We Tried Land Investing for Passive Income

It. Buy land for $5,000, lip it for $50,000, and never work again. That's what you see everywhere on social media, right? The promise of easy passive income through land investing. Well, after 25 years and over 6,500 land deals, we need to have an honest conversation about what passive income really means in this business. In this episode, we're pulling back the curtain on land investing, the actual work required, where the money really comes from, and why the passive income promise might be hurting new investors. Welcome to Nightcap. Joining me tonight on Nightcap and the Art of Passive Income podcast, I've got Breathe in the mailing without the marketing. The Zen master, Mike Zato. Mike, how are you?

I'm great. Great introduction.

Thank you.

It's good to see you, brother.

You too.

We've got Handsome Rob, John Burnett. John. Any new children this week?

Just two. Just two.

Okay.

Yeah.

Slow week. So you and Val have five kids?

Six.

Six kids, yeah. Yeah, I. I love that, that Jim Gaffin joke. What's it like having five kids? Like, imagine you're drowning. Someone hands you a baby. So what's it feel like to have six kids? It's.

You're drowning. If somebody hands you two babies, that's what it feels like.

You're drowning. Someone hands you two babies. And last but not least, the nightcap OG Dude, Buddy. Scott Bossman. Scott, how are you?

I'm great, Mark. It's warming up here in Wisconsin. It was a whole 40 degrees today outside with short sleeves. Beautiful day. Wonderful day.

Beautiful, beautiful. Well, let's get into the meat of this. The myths about passive income. So, dude, buddy, what are. What are some of the myths out there? All right, let's talk about the reality. We'll kind of go around. We'll do like roundtable style for all those ankle biter land investors. They're just little babies. They're just little babies wanting to learn.

Yeah. So. So, Mark, this is the best passive income model, right? We've. We've talked about it for, for years and years. That's. That's what, that's what hooked me back in. In 2015, I'm listening to podcasts, I'm learning about passive passive income. Like, how do I get me some of that, right? And I believe it is still probably the best passive income model. I believe you can cash flow from this business faster than a lot of other real estate investing businesses out there. However, I think we just need to frame some expectations for everybody out there. This is not get rich quick. It's get rich slow Right, Yeah.

If you, if you're, if you're looking for get rich quick, go on a crypto, right.

YouTube channel.

Good luck with that.

And then watch it crash today.

Yeah, yeah.

So, yeah, go ahead.

But, you know, but your point, though, I don't think anything. There is no such thing as get rich quick. There just isn't. If you, if you get rich quick, you lose it quick because you won't appreciate it. For all those crypto people, they're like, oh, I paid a million dollars of crypto, but then they lost it in the next cycle. So this is get wealthy slow. So this is the difference between rich and wealthy, right? So Mike Zano's buddies, the fire department might be rich, right? They might be making a lot of.

Money.

But if they have to keep going into work, they've only solved their money problems. They haven't solved their time problems. Wealthy is when the money works for you and you don't have to do anything. And your streams of income, in our case, all of our borrowers are paying our bills and we can go out and live our best lives. So passive income is giving us the trifecta of money, time and energy and health at the peak of our life so we can live our best lives. Handsome Rob John Burnett, what are your thoughts here?

Yeah, I agree. I mean, ultimately, I think it's all about time, right? Like, you know, I, there's kind of the Scrooge McDuck Philosophy of wealth of like, I'm going to create this giant pile of, of money for myself, right? And that, that ultimately is wealth. And then there's another way to look at it, which is the stream of income, right? And that's where you just need to meet your expenses, right? So for me, like, I mean, I kind of semi retired a number of years ago. I was working five, 10 hours a week, right? And I wasn't making a crazy amount of money, right? But I didn't have high expenses, right? So it paid the bills. And, and in my mind, that was wealth, right? Like, it, it covered everything I needed. It gave me the time I wanted with my family, right? So.

No, absolutely. I mean, it, it takes a lot of time to have six kids.

It does.

What's like, some of the biggest myths you see out there?

Well, all this fits. Let, let me start with this. You know, I talked to a lot of people that are getting into the business, and the biggest, you know, one like, well, you know, I, I want to do. You guys don't do bigger deals. I want to do cash Deals and things of that nature. And what I tell them is, yeah, you know, I do do cash deals, but I also have a stream of income at the base that supports everything. So if you get 10,000amonth, mark, 15,000, $20,000 a month, the recurring income, and you do some cash deals, why not? The same systems that we build can handle large deals, small deals. The difference is we're not holding our breath, turning blue in the face waiting for that cash sale to come to fruition. I had a beautiful 40 acre property in Pueblo County, Colorado. It took a year to sell, Mark. I made good money, but it took a year to sell. If I was waiting on that for my. To support my family and whatnot, it'd be a long wait. So I think one of the myths that I typically hear is like, oh, you guys, you know, guys only do these small deals. Well, number one, the small deals, as I like to say, the penny stocks of real estate, but they cash flow so well. Right? That's, that's, that's, that's the base of what we do. But when you have that, you can still do cash, large deals and flip them and make a lot of money and then reinvest them into smaller deals. So I think we should clear that up from the beginning. We're not against the big deals. We just don't rely on big deals.

Yeah, I mean, I mean, for me and Scott. Let me know if you disagree. But I don't want cash. I don't. It's not going to solve any of my problems. It's nice, but I've got to pay taxes and then go do another deal. It's a hustle.

Yeah.

But if I've got cash flow, it's the antidote for me to financial insecurity. I can get sick, I can go on vacation, I can lose a key team member. Doesn't matter, because the money keeps rolling in month after month, and I can just keep growing that slowly and consistently. And each year it's like a fun, it's like fine wine strategy. It just gets better every single year you do it. I think the myth is that you're going to come out in the first six months. You're going to do so many deals, you're going to replace your income. I don't, I don't think that's necessarily true. Dude. Buddy, what do you think?

