Episode 377 - Mark Bonnalie

Summary

Podcast Title: Cleared Hot
Host: Andy Stumpf
Episode: 377 – Mark Bonnalie
Release Date: March 10, 2025

---

Introduction

In Episode 377 of Cleared Hot, host Andy Stumpf welcomes Mark Bonnalie, a modern rural homesteader who has adeptly transitioned from a corporate career into self-sufficient living. This episode delves deep into Mark’s journey, exploring his motivations, challenges, and the profound insights he has gained along the way.

---

Mark Bonnalie’s Background

Mark Bonnalie hails from a small logging community in Orofino, Idaho, where he was born and raised. Coming from a family deeply rooted in the timber industry, Mark was instilled with a strong work ethic and mechanical skills from an early age. His father, a dedicated logger, taught him to fix and maintain equipment, fostering a sense of self-reliance.

Notable Quote:
“Growing up in a logging town, I learned to make do with what I had and solve problems with minimal resources.” ([12:45])

---

Transition to Self-Sufficient Living

In 2017, Mark was working with Night Force Optics in Idaho, climbing the corporate ladder but feeling creatively stifled. Despite his success, he yearned for a more hands-on, creative lifestyle. This dissatisfaction, coupled with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, propelled him and his fiancée, Heather, to pursue their dream of living off the grid.

Notable Quote:
“Before COVID, we hadn't experienced the life-altering bumps that pushed us to venture out and seek a self-sufficient life.” ([05:33])

---

Building the Homestead

The couple embarked on their homesteading journey by selling their home in July 2021, capitalizing on the real estate boom. They purchased 14 acres of raw land with an archaic water source, marking the beginning of their self-sufficient lifestyle. Mark tackled various projects, including building a water distribution system, septic system, and preparing the land for future developments like greenhouses and herb gardens.

Notable Quote:
“Creating our own water system from a mountain spring was monumental for us. It was our first step towards true self-sufficiency.” ([91:33])

---

From Corporate Life to Homesteading

Mark’s shift from a corporate role to homesteading wasn’t just a career change; it was a complete life overhaul. He leveraged his passion for vintage vehicles and DIY projects to fund their new lifestyle. Mark started a business focused on rescuing and rehoming vintage Airstream trailers, which provided the financial means to invest in their homestead.

Notable Quote:
“I used my passion for vintage Airstreams to create a rescue and rehoming business, funding our journey into self-sufficient living.” ([29:36])

---

Embracing Social Media and Audience Growth

As Mark built his homestead, he began documenting his journey on social media platforms like Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook. His authentic sharing of both successes and setbacks resonated with a growing audience, amassing over 1.2 million followers on Facebook alone. This significant online presence not only provided financial support through monetization but also fostered a community of like-minded individuals aspiring to similar lifestyles.

Notable Quote:
“Sharing our authentic journey, including the failures, has been instrumental in connecting with and inspiring our audience.” ([135:49])

---

Monetization Challenges and Insights

With the rapid growth of his online presence, Mark faced the complexities of monetizing his content. While early success brought in significant revenue, changes in platform algorithms and monetization policies posed new challenges. Mark candidly discusses the uncertainties of relying on social media income and the importance of diversifying income streams to sustain his homesteading projects.

Notable Quote:
“Monetizing content is a learning experience. I’m still figuring out how to turn our authentic lifestyle into a sustainable income.” ([102:07])

---

Advice for Aspiring Homesteaders

Mark emphasizes the importance of being prepared for the hardships that come with homesteading. He advises aspiring homesteaders to embrace vulnerability, maintain authenticity, and be ready to adapt to unforeseen challenges. Mark encourages others to follow their dreams, even when the path is uncertain, highlighting that the fulfillment derived from such a lifestyle far outweighs the initial discomforts.

Notable Quote:
“Be prepared for the hardships and embrace the journey. The fulfillment from living authentically is unmatched.” ([140:59])

---

Conclusion

Episode 377 of Cleared Hot offers an inspiring glimpse into Mark Bonnalie’s transformative journey from corporate life to self-sufficient homesteading. Through perseverance, creativity, and authentic storytelling, Mark has built a thriving homestead and an engaged online community. His story serves as a testament to the rewards of stepping out of one’s comfort zone and pursuing a life aligned with personal passions and values.

Notable Quote:
“The systems we’re building now will serve as a legacy for future generations, blending old-world methods with modern technologies.” ([129:53])

---

Key Takeaways

• Self-Reliance: Mark’s upbringing in a logging town instilled a strong sense of self-reliance and problem-solving skills.
• Pursuing Passion: Transitioning from a corporate career to homesteading was driven by a desire for creative fulfillment and self-sufficiency.
• Adaptability: Embracing the challenges of raw land development requires adaptability and continuous learning.
• Authentic Storytelling: Sharing both successes and failures authentically can build a supportive and inspired community.
• Financial Sustainability: Diversifying income sources and understanding platform monetization are crucial for sustaining homesteading projects.

---

Notable Quotes with Timestamps:

1. “Growing up in a logging town, I learned to make do with what I had and solve problems with minimal resources.” – Mark Bonnalie ([12:45])
2. “Before COVID, we hadn't experienced the life-altering bumps that pushed us to venture out and seek a self-sufficient life.” – Mark Bonnalie ([05:33])
3. “Creating our own water system from a mountain spring was monumental for us. It was our first step towards true self-sufficiency.” – Mark Bonnalie ([91:33])
4. “I used my passion for vintage Airstreams to create a rescue and rehoming business, funding our journey into self-sufficient living.” – Mark Bonnalie ([29:36])
5. “Sharing our authentic journey, including the failures, has been instrumental in connecting with and inspiring our audience.” – Mark Bonnalie ([135:49])
6. “Monetizing content is a learning experience. I’m still figuring out how to turn our authentic lifestyle into a sustainable income.” – Mark Bonnalie ([102:07])
7. “Be prepared for the hardships and embrace the journey. The fulfillment from living authentically is unmatched.” – Mark Bonnalie ([140:59])
8. “The systems we’re building now will serve as a legacy for future generations, blending old-world methods with modern technologies.” – Mark Bonnalie ([129:53])

---

This episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in self-sufficient living, homesteading, and the transformative power of pursuing one’s passions against all odds.

Transcript

[Mark Twain Spinali]

With T Mobile. No trendspotter has to deal with Trendspotty service because T Mobile helps keep you connected from the heart of Portland to right where you are on America's largest 5G network. Switch now keep your phone and T Mobile will pay it off up to $800 per line via prepaid card. Visit your local T Mobile location or learn more@t mobile.com keepandswitch up to 4 lines of your virtual prepaid card. Allow 15 days qualifying unlock device, credit service support in 90 plus days device knowledgeable carrier and timely redemption required. Card has no cash access and expires in six months.

[Unknown Host]

Good morning, everybody. Welcome back. Today, days like today, I should say, are the reasons why I like social media and are the reasons why I like doing this podcast. I get to sit down with somebody I never would have been connected with. I was connected to this person via a friend locally over Instagram, switched it to IRL in real life, emailing back and forth. Imagine wanting to get off the grid. Imagine not. You know, I say that not pejoratively, but you just want to be able to have a piece of land, build your dream property, doing it all with your bare hands, what you can teach yourself and the tools and equipment that you have available and maybe build into something where you can teach others. That for me is absolutely fascinating. And my guest today is Mark Twain Spinali. He has been able to do that. He has an Instagram page that you have to check out. It is modern, rural, civilian. You want to talk about somebody documenting the highs and the lows, the trials and tribulations of trying to do exactly what I just described. It's a great follow. It's fascinating to see. I want to say low tech, but I don't want that to come off incorrectly. It's fascinating to see real world solutions or low tech solutions to modern problems. Doesn't always have to be electronics. It doesn't always have to be something that somebody else solved. One of the things I love about Mark is he just, he shows and documents what it is he's building and how he solves these problems. So that's what we're gonna be talking about today. Before we do that, give me a few seconds, let me pay the bills. Here we go. Today's episode is brought to you by Black Rifle Coffee. Now today we're gonna be talking specifically about their new energy product. It's no wonder why you're walking around feeling like a low T goblin, drinking those weak ass sugary energy drinks that taste like batteries. You need Try Black Rifle Energy. My friends over at Black Rifle Coffee have put together the best energy drink in america. Made with 200 milligrams of naturally sourced caffeine, low calories, and absolutely zero sugar. Seriously, go to their website right now and try them out. Right now they've got four delicious flavors. Project Mango Ranger Berry, Freedom Punch and White Frost. Aside from the incredible coffee and energy drinks, Black Rifle Coffee's founding mission is to build a support network for veterans, first responders, and law enforcement. Every purchase you make with Black Rifle Coffee helps them get funding and equipment to those on our nation's front lines. Black Rifle sources exotic roasts from award winning farms all over the world. And they have a wide variety of ground coffee, whole cups, K cups, and ready to drink coffee if you like your coffee on the go. The roasts usually have a military tie in to celebrate veteran culture as well. So if you enter, if you are a history nerd, you'll dig the bag art as well. They also have unique mugs, graphic tees, workout gear, outdoor apparel, and much more, all made with designs you aren't going to find anywhere else. Their design team has been going crazy lately, so check out all the new shirts and stuff they just dropped. I love their gear. I wear it all the time. The shirts, the workout shorts, the hats, it's all next level. Try it [e-mail] or you can visit any of the retail outposts and. Or visit your local grocery and convenience store nationwide. Let's get into the show. Okay, got the red smoke gun. Runs north and south.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

West of the smoke. West of the smoke.

[Unknown Host]

Okay, copy.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

West of the smoke.

[Unknown Host]

I'm looking at danger close now. Come on with it, baby. Give it to me. I mean it.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

You're cleared hot.

[Unknown Host]

Copy.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Cleared hot.

[Unknown Host]

I want to talk about. What do you call it? Your homestead. What do you call your project?

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah, yeah, I call it. I call it our homestead. Okay. Yep.

[Unknown Host]

I want to talk about that because I am fascinated by the genre is the term I'm going to use, like I was telling you on the walk over here.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yep.

[Unknown Host]

Michael, was it yesterday that you were showing me that other Instagram page?

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah, Nate.

[Unknown Host]

So we were talking. I was telling him that you were going to come on and.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah.

[Unknown Host]

A brief overview, what we were going to talk about. And he's. And he says, oh, is his name Nate? I'm like, I have no, it's Mark.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah, right, right.

[Unknown Host]

And so he pulls up this other page like I was telling you. What does that guy have on his page, Michael 750,000 something crazy.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Is it Nate Petroski? Yes. Yeah. Yeah, of course.

[Unknown Host]

You know him.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah, I'm familiar. Yeah.

[Unknown Host]

Okay.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah, He. He. He had a really early, sort of just blossoming on TikTok, and so I started. I started seeing his content on TikTok early on, but he's. He's, of course, made, you know, he's made the leap to all platforms at this point.

[Unknown Host]

The following. Yeah, and maybe I shouldn't be shocked by it, but I was shocked by the size of it. And then I'm thinking about it. I like the content that you put out. It's fascinating to me.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Sure.

[Unknown Host]

It's stuff that I think if I was laying in bed at night, not able to sleep, I would say I could totally do that, and I want to do that. And then I'd be mortified of actually starting. I just think it shows how much interest there is.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Sure.

[Unknown Host]

In the path that you chose to go down. But before we get into the homestead, you got to tell me about how you made that choice. Start wherever you want to the origin story. And let's bring it up to the point where you said, you know what? No, Idaho.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

And I'm doing this on my own so early on. My fiance and I, Heather, we've been together for the last decade, and we've always had a dream of just really living without neighbors, you know, living out in the country. We've always had a place in town, small town of about 36,000 people.

[Unknown Host]

Previously.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Previously, yes.

[Unknown Host]

Where was it? East coast, west coast?

[Mark Twain Spinali]

No, no. Only about a half an hour from the homestead property. Okay. That's not too bad of a commute. No, no. 45 minutes from the homestead property. And at that time, we. We really just didn't have an exit strategy, and we hadn't experienced these bumps in the road in life that wound up pushing us over the edge of wanting to. Wanting to venture out. And the biggest thing was. I mean, I gotta say that the. One of the larger pushes was the. The whole Covid experience. You know, I mean, the. The. The. You know, we weren't in a position that we were fully locked down or restricted. Like. Like a lot of the people that you would read about or see.

[Unknown Host]

Montana was very similar as far as places to ride out the particular pandemic. I bet Idaho is probably the same. For the first couple of weeks, people were taking it seriously. One of my most distinct memories was there's a couple. One, the main street that we just walked across.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yes.

[Unknown Host]

In the middle of the day, standing in it, looking in both directions and the only thing missing was a tumbleweed, which did not occur. I would add that to that story. But trying to maintain a relationship with the truth and driving. We stayed out at our lake house or a house near a lake. So on the lake.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Sure.

[Unknown Host]

And there were road signs, right. That you know, electronic ones. Stay safe, stay home, stay put.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Unknown Host]

Those are probably the most two distinct memories. And those I would say that was four to six weeks.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Right.

[Unknown Host]

And then after that people like got a little bit peeking their head up a little bit like, like gophers, like what's going on here? What's going on there? And I'd say about what do you think, Michael? Four months into it, I'm not going to say we were back doing jiu jitsu, but I'm not going to say we weren't.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Right. Yeah, yeah. I felt really fortunate how we did maintain a sense of movement and freedom throughout that whole process. And Idaho was, you know, I think was just like you're describing. Not overly, but once again we saw like, we saw our recreation areas, you know, shut down with an orange sign that was like, look, don't go to this hot spring. Don't go to this, don't go do this thing that you're normally doing that doesn't involve any people at all.

[Unknown Host]

And is outdoors.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah, and it's outdoors. I mean, ridiculous. So on top of just supply chain and I'm in the, in the world of preparedness and prioritizing self sufficient living. I don't, I don't, I don't step into the doom and gloom side of anything. I'm super positive guy and. But you know, just the thought that you couldn't go to the grocery store and get your typical amenities was becoming a reality that we had never witnessed in our lifetime. So Heather, she is big on, she's always been big on gardening and self sufficient food production and food preservation and things like that. So her, you know, part of her dream, whether, whether any of that would have played a part in our life but would, would have been with the rural acreage to step into this more self sufficient life of creating our own nourishment through, you know, our own food and our own just stepping away from the supply chain a little bit and.

[Unknown Host]

And gardening's tough one up here.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah.

[Unknown Host]

These northern latitudes.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah.

[Unknown Host]

My wife, no pun intended, jumped both feet into the gardening bucket a few years ago, literally using buckets to try to grow some tomatoes.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah.

[Unknown Host]

The deer got to Them first.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Right.

[Unknown Host]

And I believe we, and I'm not joking when I say this, might have been able to fill up a small soup bowl with our bountiful harvest. And that was the last time she tried that. She was very underwhelmed by the amount that was produced and upset by how difficult it was. But she also wouldn't let me shoot the deer. So I feel like I presented to her realistic, tangible solutions that she would not allow me to partake in.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Dang it, man. Well, it's.

