Quit that job, that just over broke job by investing in real estate, by having businesses, by doing anything other than work for somebody else. And in today's show, I'm super pumped to bring on a fantastic real estate investor who invests in land, also makes passive income in cash flow. And he's going to show us how he's done it for many, many years and how you can do it as well. All right, let's start the show. What's up? What's up? Super blessed as always to have you. Here with me on the show.
I am super pumped about what's going on in the economy, what's going on in general in the real estate market because, well, you guys know I'm a real estate investor. That's how I became successfully employed, by investing in real estate. And then when you have 40 plus hours of your life back because you stopped working for somebody else, you now have 40 plus hours to build your own businesses, do and do whatever you want, like literally play with your kids, go to the gym, play golf.
But then, man, honestly, after I quit my job, I started feeling a little lazy and so I started building businesses. Now fast forward, I have the real estate Wealth Builders conference. I have master passive income. I have successfully unemployed a couple other businesses in there as well. But I also have my real estate investing and that is why I'm bringing on this expert.
Because I've never invested in land personally, but I know many investors who have and that honestly, they make a killing when they invest in land. Because if a piece of land is not developed, then the value is not skyrocketing high like a house. Well, land not being developed, you can buy it for pennies on a dollar. Some people inherit land and just want. To get rid of it because they. Have taxes, well, then you can buy it from them.
Well, I'm getting way ahead of myself because our guest is going to share with us how we can do this exact thing. And if you realize that real estate investing is by far one of the best ways for you to become financially independent because your properties work for you, then you start putting your effort towards investing in real estate. You buy one rental property, it makes you 500amonth. That's $6,000 a year without working. I mean, that goes a long way.
If, and then if you have 10 properties, that's $60,000 a year. Can you believe that? I mean, just think about that. If you bought one house a year for 10 years and each one making you $500 a month in passive income and then Every year the value goes up, rents go up. But with 10 properties making you $6,000 a year, that's $60,000 a year without working. That's exactly what you need to be doing.
And to help you get even more education and get around people and connect with experts, I created the Real Estate Wealth Builders Conference. It's my conference where I. It's literally no sales pitch. I wanted an event that I could go to and enjoy because there wasn't any. But I decided to go ahead and create my own event, the Real Estate Wealth Builders Conference. I want you to join with us. It's an annual conference. Go to rubecon.com you'll see it. Usually it's in the spring.
Every year it's going to change. But when you listen to this, I want you to realize that we're going to be doing this for you. We have so many people come to the event, come to the conference and then dramatically increase their wealth because they started investing. You need to come go to rubecon.com and get your ticket and also use a promo code podcast and I will literally give you 10% off of your pass. You need to join us. This is a life changing event that will absolutely change you.
Now let's jump into today's show where I interview a fantastic land investor. Like, I've already said that he found a way to buy land and make passive income on it as well, and also make lots and lots of money doing it. He's going to show us how we can use it to become successfully unemployed. Here is my interview with Mark Podolsky. Thank you so much for being on the show, Mark. Dustin Heiner. Thanks so much for having me. I appreciate it.
Well, I mean, so you have land geek and you talk about land investing, but also you talk about passive income, which is so, so phenomenal. And I personally being a real estate investor myself, I love the idea of land. I just haven't got into it. But you've been doing land for a while and on top of that you talk about passive income.
And I love passive income ever since I learned that you can not work for somebody else and getting active income and start getting passive income, by far, so much better. But how do you make passive income? And what's the best way to make passive income? Yeah. Okay, so let's, let's go through it, Dustin. Let's use you as a case study. So where do you live? Phoenix, Arizona. Okay, so we're neighbors. So I'm in Scottsdale, right across from Fashion Square Mall oh, yes, I know.
Exactly where you're at. Yeah. Okay, so I'm going to assume that you own five acres of raw land in Colorado and you owe, let's say, 200 in back taxes. So you're essentially advertising two really important things. Number one, you've no emotional attachment to the raw land. You're in Arizona, the properties in Colorado. And number two, you're financially distressed in some weird way because when we don't pay for things like our property taxes, we don't value it in the same way.
