Zero-Cash Land Deals: 7 Ways to Control Dirt Without Using Your Own Money

Oh, we pull the county scrubber list and send the offers through to folks who've held that patch of dirt but don't know what to do. If taxes, time, and distance make the whole thing feel a bother, we step in with a simple bid, a quarter on the dollar. Hey! A quarter on the dollar, a quarter on the dollar. Buy it right and sell on terms, a quarter on the dollar. Cash comes down and notes roll in and monthly checks all follow. That's the Maryland Geek Way, a quarter on the dollar. No tenants and no toilets, no termites in the wall. Just raw land in the open sky and room enough for all. A neighbor wants to guard his view, a camper wants to wander, and both are glad to make a deal on land bought cheaper yonder. Hey, a quarter on the dollar.

Oh my gosh, I got a new favorite song!

John, you gotta send us that link.

That's amazing. Order on the Dollar, it's like the— it's the catchiest thing ever.

Cheers to you, top of the morning to you, fellas. Happy St. Paddy's Day!

Happy St. Paddy's Day!

Cheers!

Cheers! Good to see you both. Uh, well Tonight we thought we'd talk about the luck of the land investor and how we create our own luck. But before we get into it, I'm Scott Bosman, the Dude Buddy and the Nightcap OG. As always, joined here with John Burnett, Handsome Rob, Eight is Enough Burnett. How are you, sir?

I'm doing great.

Good to see you. Who do you got? Who do you have along? You have a, you have an Irish counterpart there on your left.

Yeah, this one is also John Burnett, so don't get us confused. But this one is John Luke, and then I am John Thomas, so that's how you can tell us apart.

So he is actually John Jr., J-O-N. Yeah, J-O-N. Oh, that's amazing. Yeah, well, JJ, nice to see you, buddy. And, uh, we're missing Mike Zaino, uh, the Zen Master, tonight. He's stranded in Florida because of weather. That doesn't sound quite right. Stranded in Florida because of weather? Because of the weather in Mass.

Yeah, maybe it's because of really nice weather in Florida, right?

Yeah, I think, yeah, I think he's at some resort. Did you guys see like his, his, uh, his wristbands today? Like, he had like those resort wristbands on today.

For sure.

He's like, Laura, if we can't get home, it's the weather. It's like, let's go, right?

Cool. The weather, the weather. Yeah, he used the same excuse like 2 weeks ago. This is the second verse now.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's getting old, Mike. It's getting old, buddy. Um, and of course, the Godfather himself, author of Dirt Rich, best-selling Amazon book, Mark J. Podolsky. Hey Mark, be here. Thanks, good to see you.

It's good to see you. Uh, it's good to see the three of you. John, John, DudeBuddy. It's amazing.

So we got people— go ahead, go ahead, Mark.

So DudeBuddy, what do we do? Why are we here? If you're just tuning in, what is this? What is the Land Investor? Who cares?

Yeah, who cares exactly? Well, So this is the fun thing we do every Tuesday night where we talk land, we talk business, we talk how to build freedom, really, without freedom through real estate without the headaches of traditional real estate, right? So we focus on buying vacant land at a discount. What I love about it is we're buying a hard asset. And we make money on the buy, we're buying it at 25-35 cents on the dollar.. And yes, we can still do that. In this country, there are millions and millions of vacant land parcels we can buy at 25 to 35 cents on the dollar. And we turn around and sell them to other people that want the land. And we'll sell them for cash or owner financing. The owner financing can be really powerful because it creates a passive income stream for us that can lead to freedom with your time, freedom with your finances. Freedom with your location, freedom with working with whom you want, right? So that's what we do.

I love it. I feel like John should do like that, that freedom call. What was that movie with Mel Gibson? Oh, Braveheart.

Braveheart. Oh, amazing movie.

I mean, as long as I'm not like stretched out having my inner at the same time. I'm good with that.

So yeah, because yeah, I mean, land investing brings you freedom. It doesn't bring you death, brings you life. Yes.

Yeah.

We have some regulars here. Don Thracker is here. Bring it in, Don. Don, we want to hear a win tonight. Hopefully. Scott Walker's here. The governor. He's not actually the governor, but he used to— Scott Walker used to be the governor of Wisconsin. So that's what I call Scott Walker. Scott Elliott is here. Lots of Scotts on the call, we like that. Charles Jones, Chastity Hooks, uh, Aaron Giroux. Aaron, good to see you. Uh, who else? And others, say hello, tell us, tell us where you're from, tell us when you found us. Uh, did you find us today? Have you been following for a while? And bring your questions. We're going to talk a little bit about the luck of the land investor and and making deals happen. But let us know where you're from. Awesome. Well, I think the original topic tonight, guys, was really how to get in, like 7 ways to get into land investing without money, right? I think we all agree having a little bit of money is helpful. You can get started with a couple thousand dollars or less. I think you're you have a little bit more momentum if you have maybe 5 to 10 or something like that. But there are some creative ways to do deals without capital necessarily, that we're going to talk a little bit about. And then we definitely want to get to questions in the chat tonight. We also want to celebrate the lucky land— lucky land investors on the call, because I'm sure there's some wins out there. I'm thinking from Aaron Prescott, you've got to have a win. Don Thrasher. Where's Hollingsworth? Anyway, we know we have some wins out there. So, Mark, maybe we should just make it real quick. 7 ways, that's a lot, right? 7 ways to do deals without money.