No, I, I totally agree. So, so I think another, another reality you all need to face here is that for most of us, Mark, you and I talk about this all the time. For most of us, this is a three to five year journey right now. I think everybody out there watching, if they have the time and a little bit of money to start, and they have the ability to follow a recipe and do this, like, would you be satisfied if you could quit your job in three to five years? Because that's where most of us are, right? I think overwhelming majority of people would be very satisfied with that possibility, which is very, very possible in this business. So I think if you go into this and you have the notion that, okay, I'm going to quit my job in six to 12 months, that's a really aggressive goal. Could it be done? I think so. Are there some rock stars that would occasionally be able to do that? I think so. But for most of us who get into this, we're in the rat race. We're. We're in a little bit of pain, we have some debt, we're working full time. We're supporting large families. Like, we all have large families on here. John has the largest, right?

Yeah, but no one's competing with John.

You win.

Yeah, exactly.

You win.

I mean, that's. Yeah, I just want to have the largest family in the room. That's my goal.

You got it, man.

You got it.

Yeah, I get it.

Yeah.

You know, it's funny, though. I remember John came on the podcast and him and Val had a mentor and said something really important that I don't want to gloss over, because John was semi retired. He didn't have to work hard. And John, what did your mentor say to you?

He said, like, I mean, a few things, but one of the things he said is, like, your kids need to see you work, right? Like, and that's important. And. And it was help, like. Cause I hit that point where I was semi retired, and I was like, I mean, on the one hand, it was such a blessing. Like, I'm so grateful. I have meals with my family every day, right? Like, breakfast and dinner every single day. We're together as a family. We've got really good time. But at the same time, I was like, I need to do more things right? And I think that that's actually a myth, you know, like, you realize that. That when you hit time freedom, you need to do things right. Like, and that was an interesting crisis for me, like, because you read, you know, ultimately the goal is, I want more time with my family, right? Like, that's the goal, and that's the priority. And you get this time freedom. You're working 5 to 10 hours, you're providing for your family, you find I actually need to do more things. So now we, you know, we fill our time. It's great. But, you know, we just want to do it on our own terms. Right. And never at the expense of the family. So.

No. 100%. Zen master, what are your thoughts?

I think you brought up a wonderful point, Mark. That's often advice I give to new people coming into, you know, our flagship training program, flight school, is four months long. And I tell people, even if they have a lot of capital, I say, you know what, in the beginning, you know, start off small, we're going to have you mailing just enough to get a few deals in the pipeline. But those deals are so important. I look at them in a transactional assets in the sense that you're going to use those assets to build your business, build your workflows, build everything out. And then when you get that all built out and get your VA in place, because we're going to have you hire one by week eight when we do this, you'll have some multiple VAs. You have your systems in place, you're using the software, you make the sale in those first few properties. Now it's time to put some gasoline. Right? Bring the gasoline. More mailings, more acquisitions, more sales, more monthly recurring revenue. But if out of the gate, you try to go to. Like you said earlier, I want to go, I want to make $5,000 a month. The next three months, you're going to store so many mailers out there, you're going to be in chaos. You're not going to be able to build this correctly. So I think you hit upon a really valid point, Mark. No matter how much capital somebody has in the beginning, the structure and the format that we walk people through keeps them just in full control. Right. They're not overwhelmed. There's no analysis paralysis. Everything is dialed in. So they get a few properties, they build their systems, they get the return on those properties. And now you see the spike in their growth. Right. Because now they put the gasoline on, which is more mailers, more acquisitions, more sales, and more monthly recurring revenue.

I love it. And just for those of you that don't know the va, it's virtual assistant.

Oh, sorry. Yeah.

The lingo inside baseball.

Absolutely.

And you know, I think, and, but I think that's another myth, is that you have to have a real estate background because.

Oh, yeah, you're right.

Like passive income without any real estate background. I had no background. I. I had investment banking background. I only real estate. I had Done was buy a house. John, what was your background?

Yeah, I mean I had some, a little bit of real estate background, but I'd never purchased real estate and I was just pretty much new as a, as a realtor when I jumped in. But yeah, my first piece of property that ever bought was five acres for $600. So yeah.

Yeah, dude, buddy, what about you?

Sounds like a deal.

Question is, did I have any background? I had no background.

You're a physical therapist.

I'm a health care guy. Like you know, I'm the guy in college that was, I had 17 credits plus I was going to six to eight hours of lab a week. All my friends were business majors, right? They go to like one class a day and they don't have class on Wednesdays and they're just hanging out, going out, having fun the whole time. I'm just living the healthcare life. And I did that forever and ever and ever. And then I'm like, wow, I'm working really hard. Let me learn something new where I can scale my time. So I love this business because I believe anybody can do it. You just need a little bit of time and you need the drive. And I mean Mark, we have, we have, we have a 15 year old in our community learning how to do this right now. We have 65 to 70 year old people learning how to do this right now. Anybody can do this. You just need to have the drive.

I love it. Zen master, what was your background?

My background was that my only, well, I'll tell you, my only experience with, with the, you know, financing was owing credit cards a ton of money. So it was kind of fun to go from, you know, being the one that was trying to build a good credit score to being the one that's actually giving credit to other people. That was pretty cool because like I. So I had zero experience, Mark. The only thing I knew about credit financing was that I had to pay all these God awful monthly bills to my credit card company. So I, I mean I'm a firefighter. I went to school for business 30 plus years ago. But you know what, it always ate at me, Mark. I felt like I could, I could have done well in the business world. But no, that's my lot in life. I'm a firefighter. I'm just gonna, you know, stick with that, but then get into the land business and start being successful. What a refresh, refreshing moment it was when I realized that now I'm gonna bring all that business experience in and be able to actually apply it in the Real world, so it's pretty cool. So I had no experience other than owning a bunch of credit card companies, a bunch of money.

Amazing.