As a result, the county treasurer keeps sending you notices saying, dustin, if you don't pay your property taxes, you're going to lose that property to a tax deed or tax lien investor. So all I'm going to do is look at the comparable sales on your 5 acre parcel for the last 12 to 18 months and let's just take the lowest comparable sale and we'll do easy math. Let's say it's $10,000.
All I'm going to do then is divide by four and that's going to get me what Warren Buffett call a 300% margin of safety. So I'm going to send you an actual offer for $2,500. Now you accept it. Why? Because for you, $2,500 is better than nothing. In reality, 3 to 5% of people will accept my quote, unquote, top dollar offer. Now, now that you've accepted it, I have to go through due diligence or in depth research. I have to confirm you still on the property.
I have to make sure that back taxes are only $200. I want to make sure there's no breaks in the chain of title, no liens or encumbrances. And so because it's only $2,500, I'll have my team in Jamaica go through the due diligence. They're connected to an American title company. It only cost me about $11. Now it was $5,000 or more. I would not take any title risk and I would just close traditionally through a title company, but this is only $2,500.
So in the time that they're doing the due diligence, I'm getting the plat maps, I'm getting the aerial maps, I'm getting satellite maps. I'm getting everything that's going to be needed for marketing. 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 sell it, Dustin, 30 days or less and to make it cash flow like one of your rental homes. So I have a built in best buyer. Do you know who it is?
No. The neighbors. The neighbors. So I'm going to send out neighbor letters saying, hey, here's your opportunity to protect your privacy, protect your views, know your neighbor. Oftentimes the neighbors will buy. Now they pass. I'll go to my buyers list. The buyer's list passes. I'll go to a little website you may have heard of. It's called Meta or Facebook Buy sell groups in the marketplace.
And then I'll go to the lands landmoto.com land.com lands of america.com land flip.com land hub.com, these are platforms where people buy and sell raw land. But the secret is in the pricing. So all I'm going to ask for is a $2,500 down payment and then I'll make it a car payment. So I'll ask for, let's say $2,500 down, 197amonth for the next 84 months. So I get this one time sale. I'll get my money out on the down payment. I could go six to 10 months out and then I'm getting $197 a month.
I'd say 9% interest for the next 84 months, Dustin. 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 owner's 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.
My model is buying a rental property and then dealing with property managers, contractors, handymen, tenants, all that sort of stuff, which is not bad. I mean, in the, in the long run, I still own the property and I could give it to my kids. So those are obviously really good things that I love about my, my model. But there's a lot more work. There's a lot more, I would say work, a headache or more things that could go wrong and money that comes out of your pocket. But I love that idea.
Now the first thing that strikes me is how do you find these? Number one. But before we get there, because you gave a brilliant business model, how did you get into doing something like this? Like this doesn't seem like, oh yes, everybody does it. So everybody should know how to do it. Like you had to figure this out. Yeah. Yeah. So 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 Dustin, it got so bad for me. 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 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 buying up raw land, pennies on the dollar at tax deed auctions, he's flipping them online and he's making 300% return on his money. And I'm looking at companies all day long. A great company, great has 15% EBITDA margins or free cash flow. Average company's 10%. I'm looking at companies all day long less than 10%. So of course I don't believe them. So I've got three grand saved up for car repairs.
I go to New Mexico with them. I buy 10 half acre parcels, an average price of $300 each. I flip them online and they all sell for an average price of $1,200 each. It worked. So I went to another auction in Arizona, which is where we live, and this is $2,000. There's no one in the room and I'm buying up lots of acreage for nothing. And so I flip all that land. I made over $90,000 cash. So I go to my wife and she's pregnant.
I said, honey, I'm going to quit my job and become a full time land investor. And she said, absolutely not. So I said, okay, 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. I think I'm like over 6,500 deals now and growing. Wow. Wow, I love it. And then that is a fantastic story.
Now a lot of people, they start to think, well, it sounds really, really difficult to find these deals and then finding the buyers, which you've already quickly and easily threw out the idea of it's hard to find a buyer. You can easily find a buyer. Now the idea of, well, I love the idea of passive income. How do we get these properties or the land? How do we get the land? How do we find these deals? And I know I obviously mentioned one is we go to the courthouse steps or something.