7 ways. Okay, should we, should we rattle them off? I, I don't even have my notes in front of me. Hold on, let me look at my notes here. To remember all 7 is tough. Okay, so, all right, so what's the first way? You know, how about other people's money? That's the easy one. Let's knock that one off the list. So, you know, John Luke, he's a baby in the business, and actually, really a baby. And so he doesn't have money to buy land, so he goes to Rich Uncle Scott and says, Uncle Scott, I need to borrow some money. And Uncle Scott says, okay, John Luke, I love your dad, here's $5,000 and we're gonna split the profits 50/50. And then that's the first way. John Luke doesn't have any money, he's able to buy land with Uncle Scott's money, other people's money. So, so we call that a, like a JV or a partnership. I'd say it's one and two, other people's money and a JV, because you could also do a debt deal as well. You just borrow the money, you don't have to split the profits. So that's one and two. Um, and then we've got the, what we'd call an assignment, right? You would assign the contract. So using John Luke again as the buyer, John Luke, again, he's a baby, he has no money, but he has enough money from his dad to send out an offer to Uncle Scott. Uncle Scott's got a piece of land that he wants to sell, and so John Luke says, okay, I'm gonna put it under contract for $5,000. And he goes to Uncle Mark, says, Uncle Mark, I have this deal under contract, um, I will sign it to you for $6,000. He just made himself $1,000. Didn't have to— all he had to do is the cost of a stamp, let's say, what, a buck, right? So there's— that's the other way. So that's, that's number— that's 1, 2, and 3, assign a contract. Uh, the 4th way would be, uh, what we call a double close. A double close. So This happened with Paul Mendel. You guys remember that? That's a luck— you know, can we talk about the luck of the investor story? You guys remember Paul?

Yeah, I remember Paul.

So Paul, uh, found a deal in upstate New York, and he says to the buyer, hey, uh, you know, I like this deal. I think it was like $12,000 or something. It was, it was a, it was a higher price property. But Paul doesn't have the money, but what Paul does have is enough money to mail the neighbors. So he mails the neighbors and the neighbor's like, oh, I want to buy that for $30,000. So Paul's like, great. So he goes to his— the, the person wants it for $30,000 and he does a double closing. And so the title company records deed 1, records deed 2, and then Paul gets the difference between the 12 and 30. For putting the deal together because Paul then takes the $12,000, pays his seller, and, uh, and then gets the, the $30,000. So he gets the difference between $30,000 and $12,000, which would be in this example, $18,000. Not, not a bad return.

So double close, not a bad return.

So this, so we've got the debt, the equity JV, we've got the signing a contract, Then we have the double close. Land arb. Well, what else do we have?

Yeah, well, I was gonna say, uh, land arb. You need a little money with land arb. You don't need— you can't— you can't do a land arb deal with $0.

You can't do $0. Um, but okay, let's just skip land arb. How about, you know, John Luke goes back and he mails offers, he's 'But so you have to have money for mailing.' So we're just saying we have enough money for mailing, we just don't have any money to buy the land. But he says, 'Hey, look, um, I want to buy this from you, Scott, Uncle Scott, for $5,000. Would you finance me?' And Uncle Scott says, 'Okay, I'll, I'll, I'll finance you.' So I'll, I'll owner finance it for you. You pay me every month, you know, $500 a month. So now John Luke's got to hustle. He's got to sell that property in the next 30 days before he owes Uncle Scott $500, but it can, it can be done. Right. Um, that's it. So was that 5?

Mm-hmm. That's 5.

That's 5. The 6th way is what we call the dollar skittle. Where, where we do due diligence, and our offer was $2,000, but Scott owes $2,000 in back taxes. So we say, look, we'll just give you a buck, and then we resell that property. We don't pay the taxes because they're not due right away, and so we'll pay it, and we'll, we'll sell it, and then we'll pay the taxes once we get that sale. That's number 6. And then the last way. What is the last way? What's number 7?

I've got— first of all, I'm impressed.

Yeah, by the way.

Yeah.

John, what's your— what's your way? The 7th way?

I— while Mark's been talking, I've been talking to virtual Mark and some ideas. But one of the things he talked about, which I think is actually good, is if this would be as you're established and you already have some momentum, basically using the assets that you already have to create more capital. So one of those would be sell points, right? So you could sell it out, that creates the capital that you use then to buy. So it's kind of a cheaty answer, but it makes sense. Or wholesaling, right? If you've got 10 properties in inventory, you can wholesale, and then you can use that to pick up additional properties as well, which I think is actually great.

So that's amazing. Virtual Mark, I, I need to start calling my clone again.

I was just gonna say, Mark, do you, do you spend your nights talking to yourself, or—

you know, it's that cliché, like, you can, you, like, you, you can give yourself the best advice. I can actually do it now.

You actually can. You're your own counselor.

Yeah. Yeah.

