You Can Always Make More Money—But You Can’t Make More Time

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

Good.

Good to see you. We got Dude Buddy, the nightcap OG Scott Bossman. Scott, how are you?

I am great. Glad to be here.

Glad to see you. We got the most feared woman in the country who actually hosted the last roundtable. Big props, Mimi Schmidt. Mimi, how are you?

Great. How are you?

Good to see you. I'm great. I'm great. We've got. I love it when you call me Big Papa Tate. Litchfield. Tate. You look refreshed. Back from vacation?

Yeah, feeling good. Happy to be on the podcast. Missed you guys last week.

Good to see you. Good to see you. And of course, last but not least, you know him, you love them. Scott. Todd. Scott. Todd.netlandmodo.com you're not automating your Craigslist and your Facebook postings. Posting domination.com thelandgeek the knowledge bombs are there. They're dropping all over the place. Investor ninjas.com Scott. Todd. How are you, Mark?

I'm great. How are you?

I'm a little fired up this afternoon, you know, why? About our topic, about our topic. It really gets me fired up when, when Meanie's like, look, I talked to this, this client. They've been doing the business for three years and they still don't have this big piece outsourced, even though, even though we had them at the elite weekend and talked about this.

And you know what, Mark? Like everybody, because this, this, the topic of today's call was generated from the mastermind call that the coaching students go through. And when, when Eric and Tate kind of pitched this idea, I could not believe my ears. Because everybody that's gone through that or that's in that coaching program, they've all gone through flight school. And they all guaranteed me I can go back to the text messages or the chat in flight school. And I asked them point blank, are you doing this to create another full time job? And the answer is all, always know. I don't think I've ever had anybody go through flight school and tell me yes or don't to create another full time job. And then I hear this and I'm like, dude, buddy, what's going on? Not Scott Mossman, but like, what's going on? Like, I don't get it. So this should be an interesting call, Mark.

All Right, let's get into it. So, Tate, what is the topic that. That's got me all riled up?

All right, I want to know from the other geeks on the roundtable, what's the one VA position that you can't live without? Right. So you only get to keep one of your VAs. Who's it going to be and why?

All right, Tate, who should we start with?

Ladies first.

Ladies first.

It is definitely my intake manager. And feel free, guys to take that same position. Right? Because basically she's running half my business. The intake side of my business. Actually, someone asked me a question, someone who's been doing this for four years, a simply file question today. And my response was, why are you doing this? Admin crud. I used a cuss word, but I'll say crud on the podcast. Give this to your intake manager and be the manager of your business. I was shocked. My intake manager, the phone calls come into an automated fashion, and she has. Has a pricing matrix. She knows what she can buy for and sell for. And literally, I start to see these properties as the ad copywriters are creating ad content for them. And it should be that way. She should only contact me if she has problems. And she is. I don't know what I'd do without my intake manager.

So, Mimi, just for the newbie listeners that may not even know what an intake manager, would you mind defining what the intake manager role is and what they provide for you?

I guess everybody does it differently, but really, from the endpoint of accepted offers coming in, whether they be fax, email, phone calls, voicemails, she gets them. She communicates with those prospective sellers. Right. She pushes properties to due diligence. She takes a look at the due diligence and lets me know if there are any issues I need to be concerned about or if she has any questions. And then she works with those folks that. Inside my parameters that I've set for her that she knows she can go by. She sets up a closing. She has the documents created and she closes with them. She gets the paperwork back and she uploads it into either simply file or sign. Now, I mean, simply file for purchase. And then she's pushing the information to the folks that are prepping my marketing information, neighbors all. She manages my VA's on that side that collect the neighbors marketing info. All that.