Like you go to the tax liens, the tax deeds is that the best way? Or like what are your thought? Like how do we find these ones? Yeah, so I don't want to go to tax deed auctions anymore and be in a competitive situation. I want to get the property before they go to tax deed. So what I would do is I would get a list and you could go to say datatree.com and if you want to save some money, go to datatree.com the land geek and get a discount. But anyways, you can get a list there.
You can go to the county and get a list. There's all types of places where you can get a list. But let's just say we're going to go to Data Tree, right. And then the other issue is, well, where do I start? There's 3,007 US counties. How do I know there's a good county? And so I'd reverse engineer it. And so Dustin, let's say you and I are going fishing and we see there's 10 boats on one side of the lake and they're all catching fish.
And then we see on the other side of the lake there's three boats and they're not catching fish. Which, which part of the lake would we want to go to? And I want to pause for a quick second and share that honestly, I really want you to invest in real estate. My new goal in my life, my first goal was to quit my job in 10 years and I did that accomplish at 37. Now my new goal is to help 1 million people invest in real estate. So two things I would ask from you.
Number one, if you get anything out of this episode, please share it with somebody else. Just say, hey, you know, check out Dustin Master Passive Income. He really wants to help a million people to invest in real estate. That's number one. Number number two, I want to get you to invest in real estate. Get my real estate investing course absolutely for free.
Text the word rental R E N T A L to 33777 Rental to 33777 I'll literally give you my course, show you how to find the area of the country to invest, how to build the business first. You know I always talk about that. And how to find the right properties, how to make sure you're getting experts do the work for you and scale the business to where you're making $250. Or more in passive income. Scale it to quit your job. I'll literally get to you.
Or go to masterpassiveincome.com freecourse but I really, really want you to invest in real estate. Because the more that actual normal everyday people own real estate that are good landlords, the better everybody's life gets. Where you're catching fish. Absolutely. Where we're catching fish. Right. We'd be the 11th boat where they're catching fish. And so I want to know, I'd say like a website like landmoto.com where are the land investors buying?
And so I could start my county research there and then from there I can reverse engineer the pricing based on the model. So then I could go to that one of those counties based on my budget. So I really want to buy say five to seven parcels to get going. So I would just do a little bit of math based on my budget, where can I buy five to seven land parcels? And I would start in that county and then from there I would get the list.
We have software where you can go and upload the lists or you can do it manually, however you want to do it, but you want to then send out the offers. So essentially you're going to scrub the list and you're going to price that list. Because when I say scrub list, you want to take out. Let's just do a quick scrub, right? You want to take out all the homes, commercial properties, industrial property.
And so a quick and dirty way to do that would be source by use code, let's say VL for vacant land. So now I've got this list of properties, all land, and then I'm going to do one more piece of manipulation where I'm going to go ahead and price it by assessor's parcel number APN number subdivision, right? Because if I send somebody an offer for 40 acres as the same as a 5 acre, that 40 acre person is going to send me back glitter in the mail.
So we want to price it that way and then we just want to know, okay, did I price it correctly? Because I know that if the market is responding at less than 3%, well, I came in too low. And if they come in too high, like 5%, I have to retrade. I knew I came in too high. And so these are really good metrics. So I know where I am in the market at any one time. And then from there I'll, I'll, you know, move on from to due diligence into marketing, into selling. Now, man, this is, this is terrific.
I mean this is a quick masterclass of, of how or like what, like literally what to do in all these. And in order to get these properties, are you looking for them that Are, Are you just reaching out, like with phone calls or emails or how do you try to find an attach. Or. Sorry. A talk to these sellers? So I don't. Okay, so I'm ambitiously lazy. Yeah, yeah. I can't. I can always make more money. I can't get more time, so I don't want to be on the phone.
And so the most efficient way is going to be through the mail. Now, if that's gonna be our retail buyer, let's say, for example, that I've got a W2 job and I don't necessarily have time to go through the intake process. Well, there's a whole community of land investors out there. Maybe I would just buy it wholesale. And that way the wholesaler has already done all that work.
They've done the county research, they've gotten the list, they've priced the list, they've bought the property 25, 30 cents on a dollar, and now they're flipping it to me. They're making the quick nickel, I'm making the slow dime. And now all I have to worry about on a wholesale deal is am I a good marketer, am I a good seller? And so I'm eliminating then that whole front part of the deal process. The other lever I can pull is what we call land arbitrage.