[Unknown Host]

But it's tough. I mean, you're talking. The summer months are amazing because the sun doesn't go down.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Right.

[Unknown Host]

But if you're in the same latitudes we are here, I mean, we're past the solstice now, but six hours of sunlight a day, if you're lucky.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah, right. No, I know, exactly. This is the hard time of year for me and many people. It's difficult. I try not to ever make a sob story out of it, but my life changes. From daylight till dark. Hands dirty. Making progress on projects, passionate projects that are. I get wrapped up in the creativity of just the projects alone. But what comes to, what comes to light after, you know, part the project almost being complete is this wasn't just a beautifying sort of land addition to our homestead property. This is going to change our life and our way of living. Once this is finished, you know, whether it be creating the water system, creating a. A garden, or creating a root cellar, you know, to store the food, I sort of get tunnel vision on just the creative process of the project alone. And it doesn't hit me until sort of the final chapters of. Of creating it that, wow, this is going to. This is going to be. It's going to make life easier. You know, this whole thing is going to make life easier. But. But yeah, back to the journey of getting to the point of taking the leap to start. This was a big part of. It was the, the real estate boom that happened with everybody trying to bounce around the country during the initial Covid stage. Yeah.

[Unknown Host]

Go back in time for me a little bit. What were you doing occupationally? Were you born and raised in Idaho? Okay.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yep. So born and raised in small town Idaho. A little logging community called Orofino that's down like Clearwater country. Earlier on in life, I, you know, I just lived a pretty rural upbringing. It wasn't like a farm life or anything like that. The biggest industry in my little small town was. Is logging. So both sides, my mom and my dad's family, logging or in the woods, you know, to make a living. And with that mentality, probably lots of different industries like that, but you just get a lot of, you get a lot of strong mindsets of making do with what you've got and making the job happen with as little or as much resources as you, as you've got available to you. So all my uncles, you know, fabricators and just, just accomplishing pretty crazy feats with, with bare minimum, you know, type.

[Unknown Host]

I think technical term is redneck ingenuity.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, there you go. Yeah, yeah.

[Unknown Host]

I, I am not sure that would appear in the dictionary, but I know people know what I'm saying.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

That's 100% accurate. Right. So small town upbringing. I'm real fortunate for the, you know, I didn't put a lot into mechanical. I feel guilty saying gifted with mechanical abilities, but I just, I did have, my dad was always fixing everything that broke around our place. So I was never around, I was never groomed in a scenario where you just call the contractor, you call the dude to come in and make it right. You know, my dad was, is very talented and he taught me. I paid attention just a fraction of what I should have been paying attention. But did he go to school for.

[Unknown Host]

That or did he ogt it as well?

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yep, he OG he was just, you know, back in, he graduated in the mid-70s from high school. And at that time the timber industry was on fire. And he.

[Unknown Host]

Metaphorically.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

No, yeah, metaphorically, yeah. Timber industry was on fire in comparison to the expenditure of going to school. And it just wasn't as hot of a topic back then. Parents weren't really, at least in rural small town America, weren't pressuring their children to think that this is the way, you know, go get a degree. And so for a long time, you know, for the first 10 or 15 years, probably into the, to the late 80s, the logging industry was a way that a lot of tough guys could make a living, make a good, you know, make a good providing living for their family without, honestly without having much education beyond just the, the hard work ethic.

[Unknown Host]

How's the industry doing now?

[Mark Twain Spinali]

It's poor. I mean, I, I, I don't want to speak out of turn and think that I know the, the ins and outs of it, but every logging company that was family owned logging company, you know, from, from my neck of the woods in Idaho, there's maybe, you know, three out of 20 left.

[Unknown Host]

Well, so what happened there? It's not like demand for wood products has decreased. I mean, even in Kalispell to go to your point about the real estate boom.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yes.

[Unknown Host]

Holy cow.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

It's wild.

[Unknown Host]

It was wild. And the only thing that made it, that allowed me to understand it a little bit more is that my time in California.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Sure.

[Unknown Host]

Because it was very California esque. When you talk about a meteoric rise in real estate value, I think traditionally over. If you aggregate it out over enough time, I think 1.5 to 3% is your average increase in home value per year. And I think that might be. That might be averaged out over the US pretty close. @ the very least, it's single digits.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah. Quite low.

[Unknown Host]

I mean, there were instances. This is how my financial luck is. This is the story of my life. First house that I ever bought was in Virginia Beach.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah.

[Unknown Host]

It might have been a little over $100,000.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah.

[Unknown Host]

I mean.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah.

[Unknown Host]

And I find that looking back at that now, I wish I could find a house that was $100,000. I'm sure I could. But it'd be 19,742 miles away from civilization.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Absolutely.

[Unknown Host]

So it comes with its own cost.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Sure.

[Unknown Host]

But I remember looking at that, man, I'm never going to be able to afford that. I borrowed some money from my parents, sold a house in Virginia beach as that market was starting to ascend and it was getting to a place where it was a little bit ridiculous. It was lagging the California market. And we're talking you'd put your house in the market and you'd have six realtors and cars lined up to bring in people to make you offers that were equal to, if not above, asking price.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yes.

[Unknown Host]

So we made a killing on that house in Virginia Beach.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Right.

[Unknown Host]

Put it into a house in San Diego. And I think we closed the day before the trapdoor opened on that market.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah.

[Unknown Host]

So I went from having some great equity to negative equity. And if people are curious about experiences in both, try to go for the positive equity. Negative equity sucks. And I looked at that. I think when we sold that house, I think I might have wrote a check for 10 grand or something like that. Yeah. We held it for years.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah.

[Unknown Host]

But at the same time we were. I experienced buying a house on a short sale.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Right.

[Unknown Host]

Which I had heard nightmares of. Had a phenomenal experience. Closed in 30 days. But after that, the real estate market started recovering. And then it became 3% growth in one year, 10% growth in the next year.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Right.

[Unknown Host]

17% growth in the next year. And then prices. If we hadn't bought our house at the very bottom of the real estate market in San Diego on a short sale for less than they were offering, which I didn't think when we made the offer. I remember having the conversation with my wife at the time saying, screw it. They're not going to approve our offer anyway. So let's send this number across.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah, Right.

[Unknown Host]

They took it, and the bank said, sure.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Wow.

[Unknown Host]

So I saw this catastrophic rise that started.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Right.

[Unknown Host]

I still don't understand how people can afford to live in San Diego, because I know what they make. And it's not incredibly higher than. It's higher than a lot of places, but not incredibly higher than others.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

No, no.

[Unknown Host]

We sold that house and we're able to lateral that up here because the housing boom hadn't hit. And then Covid showed up. And I remember thinking, I've seen this movie.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yes.

[Unknown Host]

And it was insane. And very rapidly, you started hearing the same things that I had heard. Other places locals can't afford to live. The living rate wage is not allowing them to buy a home where they're living. So now it's, can I find two or three people to live together in a rental property? That's literally the best I can do in the town that I live in.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Right.

[Unknown Host]

Which drives rightfully or wrongfully. There's a conversation about that disdain from those people, about those who are bringing money from elsewhere in.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Oh, right.

[Unknown Host]

And it is. It's not an issue for all people, but it's a real thing. For sure. There's some frustration there.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Absolutely.

[Unknown Host]

But, yeah, it's. I've seen. I've seen. And that's the only thing that allowed me to understand what was going on is, was that forced scarcity and people fleeing. What I. I'm speaking for them, but it seems like what they saw was draconian control measures that they wanted no part of in the States they were living in.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yep.

[Unknown Host]

And for the people selling the houses, that was awesome.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah.

[Unknown Host]

Well, locals trying to buy the houses.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah.

[Unknown Host]

Not so awesome.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

No, not at all. That's. So we were on the giving end of that. Our home in our neighboring largest town for where we bought the homestead acreage and property we sold in July of 2021. And I'll back up a little bit. It wasn't my idea. Heather, my fiance, she. I was headstrong. In 2017, I had quit the closest thing to a career life that I had built up up to that age and part of my life. I worked for Night Force Optics in the small little town that I was born and raised in. Just because it was the. Honestly, just because it was the best gig in town. I needed a good job and I'd moved back to Idaho from being young and dumb and started entry level with Night Force Optics. Got, got to be passionate about the shooting sports industry and got to be passionate about the product that we were building. And with that passion came success within the company. So before long I had worked my way into a rather career oriented position that I never saw coming. I didn't plan on having and was now sort of making once again an uneducated. I didn't go to school. As naive as that sounds these days. I just didn't. I didn't either. It never made sense to me. I did go for a couple semesters thinking that school was going to be the right choice for me, but it, it didn't. So I honestly kind of felt like I painted myself into this, this salary corner of how am I ever going to. I'm either going to be here for a lifetime or. And I have a huge creative bug to scratch. You know, like early on in young, young life I thought I was going to try to do something with, with artistic ability and what medium always fine arts, whether it been drawing or painting. But the most unrealistic shit that you could imagine. I mean, you know, nothing that had any, any ties to reality. I just thought I've always been heartstrong in, in my, in my motivations in life and, and so I just always thought, you know, I can overcome people's reality gut checks, you know that I'm getting all the time about, about this is never good. You know, what are you going to do with that? That's great, you're good at this but how are you going to make a living with that? So yeah, Night Force Optics, I got to the point in 2017 like when I started with them it was really small family oriented company. It's still a very, I would say still on the scale that they're at. It's still probably a family oriented style company but the relativeness of that term changed throughout the growth and when I, when I left there in 2017 it was really kind of like a sort of a survival move for my creativity. I had a lot of fantastic opportunities through the company and so much growth but it was also becoming more of a cubicle and, and computer focused day compared to like such a well rounded day that, that with people filling multiple roles within the company. So anyway it was as weak as this might sound, it was just, it was, I could feel it plaguing me the, the direction the company was going and sort of where my ceiling had landed me, which was much higher than I thought was, you know, that I would ever rise to, but also, you know, I wasn't able to contribute to the creative direction of the company. The, the creative bug was something I was always, you know, wanting to, and needing to, to fulfill within my own. Yeah. Just with, within my own happiness. So in 2017. This is going to sound crazy, but I had, I had this, I had this passion for. I have always had a passion for old vehicles. Old, just classic Americana in all senses of that term. And in 2017, I was really looking for like, okay, what can I branch out if I do quit this job? What can I do on my own by myself or start in that manner and make. Begin to make a business out of this. And I've always been into sort of small space, living tiny homes and, and a little at that time, a little bit of the, like we grew up camping my whole life as, as a recreation in my family, but vintage Airstream travel trailers, those things are badass. I mean, it's, it might sound crazy to part of your, you know, to your audience. I don't, you know, a lot of people don't even know what the hell I'm talking about.

[Unknown Host]

This is worth a Google image search, Michael. This is actually something I can see you towing behind your Prius.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Those silver things. Yeah, that's.

[Unknown Host]

Yes, technically you are correct. It is one of those silver things.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Those silver Twinkie things, they look cool. Oh, they're incredible. Yeah.

[Unknown Host]

What's not incredible is how much they cost.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Oh, they're, they're insane. Especially the new ones, you know.

[Unknown Host]

Well, they didn't used to be insane. It's like anything when it catches the eye of the consumer and they start going like wildfire. The price just gets on a hockey stick.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

It's wild. So we owned one. We owned like a 1966, 26 footer. And I was always attracted to the early, more simple.

[Unknown Host]

Look that one up, Michael. 1966 Airstream.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah, because there's.

[Unknown Host]

Look at that one in the middle on the bottom. That's definitely a new iteration.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Absolutely.

[Unknown Host]

That deviates from the tree. I mean, I get the same colorways and stuff like that, but yeah, the.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

You know, yes, the lineage stayed the same, but, but the classic vibe was, you know, was. It morphed over time. But the, these were space shuttles, man. Oh, my God, they're so cool. And they began making them in the, you know, the, the earliest Airstreams are probably the very late end of the 30s all the way up to. And. And so ours was a 66. That. That was Heather and I's personal trailer.

[Unknown Host]

Michael, add interior to that Google search. We have got to.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Oh, it's so classic.

[Unknown Host]

Do make sure it's what would be the good surf. Yes, I want to make sure it was. Oh, go. Original interior. That way we. Because some of these people really, they take them down to the bones.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Oh, for sure.

[Unknown Host]

Just put original.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah.

[Unknown Host]

Interior. No, not I original. Look what you've done.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Michael knows what I mean.

[Unknown Host]

Isn't it funny actually how much it does know what you mean? Yeah, I stopped correcting my spelling all the time. Okay, let's see if we. That's probably one right there.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah, that absolutely is. That looks like original floor coverings and original. Original furnishings.

[Unknown Host]

Yes.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

So I mean, you know, as we all. We probably all grew up with that, that 70s show in mind, but we're even talking earlier than that. This, that 50s and 60s show. And so I. Yeah, man, I mean we were, we were on vacation soul searching. You know, I was. I was really getting fed up and hard. Hard to cope with just the doldrum of what I had found my life to be at that point in. And how old were you?

[Unknown Host]

At that point?

[Mark Twain Spinali]

I would have been. Oh, man. Well, that was in 20. I would have been late 30s.

[Unknown Host]

Okay.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah.

[Unknown Host]

I mean it's not too young for a midlife crisis.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

No, no. I mean I, I did what I could for a long time and had. I made the best of it and I had, you know, great. I don't ever want to. It was me, not them, you know, is the point. I just had creative endeavors that I knew I was capable of. That I was not within the confines of the structure of the company, at least for me at that time, were not being. I just didn't have an outlet for them.

[Unknown Host]

So it sounds like you recognize that you were a square peg and a round hole and not that they had tried to jam you into that. Yeah, it just didn't fit well for you. I would rather have. It's not that I would rather. I feel like somebody recognizing that and making the choice for themselves to change trajectory is way healthier than recognizing that and staying in it because fill in the blank, whatever reason.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Absolutely. Yeah. And. And finances. I, I mean, I, I'm. I'm the first to tell you that we do, you know, we. God, we're so self sacrificing when it comes to our, our, our comfort zones and our stepping out of that box is, is the hardest Part there's some. There's been so much happiness on this. On the backside of the scariest decisions I've ever made. Yeah, same. And, and it's so I can't preach that enough to the general public when it comes to taking the leap to the thing that keeps, you know, scratching at your insides that you can't get rid of in the back of your mind. Oftentimes we will write that off for 20 plus years or, you know, pretty soon life's passed us by and, and we didn't pursue that. Just like, you know, you and I talked on the walk over here and regrets are more powerful than bad decisions through, through the growth that you can, you know, that you can experience through taking those leaps.

[Unknown Host]

So I was just gonna bring that up. I can't think of a worse situation than arriving at the end of your journey. The metaphorical deathbed.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Right.

