WS1695 6,000+ Land Investment Deals | Mark Podolsky

Ever wondered how to turn a small investment into massive returns? Our guest Mark Podolsky did just that, transitioning from a miserable life as an investment banker to a successful entrepreneur in the world of land flipping. In this eye-opening episode, Mark shares his journey to achieving success in this niche industry, completing over 6,000 land deals, and teaching others how to do the same.

Discover the ins and outs of raw land investing as Mark explains his unique model for creating cash flow from land investments. Learn how to assess property value, send offers, and advertise to potential buyers with the help of Mark's LG Pass software, which automates the land investing process. If you're curious about land flipping, this episode is packed with valuable insights you won't want to miss.

But it doesn't stop there – we also dive into the essentials of building and scaling a land flipping business. From hiring virtual assistants and key team members to implementing automation software, Mark shares his secrets for achieving exponential growth in this exciting industry. Plus, we discuss the potential of AI and chatbot technology to revolutionize land flipping. Tune in for this fascinating conversation that could inspire you to think outside the box and scale your own business to new heights!

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Transcript

 WS1695 6,000+ Land Investment Deals | Mark Podolsky 

Mark Podolsky: [00:00:00] In this niche, it's you make your money on the buy. I mean, we, in real estate, we make our money on the buy and because the transactions are very small, that, and we're such an inefficient model. , we're averaging 300 to a thousand percent returns on investment. The only way to really fail in this business is to quit.

Whitney Sewell: This is your daily real estate syndication show. I'm your host, Whitney Se. As entrepreneurs, we're always looking for ways to scale, to grow and to like, to build a bigger business, right? How can we do things? I really gain back time, right? Or make sure we're focused on the highest producing activities or, that's four hour time.

It's always a fight for me, which you hear me talk about on the show often. But today our guest, he has scaled and has done it well. He is in a little different business model, but he's syndicating. Land and he's flipping land and at a very big scale, he's completed, I think he said, uh, over 6,000 land deals or transactions.

His name is Mark Podolski, managing member and coaching education platform at Land, the Land Geek managing director at Frontier Properties, and founder@geekplay.io. He's a host of the Art of Passive Income, author of Dirt Rich which he has another book coming out, which you'll hear him mention as well.

And but he is he's made a massive business out of flipping land and created a process where most people could go and figure it out, it seems. And so it is a great conversation around building and scaling his business. But that could be applied to our business. To my business. We've done some of these.

Same exact things in, LifeBridge Capital and the podcasting stuff, podcasting production team that we have that's producing, for lots of people now as well. There's so many things here that can go across any business model as an entrepreneur nearly. But you're gonna learn a lot from Mark today.

I love talking about building and scaling businesses. It's something that excites me. I've read tons of books [00:02:00] on it. And it's like I read something, I'm trying to implement something, right? I read something, I'm trying to implement something. Or our guest today has done just that. And not only that, he, he's writing books about it as well.

We've had him on the show before and I'm looking forward to this conversation. Also he is an expert in this space. And mark, welcome 

Mark Podolsky: back Whitney. Thank you so much for having me back. I 

Whitney Sewell: appreciate it. Honored to ha just to have a conversation with you again. And, your specialty Mark, has been the land deals, right?

The land flipping, and now also teaching people to do that successfully. And for our listeners who aren't maybe familiar with you or didn't hear the other show, maybe give us a. High level what that is. Maybe give us a little background first, and then I wanna talk about what land flipping is, uh, and then how you've scaled that.

And we're gonna dive into how, you've really scaled it. But okay. First, who's 

Mark Podolsky: Mark? Yeah, so we'll talk about the sexiest real estate niche ever land, but so who's Mark? So if we rewind the tape in 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 Whitney, I think you, you remember this? I hated it. And it got so bad for me that I wouldn't get the Sunday blues anticipating Monday coming around. I'd get the Friday blues, anticipating the weekend going by really fast and have you back at work on Monday. So I firm hires this guy and he's telling me that as a side hustle, he's buying up.

