Andrew: Hey there, freedom fighters. My name is Andrew Warner. I’m the founder of Mixergy.com. It is home of the ambitious upstart.
When I saw today’s guest, I said, “What are we doing here exactly?” So, then I went into my inbox–because really, it’s not a topic we usually cover–and I saw, “What’s the thread of conversation that led to today’s guest being on here?” And I realize it’s someone in our audience who a lot of the Mixergy team and I respect emailed me a while back. Someone else on the team followed with him to say, “Who do you recommend that we have on Mixergy?”
Basically because of the person who recommended today’s guest, we just said, “Yeah, let’s do it.” It’s not that he’s not a successful entrepreneur. He really is. It’s just that we don’t usually cover this topic here on Mixergy, where I usually focus on tech startups. But I’m interested in what today’s guest has built.
So I’m glad to have him on here. I have to admit, I don’t know that much about–here, let me introduce him first and then I’ll say what I don’t know. Here’s what I do know. His name is Mark Podolsky. He is the founder of Frontier Properties, which helps people buy raw, undeveloped land. Think about that. That’s so different from the Dropboxes and Wikipedias of the world that I usually have on here.
But he’s built up a nice little business for himself, a nice little fortune for himself doing it. That’s why I was excited to have him on here. I want to know how he did it. The part that I was a little nervous about is he also has this business called The Land Geek, where he teaches real estate investment without headaches. He teaches people, like the guy who introduced me to him, how to invest in real estate.
So I’ll bring it up in the interview. I want to talk to him about that, about the sleaziness of teaching–well, is there sleaziness in teaching real estate? I see your eyes bugging out as I say this, Mark. I’m trying to find a nice way to say it without being so nice that I regret it later.
Mark: There’s nothing sleazier.
Andrew: Nothing sleazier than what?
Mark: Than real estate information. You go on late night infomercials, you go to a free seminar and next thing you know, there’s some sales team in the back and you’ve just spend $40,000 for a three-day bus tour and you don’t even know what happened. It’s smoke and mirrors and hot cognition points. So, I’m happy to talk about.
Andrew: What’s a hot cognition point?
Mark: A hot cognition point is those images that people show in their marketing with the Bentley and the big vacations and the mansion, right? So, cognitively, we start seeing ourselves and imagining ourselves, “Oh, if I can just flip these houses, I’ll have all these things.”
Andrew: Right.
Mark: It’s a manipulative sales technique. It works, but it’s sleazy.
Andrew: I noticed you don’t have any of those on your website. I was looking through it. So, my goal for this interview is to find out how you built up your own real estate business. I’m curious about that. And then since you teach, I also want to find out a little bit about how you built up the education business, like what’s your funnel look like, what software are you using, how are you systemizing your business.
This whole thing is sponsored by two companies that you apparently know, you use them. The first is a scheduling program that makes it really easy for anyone to schedule with lots of people or even one person and not have any back and forth emails, just one quick link is what they give you. I’ll tell you more about them later. But for now, I’ll tell everyone it’s called Acuity Scheduling. Mark and I both use them.
Mark: I love it. It’s great.
Andrew: I do too. I switched away to another company a while back and they’re so much easier. And then the other sponsor is a hosting company, great, fantastic company called HostGator. And I’ll tell everyone about that later too.
But first, Mark, let’s get into the real estate business. I don’t know much about it. I’m not a real estate guy. I’m curious about how you got into it when you were doing mergers and acquisitions, which was my dream in college to just go and buy companies. You were doing M&A and then what happened that suddenly turned your eyes toward real estate?
Mark: Yeah. I really wasn’t enjoying working for private equity groups and doing this mid-market M&A. So, we hired this guy and over a drink, he’s telling me that he’s going to these tax deed auctions. He’s buying raw land on the side and he’s putting them online and he’s flipping them at a 300% ROI. Well, Andrew, I’m looking at companies all day long. A great company had over 15% EBITDA margins–great company. The average company is at 10%. I’m looking at companies all day long less than 10%.
So, I’m from St. Louis. We’re the show me state. I don’t believe him. So, we go to New Mexico. And I’ve got like $3,000 saved for like car repairs. Sure enough, I don’t know anything of what I’m doing. The only piece of real estate I ever purchased before that was my house. So, we go. We drive around. We look at the raw land. The auction comes up and I started buying these half-acre parcels. I bought like ten of them for $300.
Sure enough, next few weeks, I put them up online and I sell them all for like $1,200 a parcel. He was right. So, I told my wife, “I think I’m onto something here. I think I’m going to quit my job,” which I really didn’t enjoy, “And start investing in land full-time.” She’s like, “Absolutely not.”
So, I started doing it part time and I went to another auction. I took all that money from the New Mexico deal. There’s no one in the room. I’m buying properties for like $5, $10, these tax deed properties. Sure enough, I put them up online. I made like $90,000 in six months doing this on the side. From there, it took about 18 months before the land investing income exceeded my investment banking income. I said to my wife, “Now?” She’s like, “Okay, now.”
So, in 2001, I quit and I’ve been a full-time land investor ever since. I’ve done over $5,000 land flips.
Andrew: When you bought land for, you said, $300, how much land are you getting for $300 and how do you get anything for $300?
Mark: It’s crazy. It was a half-acre land in this subdivision that really wasn’t fully developed.
Andrew: What’s a subdivision?
Mark: A subdivision is where you could put a house. So, there are easements and there are roads and the plan in to put power in there and services, but it’s not there yet. So, to the people in the small town, it wasn’t real valuable to them, but there’s this massive market, Andrew, of people that want to buy that type of property.
Andrew: Okay.
Mark: There are preppers. That’s a huge market.
Andrew: They’re going to buy this land for more than $300 and eventually build a real house on it or are they going to flip it to the next guy and then he’ll flip it to the next guy and somewhere down the line someone might do something?
Mark: I think 90% of my buyers are what I call legacy investors. So, here’s a piece of property. Here’s an asset they can own. They don’t have to maintain it, they don’t have to protect it. There are no restrictions. There’s no time to build. So, in a way I kind of call it man jewelry. They just feel good about the fact that they own a half-acre in New Mexico. They can show their banker on their balance sheet this asset. But they may never even go see the property.
Andrew: Okay. So, you’re buying this–you’re not buying this by going into a real estate broker’s office. How did you buy it?
Mark: I’m sorry, you kind of cut out there.
Andrew: I said you didn’t buy it by going to a real estate broker’s office. How did you buy it?
Mark: I bought it at a tax deed auction. Si if you don’t pay your property taxes, eventually the county will auction off your property. So this is a massive market in single family homes. Private equity groups and hedge funds do this all the time. They’ll buy like the tax lien and that’s a whole different model. But they don’t really want the asset. 95% of tax lien certificates get redeemed. So it’s a really cool way to make 8% to 24% on your money.
Andrew: So, what you did was somebody had this property, didn’t pay taxes on it, didn’t pay taxes on it, didn’t pay taxes on it enough that it was finally taken away from them by the government. The government auctioned it off. You went to the auction, you bought it for $300.