[Unknown Host]

And the feeling that you are consuming. You're gonna probably be scared and fearful, right, because it's your transiting back into the multiverse or whatever the hell we're living in and. But being full of regret of things you wish you had done, experiences that you wish that you had, had, and your body is just no longer capable of doing that. I can't fathom how horrendous that would be in addition to the fact knowing that the end is upon you.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah, it's so scary. I mean, we're only here for literally like a flash in the pan. I, I've always had the ability, at least within my, within myself to, to realize even as things are new and shiny, like I'm going to get tired of this or I'm going to get like, this isn't going to be what it is to me today, forever. Go for it. I mean, just, just pursue it. And I'm still a product of poor decision making and learning, learning, learning through the hardships of it all. I mean, I can't stress that enough. I don't want to, I don't want to portray that I've got anything figured out here, but all I did know is that I did not have it in me to let my life slip away between the cracks and, and go on not chasing my dreams to the point where I knew I either I either failed or flew.

[Unknown Host]

The longer you waited in that decision, the worse it would have been too.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah, absolutely. So decided there in the, in the, in the latter years, years of a, of a decade long career with Nightforce Optics, that it just wasn't going to, you know, I was either going to be a lifer or else I was going to make some drastic life changes. Started the vintage Airstream, what I thought was going to be a restoration company. I always liked, I've always liked building creative projects, whether it be old classic pickup trucks or we personally owned that 66 Airstream trailer. And I knew from, from a business and marketing standpoint, I knew that there was a cult following around these old, old time trailers. And I also, through my own personal passion for them, had realized I've seen, you know, maybe not hundreds of these things out in, in the sticks like on these old country drives.

[Unknown Host]

Oh, they're out there, though.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah, they're, they're, they were my neck of the woods in the northwest of, of the country in, you know, north central Idaho. I kind of attribute it to. It's just a little bit behind time. So the people that there, there was not this knowledge that, oh, there's, these things are valuable and these things could, you know, there's people looking for them. So I, I started a company called Hells Canyon Vintage Airstream. And I thought I was just going to be turning wrenches and creating Airstreams, and I was cool with that. Right. Like, it wasn't going to be an office. It was no longer going to be a cubicle or a computer. I don't want, I don't want to take away the fact that I got to shoot a lot and get paid for it. I got to be, you know, I got, I got to travel all over the globe representing the company and doing all sorts of cool things. But the core responsibilities at the job were getting funneled more and more into a computer, telephone and, you know, cubicle space. So the, the Airstream thing, though, it went, it went from me having an idea what this business was going to turn out to be. To me, I wound up just having a knack for finding them out in, like I said, out, out in the country on these backroads drives.

[Unknown Host]

And is that how you would find them as well?

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah.

[Unknown Host]

Kicking curbs.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, it was, it was. I, I give people the visual of like American pickers. I mean, I.

[Unknown Host]

What was your pitch to the person when you found him? Well, because obviously finding him is the first part.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah.

[Unknown Host]

Leaving with it attached to your truck is the second part.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Absolutely. So the pitch was always. And at the time, it really wasn't a pitch. I just was bonkers, passionate about these things and the, the history and the, and the separation of what this is versus a 1967 versus, you know, a 1962. I was always. Whether they, whether I, you know, I felt like they were going to want to part ways with it or not. I was telling them stories about how this was, you know, this was towed behind an old international pickup across, you know, Africa, you know, not, that's not that particular trailer, but this model trailer similar to that.

[Unknown Host]

Yeah.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

So it was always kind of a correlation between the history and nostalgia of what it is that this thing is and that I'm just trying to make a small American dream come true in order to pursue creativity and pursue my, my, my version of the American dream at that time. So thought it was going to be a restoration company. What it turned out to be was a rescue and rehoming company where I literally just pulled it out of the field, you know, on flat tires. Didn't restore the trailer, but I would get it up, up and running enough for safe. Well, just for safe travel and just through connections and being passionate about these things. I found other restoration shops down in Southern California that had long lists of clients, projects on the books and no trailers to build these projects out of. So I began to just supply basically the raw materials of a project trailer to already established restoration shops. And for me that was already the funnest part because it was like, I mean it was, it was just an adventure out through the, through the country all the time, whatever that looked like, you know, complete freedom and complete self guided destiny in that sense. And I had a knack for, for not. There was plenty of money to be made in, in the final sale of what it was to the, to the established shops in California. So it wasn't, I didn't need to get them for pennies, you know, on the dollar from the. So a lot of these people were like, that thing is a piece of junk out in my field. What are you talking about? You know, I'm, you know, I'm like three, 4,000 bucks. I mean, what, you know, maybe the same price that somebody would pay for a good used older travel trailer that they could jump right in and use. And these things are hammered. Oh, they're hammered.

[Unknown Host]

Actually, they're probably not hammered. They're just abandoned.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Just abandoned? Neglected. A lot of them turn into storage units for people's junk that, you know.

[Unknown Host]

What was the coolest or most unique one that you found?

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Well, I wound up shopping. The entire western United States began to become my, my playground. Yeah, absolutely. And that's the thing. So prior to the Airstreams, I had really gotten into vintage Ford trucks. So I had built a 1964 Ford F100 short box little pickup that I had built it as like a shop truck, you know, like a little marketing vehicle. I don't know that, that, that people would know, but just like an original paint beat up scars, lots of, you know, patina is what it would be called.

[Unknown Host]

What was the. Michael. Today's a picture day, Michael. You're going to be so busy over there. What is it?

[Mark Twain Spinali]

An F F164 F100. Short wheelbase would be, would be a good.

[Unknown Host]

Whoa. What was that map you were on, Michael? Were you locating them already? No, it's just the computer being.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah, what was it?

[Unknown Host]

64.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah, 64 Ford F100SWB. That'll just give you the short wheelbase version of it. So yeah, this, this green truck with like sort of the company logo on the side door. That is, you know, off the cuff as close to what I was able to just cruise the country in knocking on doors. It was quite obvious I was passionate. I had my Airstream business on the door. You know, it was no mistake that when I was able to talk to these strangers that I this, this was goofily enough my, you know, my, my thing at that time in life.

[Unknown Host]

So how's the airbag package in that thing? Pretty robust?

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Fully custom? Yeah, yeah, Original. So, so that was part of it though was that I gotten into building these old trucks with the old shell over the top of Modern. Modern, yeah, modern drivetrain underneath. So as much as you would never know it from the outside looking in, but it had like a 2007 Ford Police Interceptor chassis underneath the whole thing. The wheelbase is identical, the body, literally. Yeah. So anyway, passionate about the trucks. Passionate about the thought that I get to like, I'm living a very creative life at this point versus the computer doldrum that I was up against. So got to travel the country had a knack for finding the trailers out in the wild and scooping them up, you know, for an affordable price. That everybody was happy with the price. And then I would always include my travel and delivery fees into the final sale to these shops down, down south, wherever they, wherever they happen to go. But most often Southern California. So I went from this team oriented, boxed in computer type life to the western United States as my playground. And I get to orchestrate these, these road trips. I mean, complete freedom road trips. I would tell the most obligation I had was I'll be there some. Sometime next week. You know, I mean, sometimes Wednesday to drop the trailer off. Was making a deal, was making a good enough living you know, I kind of, I hate to say it, I was, I was using more of the profits from the sales of the trailers as a way to see all of these back road corners of, of the United States that I always wanted to travel and see. And so I, I didn't. Once again, poor financial planning. But I didn't sell these with the Get Rich program. I mean, I was really trying to experience this creative version of my life. And I got to, I would take two or three week. You know, I never traveled back home the same direction and I would always take at least a couple of weeks going and visiting a new area of the country as I made my way back to Idaho to sort of start, rinse and repeat this whole cycle.

[Unknown Host]

What was the coolest one you found?

[Mark Twain Spinali]

19. I want to say 1950. 1952. Silver streak, maybe, maybe we can type this one in. 1953, it was early 50s, let's just call it a 50 52. And this one was made by a sort of a sister. Not, not an affiliated company, but there was a number, there was a handful of companies making Airstream esque trailers back, back in that day. Silver Streak, Alien Eyes. What?

[Unknown Host]

Yeah, I like this one already.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah.

[Unknown Host]

Whoa.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

So, yeah, the, the front and rear windows.

[Unknown Host]

See that looks like a mask.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

It's incredible. The, the go. The far left edge of the screen in that same second row down. That was what it looked like when I was finished with it. I did take the time to have it professionally polished, but that was, that is the model. I mean, that one still stands out. And when I found that, I found it down in wine country of California. At this point, my, my shopping grounds had expanded, you know, to a lot larger area. And the novelty of some of these more unique trailers was definitely a calling for me. So if I could figure out the math, like, okay, I can, I can travel down, I can pick this up and I can still see money at the end of. The end of the road once I make improvements to it. But I bought it down in. Yeah, gosh. Wine country of Central California.

[Unknown Host]

How'd you find it?

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Internet. You know, Craigslist at that time was, was a huge thing.

[Unknown Host]

I was, I've met some weird people on Craigslist.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah. I just started listening to Theo Vaughn interviewing the, the creator of Craigslist, and I'm, I'm already scratching my head.

[Unknown Host]

I. There's been times in my life, you know, where you got to sell some stuff to pay the bills.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah.

[Unknown Host]

And you know, random people on the Internet having your address can Net you some odd experience.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Oh, my God. I'm so. I. I'm. I discredit that. Nowadays I have so many folks, you know, wanting to come and see what you're building parts of the homestead firsthand, and I'm like, boy, I'm. I don't know how to handle that. I. First of all, we're not set up at all for it. You know, we. Our facilities are. My ability to be a good host, what I would consider to be a good host is lacking. But just back to this story real quick. You know, like, used this business as a fantastic excuse to rediscover myself and my creative. So, like, when I bought this trailer originally, Central California coast, you know, like, I towed this. That trailer up Highway. Highway 1, Coastal Highway.

[Unknown Host]

I've driven it many times. I'm from Santa Cruz, so.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah, so you're familiar. Yeah. So, you know, iconic American, American west highway.

[Unknown Host]

Beautiful coastal road, too.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Unbelievable.

[Unknown Host]

Not the most direct, but beautiful.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah. And that was the beauty of all of this. I was never in a hurry. Eventually, I wound up building a micro camper in the back of that 64 Ford, where I realized I was spending a lot of my profits just in the lodging that it took to travel all over the country. So that just as iconic as I could create my life at that time, I was able to make money in this instance, towing this very rare 50s trailer up Highway 1 from California all the way up to Washington, where I would just cut over, you know, back to the home. Not, I say the homestead, but at that time, just our. Our normal residential home. You know, I just built a. Built a new shop that I thought was going to be put. Put to good use doing the restorations of these things. And it. And it really just. It worked me out of that mindset into. You have a knack for finding these. You enjoy. You enjoy the communication between. Between these people. You've made the contacts that want. That are hungry for the trailers and. Yeah, so that was. That was my rebellious period away from corporate America. You know, I mean, Night Force was amazing. I learned so many. So that's what introduced me into the passionate world of training and. And anything to do with, like, I just grew up a hunter, you know, so we would hunt for deer and elk in Idaho, and it's a good place to do it. Oh, it's beautiful. I mean, unbelievable. I've got fantastic memories of my dad and my uncle out at hunting camp on a yearly, you know, annual basis. But as far as firearms went, you know, we. We were no different than the average Montana and probably like a paper plate at 100 yards to make sure that your 3 to 9 scope is on, is on target.

[Unknown Host]

I like it.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah, it's been known to work. It was cool but, but to find meaning within that, that Night Force role, I began to really, I mean I got hyper addicted and obsessed with long range precision shooting and stuff. Yeah. And, and it wasn't ever structured. I didn't shoot competitively. It was just always I had the, the public land, you know here within my close, close radius to home in Idaho. So but, but once again so Nightforce was, was incredible. I got really hooked on the, the bits and t. You know, bits and pieces of the tactical community and exposed to things that I just never dreamt of, you know within that company. Also got burned out on it went completely left field into the self employed vintage trailer restoration and, and rehoming. You know basically rescuing business. And, and I was kind of, I had the blinders on and was kind of tunnel vision on how do I take this to the next level. I just built a new shop in the back sort of area of our residential home. You know we sold a 20. Nothing fancy but like a 2700 square foot, you know home that we'd put a lot of work into making it, making it pretty and making it comfortable for us in town and then covet hit and my, my then girlfriend Heather, she said we can sell all this and buy land. Like you know it was not my. I like I said I had the blinders on with, with finally being self employed and making something of it. She's you of course you would hear whisperings of the real estate market at that time but she was the driving force to, to think. No it's like you know, it's a real thing. We could make a lot of money off of what we've built here and reinvest in, in being out in the country which we folks our age at that time, I think we're kind of unless you really had something creative in the works or, or business entrepreneurial in the works, a lot of people are just sort of accepting and getting locked into like this is not a bad life. It's not maybe my dream life, but we may not ever own that acreage kind of a scenario. And so I think there was probably about a six to eight month gestation period between you know, her mentioning it to, to like right now is the, it's a good time and it was never going to be an easy time. We, we, we set out to Reduce our belongings, you know, down to basically nothing. We didn't, we started, we started traveling in a radius around our current living, you know, where Heather is a labor and delivery nurse and have worked for the same regional hospital as a labor and delivery nurse for at that time going on 20 years. So she didn't want to. This life change wasn't really trying to move to a different region of the United States. We really just wanted to find land within the, within an out of town radius of where we were already at.

[Unknown Host]

And was the plan always with the idea of land to do it yourself? Because a lot of people would buy land and then their next step would be to find an architect.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Right.

[Unknown Host]

And then a gc.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah.

[Unknown Host]

So I mean there's a huge, there is a massive gap between those two categories.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yes. Land.

[Unknown Host]

I'm going to do this on my own. My beer.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah.

[Unknown Host]

Land. I'm going to go find an architect who does a Rolodex of GCS and they'll do it.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Right. So I have a hard time recollecting enough to tell you that we, we didn't know what the, the acreage that we were going to find is. And we were, of course, you know, the massive sale of the home was also soaked up in paying the home off, paying all the debts off. So even though we sold for this crazy dollar amount, we. And I say crazy from a small town, Idaho kids perspective. I mean not, not like we could just go buy anything we wanted, but we.

[Unknown Host]

You didn't get here in your private jet.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Oh God, no, no, no. So, but yeah, we. Heather's idea of this and her was very, you know, she, she was always aiming towards a more self sufficient existence and always aiming towards a more clean living life. Trying to step out of the typical support, just the typical supply chains and the typical surprises that we're always like a friend of mine we're talking this morning. It's like even a lot of the health food store nutrients and things we're learning later on were sort of just glorified versions of the grocery store items. You know, no doubt healthier probably, but.

[Unknown Host]

You know, just because it's farther out on the branch from the same tree.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Right.