Your own mental health therapist, financial counselor, a little bit of everything. A little bit of everything.

So put it, put in the chat. I'd be curious, like, did we miss anything? What did we miss?

I think we missed one thing. Well, you still need money, but yeah. Never mind. I was going to say, you know, what if you could talk the seller into owner financing, right?

No, no, we talked, we talked about that.

Yeah, he mentioned that.

Oh, you did mention that. I'm sorry. Yeah, I might have been, might have been looking around here.

You're probably manning the—

Manning the chat.

Yeah.

Awesome. Well, see, we did it. 7 ways to get into land investing with no money. Now, you know, good night. Let's, let's say it's good night. Good night. Exactly. Now let's not, let's not kid ourselves, right? Like, these all need a little bit of skill, uh, requires a lot of confidence to do almost all 7 of those, right? Um, so, you know, I think the best approach is to, if you are going to take, if you're going to take this route where you really not going to invest capital in a deal or in a mailing campaign or that type of thing. You need to be a sponge and do as much learning as you can and learn how to analyze a really good deal and learn how to figure out what's a really good market to do these approaches. You know, I still think it's amazing that this business you can get into for 2 or 5 or 10 or $20,000, right? When it's very difficult to get into any other real estate venture for less than what, Mark? Down payment on a duplex somewhere is what?

I mean, I guess you could buy a dilapidated home for maybe 30 grand.

Yeah.

In an area you wouldn't visit, maybe. But I'd say traditional real estate, you're going to look at about in today's dollars, $250,000 to $400,000 for a home. And then you're gonna need capital to fix it up and do a fix and flip with a BRRRR method, whatever that is. I, I would say that's probably more standard. And then to scale it, you're gonna have to have hard money lending, bank financing. It gets, you know, infinitely more complicated, and you have layers of, uh, capital friction taking, you know, away from your profit as well. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, for sure. And then, I mean, not to mention, if you don't do the BRRRR method, which, you know, we talk to people all the time who are actual flippers, there's a ton of sweat equity, right, going into these properties. Takes a ton of time. May take a ton of time to get to the property, a ton of time to invest in the property. You're living at the property. And in the end, you may have a nice profit from a sale. But what I really love about our business, John, and maybe you could touch on this, is we love owner financing land because we want this portfolio of properties to pay us, right? Whether it's— and it starts with a few properties, then it grows to 10 to 50 to 100. A lot of us have a few hundred properties paying us monthly. And with that, your net worth just increases substantially, right? Whereas with these transactional cash deals, uh, I don't think it's quite as impactful in that way.

Yeah, I agree.

I concur.

You concur? Yeah.

And also, we're not constrained by our local market.

Mm-hmm.

You know, if I want to flip homes in Phoenix, well, I'm constrained by that market, which is, you know, we're sort of a boom-bust market here. But in the land business, we're not constrained at all. We can literally do this from anywhere in the world. We can buy anywhere in the United States we, we really want. Now, there's going to be better counties than others But that's the things that we, you know, we teach you.

Yeah, yeah.

I think like for me, like the clincher was being able to do it remotely. So like, so we lived in— I mean, I've probably told this story many times already, but we, but we lived in Jackson Hole when we first started. And if anybody knows anything about Jackson Hole, it is expensive in, in that particular market, right? And so For us, we were going to be doing single-family residential buy and hold. We're going to do some wholesaling to build up capital, but we had to do it remotely. Like, it's the only way that we could do it. And so I think that is one of the strengths of the model is the ability to operate remotely.

Right.

And because we were like, okay, we're in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Like, do we try to figure out a way to wholesale properties in Cincinnati, Ohio? Or like, we're like, we were just like, it's, it's hard to do. Right? It's hard to do something like that and, and have that, have that freedom and flexibility.

Yeah, for sure. Do you guys ever go on YouTube and like, just for fun, look at these, uh, influencers that talk about buying businesses?

No, I actually haven't spent a lot of time doing that. Tell us more.

I do, just for fun, just to see like Again, I always kind of like, like, you know, do we have the best business model? And so I was watching a video today, and this guy who has an air filtration business was breaking down all these businesses. He's like, the worst business is e-commerce. And he has all these arguments like why e-commerce is such a bad business. And then he's like, another bad business is, you know, something— I, I forget, like, it kind of goes on. He's like, and then there's like these good businesses that are boring, like, you know, working with grease, like cleaning grease, doing pallets. And he's like, you know, because, you know, there's less late, like, you know, they're, they're easier to operate. He's like, oh, he has like a landscaping business. He's a terrible business. He's like, because if it's a good landscaping business, private equity will buy it. So It was really interesting to me, but ultimately all these businesses for the most part had lots and lots of complexity to them. They were going to be expensive to buy. And the— oh yeah, laundromats. He kind of was like, oh, that's totally like, you gotta, you know, it's a job, right? You gotta fix the laundromat, all these things. But one of the more interesting businesses was that he loved was buying an account, a bookkeeping business. He's like, accounts aren't going away, so you buy these bookkeeping businesses, you add AI to it, and then you can scale it. I'm like, oh my gosh, that's— this is a lot, a lot of what I like, because there's no physical inventory, number one. Number two, it's— if you have the client, they're paying on a monthly basis for bookkeeping. I'm like, okay, this is very close to the land business, um, in a way. So the land business is great because we don't have to deal with anything physical. It's a one-time sale. We get recurring passive income every single month. We use technology to, to run the business. We can operate really lean, and we don't need specialized labor, labor, which is where we have the advantage of, say, like a bookkeeper, because if your bookkeeper goes, well, then you got to hire another bookkeeper, and that's, that's going to be a more, you know, specialized thing. So it was really— I just, I feel like I'm talking a lot and I'm boring, bossman. But anyways, I find these things interesting, and, uh, you know, ultimately we have an incredible business model because we don't have to work locally. Like, they have to go into these local markets, and we can do it from anywhere in the world with an inexpensive laptop. What's a better business than what we do?

