The Perfect Land Academy Member (CFFL 0053)
The Perfect Land Academy Member (CFFL 0053)
Jack Butala: The Perfect Land Academy Member. Why We Can Afford to Give Land Away Every Month. Every single month we give away a property for 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 even have to read it. Thanks for listening.
Jack Butala: Hey, Jack Butala here from Land Academy. Welcome to our Cash Flow from Land show. In this episode, Jill and I talk about the perfect Land Academy member. It’s a topic I came up with, not Jill, of course.
Jill DeWit: Of course.
Jack Butala: It’s not how your grade school teacher admired the teacher’s pet with an apple on the desk at all in my opinion. Jill, I’m so glad we didn’t discuss this before we actually turned the mikes on because as usual, I bet we differ on this.
Jill DeWit: I bet we do.
Jack Butala: What’s your gut?
Jill DeWit: I agree. I bet we do. Do you want to go in order …
Jack Butala: Go ahead.
Jill DeWit: … like give a topic? What do you think is good? What makes the perfect Land Academy member for me?
Jack Butala: We’ve got hundreds and hundreds of members now.
Jill DeWit: Yes.
Jack Butala: I certainly don’t want to name any names, but I have a really good idea of who I think … When I was a coach … I’m going to basically talk a lot about sports. There’s a lot of sports analogies in this episode. If you don’t like sports analogies like “knock it out of the park” or any of that, you can turn it off right now. That means the one of the two people that are listening to this need to turn their stuff off.
Jill DeWit: Mom? Just kidding. That’s funny. I am positive my mom does not listen to this. Absolutely positive. I don’t even know if my mom knows we have a podcast, but that’s a whole other show.
Jack Butala: She knows. … Go ahead.
Jill DeWit: Okay. Do you want to hear my list?
Jack Butala: Yes.
Jill DeWit: I have three things. Do you want me to do one at a time?
Jack Butala: Uh-huh.
Jill DeWit: Okay.
Jack Butala: Sure, do whatever you want.
Jill DeWit: All right, all right. My first ideal Land Academy member asks good questions after utilizing all the resources available to them, including Google. It’s like our children come to us sometimes, and they ask questions. I’m like, “Why are you asking me?”
Jack Butala: Like what time is it?
Jill DeWit: Yes, and they’re just some really … I don’t know … interesting questions. Sometimes it’s questions there’s no way I would possibly know that. What time was the sunrise this morning? Really? Are you asking me that?
Jack Butala: Why did you have children?
Jill DeWit: Right. When’s the next full moon? I don’t know. Why are you asking me that? By the way, like Steven says, get out that fancy machine in your pocket and look that up.
Jack Butala: Remember when we were kids, we had to go walk all the way across the house to a dictionary?
Jill DeWit: Or an encyclopedia.
Jack Butala: Now it’s in their pocket …
Jill DeWit: Exactly.
Jack Butala: … and it’s like a thousand times the size of the Library of Congress.
Jill DeWit: Right, and if you didn’t have that book … like maybe you wanted to know a world’s record statistic. Not all of us had those books on our shelves. You’d have to go to the library to figure this out and look it up.
Jack Butala: That’s why I didn’t learn anything.
Jill DeWit: There you go.
Jack Butala: It was too hard.
Jill DeWit: It’s just silly. I really appreciate … let’s just say, people in general, when you, I don’t know, maybe look it up before you ask the question. That’s one thing for me. Another one is I love people who just dig in there, and they solve their own problems, and- this is like you and I, Steven- and they share it for everybody else. Like, hey, everybody, oh, my gosh, I just discovered X. I was going through the process, and this happened to me. I want to tell everyone so it doesn’t happen to you. Whatever it is. Postage just went up, and I accidentally put the wrong stamp on it for whatever. You know?
Jack Butala: Right.
Jill DeWit: Things like that can happen. It’s so nice to figure it out, solve it, share it with everybody else, so nobody goes there. I just love that. Do you want to hear my third one? Then I’ll hear your list?
Jack Butala: Sure, go ahead.
Jill DeWit: Okay. My third thing about my ideal, perfect Land Academy member is our members who are realistic, and they’re really happy with their growing success. They’re not afraid. They’re diving in there, and they’re making little, small celebrations/interruptions for Steven. They’re watching their bank accounts grow. They’re watching their portfolio grow.
Jack Butala: Realistic.
Jill DeWit: They’re watching it all grow. Yes, they are realistic, and they’re not hung up on …
Jack Butala: They’re not expecting to quit their jobs in two hours.
Jill DeWit: Right. Right. That’s it, and they’re seeing it. They’re seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, and they’re getting a taste of the success. It’s great. Those are my three things.
Jack Butala: My favorite, my perfect Land Academy member is a person who purchases one of our programs and never opens it. Just throws it in the back of their car and never contacts us again.
Jill DeWit: Oh, my gosh. What the heck? Oh, that’s a good one. That’s great.
Jack Butala: If any of that were true, we wouldn’t have …
Jill DeWit: Oh, my goodness.