Mark: Correct.
Andrew: Okay. And when you bought it for $300, you said you went and sold it. Where did you sell it for more than $300?
Mark: So, at that time, I was putting it up on eBay at a $1 auction and just letting people bid it up.
Andrew: Just random property. Does that kind of thing still exist on eBay? Can I do a search on eBay and find someone’s property for $1?
Mark: You can’t find it for $1, but you might be able to find it for $1 plus a $4.99 recording fee.
Andrew: What part of eBay do I need to go to, to look at these kinds of deals?
Mark: You would just go to real estate and land and you can see it.
Andrew: I didn’t even know they did real estate and land anymore. Actually, it’s like a separate domain, isn’t it?
Mark: It’s a separate thing. Yeah. They don’t charge a percentage of it because they’re not brokers. So they just charge you a listing fee and a fee when you close and you sell–$70 to sell on eBay.
Andrew: $7 to see it on eBay.
Mark: Yeah, $70.
Andrew: $70. Okay. S, it’s a significant percentage of what you paid for it you had to give eBay. And you sold it for $1,200 on average, you said?
Mark: $1,200.
Andrew: All right. So now I’m eBay’s real estate section. I should be clicking over to land. Oh, look at this. For $295 I can get beautiful 400-acre Nevada ranch land borders BLM–what’s BLM?
Mark: The Bureau of Land Management, government land.
Andrew: Okay. Road access and easy financing… I see. I can buy it now for $295 and this could be real?
Mark: It’s irresistible. Yeah. It is.
Andrew: I see. So, you bought this stuff on the cheap. You sold it on eBay for more than you paid for it and then you realized, “All right, this is something. My wife’s not letting me do it full time. I’ve got to prove to her that it makes sense.” It wasn’t until you got to $90,000 in Arizona property, I think you said, that you finally got your wife’s okay.
Mark: Correct.
Andrew: What happened to Arizona property?
Mark: Then she’s like, “Okay, you’re on to something here,” after that. Then it took about 12 more months.
Andrew: What’s the difference between what you did the first time and what you did that got you to $90,000?
Mark: I bought more property.
Andrew: I see.
Mark: So before I was scared and I had kind of dipped my toe in the water and the next time I was like, “Oh, I can do this.”
Andrew: Okay. By the way, if I buy this thing for $295, can I just have like a Mixergy meetup in the middle of a Nevada ranch?
Mark: You sure could.
Andrew: I can actually use it?
Mark: You can use it. Yeah. I’ll come to that meetup. I know the surveyor out there.
Andrew: Do you know that that is less money than I’m paying rent on my bathroom per month in my house?
Mark: Look, I get a lot of people in San Francisco buying my Nevada land. Yeah. It’s because it’s irresistible. This is how I make it cash flow is the owner financing. So, I call it the ultimate subscription model because it’s a one-time sale and then you get this recurring income and you don’t have anything to maintain, nothing to protect.
Andrew: You mean the buyer pays you on a recurring basis for it?
Mark: Yeah. The buyer pays me on a recurring basis on a land contract. So, I still own that property. I still control that property until they pay off their note.
Andrew: I see. So like a mortgage. You’re giving a mortgage instead of them having to go to the bank. And you’re not worried about them not paying the mortgage because if they don’t, then you get the whole property.
Mark: Exactly. I keep the property and I keep their payments. I don’t have to worry about evicting anybody. I don’t have to worry about the cost of foreclosure. There’s nothing to destroy. There’s nothing to maintain. There’s nothing to protect.
Andrew: You don’t have to evict them because they’re not building their houses on it?
Mark: Yeah. They’re not allowed to make any improvements until they’ve paid me off.
Andrew: I see. And if they make all but one payment and then they don’t make that last payment, you get to keep everything up until that point and you get to keep the property?
Mark: If I was heartless, technically I could. I wouldn’t do that, but I could.
Andrew: I see.
Mark: Yeah. I have a great story. This guy, I think I paid $5,000 for this 40-acre ranch in Nevada. He had already paid like $14,000 to $15,000 for it. He only had maybe $5,000 left on his note. He calls me up and he’s like, “Mark, I lost my job. I just can’t pay anymore.” And I’m looking at the numbers and I’m like, “This is terrible.” So I didn’t tell him this, I just literally FedEx’d him the deed the next day.
Andrew: You just said, “You get to keep it.”
Mark: “You own the property.” He created a video testimonial for me like in tears and like that was well worth the $5,000.
Andrew: What’s his name? I’ll search for him on the site right now.
Mark: Less Purdy.
Andrew: Purdy.
Mark: If you go to my website, you’ll see the testimonials.
Andrew: I saw the testimonials on your site. I didn’t realize you had a testimonial from someone who bought your property and was happy. I don’t see them on your site.
Mark: Yeah. You’re probably looking at the wrong company. That’s FrontierPropertiesUSA.com.
Andrew: Okay. Let’s look at FrontierPropertiesUSA.com.
Mark: Right.
Andrew: I see. Yeah. I was looking at the wrong site. All right. It’s going to take me too long to bring that up.
Mark: Yeah. Don’t worry about it.
Andrew: I’m an obsessive Googler, I’ve noticed. No one else within an interview would just Google. We had this great layout. I hired somebody to help me rearrange the interview setup over here so I could make it look better for the guests and for the audience. And it was so good. The one problem that it had was everybody could see that I was Googling. I knew it was going to distract the guest and I said, “We need to find a way to adjust this.” I can’t have my guests see that I’m constantly searching for everything they’re seeing.
Mark: Yeah.
Andrew: I do see Les on your website here on the testimonials page. Can I hit play? Let me see.
Mark: Yeah. You can play it.
Andrew: He’s saying yes. I didn’t see him crying. I wanted to see what a grown man crying. What is Les going to do with the property?
Mark: I think he put a shed on there. He’s going to use it recreationally. I don’t think he’s going to build for improvement.
Andrew: All right. Now that he’s got it, it’s his. He can do that.
Mark: Yeah.
Andrew: We were introduced by a guy named Chris Pritchard.
Mark: Chris, yes.
Andrew: Chris is a developer. That’s how know him. Is what you described essentially what he’s doing?
Mark: It’s exactly what he’s doing.
Andrew: And where’s he going to buy these properties?
Mark: So, the best place to buy the property–and this is the model–is basically people are advertising to you they don’t want their property when they don’t pay their taxes. So, you contact the county treasurer or the county assessor and you get that list of people that owe back taxes. Instead of waiting until the tax deed auction, you just send them a direct offer. You just do a little bit of math and let’s say the comps in that area are $10,000, the most I’m going to pay for that property is $2,500. So, I’ll send these people an offer for $2,500.
Well, a percentage of that, let’s say 3% to 5%, are going to accept that offer because they’re distressed. They’re not paying their taxes. We go. We do our due diligence, make sure that there’s ingress and egress legal access, there’s something compelling about the property, you can find the property. Neighbors are good, they’re not dumping on the property, all these basic things. Then we close on it and flip it. If we want to flip it for cash, we can do that. But I like to make 1,000% ROI on owner financing and then get that recurring income every month until they payoff the note.
