How to Guarantee Your Success-Trust the Numbers

Jack Butala:                   Hey, Jack Butala here from Land Academy. Welcome to our Cash Flow From Land show. In this episode, Jill and I discuss how to all but guarantee your success in land flipping, and it shouldn’t be any surprise by now. It’s all in the numbers.

Jill DeWit:                            Did you say “up the numbers”?

Jack Butala:                   No. I know that’s one of your favorite sayings. Run the numbers. It’s in the numbers. You’ve got to do the numbers.

Jill DeWit:                            I was thinking this was about upping your numbers. I was going to go on a whole different dating tangent on this one. Do you remember my brother gave me that advice?

Jack Butala:                   What? I think I’m vaguely recalling. It involves date a lot of men, and choose the one you want.

Jill DeWit:                            Yeah. Up your numbers.

Years ago, when I had got out of a relationship. I was single. I hadn’t dated in a while. My brother said, “I’m going to do you a big favor.” He sat me down, gave me a nice brother sister chat saying, “Here’s what you need to do.” I’m like, “All right.” “You need to learn to date like a man.” That’s exactly what he said.

Jack Butala:                   Date like a man?

Jill DeWit:                            You’ve got to date like a man. I’m like, “Okay, great. What do I got to do?” He’s like, “You’ve got to up your numbers.” I’m like, “What? I didn’t quite get that.”

Jack Butala:                   By the way, we’re going to put our financial success on hold while Jill shares her dating stories with us.

Jill DeWit:                            We’ll get to real stuff in a second, here.

Jack Butala:                   Go ahead. Spend a couple hours on this. This success thing, that can wait.

Jill DeWit:                            Hey, this applies to everything, Steven.

Jack Butala:                   I know it does. Plus, it’s way more fun to talk about you dating, anyway, than land and stuff.

Jill DeWit:                            It turns out, he was 100% correct. The point is, if you up your numbers, you have more to choose from. Don’t get hung up on one guy or one deal. I’ll bring it back in.

Jack Butala:                   Oh, that’s good.

Jill DeWit:                            Have several deals to choose from, and then you narrow it down. I’m saying “deals”, like men, and then you narrow it down from there. It’s a beautiful thing.

I went on to teach all of my girlfriends, because they were incredibly interested in how successful I was with this. I taught every girl, “Don’t get hung up on one guy”, or one piece of property, because it’s kind of the same thing. Have a lot to choose from, pick the best one.

Jack Butala:                   How many guys does it take?

Jill DeWit:                            I don’t know. 10 or 20.

Jack Butala:                   I honestly would’ve thought, if you were a man, you would’ve said 100.

Jill DeWit:                            What? Well, again, we had this on the last show. Didn’t we talk about that it’s hard to find a good woman and a good man?

Jack Butala:                   We talked about your bad taste in men.

Jill DeWit:                            Well, there’s that. That’s why I’d up my numbers.

Back to the numbers. What did you really mean by that, Steven?

Jack Butala:                   How can I follow what you just said? I’m going to talk like a lecturer, all this boring stuff.

Jill DeWit:                            Wah-wah, wah-wah, wah-wah.

Jack Butala:                   Exactly! That’s what everyone’s going to hear.

Jill DeWit:                            You just put everyone to sleep.

Jack Butala:                   Everyone’s dreaming of Jill dating.

Jill DeWit:                            Jill is fun. Steven is boring. Just kidding.

Jack Butala:                   That’s exactly what it is!

Jill DeWit:                            That’s not true.

Jack Butala:                   I’m happy in that. I’m comfortable in the situation.

Jill DeWit:                            It’s not true. You are awesome. You are fun. I know you have a great way to explain this.

Jack Butala:                   In investment banking and in real estate, anyone who’s real successful, one of the first things they discuss is deal flow. Anybody who buys apartment buildings or vacant land, like us, or houses, or let’s say they buy companies. I’ve been involved in these industries since my whole professional career. The number one thing that everybody starts with, that gets talked about at cocktail parties and corporate espionage, is deal flow. You have to look at a ton of properties before you buy one.

I think this is a very typical rookie mistake, where someone wants to get into real estate and they call their realtor sister-in-law, or they get access somehow to the MLS in the town that they want to buy a house. They look at 4 deals and they choose the one that they think is going to work the best. That is maybe the fatal mistake.

You have to, what Jill says, up your numbers. What we teach, in the simplest terms, is send out a ton of offers, well-planned, direct mail offers, to people who own property, or in our case it’s vacant land. You can do it with apartment buildings or houses or whatever. You look at what comes back. Some people call you back and say, “I want to do the deal right away”. Some people say, “You’re crazy”. A lot of people just sign it and send it back and you do the deal.