[Unknown Host]

Tougher to make an argument that it's something completely different.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah, yeah. And, and a lot of folks were pulling the wall. You know, it had the right label and it had the right vibe check. But it really was found out later was, was not, not so true blue. So I gotta give credit to Heather for so much of the, the initial jump into. Into becoming, not. Not becoming more self sufficient because that's like such a broad category. I just look at self sufficient living as being in my own world, unwilling to hire anybody for help. And I'd say unwilling mostly just philosophically unwilling. I'm trying to figure out, I'm trying to problem solve and I'm trying to. Trying to make the money go as far as it can by not. With the real estate boom came the contracting boom and the price of having the simplest of jobs done became more, you know, maybe five to ten times what you could actually do it for yourself with materials and if you've got the time and the know how.

[Unknown Host]

I know exactly what you're talking about. The coffee shop that met at we built during COVID Oh sure. And I. My father was a masonry contractor when I grew up, so I'm not unfamiliar with being on job sites. However, I'm not an expert at it by any stretch.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Right.

[Unknown Host]

And he moved our family back to Santa Cruz after The earthquake in 89, the Loma Prieta earthquake, which this should not be a spoiler alert for anybody. When the tectonic plates shift masonry, brick and block, that doesn't always stack up well. So it's crumbling down.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah.

[Unknown Host]

I watched in real time, you know, supply versus demand in real time what he was able to charge for a fireplace and call it the early 90s.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yep.

[Unknown Host]

In comparison to what you could get for a fireplace now. And what were you going to say? No, like, okay, you're not going to fix your fireplace. So Fast forward to 2020 and we would get a lumber quote and it would be good for 24 hours.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Wow.

[Unknown Host]

And it might go up 30% the next day where it might go down 40% the next day. And hey, we need a panel to tie in all of our electricity at this site to go from city power to be able to flip switches on in the building. Well, there's only one company that's still open and you're in the queue and it'll be here in eight months.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Right.

[Unknown Host]

Okay. Okay. So, but brings me back. I. I had asked you and I'm still curious. What do you think flipped the timber industry on its head? I asked you earlier.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Oh yeah, sure.

[Unknown Host]

Your answer.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

You know, I don't know if it's. I don't know because I think it's so disconnected, you know, And I've tried to. I've tried to because I come from this background. I've always wanted to have a deeper understanding of that industry. I will say right off the Cuff that. My dad and, and mainly my dad because he's worked in the woods his whole life and has been through the roller coaster of the high times and the low times of that industry. He was always like, run as far as you can. Like, don't, don't, you know, do something, do something different than this. I've lost, personally lost two uncles that I can just immediately think of, you know, lost their lives in the woods, you know, falling trees and, or hauling logs. So, you know, from my dad's perspective, just trying to look out for his son, he was like, this is dangerous. It's, you know, the money's not there any longer. But honestly, Andy, I don't know. The, there's huge timber conglomerates in, in north central Idaho and, and maybe they're more widespread than I'm aware, but like Potlatch Timber Co. Is one of them. And, and I, my interpretation of, of those organizations is a lot of board members making decisions for, for these land holdings that don't live in the area and don't get to sort of see the end result of there. There's, there's playground areas of the woods just up the road from my place where I grew up, you know, in Idaho that are just, I'm not a, I'm not a tree hugger by any means, but they're just raped to say, you know, like it's ugly. I mean, I'm not the first person that's highly educated on the regrowth and you know, and I know that it's a renewable industry and you know, I'm not being judgmental of that, but I think, I don't know why the, why the industry went under. I just know that the, the small guys and, and the people that made the industry go round when it comes to actually harvesting the wood out of the woods and hauling it back into the mills and possibly even the mills themselves as well, but they, they, their life doesn't change. As we see these lumber prices go skyrocket. You know, when you had to go get framing quotes to frame up, you know, the, the black rifle location. It's wild because you talk to local industry loggers and their wage is not fluctuating with these, it's not going up 30% a day and the next. No. So I mean, I, I don't want to overstep my bounds and claim that I know why the industry overall has kind of just fizzled. But one thing I can tell you is that the nuts and bolts, the dudes, the, the hard working people that are making the industry go round on the, in the small town or the small boots on the ground sense are not, they're not being. I believe it just became outpriced to, to, to continue production of wood, harvest and selling the wood. I mean the equipment alone, you know, that they're, that they're investing in to, to have a now modern logging company. You do a million, you know, million dollars for.

[Unknown Host]

I'd say that's probably entry level.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah.

[Unknown Host]

Millions.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah. For, for these things that, you know, somebody used to be, you know, stand at the base of a tree with us with a saw doing the. Being a sawyer and sawing the tree down himself. But now it's like, you know, something that looks like came off transformers and grabs the tree and saws it and, and I do like watching those YouTube. Oh, I love it, man. Yeah. I'm not judging at all. It's much safer. I think the deaths, you know, the, the injuries are a lot less and I'm not, I'm not being judgmental of that, but the barrier to entry.

[Unknown Host]

The family organizations aren't going to be able to match a conglomerate and their ability to source those type of equipment.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yep.

[Unknown Host]

And then the next thing you know, their production goes through the roof. Yeah. How can you can be competitive in that market?

[Mark Twain Spinali]

So I think they just got. I think the ability to afford to play in the game just became the math wound up not being there. You know, I grew up with one of my best friends in elementary all the way through high school. His dad, stepdad owned one of the more successful logging operations in our small town. And you know, they were. They were kind of the comfortable family when it come to, you know, just spoiling their. Their children a little bit more than what. What we were used to. And, and, but I watched the whole, the whole cycle run its course and, and before too long they were. Luckily they had invested in properties and other things like that, but they, but by the end of it, they sold off almost everything in order to try to maintain the, the, the logging business. And so once again, I don't, I don't know the, the technical reasons why it all failed, but really just. I think everybody got out priced and the, and the payoff for what the work they were doing and the, the lumber that they were bringing out of the woods wasn't paying the bills. Yeah.

[Unknown Host]

All right, so you find your property?

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yep.

[Unknown Host]

Did you have any idea of the size, scope or scale of what you wanted to build?

[Mark Twain Spinali]

No, we, we really were trying to operate within the confines of first and foremost we, we wanted to find a property that was within commuting range to like I said, Heather's sort of bona fide career at that point outside of, of finding something that was close enough. And, and a lot of people ask me questions about how do you find land like this? How do you find land with water? You know what the, the biggest separating factor and common denominator that, that is the reality of our scenario is that we weren't shopping to relocate across the country. We weren't looking at an Internet ad of what this property may or may not be. Yeah, we were able to go, you know, take an afternoon road tripping around our region and hike in these places that were for sale. So it's always hard, it's more difficult for me to advise a lot of the people that I would love to help narrow their search and quicken their dream along for finding these incredible properties. But our scenario was we were just looking for something within, maybe on the outer edges, maybe a two hour radius from where we were already existing living, but we did not know the scale. We, we first of all wanted to find the property that made sense. And, and we live in a sort of a mix of, of landscape and terrain. Anywhere from agricultural, farm, you know, field land to just upriver where I was born and raised. Much more timber and steep mountain. Not, not mountainous in the high peaks, mountainous sense, but much more canyons and rivers and timber. So we, we didn't want barren, you know, open farm land necessarily. We, we were always attracted to the more the sparse timbered areas within those, within that landscape. But we.

[Unknown Host]

Today's episode is brought to you by Fabric by Gerber Life. We're going to be talking about term life insurance, which is a topic that I did not think about very much when I was younger. Even when I first started having kids, even when I was in the military, there was insurance provider called the SGLI and it was easy to opt in but so many people got additional insurance on top of that. I was not one of them. I just didn't truly consider the risk, I guess of that particular job. And actually even after I got out, I'm not going to sit here and say that skydiving and wingsuit base jumping is actually safe. It can be done as safely as possible. My point in all of that is that nobody knows how much time we have left. And regardless of what I want to do with my remaining lap around the track, I may not be given that opportunity. That doesn't mean that I should only think about the things that I want to do. The way that I'm viewing this now is I think about not only the things that I want to do, but let's start thinking about some variables here. What if I'm not here to do those things and I have a wife and three children left behind? What can I do to help them? What can I do to set them up? I won't be able to really give them guidance anymore, but is there something that I can leave behind that would assist them in their life and the things that they would want to do? And that's where Fabric by Gerber Life comes in. You may be asking yourself, what is Fabric by Gerber Life? It is term life insurance you can get done right from your couch, all online and on your schedule. You could be covered in under 10 minutes with no health exam required. If you have kids, and especially if you're young and healthy, the time to lock in a low rate is actually right now. It's not when the health issues could potentially be occurring later on in your life. Fabic has flexible, high quality policies that fit your family and your budget. Like a million dollars in coverage for less than a dollar a day. There's no risk. There's a 30 day money back guarantee and you can cancel at any time. They have over 19005 star reviews on Trustpilot with a rating of excellent. And Fabric was designed for busy parents like you. And it's more than just life insurance. It's free digital wills, access to investment accounts to invest in your kid's future and more. And you can manage it all right from your phone. So here is the offer to the listeners. If this sounds interesting to you, you can join the thousands of parents who trust Fabric to help protect the family. Apply today in just [e-mail] ClearedHot that's meatfabric.com Cleared Hot mike echo tango fabric.com Cleared Hot. Policies are issued by Western Southern Life Assurance Company. Not available in certain states. Prices subject to underwriting and health questions. Let's get back to the episode.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Granted, we didn't have this nest egg of our home sale before. So we're just fictitiously being dreamers thinking we're going to sell this house. So let's go look for property. We didn't have it. We didn't have any money to buy the properties.

[Unknown Host]

We were looking for window shopping.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

We were exactly. We were absolutely window shopping. And we were just, you know, trying to use it as a case study for who knows, maybe something will be Available, but think. But properties and homes were being bought and sold within days of being listed at that time. We're talking mid summer of 2021.

[Unknown Host]

Oh, yeah.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

You know, we're 18 months into sort of the. The. The splash of COVID even being a thing. And so, yeah, the real estate market was absolutely bonkers. We. We basically just went and walked this property that we found listed on Facebook Marketplace, as I'm not sure if it was even real estate listed at that point or if it was property listed or owner listed. Went and poked around enough to figure out where it was and find it, and hiked the property. It had an archaically developed water source in the way of a natural spring on the land, and it had one power pole, so there was no outbuildings, there was no structures, there was no anything. We weren't able to shop in the realm of hundreds of acres. We were looking for no neighbors and a remote feel. And so what we found in this property was like, it's cliche. Everybody says, oh, you walk in that house and you just know that's the one. Or you walk on that land and you have this. There was a deep seated feeling of, wow, this feels way different than all the 20 other properties that we've went and visited. We love this.

[Unknown Host]

How many acres?

[Mark Twain Spinali]

14 acres.

[Unknown Host]

Okay.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah, nothing. Nothing to, you know. Yeah, nothing to write a book about when it comes to land ownership in the grand scheme of also nothing to.

[Unknown Host]

Turn your nose about either.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

No, we're not. We're not being. We're so grateful for everything that we've. The opportunities that have come about in this. In this journey. But. But we weren't really shopping. We were shopping for bare land, and we were. We were planning on doing it ourself. We didn't know what that. We didn't know the magnitude of what that. What that would look like or what that meant. At the time, I knew I was capable. I was building small living structures in the way of. Of these vintage trailers. Mechanical abilities enough. And I got to give it to the modern information age of. Of the Internet.

[Unknown Host]

You fill in the blank.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah. YouTube and Google up to that. You know, even up to this morning in my life, whether good, bad, or indifferent, is if you've got passion to want to learn and the subject matter that you're not trying to convince yourself to learn about. I just feel like humans can accomplish things easier right now, today, than ever before in history when it comes to something they really want to set as a goal and have a burning desire to conquer I agree.

[Unknown Host]

What is your pie in the sky desire for development of this 14 acres? What is it you're trying to build?

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Well, so when we first bought the property, we, we. We only set out to, to have no neighbors and to, to build out in the country. What that, what we thought that looked like to begin with was probably 1000% traditional building techniques. And I wasn't trying to reinvent the wheel in any of the, the construction of our systems. But what I found is that with. Honestly with, with the twinge of COVID being sort of an influence in everybody's daily life there and supply chains and just the, the slight taste of instability that we had experienced at that point in our, in our short lived life, I thought, man, if, you know, this is. So we need to build a septic system, we need to build a water system. Like, okay, this is the traditional method of doing that. And these are the most widely known modern ways of doing that. But how can we. So I set out at every one of those crossroads like, okay, we need to build a water system. We have grid power on the property. We don't have real like spread out access to that grid power. But I, I have the option for, for to build, you know, just a traditional home in the country, I guess is, is what I'm trying to paint a picture of. But every time I came to that crossroads, I thought, well, how can I, how can I investigate and build some sort of a backup plan into this modern standardized version of a well pump and a well, you know, a pump pressurized water system. So I just found myself at all these crossroads of research thinking, okay, I want, I want these, these modern comforts and amenities, but I also want to have some sort of a backup plan in an, in an off grid sense of, of. Of. Of property development.

[Unknown Host]

So I, you want the comfort of modern living, but the sustainability of having it.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah.

[Unknown Host]

Designed the way you want on the grid that you want it to be.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah. And having the insurance policy of if all else fails and falls apart, like can. Let's try to think about, think towards the future of how can we maintain minimal comforts within this property by planning for those systems in. At the very initial stages of property development. So Heather was all about that from the beginning. Oh God. Yeah, I can't. Yeah, I can't. You know, everybody, a lot of my, A lot of my audience is like, oh, I'd love to meet Heather. You know, I can't believe that you're dragging her through this. In a. Maybe not. I say in an Innocent manner, maybe not. You know, everybody likes to troll and poke fun on the interwebs, but she's, she's gung ho. She is as much of a driving force behind this lifestyle as I could ever be. And so anyway, just research into, okay, this is the traditional, modern 2000s way of doing, doing this type of property development what it looked like 100 years ago. How, how could I, you know, how could we investigate a backup plan for this traditional system? And so when you say pie in the sky, what started out as just like we just want to live in a nice farmhouse in the country that we built ourself. Not necessarily thinking fully off grid or maybe not even considering trying to do something off grid at all has turned into these small challenges that have fed my creativity and fed my, honestly fed my insurance side of me for, you know, for preparedness and, and then just challenges in the sense that what I set out to have, okay, let's just. I use the water system as a common example, but a 220 volt water pump operated water, you know, rural water system. But now I want this off grid backup plan. The off grid research and property development became so successful through my obsessions just and nothing more, honestly, just through my small brain becoming intrigued by, by old way, old world ways became so successful that the, that the off grid option became the plan A. And so now we're looking at, you know, installing power to these areas of the property as a, like fire suppression if I need to move a lot a shitload of water all at one time in the case of emergency. But the more simplistic off grid versions of these systems have become so successful without my knowledge of that even being a possibility, that I'm now really sort of hooked on the challenge and hooked on the drive to and the accomplishment. I've got a little bit of accomplishment in my back pocket at this point thinking you can do things that you never dreamt. You know, you can maintain your quality of life, you can maintain your quality of living through these simple systems that in a way it's combining philosophy from 100 years ago with the tweaks of the little modern products that we have available through technology. And not that they're technological products, but everything's been improved upon. So whether it be sprinkler heads that can run off of low PSI of water pressure, those weren't available 100 years ago. But now by running a gravity powered water system and having these new modern little tools in the way of irrigation sprinkler heads, you're Able to accomplish these things that really haven't been possible up until present day.