Andrew: So, what you’re saying is you’re doing a lot of due diligence for something that costs hundreds or low-thousands of dollars.
Mark: It costs $11 to do due diligence.
Andrew: How do you do that kind of due diligence on the property to make sure the neighbors are okay, to make sure there’s ingress/egress?
Mark: It’s crazy. You’ve got Google Earth. And then you’ve got software now to show you the entire chain of title. So, we just outsource it to the guy in the Philippines. For $11, he gives us all the maps, all the reports, the plat map, the whole chain of title so we know it’s free and clear of any liens or encumbrances. We get it all.
Andrew: And you show them how to do that and he does it for you?
Mark: I’m sorry?
Andrew: You show him how to do it?
Mark: No. He knows how to do it. He works for a big title company. He’s already pre-trained.
Andrew: I see. But he’s not doing it for you through the title company. You’re working with him directly.
Mark: Right. If it’s a bigger deal, let’s say it’s $5,000 or more, then we will close through a title company. Absolutely. We’ll do it the more traditional way. A cheap property, if I’m paying $1,000 for a property, we don’t want to do that. It’s so easy to do on your own. After you’ve been doing anything for 15 years, you kind of know what you’re doing.
Andrew: All right. I’m a cynic. You and I have good rapport here and I hate to say it to you, but I still am very cynical about the whole process. And I’ll talk to you more in a moment about what my cynicism is about and where it comes from and maybe we can address some of it.
But let me quickly take a commercial break here and talk about Acuity Scheduling. You and I both use it. It is fan-freaking-tastic. Here is what I use it for. I’ll tell you what anyone out there could use it for and I’d like to hear what you use it for.
Mark: Sure.
Andrew: One of the things that I use it for is I needed to schedule phone calls with my customers. I have a bunch of customers that I really wanted to understand, “Why are they buying from me? What do they want? What is it that got them excited about working with me in the first place? What do they like about my interviews?” It’s a lot of phone calls. All of them were, I think, half an hour. I didn’t know how to organize it otherwise.
So, what I did was I went to Acuity Scheduling. I created a brand new calendar on there. I said, “Here’s a connection to my existing calendar on Google Calendar. Here’s when I’m free to make these phone calls. I want to do them all on the same day so my mind could be on it and I don’t want my day to be interrupted by it.” And of course, if anything else pops up, like if my wife says, “Would you like to go to lunch of breakfast,” which she would never do. She knows better than that. I don’t like to be interrupted in the middle of the day, but if someone on my team needs me for a half an hour or someone else needs me for some time, it automatically goes on my calendar.
I want Acuity to know, “Don’t make this available to my customers. Just give them what I’m really ready to offer. Look at my current availability.” Acuity did all that. It sent it to them. I don’t like to talk to people on the phone because I get distracted. They get distracted. I like Skype where we can see each other and I could see if some of the things I’m saying are going over well or not. So, I ask them, “What’s your Skype name?” and I get that. I ask them a couple of other questions. Boom. I’ve got my whole calendar.
I like to put things on my domain. So, I took the code from their site. I embedded it on my site. I had a nice looking calendar from Acuity that asks all the questions I want answered that automatically makes dates available or unavailable based on my personal calendar. Boom. I was able to schedule phone calls with about a dozen different people like that. So easy. What do you use Acuity for, Mark?
Mark: I do similar kinds of things, like client consulting calls, podcast guest and just blocking off time. So, Monday and Friday, I just like to think about the business and think on the business. So, you can’t talk to me those days. Tuesday through Thursday, you find those times that I’m open and it’s so efficient. What you said that was really interesting is it looks good. There are a lot of calendar apps out there that look terrible.
Andrew: Just a few weeks ago, they made it look even better. Before that, I’d like to really dress it up. I’d go into the CSS. I’d make changes. I do things my way. Then it made it so good, I just stopped messing with it. It just looks really good. It’s beautiful. Here’s what, if you’re listening to us, you can use it for. Let’s say you have a high-end product and people need to talk to you before they buy. Well, create a calendar on Acuity Scheduling and start giving that out to potential customers. You’ll be amazed at the response that you get from people–more bookings, more bookings, more bookings.
Let’s suppose you just care about your customers. After you buy, your welcome email could say, “Thanks for buying. Here is a link to my calendar. I want to help you out. The guy from Baremetrics did that with me, but he, I guess, must not have a lot of customers because he said, “Andrew, when do you want to talk because I gave him a time and he immediately took it. If he didn’t, he could have lost me as a caller. What you need is an easy way to schedule calls with people. So, Acuity lets you do that.
Let’s suppose you just want to do phone calls in general, like someone wants to have a business call with you. Why not just have an Acuity calendar just ready? As soon as someone says, “Hey, Andrew, do you want to talk?” I can say, “Here’s my Acuity calendar link. Let’s have a conversation.” Or, more likely frankly, Mark, I say, “No, I can’t have a conversation.” But if I do, I give them my Acuity calendar and it’s ready to go.
If you’re listening to me, you should go check out Acuity Scheduling–that’s how people can schedule with you– AcuityScheduling.com/Mixergy. Why add the /Mixergy at the top? Because when you go to that full URL, AcuityScheduling.com/Mixergy, they’re going to give you more free time than they give anyone else because the Acuity founder has been a long-time member of Mixergy and because he is testing the Mixergy ads to see how well they do.
So, he wants to do everything he can to make them work and so do I. So, that’s why he’s giving you a lot of free time. You can basically use this thing for all your sales calls and then cancel if you want. Go to AcuityScheduling.com/Mixergy. You’ll be really glad you did. Thanks.
Mark: Can current customers [inaudible 00:22:34]?
Andrew: Sorry?
Mark: Can current customers use it or is it only for new customers?
Andrew: For new customers. Yeah. I think if you’re in there, you’re in there. But frankly, they don’t even charge that much. I think he can charge you way, way more. I wonder if he’s a little bit too nervous about charging. I don’t know. I’m glad.
You know what I did? I did a course on how to charge more. Dude, Mark, people on my team, they watched it, they emailed me using the exact freaking process and now I’m paying more for my people. So, I’m not about to tell Acuity Scheduling guy how he should be charging his customers more. I realize that my words have consequences. I’m not even kidding about that. I knew as I was recording that other course, “This can come back and bite me.” Then I said, “I’ve got to go with it.”
Never mind what course it is. Actually, it’s the course on productize services. It’s a guy who said, “Look, stop charging for hours. Start charging this way per product. Here’s how you do it.” It worked exactly on me.
So, Mark, here’s my issue with this. My issue, frankly, comes from me not having enough experience in this industry to push back and know where to push back. Like if you start telling me stuff about your software business, I’ll know whether it’s in line with what other people’s software companies are doing or not. Real estate, not so much.
So, all I have to go on is the fact that if it’s working for you–and this is not a brand new industry. Real estate has been around forever–then someone would have discovered it by now, enough market pressure would have been buying it and getting the prices to where they reasonably belong, number one.