Raw land at tax deed auctions. He's flipping them online and he's making a 300% return on his investment. And I'm looking at companies all day long and a great company has like 15% EBITDA margins of free cash flow. Average companies, 10%. 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 do exactly what he tells me to do by 10 half acre parcels, an average price of $300 each. I flip them online and they all [00:04:00] sell for an average price of $1,200 each. It worked 300%. So I took all that money and went to another auction, and this is in Arizona where I live, and again, it's 2000.

There's no one in the room. I'm buying up lots in acre or nothing. I sell all that land. I made over $90,000 cash. So I go to my wife, I said, honey, and she's pregnant. I'm gonna quit my job. Become a full-time land investor and she says, absolutely not. So I said, okay. Okay. So it took me about 18 months for the land investing income to exceed the investment banking income, and then I quit.

I've been doing it full-time ever since. I've done over 6,000 transactions and growing, and really the way that I do it now is I wanna make a cash flow. And so, Whitney, if you want, I can just walk you through that model really quickly. 

Whitney Sewell: Yeah, I think that would be helpful for, yeah, for all of us listeners included just to understand a little more in case they haven't heard of you before.

Mark Podolsky: Sure. So Whitney, where, where do you live? I'm in Virginia. You're in Virginia, okay, so I'm gonna assume that you own 10 acres of raw land in Colorado and you owe $200 of 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, properties in Colorado, and number two, you're distressed financially in some weird way cuz we don't pay for things like our property taxes.

We don't value them in the same way. As a result, the county treasurer keeps sending you notices saying, Whitney, if you don't pay your property taxes, you're gonna lose that property to a tax deed or a tax lien investor. So all I'm gonna do is look at the comparable sales on your parcel for the last 12 to 18 months, I'm gonna take the lowest comparable sale.

Let's say it's $10,000 and it would divide by four, and that's gonna get me what Warren Buffet would call a 300% margin of safety. So I sent you an offer for $2,500. Now you accepted why, cuz for you, $2,500 is better than potentially nothing. Now in reality, three to 5% of people will accept my quote unquote top [00:06:00] dollar offer.

But now that you've accepted it, I'm gonna go through due diligence or in-depth research. Confirm you still own the property. Confirm back taxes only $200. Make sure there's been no breaks in the chain of title, no liens or encumbrances. This whole big property checklist, I'm gonna outsource it to my team in Jamaica.

Cost about 11 bucks, but if it was $5,000 or more. I would just close traditionally through a title company, but this is a little deal. $2,500. I'll use my team. They're connected to an American title company and we'll assume that everything checks out. So I send you a check for $2,300. The treasure, $200. I own it free and clear.

And now I'm gonna make it cash flow like a rental home. So I have a built in best buyer. I'm a sell in 30 days or less. So Whitney, do you remember who the, the best buyer is? Who's that? 

Whitney Sewell: The neighbors. The neighbors. Oh my 

Mark Podolsky: goodness. Yeah. So I'm gonna send out neighbor letters saying, Hey, here's your opportunity to protect your privacy, protect your views, know your neighbor.

So oftentimes the neighbors will buy it. Now if they pass, I'll go to my buyer's list, they pass. I'll go to website, you may have heard of, it's called Craigslist, 15th most trafficked website in the United States. I go to one, I know you've heard of called Meta or Facebook, the buy-sell groups in the marketplace.

And then I go to the Lands Land motor.com, lands of america.com, land farm.com, land flip.com, land help.com. These are platforms where people buy and sell raw land, but the secret is in the pricing. I'm gonna make it irresistible. So all I'm gonna ask for is a $2,500 down payment. So I'm gonna get my money out on the down payment, and then I'm making a car payment, let's say 2 97 a month at 90% interest in the next 84 months.