Yeah, that's. That's a really a good, comprehensive role. I don't. I'd be curious to see what other people are saying about what their intake manager does. But that's essentially what the intake manager does. So when before you buy a property, you, as the owner of your land investing company, you can call up, like, you send out your offers, right? They come back to you. This is the intake time process. Sometimes the seller just wants to yell at you. Sometimes they're confused, what was this offer? And sometimes they really want to sell. So I'm gonna rewind the tape. Let's go back to 2003, where I would contact my seller, right? And I would. They would accept my offer. I'd call them up and I'd say, hey, I see you got my accepted offer. Then for the next 30 minutes, they would explain to me the entire history of when they bought the property, why they bought the property. Can we discuss your offer? 30 minutes. Burnt out of my life. Now, granted, I have young kids at that time that I could been playing with. But no, Mark wasn't playing with his children. He was talking to a seller. I could have done that conversation in two minutes. The Tateway. That was my offer. You take it. This is our closing process, right? But no, no. And so it wasn't until I became enlightened about the value of my time that I hired my first intake manager, which took a long time, I'm embarrassed to say. But now, dear listener, you've already been lightened. We talk about this all the time. Can always make more money. You can't get more time. The intake manager is a crucial piece of it. So, all right, got off my. My little monologue there. Let's go to the technician, Eric Peterson. What is the VA position you can't live without and why?

And I think I would agree. I mean, the intake manager role is key in this business. It takes so much of the busy work off your plate and allows you to focus on other more important things in this business. So if I had to pick another one just to have something to discuss, I could certainly come up with another.

But no, I want to know your top position. I don't want your second. I want your top.

So it's intake manager. That's it. I mean, I can't live without it. And, you know, I think something that maybe people struggle with is the idea of bringing someone on to take care of this role. It seems a little overwhelming. You don't really know how to hire for it. Maybe you went to the land geek VAs and their intake managers were full. So now what do you do? And the reality is it's not that hard to hire this person. What you want is someone in The US that can speak English, that can communicate well, that has negotiation skills and organization skills. From there, you can train them what to do and you can do it step by step. You don't have to take them to the level that Mimi just walked through from day one. You can take them just to. Okay, this is what you do. When the offers come in, they're gonna come to your email and I want you to do this. And once they get that down, then add the next piece and you just keep working through that until it's done. It's really not that complicated.

Yeah, no, it's true. How much time would you say you save per week with your intake manager as opposed to when you were doing it yourself?

I mean, actual time that my intake manager spends on the business is probably like, I don't know, five to six hours a week. But the reality is the time that it saves me is far greater than that because it takes all that off my mind. I don't ever have to think about it. I know that my intake manager has it under control and I can rely on that person, that role to take care of it. So to me, it might be five, six hours a week, but the reality is it's like 20 hours a week in my mind.

Mark, if I can interrupt about what Eric said, it's about this disruption, right? Like we've all been there where we're trying to buy a really good property and we've been playing phone tag with somebody for weeks and they finally call us back and it happens to be on a Saturday when you're at lunch with your wife and you're like, hey, honey, I really love you. But I got this guy, he's finally calling me back. I really need to take this call because it's going to make me a lot of money. And your wife says, okay, 30 minutes later you come back to the table. You're feeling you're on cloud nine because you just agreed to buy a property that you're going to make a ton of money on. But your wife is upset, right? And so for me, yeah, it multiplies the time that I save by easy 2 or 3x. But it also prevents me from having those disruptions that take me away from, you know, time with the family or time that I'm spending on sales or high level work within the business. So, yeah, what Eric said is so true, right?

I mean, imagine if you're Scott Todd. Not only is your spouse upset with you, but your Panera soup is now.

Cold, your bread's gone. Stale.

Your bread's gone stale. The soup is cold. It's a problem. I mean, the whole. The whole Panera experience is essentially ruined. How many of those are you gonna get? What does that mean?

That's a problem?

Fake news, man. You're just hashtag fake because that doesn't happen. Like, first of all, the Panera bread is a thing of the past. Let's set the record straight. You know, hold on.

I got to come to Scott's aid on this one, Mark, Because I spent some time with Scott in Tampa recently, and all I can say is that guy eats well and we've been giving him a bad rap, Mark. Because we went to this cafe for breakfast and I mean, it was life changing. We had to eat there pretty much every day for breakfast. The Cuban bread in Tampa. I mean, I'm thinking we might need to have a boot camp in Tampa just for the food, for the bread.

Okay, first of all, you guys do not understand the concept of the stereotype. Once you get the rap, you don't just drop the rap. You think we're just going to drop jot not pro for Eric because he's dropping amazing tips every week. Oh, you guys are too nice. Let's move on. Scott Bossman, what's the one VA you can't live without?