And number two, if it was working for you and that didn’t happen yet, you wouldn’t be creating a website called The Land Geek where you’re teaching this stuff, you’d be doing it yourself. You’d be financing it if you can’t get enough money and you’d just be quietly making your money and laughing at everyone else for not knowing it.
Those are two different issues. Let’s address the first one. Wouldn’t the market have already solved this problem?
Mark: No. The market hates raw land. This is an unloved niche.
Andrew: The market loves money.
Mark: The market doesn’t know about it.
Andrew: But now they’re teaching it. That goes to number two. Then you’re teaching it, so the market would have discovered this.
Mark: Yeah, but how many people can I reach? I’m not a big education company. I think it’s a long tail of real estate. It’s unloved and it’s not sexy. You don’t go on the DIY Network or HGTV and see “Flip This Land.” But if you do the numbers, our investment model makes a lot more sense than that investment model.
And then I tell people–okay, I bought a piece of property for $1,000 and I flipped it for $4,200–okay, nice. But my neighbor just bought a house for $250,000 and flipped it for $320,000. Which is more sexy? The house model guy. You know when you look at his time, his effective hourly rate. My effective hourly rate is through the roof in the fact that we have this 85% automated software, it’s scalable because I can do it from anywhere in the world. I can do it from anywhere in the country. It’s a nice little niche. So, that’s the first part.
And then the second part is yeah, it’s a sleazy world out there. If I’m doing well, why teach it? And my wife asks me that, my current prospective customers ask me that, like, “What’s your lie?” So, for me it’s like I’ve been doing it forever. I’m still doing it. I love it. I’m looking at a $3 million deal right now and raising money to do that deal. So, I’m doing bigger deals. It’s like, “How much is enough?”
Nobody ever thanked me for buying a piece of buying a piece of raw land. Now, I’m moving the needle in people’s lives. Some people are making $1,500 a month in passive income. Jeff Axton is a full-time firefighter. He’s working at this two hours a day and he’s at $10,000 a month. I played for you this guy, Scott Boston, he’s just been doing it for 30 days at $700 a month.
So, it’s just more gratifying and it’s just more enjoyable for me to have that kind of impact, where I didn’t know–Mixergy, if I go through a course on how to charge more money and I execute on it and I implement it and now I’m charging more money, it moves the needle in my life. But at some point, I had to actually go through it and execute on it.
Andrew: I don’t know. I still feel like the market would have discovered it and bid it up. I still think as much of a nice guy as you are, if it was continuing to work, why not hire a bunch of people, raise money and start buying all the property for yourself and if you want to help people like Chris and other people do well and a firefighter, give them the money, just give them some of the money or find other ways to do it so you just keep milking this one thing instead of teaching it?
Mark: Yeah. It’s not a bad idea. But you know, at some point, the niche also, I think–let’s say that I raised $1 billion. I couldn’t deploy $1 billion in my raw land niche. There are just too many small deals. I couldn’t do it right away. So, I talk about this and I’ve got a buddy who has also been doing this for as long as I have. He’s like $120,000 a month in passive income now. He’s doing a lien fund. The reason he’s doing a lien fund is at some point our niche, it’s harder to do that because–
Andrew: Yeah. What are the scale issues involved in buying land like this like you just described it?
Mark: It’s a great model to make seven figures. But after that, if you want to make eight figures, you’ve got to go in to do bigger stuff. At some point, you’re not going to have the people in place, you can’t do the velocity fast enough to do this. I think it’s a great side hustle, actually.
Andrew: It’s a great side hustle. You’re saying you can’t get enough people in to do what?
Mark: To process the deals fast enough, to get them to market fast enough and sell them fast enough to scale up. If I raise $10 million, then I can’t put $10 million to work right away.
Andrew: Why not? Because you can’t do what?
Mark: Well, because it’s in my niche. We’re buying up small parcels. I might be buying a $5,000 or $10,000 parcel. But at some point, you’ve got to do your due diligence. There’s a percentage of those. It just takes too long.
Andrew: Okay. So, you got to $90,000. Your wife said, “All right. This is it. It makes sense. Go for it.” You start to build up. Before we started recording here, I don’t know if you noticed but you said something about how you had a big house, cars, private school–tell me about the nicest thing you bought for yourself when you were doing really well?
Mark: The nicest thing I bought for myself… I actually have a hard time buying nice things for myself. My wife will tell you that. I’m naturally a very frugal guy. But my wife on the other hand loves nice things. So, I would say at the height of the market, the nicest thing I bought for myself was probably a Lexus GS 430. Of course I had to get a deal. There was a seller in Malibu. I was out there doing some business. I just bought it.
Andrew: What is it? A Lexus–
Mark: I had to get a deal, a Lexus GS.
Andrew: What did you pay for it?
Mark: I think I paid $36,000.
Andrew: $36,000? That’s not a big splurge. You got yourself a house, private school as you mentioned. And then 2008, a crash happened.
Mark: Right.
Andrew: What was the crash and how did it impact you?
Mark: Okay. So, this is interesting because when I started in 2001, I didn’t know really what I was doing until 2003. So, it’s a real estate market, right? I didn’t have anybody kind of like mentoring me and saying, “Mark, by the way, you realize this is a real estate cycle and what goes up is eventually going to come down and do all that.”
I just thought, “I’ll just keep riding this thing forever.” So, Parkinson’s law takes in. So, I’m making all this money. My expenses go up at the same rate. Sure enough, the market goes down. I wasn’t prepared for it. It wasn’t a fun conversation with my wife.
Andrew: And you were left holding onto real estate–you pay mortgage on it? You weren’t paying cash, right?
Mark: That’s why I kind of survived. I wasn’t over-leveraged at all. A lot of my competition with way bigger houses, way bigger cars, they had to leave the market.
Andrew: I see. You didn’t have any mortgage at all on it?
Mark: No.
Andrew: So you paid all out of your own money and you were starting to still collect payments from people, right?
Mark: Yeah. But let’s say that note portfolio, 15% of it went away.
Andrew: Because they stopped paying you and then you get the property.
Mark: They stopped paying. I’d get the property and then I’d had to resell it. I think the blessing in it was it forced me to think more of it as a real business, where before it was like you can throw up anything and it would sell.
Andrew: I see. Beyond eBay, where else did you sell?
Mark: Craigslist is great, Land and Farm, Land Watch, Landflip, LandHub, Bid4Assets, Backpage–those are great places to sell land.
Andrew: Just going on Craigslist people are buying it from you on there, they’re doing nothing with it, holding onto it and then maybe building a shed the way that this other guy did?
Mark: Yeah. It’s just like what you said. You’re paying more for your bathroom than you are for a piece of raw land. It’s pretty irresistible.
Andrew: What’s a monthly payment on something like that? You’re talking about like $10 a month, right?
Mark: No, a car payment, between $149 to $349.
Andrew: I see. So, went up beyond the $300 properties. You started going to thousands.