I'm just curious.

Talk about the— there's no margin. Our margins are huge.

I was just gonna say, talk about the margins for a second.

Yeah, it's an inefficient market. So yeah, I mean, we're averaging like 72% yields. We started doubling your money every year.

And that's not to mention just You know, also within that is operating expenses for this business, right? I mean, you can keep the operating expenses very low. I think my first couple of years in the business, I was spending $1,200 a month, right, on mailers, some other web tools, softwares, that type of thing. And keep your eye out, you know, if you're keeping your operating expenses at $1,200 to $1,500 a month and you're bringing in $10,000 a month passive, maybe getting a cash deal on top of that every month. Pretty, pretty amazing margins. Yeah.

So, John, you run lean, don't you? I mean, are you, are you renting out a 3,000-square-foot office?

Yeah, that's what I'm in right now. This is— what is this, 10 by 12 feet? So pretty lean.

It's your prison away from home.

Right, it's prison.

Fell away from home. Yeah, it's good. Yeah, um, well, that's awesome. Well, uh, I think we should, uh, say hello to some folks here. Erin, Erin is— Erin Prescott's here. She's got a win to celebrate, which we'll talk about here in a minute. Shelly Becker's coming in from Oregon. Mike Caviey, uh, my Minnesota neighbor. Uh, Iyana Gooding. From Houston, Texas. Nice to see you here. Mark Bryan, week 10 of flight school from Boise, Idaho. Good to see you, Mark. Uh, Aaron's loving the spring weather in Midland, Texas. Uh, yeah, well, so here's the craziness that is Wisconsin. Uh, we had 8 to— we probably had 10 inches of very heavy wet snow here the last couple days. It was 0 degrees this morning when I woke up. In 2 days it's supposed to be 70.

Whoa.

So it's, yeah, it's craziness. Craziness.

What's that? The old 70-degree swing.

The 70-degree swing. Gotta love it. Uh, Chris P is here, recent flight school grad. Awesome. Well, and it also, we'd love to get to questions, so if you guys ask questions please throw them in the chat. Again, if you're new and you have some burning questions about what we do, please, please, we'd love to help with that. And then let's, let's talk some wins, shall we? Ooh, here we go. Don Thrash has got a win. He's always got wins. Two properties closed together on April 2nd. So, Don, that means the sale is coming, sounds like. He bought for $1,500 each, selling at $2,750 each for an 83% ROI with 4 days on the market. 3 good buys closing within 2 weeks.

Wow.

I mean, that's a lucky, lucky land investor right there.

That's a lucky Don Thrasher.

Yeah, but he created his own luck, right? Aaron Prescott, they have the win. So they filed the deed for 6 parcels from, from one seller yesterday, and now they're on their, on their way to marketing.

Love it.

So that's amazing. Aaron, Aaron, Jeremiah, good, good for you guys. Any other wins? Oh, that's very nice of you. Real Real Estate for Us. You should come to this call more often. More often. Nice, clear explainer of tools available to all of us. To all of us. I think that's a shout out to Mark J. Podolsky right there.

Very clear explainer.

Thank you.

Very clear explainer. That'll be your nickname. The Clear Explainer.

Don, another one also bought for $3,200, got $699 down, $249 a month. For 48 months, 118% yield, 27 days on the market. Crushing it, crushing it down. Don the Land Thrasher. How did we not come up with that nickname before? Scott Elliott did just now.

Scott Elliott, I love it.

Don the Land Thrasher.

Awesome.

Uh, oh, Charles Jones lived in Jackson Hole for 2 years off the pricey and cold. Got engaged out there.

Oh, nice, nice.

Awesome. All right, so here's a question from Scott Elliott. He's been hearing a lot about going vertical. Ooh, Mark's Mark's cringing right now. Going vertical, putting mobile homes on lots— any thoughts or opinions on that?

I don't like it.

Look at Mark, he can't even hold himself back.

I'm not saying a word, I'm letting you guys talk. What do you think?

Yeah, I mean, I, I generally don't want to— I've never done it, right? Um, I heard about one person at one point going vertical down. He would buy these properties in Arizona, and then he would buy a shipping container, bury it, and then it was like— and then there was like a hidden entrance to this, and somehow ventilation so you could breathe and stuff. And so it was just like these bunkers, which was very creative. I mean, that's interesting to me. But no, I'm not— I, I don't do that.