[Unknown Host]

100 years ago, their brains would have exploded if you would pitch them that concept.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah, I know, right? Yeah. It's so true.

[Unknown Host]

You mentioned your audience.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah.

[Unknown Host]

When did you start bringing people along on this journey? Because your, your audience.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah.

[Unknown Host]

Is huge.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Sure.

[Unknown Host]

Did it grow rapidly, slow over time? And I bet almost immediately, correct me if I'm wrong.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah.

[Unknown Host]

People started reaching out, saying, how are you doing this? Because this is what I want to do too.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yes, absolutely. It's, it's, it's humbling because we've always been just far enough ahead of the, the, the curve in, in general population, you know, wanting to make these life changes that I never saw it as anything special. You know, I didn't think that I was, it was just your life. You lived your life. It was just the natural progression of our story. It wasn't. But I, so I started, I started taking a note to social media and the possible importance of a social media presence and sharing your journey and, and documenting your journey. Really. Like, I, I, I always get this little twinkle in my eye about if, if, if everything is as stable as it is now Today, you know, 60 years down the road, I think it'll be really cool for my grandchildren to be able to flip on a channel and see how this property came about, you know, like. So documenting the journey has always been a core thought in me wanting to share these projects and things. But I started sharing on social media back when I was doing the vintage trailers. Really just wanted to show this sort of once again niche interest that you can turn into an entrepreneurial lifestyle and buy back some of your freedom, you know, buy back some of your own choosing of the direction that your life goes on your own. And I didn't have any, any preconceived thoughts that it could ever turn into what it is now. I mean, it's, it's once again just humbling.

[Unknown Host]

But was there a time where it just levered and accelerated rapidly?

[Mark Twain Spinali]

20. 2020. When? Not basically during COVID Yeah, during COVID Son of a. Yeah, absolutely.

[Unknown Host]

I'm sitting in New York City locked in my concrete jungle, and you're out there digging a trench on your own, on your own property.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Absolutely. No, that's exactly where it was. I get it. 2021 is when we bought the property. We immediately, we immediately we sold everything that we own. We, we. I just got to touch on this before we move forward, but we, we, we listed our house, we sold it in Four days cash offer. That's what I'm talking about. Four days. We kind of. And we knew that that was going to happen, or at least we knew that it was a high percentage chance. We had a 48 hour window where we had keys to our house that we just sold and title to our new acreage that had jack shit on it and nowhere to put anything. So that alone was just an absolute shit show of trying to figure out how do you do, you know, we've got some chickens, we've got a couple goats, even on our little urban farm.

[Unknown Host]

Maybe the new buyers wanted those.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah, right. Yeah.

[Unknown Host]

Maybe they didn't know that they wanted those and it would be a journey of discovery when they found them.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

I think had we offered them up, that would have. That would have absolutely been accepted.

[Unknown Host]

You actually might have been able to charge more like, listen, this is the rustic experience.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

It's a lifestyle.

[Unknown Host]

Yeah. This is what you're looking for. We're gonna throw in at an additional cost, a few things that's gonna help.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

You two goats, 17 chickens, ease into.

[Unknown Host]

What you guys have now signed up for.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah. No, it was, it was, it was a major, you know, like, we've never been afraid of big scary decisions and, and taking that leap. Just, we just boiled it down to the work involved in actually packing, moving and. But we didn't have, you know, a great big grand scheme plan. But we did only have. We had 48 hours. We sold, you know, in the coming months, up to the point of selling, we. We sold pretty much all the garbage. Maybe shouldn't discredit.

[Unknown Host]

I think you're headed down the right direct path because how empowering does that feel when you start carving away the excess? I think I've told Michael this, but who I haven't told is my wife.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah.

[Unknown Host]

When she's not at home, I get rid of stuff.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah.

[Unknown Host]

And she doesn't really listen to the podcast, so I think we're safe. Michael, I'll kill you if you tell her. Because the strategy has been working well for me.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Absolutely.

[Unknown Host]

You know how many things she's noticed?

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah. Not a, Not. Not a single one of them. It's true, man.

[Unknown Host]

Now, having said that.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah.

[Unknown Host]

I'm being strategic.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yes.

[Unknown Host]

I'll look in the boxes that are in the back first. I'll leave that sucker out there, and then eventually you can move the box away. I don't, I don't mess with, like, her stuff. Stuff.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Right, right. Storage.

[Unknown Host]

But I mess with some of the other stuff.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Oh, I don't Blame you, man. I think everybody could take. Take some serious advice to heart from that. And. And we most powerful philosopher of our.

[Unknown Host]

Time, also known as Bradley Pitt, said in the documentary movie Fight Club, a line that is incredibly true.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah.

[Unknown Host]

The things that you own end up owning you.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Absolutely.

[Unknown Host]

And man, it feels good. It mortifies Leah probably twice a year.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah.

[Unknown Host]

I will get rid of almost every T shirt that I own.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Right.

[Unknown Host]

I cannot stop people from sending me T shirts.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

I know.

[Unknown Host]

It is not a matter of me not having something to wear out of the house.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Right.

[Unknown Host]

She is more. I mean, and I love some of the shirts. Like I wear my friends.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Oh, absolutely.

[Unknown Host]

I wear my friend's stuff.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah.

[Unknown Host]

And even I can't stop them from sending me their stuff. There's not enough days in the week or month or year for me to wear the shirts.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Right, right.

[Unknown Host]

For everybody who sends me stuff. Thank you so much. I am incredibly grateful. I'm not going to keep it forever.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Absolutely.

[Unknown Host]

That nerds her out.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah.

[Unknown Host]

It does not nerd me out.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah. That's awesome. Well, you're so true. I mean, being able to whittle down our lives into what really matters is a core element of maybe moving forward with a new state of mind. Maybe moving forward with a new weight lifted off your shoulders.

[Unknown Host]

I was gonna say it can make you feel a little bit more weightless.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yes, absolutely. And all of these things are exercises of. Exercises that, that show you how much more you're capable of. I mean, initially, it's just the. It's the necessity to not have this much to move. But the byproduct of that is I feel. I feel so much better without all this.

[Unknown Host]

You're more able to.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah. And I. And I was able to part ways with it without it crushing me. Like I've always had the thought, like the, you know, so it's. It's all one. It's cyclic, you know, as you make these life changes, as you begin to simplify things. It feeds itself. At least it did for us. So we knew that we were just going to lease like a 20 foot shipping container, you know, that we could have delivered to the couple of flat spots on the land. And so we really had. That was all we had in the back of our mind. We. We. We bought an inexpensive old RV like a motorhome. We had till midnight the night of the 48 hours to get the out and we ordered pizza and we jumped in this old shitty motorhome and we headed towards the new property and we had moved everything out there. We just had these piles of our belongings tarped. You know, luckily it was in mid summer of, of, of a pretty nice climate where we live in the summer. So we later then got the, the shipping container delivered and placed and, and, But I mean I had a whole shot. You know, I kept, I kept all my tools. I kept everything that I knew that would, you know, obvious things that would be required to, to rebuild our life. But it was a, it was a fraction of what we had and, and a fraction of what, of the comfort of what we had for the longest time. We had, you know, shit, we had a, we had a propane powered shower, you know, like hung up in a tree next to the spring water source.

[Unknown Host]

Where probably some of the best showers of your life.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Absolutely. Like, I mean I, I just because.

[Unknown Host]

It'S new doesn't mean it's better.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Oh no, I mean it's.

[Unknown Host]

So when you were describing how your plan B kind of became your plan A. Yeah. Thinking evolution is almost always talked about in terms of a lever forward in either ability or quality or technology.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yep.

[Unknown Host]

And sometimes that's just not the case.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

No.

[Unknown Host]

Yeah. I mean, sure. Can a propane shower be a little bit more complex to use? And is it?

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah.

[Unknown Host]

Is it as convenient as being able to pull your shower curtain across now untapped hot water?

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah.

[Unknown Host]

No. But I'm thinking of showering in the woods.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Oh, it's, I mean, come on, it's unmatched. I mean, I mean, and I'm, you know, I, I, I don't take anything from it. I'm just also trying to, I'm trying to, to make this lifestyle accessible to a wider range of people that may not be so easily extreme in, in what they're willing to give up and, and, or sacrifice. And so I just always enter the conversation with the knowledge that not everybody's me when it comes to like, but that those were my best showers on the property. I mean those were some of the, the simplest times. Like, I mean for the longest time. I hadn't thought of this for years but you know, the, the spring overflow ran into this little horse trough thing. Well, rather than going and buying ice at the, you know, at the closest place that we could haul ice and keep it as long as we could in a nice cooler, that that cold water that just comes out of the mountain became our little, you know, little juice cooler. Whatever, whatever. We had our cans thrown inside of that in that little water trough. And it just. The simplest things. But I mean, I'll still remember those Memories when I'm on that deathbed that we talked about earlier as probably some of the most pure moments that we've, that we've had.

[Unknown Host]

And if shit does hit the fan, yeah. That system's still going to work.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I don't, I don't. I think I take for granted how many of the fears have been erased from my mentality of what we can put up with and how do we approach this without this and the, the problem solving and challenges that come with this for us. Buying what I'll say is raw land with, you know, with. Not with, with nothing there other than just a couple amenities and working from, from there outward, it takes, it takes a long time. It takes a lot of work. I, I'm, I'm a, I'm a glutton for punishment because no matter how hard it is and no matter how the time span has grown past our initial hopes that we would be working and building on our, you know, our forever home at this point.

[Unknown Host]

What was your initial timeline you gave yourself?

[Mark Twain Spinali]

I mean, you know, I think this.

[Unknown Host]

Thing knocked out in six months.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

No problem. No, no. The, the land. So we're on this, we're on a steep slope of a canyon wall, timbered. Not a lot of flat land at all with it. And initially at that time, back to, I guess kind of ties back into the logging stuff. But my dad, one of his earliest woods bosses, became his longtime good friend and was much older than him. But when he passed away, he left my dad a cat D7 dozer in his will. So my dad didn't really use this thing for a lot of things and it wasn't a fancy. It was in late 60s piece of logging equipment. But he was able to bring that thing up there to our property and sort of help us reimagine what we could do with the land. And, and we didn't, you know, we didn't change a lot. We just, we just maximized the flat. Yeah, the flat areas. Yeah. We needed as much flat as we could. We even, even with that, we have, you know, we're, we're more spread out like a, like a homestead of outbuildings. Then, then we can put everything, you know, within walking range of, of, you know, something like you'd see a modern house, but, but the, the property itself raw. So we, I think that we had this. We hadn't put our finger on it because we didn't know how we were learning as we went with development of a rural acreage like this, but I think in the back of our minds, we thought a couple years at the most before we were maybe living in our. In our forever home, if not at least building our forever home.

[Unknown Host]

And how many years ago was that?

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Three years ago. So, yeah, we're, we're. We're. We're a humble. We're a humble pictation of what. What we thought we might be poss. You know, what we thought we were possible of a little bit. You know, there's a little bit of. Of sometimes I heard you talking about not too long ago that you hate. It was like on Full Auto Friday, but you were talking about you just hate saying things and then for some odd reason they don't. They don't happen. You know, they don't wind up coming true and not.

[Unknown Host]

And I like to under promise and over deliver.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yes. And I've always, I've always been that guy in my personal relationships and my especially, you know, I'm always learning different sides of business and. But one thing I can tell you with, with being that glutton for punishment and trying to be committed to doing all of this homestead building on my own. Oh man, I can't tell you how many times I kick my own self in the nuts with I said this. And God, I just have to accept that I can't. Yep. And so it sucks. It sucks.

[Unknown Host]

Painful tuition payments.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

It really is. And, and you know, not taking any. It's just a. It's a hard arena to play in. I mean, that's, that's the strong point of that statement, is that a guy can watch YouTube all you want on the consolidated process of building this thing and think and, and, and then sort of apply your own skill set to that activity. And Heather's real good about telling me at this point, like, I'm going to build that concrete pad and that little, you know, that little gazebo roof and this, this thing. And it'll, you know, it might take me a week, two weeks. And she's, you idiot. She's like, that's two months. I mean, you have to, you have to start. Really.

[Unknown Host]

This is why we need high power women in our lives, because men are idiots.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Oh, we're so unreal.

[Unknown Host]

Tell you that we can do anything.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah.

[Unknown Host]

And let me tell you, we cannot. But we will tell you we can.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

I'm so confident every time. I'm not, I'm not trying to pull the wool on anybody or flat out lie to anybody about even myself. I'm just overzealous with my ambition for what I know I can Achieve. And what I want to do with the reality of the research that goes along with the process. Like a lot of what I'm doing is. All of what I'm doing is brand new to me. I didn't, I didn't, you know, I've worked every sort of job that you could strum up in a small town. You know, some, some laboring, some, you know, the, the peon for contractors. Just, just all like a taste of all sorts of different industries and. But I've never been a pro at any of this shit. Like, I mean, not even the slightest bit. So you got to be seen at.

[Unknown Host]

Least a little bit now of some of the similar problems. Because. Not that I don't. I'm about to say construction is construction and I don't mean that in like the huge sense.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yes.

[Unknown Host]

But you know, angles being level things.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yes.

[Unknown Host]

You're gonna start to encounter similar issues, which I bet you'll be able to knock.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Absolutely. Like, I'm already so grateful for. And that's one of the things that just feeds the monster master in this whole journey is, you know, if we, if we stumbled across a pile of money tomorrow, I'm, I'm still not gonna, I'm not gonna skip from A to Z. I, I love this. Yeah, I love this process. It'll definitely make life easier to fund these projects a little bit more graciously. But I'm not the, I'm just not interested in the shortcut. And that's come with the accomplishment of just like you say, pieces beginning to fall into place, like, oh, I can do that. There's nothing I haven't been able to fix or make work even with bare, minimal raw materials. And our life might be under a microscope, less glamorous than a lot of folks out there that, that, that can't grasp this concept of, of building a homestead or the homesteading lifestyle in general. But the winds are so important. I mean, there's, are, they're so meaningful there. Yeah. So, so what do you have built.

[Unknown Host]

Out there so far?

