No Broke Months For Salespeople - Increase Business Growth Quickly Through Automated Systems

Episode Date: April 4, 2024

Mark Podolsky owns Frontier Properties, a land investment company. Mark (AKA The Land Geek) is widely considered the country's most trusted and foremost authority on buying and selling raw, undeveloped land in the United States.This Monday afternoon, Mark will discuss how you can leverage systems and automation to simplify and scale your real estate business.Catch Mark Podolsky here for the No Broke Months Podcast. To find out more about Dan Rochon and the CPI Community, you can check these links:Website: No Broke MonthsPodcast: No Broke Months for Salespeople PodcastInstagram: @donrochonxFacebook: Dan RochonLinkedIn: Dan Rochon

But the secret is in my pricing. So I'm going to make it irresistible. So all I'm going to ask for is a $2,500 down payment for someone to control that five acre parcel. And then I'll make it a car payment. Let's say $2,500 down, $249 a month at 9% interest for the next 72 months. So it's a one-time sale. I'm going to get my money out on the down payment.

I could go six to 10 months out. Now I need $249 a month and 9% interest for the next 72 months. Dan, no renters, no rehabs, no renovations, no rodents. And because I'm not dealing with a tenant, I'm exempt from Dodd-Frank, RESPA, and the SAFE Act, all this onerous real estate legislation. So then it's a simple game. Can we create enough land notes where our passive income exceeds our fixed expenses? And then we're working because we want to, not because we have to, and we're guaranteed no broke months.

Welcome to the No Broke Months for Real Estate Agents podcast. Working as a real estate agent can be incredibly rewarding and fulfilling, but it can also be frustrating if you aren't making the money you deserve. So if you're ready to end the stressful cycle of working hard for no results, then get started with a proven step-by-step system so that every month is no broke months. My name is Dan Broshon. I'm the host of the No Broke Months podcast, which is a show for real estate agents to help you have no broke months. Thanks for joining me. Enjoy the show. Mark Podolsky owns Frontier Properties, a land investment company. Land Investment Company. Mark, aka The Land Geek, is widely considered the country's most trusted and foremost authority on buying and selling raw, undeveloped land in the United States.

This Monday afternoon, Mark will discuss how you can leverage systems and automation to simplify and scale your real estate business. Catch Mark Podolsky here for the No Broke Months podcast. Mark, welcome. Dan, thanks so much for having me. Appreciate it. My pleasure. So I want to talk to you about some automated systems today, because you are a business person, I'm a business person, our people who listen to this are business people. And I also want to know a little bit about land investing as well. So tell us a little bit about yourself, Mark. Yeah. Yeah. So if we rewind the tape to 2000, I was a miserable, micromanaged, 45-minute commute to work and back investment

banker specializing in mergers and acquisitions with private equity groups. And Dan, it got so bad for me. I wouldn't get the Sunday blues anticipating Monday coming around. I get the Friday blues anticipating the weekend going by really fast and having to be back at work on Monday. So my firm hires this guy and he's telling me that as a side hustle, he's going to these tax deed auctions. He's buying up raw land, pennies on the dollar. He's flipping them online.

And he's making a 300% return on his money. And I'm looking at companies all day long. And a great company, great, has 15% EBITDA margins or free cash flow. Average company is 10%. And I'm looking at companies all day long, less than 10%. So of course, I don't believe him. I've got three grand saved up for car repairs. I go to New Mexico with him. I buy 10 half acre parcels and average price of $300 each.

I flipped them online and I sell them for an average price of $1,200 each. It worked 300%. So I took all that money and I went to another auction in Arizona, which is where I live. And 2,000, there's no one in the room. I'm buying lots and acres for nothing. And I sell all that land I made over $90,000 cash. So I go to my wife, she's pregnant. I said, honey, I'm going to quit my job, become a full-time land investor. That's what you want to tell your pregnant wife, right? Yeah, yeah, exactly. So she said, absolutely not. So I said, okay, okay.