I, you're not gonna do that yourself, John?

No, I, I don't think I've done really— I'm trying to think of any improvements I've done on a property. Like, I think at the most, like, sometimes I had a property that was kind of pricey and I was like, let's just— and the roads were rough, and so I just hired somebody to get the roads, you know, level, throw in a driveway at the same time for free. And I think that's kind of the most I've done in terms of improvements. But I feel like we just— the, the— we make so much money. If you are buying 25, 35 cents on the dollar and flipping that, it's a lot easier to just find more of those than it is to get a mobile home installed on one of those.

So I concur.

Hey, I got his concur! I got my concur. I just needed one. Also, I don't know what's going on with my camera, but it's very interested in this corner right here.

Oh man. Yeah, I, I have also not gone vertical, uh, on a property. You know, we like to, like to move the property, not improve it. That doesn't mean that you can't, Scott Elliott. But, you know, to me, again, as John mentioned, I'll echo what he said, it's just about velocity and going quickly. And the ease of doing a land deal without having to wait, without having to, you know, improve and have engineers involved and all these other people involved in the improvement and sale of my land, by the time that gets done, how many other land deals could I have done? Right. This is the way I kind of look at it.

Yeah.

What do you think, Mark?

Well, it breaks the model. Because ultimately, at the end of the day, we, we have a simple business model. We want to make this land cash flow like a rental home. Now all of a sudden you're putting a home on it and you're adding in so much more complexity that Scott's talking about. With that complexity, you're missing out on the opportunity costs. You have to get banks involved. You're taking substantial risk now. The risk-reward ratio is not worth it in my, in my mind. When Scott was talking about like, we're making so much money, and John's talking about we're making so much money on the buy, why, why make— you could make, I guess, more aggregate dollars, lower yield, but now are you dealing with a tenant or you're just flipping a home? So okay, you've, you now you've got cash But now you have a new problem. You got to pay taxes on the cash. You got to do it again, which is what I would call a job. So I'd rather have cash flow and freedom and simple, simple skills. But Scott Elliott, I don't want to rain on your parade. And if you have passion for doing these things, don't let me dissuade you. You know, we're a bunch of jabooks. What do we know? This is what we do. So I, I would say that if it's, if it's something that you, you know, if it's in your— the things that you want to do in your life and it's going to meet those needs, don't let us dissuade you. Like, my values of freedom and cash flow might be different than your values, and that's cool. No, no, you know, you know, when you come to, uh, Dirt Rich Summit, we'll hug it out. Like a Don Thrasher hug.

It's cool. Uh, we have had, uh, well, we have— we've had one investor that I know of for sure, Luke Harris. He went vertical on his own land and he homesteaded on his own land, which I thought was pretty cool.

That's cool.

Yeah, but Luke does like 200, 300 deals a year. Yeah, he's doing velocity.

Yeah, exactly. All right. Awesome. Scott Elliott does have a win as well.

Ooh, ooh.

Had a good win a few weeks ago. Bought for $1,750. Sold— oh, this is amazing. Sold for $1,000 down, $199 a month for 60 months.

Wow.

300+ percent yield. Best deal so far.

That's great. That's a luck of the land.

Luck of the land. That is the luck of the land.

That's your deal.

So we're seeing deals in real time, which I think— that's what I love about, uh, Nightcap lately. We're getting— we're— we have a lot of— we have a lot of, uh, folks interacting, and we also have a lot of wins showing up in real time, which I think is really awesome. So John— we don't even ask John about his wins anymore. He's got like You know, he just shames us with his wins.

Does John even know about his wins anymore? He's like, my spreadsheet's so big.

Yeah, right. My bookkeeper gets a monthly report. Yeah, doesn't even know what he bought this month or what he sold until, you know, end of the month. It's a little report. Yeah, I mean, that's not a bad thing. Not a bad thing. Any other questions out there? Would love to answer for you guys. Bryce McGee's here from Kentucky. Good to see you, Bryce. Mike Cavie closed on a 5-parcel acquisition off one mailer last week. Finally, he says. Mike, we'd love— if you'd love to, if you'd like to share, we'd love to hear the numbers on that. Like, what are you buying them for? And, and what are the margins look like on that? What's the market value?

It seems like the luck of the land investor deal. 5 parcels on one mailer, right?

Oh, here we go. Oh, @realrealestate4us. Here we go, folks. Another reason I love this community is because you can make— what do we call them, John? You complete me. Oh, real, real friends and Deal friends and deal friends. Maybe a real, real deal friend for Real Real Estate For Us. Looking to fund bigger deals for 20% of quick flip net profit. Well, join our Facebook group, Real Real Estate For Us, and you may make some connections in there for sure. Don's thrashing it. How have we not had more fun with his name until tonight? I like it.

Yeah, I think I'm gonna change my role.

I want to do it like a t-shirt that just says Thrasher and like, you know, like Metallica font, and then it's just got Don Thrasher's face on it.

I love it.