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah. Okay, so the biggest thing, water system, septic system. And when I say water system, I mean like distribution throughout, you know, probably a five acre parcel of our land, you know, all throughout future outbuildings, future greenhouse. So basically I've never had to think so far into the future of. I don't want to re. Dig this. What does this look like? I'll probably break some stuff if I have to do this again later down the road. You know, just the, the thought process that goes into what's going to be here? Where's it going to sit? But water system meaning underground distribution of the spring water that we've developed ourself throughout a multi acre parcel of our ground that took a year and a half to complete like just this last spring. So I guess it was last May or April was the first time that we have used water out of a spigot. We had one water access point from the archaic spring that I had told you was already part of the property when we bought it. So we live off of a garden hose. We're, we're filling our water through that garden hose constantly. But after this water distribution system last spring was the first time that we like sort of lifted the handle on a frost free spigot and had water that we made happen come, come out of our, out of our ground. So as simple as that might sound, that was monumental for us. We've got a third of an acre area that will all become herb, herb and plant garden. My Heather, she's like her roots are in western medicine and the nursing scene and labor and delivery, but she's, she's a super passionate herbal medicine maker practitioner. So, so a big part of, of, you know, a big part of our usable and accessible acreage is, is going to be isolated to food production and then medicine production. When it comes to natural plant medicine water system, we've got our septic system in. But of course I was of the belief that I wanted to build the infrastructure of the property before we finalized with the home. I sometimes have second guesses on how I interpreted this life and maybe some of the hang ups that have come with that. But that's the path that we're on. We've developed all of the, all of the systems that will hook into the house before we, before we'll have broke ground on digging the foundation for the home.

[Unknown Host]

Is that next for you guys?

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yes, it is. It's. But once again, and I got to be honest with your honest or with your audience and honest with myself because I don't want people to be misled by the realities of this lifestyle is we're now operating out of pocket like we had this nest egg from the sale of our home and the sale of our old life. But the future of what we're able to produce is going to be solely based on how we can turn our homestead into an income and turn our life. You know, this content platform that I've been building for a number of years now were now operating even not, not underwater. But we're now operating. So I want to say, you know, there was a time that we just kind of committed to the fact that we're going to be starting our, you know, breaking ground neck this, this later this year in the spring financially. There's been some things come up in the meantime that I think have humbled me once again and, and made me more so start to button my lip and, and not speak out of turn. But that's next. The, the house will be, I mean we've got fencing and pasture and greenhouse and, and small barn that we need to, to construct all like sort of little outbuilding projects. But the major tearing up of the earth in, in a beautiful way, you know, reconfiguring the flats on the earth, making more flat ground and then doing a lot of the work that you just wind up covering over with in, in waterline ditches and electrical conduit ditches that, so that we'll be able to.

[Unknown Host]

Nobody knows it's there but you do.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Oh my God. It's, it's, it's, it's unbelievable. Like, and maybe it's a good thing that we started with this. With the stuff that you wind up backfilling back over and you're like what the fuck did I do for the last year?

[Unknown Host]

I think you have to, I think you have to build the infrastructure that you're going to connect to.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yes.

[Unknown Host]

Going the other direction. Let's just build the house first and we'll build everything else around it.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yep.

[Unknown Host]

What if you find out that all the areas you're going to build around it were untenable to what you want to put there Right now? You got a problem?

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yes, I, I, it was always in the, my gut feeling to do it this way, but I, you know, at times that I've been questioning myself now as we still live in these old ass like little RVs, you know, trying to, trying to get to the point that, that we're, that will eventually be at. I've often wondered God, why, why doesn't anybody do it this way? Or you know, why don't I see it being done this way. But I really have felt in my gut that this was the, this was the right play of events to, to get to the point of. I mean the home won't be the, the, the grand finale of this homestead. There will always be improvements and ways of making things better, but we'll be much closer to that stage of let's go sit in our rocking chairs on the porch for a minute like the rest of the has been accomplished through all of this blur of becoming new homesteading folks and building this ground or building this property from the ground up. So.

[Unknown Host]

So as your audience grew, I mean, I follow you on Instagram. Do you use other platforms as well?

[Mark Twain Spinali]

I do.

[Unknown Host]

Don't say the T word.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah, yeah.

[Unknown Host]

You understand that's not built for our generation, right?

[Mark Twain Spinali]

I do, yeah, I do, I do, I do. Yes, I do.

[Unknown Host]

It's unacceptable.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah. I'm, I'm present on any. On YouTube as well. YouTube as well. Facebook as well. I know that Facebook, you know, I.

[Unknown Host]

Think Facebook, most people would say is built for our audience, if not older, which I believe is called the boomer audience.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah, yeah. Which, which honestly, like, I've been very fortunate to realize that this way of life is not age group specific. You know, I have, I get messages constantly from people, you know, that are, that are 20 years my senior that are still, oh, we can't, you know, we can't wait. We're just a. The biggest. One of the most inspiring things to me is that there's such a desire to step away from whatever it is the general population has gotten themselves wrapped up in, in daily life and living maybe I guess residential. I'm not, you know, I never have the full picture of what these people that are messaging me, what their reality looks like. But everybody is in the, what I call the dream state of starting this journey. You know, I'm going to fill in the blanks a little bit for them and tell you that what that means in the back of my mind is that they're going to buy land in the country and make a simple goal of becoming more self reliant and self sufficient in their existence in the remainder of their life. But it's really inspiring to. I just didn't know. I mean, I've always been sort of a niche interest, sort of dude. Never thinking that this was a widely appealing, you know, vintage trailers, precision shooting. It's always sort of this like sort of smaller crowd that I don't assume everybody's going to find comfort or understanding in why I'm so obsessed with these things. But homesteading and the self sufficient movement in this world right now is so much more broad than I ever would have given credit to it.

[Unknown Host]

How did you structure it? So you're on the plat on all the, I'll call them content platforms for lack of a better term. How did you structure it and when did you start thinking about building that into a business that could sustain what it is that you're Building. Because having an audience is one thing.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yes.

[Unknown Host]

Having an audience that is willing to support from a financial perspective or in. There's the other side of that too. What do you offer them? You have to figure out what it is of value that you're going to offer somebody if you're going to separate a dollar from their wallet. I'm curious how you manage that growth and turned it into a business or if you would even describe it as a business or a passion project, hobby, whatever the word may be.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

No, I mean, that's sort of a key element to my current growth. Right now I'm only just buckling down on. Okay, let me back up just a little bit. When I first started to monetize off of these platforms and began to make. I've always, I've always just wanted to provide informational content for like authentic informational content for, for an audience. I, I never really foreseen trying to make the need to have to make a business out of it.

[Unknown Host]

I would describe your content as, hey, Mark.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah.

[Unknown Host]

This is what I'm doing.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Sure.

[Unknown Host]

And this is how I'm doing it.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

I appreciate that.

[Unknown Host]

That's what it comes off to me as a consumer of the content you create.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Absolutely. And to this point, I'm sort of a victim of my own lack of, of, of business and knowledge understanding to grow it beyond that. Because initially I, I was, I was naive, I think, enough to think that I'm, I've always been like just this ridiculous dreamer when it comes to, to all these different creative endeavors. And so when I first began to monetize, meaning reach these thresholds within the, the structure of the platforms, the requirements for whatever it is.

[Unknown Host]

Yeah.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

So I began to get paid for basically just the number of people watching my videos from these platforms about a year and a half ago. So about halfway through, we were, we were basically operating off of our nest egg up until that point from the sale of our home. The, the fact that we paid everything off. We have very little bills when it comes to, to, you know, normal people's lives maybe, but I was really like striving to try to want to do more in the way of. Well, for one, I could see the nest egg running out. So I'm like, what the hell? How the hell is this supposed to work?

[Unknown Host]

You know, we're on outgoing only here.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah. We're fully committed. Like, we're locked in. What the fuck are we gonna, how are we gonna make this, make something? And that, in a nutshell, is a learning experience. All of its Own. But to. To simplify here, I'm like looking up at the sky often thinking, I don't know what. I don't know what. What's my next move? What. What do I do here to try to begin to capture all sorts of people's attention. And that was, that was always a, that was always a orchestrated desire and hope in the back of my mind. But I never also foreseen that, that it would become so out of control. And, and what's the platform that you have? The largest followership on Facebook honestly is 1.2 million.

[Unknown Host]

No.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah. And. And I say that and, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna follow up with the fact that they are the least concerned. Like, I don't know if they just signed on. You know, Facebook is a real roller coaster of engagement. You don't, you know, you can. There were times in those early days of. So I was a product of understanding short form content fairly early on and understanding, not that I'm a pro at anything, but understanding how to build pieces of short form content. And prior to just about the. I knew it back from the early days of that T word because that was the, that was the initial platform that anybody. That was kind of like our first taste of, of 90 second videos and.

[Unknown Host]

If not shorter, actually.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah, I mean it could have been. I'm always stuck in this 90 second time frame. But that was. So I played around with that a little bit back in gosh, probably like 2018, 2019 stuff. And I, I amassed a little bit of a following there. Like a hundred thousand people, a lot of a lot through some of the DIY projects of my classic trucks building and doing so. But I had this understanding of like sort of the way that you added a short form piece of content and then. So when, when I began to want to document the homestead and the, the projects and the work on the homestead, Instagram reels was becoming the place to be. They. They wanted a piece of. Of that short form audience. So they began. Prior to that, I was posting cars, you know, just carousels, like individual pictures. I love to write. So I was trying to. Trying to.

[Unknown Host]

Which nobody reads on Instagram.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah, sweet.

[Unknown Host]

Picture swipe.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I mean spend. Spend an hour, you know, in the morning writing this, writing this caption deeply. Yeah.

[Unknown Host]

Well thought out caption.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

People are just. Yeah. All these feels and you're like, so. So anyway, I just kind of had a little bit of a leg up on understanding short plus if you were.

[Unknown Host]

Prioritizing TikTok because the 90 seconds, the reels come around. You can just use the same content in two places.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Absolutely. So I began to post on. I went through a rebrand like I, I was. I wanted to continue to grow this content thing. So I thought to myself, like, you know, I had one sort of call, call sign, whatever you want to call it, like Instagram username. Username. There you go. Back in those days. And it was the Highwayman. Similar to like the old band. Right.

[Unknown Host]

Do you still have that?

[Mark Twain Spinali]

I do.

[Unknown Host]

Because that's a good one.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

I locked it in. Yeah. And, and it.

[Unknown Host]

You could travel around and that would be a really good name for like a serial killer.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah.

[Unknown Host]

That travels interstate.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Right.

[Unknown Host]

That's where my head goes on.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah.

[Unknown Host]

I don't know what that says about me, but that was my first.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Well, and it all came from the, the old, you know, the Highwayman is the, the, the band. But it was in alignment with my travels all over the country rescuing these old Airstreams and just the self guided sort of creative life that I was able to live living out of the back of my truck. And, and man, I would take that.

[Unknown Host]

In a different direction.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah. I can see.

[Unknown Host]

I would take pictures of people from behind.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah.

[Unknown Host]

So you can't see their face. And I would describe as the serial killer why I was selecting them as my victim.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

I liked all just throughout.

[Unknown Host]

You're liking this, aren't you, Michael? You can do this if you want to. I'm trying to give you content gold. Here's the advice.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah. I love it.

[Unknown Host]

It's all pictures through like grainy windows. But this person I picked because of true crime is. This is what I would. You would find them buried amongst the ferns and moss.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

We just did a true crime show.

[Unknown Host]

Yeah. I feel like you'd probably get a visit from the FBI or somebody associated. But I mean, here's the thing. I didn't say I was going to kill them.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah.

[Unknown Host]

I said it would be in the vein of a serial killer and you just, you wouldn't be able to identify the people. You could take the pictures.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

And this is what appeals to me.

[Unknown Host]

These are the thoughts that I'm having.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah. These are the attractions next. That's awesome. But I was having a little bit of a identity crisis with trying to, to bring this homestead content. Yeah. Into. Into what I had been trying to frame my, you know, frame my life as prior. So sat down, you know, like probably winter of 2020, 2022 is maybe when I rebranded and modern rural civilian was. Was all encompassing for My, I really wanted to create a category and a title of people that people could identify to that encompassed all of these passions that I had amassed over my crazy journey. And, and without trying to manage three different YouTube channels that were all very specific to. Yeah, yeah. And I, I, I. That was the big goal. Like I was trying to, you know, how can I, how can I be broad enough that I can begin to show people different areas of my life that I don't have to be. So am I going to just do these Ford trucks and build, you know, this. So. Rebranded Facebook. I started posting through Instagram Reels on the DIY projects of tearing the land apart and rebuilding it with the infrastructure that, that was becoming my daily life. Instagram actually created this duplicate Facebook account that I didn't even realize I had probably started crushing. Yeah, yeah. The first time I looked at it, I had 40, you know, 40,000 followers in, in just a couple months time. And I'm like, thank you, ig, this is not my Facebook account. Like I have my own name on. But, but yet. So back to the Facebook thing. I just couldn't, I couldn't believe it. I mean, what I was a benefactor of though, is once again, reels began to really get traction with the world in general. The actual Instagram reels portion of content.

[Unknown Host]

And does money from that just come from watch time? Essentially, yeah.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Views, I guess.

[Unknown Host]

Something to do with views or watch time?

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah, views. I mean, sometimes I question if it's how much it has to do with engagement. But the shitty part is, is that there's no manual to any of it. No, there's nobody to call and ask and there's no real people. You're trying to, you know, you're trying to investigate it yourself and understand on a deeper level, how can I influence the. My own income here within the parameters of what?

[Unknown Host]

I don't think it's accidental that you can't find.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Oh, no, it's. It's a there.

[Unknown Host]

Well, here's the thing. There's incredible value.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah.

[Unknown Host]

So even as someone who does a podcast, right.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yes.

[Unknown Host]

I upload this to the Internet that we uploaded to YouTube. I get very limited parsed data back to me about consumption.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Right.

[Unknown Host]

But I know damn well that there is valuable upstream information. Not that I actually would know what to do with it, but.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Oh, I'm the same. I'm learning.

[Unknown Host]

Yeah, there'd be the user device type there I'm sure would be their IP address. All of that stuff that I assume they use and package to sell to Advertising for them. What that will give me is here's your general locations, download statistics, things like that. When it comes to audio and the same. You're familiar with the viewership stuff on YouTube you can get, you can get relatively detailed information.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Right.

[Unknown Host]

But there is, there has to be a treasure trove upstream of what we see that they are using to make their own money. And it's not an accident that there's a hard break in that information.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

No. And, and meta is even worse. You know, YouTube is one thing, but Instagram and Facebook book, you know, you. I don't even know that I'm ever, I don't think I've ever even really reached anybody more than an automated response when it, when it comes to questions through the meta platform. So the understanding of this and, and you know, I'm grateful for all the. For. I'm grateful for any level of freedom that's come from this. So it's hard to, to try to be judgmental, but you're definitely not being judgmental.

[Unknown Host]

I think it's safe to say. And I know nothing about meta or the internal workings. I bet you they understand it down to it. And that's.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

I think they have me pigeonholed into.