Amazing. Yeah. I mean, I think it's. It's a myth.

You don't have to go into a.

Lot of debt either to start this. No, for sure. Yeah.

I mean, that's.

I think that's a big myth. Is like, oh, I need a lot of capital to start. I start with $3,000. Mike, you're 40 grand the hole. John, what were you, I think, going.

Into fight school, we were at, like, 20 grand or something like that. Okay, so 20, not a little bit more.

Yeah, yeah, dude. Buddy.

I mean, I think before I. Before I tapped into other resources, I had a couple thousand bucks. I. I honestly didn't have much.

Right.

And I was able to. To make it work with the. With the land geek, with the investor toolkit back in the day. I. You know, it's hard. It's hard to do it on your own. I spent, I don't know, probably three, four months trying to figure this whole thing out. And I was biting my nails the whole time, wondering if I was doing the right thing. But I was able to do a deal. And then I saw it work, and I'm like, you know what? Let's figure out a way to invest a little bit more heavily in this. So I had the ability to draw from some other funds to do it. But before I allowed myself to do that, I think I just wanted to see it. Want to see it work.

So.

Yeah.

Yeah. How about the myth of competition? What do you guys think of that, Handsome Rob?

Yeah, I think that part of it is that we are, like, the way that the model operates. Like, I don't know. I think about it with the abundance mindset, There are certain areas where it doesn't necessarily work, right? So, like, let's say I just think of the example, like, in my hometown, if my play, my investment play was I find an infill lot, I petition the city council to upzone it, increase the density, and I flip it to a developer, right? And let's say that that's my play, and that's what I do. Like, if I get all my buddies in a room and I tell them, like, this is, like, this is the thing. I've discovered it. And, like, if any of them get in on that, there's really a limited supply. Right. Of that in my specific market. But what I'm dealing with is thousands and thousands and thousands of opportunities, right? It's a very Large market. And so there's a lot more room for competition. And I also think the nature of our industry, there's just a steady churn rate. Right. Like the example I gave with the info lot thing, you take advantage of the opportunity. It's off the board, right. There's a limited amount and then they go away as you take advantage of them. With this, like, I'm buying property from people who bought from other land investors, right? And I bought property from, from people who bought from me, right? Like, there's a steady turn that happens of people that are interested in selling, and so the supply doesn't really go away either. So I mean, I still, like, I do mastermind, like, calls with people that are working in my same markets, and we talk about strategies and how we can, how we can get better in our businesses and we all grow, right? Like in the. It's a big enough market where there's, there's room for that to actually happen.

Yeah, for sure. And you know, it's funny because there's not millions of acres available for us to buy. There's.

Billions.

I know you're gonna do that. I love it.

Billions.

And even, you know, like, and there's no private equity use, there's no hedge funds, no big money doing. It's like this little Goldie box niche. It's massive because too little money is a problem, but too much money is a problem.

Yeah.

And so I don't think there's any real competition. I think what it is is that if I have a piece of land to sell and the Zen master sends me an offer, and dude, buddy sends me an offer, handsome options, you know, for. I'm like, oh, this must be what my, my land is worth. But the reality is, in the 25 years I've been doing this, very often people will say to me, you're the first person to offer this to me. And it always shocks me considering that when I first started, like, there was like, no one had ever heard of land investing. Then I started teaching people how to do it. And I, I, you know, I go on these podcasts and people like, you know what, what question should I have asked you? I didn't ask you, like, well, marketing is so great. Why are you teaching anyone how to do this? Like, you're creating your own competition. And I always say the same thing. I'm like, no, I'm not. There's just too big a market out there. And it feels great to be able to say, like, I changed somebody's life. It's a rare, rare privilege. And we're able to do that and we can help people solve their time running problems without hurting our own business. It's. It's really incredible. It's a really credible opportunity. Zen Master, what are your thoughts?

Well, I think it's funny you brought up crypto earlier, because I think what we're building actually is a land mining machine. And the interesting thing is that we mine land out of the same areas over and over again. So how's that for an argument against saturation? We will mail an area and we will buy land, and then four months later, we'll mail it again. We'll buy more land. How is that? And then four months later. And then four months. How do we keep doing that? How do we keep mining land out of the same. Because it's an opportunity, right? It's just, it's timing. People, they may receive our letter and not. Not be interested, or they may be too busy to look at it, but the day that they get a bill in the mail, or the day that they get the tax bill in the mail, or they have to pay the college bill for their kid, and all of a sudden our letter lands, the timing is there. So, yeah, I think that if this saturation on. How are we continuously mining out of the same areas more and more land? This is too much. We can't do it. And I think you brought kind of stole my thunder, but you the one that, you're the one that actually told me, so it's okay. Y' all say the biggest reason is there's no big money. I've had people getting calls, Mark. They're like, yeah, I get a million dollars. I'm like, oh, breaks. How quickly looking to deploy that. Like, you know, how quickly do you want to deploy that money? Right? Because it's not going to happen overnight. It's going to take time. You can deploy a million dollars, right, but it's going to take time. It's not going to be overnight.

No, no. 100%. And dude, buddy, what are your thoughts?

So this, this is what I tell people all the time. There are millions of realtors and real estate investors and house flippers literally fighting for thousands of homes, hundreds of thousands of homes, millions of millions of them, fighting for hundreds of thousands. There are thousands of us fighting for millions of vacant land parcels. Completely the opposite. And I think all three, all four of us on this call. Mark, you've been doing it 25 years, quarter century. Your business has never slowed down in 25 years. Mine and Mike's has never slowed down in 10. John's has never slowed down in eight or nine or however long he's been doing it.

Now I think people are wondering, mark, did you start at 10 years old? Like, how did you.

