Working for the Man (CFFL 0068)
Working for the Man (CFFL 0068)
Jack Butala: Working for the Man. 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: [Jack Butala] here from Land Academy. Welcome to our Cash Flow From Land Show. In this episode Jill DeWit and I talk about working for the man. Is it bad? Is it good? I think it’s both. Hey, Jill DeWit.
Jill DeWit: Hello.
Jack Butala: Hey, we both work for the man, and we are both motivated enough eventually to leave, so … Get started by telling your experience about what was good about it, what was bad about it, and if there was anything good about it.
Jill DeWit: I have a lot to share about this.
Jack Butala: Good. Excellent.
Jill DeWit: I think my experience is different from your experience-
Jack Butala: Me too.
Jill DeWit: -because a majority of my experience working for the man was very … What’s the word I’m looking for?
Jack Butala: Painful?
Jill DeWit: Yeah. That’s great. Yeah, that’s one way to say it.
Jack Butala: [crosstalk 00:00:59]. Let me make one positive comment before we get into this. The worst thing, I don’t care how bad your job is and how bad you want to get out of there, what you are getting out of that is incredible motivation to start your own stuff. If that’s the worst thing that can happen, then you still win.
Jill DeWit: Exactly. Here’s the thing. Big picture, first of all, I think about working for the man is some people are set up for it. Some people are not. Number one. Some people love consistency. They love knowing their benefits are going to be taken care of. They love, you know, they got their child care set up for their kids. They drop them off, they got to work. They know their paychecks going to clear. They can … They know it’s six months or a year. I have that. I mean, I didn’t want that, but I worked in that environment and there was a time clock, everyone. I literally had to punch a time clock back … Log in, log out of a computer. You know what I mean.
Jack Butala: No. You mean time clock.
Jill DeWit: Well, there was a time clock too at one time.
Jack Butala: Yeah.
Jill DeWit: Years ago in the nineties.
Jack Butala: Big green thing sticking out of the wall.
Jill DeWit: Oh my God. [crosstalk 00:02:19]. You know what was nice, though? You also knew that because back then pay was based on seniority, so you knew, “Oh, in one year I get this raise, and at three years I get that raise, and at nine years I max out. Blah, blah, blah.”
Jack Butala: Ten years you die.
Jill DeWit: Yeah, in ten years you die.
Jack Butala: Because of that job specifically.
Jill DeWit: Pretty much. I remember going … It was so funny because I first got that job … I mean, I’ve had other jobs like this, but this is the most … It was American Airlines. They always spelled it out as you know, they are the on-time machine, and they expected it no matter what work capacity you were in it was an on-time machine. You know? You wore a watch. There was a time that I worked there I had to wear a uniform at the ticket counter, and part of our uniform was a watch because we were also portraying an image that we are the on-time machine.
Anyway …
Jack Butala: Do you have any pictures of that?
Jill DeWit: I do. I might still have the uniform.
Jack Butala: It’s working for me.
Jill DeWit: Thank you. Oh, it’s a whole other thing. Remember I did that for Halloween? One time I wore that?
Jack Butala: I do, like it was yesterday. I have some pictures of that in my phone still.
Jill DeWit: Thank you. There’s so many things I could say right now, but I’m not going to say because we’re G-rated.
Jack Butala: Go ahead. Say it. Everybody’s fallen asleep.
Jill DeWit: Ever heard that saying that, “Great, hey thank you. Now I have some audio to go with that video”?
I’m just like … All right.
You know those movies where the kid … There’s some grown-up jokes and they go right over the kids’ heads? That was one of those grown-up jokes that’s going to go right over all the kids in the cars heads, for anyone who’s commuting with their kids in the backseat.
Jack Butala: Oh, right. The kids in the backseat.
Jill DeWit: They’re like, “I don’t know what that was.”
Okay. Back to the … Reel it back in.
I remember when I first started there. I’m like, “There’s people here that have twenty years, thirty, forty years seniority. How the heck do they do that without dying?” You know, that’s just what they wanted. They were set up for that, and that’s okay. I want to say working for the man, there’s nothing bad. It’s really up to you.
For me, it was eating me up. It was keeping me from doing what I wanted to do. I had so many things I wanted to get out there and do. What happened, I got kind of stuck. I’m like, “Shucks!” My pay and my schedule got to be, “You know, it’s not bad right now.” I mean, you really tell yourself this. “You know it’s not that bad.”
Jack Butala: Yeah, you justify it all the way through.
Jill DeWit: “I can now get Christmas off every year, so it’s not that bad.” Then, “Now I’m not working late night shifts.” Whatever it is. I did that.