So I have this one time sale, and then I get 2 97 a month. For the next 84 months, no renters, no rehabs, no renovations, no rodents and cause I'm not dealing with the tenant, I'm exempt from Dodd-Frank respa and the Safe Act. All this owner's real estate legislation. So it's a simple game. Can we create enough [00:08:00] land notes where our passive income exceeds our fixed expenses?

And now we're working cuz we want to. Not because we have to. , 

Whitney Sewell: well, how did you find me? You're in Arizona and I'm in Virginia, 

Mark Podolsky: so I go to your county and I get it's public information and I a list of the real property owners.

And then I'm a scrub that list, let's say by use code, let's say by VL for vacant land. And now I just have all the owners that own property. In that county. And then from there, I'm gonna upload that list to my software, which is called LG Pass. The lanky proprietary automated software system, right?

Shameless plug. And then it's gonna automate sending out offers and then take people step by step through that entire process there. But it's important. I mean, whether you use an LG Pass, you wanna use software to automate this. So you can scale. Yeah. Which is one of the things I, I wanna talk about in Dirt Ridge two, how to scale your land in business without skipping a beat.

And, and I think the software pieces are a really important piece of it. No 

Whitney Sewell: doubt about it. Uh, yeah, I, I love building scaling, thinking through how to do that. It sounds like you've used, virtual as systems and employing people, in other countries to do this just like we've done in some different ways.

But you, you mentioned even right then you said I think your team was in Jamaica, cost $11 to do due diligence. Yeah, that's right. Wow. That's impressive. I want to dive in though to the building and scaling exactly what we're talking about right here. It's like, so you, you figured out the process to buy this piece of land or really to find it right at a, and, and to be able to buy it, acquire it at, at a great deal, but then cheap enough that you can still sell it for a great deal so you can move it fast, right.

And then, But not only you're, you're not sitting there, you and you and your wife. You're not sitting there every night Right. Doing all this yourself. That wouldn't be very scalable. And, and maybe you, you were doing that early on [00:10:00] but how, let's talk about the building, scaling, how you've grown, how you've moved past that and doing this at a very big scale now.

Yeah. 

Mark Podolsky: So I think it, it first starts with what you're talking about with the people and the virtual assistants, and I think. In, in, in the land business, there's a a few key people that you wanna have in place. The first key person is that intake manager, so the intake manager. So when you set out an offer, so in, in our scenario, Whitney, when I send you out an offer, well, you might receive that offer, you might have questions about it, you might be confused about it.

You might wanna call and yell at me. You might wanna send it back and accept it, but, I don't make any money talking to the sellers. So the intake manager will handle that role and they will work with you, the seller, on that parcel and explain the offer, explain the process of how we're going to go through due diligence and close with you as a seller.

So that's a really key piece right there, is that intake part. Now, once we've gone through intake, And we own the property, the intake manager might be the one to actually close it. Logistically, we might use software like simplify.com where we can digitally close it, or it might be our acquisition manager.

So our acquisition manager might then hand that, hand it off from that, from the intake manager. Now that they're gonna own that piece of the process and they're gonna bring it to the marketing team. So we're gonna have a marketing virtual assistance. Who we've created templates, and now with chat G V T and ai, it's never been easier.

We've got these, you know, the, the best intern in the world for marketing, but essentially we'll create these a marketing process for the inexpensive virtual assistance to then start going to our marketing channels and making sure that we're, [00:12:00] we're getting market penetration and that we're ubiquitous, and that this, this advertisement is on all our marketing channels.

The most important one being our buyer's list, because this, these are people that have already raised their hand and said, oh yeah, we're interested in buying land. And then from there, in that process, as we start talking to potential buyers of our property what? We're gonna move into sales. And so we have our sales team who are commission only.

So they only eat what they kill. We wanna keep our overhead lean and mean, and now they are closing with potential buyers. And then it's gonna go back to the acquisition manager to then make sure that it's moving along in our software to make sure that we've automated the piece of the promissory note, the purchase sale agreement, the land contract, and the software that does all that about it.