Mark: Yeah. I’ve got some notes that are like $1,500 a month. It just depends. But it’s still a good deal.
Andrew: All right. I don’t want to talk about this like it’s all just butterflies and roses. Really, when that recession hit, you were hit pretty hard. You actually told our producer that you felt depressed because of it.
Mark: Yeah. I was very depressed. You never want to kind of go to your spouse and say, “Look, because I didn’t save money and have a cushion, the kids can’t go to that school that they love anymore.”
Andrew: And they literally could not go that school they loved anymore.
Mark: They literally could not go to that school anymore. We had to pare down our expenses. We had a housekeeper five days a week. So, like a Band-Aid, we just cut everything. Honestly, I think she’s happier and I’m happier. Maybe that’s why I don’t use hot cognition points because at the end of the day, I don’t think they increased my happiness. My ego was out of control. So, that was great. It was great for my ego.
Andrew: What was the best part? So far I’m seeing just a nice car. How was your ego at all affected by it?
Mark: Well, I had a $1 million house, private schools. We were going on big vacations and big restaurants. It was one of those things where you’d look at me and be like, “Oh yeah, this guy is affluent,” kind of thing.
Andrew: And you liked being thought of that way?
Mark: I think I did because I didn’t grow up that way. I thought, “My parents would be proud of me.”
Andrew: How’d you grow up?
Mark: My dad was a wholesale grocer and very middle class. Being a wholesale grocer, he knew the price of everything. So, we’d go to the supermarket like that pack of gum there, that might cost $0.29 and they’re selling it for $0.69.
Andrew: It burned him every time you bought a pack of gum.
Mark: I think that’s why the land business was so attractive to me, because we’re buying these properties so inexpensively and with such good margin. It’s like in my blood. I find that too with the Land Geek people. Those are the people that I attract as well.
Andrew: The second sponsor for this interview is a company called HostGator. You’ve had experience with HostGator.
Mark: Yeah. I love HostGator–unlimited domains for like $14 a month. I think I spent more on coffee today than I did HostGator.
Andrew: Unlimited domains?
Mark: I think so.
Andrew: I think so too. I don’t know why they’re not promoting that here with my ad. I think the great thing about this is you really could just set whatever sites you want up and experiment with them all freaking day long.
Mark: Yeah. I’ve got like 50.
Andrew: 50 different domains?
Mark: 50 different domains.
Andrew: Just to be clear, we pay for the domains ourselves and the domains are under $10. The hosting of those domains is the part that I think is included. I don’t see it specifically here, so I’m afraid of saying it out loud, but I think it is.
Here’s what I do know for sure. They give you unlimited email addresses, unmetered disc space, unmetered bandwidth–what that means is go crazy, have as many people as you want go on your website. It’s not going to cost you more money. They’ve got a 45-day money back guarantee.
In a past interview, I actually said that someone should create this–well, actually, I had a guest on before Mark who ran this software that allowed anyone through their APIs to send out postcards and letters and through the API you say what you want on the postcards and letters. I asked him, “If you had a HostGator account today, what would you do?” He said, “I would create a website that allowed individuals who don’t know anything about APIs to send out letters without having to ever touch paper or postcards without ever having to touch paper. Look my software,” his company was called Lob, “Can do this for anyone.”
Mark: I use Lob. I love Lob.
Andrew: You know Lob?
Mark: I love Lob. It’s how we send out our offer letters and that’s how I have my acquisition manager send checks to the people who are buying the land for them, so I don’t have to touch it.
Andrew: Right. Doing paper just stinks. The problem with Lob is–it’s not a problem–it’s not meant for the average person who wants to just send one letter. It’s meant for someone like you who wants to send tons of letters, who can understand a little bit about the APIs. Most people don’t care about that.
So, the guest said, “Hey, someone should just create a webpage that does this. If you have a HostGator account, basically for a few bucks a month, you can run this.” So, a guy named Ed in my audience says, “All right, I’m going to try this freaking thing. Let’s see if what Andrew is saying actually makes sense. Let’s try my first real business.”
So, Ed goes and he buys a domain name called PostalZen.com. Anyone can go see it. He just sets it up using standard WordPress. And with HostGator, they do like that, one-click install. So, you have WordPress up and running, easy-peasy. He connects WordPress that’s on HostGator to Lob’s site and instantly he’s got this business where anyone who wants to send a letter and just go and type out the letter on his freaking site or upload the letter to the site, pay a couple bucks and then send the letter out.
I go, “How’s this working for you?” He goes, “Well, I do want to make it bigger and I’m looking to turn this into a real business.” I go, “You have any customers?” He goes, “Oh yeah.” I go, “Who’s doing it?” He goes, “Real estate guys love it. They want to send letters and postcards out without having to address letters or send them from their office or print postcards.
So they just come to his website and they send it out.” Frankly, anyone who’s listening to us, if you ever have to send out a letter anywhere and you know you don’t have a printer at home and you know you don’t have the patience to address anything or put a stamp on it, you can go to his website. It’s PostalZen.com.
Anyway, that whole thing is built on HostGator. The guy is a brand new entrepreneur. If he can do it, anyone can do it. Go experiment. Whatever idea you have for a website, you should be putting it up right now on HostGator. If you’re not happy with your current hosting company, you keep hearing me rave about HostGator and you want to try someone new, HostGator will make migration so easy. I think in many cases they’ll even do the migration for you.
Mark: Their tech support is great–your SSL certificate, your migration. You can talk to a real human being who knows what they’re doing. They don’t send the ticket up.
Andrew: You just got me so excited about it. I said, “Ed, you’ve never done any of this before. How are you able to create a page that’s safe for people to put their credit cards on?” He goes, “Oh, it’s super simple. There’s just like a little switch you do HostGator.” This is incredible. For a guy who’s never started a business to not only create a site that charges people, but also is secure, it’s killer.
That’s what HostGator. It’s super, super simple. You’ve heard me interview many entrepreneurs who use HostGator who are experienced. Here’s an example of someone who’s brand new. If you have an idea, go to HostGator.com/Mixergy. They’re going to give you 30% off. If you have a site and you hate your hosting company, go to HostGator.com/Mixergy.
They will move you over, 45-day money back guarantee. If you think I’ve over-exaggerated, number one, get your money back, number two, email me. I don’t want to be an exaggerator. I stand by them. I’m happy with them. I think you will be, but there’s a way out if you’re not happy and I’d like to know about it–HostGator.com/Mixergy.
I’m really grateful to them for sponsoring and congratulations, Ed, for listening to this interview and creating a site based on it. If anyone else creates a business or site of any kind of based on these mentions, let me know. I’m really proud to hear about them.
All right. How do you recover from that? The economy takes a dive. How do you, Mark, recover?
Mark: First of all, you’ve got to go through it. You just can’t kind of cutoff from that hit, otherwise you’re going to relive it.
Andrew: What do you mean? You can’t just go to bed, sleep, play video games.