Jack Butala: … we would not have put up SuccessPlant.com where we micromanage everybody’s success, and we encourage them and help them every step of the way. I’m just …
Jill DeWit: Hilarious.
Jack Butala: … joking around. We have some people like that. We almost never hear from them again.
Jill DeWit: They’re always like that. That was my dad. My dad was the king of buying things like this. Some of them, when he passed, I’m like, the plastics still on this one. He never even opened some things. Yes. I know there’s people out there that do that.
Jack Butala: When the kids were really little, I was a soccer coach, which is a great time to be a dad coach because you don’t have any real responsibility. It’s more discipline than anything, and the kids still want to listen to you and the whole thing. Coachability was so important back then. There’s three or four different types of kids that would come in, little kids. My favorite kind was always one that had some basic skill but needed some instruction and would take it and would listen to it. They’re coachable. Those ended up being, and we would always give out awards at the end, and my favorite award was Most Improved. It still is. The kid that you just think he wasn’t going to make it in the beginning, and then he starts listening to you. You go through and you give him … At the end of the season, he’s top one through three players.
Coachability and improvement and an open mind. Those are my favorite Land Academy students, where they just come in and you don’t hear from them, but then they come out with some really good questions. You help them, and they’re doing it. Every step of the way you feel like this inner pride. My perfect Land Academy member is coachable.
Jill DeWit: Love it.
Jack Butala: Now we can talk about the fun stuff.
Jill DeWit: Okay, because I have a question.
Jack Butala: Oh, go ahead.
Jill DeWit: All right.
Jack Butala: Now we can talk about the people that eh-eh, I’m not sure.
Jill DeWit: I was going to ask … I was going to take it a little more personal first. What kind of student are you, Steven?
Jack Butala: You mean now, or when I was a kid?
Jill DeWit: No. Okay. … How about as a kid? What kind of … because I have a funny story, too, but-
Jack Butala: I was not a good student as a kid. I was a good college student.
Jill DeWit: Really. Okay, tell me about as a kid …
Jack Butala: As a grade school …
Jill DeWit: … and tell me as now. This is perfect. What kind of student were you as a kid in grade school?
Jack Butala: I was a class clown.
Jill DeWit: Oh, my gosh. Did you pay attention at all?
Jack Butala: No.
Jill DeWit: Did you ask any good questions, or you …
Jack Butala: Uh-uh.
Jill DeWit: … couldn’t care. You just want to get out to recess?
Jack Butala: I wanted to horse around.
Jill DeWit: Okay. … Okay, how has that changed?
Jack Butala: It’s not. That’s why my only option is to own a company like this. I could never work here.
Jill DeWit: I thought you were going to say something that you had some great changes. I mean, through college I developed these work ethics …
Jack Butala: No, no.
Jill DeWit: … and the study habits.
Jack Butala: No.
Jill DeWit: Because you have a pretty good work ethic. I got to say. You know what’s funny about this? This is the total truth that even though you say you just want to goof off, you are in here every morning before everyone.
Jack Butala: I know.
Jill DeWit: That’s not how I operate.
Jack Butala: You know why? Because I enjoy this. I love buying and selling land.
Jill DeWit: That’s good.
Jack Butala: I love the whole thing.
Jill DeWit: I do, too. I do, too, just not at 6am.
Jack Butala: This show is not about me. You just have to bring a good attitude. One of my favorite books ever, it was written by Bill Gates, Sr., Bill Gates’ father who is also named William Gates. He passed away now, but he wrote the book. I highly recommend it. It’s a one-sitting read. It’s not long or painful. He sits down, and he says, I wrote this book because I’m so tired of answering this question at the grocery store. What is it about him? What did you do to the kid to make him Bill Gates? The name of the book is called Showing Up for Life. He said, you know what? I showed up for my kid’s childhood. Then he goes on from there about all the stuff that families go through and people go through in general in life. He’s an attorney and a very methodical approach. He tells a lot of funny stories about Bill Gates as a kid, but I’ve used that sentence a million times probably since I’ve read that book.
You have to show up for this. When I mean show up, I don’t mean stand there and wait til it’s over like a lot of kids do. They just stand there, kind of scoffing and kicking the dirt, and saying, it’s only 15 more minutes left. Only 10. That’s not showing up. Show up and take an interest in this. Make a commitment, and it’s possible to make some serious money pretty quickly.
Jill DeWit: Do it to the best of your ability. You think so?
Jack Butala: Yes. You got to show up.
Jill DeWit: You know what? You said it’s not about me, and you know what, though, Steven? I think it is about you. There’s a lot of people who want to emulate you in a really good way. I think it is kind of about you. You set a good example. You have good values. You clearly figured out a brilliant business model, and now you’re sharing it. Even though you said it, it kind of is about you. I’m going to get a little teary eyed.
Jack Butala: Oh, my gosh.
Jill DeWit: I mean that sincerely. I really didn’t think … it’s just kind of coming out. When you said, “It’s not about me,” I want to go, “Hold on a moment. Yes, it is.”
Jack Butala: I’m laughing on the outside and crying on the inside.