So it took 18 months for the land investing income to exceed the investment banking income. And then I quit and I've been doing it full time ever since. And the way that I do it is using systems and automation because I think people who are listening, they don't want to build themselves another job. And passive income, like nothing's really passive, but I think when you have a one-time setup and then you get recurring income every single month, that's about as passive as you can get. And when you have a team doing the work and you have the systems and the processes and the software and the automations,

that's about as passive as you can get. It's just the initial setup of it all is where, you know, we can delve deep into it. So tell us more about that. Like what is the setup and what are the systems, how do they help? Well, there's, there's two software pieces, right? So we want to use three levers of leverage, essentially. We want to use other people's time.

We want to use software automation and we use other people's money. So let's talk about that first lever, which is other people's time. So we have a team based out of Jamaica who are inexpensive virtual assistants and they're handling the front end of the business. So they'll handle our due diligence and they'll handle our marketing. And well, yeah, they'll put out the ads for our marketing team. Then we have a marketing team and a sales team. We also have an intake manager as well. And we have an acquisition manager managing the entire team as well.

So we run lean and mean. But then on the front end of it, we use a software called LG Pass, which is a system to get a list from the county so we can mail offers to prospective land sellers. And it might be better if I kind of gave you a little bit of context from a- Sure, yeah. Give us context. Just how the model works and then do it. So Don, where do you live? I'm in Northern Virginia.

Northern Virginia. Okay. Let's assume that you own five acres of raw live? I'm in Northern Virginia. Northern Virginia. Okay. Let's assume that you own five acres of raw land where I live in Arizona. And you owe, say, $200 in back taxes. So you're advertising two important things to me. Number one, you have no emotional attachment to the raw land. You're in Virginia.

Property's in Arizona. And then number two, you're distressed financially in some weird way because when we don't pay for things like our property taxes, we don't value them the same way. As a result, the county treasurer keeps sending you notices saying, Dan, if you don't pay your taxes,

you're going to lose that property to a tax deed or a tax lien investor. So all I'm going to do is look at the comparable sales on your five-acre parcel for the last 12 to 18 months. I'm going to take the lowest comparable sale. Let's say it's $10,000 and divide by four. And that's what Warren Buffett would call a 300% margin of safety.

So I'm going to send you an actual offer of $2,500. So for you, $2,500 is better than nothing. In reality, 3% to 5% of people are going to accept your quote unquote, or my quote unquote top dollar offer. But now that you've accepted it, I have to go through due diligence or in-depth research. I have to confirm you still own the property. I have to make sure that the back taxes are only $200. I have to make sure there's been no breaks in the chain of title,

no liens or encumbrances. So I have this whole property checklist. They're connected to an American title company. Now, if I were investing, say, more than $5,000, I'd close traditionally through an American title company. But this is real small, $2,500. We'll do it. Everything checks out. I send you a check for $2,300. I send the treasurer a check for $200. I own it free and clear. And now I'm going to flip it. I'm going to sell it 30 days or less.

I'm going to make it cashflow like a rental home. So Dan, I have a built-in best buyer. Do you know who it is? No idea. It's the neighbors. The idea. It's the neighbors. The neighbors. It's the neighbors. So I want to send out neighbor letters saying, hey, here's your opportunity.

Protect your privacy. Protect your views. Know your neighbor. Oftentimes, the neighbors will buy. The neighbors pass. I'll go to my buyers list. The buyers list passes. I'll go to a site you probably have heard of.

It's called Meta. It's Facebook. So buy, sell groups and the marketplace. And then I'll go to the lands. So I'll go to landmoto.com, landsofamerica.com, landandfarm.com, landflip.com,

landhub.com. These are platforms where people buy and sell raw land. But the secret is in my pricing. So I'm going to make it irresistible. So all I'm going to ask for is a $2,500 down payment for someone to control that five acre parcel. And then I'll make it a car payment. Let's say $2,500 down, $249 a month at 9% interest for the next 72 months. So it's a one-time sale. I'm going to get my money out on the down payment. I could go six to 10 months out. Now I'm getting $249 a month and 9% interest for the next 72 months. Dan, no renters, no rehabs, no renovations, no rodents. And because I'm not dealing with a tenant, I'm exempt from Dodd-Frank, RESPA, and the SAFE Act, all this onerous real estate legislation. So then it's a simple game.