Jill DeWit:                            Are you sending out 4 offers, or how many offers are you sending?

Jack Butala:                   Thank you very much. Hey, this could be a super short podcast.

No. Look, if you send 5 million letters out, and I’ve done that, you’re going to get whatever your percentages are, and if you’re choosing the right people to send these to, which we also teach, you’re going to get an ‘x’ percent back. Hey, it’s a numbers game. Send a ton of stuff out. You’re going to get a ton back.

If you want to buy 1 house, send 1,000 letters out. That’s houses numbers. Those are good numbers, actually. If you want to buy 7 houses, send 7,000 out. With land, our success percentages are way higher.

Great, now you bought a bunch of cheap property. How do guarantee your success that you sell it, Jill?

Jill DeWit:                            It works the same way. Don’t just put it on 1 website. Up your numbers. Trust your numbers. Have a system and advertise at many different places. Don’t think that 1 property is fit for this or fit for that. Make it easy on yourself. Get it out there. Reach … we haven’t used that word in a while, and that’s a big word for us.

Jack Butala:                   I have. I’ve been typing it in the success plan almost daily.

Jill DeWit:                            Reach is the key. Reaching as far as reaching the right sellers, and reach as far as reaching the right buyers who are going to want to buy your thing. The only way you’re going to reach them is if they know you have something to sell. That’s one of the things that I think people, I hear, struggling with a little bit. “I don’t have anybody.” “Well, have you offered it?” “Well, no.” “Well, how are you going to sell it if no one knows that you have something to sell?”

Just putting it on your website and trusting that the right person is just going to organically find it is often not enough. You need to have it advertised and out there and drive people to your website. Then you will reach the right people.

Jack Butala:                   Every once in a while I get a question like this. It goes like this, “Man, I’m ready to send a mailer out. I’m so afraid to pull the trigger because what if I don’t have the success that you guys have? What if I send all these letters out and nothing comes back at all? I’m afraid.” Or worse, they say, “I just sent out a 1,500 letter mailer” … and I’m going to answer all my own questions in a second here … “What if I if I sent out a 1,500 unit mailer, and 3 weeks have gone by, and all I’ve gotten back is 3 people called me back and said that you’re crazy to offer this small amount of … I’m going to fail.”

Here’s my answer. What happened is, you didn’t send it to the right people. You didn’t do what we microscopically teach in our Cash Flow From Land program about choosing the right areas to send these mailers in, checking to see if there’s properties that are other like kind properties on the Internet that are selling there, for what prices. There’s a several step process that you need to go through to identify where this program works. It’s the same thing with houses.

I’m going to give you a huge hint. If you send letters out for a very small amount of money to purchase any real estate product type, and that product type, for whatever reason you choose to send it to owners of properties where there’s mortgages or debt, you will probably fail. The whole key to success … and there’s a million little moving parts, here … is sending out mailers. A lot of mailers to people who own property where they’re showing all the signs of not wanting to own it anymore.

If they have to check with the bank and it’s over-leveraged, you’re just kind of wasting the price of the postage stamp and a lot of … I told you this was more boring than your dating thing.

Jill DeWit:                            I’m sorry. You woke me. What?

Jack Butala:                   The same thing on the sales side.

Jill DeWit:                            You see my eyes glazing over there for a second.

Jack Butala:                   Let me just get through this lecture piece and then we can talk about your sex life.

The same thing with the sales piece. There’s only 2 reasons that any property doesn’t sell. One, you’re not reaching the right people, and it’s usually that, or two, it’s not priced right.

Jill DeWit:                            I agree.

Jack Butala:                   There’s not a lot of mystery in this stuff.

Jill DeWit:                            I like what you said about moving parts, because that’s true. It’s not hard. It’s not rocket science, but you’ve got to do it right. You’ve got to know how to find the right property and isolate the right people, offer the right price with the right letter, all of those things. I understand sometimes people have some trial and error, but if you follow us, it’s going to be really, really easy. That’s the whole point of us. Let us save you. We’ve done all the trial and error. We know the right letters. We know what to send and what doesn’t work. We know the areas and how to pick them.

Jack Butala:                   Yeah, because I’ve done it wrong.

Jill DeWit:                            Right.

Jack Butala:                   Now we do it right.

Jill DeWit:                            We can save you. You can really sit down and very quickly determine, “All right. For every 1,000 letters, I’m going to get this number of calls. Then I’m going to get this number of offers to review. Then I’m going to get this number that I’m going to want to make an offer on, and I’m going close this many.” Then you can quickly go, “I’ve got this. Now I’m going to double it, triple it, whatever I want”, or, “I was overwhelmed. I’m going to cut it by half next time and I’m going to do it this way”. That kind of thing. It works with everything.

