516. A Profitable Venture into New Land

Mark J Podolsky

Mark ventured out of his native Midwest and took a chance on a new landscape he loved: Scottsdale, Arizona. His new investment banking job paid him well, but he hated everything else about it. In fact, he says, “It was hurting my soul.” So, now that he knew what he didn’t want, what would he do next?

Mark J. Podolsky (AKA The Land Geek) is considered the country’s most trusted and foremost authority on buying and selling raw, undeveloped land within the United States. He has been actively investing in real estate and raw land since 2001 and has completed over 5,000 unique transactions. His company, Frontier Equity Properties, LLC, is an A+ rated BBB real estate company. He has achieved this level of success due to his core business philosophy – “Happy Customers Guaranteed.” Mark is the host of some of the top-rated podcasts in the Investing Category on iTunes aptly titled The Best Passive Income Model and The Art of Passive Income. He also hosts the Land Geek Podcast- Work Smart. Earn More. Learn How.

How Did You Start Using Your Talents?

“I thought I would get a really high-paying job. At that time in the early 1990s, I decided to be a stockbroker. I started cold calling all the stockbrokers, doing interviewing, and I thought, ‘I don’t know if this really is for me. But I knew I liked transactions. An Indian gentleman named Raj hired and mentored me. Raj had an MBA and was a chemical engineer. He said, ‘If you can sell, I’m going to teach you how to buy and sell dental practices.’ So, I became a broker of dental practices! I would help young dentists buy into an older dentist’s well-established practice, thus helping the established dentist sell the practice and the buyer would also have an instant cash flow, while his dental school classmates were starting new practices from scratch. It was a really cool first job and I learned a ton!”

The Most Impactful Turning Point?

A lifelong Midwesterner, Mark and his new wife visited Scottsdale, Arizona. “I thought it was just beautiful out here. I convinced my wife to move, telling her I would get a job and try it for 5 years, and I got a job as an investment banker. It was the most similar thing I could find to what I had been doing, except we were working with bigger numbers. I absolutely hated the work! Even though the money was good, I knew it wasn’t for me. It was hurting my soul. I hated the lack of control, the 45-minute commute each way, and the high pressure. I worked in a cubicle and my time was not my own. There was no freedom or flexibility.” The job clarified Mark’s future choices by showing him everything he didn’t want.

The Most Powerful Lessons Learned?

Mark offers a contrarian view of what he calls the romantic notion of following your passion. “When you’re 20 or 30 years old, you could have tons of passions, you just don’t know. I would say get really good at something, or at a few things. Then you’ll learn to love it. Because we love what we’re really good at, really competent at, and it just keeps growing and growing and growing. But until you get really good at something, you’re not going to know what that something is.”