So, for example, because we're using, let's say, a land contract, and I sell you that Property, Dustin, for $10,000, you make payments for 10 months of $200 a month. $2,000. My cost basis is now $500 on a piece of property because they defaulted. So what I could say is, hey, Dustin, this is the market for that property. Instead of you paying me $10,000 to the property, why don't you control it and you put $200 down and pay a hundred dollars a month?
Because I've already proven to you that the market, you can flip it for $200 a month and you say, okay, I'll make the spread of $100 a month, and I can control that property. And I, Instead of paying $10,000, I can control it for $200 and test the market. So we have three levers we can pull. We have the retail sending out the offers in the mail. We have the wholesale using a community.
And we have land arbitrage working with people who are more seasoned that are getting back properties that they've already really gotten their money out on, and they'd rather have a more solid buyer who will then go and market the property. This is. This is awesome. Now I do remember you did say something about Jamaica. Was it Jamaica? Yes, it was Jamaica. Because I love what you said. I want to be as lazy of a millionaire as possible.
I love passive income because either I have an asset that works for me, like my properties, or the land like you're investing in that actually makes me money. But then also I'm a business owner. I have businesses that require work or require things to physically be done, but I don't want to do it. And I'm better at building businesses or growing businesses or buying investments, getting people to invest in deals. I'm better at that as opposed to working in the business. In the business.
And then I could hire other people to actually do that work for me so I don't physically have to do it where the work gets done. They get a great job. They are getting exactly what they want and it works out well for everybody. So talk to me about utilizing people that are, let's say, Jamaica or someplace else. But to help you in this entire. Process, Right, So we're going to pull on two levers.
We're going to use inexpensive virtual assistants from around the world and we're going to use software and automation. So 90% of this business is automated on the front end with software, as we were talking about, and then the back end on the note collection piece. So I have two pieces of software. The first one is called lgpass.com that will be like a CRM, taking you step by step through the process all the way up to contracts.
Well, you take 20 minutes of contracts of a purchase sale agreement and land sale contract. And promissory note takes the time it takes to press a button. And so that's on the front end and on the, on the back end is a program called GeekPay IO. It's a set and forget it note collection system. So you collect the down payment and then you get the monthly recurring payments via ach. And it does all the math, all the loan accounting.
Because what would happen back in the day, Dustin, is people would call me and say, what's my current loan balance? How do I make a prepayment? And now they can log in and they can do it themselves. Are these all your companies? Like, these are all my companies, right? Yeah. So you needed these services for your business and you create these so that other people can use it. Yeah, 100%, yeah.
And if you don't like me and you're like, oh, I don't, I don't want to use, do anything with Mark, there's Other companies out there as well. So you certainly, you certainly want to use some type of software. Yeah. And I love the idea of what you're doing is. And I heard the term recycling or selling your own sawdust, like you're basically doing your own business and you have something that works for you. Well, more than likely that other.
Like you're cutting lumber and you have sawdust that just sits on the ground. We'll see how we can utilize that and make money from it instead of just throwing it away or, you know, having a landfill had to pay for it. And so being able to utilize that, I think that's fantastic. But to add to that, I love the idea that you have more of a system, more of something that.
Because with businesses to make passive income systems, procedures and processes are things that you need to put in place and other things that come to mind. So that would be more of a system. So you have that, which is terrific. What about like business processes? Do you have to foreclose on a note? Like how if somebody stops paying, what do you do when that happens? Yeah. So the land contract spells it out and says if you are 30 days late, you are now in default.
You have 30 days, secure your default. And if you don't, then we keep your down payment, we keep your monthly payments and we sell it to another buyer. So we don't have any costs of foreclosure with a land contract, unlike a deed of trust. That's fantastic. Well, it gets me thinking. I'm trying to find problems or potential pitfalls in there. You would know them because obviously you coach people how to do it. You wrote an awesome book, which we'll get into in just a second.
But what would be some pitfalls, some like low lights or problems that we might run into? Yeah, I mean, I think it's just not being educated and going into a market not doing your research. The biggest sin in this business is overpaying for a piece of property. So not doing your research. During the due diligence process, you have to make sure there's no breaks in the chain of title or no liens or encumbrances.