Can we create enough land notes where our passive income exceeds our fixed expenses? And then we're working because we want to, not because we have to, and we're guaranteed no broke months. Excuse me for interrupting my own show. You are freaking amazing. And because you're amazing, I'm going to ask for a quick favor. It'll just take you 30 seconds for you to leave a favorable five-star rating or review on your favorite platform. Then what I'll do is I'll enter you into a raffle where we can meet 45 minutes for a

free coaching session. And I'll also give you a copy of the book, Real Estate Evolution, which is the 10-step guide to CPI, consistent and predictable income. Oh, by the way, I'm the author of that book. So if you'd like for me to coach you, give you some nuggets and help you in your business, go ahead and leave a review and you can enter into the monthly raffle to win. I love it, man. I love it. I love the way you tied that in. Okay. So that's the 30,000 foot. Walk me through step-by-step. How do you use automated systems to like make all this work? I like, if I wanted to do that, what's my first step? So your first step is we have a software called LG pass.com. So you're going to want to get that software. That's going to really

be the first piece of the automation because it takes, so each step from buying the piece of land all the way to selling the piece of land is automated. So for example, on the first piece of it, my team will go into LG Pass, and they'll upload that list, it'll automatically mail out the offers. If we get a higher response rate, we need to lower our offer. If we get too low of a response rate, we need to increase our offer. And LG Pass will let us automatically do that. And then the offers will go out again. So we're going to automate the offer process. Then once we get a seller that says, hey, I want to go ahead and sell my property, then the person's going to go into LG Pass, they're going to take notes in that record and they can do a search for that record in there. And then they'll take that seller all the way through the closing process. And we'll call that our intake manager, essentially. So sometimes sellers will call and they'll be angry about it or they'll be confused by it and someone has to walk them through that process. But the software are our

bumpers so that our acquisition manager is keeping good notes and good records of what's going on with that seller. Then once we buy the property, we have to use a system to do that. So recording the deed, for example, and sending the check. That can all be done. Well, the sending the check can be done through LG Pass. The deed can be done through LG Pass. But the recording, we use a company called simplifile.com. And so we just take a picture of the deed that's been signed and notarized and automatically file it with the county. So now we own the property. Now it moves on to the marketing team. The marketing team then will put into LG Pass where they're marketing.

So we know by the Pareto principle, okay, this land site is outperforming this land site, or this marketplace on Facebook is outperforming this marketplace on Facebook. So we know that 20% of our marketing is going to yield 80% of our results. And so we track that. And the software will track that for us. Then once we get the sale, we have to create a promissory note, a purchase agreement, a land sale contract. It used to take 20 minutes of paperwork back in the day. Now we just press a button. It auto-populates their information, and it then sends it to the new owner of that property to go ahead and digitally sign their contracts. And then it goes to the next piece of software called GeekPay.io. Now that's a set it and forget it payment system. And that's the next process. So they'll put their down payment

using GeekPay. And then GeekPay will take out of their checking account via ACH. So we just need their routing number and account number, their monthly payment. And then it'll handle all the calculations as far as interest. It'll automate the notifications if they're late on a payment. If the payment bounces, it'll let us know that their person's in default. They have 30 days to cure and to go ahead and resell that property after 30 days. If the buyer wants to make a prepayment, they can just log in and make a prepayment. And if they ever want to know their current balance, they can they can just log in and make a prepayment. And if they ever

want to know their current balance, they can go in and log in and do that. So the whole idea is I can always make more money. I can't get more time. These software processes and systems and automations save us so much time. How big is your team in Jamaica? So the team in Jamaica, it's pretty big because we're a big organization. I want to say we have over 20 people there. Okay. So you're a big

organization. But I would say the average, like we're one of the biggest land companies in the country. But I would say that our clients who we teach how to do this they might have four virtual assistants okay yeah and so lg pass what is that so like i understand that that's automating the offers right does that does that um tell me more about that system because i'm not is that only for this type of transaction or is that a system you could use for any type of, you know, like making offers on residential properties or tell me more about that.