One second. It used to take about 20 minutes to do all this paperwork. And then we wanna set that up on our final piece of software, which is called Geek pay.io. It's a set forget it payment system. So we wanna get the ACH H information from the buyer so that they can make their monthly payments on an automated basis.

If they get, if they're late, they get notifications. If they wanna make it early payment, they can log in and do so. But once you start scaling and you have hundreds of notes, You wanna have a softer program that's going to keep track of each and every one of your borrowers. Love that. The 

Whitney Sewell: key people, it doesn't sound like a big team though.

It's 

Mark Podolsky: it's not that big actually. It, it might be five key people. It's, yeah, I mean, it's as now at my scale, it's gotten way bigger. But as you first start scaling, That might be your team and, you know, 

Whitney Sewell: speak to training these people or maybe, the previous level of skills that these people [00:14:00] needed.

I mean, intake manager, I would imagine that could be a delicate conversation, right? Talking to that individual or making the deal or, training them versus training somebody to do the acquisitions or sales team. What, what does that look like? Training and, and skills ex the expectation of their skill level before they do this.

Yeah. 

Mark Podolsky: Whitney's such a good question. So the first thing we wanna do is, for example, I wanna do it myself. And I might record myself maybe via Loom or Zoom and watch the steps that I actually do and maybe record myself wi with a permission, of course with a. Potential, uh, seller. And then what I'm gonna do is take what I've done with that seller.

I'm gonna transcribe it, and then with the transcription, and this is actually what I'm we're doing now, is we're prompting chat, G P T to create a standard operating procedure and become our technical writer and write out step by step each part of that process. And so now we have. A very simple, tight process that we can then give.

To the person, and we're gonna look for somebody who has good verbal skills, good communication skills, and they're going to be compensated for negotiating skills. So we might send them a book like Never Split the Difference by Chris Foss on negotiating or in our s O P. We might have certain negotiating type of tactics where they are.

Motivated to get us the best price possible during due diligence, where if we do find a flaw in something with the property, yeah, I know we offered you $2,500, but unfortunately, based on this and that we're gonna have to do it at $2,200. And then for every, let's say a hundred dollars, they save us.

They're getting an extra bonus hour for their, [00:16:00] their hourly compensation. So we're all aligned on getting the best price. And so what we might do in that situation is we'll hire three people, we'll test them, and then we'll see who's putting in emotional labor, who's thinking outside the box, and we'll keep that one and go from there.

And then we'll refine our process as we go along as well. And so, if. An 11 year old or a 10 year old can understand that process really well. We know we have a good process. 

Whitney Sewell: You mentioned Jamaica, is that is there a platform you're going through to find candidates there specifically, or, or what platform are you using to find your virtual assistance?

So virtual 

Mark Podolsky: assistance are typically, All over the world, you could use like an upwork.com or a fiver.com. But because we teach people how to do what we do, we have our coaching clients who are also entrepreneurial, they'll start businesses. And so two of them, they're best friends. They had another business and they were using Jamaican virtual assistants and they thought, oh, why don't we teach them the land business?

And so they did. And so they trained their virtual assistants and they created. A company called Land VA for you.com based in Jamaica. They already understand the land business. They already have the intake managers, the marketing people even sometimes sales assistants to help people grow and scale their land business.

Interesting. 

Whitney Sewell: Yeah, that, that's wild. I wondered about if you were using a specific platform. I, I should have known somebody just created one just for this. All right. 

Mark Podolsky: Absolutely. It there's another one in the Philippines, I think it's, it's called Land masters.us. So there's, it's got a little mini economy of virtual as systems that understand this niche.

Whitney Sewell: Yeah. Well, you talked about now these people are there any other, are are the key people that we have in place, are there other automations that I know , you named a few, but any others that we should know about or somebody that's wanting to scale this [00:18:00] kind of business? 