For me, for me, it was also good, like what you said. I finally got pushed to the point where I maxed out, there was no where to go, I was … This is it. I was staring at it going, “This is it.” I had the golden handcuffs, and I’m like, “I’m out of here.”
Jack Butala: I think you … I think most people, I include myself in this, you have to hit some version of rock bottom. I’m not talking about like an AA meeting. I’m talking about just with your career.
Jill DeWit: Right.
Jack Butala: You know? It has to get so bad that you are just … I don’t know. I said this a few times to myself when I was in that situation. I said, “I would rather flip burgers.” I said, this because I was in Pennsylvania, “I would rather flip burgers in Arizona than work for this accounting firm one more week in Pennsylvania.” It wasn’t state specific, and it has nothing to do with that. It’s just, you know? I was just done with it.
That was my version of career rock bottom. That’s when I started going to look for land on the internet.
Jill DeWit: I want to ask you a question-
Jack Butala: In the [ebooks 00:06:15].
Jill DeWit: -I want to say, for me too, what was interesting. My job was great. It was coasting. It was perfect. I had friends. Everything was great. I was just bored out of my mind, and I knew I had to do more. There was nothing wrong with mine … I just knew I had more in me, and I needed to do that.
Jack Butala: Right.
Jill DeWit: All right, so please, please share with us your story.
Jack Butala: You know, honestly, I’m always, always incredibly straight-forward and honest, but along those consistent lines I’ve never had a job, with very few exceptions if ever, where I didn’t make a great wage. I went through college, graduated, did all the stuff you’re supposed to do, and it still didn’t work.
I think that there’s a lot of people out there that think that there’s this magical thing. There’s some people that get born into these white-collar situations and that they don’t really have to work for a living. Those are the most miserable people. I know a lot of … I’ve known a lot of those people in my whole life. They’re the most miserable people there ever was.
I’ll tell you about the happiest people. The happiest people are … And we just got a compliment from a member who joined yesterday-
Jill DeWit: Oh, yes.
Jack Butala: -what did he say?
Jill DeWit: He said …
Jack Butala: Why does he listen to our show?
Jill DeWit: “Because you guys generally, you seem very happy, really happy.”
Jack Butala: We are some of … I’m not joking.
Jill DeWit: We are happy.
Jack Butala: You and I are some of the most happy people I know. If not the happiest. It has to do with you have got to hit rock bottom. I had to hit rock … Hit career rock bottom, and rock bottom in some other stuff that we won’t cover now. For me, I don’t know, for some reason it’s real effective to just be in a situation where, “I just can’t take this anymore. I’m going to start making some better decisions.”
Jill DeWit: Right.
Jack Butala: “I am going to … Now, I’m going to work toward paying this mortgage off.” Which we did a lot of years ago. You know, you sit down and you say, “You know what? This is going to really make me happy, and this other stuff over here? I don’t care about it.”
Jill DeWit: Right. That’s it. There you go. For me, I noticed how well … I sleep better. Back then, I mean, I was … Even though everything was perfect, I didn’t have to worry about anything, I was still kind of a stressed out … Maybe the mundane. I think for me the monotony of it all got to me. I remember, you know … What?
Jack Butala: I just thought of something. Go ahead.
Jill DeWit: Okay.
Jack Butala: I’m not laughing at you.
Jill DeWit: Okay. I just sleep so well. You know what’s really funny is you and I are working on this data mailer package thing coming up, which is going to be so fantastic I can’t wait. You and I have … You and I have more [crosstalk 00:08:38]
Jack Butala: We’re within days of releasing that.
Jill DeWit: I have more projects, big projects on my plate than I probably ever had in my entire life-
Jack Butala: You know what? Me too.
Jill DeWit: -but I … We both.
Jack Butala: Jill DeWit, me too. What’s wrong with us?
Jill DeWit: I know, but we’re both so excited and happy and sleeping like babies. It’s hilarious. Maybe because we know what’s going to happen. We just know we’re on the … We’re on the right path. We’re doing the right thing.
Jack Butala: Jill DeWit and I are going to release, probably within probably two weeks, a data package that goes with our … So, what we teach our members is: learn how to do this, then send out offers, tons and tons of offers based on data. By a million requests we now are a licensed seller of the best data on the planet, in my opinion, for a way better rate than they offer themselves. It all is based on the fact that we’ve … Since the mid-2000s we have sent hundreds of thousands of letters out, literally.
When I … I reached out to them to say, “Look, I’d like to sell this to our people.” They looked at my thing and said, “Okay. You’re qualified.”
Jill DeWit: Right.