Yeah, I mean, look, you know, I appreciate that. I'm, you know. Yeah, thank you. I, you know, 10. I, I, you know, I started one. This, this, this, this nightcap is good. About to devolve very quickly here. The myth of aging. So, okay, let's talk about another myth, which is, you know, you can't make big returns on risk, right? We always talk about the risk reward ratio. You want to make big returns in the stock market, you're going to take big risk, right? You want to buy Google you. Yeah, you'll make 12%. You want to buy. I don't know, what's the name of your stock that's not risky, right? I don't know. It's funny.

Like, no, no.

Must even buy stocks. Like, wait, what's stock market? Okay, so there's this, there's this, there's this way to like, invest in companies and you get a return anyways, right? So, so the bigger the company, the more successful the, the less risk, Right? Is typically what you do. But if you're gonna buy a start like a startup, right, odds are it's gonna go under. But if it hits, you can make 50x100x,000x returns, but you're taking a massive risk. So our returns are 300 to a thousand percent. What are the risks? Hand to rob.

How much.

How many times you lost money on a land deal?

Once, I think. Oh, no, twice. Two times.

Okay.

How much did you lose?

Once was 1250. The other was 1450.

$1,250 and $450.

Yeah.

And how many deals have you done?

Hundreds and hundreds. So, so, and, and there, there feels I honestly like I could have resolved them and just didn't. I just didn't. I just didn't want to put the time and effort into it. So it was resolvable. There were just other things that were more pertinent for my time and my energy and, and so, yeah.

Okay.

How about you, Zen master?

I may have broke even on a deal, but never lost money. And I think that, you know, along the lines of what you're bringing up, just talk about the elephant in the room. It's like defaults. What about defaults? What happens when people don't pay us? It's like I always tell people, listen, I fulfill my Promises. And I want people to fulfill theirs, but if they don't, in this instance, I'm okay. Right. Like, you know, I think we talked about this last week, right? If you bought a property for $3,000, you sell for $300 a month and someone pays you for, you know, four months. Right. Well now that's $1,200 less I have invested into that property and I will resell it. Do I have to evict them? No, they're not allowed to build on the property. Plus a bank's not going to give them a loan to build on a property they don't own anyways. The risk isn't there. So it's easy to remove them from that property because they're not living on it. Right. They get a notice of default, notice of termination if they miss another payment and away they go. And what do we do? We resell it. We make more money. So defaults are not a problem. Defaults happen.

But.

Yeah, but what's terrible though is like how you have to literally like chase the people for the money. Like you have to get a paper check every single month. You have to go to the bank, you have to deposit it. Oh wait, no you don't. It's all automated. Yes, it's all automated with a shameless plug for GeekPay IO, a set and forget it payment system. So even then you don't even have to notify your borrower, it automatically notifies them as well. So with software now collecting those monthly recurring payments, your mailbox money, so to speak, you don't need to go to the mailbox, it just automatically comes into your bank account. And if it doesn't, there's nothing to do. It's all automated. So sorry to to cut in there with my.

No, it's a good point. People, people, you know, they asked about managing the notes and I say it's great. You know, if you're buying from me, Mark, guess what? You're going to get a login credentials to a portal. You're going to be able to see your balance, see your agreement, make early payments, pay off the property. It's fantastic for you. But what's better is that your eye as the person who owns the property, I'm going to get automatic payments each month. So it's a win win on both sides. I don't know who created that, but it was genius.

I don't know, dude, buddy, what are your thoughts?

Have I ever lost money on a deal? I don't think I've ever lost Money on a deal. I've probably broken even on one or one or two out of thousands of deals.

Hundreds, probably.

Over. Yeah, over, over thousands now. Yeah, yeah, yep. So. So yeah, that's, that's pretty amazing when you, when you look at that. Right. And again, you know, I think our, when we're buying, we're buying mostly lower value properties. Right. We're buying properties for $5,000 or less. Those deals are just inherently less risky. Right. So, you know, if I were to buy a $50,000 property, that's a lot more risky, in my opinion. We're, we're kind of mitigating our risk by buying all of these smaller properties that we turn into performing assets. And the returns on each of those small properties are really amazing. And the risk is just really low with these smaller properties. Right. We buy them at a margin of safety. We make money on the buy.

We're making our money on the buy. 300% margin safety.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And we teach you how to find an area that's conducive to buying at a deep discount and selling. Right. So, so the risk is very low on these deals. You know, I, I know people, Mark, in the last year, they. Who have done bigger deals, they're actually having a tough time right now because, you know, buy for 50, sell for 100, or maybe get a, maybe get a property under contract for a million, try to find a buyer for 2 million. Like in the last year or so, people don't want to fork out the cash. But there's still a lot of people out there who can afford land for one to 200 bucks a month.

Yeah. You got a job, you can afford our land. Absolutely. So we have a massive buyer pool too.

Yeah.

I've never been stuck in. These are all land.

All you need is allowance mark and you can buy our land.

Yeah, yeah, Exactly. But after 6, 500 days, I've never been stuck with a piece of raw land. I've broken even when I factored in my time, but I've never lost money on a deal, which is kind of nutty to say.

So.

It is nutty to say. That's pretty nutty.

It is nutty. It's just we're making our money on the buy. Yeah, yeah, I remember. I remember that one deal. We screwed up the due diligence and had tons of back taxes. And I was like, I'm.

I'll.

If I pay the taxes, I'm going to lose money on this deal.

Deal.

I'm like, we don't lose Money. So I'm like, let it go for the taxes. And then sure enough, it goes to auction. And it In a competitive auction situation, people start bidding it up. They start buying the property. I just requested the overage on the taxes. That's my money. And we ended up making, like, you know, 200% on those deals. I didn't have to sell the property. The county sold it for me.

That's awesome. Yeah, right?

I love this. Yeah. So crazy. Well, anyways, I know this is the part at nightcap where he's get a little rowdy. You guys are drinking. I've got my 40 of water.

Nice.

It is mountain Spring valley water.