Mark Podolsky: Yeah, so for us, the two big automated pieces are gonna be lg pass.com and geek paid.io.

So lg pass.com handles the front end of the business. Geek paid.io handles the backend of the business. As far as other softwares that we see our clients using that we like as well, there's a company called Follow up boss.com, which is a really great way. To keep following up with your leads and closing those leads and looking at your metrics.

For example, I know if I get 50 Facebook leads on one ad, that should convert to a sale, and if I get 70 leads and then it converts to a sale, I know I've got a sales issue. If I've got 30 leads and. I know I've got a marketing issue, there's something that needs to ha change in that marketing. Maybe it's the headline, maybe it's the pricing.

So we can isolate certain variables, knowing our metrics and follow up boss can, can help with that as well. 

Whitney Sewell: And how are you, how do you track your metrics for all those different platforms and ads? So 

Mark Podolsky: the team is just sort of trained to, to keep track of, of that and. When we get a lead, we're putting that lead into our, our C R M.

So we might use something like an active campaign to put that in, and so we'll know, okay, we got an email that's a strong lead. When anybody asks a question, like, okay, this is a prospect, but until we get their email, if they're not really a lead, and then we can throw that into our crm, we say, oh, we've got 50 of these.

This property should be selling now. And, and know that now we have other people who are really good salespeople and maybe they only need 30 per ad, but our typical standard is gonna be about 50 on a social media platform, on something where, uh, like a land moto.com, it might be three to five leads. Those are much [00:20:00] stronger leads.

These are people that are actively looking for land. No, I 

Whitney Sewell: love that. The metrics that detailed, right? It's, yeah. That's, that's incredible. Most do not it seems but any other who's, we, we were talking about before we started recording, you know who not how, right? And I, I'm completely behind.

I got the book right. Up there. 

Mark Podolsky: Yeah. I've got, yeah, I've got right 

Whitney Sewell: here as well. And I, yeah, I followed some of Dan Sullivan's stuff and it's yeah, it's eye-opening right when you can start to think that way. And, and we're doing that within LightBridge Capital as well. It's like Sam and I'm a business partner.

We were doing everything at first. Right now. We got a whole team of people that are doing all those things that we were doing, but. The thing is they can do it so much better than we, we could do it. Right? Yeah. They're more skilled but they're focused on that one thing too versus lots of things. And so it's just being able to scale and think that way. But is there any other who's that maybe have helped you to be able to scale that way? Well, I think 

Mark Podolsky: a, a big, who is just a mentor that has already done it. And, and can sort of, they're not emotionally attached to my business and they can scale out.

And so when I'm stuck, I can go to my mentor and say, Hey, this is what we're struggling at. Oh, okay. Well, have you thought of that? Have you thought of this? And can really help identify certain who's, but I'd say that the key, who's are really going to be in the beginning, the intake manager, The due diligence team, the marketing team, the sales assistant, and then the acquisition manager to manage those, that team, and then close the sales.

And on the other end of it, the county research part of it, because you had could have, you could have the best team ever, but if you don't get your county research right in the beginning, you don't pick the right market. That whole model goes off the rails. 

Whitney Sewell: When do, when do you see people that are doing this start to hire these people versus doing it themselves?

Or is it something they need, from the very beginning? 

Mark Podolsky: Well, [00:22:00] I think that it's going to depend on how much capital you're starting with, how much time you personally have as well. So a lot of people that start in this niche, they do it as a side hustle. And so I think there's a very fine line between delegating and abdicating.

And because if you're abdicating, you don't have enough depth of knowledge to even train the, the virtual assistant. And so even if you use a company like Land VA for you that are already pre-trained, you still don't even know your metrics and you still don't know how much time it should take. You could be easily taken advantage of if you personally haven't gotten into it enough.