All right, we have a great question here from, uh, user79543. New here, very interesting stuff. Scott mentioned an estimate of starting overhead. Realistically, how much time was dedicated to the business in the first 6 to 12 months, and when was it profitable? Well, I think everybody has a little bit different story. But I was profitable pretty quick. This was 10 years ago when we went a lot slower. The tools weren't as good. I was licking and sticking and stuffing envelopes. Right. But I really tapped into the community and I tapped into coaching and I learned a lot from Mark and Scott Todd. And I think I did 30 deals my first year. Right, which, uh, you— which resulted in about almost $4,000 a month passive income after year 1. But we, we talked a little bit about overhead earlier. I was able to keep my monthly overhead at about $1,000 or $1,200 a month. That includes mailings, you know, some, some softwares. I think, I think you can still keep it pretty close to that, you know. It depends on like if we recommend 20 to 30 mailings a day, right? That's 600 to 900 mailers a month. So $500 to $800 a month for mailers. And then what else do we need, guys? We need Zamplo, which is $50 a month. What else do we need really to get started? Maybe, yeah, I don't know.

I mean, you know, LG Pass uses LG Pass, so that's $99 a month.

But yeah, and if you're in flight school, you get LG Pass free for 6 months.

Yeah, so that's—

yeah, right.

Geek Pay on the back end is $49 a month, starts at $50 a month, right?

You're charging a no maintenance fee, right? And you're done. Yeah. And so that ends up—

that kind of covers a lot of your overhead, right? For the tools.

So we're at about $1,000 right now, uh, considering, you know, sending out, uh, 800 mailers or 900 mailers a month. Pretty good.

$20 a month for a ChatGPT subscription or cloud subscription, right? Yeah, you know, spin up an agent.

Yeah, and maybe hire a VA for a few bucks, a few hours a week. At $5 an hour, 3 hours a week. So a lot of these tools are, are very inexpensive. And it's very, very feasible to run this lean, as Mark says. Right? And that's how we teach it, in all honesty. We're— what I love about what we offer people, Mark, is, like, we're not telling them to send out 3, 4, or 5,000 mailers their first month.

Right?

No, we want—

we're, we're teaching them to be a startup. Be resourceful.

Yeah. Yeah. Be lean and cover your costs before you start spending more. Right. So, John, anything to add to business expenses and startup. What was that kind of your experience as well?

Yeah, I, I really think so. And I, I think that the other thing I— that I— that, um, he was asking about was time too. So there's the finance side.

Yeah, right.

Hours. And I think, um, like where I generally tell people, like if somebody's you can jump into this whatever, with whatever time you have, right? So if you've got a couple hours a week, you can jump into this and you can get something started and rolling. I think where we, like, like if somebody's jumping into something like Flight School, we generally want them to be in a spot where they've got like 10 to 15 hours so that you can scale at the speed that we want you to scale. Um, but you can do that, right? Like, and that's learning and application at the same time. So I think, um, I think we were— it's hard to remember because it's been, you know, 8 and a half years. Um, but, and, and then things were a little bit different when we started. Like, you know, I was building scrapers for these county websites, and we were doing a lot more work to scrub the list and get it to the way we wanted to. And, you know, printing, licking, stuffing, stamping all those letters. And so it was You know, there was, there were time requirements for me that thankfully just aren't time requirements anymore. So it's a little bit simpler than it used to be. So I think 10 to 15 hours is really reasonable and I'm really comfortable with people at that 10-hour mark.

So yeah, the 10 and 15 hours spent today is so much different. And I think that's why people like Don Thrasher and Scott Elliott and the Prescotts they're gonna go fast. It's fun to watch happen in real time.

It's funny because like one of the things that you said a while ago, Scott, was, um, like when I started, the, the dream was the $10,000, right? Yeah, $10,000 in a year was like— and there were, you know, I didn't do 10— I didn't get to $10,000 in a year.

Right.

It took me a little bit longer to get to that, but there were the people— like, every so often you get somebody that gets to $10,000 a year.

And it's not $10,000 a year, $10,000 a month.

Or excuse me, $10,000 a month within the space of the year, right? And, um, but now we, we're seeing that more and more, right? Because there's way more available to people as far as resources and tools and automations that just didn't exist when, when we got started.

But even if you get to $2,000 a month in a year, or, or even $1,000 a month in a year, right? I always just always ask people like, what difference would that make for you? And, um, you know, it's a couple car payments, you know. Get up to $2,000 as mortgage payment. And then you just keep going. You just keep going and keep going and keep going. And the deals replace the next expense and the next expense, the next expense, until eventually it buys your freedom. And make no mistake, that's a years-long journey, right? Doesn't happen overnight.

But I love the Bossman strategy when you first start out. You know, one cash flip for your overhead and then three terms deals for your cash flow. Is that, is that the Bosman way?