Oh. Last time I had a 40, it was an old English 800. Yeah. Wasn't good. Might add two, and it wasn't good. Wasn't good. But anyway, Mark, I mean, thanks for. Thanks for having us.

Thanks for having me.

Sad part, Mark. This is where Mark's gonna go.

This is where I drop off, you guys.

It's really. It's really more about the pretentious hard stop. Mark's like. He's got kind of this air about him where he doesn't want to hang out with us, so.

No, I'll. I'll hang out. I just think it's more fun without me.

Okay, we'll talk to you later. Bye. See you. That was a good one, right? Yes. All right. Let freedom ring, Mark. Let freedom ring.

A little dab of water in my whiskey.

So this is where Mark's gone. The drinks are out now it's time to kick back and talk land investing without a filter. No filter.

Nickname is the filter.

Yeah, I think he's the filter. The filter.

Guys, what do you got?

So, cheers. So, Mike zano. I have 18 year knob creek.

Oh, man, you're a. Get a good. Get a good drink there.

I'm telling you what. This is older than my. My boy, than my youngest boy. And it's very worth, very much worth all I paid for it.

It's older than all of my kids, I think, added together.

Are you having a drink tonight, John? You drinking tea?

What are you drinking tonight?

I got a look at this. It's French press. I know. Just pulling out all the stops tonight.

It's great. How much coffee do you drink a day, though? That can't be good for you.

I know. It is a lot. I drink an obscene amount of decaf. It's like an embarrassing amount of decaf.

All right, that's. That's better for you. That's better for you. What do you got, Zano?

Yeah.

Oh, this is actually really good. I got. I don't know how you pronounce it. The N, I, K, K, A. Is it Nika. Nika. Whiskey from the barrel. The Japanese whiskey.

O. Nice.

Oh, it's all baited out. I know.

Yeah. It's not bourbon. Good stuff.

Oh, I got that nice Tennessee hug. First sip.

Oh, yeah, the Japanese hug. That's awesome.

So.

So, viewers, we're here for you now. We're here to answer questions for all of you folks. So those of you tuning in, maybe you just found the land geek. Maybe you're like, what the heck is land investing? That's why we're here. Ask us questions, we'll answer. No question is a dumb question. You know, we'd love to help anybody, no matter where you are in the business, if you just found this, maybe you're. Maybe you're in flight school, maybe you're in coaching, maybe you're a veteran. See if we can help. So, yeah. Who's here tonight? Say hello. Where are you from? Mike, you got a shout out earlier. Where'd it go? Ryan Griff.

Yes.

Talking to you.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

He's a lucky man.

Cheers, Ryan.

Cheers, Ryan. Congrats, Ryan. Ryan, tell us. Tell us what you do and maybe why you're looking at land investing. Love to hear that.

Absolutely.

And I don't know, I thought that was a good podcast with Mark, right? Myths versus Realities.

I thought that went well.

Yeah. And I'm trying to think. Any other. Any other myths about this whole thing? I. I know a myth that we could talk about. Have you guys ever heard the myth that. Or have you ever heard this. This statement that owner financing land is hard? That is too. It's too. Too many moving. Too many moving parts. Too difficult.

Right, right, right, right.

What are your thoughts on that, John Burnett?

I mean, I. I disagree.

Tell us why John Burnett?

I mean, for me, like, I've got, you know, well over a hundred notes right, at this point in my business, and I don't talk to people.

Right.

Like, I mean, I talked to some people that work for me, but I'm like, it's very rare that anything gets escalated to me where I'm actually talking to a person, and then nobody's like, I don't want anybody mailing me checks. Right? Like, it's not. It's not in my interest. It's not in theirs. It's all in geek pay. It's all automated. And so. And then I've got somebody like a Virtual assistant that works for me. And this is a part time job for her. But she sends out the notices, she handles the default process. She handles all of that. And so I just get the notifications, right? Like, hey, this property came back. We finalized the default process. Or, you know, and then she's even got her own processes. If people, like, if people say, if people are having trouble making payments and asking for some grace or something like that, we've got a basic policy like, here's what we do in that scenario. If you, if they, if you want to do this, you can do that without my approval. Right. And so it's really pretty. It doesn't take a lot of my time, really, you know.

I love it. Zayna, what are your thoughts? And I have some thoughts.

I. I don't know. I'm gonna go with the. What was that movie back in the day with? He was in Leonardo DiCaprio and he was impersonating and he was a doctor. And the guy's like, I should have concurred. Well, I'm gonna concur. I concur with John. I concur.

I don't know what movie that is.

Dude, catch me if you can't.

Is it catch me? Yeah.

He was acting like a doctor and he's asking the guy. I should have concurred. Learning from that guy. John. I concur.

Why do you concur? Tell us more.

Because I agree with everything you said. It's only difficult if you're doing it all yourself, right? Do it all yourself. It's a pain in the butt. I mean. But the nice thing about this business is it's repeatable. It's redundant. Ready? It's boring. But yeah, money, the returns are nice, but the processes just repeat themselves over and over and over and over and over. But since they repeat themselves, you can outsource them, you can delegate them, you can systematize. Finally got that word down after hearing Scott Boss would say for about a decade, systematize.

Mike's been sitting into a mirror for hours.

I say it all the time, just for no reason. I walked around, hey, how you doing? Like it Systematize. The other one, Scott, you love working per se.

Yeah, that's a clinical term.

Sounds like a pt.

Yeah, yeah, it's a clinical term. We'll get to it for sure. But okay. But yeah, here's the thing with like, with the past, with owner financing being so difficult, right. Who would be so lucky to get to a point where they're at 5 to 10 to 20 to $30,000 a month passive income on our financing notes. And we have people, we used to talk, $10,000 a month passive income was the pie in the sky number back in 2015.

Yeah.

It's 2025 now, folks. People are getting to 30,000 plus in five years. John Burnett. How amazing would it be to wake up on the first of the month knowing that you had $30,000 coming in that month.

Yeah.