Now, there are certain aspects of the business that, okay, yeah. You don't need to know v lookup if you're converting a county list to from, CSV or Excel, right? So there's certain things that certainly you don't need to do. You don't have to know how to build a website or un understand that piece of it.

But there are certain fundamental pieces you should know well enough before you delegate it to someone else. And you should be prepared. Mentally to get to that next level. You, you understand this is going to be an investment and that to make that investment and go to that next level it's going to be bumpy along the way.

Whitney Sewell: Yeah, that's it's, there's gonna be some bumps almost in any entrepreneurial endeavor, right? Yeah. Real estate's no different. Well, but one thing I wanted to ask you, it seems, I've heard, I, I've heard more about land flipping right? Over the last maybe year, maybe two years, but specific, more and more, right?

Uh, do you feel like there's like so many people getting into the space that maybe five years from now, 10 years from now, or even sooner, that it's, it's gonna be too populated? Or how do you feel 

Mark Podolsky: about that? Yeah, it's such a good question because I always thought that [00:24:00] this would always be sort of, it's like the uns sexiest real estate niche, right?

If you go to a Rio meeting, real Estate Investment Association meeting, there's a hundred people in that room. 99 of them are gonna be wholesalers, flippers, and landlords. You and I would be the only land guy in there. So I think that it's interesting that it is becoming more popular, but at the end of the day, It is a cottage industry, so a million people could be in this niche.

They'll all run outta money before they run outta deal flow. So because there's no private equity groups, there's no hedge funds, there's no real big money. Yeah, I, I'm not concerned at all. And I do think in a weird way, there is no competition in the sense that if you get five offers on your property, it's just validating the market.

You're like, oh, okay. If if I'm the only one doing it, there might be something wrong. 

Whitney Sewell: Yeah, no, that's a good point. That, that's a many good points. You know what, I guess what have been some of the, um, the ways you've seen people fail in this? What, what did they not do or what did they do that, were they the big mistake they made that maybe they didn't see coming?

Mark Podolsky: Well, I think. In this niche, it's you make your money on the buy. I mean, we, in real estate, we make our money on the buy and because the, the transactions are very small, that, and we're such an inefficient model. I mean, we're averaging 300 to a thousand percent returns on investment. The only way to really fail in this business is to quit.

And so what we see happen where people fail is they just don't have the grit. And it's really difficult if you're really good at your job or at, as an adult, to have that beginner's mind and just embrace the suck. We see a lot of people with very low frustration tolerance. Like I have low frustration tolerance.

If I go on the golf course, [00:26:00] I'll have a fit if I, if I don't hit well right now, I'm not going out there every day and practicing. And yet for some reason, in my mind, I think I should be a good golfer. Well, I'll never be a good golfer if I don't consistently show up every day and practice. And so what we see is inconsistency and a lack of grit.

Those people fail. 

Whitney Sewell: How does the, just the current economy and interest rates affect this business? 

Mark Podolsky: Yeah, I mean, we're interest rate and economically a little bit agnostic because we're paying cash for the properties. So what we'll see in any market cycle is. For example, in 2008 in the Great Recession, it was really easy to buy as people needed money, but it was much more challenging to sell and get your pricing right.

As we go from say 2011 to 2018, for example, we had nice equilibrium, easy to buy, easy to sell. As this market starts to heat up and we have all this money going to. The economy in 2020 with stimulus checks. Super tough to buy, but really easy to sell, right? Properties flying off the shelves. Today we're seeing a little more equilibrium than we did before, but we're still seeing a, it's getting a little more challenging now to sell than in months past, so, I think for our niche, the biggest indicator that's going to be cha like, okay, we're going, a challenging market is high unemployment, cuz with high unemployment, it's gonna be very difficult for people to not only keep paying their notes, but also make acquisitions in in the niche.

That being said, at the right price, everything sells. But you'll get, you get spoiled and you're like, oh, this should sell for this. And all of a sudden you're like, wait. It's not selling. [00:28:00] And so that flexibility, that adaptability to markets is super important. 