It's not to say that you can't cure any default title default, even an IRS tax lien, you can cure in 90 days. That being said, you want to know going in about these issues. You also don't want to buy in an area that would be a super fun site. So you want to check out a website called epa.gov and make sure you're not buying in any Superfund sites. But you also want to know that the markets you're in, for example, I mean, Dustin, let's face it, nobody wakes up and thinks themselves.
Boy, I'd like to buy some raw land today in New Jersey. Unless you live in New Jersey, which could have a Superfund site because it's a manufacturing area. So we want to specialize in areas like Nevada, Colorado, Arizona, California, Texas, Washington, Oregon, Florida, and then some parts of the Midwest that are going to be treated as well. So we want to avoid sort of these, the areas in the Northeast. But you want to do your due diligence.
But essentially that's really going to be your biggest risk, is just going in, not really knowing what you're doing. We even talked before the podcast. You're buddies with Seth Williams. This guy has an incredible educational site called Retipster.com. you could go and search and learn just about anything you need to know about land, Land investing, real estate. It's all there and it's free. I love it.
And yeah, yeah, Seth's a great guy and he has a heart, just like we do for just helping people. And you, when you're thinking about your book title, I love the book title, and it got me thinking of a song. There was a song, a country song that came out recently. You might have heard it, but I had to look it up. It's by Jordan Davis and Luke Bryant, and it's fantastic. It says, buy dirt, and you want to buy dirt.
And the premise is, is that other things that you buy in life will eventually, you know, go away. But dirt or land or some physical property you can build a family on. You know, build a house, have a family, have children. And honestly, in my opinion, you're only going to like, the only legacy you're ever going to leave is to your children and nobody else, everybody else is going to forget you, but your children and their children and so on, they're the only ones that are going to remember you.
So I love that song. It's such a fantastic song. My kids love it. But buy dirt and then you have your book, which is Walk me through what the book is going to actually walk us through. So it's Dirt Rich, which is a fantastic title. I love it. And it's. I am a property guy. Like, I love buying tangible things. I honestly don't even invest in bitcoin or anything. Like, it's not tangible. Like, if the electricity goes out. And don't get me wrong, people love bitcoin.
I get the Value and all that sort of stuff. But the electricity goes out. You're not going to buy anything with bitcoin. But talk to me about Dirt Rich, because that is such a fantastic title. And I mean, you wrote. And you obviously gave it away for. Well, say obviously, I love that you gave away for free, which we can get into in just a second. But talk to us about Dirt Rich.
Sure. So I wrote this book and I have three kids and I thought, well, this is a great way to teach my kids about what I do and give value. So it's a high level overview of what we've just talked about in the land business and also talks about my story as a cautionary tale. So from 2001 to 2006, any. Anyone can make money in real estate. And I had just no humility about it. I thought I was just so smart and money was. Sorry, what year did you start? I started full time in 2001.
Okay, 2001 is when he started. And then five years investing. Okay, continue story. I just wanted to have a reference. Yeah, so I'm making all this money so easily. And I had Parkinson's law of money. And I talk about that in the book how, you know, I kind of went through this existential crisis, if you will, and realizing, you know, I'm chasing out there, chasing out there. And I realized I'm trying to find this, this feeling of enough. And it's, it's not out there. It's. It's inside.
But I had to really go through the aches and pains and the ego hit of really losing 50% of my income. And I had a big house and luxury cars and private schools and nanny and housekeeper and had to whittle all that away to really discover there's nothing out there in turn that's going to make me happy. But I thought that's what it would be. And so I talk about a lot of that in Dirt Rich as well. So you can smart cut it, not have to go through what I went through. Well, I personally love.
There's two different ways to learn. You can learn from your own mistakes or you can learn from other people's mistakes. And they say that a smart man learns from his mistakes, which is a fantastic. Yeah, you learn from your mistakes, but a wise man learns from other people's mistakes. I would much rather learn from somebody else and be as best as I can, try to be humble and realize I don't know everything.