[Unknown Host]

They not only have you, they have the monetization. They have so much aggregated data about their users. They have it down to a gnat's ass. They do, but they leave it to everybody else who is playing in their ecosystem signed to the terms of agreements. And I'm saying this without judgment as somebody who participates. Figure it out. Yeah, we got ours figured out.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah, yeah, you figure it out. See what works well and that, that's what. Okay, so I. Time flies and I don't pay special detailed attention to this, but I think that Facebook wanted a part of the short form content action. So they began Facebook, Facebook reels. And because they wanted to, to grow their attraction to that portion of their platform, then they, they started these creator. I don't even, I'm just gonna say creator monetization programs.

[Unknown Host]

That, and they prioritized it.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Oh, they prioritized the. Out of it.

[Unknown Host]

So Instagram does it sometimes too. They'll do bonuses for reels or watch sign management or all that stuff.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah, and it's, it's a, it's a big unknown for a lot of people. Even anybody that's wanting to, you know, sort of dream about documenting their journey. And how does it, you know, how does that all orchestrate in the background.

[Unknown Host]

A few pennies at a time is the answer yeah.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

So you couldn't have nailed it any more square on the head because here I am, you know, watching the money, seeing an end to the, the savings that we had amassed from, from our life change and wondering how do I, you know, how do I, how do I not get a real job and keep doing this? Because I don't, I for one, I don't want to, I want to build a property. So.

[Unknown Host]

And it's your full time job right now. It would be so hard if it became your part time or tertiary job.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Oh, absolutely. Like I can't give enough credit to that. But Facebook wanted a piece of the action. They started prioritizing us creators. Looking back, they started. God, I don't. Once again, I'm grateful for everything. But they started, they started just using the, the popular creators to build their, their, their validity within that short form content, which, I mean, nothing new there. No. And probably, you know, from a business standpoint, nothing wrong with that. That's a smart move. But I was sort of the, the. So here I go. Just monetized off Facebook with this massive growth in a very short period of time in an account that I didn't even physically create myself. I mean, one, one year's time, I had a million followers on Facebook from an account that I didn't even realize had be. You know, I mean, granted I watched it grow from 40,000 up.

[Unknown Host]

Yeah.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

But the growth and the, the views and the amount of. So here I am realizing that these landmarks are coming down the road for being able to finally, you know, make some money because I'm, I'm not naive to content creation and the thought that there should be an ability to make, turn this into a living, that was always the back of my mind. It wasn't the priority, but it was definitely. This is, this is going to hopefully be the.

[Unknown Host]

It's a real system. There's no reason to not figure out a way to utilize that.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah.

[Unknown Host]

Achieve your goals.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Right. So I finally flip through these, you know, screens within my professional dashboard and I'm looking. I finally qualify for whatever that threshold is. You know, it's saying, click, click to the next screen in order to see your approximate earnings. And I click one button and I go to the next screen on Facebook that says that I have a. I still almost shit myself, but I had, I had an approximate earnings of $9,000 and change over the last 30 days from this Facebook account. That's fantastic. And I was. First of all, I didn't believe it. I mean, I thought this is some Scammy, you know, like, I just give.

[Unknown Host]

Us the last four of your credit.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Card number and your social.

[Unknown Host]

Be sure to get it right to you.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah. Showing, Heather, showing, you know, talking to my close loved ones about it, I'm like, I don't know, like, I mean, this seems legit after all of the, the, the framework that I've tapped through to get to this. But show me the money, right? Yeah, like, so I was naive enough to think that that was just like the life changing moment. I, I, I've never been super money focused and money driven, but I have, I've always, in no lesser way of describing it, thought of that day, that the break, you know, that there's some sort of a break that happens, or so I thought. Babe, we're good. Like, I mean, this is our new baseline.

[Unknown Host]

It doesn't go down. It only goes up from here. Yeah, we need a convertible Porsche on our homestead.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

You're so awesome. And it's not, and it's not far off from where my brain, you say.

[Unknown Host]

Like, okay, 9,000 immediately multiply that by 12. That's our salary now, but we can do better. So let's say multiply by 15.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah. And that's one platform, you know, there's, there's others to come, so. Holy shit, did I. Dear Facebook, I'd.

[Unknown Host]

Like to be paid in gold bullion.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah. So I just thought, and obviously that's the less, that's the least. I didn't have to ask my audience for anything to earn that right. Like, that that was strictly off of their interest in my already natural, authentic life. So I just didn't think, I didn't think past that. I didn't think past the thought that this would. So once again, there's no boardroom meeting with Facebook saying, hey, we're changing the, the, the, the payout rate, terms and conditions. Yeah. I mean, whatever it may, may have been behind the scenes, but I really did at numerous parts of my life think, this is it, we did it. You know, like, this, this is going to change our life. And within, you know, that probably lasted the first, the first six months were life changing with just Facebook money alone. And as they established their presence as a short form, content, Content prioritizing. Yeah, they stopped. They stopped. I still, I still qualify and make money through all of those platforms, but the pay rate, you know, without any understanding of what the period was to begin with versus what it is now, you know, like, that same payday might be shit. A thousand, twelve hundred bucks a month.

[Unknown Host]

It's Easy to get. Or to want to get frustrated at Facebook for that too. The reality is though, we, you and I, everybody else, we check the box too.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Absolutely.

[Unknown Host]

We use this for free. Somewhere in the small print.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Oh, for sure.

[Unknown Host]

I didn't read and I'm not going to fantastic tests on this.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yes.

[Unknown Host]

Where they'll put into small print just to see if people are like, hey, you sign over the rights to all of your children and all the property. No, it doesn't stop anybody. The click through rate is exactly.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Oh my God. Yeah.

[Unknown Host]

But we, we're using their system for free.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yep.

[Unknown Host]

What they want from us is our attention.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Absolutely.

[Unknown Host]

And our time. And they sell that. And that's the game. And it becomes, it becomes tough. Especially when, like you said, without consulting the person. That is actually, because it is more. It is symbiotic. They're not going to grow their platform without the content that people want to watch.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Right.

[Unknown Host]

They're rewarding you for that. They can change the mechanism behind the scenes. It may change your ability to make the content. So there is a, there's an inequity there because they can control the platform. But that's kind of the game.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

It's just the game that they've created and we're just a player in the arena. And I be frustrated. Yeah.

[Unknown Host]

The better move is to just, to continue to move forward. I think the way that you are, you're going to figure it out.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. So that, that just leads me. I just wanted to show the, the vulnerability of my naiveness through the journey of content creation. To tell you that I, I'm not, I don't have a, I don't have it all figured out. I'm absolutely learning as I go. Only this, only this year am I really trying to buckle down to. And I say this year meaning like a couple days ago, you know, 2025. I'm, I'm, I'm.

[Unknown Host]

How's that going for you?

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Well, it's been a lot under your belt. Yeah.

[Unknown Host]

Like five days.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Just a new approach, you know, not trying to maximize, trying to scratch the surface of opportunities to a deeper level to make sure that I'm not just clicking through something that could have amounted to, you know, a relationship that I never seen coming.

[Unknown Host]

Michael and I were, what was it, Were we having this conversation yesterday? Michael, about looking at. YouTube is probably the main visual platform. Spotify just recently added an audio or a video component to the audio.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Oh, I didn't even, I was not even aware of that.

[Unknown Host]

It was in a Beta for, I don't know, six to eight months.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yep.

[Unknown Host]

They allowed me into the beta program. It's. So it's offering the same thing that YouTube is.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yes.

[Unknown Host]

YouTube, though, I think is easier to share because you can attach it to social platforms a little bit from what I've seen so far.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Right.

[Unknown Host]

And I try to listen to the feedback I get on the show and, and if I get a single point of feedback, I will read and listen to it.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah.

[Unknown Host]

But when I start getting trends, I pay more attention and it goes to what you're talking about. What are the platforms looking for? And one of the main ones I get is the short form content.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Right.

[Unknown Host]

Because there are YouTube shorts which need to be 59.9 seconds and below.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yep.

[Unknown Host]

But the suggestion I keep getting is create a clips channel. So you could have something that is four minutes long or six minute, but not a two and a half hour podcast. Because when people share those with people that don't know the show, it's really unlikely they're going to barrel through two and a half hours of somebody they don't know.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Right.

[Unknown Host]

Four minutes is pretty easy, though.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Oh, sure.

[Unknown Host]

And it's easily shareable.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yep.

[Unknown Host]

And so it's a way to write. You need your top end of the funnel to be as large as possible because at the end of the day, it's the bottom end of the funnel.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Right.

[Unknown Host]

Which is completely predicated on how much goes into the top.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Absolutely.

[Unknown Host]

And so, yeah, I'm going to unleash Michael to create a specific clips channel for the show.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

And I love it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Unknown Host]

Well, I mean, let's be honest. He's not going to do a good job.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Well, that, that's something that probably spelled.

[Unknown Host]

The name of the channel wrong.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Like, I love it, I love it. It's, it's a, there's no roadmap and there's no, you know, I'm, I'm really fortunate with the, the reach of my platform. It affords me opportunities to ask questions to people that I would have never really assumed would, would be willing to help or would want to, you know, want to offer insight. So super grateful for, you know, for. But, but once again, there's just no roadmap. There's no, there's no manual for doing this. And it's really a new, for me at least and anybody in my circles, it's a new sort of career move that, that nobody really has much to contribute to in the way of, oh, well, this work, you know. Yeah.

[Unknown Host]

It's a, it's it's like a mutual fund. The small print at the bottom.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah.

[Unknown Host]

Past performance is not indicative of future performance.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah.

[Unknown Host]

Just because it worked yesterday doesn't mean it will work tomorrow.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

No. And, and, and it's a, it's a highly self motivated. You know, I, I often use the phrase feed the monster on, on these social platforms like YouTube. Long form is something that I've always had as a goal. In the back of my mind, I'm so locked into feeding that monster with the short form content of posting and working my ass off all day, filming all day, waking up at the crack of dawn, editing for a couple of hours on that piece of short form content, posting it by breakfast time for most Americans and, and then getting back.

[Unknown Host]

Let's be honest, they're not consuming breakfast.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah. Right.

[Unknown Host]

They're sitting on the toilet.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah. Yeah, that's so true.

[Unknown Host]

Probably right after breakfast.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

No, no, that's accurate. I'm, I'm, I'm a victim of, of toilet consumption. We all are.

[Unknown Host]

What the hell else are you going to do? What, what did we possibly do on the toilet before?

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Well, we got an outhouse now, so it's, it's bougie. It's not at all. However. Fuck, it's cold. It's so cold. But, but Heather, she's like, she, she bust my chops constantly because she's like, what the fuck are you doing? Like it's an outhouse. I'm like, I'm answering some messages I'm sent. I'm, I'm, I'm saying hi to some friends. So the, the, the discomforts of an outhouse will not take you out of perusing your social media even while you're on the, while you're on the john.

[Unknown Host]

May I recommend a space heater of some kind?

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you may.

[Unknown Host]

Let me ask you this because we've known each other for a couple hours.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yes.

[Unknown Host]

Other than our communication. Setting this up.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah.

[Unknown Host]

You're going to figure this out. I have no doubt that you will get to the end state.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Sure.

[Unknown Host]

And the homestead will be what you want.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Right.

[Unknown Host]

So here's my question. What do you do then? What. Because I feel like your creative itch is definitely being satiated right now.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Absolutely.

[Unknown Host]

But when you're done.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah.

[Unknown Host]

I think it might come back.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah. Well, I've had, I've had visions of that because as we've progressed on the property and now I can visually imagine the home being started and completed and built, I want, you know, I've always wanted a. Right now I work in the, in the mud, the gravel, the snow, on anything outside in order to stay making progress on projects. But I sold a very nice new shop that I had just built. Just had built. I was that guy back then and really didn't get the chance to, you know, to, to even experience the, the blessings of having this heated, you know, well lit, nice space that can take you out of the, the season that you're in.

[Unknown Host]

Yeah.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

And still allow you your beat laboratory. Oh, yeah, yeah. Right. No, it was the movie Old school. Yeah. Loved it.

[Unknown Host]

That's your beat laboratory drum set.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah. Yeah. No, I love, I loved that shop, but it was only, only just got a little taste of it before. Yeah. We decided let's, let's, let's turn our life upside down and start this homestead. So I don't think I'll ever run out of, of, you know, eventually I would like to. I'm getting, I'm getting asks constantly about teaching, sharing this knowledge base with, with other individuals who are, you know, less earlier in the. The journey of getting, getting to this place. I'm a little bit. I love people. I, I tell, I joke sometimes that I love people from a distance more than I love the reality of, of, of people like right, right in my face, you know, so I'm, I'm, I know that there's a good. I know I can offer a good value to physically showing people how some of these systems work and showing them even through the remainder of the, the building of our dreams here on this property. But I'm definitely reserved to the thought of bringing people, you know, to the land to be able.

[Unknown Host]

I don't think you need to as you're describing this and again, take 100% of the things I say with a grain of salt because I'm a fucking idiot. All right. And I've also never done anything homesteading.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah.

[Unknown Host]

You already understand content short form and you've already. You said today you have an interest in long form.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

I do.

[Unknown Host]

You don't need to bring people to your property in the area that we live in where they can connect with your property on a screen size of their choice.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Sure.

[Unknown Host]

When you finish, you could always choose to build because I bet you the questions come to you in tranches as well, like septic water.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah.

[Unknown Host]

Fill in the blank.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah.

[Unknown Host]

Who's to say you couldn't get to a place where you can do a smaller size project somewhere else on your property? But again, now you're turning that more into, let's say a polished collegiate level Course, for lack of a better term, where you're structuring it.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Sure.

[Unknown Host]

Start to finish. A to Z or whatever number numerically or alphabetically, whatever it is you want. That way you don't have to bring people onto your property, but that could actually be the product that you are now providing and selling and giving them access to.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Sure.

[Unknown Host]

You're already doing a lot of the aspects of that. You already have the audience. You're obviously capturing the content. You're passionate about what it is.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yep.

[Unknown Host]

Again, just spitballing it. I mean.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Oh, no.

[Unknown Host]

It'll prevent you from having to have physical people.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah, yeah. I'm so reserved in that, you know, the. The further along we've got with the space and the more I've. Excuse me. Enjoyed the. The rural country life. I'm like, I don't even want to leave the property, let alone. Yeah. I just. I'm so comfortable in this. In this space, and I find it hard. There was a time that I was traveling all over the country doing these things, and I would have told anybody who would listen, this is my happy place. Being able to explore all over the country and see new places and be mobile and kind of nomadic. And now I don't even like to go to the corner store down the down.

[Unknown Host]

You know, Mark, you can touch the world. Yeah. I mean, I'm assuming you got a little Starlink out there.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yes.

[Unknown Host]

Absolutely amazing. I honestly think we're probably two or three years away from Starlink directed device.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

I agree.

