that was great. Doesn't always happen that way. But you just have to, you have to do it, you have to market it and take that next step and just keep on pushing forward.

Yeah, you've got to be impatient with your actions and patient with your results. And so as long as you know the next right thing, what action to take and keep doing that, the results are going to happen. Now, they may not happen as fast as John's buddy.

Right.

But they're inevitably going to happen because after doing this over 6, 500 times, I've never been stuck with a piece of raw, man. They all sell. There's a pick for every barn. But you need to prove that for yourself and you need to go through the steps. And so I think what's great about what they were doing is like they, they smart cut it. They, they went to a program. You could go on YouTube videos and try to figure this out yourself. But I think going through a step by step program following a recipe is a smart cut. It's a great investment of your time and energy and resources.

Dude.

Buddy, what are your thoughts?

Yeah, I think simply it's just all about momentum. Right. So you have one property right now. Let's get more. How do you get more? Well, you mail or you possibly buy a property wholesale or you possibly buy a property land arb. Like see if you can get a couple more properties in your inventory. That will create a little bit more momentum and then, you know, market.

Right.

It's mailing and marketing. So if you're down and you know, if you're down in the dumps a little bit about how your business is doing, how your business is doing today. Ask yourself two questions. Did you mail today? If so, think of it as making money. Because if, like that's how that's how I think of it. Like when I used to go to the mailbox and drop the mail, you know, drop 100 letters in, I'm like, okay, I'm making money here. Which. Which you are if your pricing's right. Right. So, so are you mailing and making money in that sense and are you marketing to make money in that sense? And I think it's just, you know, I think we can so often get lost in all of the details of this thing, right? When maybe we just need to keep it simple and dial back and just do the two things that matter and, and that'll lead to success down the road. Down the road.

I love that. So I love that we.

I have a question, so I think we should talk about this, Mark. So we have a question from Marsha Wright, the best realtor in Douglasville, Georgia. Her question is the best realtor.

She's famous.

She's famous. Wow. Is your program based off sending mailers to acquire land? It is. And I think we should talk about why that still works, because a lot of people out there kind of poo poo the direct mailing, right?

Sure.

Like it's working, right?

It works. So, okay, the response rate, if you get your pricing right, should be 3 to 5%. So for every 100, 3 to 5 should respond. Now, if it's under 3%, you came in too low to the market, it's over 5%, you probably came in too, too high. But as far as deal flows concerned, right, we're gonna get a list of all the real property owners in that county. We're gonna scrub that list. We're get rid of the commercial property and the industrial property, all the things that are not vacant land. So like, let's just use a, a quick and dirty way of doing this. My use code VL for vacant land.

Right.

So now we're just vacant land. Then we're going to do another scrub. So assessor's parcel number by subdivision. Because if I send somebody an offer with 40 acres, the same as 1 acre, the 40 acre parcel person is going to send me back glitter in the mail, right? So now we've done that. It's a very efficient way to get to the owners of the property who are sick of paying taxes. They're not going out the property, they're not emotionally attached to the property. And you're making an offer. Now they know, okay, this is somebody who wants to buy the property. How many times have we seen it where in traditional real estate the offer is, hey, I'm Interested in buying your house? Well, now you're in the appraisal game and that's taking a lot of time.

Right.

And so the philosophy being we could always make more money, we can't get more time. And so this cuts through all the noise because when's the last time you.

Picked up your phone?

I don't pick up the phone. I don't know if someone's calling me, go straight to voicemail. But I get the mail every day and oftentimes I'll open the mail. And it's becoming less and less actually. But if you think about like a credit card company, they're still sending those offers and one day you're going to.

Take, you're going to open it, you're.

Going to open it. You don't know when. So to Scott's point, it's like a little lottery ticket. Every time you do the mailing, you just never know who you're going to get. You get them on the right time or day. But also with the way I started was going to tax deed auctions and I was in a competitive bidding situation with a bunch of people in the room trying to buy lots of. Now avoiding all the competition, I'm going straight to the person who owns it. JB what are your thoughts on this?