Jill DeWit: Where’d you read that one?
Jack Butala: I think it’s Yogi Berra.
Jill DeWit: Oh, my gosh.
Jack Butala: Some of the best quotes ever.
Jill DeWit: That’s a good one. That’s funny.
Jack Butala: I was not a good student early on, and I’ll tell you, one of the reasons was we lived in a very lower middle-class …
Jill DeWit: Pfft. Not … in Grosse Pointe?
Jack Butala: No, listen. Until about sixth or seventh grade, we lived in a lower, middle-class Detroit suburb, and then we moved then to a very affluent suburb of Grosse Pointe because some financial stuff in our family changed. A lot of it was just with the teachers and the surroundings and the distractions. All that stuff.
Jill DeWit: You know, you and I have some similar backgrounds.
Jack Butala: Yes, I know.
Jill DeWit: That’s really funny you said it because I forgot. Because where I grew up in Garden Grove is not where we ended up in Laguna Hills.
Jack Butala: Right.
Jill DeWit: Their hill’s built a bit different. Because then some things in our family changed financially, too. That’s interesting.
Jack Butala: I don’t know. I think anybody, if you take it seriously regardless of your past, take a program like this, not necessarily this one, but whatever you want to do seriously, you’re going to do it. Some people it takes a long time to learn to get an A on a test, but I don’t believe this crap about oh, I’m just not academically good at this.
Jill DeWit: Oh, I don’t believe that either.
Jack Butala: It’s just you can’t get an A on a test by studying for 35 seconds like the guy next to you. That’s what the “Oh, I’m not smart then.” That’s silly.
Jill DeWit: Yes, it’s true. You’re going to do it differently. Get over it.
Jack Butala: Yes, get over it.
Jill DeWit: Yes. That’s okay. Do you want to know what kind of kid I was?
Jack Butala: Yes, yes. Now it’s about you, Jill. That’s why people listen to this show. It’s for you.
Jill DeWit: I have a funny story that I was going to share. As we’re talking about what kind of students we were then and now, one of my stories is Mr. [Tinsman 00:12:11] got sick and tired of me talking in class. Here’s a surprise. I would not shut up. He put me in the front of the room. Didn’t matter. He put me in the back of the room. Didn’t matter. Then he put me in the corner, and he put a bookshelf in front of me, thinking this would work, because I couldn’t have eye contact with the other classmates.
Jack Butala: This is exactly like today.
Jill DeWit: Putting me in a corner with a bookshelf in front of me?
Jack Butala: No. Just there’s a lot of talking.
Jill DeWit: Oh, stop. Thanks a lot. Last time I checked it was okay.
Jack Butala: It’s good. That’s why we have a show.
Jill DeWit: All right. This is true.
Jack Butala: No one wants to listen to me.
Jill DeWit: Could you imagine?
Jack Butala: No.
Jill DeWit: No. All right. Then I’m clearly bored, trying to come up with something to do. I got through my work. As a child, schoolwork came really easily to me and didn’t have to study at all. I had a lot of downtime. I looked around the bookshelf, and I decided that you know, I could make some money off this here. There was an entrepreneur thing, I think, in me, too. I used my free time to make signs and put it all over the bookshelf that I was renting out all the books. It was all the dictionaries and whatever it was on the bookshelf. I was very proud of that. It was 25 cents to rent them out.
Until Mr. Tinsman called me over to his desk and explained to me. Since he owned the classroom … It was his classroom, his bookshelf, his books. He really sat down, and we did a whole math thing and broke down the numbers of how much his cut would be and how much my cut would be by the time it was all over, because I was only leasing the books from him. Anyway, it did not work out, so I took the signs down.
Jack Butala: That’s how the Mafia works.
Jill DeWit: Isn’t that great, though? What a great thing to teach …
Jack Butala: It’s the Mafia business model, right?
Jill DeWit: … a kid. I still remember Mr. Tinsman …
Jack Butala: He’s paying you for protection.
Jill DeWit: … to this day telling me, “This is not going to work, you know. Here’s what you’re really going to make off that 25 cents.” Then it wasn’t worth my while, so I took all the signs down. I love that.
Jack Butala: Yes. I love that entrepreneurial spirit, though, Jill. I never heard that story.
Jill DeWit: Thank you. Thank you very much. Then it wasn’t until later years that I had to develop study habits. The kind of student I am now is I focus, man.
Jack Butala: Yes. That’s good.
Jill DeWit: Now maybe it’s because I’m not there because I have to be. If I’m taking a class or I’m working on something, I’m really there because I want to be. That’s another thing that I think about our members, what I love about them. Our members, they’re there because they want to be there. They made a decision, and they’re in it, and it’s really in it. There’s money involved. Everybody is really paying attention and wanting to be a sponge.
If you enjoyed the podcast, please review it in iTunes . Reviews are incredibly important for rankings on iTunes. My staff and I read each and every one.
If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to email me directly at steve@LandAcademy.com.
I would like to think it’s entertaining and informative and in the end profitable.
And finally, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes.