I'm just saying, Mark, have you ever had a guava turnover?

I will be going to Tampa and I will be getting my guava turnovers.

Okay, good. Scott knows where they're at. I don't know where it is.

Let's move on to the dude, buddy.

That'S such a hard question. There are so many people in your team that are essential. You know, I couldn't do it without my list creation va. I couldn't do it without my ad poster va. I like the intake stuff. I'm gonna say for me, it's a tie between the list creation VA and my ad posting VAs, because how much time and energy do those people save me? It's insane.

All right, fantastic. And so, just for the newbie listener, please define what list creation is and what automated ad posting is for you.

So I will supply my VA with a new area and say I would like a list from this area and you compile the list for me. She knows exactly what she needs to do to compile that list. And I have her come up with some preliminary pricing figures in that area. And basically, you know, I'm to the point where I review the list, I make sure the pricing is dead on, and there we go. As far as ad posting, they are. I have a Facebook VA who's writing the content and posting for me. I have a Craigslist VA who is supplied with the content and they post for me.

All right, fantastic. And how many hours a week would you say you're saving?

Oh, I mean, well, it's just, you know, a couple of Facebook ads a day, that doesn't take long, but let's just say a half hour a day there probably more than that. Probably an hour on Craigslist a day. And then the list scrubbing stuff. I mean, she's probably putting in five hours a week for me, so I mean, 10 hours. Probably 10 hours. 10 hours or more a week.

Wow. I love it. I love it. Big papa.

You know, I'm going to sound like a broken record here, but for me, it's the intake manager hands down. I could never not have an intake manager. I think one of the biggest fears people have when it comes to hiring an intake manager is, is they forget.

That.

This position is from the gig economy. So hiring an intake manager does not cost you 40 hours of, you know, of money a week. My intake manager, three to five hours a week. That's it. So when I'm on vacation or there's just not a lot happening, they might not work at all. And I don't feel at all obligated to provide them with a minimum number of hours. That's the world that they're operating in and they understand it just as well as I do. I'm okay with them finding some other side hustle or working with someone else on the side as well. But the intake manager position, it's so important and it's such an easy position to train for, right? You just take it one step at a time. Don't think you need to have them do everything. Start with having them call people. Then you can have them work into your due diligence. But a word of advice to anybody listening to this, that is hiring somebody. You need to have a swim lane mapped out of what they're going to do for you before you hire them, because it's really hard to train somebody and say all you're doing is calling people and they're going to say, well, then what? It's nice to have a roadmap for them to follow. So intake manager, hands down, most important position, can't live without it. And then up there closely with the marketing team because I just hate doing that now.

All right, fantastic. Scott Todd, with your fancy Cuban bread.

What'S your listen Listen, you don't know what you're missing by resisting a trip to the east Coast. Like, I know you don't like the east coast, but I gotta tell you, like, like, take said we eat well over here, right? Like, the food is good. Like, I'm telling you, you would love it. The foodie of yourself would love it. You'd be like, man, I don't know why I have resisted Tampa so long.

So this place, it was that good, Mark? It was that good?

I mean, like, listen, Mark, it was so good. Let me tell you, it was so good. At one we got done, and I'm like, tate, are you ready to go to dinner? He's like, I can't go to dinner right now. I'm like, what are you talking about, man? He's like, scott, first of all, breakfast. Too big, too much food.

Lunch.

Because we went to the lunch place, the secret place.

He.

He's like, I can't do it, Scott. I can't eat dinner. I cannot eat dinner. And I'm like, what? You can't eat dinner? That's crazy. You're talking crazy, Tim. So I had to bowl Tate stay at the hotel. I had to go. And I asked him the next day. I'm like, hey, did you finally eat dinner last night? He's like, I did eat dinner. Guess what? He. Guess what? He walked into. He chose an Indian restaurant that happened to have a speed dating going on, and he sat down at a table. That's a different story.