Yeah, I mean, I agree. I concur as Mike would say no. And I, I mean what I like about mail too is that it is like so A, it works like you said Mark, and then E, B, like there's a flexibility in mail as a marketing medium that you don't have in others. Right. If you're doing like, if you're doing cold calling, if you're doing texting, if you're doing like other medium or other media as far as marketing is concerned, there's an immediacy of response that is required. Those are flash of the pan leads with mail leads. That's not the case. Right. And as you're building out this business, right, you need that flexibility. If you're, if you're working a full time job, you can't just like pick up your phone and like and, and respond to these leads. And so you know, I like mail. It works A and B, you can get back to somebody in a day and it's fine. Right. Which isn't the case. If, if you're, if with these other, these other marketing sources, it's not that they don't work, it's just that it's, it's not, it's, it's not a good Entry point, I think.

Right, right. And look, I think maybe a year, two years from now, maybe we're all using AI agents and they're cold calling owners and maybe that beats direct mail. But again, like once jb, like besides your kids and your wife, are you picking up the phone?

No. I mean, no, I don't want to talk to people. No, no one wants to talk to you, Mike.

You talk to me. Yeah, but you probably even screen my calls. Yeah, I mean, 4, 8, 0, number. Forget it.

Just most of them.

That's okay. Yeah. Scott, what about you? Do you pick up the phone?

No, sir. Nope. Yeah, not picking up the phone now.

And now text messaging, sms, not a bad strategy, but it's a little dicey because you gotta, you gotta play within the rules.

Right?

You can't just cold SMS people.

And I would say. Oh, sorry. I. I would say, I think if you took a poll of 10 people in a room, people get more annoyed with junk text messages on their phone than they do mail.

100. They do? Yeah.

Like how many? Like I'm reporting junk every text message I get?

Yeah, 100. They do.

Yeah.

It's.

It's such an intrusion where mail. Where it's not that big a deal. It's, you know, it's normal.

It's.

It's.

Yeah, it's normal. We're normalized by it.

It's.

It's not as intrusive. It takes a second to recycle it. Where, you know, the phone is sort of a different thing.

Yeah.

So I think it's a good, It's a good thing to pick a good question, though.

Very good question. And it's still working. It's been working. It's been working for that guy for 25 years. Mark, Mike.

Mark.

I'm turning to my grandma over here saying all the dance. Okay, here's a question from Devin. Well, this will be real quick. So we're not going to get into how you write a contract for owner financing when it comes to all the minutia, but can we, can we default? Can we default? Buyers if they quit paying? Well, yes. And how can you do it?

This is like a city Slickers question. Scoop of chocolate, scoop of vanilla. Don't wait, waste my time. Of course. Of course you can default.

Yeah, we def. Yeah. So it's built right in the contract. Right. So this is another reason land is so easy. This is the reason we love to buy the land at a deep discount and control the land for the life of the loan. Because if the buyer defaults we take it back and it's a matter. It's very simple. We take it back with a certified letter in the mail and then we'll turn around and sell it again.

Right?

Yeah. Great answer.

We have a comment from Thomas. He's sitting here in the parking lot waiting on a ride. He wishes he was at home watching this and moving forward with his business. But no solo. Economic dependency is his life right now. But hey, you're here.

You're here to. I mean that's the thing is like I think it's. Is it. Oliver Wendell Holmes's quote of mind, once expanded, cannot go back to its original form.

Fancy. Did you hear me? You make this show way too fancy.

Like this is. Mark's bringing all our window. All right, well.

Next week we're kicking you off at the 30 minute mark. For sure.

You are.

And I deserve it. By the way. This has been a treat for me.

We're coming up on an hour and we do have a couple announcements.

Okay.

First, for those watching, for the thousands watching, go to the comments and fill out the Google form. And you can be eligible to win signed copies of Dirt Rich one and Dirt Rich two. And I should announce we have some winners from last week. So I'm going to announce who those people are right now. And those people are. Hold on. Drum roll please. The Nightcap giveaway. Three winners from last week. Richard Lionheart. Oh, that's a great name.

That is a great name.

Tiffany Riley and Devon Hendricks. Devin Hendrix.