Mark: You can’t go to that, “Okay, I’ll survive this. This is not that bad.” You’ve got to be like, “Okay, what did I do wrong?” You’ve got to take responsibility. And I did. It was painful and it was depressing and it was fairly miserable to not just not have the stuff anymore, but to just take the ego hit. Your friends who have jobs and aren’t affected like you are are like, “Hey, Mark, you going to come out this weekend?” “No, we can’t afford to go out this weekend.”
Andrew: Did you admit that? I never admit when I can’t afford something when I couldn’t. I’m sure there are things I can’t afford now. I would just say, “Sorry, I don’t want to drink anymore,” or, “I’ve got work to do.” Did you admit it?
Mark: I admitted it. My close circle of my friends and family, they knew what was going on. Surprisingly, they don’t care. They were just supportive. They’re like, “Okay, we get it.” I think the interesting thing is everyone in Scottsdale, this whole town got decimated. I saw a guy with a $500 million net worth go to zero because instead of selling off his land, he tried to develop it and sure enough, everything went sour. So, that was probably the only saving grace was that everyone was kind of going through it together in this town with real estate.
Andrew: Okay. I can see how that would be helpful.
Mark: Yeah. So, it’s like, “Wow. The Jones’ are also suffering like we are and all these other people.” But yeah, it’s not fun. Entrepreneurs, we have these setbacks. I didn’t realize I’m an entrepreneur, things go up, things go down. It just went like this. It wasn’t realistic, where today, I know there are going to be good months, there are going to be bad months. We have to prepare for it. I just read a great book, Andrew, “Profit First,” by Mike Michalowicz.
Andrew: Yeah.
Mark: I’m doing it. I feel so much better, in control. It’s great.
Andrew: Profit first is the idea that you should take your money out of the business before you invest in anything else.
Mark: Correct. So, it just turns it on a head. So, it’s revenue minus profit equals expenses. So, you’re running lean and mean and you’ve got to be creative because you’ve taken your profit first.
Andrew: He did a course on Mixergy. People should check that out if you’re at all curious about this concept. He really did a great job of explaining it on Mixergy. All right. So, then you did what? You started selling the properties you had for whatever you could get?
Mark: Yeah. At that time, I was flipping, flipping, flipping, right? So, I started doing owner financing. In about 2007, I started doing owner financing. Luckily those notes and that passive income really were sustaining me. What I learned was maybe somebody will spend $15,000 for a piece of land, but they still want to spend $249 a month for that same piece of property.
So, slowly and surely, I built that note portfolio and if I needed money, I could sell a portion of the note or the whole note and get my money out and keep going, keep fueling it and just keep self-financing.
Andrew: What’s your interest rate on that?
Mark: It depends. Sometimes it’s zero. Sometimes it’s 12.7%. We play with it, like in marketing.
Andrew: Why? Just to see what would get people to buy.
Mark: Yeah. So, if you choose the price, I’ll choose the terms. If you choose the terms, I’ll choose the price.
Andrew: I see. That’s the one thing I remember taking away from my real estate class, that and the guy said to me, the professor said, “Real estate is like horse trading. It’s all about the negotiation,” unlike the market, which is the rest of the stuff that we studied in school in business classes. But he said the same thing you just said. If I pick the price of zero percent interest, what are you going to adjust in your terms to make it worth your while?
Mark: So I’m either going to do a bigger down or I might give you a larger, let’s say, note collection fee. So I can kind of cushion in fees there. Either way, I’ve built in my margin anyways.
Andrew: I see. So the note collection fees would become your profit for giving this guy a loan.
Mark: Yeah, my interest rate, in a way, $12 a month or whatever it is.
Andrew: All right. So you continued on. Did you do anything different after the recovery?
Mark: Yeah. I started treating it like a real business.
Andrew: How do you mean?
Mark: I got better at marketing. I got better at acquisition. I started to create systems and processes and really thinking about the future, like if I’m going to do this full-time and if it was taking seven days to sell a piece of property, now it was taking 30, how am I going to get to the next level with this? Where before, I didn’t have to do anything. The market was hot. So it made me better, in a way.
Andrew: When you say systems helped you, what’s a system that helped you improve? We’re talking about Frontier Properties, right?
Mark: For Frontier Properties. Now you’ve got it 85% automated with software. But one of the systems I had–I was doing all the work. I was the one doing the county research. I was the one figuring out the pricing models. I was the one sending out the offers. I was the one doing the due diligence. I was the one closing. I was the one creating the marketing ads. I was the one selling. I was doing it all. That doesn’t scale. Mark doesn’t scale.
So slowly but surely, I started hiring inexpensive VAs to do this piece really, really well. So I would train them, “Here’s how you do the due diligence, right? Here are our checklists.” And then as things kind of got better technologically and crowdsourcing–we could use a program or a company called WeGoLook.com, so Mark doesn’t have to drive to look at the property. For $79, I can have my whole checklist filled out, get videos and pictures of the property, see what the neighbors are like, what’s the access like. It’s great.
Andrew: This is WeGoLook.com?
Mark: Yeah, WeGoLook.com.
Andrew: They’ll send somebody out wherever you want and just go through a list of issues for you?
Mark: Yeah.
Andrew: I see on the website they’re inspecting a car. So if I wanted to buy a car from out of state, I could give them a list of things I want one of their people to check out. They’ll check it out, send me pictures of them, send me information.
Mark: Yeah. It’s a safer way to buy.
Andrew: That’s great. How do you find out about stuff like this? What network are you plugged into that tells you about sites like WeGoLook?
Mark: I’m a real geek. So I love ProductHunt.com. And because of my podcast, people are kind of giving me information as well. So just through the general milieu, I’m always kind of trying to keep up with technology, reading blogs. I’m on Pulse a lot on my phone.
Andrew: Pulse, the app for reading news.
Mark: Yeah.
Andrew: I think that’s the best app for reading news and LinkedIn is kind of screwing it up. What’s great about it is it’s easy to flip through articles fast.
Mark: Yeah. You’ll see something like, “Oh, look what Macworld…” I guess Macworld is a bad example.
Andrew: What’s another tool you like using?
Mark: Podio–have you used Podio?
Andrew: No. What’s Podio?
Mark: Oh my gosh, Andrew, after this interview, I’m going to have to show you all my geeky tools. So, Podio is a really cool platform. Have you heard of Trello?
Andrew: Yeah. I’m on their site. Podio is a project management–I could spend like an hour doing this conversation with you where you tell me about your tools.
Mark: Yeah. What we’ve done is with Podio, GlobiFlow and Zapier, we’ve automated the whole business. So, using Lob and an API, I can upload a list of people that own property and have back taxes. We’ve priced it and then boom, it just goes out magically.
Andrew: So, Lob is what sends it out. Zapier or Zapier, as you said it, sends the data into Lob.
Mark: Correct.
Andrew: What sends the data in to Zapier?
Mark: GlobiFlow.
Andrew: What’s GlobiFlow?