You didn't have to do anything for her.

Yeah.

It was all, maybe there's a 10 default. Okay. You're gonna take a $3,000 hit that month. Right. So you only got 27,000 coming in.

This hoodie is with numbers just like that. You spit those. But you're good. You're good.

I'm on top of it tonight. For all of the 16 people watching, I'm on top of it. I don't know why our viewers are down tonight. We had so many last week, not this week.

We live in the rerun. We know that.

We live in the rerun.

Yeah.

So anyway, but like how amazing is that feeling, right? To know that on the first month you have that money coming in. It makes your life, in my opinion, a little bit less transactional. Right. There are less transactional deals to be done that month because you have that money earmarked. It's already coming in now when you get a couple nice cash deals on top of that, like John Burnett did last week where he brought in like I don't know how many thousands of dollars in one day. That makes a pretty sweet month.

We get a device when you say that, we cut away and we see John talking last. Like when you say that like John did. And it pops in.

Yeah, yeah, Totally.

Last week on the nightcap.

Yeah.

So, right. So those, those are our thoughts. People on, you know, owner financing is. It's just too difficult to manage. Not. It's a big knot for me.

Big knot.

We got some, we got some comments coming in. Some maybe, maybe question. We'll see. Philip. Philip says mouse key. Maybe he's on week two of mailing 100 letters per week. That's awesome.

Good job, Philip.

At what point should I expect feedback or response assuming I'm offering a compelling price? I love that question. Couple things in there, Mike. So time frame and then the compelling price I think we should talk about as well.

Yeah, yeah, Right. Right now. You know, listen, you know, usually it takes a few weeks, if not three or four to start getting some people to respond. You know, sometimes we've had mailers. Right. Out of the gate.

Boom.

People, sometimes it takes. Goes back to. We said last week on the nightcap, we, you know, you have to be consistent with the mailing and the marketing, right? So consistently mailing. All of a sudden, after a certain point, you hit that breakthrough point. The deals are continually just bubbling up, bubbling up, bubbling up. They're going to keep popping up into your inbox, into your mailbox, into your text thread. They're going to start coming, but it's a few weeks for sure before you start getting that. Would you agree, John?

Yeah, I do. Yeah. And I think, I think you're right. Like, persistence is key, right? And getting your offers, right. I remember, man, there's this one county in Oregon and I was mailing there and I, I saw somebody I knew, they bought this property there for $2,000. And I was like, they can do it. I can do it. I couldn't do it, right? And so I sent so much mail and, and like, and then got it finally to the point where I just did consistent deal flow there, right? But it just took. Took a little while for that, for that to hit. And that was because I went way under on the price point, right? I was going way under the standard, you know, percentage. So.

Good point.

And that's. We don't all hit the nail on the head with our first batch of mailers, right? That's just how it is. But did you quit, John Burnett? Did you quit that county?

I didn't, I didn't do it.

I didn't quit. He did.

I made so much money.

There you go. You just can't quit, right? You just gotta, you gotta dial in sometimes to the pricing.

Yeah, yeah. You know, I was talking to someone today, Scott, that he's got the intake down. He's buying a lot of properties, but he's having a difficult time selling, so he's getting a little, little, little, little anxious. But the reality is that they're all going to sell. It just takes the right amount of marketing. And I can't tell you how many times I've talked to someone like, all these properties aren't selling, aren't selling. And all of a sudden, one week they sell three or four. But it wasn't like they sold it in that one week. They sold it as a result of all their previous efforts. And the consistency.

Consistency is.

By the way, is it true that the. It says I love, Nobody can see it is the same mic underneath that. I'm just curious. Oh, dirt, you always have the coolest shirts.

I don't know, I'm just a shirt guy. Like shirts. You have the shirt too, Mike. You just, you know, I don't know. I forgot about it. You have so many shirts. You forgot about it? Laura didn't lay it out for you. It's fine. Whatever. Kind of the truth anyway. See who else we got here. So, Philip, if you don't hit the head on the nail with your first batch of mailings, don't give up. It's data. It's data for you. And you're learning the counting. Right. So hang in there. Here's a great comment from George Stewart. So, Mike, give this one to you. Hey, guys, Indianapolis representing here, he bought the Land Geek program at least a decade ago. So he was a toolkit guy. Right. And he sent out a bunch of offer letters to tax delinquent properties.

Yeah.

And he didn't have any success and he got frustrated. What would you say to George today?

Well, I'd say just like I said a few minutes ago, there are sometimes mailers where they completely fall flat in their face.

Whatever reason.

John, you just mentioned. How many mailers did you send out, John, before you figured out that the pricing was off was a few hundred more. I don't know, man.

It's embarrassing. It's like probably a thousand for this one before I actually, like, mailed the appropriate amount.

And it can be tough, right? If you're in the beginning and you, you know, you don't have the quote unquote proof of concept, you start doubting yourself. But if you're not careful, you can unwind yourself from a very big opportunity. Unfortunately, that sounds like what happened a decade ago. But that's okay. You're here today and you can learn from that past action that you took. The fact that you already did that should give you confidence to get back up on that seat, start riding that bike again, and just start mailing and realize it's going to produce. It's just going to take consistency.

Yeah. And I think some other things are better than a decade ago. Right. The way we do things is better. It's easier to get information. You know, George, we're not having to necessarily purchase lists from the county anymore that are 30,000 line items long, that you then have to scrub down to 100 line items to mail.

Remember that Frankenstein in the list which takes you.

It takes you hours and hours and hours, and then you get a line off and you're screwed when you set out your first mailing. So data is easier to come by, the training is better, tax Delinquent people. We don't. I mean, we actually go after everybody now because wider net, I mean, wide net, right.