It was awkward. It was really awkward. I walked in and I had my headphones in. I walked in and I just kind of said, table for one. I sat down and I look around me and I'm like, this is unique and interesting. And I see all the guys on one side of the room, and then I look over and I see all these. All these women on the other side. I'm like, oh, I don't think I'm gonna. No, I'm not here for the games. I just wanted some. Some, you know, chicken tikka masala to go. And so I stepped. I stood up and I was like, do you do to go orders? And they were like, yeah, why don't you just wait over here? I'm like, I'm just gonna wait outside in the heat and humidity of Tampa to avoid this situation. It was. Yeah, it was awkward, but the food was amazing.

There you go, Mark.

All right, all right.

So.

So while we're basking in your. Your gastronomic, you know, foodie sort of just.

I don't know what the word is. It's food bliss.

The bliss of it all. I'm having a senior moment.

Yeah.

What's the one VA that you cannot live without?

All right, well, this is gonna sound boring, because it's by far the number one thing everybody said, but it's the intake manager. And the thing about the intake manager that a lot of people and Tate take on a hit on it is that the intake manager, it freaks people out because you can't just go to your favorite, you know, platform and say, I'm looking for an intake manager, because, well, what is an intake manager? First, you have to understand what you're doing. And then what happens is people. I think that what happens when people try to get this intake manager in, they may dip their toes in the water a little bit to try it, but as Tate said, like, they get derailed when all of a sudden, the person doesn't know what to do.

Okay.

Because it is a dynamic conversation that's taking place. They need to understand how the process works. They need to understand it's not just a phone call. It's a phone call to get someone to convince somebody to sell you the land, even though there's not a lot of convincing there, but they need to understand the process. And one of the mistakes that people make a lot of times when they're outsourcing anything is that they just think, like, I can just give the keys to somebody, and they're gonna drive the car, and they've got it. So, like, okay, here's everything the intake manager does. Now go do it. That is, like, the worst mistake ever. It's because you don't teach someone anything by just handing the whole process over to them. You teach them one component of the process at a time. Just think about, like, if when you learned how to drive a car, you didn't just jump on the interstate. You learned how to back up and pull forward. You learned how to turn the wheel to go right, turn left. You know, if you learned on a stick shift, you had different things, your parents taught you different things.

You.

And then over the course of, say, a year, you learned as much as you needed to to be able to drive on your own. At least we hope, right? Like, you learn that process over time. And if you take that same approach to teaching someone how to do the work of an intake manager, that means that you've got to sit there and you got to work with them for a while. You got to. You got to be committed to their training. You got to suffer through the weird turns or the weird things that they do. Are they gonna. Are they gonna lose some properties along the way? Look, the first. Probably the first 10 calls I got, those people disappeared on me. I don't know what happened to them. Okay? But then you find they get better and better and better. So, you know, it's a learning curve, and you got to be able to be there to support them. And that's the weird thing, is that you're going to. You're going to run into resistance. You're gonna wear. You're gonna run into people who don't know what you're asking them to do. And then you need to be the leader and guide them and teach them and coach them, just as you have learned how to do it. And when you do that, all of a sudden, you've relieved yourself from one of the biggest, to me, pain points of this business. And that is taking the calls from the seller, who, as you said, they want to talk to you for 40 minutes about how they got the land. They went out there one time to see it. They never could find it, and they're not sure why their husband bought the land. And, you know, they wanted to sell it for years, but they couldn't do it because her husband didn't want them to sell it. And then they. Long story short, they're ready to sell now.

Right?

Like, it's like, oh, 40 minutes later.

Right, Right. And you want that property. It's not like you can just speed up that conversation. Right.

Let someone else have it. Right. Like, let someone else do that stuff.

Right? Right. So, Mimi, let's get into the nitty gritty. And how much do you pay your intake manager?

I started out at 11, and now I pay her 15. But I'm on the verge of a. She's going to get a pay raise soon. I always want to be the person that pays people the most, Even if it's by 50 cents, because I want their loyalty.

No, I do the same thing. There's a great Bob Parsons quote. If you pay people peanuts, you get monkeys.