You could definitely make offers on residential properties. We'd probably have to code it a little bit differently because the land market's a little bit different than the residential market. But otherwise, yeah, absolutely. You could use it for that. Is that a system that you own or a system that you use? Yeah, I mean, I eat my own dog food. So yeah, I created it. You created it.

Okay. So then is it off the shelf ready to use for residential? Or is that something you'd have to tweak it to make that work? You know, I, I don't know because I don't work in that market. So someone from residential would have to go in there and say, Oh, it's missing this or it's missing that, or this is perfect. Okay. I really wouldn't go. Okay. Good to know. And then, all right. So you use these systems to automate it.

You use the virtual assistants to automate it. What do you have to do besides get on and have conversations with me? So my job as CEO is essentially be innovative. How can we do this better and be supportive? What resources do you need? And also, I'm in charge of the numbers. So I want to look at the numbers each week and have meetings and see where can we improve? Are we having any people issues?

Are we having any software issues? And just stay connected to the business as well. What's the biggest learning opportunity you've had in land investment? Like what? So this all seems pretty straightforward, pretty seamless. Where have you screwed up? So, you know, basically, you know, entrepreneurs, we screw up every day. Yeah. I mean, yeah, I mean, so it's, it's two, it's 2 51 PM Eastern time right now.

You want my list? Yeah. Yeah. So what am I screwing up? I mean, so on a daily basis, I screw up something, but I would say that like the big screw ups from the very beginning was number one, not, not realizing that I created a job for myself. So in the beginning I was doing everything myself and this is for years and years because to me, this was just, I could make my own hours. Like this was better than my investment banking job. And it wasn't until I had a mentor who is kind of bragging to him about my so-called business. He's like, Mark, don't insult me. It's like, don't,

don't call yourself an entrepreneur. Like, what are you talking about? It's like an entrepreneur big, build something bigger than themselves. Like what happens if you die? Where's the money coming from for your family? Like, Oh, he's like, you need to have this in place and this in place and this in place. And so I did it all kicking and screaming because, Oh, I thought no, you need to have this in place and this in place and this in place. And so I did it all kicking and screaming because, oh, I thought no one's going to care as much as me. Sure. And I was completely wrong about that.

So that was my first big mistake was thinking that. I had a business when I really had a job. OK, so hold on one second. So you had a mentor, he sort of punched you in the teeth and you're like, oh, okay, I need to, or I don't really have something that's going to sustain itself without me. So how long ago was that, that you had that realization? That was 2007. Okay. And let me, today, would you say you have something that would exist without you? Oh,

absolutely. I can die in peace now. So we have playbooks. We have managed them in notion.io. And so everything that I do, I record and then we get transcribed and we have a technical writer come in or actually now that was back in the old days. Now we have chat GPT create our playbook and then we have a team member run the

playbook and then edit it from there. So everyone who's in charge of their part of the business, they're in charge of their playbook. And they have to update that on a regular basis so that anyone can quit or die and the business continues to run without them. So how long did it take you from the conversation you had in 2007 with your mentor until you could say, yeah, this could work without me. Like how long of a cycle was that? Well, I think it's always iterative cycle. So I would say that the time where I was like, okay, I can sleep well at night, it's probably five years.

Okay. Yeah. All right. So five years from the point of recognizing. Now, I'm assuming that today, if you were in that same position, you could do it probably three years. Is that about right? I could probably do it in a year now because I know. Yeah, because you know what the hell.