Jack Butala: Then we, on top of that, aligned ourselves with a commercial printer that’s to get all your stuff in the mail is pretty close to the price of a stamp. It’s a little bit more, but it’s very close.
My point is, we’re releasing this program now so that our members have no freaking excuses at all.
Jill DeWit: Exactly.
Jack Butala: You know, you get educated about it, and here’s the tools to do it. Here’s the data, and here’s the mailing company. All you got to do is sort your own data and choose the right market and that.
We’re about to release that, well, two weeks from now, three weeks from now. I’m jacked about it, too.
Jill DeWit: I am.
Jack Butala: You know, I don’t even look at this, that part of it as work at all. I know how well it’s going to work. I know we’re going to make some money on it. I think … I can’t wait to see … We should have a contest of who’s going to be the most successful.
Jill DeWit: You and I get multiple emails every day about this thing. It’s awesome. Everybody’s ready for it. They need it.
Jack Butala: That funny story that just I thought about because I was setting this podcast up with one of the people here, and I said … She looked at the title and just looked at me, and I said, “What?” And she said … I said, “You think I’m the man! You’re working for the man.” She said, “Kinda.”
Be careful. You can become the man.
Jill DeWit: I can … What?
Jack Butala: No. You could become the man. You can become the man who people work for.
Jill DeWit: Okay. Yes.
Jack Butala: You just got to be careful not to be a …
Jill DeWit: Don’t be that kind of man.
Jack Butala: Don’t be that guy.
Jill DeWit: Yeah, I know. No, I try … I won’t let myself become …
Jack Butala: Right.
Jill DeWit: You know, if anything? You know what’s really funny is I’ve been … I’ve caught myself going the other way. If anything I’ve been too lenient to not be-
Jack Butala: Yeah, I’ve caught you doing that, too.
Jill DeWit: Thank you. [crosstalk 00:11:29]
Jack Butala: I had to put a red egg timer.
Jill DeWit: That doesn’t have anything to do with my point.
Jack Butala: I had to put a red digital timer on Jill DeWit’s desk because she was talking to potential customers, this isn’t a land business, people who had no intention of buying anything ever for like two hours straight just because she likes to talk to people.
Jill DeWit: I do not talk for two hours. You’re so funny. [crosstalk 00:11:58]
Jack Butala: The other thing about it …
Jill DeWit: I do make friends easily though.
Jack Butala: The other thing that I noticed about when you’re in with … Those job, those professional shop situations for big companies, do you notice that three years go by in one minute?
Jill DeWit: Oh, yes.
Jack Butala: I don’t see that here. You know?
Jill DeWit: No, no.
Jack Butala: When you’re on your own show it just …
Jill DeWit: Because one year feels like five. I’m just kidding.
Jack Butala: That’s not what I meant, but …
Jill DeWit: With you. Just kidding.
Jack Butala: Not what I meant.
Jill DeWit: I totally get it.
Jack Butala: You know, seven years with you feels like two minutes underwater.
Jill DeWit: Thanks. You’re so … Oh my goodness. Where is this show going? Somebody’s got to save this.
Jack Butala: No, I’m serious. When I was specifically working in healthcare really early, I was buying and selling hospitals for this company. It was just like six months would be one week. That’s not good.
Jill DeWit: That’s true.
Jack Butala: You could wake up forty years later and just say, “What the hell just happened?”
Jill DeWit: That can happen. You know, you’re getting to that stupid routine where … I … How it happened for me was I get into a routine where Thursdays I’m dropping off my dry cleaning, Monday I do this, Tuesday I do that. You get so set in a routine. You know? Tuesday night’s taco night. Whatever it is. Then you have ten taco nights, or fifty taco nights and there’s a year.
Jack Butala: Yeah.
Jill DeWit: That’s what happens.
Back to the topic. Where do our people fit in this … Where do you think our people fit in this situation?
Jack Butala: Here’s the message …
Jill DeWit: Are they happy to be with the man, and they’re looking for a side thing? No, no. I’m serious, because they’re … I don’t … Are they all done?
Jack Butala: Yeah. I’ve never spoken with a member who said, “I really love this job. I love my job and I just want to make an extra thousand bucks a month.”
I talk about that in the program actually, because I thought long ago that there might be a lot of side business people out there. Maybe there are because this is … We had a lot of real estate agents who do this as a side business, but I don’t think real estate agents are working for the man.
Jill DeWit: True.
Jack Butala: They’re working for themselves.
Jill DeWit: That’s true.
Jack Butala: What’s the message that I want to send with this podcast? How much is enough? You know? We don’t sell misery here.
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