Whitney Sewell: What's the, the next way that you're gonna scale?

Mark Podolsky: So the next way I'm gonna sail scale. I think it's just going to be growing what we're doing and gets getting more people as we take on more capital. And with more people, we have them more and more marketing channels and just getting smarter about how we do things and becoming more cutting edge. We're very bullish on AI and chat, G p T and those types of technologies.

I think technology's making our, our jobs so much easier. There's drone technology, mapping technology, uh, and so it's the best time ever to be an entrepreneur. 

Whitney Sewell: What's a unique way you're using ai? 

Mark Podolsky: So I think for marketing for sure we can use Adobe Photoshop now with AI and we can take a photo and just generate a photo of raw land and just as long as we're honest about it and say, this is not the actual land.

But indicative of what it looks like out there. There's certain things we can do with that, with imagery but I think the, for the majority of what we're really doing, we're testing images right now. We're not really actually doing a whole lot with it, but we're testing it and seeing what we can do.

But I'd say it's marketing, it's headlines, it's copy, gets calls to action. It's getting the tone right, and so the more detail you give the ai, the better your output. And you also have to kind of go into it like they're an intern. I'm not shipping anything that Jet G, I'm not copying and pasting anything chat G P T is giving us.

It's just not ready to ship, but it's a really good start and can make us more efficient and save us time, especially with our team. 

Whitney Sewell: No, I've been messing with it some lately as well for some different things and [00:30:00] it's, it's very interesting. I agree completely. It's like, man, it can give me, give you something to start with.

Uh, speed the process up of something you're trying to create. Right. Or copy you're trying to create. But it is still. It's up to this point. It's always needed some tweaking, right? Yeah, to a big degree. But what about in a, a downturn, , we briefly hit this just a minute ago, but like, what happens, you're stuck with properties or, what's worst case then?

Is if you can't sell, or maybe how long have you had to hold properties? Typically some of that. 

Mark Podolsky: Yeah, so we've had to hold property. I mean, when we're holding property for 90, 120 days, that's a long time for us to hold property. So at that point, usually our metric is if it hasn't sold in 30 days, something has to change.

And we have to then start looking at the variables. Is it our headline? Are we not getting enough leads? Is it some, is it our pricing? Is it not irresistibly priced? Are we not? Having a clear enough call to action where people know the next step of what to do, so something needs a change in that marketing.

For us to start generating more leads and doing that. Sometimes we have to raise the price. Sometimes people like, oh, there must be something wrong with it if this is, is this is expensive. Sometimes we need to lower the down payment. Sometimes we need to raise the monthly payment. Sometimes we need to raise the down payment and lower the monthly payment, so we have to isolate certain variables and see what, what's resonating with the market.

Whitney Sewell: It's interesting. You may need to raise the price, right? Yeah, yeah. The psychology behind it. Uh, and so I, what are the typical size of the deals? Are you raising money as well, for these deals, or have investors? Is it mostly your own capital? Yeah, I 

Mark Podolsky: For the longest time it was my own capital.

Now we've gotten to a point where we use other people's money. I talk about this in, when you scale, you wanna use three levers. So you wanna use other people's time, which is gonna be virtual [00:32:00] assistance. You wanna use software and automation, and then you wanna use other people's money. And so that's truly the way to, to scale.

And so, we do have, programs for accredit investors to, to do 

Whitney Sewell: that. Nice. And, and the size of the deals that you all are typically doing or like somebody getting started versus where you're at now? Yeah, I 

Mark Podolsky: , some of getting started, the, the average size might be 2,500 to $10,000. Uh, our size is probably gonna be a little bit more than that.

I mean, we just did a, a 1600 acre deal. We're subdividing it, putting the roads and the power, so that's, millions of dollars. But that's, that's not a typical 

Whitney Sewell: deal. Yeah, no, that's awesome that you can see scaling to that you're even syndicated this or having investors coming in. What about what it's the biggest challenge in your business right now?