[Unknown Host]

I can see the writing on the wall on that one.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yep.

[Unknown Host]

Which. What does cell phone companies do then?

[Mark Twain Spinali]

I know, I know.

[Unknown Host]

Guess what? Not my problem to solve. Have fun with that one.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah. I agree.

[Unknown Host]

You can touch the world.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah.

[Unknown Host]

From where you're at, you don't have to go to the corner store.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Sure.

[Unknown Host]

And I mean, I don't know how doordash is out at the old room.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

You can bring the corner store to you.

[Unknown Host]

It's probably a little bit better established here, but I think there's a path for you to scratch that creative itch, but also turn it into a very rewarding, whether that be personally or economically. Platform. You already have the platform.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

I do. I'm just. At this point, I'm just realizing that I'm actually taking a little bit of a gut punch to realize that I thought I'm not as well equipped to know what the right move in development of a business around this audience and around this sort of tribe of individuals that I've amassed and really trying to kind of Taking a step back to realize. And I'm asking anybody who is willing to, you know, to offer insight in this. How do you do that? Like, I've just been. I've been so successful with just my authentic way of conveying this lifestyle to people that I haven't tried to. I haven't tried to funnel anything. I haven't tried to.

[Unknown Host]

I think you just answered your own question.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah.

[Unknown Host]

I think if you can maintain being who you are.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Right.

[Unknown Host]

That is the best, Best path forward.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Sure there are.

[Unknown Host]

And I think anybody can see this anecdotally. This is what I see, at least.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yep.

[Unknown Host]

Whatever it is you're looking for, there's somebody on the Internet selling it to you.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Right.

[Unknown Host]

There's probably 10 people selling it to you. They might sell you a system. They might tell you. Sell you a masterclass, a seminar, whatever it is.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Right.

[Unknown Host]

When you start deviating, in my opinion.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yes. No, I'm not talking about you.

[Unknown Host]

I'm talking about in general. And this is something I remind myself of. I think when you start deviating from who you are to follow somebody else's system, you're immediately shaving away at the effectiveness and efficacy of what it is that they're selling. Not everything scales infinitely for all people.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Sure.

[Unknown Host]

I think if you maintain your authenticity. And you know what? I don't think there's anything wrong in talking to your audience and saying, I don't know what I'm doing. I do that all the time on the podcast. I don't know how to do anything that I do.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

I love that.

[Unknown Host]

And I will tell people like Michael, how many T shirts do you think are in my garage? In hundreds. I mean, do you think there's a thousand T shirts in your garage? Okay.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah.

[Unknown Host]

There's a thousand T shirts.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yes.

[Unknown Host]

Let me tell you about the T shirt journey.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Unknown Host]

Pay for them up front.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah.

[Unknown Host]

So when I see the T shirts in the garage, what I see is me trying to play businessman. Trying to. And it's something that I enjoy doing. I like the soft goods, the soft good sales. They're real.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Right.

[Unknown Host]

They layer into a complexity. Like for you right now, it would not be the move, because where are you going to store it? How are you going to fulfill it? Who's going to the post office?

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Right.

[Unknown Host]

It's a lot.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yes.

[Unknown Host]

I think. Right. I mean, you. You're providing information.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Right.

[Unknown Host]

So I don't know how many shirts to order. I also don't know what people like, and I don't know the cut or the blank.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Right.

[Unknown Host]

Or the feel or the color or the branding.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Sure.

[Unknown Host]

So I have ordered some really fucking bad shirts, and guess what? They don't sell.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

They're still sitting in the.

[Unknown Host]

They're sitting in there. And they are also part of the things that I get rid of when my wife, Leah.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah.

[Unknown Host]

Is not around.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah. So she doesn't see the. I caved in on that one.

[Unknown Host]

They remind me, though, that it's okay to not know what you're doing. I mean, I'm not going to go bankrupt because I'm not selling these T shirts.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Right.

[Unknown Host]

But I almost like the reminder of, hey, man, anytime I need to go into the garage, like, freezer is to get some elk to eat.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Sure.

[Unknown Host]

Every time I open the door, I'm reminded with, hey, you're a fucking idiot, because here's a stack of T shirts.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Well, it's just a. It's a gut punch and a humble, you know, humble pie.

[Unknown Host]

You have to have that.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah.

[Unknown Host]

Have growth without being uncomfortable.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Absolutely. And I'm. I'm grateful for that to come so natural. I mean, and just like you, I'm happy to. I think one of the things that sets. Sets aside some of my content to my audience is just the. I definitely don't try to be afraid to show the failures like I have to. I love. And I put enough obsessive research into things that I. More often than not, I get more success out of what I'm trying to accomplish than failure. But there's times that. Anyway, the Internet craves that. The. The. I mean, just.

[Unknown Host]

I think the Internet actually craves authenticity.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yes.

[Unknown Host]

I don't know if. I don't know if your average consumer would articulate it in that way.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Right.

[Unknown Host]

But I feel like as human beings, we are drawn towards things that are more authentic.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yes.

[Unknown Host]

And again, whether or not that is something that is subconscious or above that subconscious level, I don't know.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Right.

[Unknown Host]

But I have anecdotally found that to be true.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yes, Absolutely.

[Unknown Host]

In my own behavior as well.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Sure.

[Unknown Host]

If I look at my own consumption, what is it that I'm consuming? One. There's a little bit of an outlier to that because I really enjoy people on bicycles getting hit by cars.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah.

[Unknown Host]

It's one of my favorite things.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

I heard you talk about that. Yeah. I actually did.

[Unknown Host]

What I like even more than that is going, like, putting stuff in my story for a good month without any, and then just slide in a juicy one. Just stop people in their tracks. We're talking full ragdoll cartwheels. And I Don't have to look for them because people know this, so they send them to me.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

So demented. I love it.

[Unknown Host]

Yeah. I mean, again, so that's a little bit of an outlier.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah. Right.

[Unknown Host]

My own consumption, though, is that I. I want to see people fail.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah.

[Unknown Host]

Not. Not meaning, like in their life goals. I need to rephrase that.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah.

[Unknown Host]

I don't want to see people fail. What I want to see is when that does happen.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah.

[Unknown Host]

They're honest about it.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Sure.

[Unknown Host]

Because it makes me feel more comfortable being honest with my own failures and sharing them as well.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah. The vulnerability is. Is so consumable by. By. I mean, and it's not even a concept.

[Unknown Host]

Easier for everybody else to be more honest.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Absolutely. Yeah. You're creating a landscape where it's not such a polished fake world that. That everything goes perfectly. You know, I try to learn off of YouTube how to videos all the time and it's. So, of course they're not trying to. We're not there to see how you screw up, you know, in some of these more nuts and bolts activities. But that's where you. That's where the authenticity of what this homesteading journey for us has really. I get the most heartfelt comments and messages because, man, thanks for showing. Thanks for showing how that hillside slid in on all your work. And you're like, you're down there every day digging your work from yesterday out of the mud.

[Unknown Host]

Yeah. I was just about to start down that path and you saved me an immense amount of time, effort, energy and suffering.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Absolutely. It's just realistic. It puts a. Puts a more humble approach on. On these hard. They're not easy. None of this shit's easy. I mean, it's really hard work and it's really. It takes some pretty. Pretty strong mental commitment to even be trying to do the work to begin with, let alone thinking that it's all going to be easy. So sharing that part of it has been fairly instrumental and I love to. Just like you had said with you mentioning to the podcast viewers, I don't know what I'm doing. Like, I mean, I'm fully willing to tell you I'm learning every step of the way. I feel fairly gifted on being a decently quick learner, but I'm not, I'm not. I'm not an expert in any of this stuff. And if I can do it out of pure obsession and learning out of necessity to accomplish pushing this needle forward on the homestead and improving very basic human needs to more comfortable amenities within whatever those homestead Parameters are so many more people can do it than give themselves credit. So I want to make sure and water those flowers, so to speak.

[Unknown Host]

I think that's awesome. Michael, would you do a scientific experiment with me real fast?

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Sure.

[Unknown Host]

Mark got me thinking about this with the how do you. Can you go to YouTube.com and I just want you to type in how do you. And I want to see what YouTube auto populates it with.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah, no, that's.

[Unknown Host]

Now, I don't know if this is going to be based off my search history, so you guys might need to strap in. Put it up there on the screen, Michael, so we can share this. How do you. How do you want it, Tupac? How do you like me now? How do you heal a broken heart? How do you sleep with Sam Smith? How do you get free Robux?

[Mark Twain Spinali]

That is very.

[Unknown Host]

How do you make slime? I like that one. How do you keep your pants up? It's a belt, fuckers.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah.

[Unknown Host]

How do you get your voice.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Shut up, Roblox.

[Unknown Host]

How do you do a backflip? Oh, there's gonna be some broken necks.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Oh, God.

[Unknown Host]

Michael, scroll down to how do you heal a broken heart? And click on that. I think this is gonna be a music video.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah, Right?

[Unknown Host]

Yeah. Okay.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Lyrics. Yeah.

[Unknown Host]

I was gonna say if there was a play by play of like a 22 year old dude with lettuce hair.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah.

[Unknown Host]

My heart is so broken and I'm gonna teach you.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

I got over. This is. This is the steps. Oh, that's awesome, man.

[Unknown Host]

Man, we've been at it for almost two and a half hours. I want to get you back to Heather, but I want to close out on in the three years you've been at this.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yes.

[Unknown Host]

For anybody out there who is inspired by the way that you've chosen to live your life and what it is you're trying to do. Homesteading.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Absolutely.

[Unknown Host]

Is there anything that sticks out as like a waving flag of hey, be prepared for this. Or you know, advice to things to maybe consider or avoid. Like big ones. Like, hey, before you do this, consider this.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Well, I don't know. Like, I had this thought earlier today that just be careful what you ask for because it's. It can. Cause it's a beautiful. The pluses are so much larger than the minuses and, and the wins for me personally and for Heather, you know, the. I can only speak from our own personal experience there they far, far out seed exceed the. The. You know, the. The discomforts and things that, that our life looks like right now. But I don't know if people really know what selling everything and beginning on raw acreage looks like and feels like. And it's hard, and it feels overwhelming at times. It feels like we're fully committed. We don't have a backup plan at this point, and we don't have a home. So we are figuring it out as we go. We are. We're going to have the most beautiful place that you can imagine in. In a num. You know, seven to 10 years. Yeah, that's what I was going to say. God damn it. I'm trying not to. I'm trying not to.

[Unknown Host]

Our plan was three, so seven to 10.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Seven to 10 is going to be the commitment right now. But just. I don't want to scare anybody away from it, but I do want to remind people that an outhouse in negative 14 degree temperature with no. You know, I'm. There will always be improvements, but currently, for us, there's no lights. There's no nothing. It's a flashlight out to the thing. It's water that can freeze. Freeze up on you. You know, you. I'm just. I'm dealing with stuff that I'm prepared for and goofy enough to put up with, but I also don't. I just want to make sure that when people have the idea that they're gonna buy at least the raw land version of what I'm trying to. Trying to teach people and show people that they understand that I used to be so focused on a single project and like, okay, let's start that and finish that in a matter of weeks, whatever it may be. But I never had. I'm now juggling no less than a dozen different major projects throughout this property. I mean, I. I never thought my mind could even really tolerate that, let alone. You feel. You know, there's days you feel like, am I ever gonna. You know, am I just starting to start shit? Am I ever gonna finish and see the. You know, see the fruits of all this labor in any one of these particular projects.

[Unknown Host]

It's my average Tuesday.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah, I mean, it's. It's humbling, man. It's so humbling. So I. I guess I would just warn people of the. The hardships that come along with it. But I would also follow that up with. If you're really trying to do stuff from the ground up, like, we've chosen this path for us. There are. There are appreciations that come from, like, I've found myself calling them, like, a circle of life fulfillment that I never saw coming, like creating a water system from a Mountain spring that you find just leaking out of a rock that you then go and you know, have that water tested and you can drink it right out of the ground. Now you've taken that water, contained it and turned it into an entire system that now I really do predict that this land will granted I'm hoping that my child and our children. Heather has two kids I have coming up on a 13 year old birthday here soon. But if this is their interest in life, I predict that these systems that I'm building right now will be in place generations after I'm gone. Providing nourishment to my hopefully, you know, family down the road. And the, that old world connection to accomplishing these things that just in modern, our modern daily life we're not, we're just kind of well, water comes out of the faucet and, and if I, if it breaks, I call somebody. Yeah, yeah. Like the connection to our history as humans and maybe not so, not that so long ago history but, but the settlers type history of, of this country just brings me joy that I could never, I could have never saw that coming and I could have never put a frame around it for, for the public to understand. And that's I'm all, I'm always so grateful and fulfilled by this lifestyle that I think it comes out through my content and I think that's part of a bigger appeal to all of these folks that want to watch. But I'm, I'm sort of uniquely naive in that I'm just willing to keep trudging and keep, and keep experiencing the small wins and calling them larger than, larger than life and, but, but it's, it's a hard life and I, and I the wintertime for us, everybody's climate is going to be different. Everybody's version of buying property is going to be different. You know, I mean I think that there's a lot of people that would have the opportunity to go buy, you know, a sort of a retired farm that's got barns, that's got a farmhouse, that's got these other things and I can't tell you exactly what that looks like, but when you're trying to do it all on your own and you're trying to really absorb the enjoyment later in life that came from that path to get to having our forever home built and all of this property done really with only the help from like my dad sometimes comes up and, but it's unmatched for me. I mean the enjoyment is. It makes me understand why we, why the west was settled I mean, it was harder than hell and people died left and right, but the enjoyment that comes from the point of going from a wagon to a cabin and going from hauling water from the stream to water that you finally somehow piped into your place. Those life, those. Those accomplishments and those improvements, they just make me feel, like, tied to the land and tied to our existence as humans.

[Unknown Host]

I think it would for most people.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah.

[Unknown Host]

Promise me this.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yep.

[Unknown Host]

Come back in a year, year and.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

A half or whatever.

[Unknown Host]

And we got to keep doing updates.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

I'd love to, man.

[Unknown Host]

Okay.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Yeah, Absolutely. Yeah.

[Unknown Host]

We'll just make it the first episode of many, and we'll just keep going along. And then when you're done, we'll publish your address on the Internet so people.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Can come visit you. Spare me. Spare me. Awesome, man.

[Unknown Host]

That was great.

[Mark Twain Spinali]

Thank you. Yeah. I appreciate it very much. With T Mobile, no Trendspotter has to deal with trendspotty service because T Mobile helps keep you connected from the heart of Portland to right where you are on America's largest 5G network switch. Now keep your phone and T Mobile will pay it off up to $800 per line via prepaid cart. Visit your local T Mobile location or learn more@t mobile.com keepandswitch. Up to 4 lines via virtual prepaid card. Last 15 days qualifying unlock device, credit service port in 90 plus days device and eligible carrier and timely redemption required. Card is no cash access and expires in six months.