Well, it is now. I mean, looking back at my experience, I just remember my coach Scott Todd back early on. He's like, you know, Scott, you just need to learn how to— if you're spending $1,200 a month on this business, as quickly as possible, you need to figure out how to cover that $1,200 a month. And at the time, I think there were more cash deals. So I was maybe lucky, lucky in that regard, in that, you know, 30, my 30, my deals, 10 of them were cash deals, where I made $1,000 up to $5,000 per deal on 10 deals, right. But if I could just get one cash deal a month, whether it was wholesale or retail, that's going to cover my operating expenses. And that's why I encourage everybody to do Who's in flight school? Once, once you get to month 3 or 4, you should be in a position where your mailers start hitting. And when your mailers start hitting, try to wholesale a property to cover those operating expenses. Yeah.

And, you know, we talked about it earlier, you could do some fun math. You just only want to do terms and you wanted the biggest buyer pool. You could season that note, say, 3 months and then sell the note $0.50 on the dollar and you get that cash sale essentially.

Yeah.

So you can manufacture it for yourself.

Awesome. Scott— Scott Elliott wants to know when coaching live is. Needs to make some sales to pay for coaching. Well, Scott Elliott, we got to get you into coaching live, which is the last weekend in April, Mark, or first weekend in—

last weekend in April. But you have to be in coaching. It's not to the general public. It's only for coaching clients. So Scott, join coaching and then come to coaching live.

Coaching pays for itself.

It does.

And it really does.

Yeah.

Yeah. Awesome. Is there a downside? I, I don't know. This is a loaded question. I don't know if I can answer this. Is there a downside to doing this business in California? If so, any tips to avoid them? Mark, you're the closest to California. You have to answer this.

Yeah, yeah, there's some counties in California, but yeah, there's a downside. I mean, you know, California's gonna have more costs associated with it.

What I— I've actually done some deals in California. And John, have you ever done deals in California? They're, they're all snail mail counties.

Yeah, I haven't. I've I, I don't know. I feel like I knew people that were doing— is it Kern County or no? Which county is it?

There's Kern County, San Bernardino, Modoc. Those are some of the land investing counties.

And I feel like I knew some people that were like doing some deals out there. And then I started knowing fewer and fewer people that were doing deals out there. So I've kind of, I've kind of avoided it.

So yeah, we like the easy states, right? Yeah.

Yeah. It needs to be a SimpliFile county now.

Mm-hmm. What is SimpliFile, Mark?

SimpliFile allows you to record your deed digitally instead of the snail mail way. And so as we like to say, money loves speed. So you can quickly close these deals and record them.

Love, love the SimpliFile tool. Charles Jones, starting to acquire at a good conservative rate, but sometimes I feel like the fish at the table may be offering a tad aggressive price relative to others. Any advice or thoughts?

I just like the metaphor, fish at the table. I don't know what that means.

Yeah.

Sounds like a great, uh, campfire song or something. Fish at the Table.

Or a band name.

Band name.

It could be like a Coen Brothers movie, right?

Yeah, I might need some, um, verification on what you're asking here, Charles. I don't know if I know for sure.

I think that he is basically saying that, um, he's pricing— he thinks he's maybe pricing higher than other people would price their mailers for these same properties. And so any— like, he's, he's feeling good about the deals, but he's feeling like he's buying, maybe buying high because other people would be offering lower. So I think my thought is like a couple things. One thing it comes down to is just like verifying. Like, there have been times when I bought properties and there are different areas and different subdivisions that sometimes have different price points, you know. And so sometimes this part of a subdivision has power, you know, that part of the subdivision is very close to the mountain and people like it a lot and they pay more money. This part is really close to the river, or this part has trees or something like that. And sometimes those factors can bump up the price point where, you know, other people might just offer a uniform offer for that particular area, but the market maybe bears a little bit more. So sometimes that's the case. But I think just looking at local comps and just making sure that, um, that it works. I don't think like, you know, you don't want to be at a point where you're offering 50 cents on the dollar on a mailer. Because you're paying your mailing costs and you're paying for your due diligence and all of your acquisition costs. And so at that point, you just buy wholesale, right? But, um, but you know, I think—

concur. Yeah, you gotta concur for Mark.

I gotta concur from Mark. That's the best. Okay, Scott.

Oh, John's tired. Look, John— JJ is tired.

Yes.

Oh, all this Luck of the Land investor talk.

No, right?

Uh, I remember we used to do boot camps, and my whole goal was not to have somebody fall asleep on me the whole weekend.

Now I have people fall asleep on me. So it's great.

I can't imagine anyone falling asleep at boot camp. Has that happened, Mark?

No.

Oh, yeah. In the early days, it did. And I'd come home, my daughter like, so, did Amy fall asleep?

No.

But in the old days, they did. Scrubbing the Lisp module.

Yeah. That was a long module. Uh, any other questions out there? Uh, let's see here. I think we hit them all. But yeah, I hope Mike's here next week. The energy's a little low tonight, guys, not gonna lie. I think we're missing Zaino.

We're missing him.

Our color— he's the color commentator. He's the one that has all the The, the creative analogies. We're so not creative.

Yeah, yeah, no, for sure.

We could do some— I guess we got a few more minutes. We could do some story time, talk about, um, talk about some of our, our lucky deals.

I had a great deal today. If you don't mind, I'll share.

Oh shit.

Yeah. So, so this is out of the wheelhouse typically. But I bought this property for $17,000 and sold it for $50,000 with $10,000 down and $475 a month for 72 months. Wow.