Yeah, but I didn't know what I didn't know. And it was just struggling. And yeah, I think the reason why I'm bringing those timelines out is because what I've noticed is that you're anywhere from where you are to where you want to be, you're about five years away, no matter what. However, the second time around, I find that it's going to be one to three years because now you have the knowledge, right? You could shortcut it for sure, right? Like if you already went through all that time and that evolution, which goes back into the importance of getting a mentor, right? Because you mentioned that your mentor, right. And so if, so that my mentor was an entrepreneur, he was in the land business. I had no land entrepreneur, land mentor, which I, you know, so that's why I'm doing it now. So I'm saving people five years of their lives.

You already know 87% of all real estate agents fail in this business. And you also know it doesn't have to be that way. If you're a real estate agent and you're looking for consistent and predictable income, I invite for you to get your free copy of real Estate Evolution, the 10-step guide to CPI, consistent and predictable income for real estate agents. And you can do so when you visit www.therealestateevolution.com. I'll share with you your book that I authored to show you the way. Thanks. So I heard you say, Mark, that your mentor was a mentor, was an entrepreneur, but not in the land business.

Not in the land business. So he didn't know the land business at all. So I had to really figure out how to do it for the land business. And he was just sort of pushing me and keeping me accountable. But yeah, if I had a land mentor, I could have really shortcut. how to do it for the land business. And he was just sort of pushing me and keeping me accountable. But yeah, if I had a land mentor, I could have really shortcut. Right off the bat.

Okay. All right. And besides not building initially to last without you, what other mistakes did you make? So the other mistake was just not knowing what I really wanted. Like what was the whole purpose of all this? So in the beginning, I just wanted to make a lot of money and didn't realize there's time, there's money, and there's energy. So I was really just looking for money and I

wasn't realizing, okay, wait, how do I maximize my time and how do I maximize my energy? Like, I should only be doing what I love to do in life. Like life is short. Wasn't really a good use of my time to be doing $3 an hour tasks. And I didn't realize that. So I would say that my why now is figuring out, okay, I just want the antidote to financial insecurity. I want to know I can get sick, I can die, the market can collapse, and I still have this cash flow coming in every single month. So I have no interest in appreciation. I have no interest in cash flips because, I mean, cash is great, but then I got to pay taxes and I got to go do it again.

So I just want to create a machine and a system that just keeps giving me passes. It gives you a paycheck. It gives you a paycheck. So I don't want to create a machine and a system that just keeps giving me passes. Your paycheck. Yeah. Cause your paycheck. So I don't want to have any broke months. So if I was somebody interested in learning more about that, how could you help me?

So I would, I would say, you know, you could go to my website, the land geek.com. You could start there. You could listen to the podcast, the art of passive income. And for your start there. You could listen to the podcast, The Art of Passive Income.

And for your listeners, I wrote a book called Dirt Rich, which kind of talks more in depth about the process that we talked about in the beginning. And they can get that for free. They just have to pay for the shipping. Got it. And we'll put a link into the show notes there. So landgeek.comcom if i was to go there what would i find so you would find basically all the information of what we were discussing and how to learn more yeah okay fantastic if you were to say that you would change anything about your journey what would that be i would say i would have started meditating earlier okay because i could have saved myself a lot of

suffering in the process i think you're gonna be a little crazy to be an entrepreneur you really do. I think so. And so to deal with all that uncertainty, today, I'll ask people at dinner, I'll ask you, complete this question. What's the most important thing in life? Love. Or the most important thing in life is? Like, what is it? Yeah. Love. Love. Okay. Love. People say love. People say love. Yeah. Love. Love. Okay. Love. People say love. People say love. People say family.

People say God. People say health. And for me, it's serenity because love can make you crazy. Your family can make you crazy. If things don't go your way, you can blame God, right? If your health starts to deteriorate, which is going to be inevitable at some point, you're going to suffer. But to have a calm mind in every moment and enjoy every moment, I think is the most important thing. And then that allows you to enjoy your loving relationships,

to have that spirituality, to focus on your health in ways that you can just not be so attached to the results of all of it. So be committed, but not attached. Be committed, but not attached. Be like a duck, right? So you're peaceful on the surface, but you're striving, you're paddling furiously below. So you would have gotten more in tune with your serenity. A method that you get in tune with your serenity includes meditation. Are there other methods that you use to be able to get at peace with your serenity? Yeah, right now I do breath work every morning. So that starts, so I start with breath work

and that really helps me kind of calm down and then go into my meditation. And then three, four times a week, I go to this place called Optimize here in Arizona, which is infrared sauna and a cold plunge. And so those cold plunges I really find are just fantastic for staying calm and in the midst of chaos. Yeah, I find they're fantastic after the fact. Yeah, they're fantastic after the fact.