Mark Podolsky: I think the biggest challenge right now for us is just creating enough leads on a daily basis where, we wanna be doing a dealer two a day and in, in getting that really fine tuned. And, and have that marketing machine just more consistent , and growing that way. And because we have, over 800 properties right now that in inventory we just, we need to just sell 'em faster.

800, 

Whitney Sewell: that's a lot. Yeah. Just to hit a few final questions, mark. You mentioned some metrics earlier and it's obviously something, you all are big on and, and which is great. What would you say is some of the, a couple of the most important metrics that you track?

I think the 

Mark Podolsky: most important metric is going to be time on market number one, and then also just the marketing piece of it. How many leads. To a sale. Number two are really important metrics. I think the yield is a super important metric. What's the yield on the property? [00:34:00] And we do that before what we, on our buy, we kind of figure out, okay, does this even meet our yield requirements?

We typically won't do a deal unless we get a minimum 72% yield, which means we're do, we're doubling our money every year. So I think those three are really important for us to stay fiscally disciplined and then know that our marketing is effective and, just keep getting better at that. 

Whitney Sewell: What are some habits that you have, mark, that are produced, the hash return for you?

Mark Podolsky: Well, it's so funny, I, I get hazed a lot about this, but every morning I do breath work. And then, uh, I get into a very nice, peaceful state of mind after that breath work, and I meditate for at least 20 minutes. And I think it's a great way to start the day. I, I do love to exercise, but I'd say I'm not as consistent every day with exercise seven days a week as I am with the breath work and meditation.

But I do think there is something to be said about having that equanimity. Being an entrepreneur is brutal. You're gonna have good days, you're gonna have bad days. And though, to be too high, to too low I think just keeping that equanimity and realizing every moment is precious really helps me enjoy the journey much more than feeling like a, a mental pinball machine and the outside world, just hit me around.

And how do you like to give back? So I like to give back by helping people solve their time and money problems and teaching them this, this business. That's my number one way of giving back. As far as charity, I like a group called Effective Altruism. And the idea of just what's gonna get the biggest bang for your buck [00:36:00] to alleviate human suffering.

And then one of my mentors, uh, has a foundation called Ball to all.org as well. These are $10 indestructible soccer balls that he sends to kids throughout the world that are in, in impoverished nations, and they stay outta trouble. They're playing soccer and the the soccer balls are indestructible.

Whitney Sewell: Love that. Wow. Thanks for giving back in that way, mark. And, and I wanna look up the, the bulk all. I wanna learn a little more about that, but incredible. I'm just grateful for you being willing to lay out, building and scaling cuz that can apply to any, any entrepreneurial business almost.

Right? And it's the who, not how that book from Dan Sullivan, Benjamin Hardy, I highly recommend that as well. But it's obviously importance that you put a mark on, uh, tracking metrics, right? And knowing those things, uh, I think that helps you make key decisions, right? All the time, right? And, and improvements, uh, no doubt about it.

But just helping lay out what this land flipping process looks like, the team that you need, being able to scale it. And just some of the automations I think are, are key too. When when you start something like that, it can be so overwhelming. Right. Well, which, platform or which mentor even, which, team members do we need.

And website all these skills that, we think we have to have. And sometimes some of 'em we may not need and some of 'em we may need, like you talked about. Um, but so grateful to have you back on the show again. I know you have a book coming, another book coming out in the near future.

If you can, tell the listeners how they can get in touch with you and learn more about you and the book. Yeah, I 

Mark Podolsky: think the best place to start is the land geek.com, the land geek.com. And I'm sure we'll have a URL to get you the book the Dirt Ridge. Two, how to Scale Your Land Business without missing a beat.

And then, Certainly, I think, I think it's, if you go to atlantic.com/dirt rich, you can get, uh, the book for [00:38:00] free. There as well, just pay for the shipping.