Mark: Check out GlobiFlow.com. Did you see yesterday Zapier came out with–
Andrew: Yes. Wade emailed me. He emails me this thing and it blew my mind. Here’s the thing with Zapier. Here’s the problem. It’s fantastic for hooking two different pieces of software together. You want to get someone who buys from you to also get a letter. Zapier will connect the software, the purchase software with the letter software and automate the sending of the letter out.
But what if you want to do two things? What if you want to, say, send them an email and send them a card? What if you want to add them to your finance software and send them a letter? Well, then you’d have to create two different ones and remember that both of those interactions connect to the same thing, same initial action. That’s kind of a pain, but for a long time, that’s how they did it.
Now, you can have the sequence of steps, you can say, “Someone buys, boom. Send a text message to my phone so that I can laugh or smile, send a message over to my bank so that we know we’re getting some money and then send a letter out to them thanking them.”
Mark: It’s crazy now.
Andrew: I’m having a hard time talking today. Sorry. I’m second-guessing my words as I’m talking. Yeah. It’s fantastic. How are you going to use it?
Mark: Here’s a good example, RingCentral. I use RingCentral. So, you press one if you want to buy land. You press two if you want to sell land. You press three for Land Geek services or four for technical support. Well, if you hit one, we have a zap that automatically that message will get automatically emailed to Fancy Hands with a script. So, Fancy Hands will qualify that person and then get it to my acquisition manager.
Andrew: I had no idea you could do that.
Mark: It’s amazing. So, if they’re selling land, we do the same thing. “Are you really selling the land or just calling to yell at us?” So, we can have it go to Fancy Hands. They, again, qualify the person and then it goes to the acquisition manager. Now we have all these other workflows that we can start utilizing and how much more efficient can we go? It’s really exciting. I haven’t played with it yet. I can’t wait to play with it. Friday is going to be my Zapier day.
Andrew: I love that software. I think every time people compare it to IFTTT, they’re giving themselves an easy understanding that’s technically true, but it’s so much better than that. I would compare it more to like an in house coder. If you needed some in house software developed for yourself, this would save you that money and allow you to take control of it yourself.
Mark: Absolutely. I can’t spend enough money on that program. Talk about undercharging.
Andrew: Right. They’re so good.
Mark: What’s your time worth? It’s crazy.
Andrew: So, what’s GlobiFlow? I’m on there right now. Boost productivity and save man hours by automating pretty much anything you can think of in your Podio account. How does this work?
Mark: It’s just like the building blocks for all these integrations. That’s like the middle piece, let’s say, from Lob or Click to Mail in Podio. You’ve got to make it a flow. That flow will fire off to those people.
Andrew: How is this different from Zapier?
Mark: It’s Podio-based, basically.
Andrew: What’s Podio? Oh, Podio is that product management. I see. So, if you want something that gets triggered from your project management software, you would use this GlobiFlow. If you want it triggered by something else, then you’d use Zapier.
Mark: Right. I create apps in Podio. We’d have the due diligence app. Things follow along in a nice logical progression using this program. One of my favorite things is you get the button push to web. So, all my marketing in Podio goes to draft in WordPress hosted by HostGator.
Andrew: I see. I had this interesting conversation with Tim Ferriss a while back. We talked about something private and it was important and we got into it. Then he asked me something at the end that coming from anyone else, I would have just dismissed as a waste of time. But from him, I had to just take notice. He said, “What software are you using?” Then I started telling him about the software. I thought, “He doesn’t need more software in his life.”
Then I realized what he was doing was asking me about my workflow. How was I optimizing the podcasting business? How was I organizing my team? There’s something about just hearing about the software people use and how they use it that actually tells you a lot about how they run their business, where if I just say, “How do you run your business?” it wouldn’t lead to anywhere near as useful a response.
Mark: Right.
Andrew: Let’s talk about the other part of the business. So far we’ve talked about how you are a guy who’s buying real estate for yourself, buying land for yourself, how you have Frontier Properties where you’re buying it for other people and selling it to other people. You then created this thing called The Land Geek. This you started 2013?
Mark: Correct. Yeah, 2013.
Andrew: How did you know the first thing you were going to teach, a course, a mastermind or something else?
Mark: I really didn’t. I get a phone call from a guy. He said, “I’m on your website, Frontier Properties and I was wondering could you teach me this business?” I said, “I don’t teach people how to do this.” I’m thinking scarcity mentality, right? I’m not going to create my own competition. He’s like, “Well, why don’t you?” I’m like, “I don’t do it. I don’t know how to. I don’t even know what to charge. What would you pay me for something like that?” He threw out a really high number, like, “Oh, really? Is that right?”
So, this is before I know about the Armandos of the world that were selling real estate information for like $40,000 in three days. So, that number was compelling enough. So, I coached him one on one and I recorded all of those calls. I took those recordings and kind of made a course.
Then I had another guy, Jeff Axton, the firefighter do the same thing. He’s like, Mark, can you teach me this business?” He came from another guy who was teaching it, but he wasn’t getting results. So, I got him going. Now I’ve got testimonial, testimonial because again, we’re talking about a very sleazy business.
I think I just kind of built momentum there. I had more proof. Then I’m like, “Okay, maybe this is a thing.” I was enjoying it. It was much more satisfying than flipping land and creating the notes. It was like a new challenge too.
Andrew: 2013 you had a site where people could join–there was some kind of membership. What was in the membership?
Mark: At that point it was just what I called the Investor’s Toolkit. It was just kind of the DIY home study course teaching you the five basic pieces of how I buy and sell raw land.
Andrew: How did you figure out what your five are?
Mark: Well, I really hired a processes guy to help me break down what I was doing.
Andrew: There’s a professional processes guy who could do that?
Mark: Yeah. This guy was in Germany, really inexpensive. We would meet on Skype. We would just break down my business. It really helped me think about the processes in my business.
Andrew: He does this for other people who want to create courses?
Mark: I don’t think we were thinking about it like a course. I was just doing it for Frontier.
Andrew: I see. He’s just helping you organize your process by understanding what you do. How did he help you? Do you have an example of something he helped you with?
Mark: Yeah. We would take like how I do county research. He would just break it up into a checklist that was very logical.
Andrew: I see, like a literal checklist. Is he the one that introduced you to your project management software and said use this?
Mark: No, actually somebody in my community show it to me.
Andrew: I see. He just said, “You need a checklist. Here’s a checklist. We created it,” maybe in something like Microsoft Word, is that word?
Mark: Yeah. The great thing about branding myself to Land Geek is I attract guys like Chris Pritchard who are way smarter than me and they’re like, “Mark, have you thought about doing it this way?”
Andrew: I see. They tell you about the software.
Mark: They tell me. Yeah.
Andrew: And it looks like you were selling the Investor’s Toolkit for $1,000. I was looking to see where you get your users.
Mark: I think it’s the podcast.
Andrew: Is that your number one source?
Mark: I think it is.
Andrew: Do you also do affiliate programs?
Mark: I do.
Andrew: I see that there are people who have written reviews or done video reviews of your course where there’s one guy who was doing a screencast, my researcher sent me. That’s part of where you get your customers. What percentage come from affiliates?