And if I'm going to just jump in thinking I know everything, there could Be I'm old enough now where I realize if I do or when I do that just jump in thinking I know everything, it doesn't work out well. And so there's so much more you can learn from other people's mistakes. It's just so much so terrific. Now with the, with Land investing and talk to us about Land Geek in general. I love the brand, the idea of being the Land Geek. How'd you come up with Land Geek?
Well, you know, no one's going to remember Mark Podolski. It's just a weird name. And so I was on a walk, I thought, oh, I'll brand myself as a Land Geek and that'll be more memorable because I'm, I'm kind of geeky. I love technology, I love systems and processes and automation. And so I just thought, oh, this is just a great way to encapsulate what I do because I don't want anyone to build a job for themselves. I really want them to build a business.
And ultimately what I find and what, and I talk about this, actually I just wrote Dirt Rich 2 how to scale your land business. And in Dirt Rich 2 it talks to you about, talks about the systems and processes and how to build them, how to build a team so that you're working on your business, not in your business. Because ultimately we want total freedom. We want to work when we want, where we want, with whom we want.
And I think that if we can do that, we get the privilege and it could really move up Maslow's hierarchy of needs into self actualization, find out what we really want to do in life.
And so ultimately what I find is so many people are in the scarcity mentality, they're working for that weekend or they're working for that two week vacation and they're going bed at night feeling like they didn't get enough done that day and they wake up feeling like they didn't get enough sleep and it's just a grind. And that's what's so great about what you teach. What I teach is that the passive income is the antidote to financial insecurity and can get you that freedom.
So Land Geek is really built to help people become totally free. And you know, if you're listening to this and you're like, oh well, you know, I'd be skeptical, right? Like, why is Mark teaching this? And so after 10 years of land investing on my own, I discovered it's it. It was great for five people, myself and my family. But when you start helping other People, it's way more fulfilling. And there's a book by David Brooks called the Second Mountain. And the first mountain is very egoic.
And you know, you do what culture tells you to do. You, you get the good education, you get the good job, you get the house. And if you're lucky, you get up to that top of the mountain and it's empty. And I'm sure there's people listening to this, that, that feel that way. But then when you go to the second mountain, it's other focused. It's about purpose, it's about your faith and spirituality, it's about community, it's about love and intimacy.
And this is a harder mountain to climb, but it's a way more fulfilling mountain. And so Land Geek is really my second mountain. It's my vocation to help people solve not just their money problems, but also their time problems to go on and live their best lives. And I hope that's my legacy. I think so. And that's exactly the direction that I like with everything that I do at Master Passive Income. Successfully unemployed. That's exactly the direction I go.
Because when you don't have like finances, you're not successfully unemployed, like the term that I like to use. Instead of being called retired, when you don't have enough money, then you ha. You do have that scarcity mindset, which is just rough. And it's hard to get out of that. It's really hard to break out of that unless you make yourself break out of that. And a great way is on our. Obviously Mark, you're in my opinion is through passive income. And we love real estate.
I think all types of asset classes in real estate will help you get over that hurdle of being scarcity mindset because you're starting making money instead of trading time for money. Basically you're selling your life. That's really what you're doing. You're selling your hours, you're selling your life to make money. Instead of doing that, where you're now making passive income, where you are doing work one time and make money over and over again as best you can.
And then you have 40 plus hours of your life back so that you can play with your kids, build businesses. That's what I love to do, play with my kids, be with my wife, and build businesses. Those are the three things that I really, really love to do. And on top of that, what you have is the ability to serve more people. You know, when you have a job, you have one person that you serve, your boss that they might have lots and lots of customers or, you know, people they serve.
But you're serving your boss. When you get out of serving one person, you start serving as as many people as you possibly can. You make so much more money and you improve so many other people's lives and you feel more, more fulfilled. I'm sure, Mark, you're in the same position. Like whenever I coach a student, they buy the first property or they quit their job, but you know, they get their goal of what I feel fulfilled.
I didn't get an accomplishment, but I feel fulfilled that I've helped another human being get what they wanted most in life. Yeah, I couldn't have said it better. You feel like the pebble in the pond. You make that impact and then, you know it's going to ripple out and it's going to affect everyone that they touch as well.