You used to have to like create a formula, right? Oh, this. I'm going to offer fifteen hundred dollars, but. And then I put on the next column, how much is owed in back taxes. Then I have a little formula and everybody gets a unique little offer. It was so nice. It was so beautiful. I felt so good with my little formula. Big Excel genius here, right. Everybody now gets an offer because all we want people to do is raise their hand and say, I'm interested. And if they are interested, then we have discussions and then we find out, oh, there's back taxes. Don't worry, we'll take care of that. Instead of 1500, you got $300 of back taxes. I'll give you 1200 and I'll take care of that. It's just part. We just need someone to raise their hand. So m. We have really simplified things. We've really taken a lot of the stress out of it. It's really simple. One price, they all get it, and then we deal with it when they go through intake.

Yeah. And I would say, you know, George has another question. You know, so how, how are things different now? So we kind of answered that. Right. But I also have to say the training is better. Right. So like, like we have a land investing college now that we didn't have 10 years ago.

Yeah, right.

In 16 weeks you go through this land investing college we call land geek flight school. And like you're done and you're doing deals. Right. Like you guys do it. I, I talked to somebody the other day. He's in week 11 of flight school. He's already sold eight properties. Right. I talked to somebody who was in week eight of flight school a few years ago. Few weeks ago. He's in week eight of flight school. He'd already bought 10 properties.

Yeah, right.

And in week eight, he bought 10 properties at 30 cents on the dollar. Right.

There's no way I did that 10 years ago in my first, first few months. No way.

Yeah. And look at, look at, look at the asset column. He has acquired in just eight weeks.

Yeah, right. Yeah, so, so yeah, that's a great point. Because even if you haven't sold these yet to the point of the person that I was referring to earlier that a little anxious because they haven't sold them yet, bought these all 30 cents on dollar, you have a great portfolio of land that you owe and own at an incredible price. So that alone is an accomplishment. And now it's just a time to put in the effort and go through the marketing and understand that it sometimes takes longer than we would hope. But they all do sell.

Yeah.

And. And we just need to make those assets, performing assets. And it happens. Right. Even if it doesn't happen right away, you're not losing money on that asset. So it's good business. What do you got there, Michael? Laura. Laura just dropped something off. I can tell.

Oh, I was trying to think I was going to get a little. I was going to get a little dollar bill and said, I got a dollar coin. It's a performing asset.

So I. I have to brag. I have to brag tonight because my wife pulled a Laura and she brought me a tray.

Is that a karate board?

It's like a cheese and cracker tray.

I call them karate boards. That's a karate board. You want to call it your karate board?

Yeah, I like it.

Shout out to my wife if you're watching this. I want a karate board.

Yeah.

I mean, I've just heard my kids, like, I just heard my kids banging on the door over there.

Oh, my God.

Different stage of life, guys. Different stage of life.

Different stages, exactly. We have a question. Where are the tracks in tonight? I. You know what? I. I think we just got ahead of ourselves.

No, they're coming. We have some in the works. Something.

We got a few things in the work. A few things. A few things in the works. Back to Ryan Griff. He's a mechanical engineer, and he's happy to be in contact with you, Mike. So, I mean, engineers, they do really good in this business because it's just. We teach you a recipe, so just follow the recipe. So there you go.

Brian's gonna crush it.

This is from Leo. Leo. Leo checking in from Utah.

All right.

Just started week three. Getting ready to send out his first batch of mailers. What are your thoughts of sending mailers to corporations and LLCs? When you're sending out your. Your mailers, John, you do it.

No, I mean, like, when I'm. When I'm interacting, like, generally, if I'm sending out mailers to other LLCs, I'm sending them out to other people like me. Right. And yeah, you might get the odd deal in there, but it's. You can be. It's going to be a much smaller ratio. Right. And so generally, I want to be interacting with individuals compared against LLCs.

Mike. Channel.

I concur.

Come on, man.

That's two concurs in one evening. That's Great.

Again, it's. It's generally a good idea to just stick there.

I will also concur. All right.

Look at that.

Three concurs.

I love it. That's the new episode and we have.

I don't know if you guys knew, but we actually have a guy watching. His name is Kirk Yoder. Wasn't he an MTV DJ back in the day? Kirk Yoder?

No, Kirk. No, it was. Oh, I know you. I don't think it was very similar.

Kirk, did you work for mtv? And. And if so, it's good to see you.

But anyway, if not, it's not good to see you.

Any other questions tonight that we can answer for the land investing community? I think we're definitely living in the rerun this time. I don't know what happened. It's probably because I'm managing the streaming.

You're only looking at one platform, though.

I'm looking at multiple platforms. I don't know what happened.

By tomorrow, 10 million people will watch this.

Oh, by the way, we do have an announcement to make though, because two announcements, actually. Number one is if you go to the comments in the description of this live broadcast, there's a link to a Google forum where you can enter to win a drawing of Dirt Rich one or two. Do you remember? Well, you know, my name is Simon and I like to do drawings of Mike Myers on Saturday Night Live. Anyway, you can. You can enter to win a signed copy of dirt rich 1 and 2. So make sure for all, all of the many of you watching tonight that you go to the description and click on that Google form and fill out the form so that you can win that. And then we do have three winners from last week.

What are they winning?

They won. You listen to me when I talk signed copies.

You said definitely they're gonna enter for now. I didn't know. That's. The people last week won.

Oh, yeah, yeah, last week. Same. Same draw.

That was pretty.

Same drawing. Sorry, I didn't mean to blow up. So. So here are the winners. Here are the winners of last week's drawing. Your odds of winning are much bigger this week. Last week it was very competitive.

Would you have to be present to win?

What's that?

Do you have to be present to win or someone. Someone that.

No, we don't do that here. You don't have to be present to win. We just honor it. So the three winners of the. The signed Dirt Rich compendium are.

This guy's good at Scrabble.

Dan. Dan Neems. Dan Neemes. Ben Dittinger and Vin Dininger.

I feel like he pronounced all. I really think he did. I mean, sorry, guys.

I think it's dinner.