Devin Hendrix.

Let's go. So congratulations to you guys for winning signed copies of Dirt Rich. And I'll remind you once again, Mark, that I do not have a signed copy of Dirt Rich.

I entered the drawing last week. I'm. I'm just waiting. I figure if I enter every week, I'm bound to win sometime.

I did not know this.

And then here's another very exciting announcement. So on March 21st. Fifth. Is it 25th. What's today? Today's the 11th 311 day. So yeah, March 25th. We're doing a giveaway. A live giveaway Mark on. On Nightcap. Do you even know what we're giving away?

I have no idea. No one tells me anything.

We are giving away. Hold on, I gotta make sure I get this right. We are giving away 2 years free LG pass and geek pay.

Are we really?

That's what I was told.

Prove that. That's like a two thousand dollar giveaway.

It's a twenty four hundred dollar giveaway.

Are you serious?

Yeah.

So we're Gonna show down today. And Nightcap is done. Thank you all for, for showing up.

Hey, this costs nothing, man. Mark, Mark.

Over delegated here. Wow.

All right, I'm happy to do it. So just for those who don't understand what those softwares do, LG Pass is a customer relationship management software that actually manages your whole business in your deal flow and then also automates the contracts. Geek Paid IO is a set and forget it payment system so that you can collect your down payment. They collect your monthly payments on an automatic basis so you don't have to deal with spreadsheets. You don't have to deal with the math. You can charge interest, you can charge, you can have penalties. It's actually a profit center. It's the only software I know that actually makes you money because you can charge a note collection fee, you can charge a note setup fee. And that's for those of you that don't win the free. The free software, the Geek Day actually makes you money, but for the person that actually ends up getting it for free, it really makes you money, right?

Yeah, that's pretty exciting.

That's really exciting.

Pretty exciting.

Yeah. I can see why no one told me, but that's cool.

Well, we're gonna, we're gonna quadruple the attendance on this call that night. Quintuple.

Quintumsy. For sure.

Yeah.

All right, cool. Well, I think that's all I have. And we're coming up on an hour. Any final words, Mark? Any tip of the week?

You know, my tip of the week's.

Gonna be what.

I think my tip of the week is going to be. Really look at what you're doing. And is it, is it bringing you closer to your goal or is it, is it bringing you further away? And so do you want.

Freedom?

Do you want to work when you want, where you want, with whom you want? And if you do, have you looked at different passive income models? I don't care which one you pick. Personally, I'm totally agnostic. I think ours is the best and the simplest because it's a one time sale. And then we get recurring passive income every single month without any renters, rehabs, renovations, or road. But if you're stuck in solo economic dependency, what are you doing to solve not just your money problems, but your time problems? And to have that freedom to live your best life, to be at John Burnett and go Visit with your 23 children and be in a lake and, and not have. And have that freedom to be on Nightcap, right. And do what you want to do in life or you know, dude, buddy, Scott bossman, who still can go into the clinic because he wants to, not because he has to, to help people, you know, solve their, their pain in physical therapy because he loves to do it, but not because he has to do it. And for me, there's nothing better than being available to my family. You know, I never missed an activity. I was there to take them to school, pick them up from school, read them bedtime stories, do all those things. And having borrowers paying for my life and I could get sick. I could go on vacations. I had to. I mean, I still, I have total freedom to live the life that I want to live. And if you're not doing that, what actions are you taking? What steps are you taking to remedy that for yourself? I would say that would be a something to, to leave nightcap with as far as like, you know, yeah, we can build a seven figure empire with just $5,000. That's great, right?

But what's your. Why?

What do you really want out of life and what are you doing to get it?

Cheers to that.

Cheers. That was great. Cheers.

It was awesome. Mark, thank you.

Thank you guys.

Appreciate you. We'll see you. See you next week. Oh, you're going to love this one next week. Mark, we know you love this topic. Cash flow versus quick flips.

Oh, I love it.

I love that topic. So yeah, I topic next week.

All right, everybody, let's talk to you later. Freedom ring.

Let Freedom ring.

Let it ring.