Mark: I would say 20%.
Andrew: 20%. There it is. Seth Williams is the guy whose video I saw of the inside of your Investor’s Toolkit.
Mark: Yeah. He’s got a great blog, RETipster.com.
Andrew: That’s another thing. I so went to see using SimilarWeb, one of my favorite tools, where you get your traffic. It looks like he’s the number one individual source of traffic outside of Google.
Mark: He’s great.
Andrew: Here’s the thing that gets me about this interview. I have no affiliate commission on this. I know you’re going to get some customers from it. I’m not making any money with it, which is fine with me. The problem is that I need to sharper questions and I don’t have the sharper questions for real estate. I don’t know where the bones are.
Frankly, when you mentioned that guy, that other real estate person who was charging $40,000, Armando. I Googled him as we talked. I thought you were talking about a different Armando. I quickly Googled him. Look at the Forbes headline on him, “Meet Armando Montelongo: The Home-Flipping Huckster who Will Make $50 Million This Year.”
Mark: $50 Million.
Andrew: $50 million this year. The caption underneath the first photo there is, “The most sought after real estate expert in the world!” That’s a quote from him about him, I believe. It says Armando Montelongo created a cult of himself.
Mark: Yeah.
Andrew: I’ve got to Instapaper that for later.
Mark: Yeah. This is the world. It’s very easy to differentiate yourself if you’re coming from it in a different way.
Andrew: BiggerPockets is another source for you.
Mark: BiggerPockets is great. Those guys are great.
Andrew: What are you doing with BiggerPockets that they’re sending you business?
Mark: Yeah. They don’t like my ilk. They don’t think that anybody should charge money for information. They think you should just go online and get information for free from their forums. I’m very open about it like, “Look, the only thing I can do is save you time, hopefully save you from making a big mistake, but you can figure this out on your own. It’s not brain surgery.”
Andrew: So, you go into their forum and you respond to questions and you help people out and then that’s how you get links back to your site. I see. Is that the biggest source of traffic? I might be wrong about RETipster. That’s number to according to SimilarWeb, now that I look at it carefully.
Mark: I think Google and RETipster, BiggerPockets. I think people start listening to the podcast. Every time I get on the phone with somebody I’m like, “How did you find me?” They’re like, “The podcast.” I’m on the podcast circuit.
Andrew: I see. Did you ask Chris to introduce us or did he just do it?
Mark: He just did it. He’s really proud of what he’s done. He loves my model. He’s like, “You’ve got to get on Mixergy.” I’m like “Yeah, that would be great. Finally, Andrew Warner can interview an accomplished entrepreneur, like a real name.”
Andrew: Finally.
Mark: After a thousand interviews, let’s elevate Andrew.
Andrew: Here’s a question that we ask every guest. It’s like what question didn’t we ask you that we should have. Your response to our pre-interviewer, Brian, is, “You should ask why is your podcast The Best Passive Income Model?”
Mark: Right.
Andrew: Why? Why is that a question that we should have asked you?
Mark: Because you should come on the podcast and I can explain to you my model and ask you, “Do you think I have the best passive income model?”
Andrew: And that’s the format of your podcast? You do more than that.
Mark: That’s one point. The point of my podcast is a free-flowing interview about my guest and their success and why they’re successful, why they think they’re successful and their background and then I say, “Here’s my model. Do you think I have the best passive income model?”
It’s really interesting coming from their backgrounds what they’ll say. Some people are layups. They’re like, “That’s amazing.” Other people are like, “That’s the best model for you because it works.” Other people are like, “Where’s the tax benefit from it?” Or they’ll pick it apart and ask questions. So, we might argue a little bit.
Andrew: Who had the best argument with you?
Mark: What’s that?
Andrew: Who had the most insightful argument with you?
Mark: I think J. Massey from CashflowDiary.com because he’s a certified financial planner as well. He’s like, “Mark, this is not the best passive income model because there are no tax benefits where you can depreciate a building. You can’t depreciate raw land.” I said, “Well, Jay, you can invest in this with a self-directed IRA and it grows tax-deferred. You can use a tax-free Roth, it grows tax-free. Checkmate.” He hasn’t spoken to me since. Just kidding. He’s a good buddy. That was pretty interesting how he was able to pinpoint in the model something that had a flaw.
Andrew: All right. Fair point. I don’t even know if that’s true. I had no idea that was possible. It makes sense, though.
Mark: Yeah. You can’t depreciate raw land.
Andrew: No. It’s not losing any value.
Mark: Right. I think the model is great. It’s an unloved, non-competitive niche, a massive market. It’s the ultimate subscription model. You have a one-time scale. You have recurring income. You don’t have to deal with tenants, toilets, termites, trash. You can scale it to a point. How much is enough? You won’t make $1 billion in this model. You have to do other things. But it could allow you to do other things as well.
Andrew: All right. Well, I’m glad that you came on here to talk about it. I like your attitude. I told you before we started that I was going to hit hard with the most challenging questions I could think of and you were fine with it. I think we had a great interview here.
All right. If anyone wants to go check out your work, I guess the best place for them to go, the place you probably want them to go is The Land Geek, right?
Mark: Yeah. Go to TheLandGeek.com unless you know for sure you want to invest in raw land, then go to FrontierPropertiesUSA.com. I think for your entrepreneurial listeners, this is a great way to take what you’re doing and build your passive income on the side without a lot of work. We can systematize it. We can automate it. You can be like a Chris Pritchard. He’s at $1,500 passive income. That’s a vacation every month.
Andrew: All right. I’ve got to follow up with Chris at some point about this too. All right. Thanks for being on here. You guys have his website.
Let me tell you again about the sponsors. I told you that if you need an easy way to schedule with people, please remember, in fact, don’t bother remembering, just say, “Hey, Siri,” or hit the button on the phone and say, “Take a note: Acuity Scheduling.” That’s the site that you need if you want to schedule with people easily–AcuityScheduling.com/Mixergy for an especially long trial period. And if you need a website, remember what worked for Ed will work for you. Go to HostGator.com/Mixergy. I’m grateful to both of them for sponsoring Mixergy.
We talked about also in this interview the Mike Michalowicz interview. And where is that other interview that I mentioned? I know where. I pinned the tab in Chrome. The one that I mentioned earlier about the guy that everyone is billing me here at Mixergy–his name is Brennan Dunn. You all know him. He created a great source on how to handle your consulting business so that it actually scales. I really urge you to go check it out.
The best thing you can do for yourself is go see Brennan Dunn in person or find a way to chat with him. The second best thing is to go take his course on Mixergy. You’ll really learn a lot from him. He’s a long time Mixergy fan and I’ve just been in admiration of how much he’s built over the years and I’m grateful to him for being on Mixergy and I’m grateful to you, Mark, for being on Mixergy. Thank you.
Mark: Andrew, thank you so much. I really appreciate it.
Andrew: You bet. Thank you all for being a part of it. If you like this, remember, recommend it to your friends, tell them to subscribe in whatever podcast app they like. Bye, everyone.