It's Dininger. I know.

All right. You know better. All right.

Yeah, I'll crack them for you then.

I know.

Vincenary.

So like Zano, There it is.

David Letterman in the house.

Ah, guys, well, we're coming up on five minutes. Let me see if we got any other questions, comments. Jared Bell. Here we go. Jared Bell. I think I was made for nightcap at this stage of your business. And Jared Bell, I gotta give you a shout out. So you guys on Facebook and you see other land investors posting their land. Right. So Jared Bell. And you guys will now see this because I bring it up and you'll notice in almost all of his land ads on Facebook Marketplace, he's holding up a sign that says like, for sale, but he's standing there with the for sale sign next to his land. And sometimes it's next to his land, sometimes it isn't, but it doesn't matter. It's very creative, and I think he gets a lot of hits that way. So anyway, Jared Bell. Good for you. He's one of our coaching clients at this stage of the business. What percentage of sales are coming from Facebook versus land site? John Burnett.

I got tired of Facebook. Zero percent Facebook.

Really? You're zero percent?

I'm zero percent. I should be on Facebook. I just, I started hating Facebook in general and deleted my Facebook profile.

Hey, you know what, though? I gotta say, that's actually pretty, pretty impressive in this day and age because most people are selling most of their land on Facebook.

Yeah.

So good for you, man.

Yeah, I'm selling zero percent.

So you're doing the land sites in your buyers list? Yep. Yeah. That's awesome. John. Do you ever listen with realtors?

Every so often. But, you know, only if I feel like the market's super, like, super duper hot in an area and if I. If I'm pretty confident about the realtor. You got to be careful with a realtor because you can get. You'll get locked in a six month contract and they'll throw on a gis picture a couple sentences and then, you know, we'll see what happens. And that's never fun. Yeah. So.

All right, I like it. Thanks for the. Thanks for the advice there. Mike Zaino. What are you Facebook versus land sites?

I think it's a mix. I don't know the percentage, but it's a mix. Definitely a mix. I'm. I'm in awe that John's off of, like, John.

Like, yeah, Craigslist John.

Hats off to John.

No Craigslist.

No Craigslist. No Facebook. John Burnett, you are the entire buyers list.

Let's not forget, realize he has a buyer's list.

Yeah. And that buyers list has got to be getting pretty big after, what, eight years now.

Pretty big, I'm guessing.

Pretty, pretty big. Yeah. We do have a comment. What's that?

Oh, I just said it's large.

Yeah, it's large. Right. I. I would say that we're probably like half and half. Well, I would say actually probably like 40 Facebook, 40% land sites, 20 buyers or like, and then 20 buyers list. That's probably what we are right now, which is pretty awesome. I mean, the buyers list. I mean, you get a lot of repeat buyers, Right. And then the question, does the buyers come from Facebook? Buyers list comes from Facebook or. Or the land selling website.

Engage with you at any point. You can get their email. Now they're on your buyer's list.

Yep. Yeah, for sure. Mark Podolski commented. Mark, I dropped you through the floor there pretty quick. We didn't even get the Let freedom ring in. But. But he says this is the best show on the Interwebs. No. No idea why the live viewers didn't show tonight. Next week will be millions.

Millions.

Millions. Yeah. I think we'll definitely get more viewers next week. I don't know.

You know what? I'm just.

I think next week's at least 17. It's gonna be great.

You know, remember, Scott, we started this ago just because we could hang out and drink together and talk. So the three of us are hanging out here. It's a win.

You know, I. And I. And I do have to say that that was actually way back when, before streaming was even really a thing. Like Zaina. We were streaming, man.

We had an intro song, and we got so big, YouTube shut us down.

We're gonna get another intro.

They blocked our intro. Like, wow.

Yeah.

Noticed by the algorithm.

Wow.

Yeah. I think we're still in trouble for that. But. Yeah, so. But we got another intro coming. It's actually not an intro because it's in the middle of the show. So we got it. What do we call it? A mid trow.

Midro.

I like it.

I like a Metro.

And I was gonna throw in. In the. I don't know if you noticed, Mark, but I had my own little hook tonight halfway through, and I was gonna throw in live for many hours Tuesday night, and I didn't so next week.

That is really good.

That's going in. I love next week. That's going in. All right, all right, guys. Well, we've. We've come up on an hour here, so hopefully this was helpful. I think that we did definitely cover. We talked. We definitely covered the myths about passive income and land investing and how there are some myths that. There are actually a lot of myths that are not true. Right, Mike?

There are a lot of myths that aren't true. That's true. I think I like to end with a little bit of a toast. Can I do that, please?

Please do.

Because it's something I was to tell Mark, and if Mark, you're listening, when I first started, Mark would say, mike, we're looking to create new problems, but good problems. What's a new problem? Problems send out lots of mailers. People start responding, and you got to re. You got to actually engage them. You're looking, you buy a bunch of property. Now you're going to create ads to sell them. You know, you're creating new problems and solving them. Right. New problem. Mark would say to me, good problem. So here's to creating new problems.

I love it. That was a great one.

True.

Cheers to you, buddy. Cheers, Don. Cheers. Like, one last thing. If. If any of you watching for the first time ever have a question about land investing, there's a little banner at the bottom of your screen. Email us Scott at the Land Geek, Mike at the Land geek, john@thelandgeek.com whoever you like better.

Whoa, My email's blowing up right now. Keep it coming, guys.

Yeah, Mike got all 16. That's great.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, he's the man. All right, everybody, hope you have a great night. We'll see you next week. Now, next week, we are featuring a client, or we'll just say a land geek. We're featuring a land geek who has done very well in the business, who has the business has changed their life. Not are they. Not only are they more wealthy money wise, but they're more wealthy with their freedom. Right? That's what it's about. So next week, tune in. We got a. We got a student success story for you. All right, thanks, everybody. Have a good night. Signing off.

All right, like last time, cheers.