Because you and I both know when you don't have that big bucket of stress in our lives called money, you can really deepen your relationships with your children and your spouse and your friends and your family because you're totally present. And it's, it's a different feeling, it's a different energy when, when you don't have that. And I, I remember I was, gosh, my kids were really young. I'm playing basketball with my boys and it was a very stressful time. I want to say it was maybe 2008, 2009.
I was very stressed out about money and we're playing basketball and my, my phone fell out of my pocket and they started cheering, thinking that the phone was broken. And it was such a wake up call to me. And I remember thinking, you know, I, I'm, I'm telling myself the story. I'm a, I'm a good father. But this is proof that these kids think I value that phone more than I do valuing that time with them because I was so distracted.
And it's, Yeah, I think that, you know, helping people accomplish their goals, you, you definitely feel way more fulfilled. But you know that they're going to be the best version of themselves. And you helped facilitate that as well. And it's so funny because when you're talking, it made me think of this. I was just reading this book by Joseph Wind. It just came out about, I forgot to hear. I'll just tell you the name of it, but I wrote down this quote if you made me think of it.
So the book is don't believe everything you think and the questions he asked to help people get out of scarcity mentality. I wrote it down. If I had infinite money, no fear, and did not have the need for recognition, what would I do or what would I create? Did you come up with an answer? I'm trying to think myself. I was like, wow, that's a powerful question. I think it's sort of a like a Zen Cohen, if you will, where it's that feeling of, well, what is there really to fear now?
We, we live in this abundant world, and if I didn't have the ego, I didn't care what anybody thought, well, I could go out and I could take that risk that I've been afraid to do, and I could just break through and just again, a different energy and a different way of doing things. Yeah, I, I love the idea that instead of having a scarcity mindset, thinking that the world is out to get you and all the forces against you, flip it.
It's just a reframing, thinking, oh, my goodness, the world is out to help me. There's so many great people out there. There's so much to go around that I know that I'm going to actually have an abundance mindset. Like, there's so much out there. How can I help more people? And I kid you not, Mark, I know you. You have experienced this exact same thing. The more people that I help to invest in real estate, the better my investing gets.
And the more people that want to invest with me, the more properties that come to me, more money that comes to me. Like, the more people that I help, oh, my goodness, I get so much more in return. And so I make more money, I get more successful, and I feel more fulfilled when I help other people. It's just the only way to, in my opinion now. And it takes a lot to actually. It's hard. Everybody listening. You might be thinking, okay, Dustin, I get it.
Serve people, you make more money, you help other people. I get it. And I'll say this. No, you don't get it. You might comprehend it. Just like when my brother, he had his kid before I had any kids, and I said, oh, you know, I was playing with my nephew. I said, oh, man, I love your kid. I love your son. My nephew, just like he's my own. And he says, no, you don't. I said, what do you mean? Of course I do. Yeah, he's like, he's your son. He's my nephew. I love him.
You just don't have the comprehension. You can't comprehend the love that you have when you actually have your own child. It's just different. It's not bad. It's just. You don't comprehend it. And then when I had my first child, I got it. I was like, oh, my goodness. I did not know what love would. Be for a child until I had. My own same thing. Everybody listen to this.
I'm telling you, and Mark and I are both telling you, the more people that we serve, the better our lives gets, the more money we make. It's more than just understanding it. You're not going to really comprehend it. You don't have that capacity comprehend it until you actually live in it. Once you live in it, you're going to think, I don't want to make. Any money any other way. I don't want to do anything else other than serve people. That's what I realize is now because I've experienced it.
I've seen my life change. And then so many other people, people come to me. Dustin, thank you so much for everything that you do. You don't have to do this like podcasting or coaching or you don't have to this. But you've changed my life. That makes me like, I. I feel like I could go up for years with that type of accomplishment. Same thing. It's like once you actually have that in your, you know, soul, you have that comprehension. My goodness. You don't ever want to go back.
No, no. A hundred percent. There's no better feeling when someone says, thank you, you changed my life. Absolutely. Now, Mark, I know there's probably something that I missed. I mean, we've glossed over. There's so much more details in there, but what could we have missed? Like, what question should I have asked that you realize meant when my students ask this or I wrote this book because of this, like, what else could I have?