Wow.

Yeah. 78% yield. On a bigger deal, I'd call that a dolphin. What's that, a dolphin? Mike and I used to call our land deals minnows, dolphins, and whales, right? We buy a lot of minnows because they're cheap and they move fast. And then we'll buy some dolphins, and they're like the $5,000 and less properties. And then we'll buy some dolphins that are like $5,000 to $15,000. And then the whales are a little bit more expensive. So I got a decent size Maybe not a whale, maybe a whale shark. Whale shark, it's a good deal.

That's a good deal.

That's a great deal.

Yeah, it was a great deal. So that's exciting. That's awesome. Scott's very jealous because Mike didn't visit him on his trip to Florida. Well, what a jerk.

We'll bring it up next week.

Yeah. All right, John, what's your story time before— oh, sorry.

Oh, I was just gonna say maybe Mike delayed his return home just so he could visit Scott.

Could be, could be. John, what do you have? A story time?

Uh, I would say, um, so I've got one great deal that happened this year that was, um kind of similar, and it was one that, like, you know, you kind of come across these every so often and, um, where, uh, it's just kind of a unique opportunity. So we got it in a mailer, and it was two properties side by side in an area that had power, and they were fenced, that had septic. And so, um, we got both of these for 10 grand. And then, um, it sold in about 3 weeks for $8,000 down and $577 a month for 10 years.

Whoa, that's a dolphin deal or a whale shark deal. That's a good deal.

That was a great deal. So that one made me happy. But, um, yeah, I don't know. I mean, I think a lot of the ones I think about too are like the— I, I can't think of any in particular, but I mean, I've had like where I would buy a note from somebody and then the property comes back. I'm like, oh my goodness, they sold this thing for $20 grand. I was like, this is worth $35 grand, you know.

Oh wow.

And so you retain all the payments that you make prior to the default and you resell it and you get all this, you know, all this extra. So I've had stuff like that happen and those are kind of um, rare, but, but they happen, you know. And then things like, um, I don't know, I think of this one, this one property I bought. I can't remember what I got. I think I bought it for like $450. It was 5 acres, but it was, uh, it was in the floodplain, and not the 100-year floodplain, it was more like the 3-month floodplain. It would get damp on a regular basis. And, uh, and so I, you know, we just told the guy, we're like, look, like, this is what we could pay, take it or leave it. And we got it. And, um, and then I sold it to somebody for like 4 or 5 grand, and they just wanted to have a music festival. On this property. So, you know, so it's just like, you know, I don't know, you see things like that happen.

Luck of the land investor.

That's the luck of the land investor. Yeah. Awesome. And, you know, it's fun because as time goes on, these stories are created with your land investing business and things, you know, I'll never forget the first couple years in the business. I'm like, I'm never going to sell this property out in the middle of the Arizona desert. There's no way in the world. And the astronomer calls me one day. Yeah, I need this land. I need land with no light pollution. Right. And yeah, it's fun stuff.

So there's a pig for every barn.

Pig for every barn.

Yeah.

Well, everybody, thanks for joining us tonight. Hopefully, you continue to experience some luck of the land investor yourselves. But really, the luck occurs just by showing up and doing the work, right? And, you know, Mark, the godfather here, has a pretty proven recipe that he's taught many of us, and we'd love to teach you. So if you're interested, schedule a call with us at thelandgeek.com/training. Check out Mark's book, Dirt Rich, Dirt Rich 1 and Dirt Rich 2 on Amazon and/or Audible. And we'd be happy to chat with you sometime about the business. So guys, I may not be here the next 2 weeks, actually.

Do we even know?

We can't do Nightcap without you.

I mean, do we take a break?

Yes.

I don't know, do we take a break? I don't know, we could have a spring break. You can have a spring break if you want.

Yeah, it's like U2 touring without Bono. They don't tour.

Uh, you know, I was talking to somebody, uh,, yesterday who referred to you, Scott, as the leader of the podcast. And so, whoa, you know what? Yeah, I concurred. I really did.

Put in the chat if you would even show up next week without Scott. I know I wouldn't. I'm not going to a concert. I'm not going to Pearl Jam without Eddie Vedder.

You know, uh, uh, that reminds me though, a couple years ago Bono was, uh, remember he got in a serious, uh, bike accident and they were— U2 was supposed to play, I think, like the New Year's Eve special or something like that, the Dick Clark. I don't know what it was, but Chris Martin filled in for him. That was pretty cool. Chris Martin filled in, a Coldplay guy filled in for Bono. It was almost as good singing U2 tunes, right? But I don't know, I guess we can— I think you guys can swing it without me. I think you'd be fine.

Maybe we could get a filler, like a, like a Chris Martin.

Yeah, we're gonna like hire a, a stand-in Scott. We just have to like find an actor.

Maybe I'll have my AI, uh, bot created by next week.

That's great. I'm putting it up. All right, everybody, up for, uh, Scott Bossman lookalikes.

All right, everybody, uh, thanks for— good night, Mark, as always. Thank you. And John, thank you. We'll see you when we see you.

Thanks, guys.

Good night.

Cheers!

Night!