Yeah. Completely believe it. Completely believe it. And you know what? I noticed that when I go to boot camps and when I talk with coaching students, they'll burn through VAs. Two months, three months. Oh, it didn't work out for me. The stick rate was too low. Well, you gotta stick with it with these VAs. I mean, if they show two, three times, they can't do it. Okay, get rid of them. But a lot of them, you've got to work with them and help them refine their skills. And that'll pay you. You know, you will earn the benefits if you just work with them and help them refine their skills.

All right, fantastic. Eric Peterson, what are you paying?

15.

15. And on a monthly basis, what does that come out to?

Probably.

I don't know, like 250 bucks maybe.

So 250 bucks a month, Something like that?

Maybe a little more.

300 bucks a month? Yeah. Wow. To save all that time.

Mm.

That's insane. If your effective hourly rate is even minimum wage, it makes. No, you have to get an intake manager. Correct. Am I doing the math right?

It's worth it for so many reasons.

Yeah. Scott Bossman, what are you paying your ad writer and your list scrubber?

So let's see. List scrubber, $5 an hour, five days a week. So 25 bucks there a week. So $100 a month. And then ad posting, we're looking at between Craigslist and Facebook. Seven hours a week. Sorry, trying to do the math in my head here. Seven hours a week, $7 an hour. So $50 a week for Craigslist. So $200 there a month. Probably another hundred dollars a month for Facebook.

Wow. Okay, Tate, I'm sure you probably don't Even pay your VAs the way you negotiate, but I'm gonna assume that they do it. They must be doing it for something. Yeah.

We had two intakes. 1250 and $15 an hour. A couple hundred bucks a month total.

All right, Scott.

Todd, you know, mark, it. In my experience, it takes about an about an hour per property for the intake manager to close on it. Okay. Give or take a little bit of time, but about an hour they can do it about an hour. I pay them about $18 an hour. So the way I look at it, it's probably cost me about $20 a property to acquire that property through their services. And I probably spend 400 to 500amonth on the intake manager.

Right, Right. Now the way that Tate structures it, I think is brilliant because the intake manager essentially pays for themselves because they get a bonus on the negotiation. So if they. For every $100 that they save on the purchase price, they get an extra hour compensation, which means a lot to them. But really for us, we want to save as much as we can on the purchase price.

When you think about it, mark, I'm spending $15 to essentially reduce that purchase price by 85. It's a no brainer. Right. And my intake managers are like sharks with blood in the Water. They are aggressive. They are hungry. They're constantly working on ways to improve their renegotiating tactics and skills because they know that saving the company money means more money in their pocket and the more properties that we have capital to buy. So it's a win win for everybody. So it's a pretty cool approach. And I've had intake managers renegotiate deals from 3,500 down to $2,000. So saving us $1,500, it's crazy. But they're good people. And like everyone said, they just. It takes a little bit of time to get them up and running, but once they're capable and have an idea of what they're supposed to do for you, you'll never be able to live without them, guaranteed.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'd really be curious to find out the logic behind somebody doing it themselves if they've been doing this business for a long time. I get the whole idea of the cheapest person you could hire is yourself in the beginning. But once you have a profitable cash flow and you've been through our coaching program and we kind of teach you all these ninja tactics, I just don't understand why there could be any logical reason to not have that big piece outsourced. I guess you can make an argument. I love intake, so therefore, I personally get joy out of doing it, even though I have the cognizance, the awareness that I'm losing money. Is that something? Is that a thing?

No, but I would think. I would think that the logic behind it could fall within the two categories. One is that they're either afraid to spend the money, okay, because they're the cheaper person, but man, like, if you're doing $3 an hour work, well, that's saying that your value is worth $3 an hour. Or if you're doing $18 an hour work, your value is worth $18 an hour. Well, I value my time a lot higher than $18 now. That's just the value that I put on my own time. And then the other piece is, is that, you know, like, if you're not committed to sticking through the hard part, like you're forming almost like a marriage, right? Like, marriage is hard, okay?

Like.

Like in the beginning of any new relationship, it's the communicating, it's the forming. Mimi says all the time, forming, storming, Norman. You know, that whole thing, like, it's hard to bring someone that you're going to work in a very high level position with your company for. It's hard, okay? And you got to commit to it. And then first sign of weakness or when somebody doesn't work out, well, then it's just easier for you to do it yourself.