Should we know about everything with the land, investing and passive income? You know, it's. It's such a deep subject. I. I don't know what else we could have really gone through without getting, you know, deep in the weeds of it. And then, you know, people going and listening to something else.
Let me ask you this way, because I know a lot of people, they might think, because I. I get the same thing where I'm like, okay, where are people's hangups if they're going to start doing something like this? We talked about finding the properties or the land, which that's not. That's not problems. That's not a big problem at all. In fact, you just work through that. The one thing that I always hear from people is, how do I Get the money. Let's say, you know, $2,500.
Maybe somebody doesn't have $2,500 that they could spend or let they have a really great property that they could buy for 10 grand and they could sell it for 300,000. Just random numbers. Money. That money issue, does that come up? Do you have any ideas on how. To get past that? Well, I mean it's such a mindset shift, isn't it? Because it's a self limiting belief that there's no money. Money's everywhere. What is valuable is can I get this asset 25, 3 cents on the dollar.
So for example, do I have enough money to send out offer letters? And if I can send out a hundred offer letters, I know I'll get three to five deals and maybe I'll close one deal. So do I have a hundred dollars and then it's, I lock up that Property say for $5,000. That's 25, 30 cents a dollar. Well certainly I could assign that contract and make some quick cash or I could flip it myself or I could partner with someone. And so the real value is, is getting the money.
There's, there's so many different ways to get money. I mean you can, you can credit card stack, you can partner, you've got friends, you got family. Family. There's no shortage of ways to find money. What's really difficult is finding an asset. 25, 3 cents a dollar. I don't care what asset it is. It could be raw land, could be a house, it could be multifamily. And again, you know, obviously those, you're not going to get those assets 25, 30 cents a dollar.
But in my niche, if you do, you're, you're, you're going to have someone else on the other end of that deal. You'll find the money to fund it. So yeah, you just need to have the grit. Because I think after listening to this you might think, oh, Mark makes this sound so easy. This is not easy. No business and nothing worth doing is easy. It's a simple model. There might be less moving parts than other real estate niches or other businesses, but it's not easy.
And so I would say if you don't have grit, you don't have resilience, you're not resourceful, this probably isn't for you. But if you're the kind of person that like I like the, the, the analogy of, of hockey, right? Hockey players love hockey enough to get knocked down and lose their teeth and they get back up and they keep skating. It's the same thing in business. And so you need to be that kind of person, have that kind of mentality. I love the idea of grit.
Grit is something that I'm trying to instill into my boys, helping them to realize that you got to push through. Like just because you don't know how to do it right now, you got to figure it out. Like, you need to just don't get give up at a certain roadblock. The roadblock comes and I'm just stopping. No, no, no. We got to push through it. So love the idea of the grit. Now you have a podcast and this podcast is talking about passive income.
And I love that you have actually been podcasting longer than I have, which is. It's rare to find somebody podcasting so longer than I have. So I'm super excited to share with everybody your podcast. Obviously, we're gonna. And for everybody listening, we have Mark's book that we're gonna put a link in the description so you can get his bar, his book, literally for free. Just pay for shipping. And obviously shipping is kind of, kind of just one.
One aspect of it, but the value that you get out of it. You're gonna get so much value out of it. But talk to us about your podcast and your book and how else can people find you? Yeah. So I'd say that if you go to thelandgeek.com is a great place to start. There's lots of information on there, lots of ways to learn, and then certainly the art of passive income podcast, which you can also find on every place that you can find a podcast.
I'm going to interview experts like Dustin about passive income and I'm also going to have interviews with our lanky coaches where we'll talk about a pain point in the land business and we'll roundtable it and we'll sort of mastermind about how do you handle this or how do you handle that. So we really want to help people eliminate all the pain points in their business and again, smart cut it and utilize the decades of experience that we have in our team. Love it.
Mark. Hey, thank you so much for being on the show. Really, really appreciate all the wisdom and even given the way the book for free and but really appreciate meeting another podcaster and real estate investor. Thanks, Dustin. I appreciate it. And that is it for today. Go ahead and get my free real estate investing course, Texas word rental at 33777 R E N T A L to 33777. You can also join my real estate. Wealth, builders, group coaching. Get all my courses.
All right, guys, we'll see you in the next show. So see.