But you know, yeah, there's something to be said about doing something hard every day. The breath work. Describe the breath work for us, if you could, please. Sure. So I subscribed to this app called The Source. It's all these breath work experts. There's all different modalities of breath work. So it depends on what you're looking to do.

Do you want to be more calm? Do you want more energy? Do you want to be more calm do you want more energy do you want some type of big insight and so for me i want to do all three essentially uh so i kind of you know i'll get into you know one instructor then i'll get tired of it then i'll go to another instructor and and do all that so i i start off with Soma breathwork, which was more about, you know, sort of a, it's kind of like a psychedelic type of experience of 20 minutes. And you could have like these big insights. And then I would do more of like a Wim Hof type energy breathwork and get more alkaline. and you could feel your fingers and your toes

tingling and that was a great way to to start the day and then when i'm stressed out maybe you know i've got my mind racing before bed uh to do so you know more of a calming sort of box breathing type of exercise and and kind of help me just relax can you describe can you describe one of those to us like sure walk me walk me through one of those sure so uh let's say we want to just increase our energy let's go let's go for what come on let's go for the psychedelics let's have fun with this all right so the psychedelics is soma breath work uh i'll tell you the guy's name it's his name i love this guy uh it's mirage nike okay mirage is n-i-r-a-j nike is n-a-i-k and okay you'll do a few rounds but basically it'll be it'll be two in two out to music so you're going to breathe in through your nose and then you're

going to breathe out through your mouth two and two and then you'll take a big breath in and you'll hold it and you'll you'll kind of squeeze your pelvic muscle and you'll certainly see like these lights you know say like it's really interesting when your eyes are closed it's it's really kind of a psychedelic experience and when you're done you feel really good you feel really calm and uh you could have like one of these big insights while you're going through it it's amazing man all right well i didn't expect for the conversation to go to uh raj naik and um psychedelics but i'm grateful that we did that's freaking awesome i'm i'm somewhat familiar with uh you say win winhoff that's uh that's guy with the cold

yeah he's he's a cold plunge guy but like really you know getting your body more alkaline it's fantastic i remember i was in colorado and i was going skiing and i was feeling altitude sickness and i remember he's like oh, you can increase your oxygen by breathing. So instead of buying one of those $20 oxygen canisters, I did the Wim Hof breathing. I'm telling you, my headache went away. The blood, the bloodshot eyes went away. It worked. Who needs, who needs alcohol? So you just, just do some breathing work, right? Yeah. You just do some breath work. Yeah.

Awesome. Mark, I appreciate your time today. Landgeek.com is the website. Go check it out. And Mark, thank you for your time today. Thanks for walking us through the automated offers and the simple file, the lgpass.com and the different systems that, that you talked about today. So thank you again, Mark. Everybody have the best day of your life. Be grateful.

Make good choices. Go help somebody and do a little digging and add some breath work. That's your daily mission if you choose to accept it. Thanks so much for listening to the No Broke Months podcast today. Until the next show, I invite for you to be grateful, make good choices, help someone, have the best day of your life, and go find a listing. Hey, I just had the best 45 minutes interviewing Dan Rochon. He's from Virginia, right outside the DC area. He's been in a stable market for a long time. Within 18 months, he created so much success where he was actually able to buy the brokerage

as a real estate agent. Dan is a leader of vision, focus, and passion. His enthusiasm is truly infectious. He just came out with a book for real estate agents to kind of help people pivot. We went through and talked about how to succeed in adversity, some of his big traits out there.