All right, I like it. I like it. Well, that brings us to. Is it Mimi this week, the tip of the week? Mimi? Shaking your head no, it looks like it's the technician, Eric Peterson. Tip of the week. A website, a resource, a book, something actionable for the art of passive income listeners to go improve their businesses, improve their lives. It's so nice to have Eric back on.

I've got no week.

I'm not prepared for this.

So we.

Because Mimi has spoiled us, and now we're not even prepared for the tip of the week. So I'll let you think about that while I. While I thank the listeners and let them know that today's podcast is sponsored by flight school. If in 14 weeks, you want to get your business running and you want your Sherpa who's done this thousands of times to teach you how to get up that, that mountain quickly, efficiently, safely, Scott Todd's gonna teach you. In 14 weeks, get your business going. Learn more. Go to land geek.com training. Get on a call with the Zen master, Mike Zano or Dude buddy Nightcap OG Scott Bossman. They'll walk you through how it all works in fight school. So, Eric Peterson, what do you got?

Come to boot camp.

The boot camp tip.

We're like three, three weeks out, right?

We are three weeks out. Boot camp, I believe, is full. It might not be, but I think it is, but yeah. Or get start preparing for January, the next boot camp in San Antonio. Learn more@the landgeek.com bootcamp. But Eric Peterson, what's so great about boot camp?

Oh, come on. Boot camp is what it's all about. I mean, that's, that's where you learn all about this business for people of, you know, every kind of place in the business. Whether you've been doing this for a while and you're in the coaching program, there's a section for you. It's called the VIP room. If you're just getting started, we got the main room where, you know, Mark and Tate and Scott are all going to take you through different aspects of the business and show you how it's all done and kind of unlock maybe what you read in the toolkit or watched in the toolkit. And for people in flight school, you know, they come all the time as well and just find it to be very beneficial, just what they can learn, but also the Networking that happens at boot camp is. Is pretty amazing.

So.

Yeah, can't recommend it enough.

Yeah, no, it's like the opposite of a bad dinner date where you're out with, you know, someone that you don't know that well and you realize you literally have nothing in common and, like, the topics that they're interested in, you're not interested in and vice versa. Right. Like, it'd be like going out with Zaino and trying to talk about sports and he's like, yawning. Right. I don't really care about sports. Right. But at boot camp, we're all on the same page. We're all passionate about passive income. We're all passionate about the land business. We all want to see everybody succeed. The abundance mentality is visceral and you get little tips here and things there. And Mimi might even throw out. Yeah, this is how much I pay my va. You're like, oh, wow, I didn't even realize that that's a thing or whatever it is. And being in that room is really special, for sure. I mean, even at the break, you could ask Scott Todd about, you know, what's a better place in Panera to eat for lunch? He might even tell you, well, you could.

You can ask me. You can ask me where a great place to eat in Tampa is. Panera Bread. Yeah, Panera. Panera Bread and I are not friends, so.

All right, well, are we ready to do this? Oh, by the way, if you're getting value out of the roundtable, please do us a favor. Subscribe, rate, review the podcast, Send us a screenshot of that review to support thelangic.com we're going to send you for free the $97 passive income launch kit. We're also going to send you for free the new whole tailing course which teaches you step by step, how to double your money 30 days or less for cash. Alright, ready to do this? Are we? Good? 1, 2, 3.

Let's let freedom, freedom ring.

You guys are getting really slow.

You drug it out too long.

It's kind of like. It's not at the level of like between Two Ferns, Zach Alfenakis awkwardness, but like it like in between, like the office kind of awkward. And between two Ferns awkward. So great.

Did you see the movie?

I love the movie with Will Ferrell.

Oh, my gosh.

Oh, it's so funny.

The outtakes are good.

The outtakes are so good. I love, I love when he goes to Keanu Reeves. How many words would you say, you know, 1875, 100 he's like. And then he asked him a yes, no question. He's like, stomp once for yes, stomp twice for no. It's so good. It's really good. All right, well, thanks, everybody. We'll see everybody next week. See ya.

See ya.