Jack Butala:                   You know what the antithesis of trusting the numbers and playing the numbers is?

Jill DeWit:                            There’s a lot of big words this time. You have used “corporate espionage’ and ‘antithesis’. What have you been reading? Have you been reading The Wall Street Journal again?

Jack Butala:                   No. Gosh, no. I stopped. I gave that up years ago.

You want to know how to fail? I’m going to push one of Jill’s buttons right now. How to fail in real estate. Drive for dollars. Jill, explain for the 6 people on the planet who don’t know what drive for dollars is, and how to wreck a real estate career overnight.

Jill DeWit:                            Don’t lose the car, and don’t drive for dollars.

Jack Butala:                   Explain to us what driving for dollars is and why it’s just the most ridiculous … and it’s so taught! It’s everywhere on the Internet, all of these great stories about driving for dollars. I don’t understand that! Let’s drive around Alaska and look for a property.

Jill DeWit:                            I have 8 hours and it’s Tuesday. I’m going to get in my car. I’m going to give you 2 examples. Here’s what I think is the wrong way, and then what I think is the right way.

Gosh, I’ve got 8 hours to spend on Tuesday. I’m going to put 10 business cards in my pocket. I’ve heard people do this exact thing.

Jack Butala:                   You get cynical too often, but I love it.

Jill DeWit:                            This is one of the ones that really rubs me the wrong way.

I have heard people do this verbatim. 10 business cards in my pocket. I’m going to drive this area. This is the neighborhood …

Jack Butala:                   ‘Verbatim’ is kind of a big word.

Jill DeWit:                            It is a big word.

I know this area very well. I know the market. I know what people typically buy for. I know what they sell for. I’m just now looking for the right properties. I’m going to go and knock on doors. I’m going to see what I find. Oh! That one looks vacant. I’m writing down the address. I’m going to do all this stuff. I’m going to try to meet people that maybe they might want to sell. I don’t know. My goal is to hand out my 10 business cards.

Jack Butala:                   Did you pack a lunch?

Jill DeWit:                            I better pack a lunch, because this is an all day thing. Fill up the gas tank. There’s another expense.

Jack Butala:                   Well said.

Jill DeWit:                            I’m just canvasing this area, hoping to stumble across a deal. Hoping and praying, and if I’m lucky, I’ve heard people say that they were successful because they handed out all those 10 business cards and they think those people are going to save them and call them. It could have just gone in the trash. They don’t know.

Jack Butala:                   Let’s say it all went right. What did you buy?

Jill DeWit:                            Nothing! I don’t know.

Jack Butala:                   You bought a house.

Jill DeWit:                            You think?

Jack Butala:                   You did everything right and you got lucky and the stars were aligned.

Jill DeWit:                            It doesn’t usually happen overnight like that.

Jack Butala:                   Go ahead.

Jill DeWit:                            Slash, however, maybe I wanted to review. Maybe I got really lucky and after a week of that, one guy called me back and might be interested and it might be something I want. It might not. Versus, gosh, that same 8 hours, I could’ve spent half that time and I could’ve isolated that same neighborhood, that same square mile, whatever it is, that zip code, if you will, or that county, kind of how we do it, and isolated the exact size, the 3 bedroom, 2 bath, this price range, no debt, no mortgage, gosh, behind on the taxes, could be vacant. I’ve got a list of 500 or 1,000 here. I’m going to blast them all with a beautiful letter and let them call me. That took 4 hours.

Jack Butala:                   It’s like foreplay when you talk like that.

Jill DeWit:                            Thank you.

By the way, I didn’t have to go anywhere and I didn’t have to pack a lunch.

Jack Butala:                   You let the data do all the work. You dream it up. Let’s just dream it up. Forget about reality. Let’s have a little daydream together.

I only want to buy 40 acre properties in southeastern California that have no debt, have a completely uninterested owner. They don’t want to own the property any longer. I can’t have any back taxes. It has to have access to drive right up to it. I don’t want the side of a mountain, and on and on and on and on.

You scrub the data down. You take the whole data set of 40 acre properties in one of the counties there and you scrub it down, down, down, down, and you end up with, let’s say, I’m using just a fictitious number, 1,500 properties.

Jill DeWit:                            Perfect.

Jack Butala:                   You send a mailer to all of them, nice, super targeted, and the one that you want to buy or the 6 that you want to buy, they call you back.

Jack Butala:   Every single month we give away a property f or free. It’s super simple to qualify. Two simple steps. Leave us your feedback for this podcast on iTunes and number two, get the free ebook at landacademy.com, you don’t have to read it. Now go buy some property.

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