Two Ways to Start a Company (CFFL0087)
Two Ways to Start a Company
Jack Butala: Two Ways to Start a Company. 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 from Land Academy here. Welcome to our Cash Flow from Land Show. In this episode, Jill and I talk about the 2 ways anyone starts a company from Wall Street to Main Street. Jill, this is a fun and informative topic for me. You start a company by the seat of your pants, but which is the kind of the Main Street way or you start it by the book the Wall Street way. Let’s see which one is right for you, listener. Before we do that, as always, let’s take a question from a caller.
Jill DeWit: Thank you. Jessica from Washington called in and asked, “I have a chance to buy a property really cheap, but I know it gets flooded from the river every year. Should I buy it?”
Jack Butala: No.
Jill DeWit: No. That’s my answer too.
Jack Butala: Oh, that’s awesome. Let’s get on in the topic.
Jill DeWit: Exactly, no.
Jack Butala: In all seriousness, if property is flawed, for us, we run in the access issue all the time. If property has absolutely no access in any way, I don’t care what the price is, we’ve done shows and blogs on this topic. There’s such a thing as you got to pass on it even if it’s free. No, Jessica, do not property that you know flat out is flawed. It’s only going to come back to get you.
Jill DeWit: That’s funny that you say that too because there’s a few areas in subdivisions that you and I know very, very well that we just don’t buy. I feel bad when people call in and I’ll say, “Where is it,” and I’ll say, “It’s x, y, z,” and I’ll go, “Sorry, I can’t help you. I’m just not interested. They’re like, “Really?” I’m like, “No, I’m sorry.”
Jack Butala: That’s a good point, Jill because a lot of that, a lot of the subdivisions or property areas that we’ve identified as properties just won’t buy for any price. It’s because we’re just too busy, it’s not worth our time. It doesn’t mean they’re not profitable. We have this thing called DEAL BOARD on successplant.com. For our Pro members, they get to access that and throw deals up, and we throw deals up there. While we don’t just say, “No, we’re not going to buy it, sorry.” We say, “Yeah, we’ll just throw it up on the DEAL BOARD and someone’s going to call you.”
Jill DeWit: The bad ones, we don’t. We don’t give those [passes 00:02:05] on. That’s what I’m saying, there are some, “I don’t buy every property,” that’s the point I was trying to make.
Jack Butala: That’s right.
Jill DeWit: The ones that are still good properties, but not what I’m looking for right now, but it’s a rocking deal and it is a good property. Oh yeah, we share that with our members, so they can do the deal. That’s another point so thank you.
Jack Butala: Yeah, that’s a very popular question. I can buy some property with no access at all for $30 literally, should I do it? No.
Jill DeWit: Why? What do you do with it? No one’s going to want it.
Jack Butala: I mean you can try it.
Jill DeWit: No.
Jack Butala: Here me out on this.
Jill DeWit: Okay.
Jack Butala: You and I know this from experience. It’s just more hassle than it’s worth. What you’re doing is taking up time then on this property to do the maps, and market it and the whole thing, and put it in your system, and it’s taking up time from you to actually return other phone calls from the mailer that you sent out for a property that rocks. That’s the real cost of that.
Jill DeWit: I have a problem too with I’m not going to knowingly sell something that there’s a defect or if there’s going to be a problem.
Jack Butala: Me too.
Jill DeWit: Because that’s the thing, you can’t in good conscience. You have to disclose what the problems are and then, no one’s going to buy it, and then you’ve wasted everybody’s time. You don’t want that, so move on.
Jack Butala: Right, yeah, move on. Like we say, send out enough mailers and get into a system where your phone’s constantly ringing you with new acquisitions every day. Our phone rings every single day with at least, back me up or tell me I’m wrong here Jill what, 4 or 5 property opportunities.
Jill DeWit: Exactly.
Jack Butala: Of those opportunities, you want to get the deals done or you’re going to make the most money out.
Jill DeWit: Right. I could have someone and that’s all they do and now that I think about it, what can I do, but almost just stay into those calls and deal with all that. There’s a lot. We spread it out.
Jack Butala: Right.
Jill DeWit: Okay. [Inaudible 00:04:04] to start a company, Steven. Please share with us your wisdom.
Jack Butala: How sad is that? People listen to my advice. You’re exactly right, wow. It just all hit me like a ton of bricks. I’m going to say a bunch of stuff in the next 20 minutes and people are going to listen to it.
Jill DeWit: Or they’re going to turn it off right now.
Jack Butala: Jill and I, last week, we have this professional, now social friend who’s a college professor at a university here. Sometimes, we join him. He teaches an entrepreneurial class and sometimes, we join him in his class. Once in a while, we sub for him. Last week, we sub for him. Jill and I went into the class and I brought a little bobblehead of Eisenberg like Walter White from Breaking Bad.
My whole point to this talk was Walter White created the perfect business. Aside from the fact that the product that they were selling, if you live under a rock and you’ve never seen Breaking Bad, then you just move on to another episode. Walter White, he was a drug dealer, a drug manufacturer. Step by step, this whole series, I don’t remember which channel it was on, which network, showed us how to manufacture and distribute illegal narcotics. He was a perfect business model except for the fact that his product was illegal.
Jill DeWit: Illegal, yeah.
Jack Butala: There’s a lot you can learn from something like that. Anyway, my point is Jill and I takes this class and I never thought that maybe we’re not qualified to teach it. It never crossed my mind.
Jill DeWit: Because we are qualified because we’ve been there and done that. Seriously, I would argue that we are more qualified than someone who knows the textbook forward and backwards and inside out, and can tell you what it should be versus someone who’s done it.
Jack Butala: That’s exactly how we teach the class. The first thing I say is 90% of the stuff you learn in college is silly, but the stuff that you’re going to learn in the next hour and a half is reality-based. I’m telling you, this is how it really is. You might not like it and you’re not going to be tested on it, but this is how it really works.
This is how this works. There’s exactly 2 ways to start companies from any level. I don’t care if you’re buying a piece of property for $500 and selling it for 3000. What if you’re starting an operating system like Microsoft or like Windows? You have 2 choices, you can keep your regular job and work that on Sunday. Piece by piece, and parcel by parcel, or step by step build a company by the seat of your pants where it’s all taped together and it’s a god-awful mess; but you love your customers and your customers love you, and you make them feel special, and you charge the right price, and you make mistakes along the way. At some point, you decide to make it a full-time gig. That’s one way. The tape-together method is what I call it. Every company I’ve ever started is I’ve used that method.
The Wall Street way is to get a fund involved, raise some capital, get some investors, get some experts. This is a Steve Jobs’ Apple computer way. Steve Jobs said so himself, “I have a ton of talents, and I have a vision, and I love going to meetings, and I’m going to surround myself by tech people, and raise some capital, and raise more capital when I need it, and take my company public when I need it. In the end, that worked out great for him, but there’s a lot of responsibility to that. Unless you have a very specific incredible talent, I think that the way that Jill and I do it, the tape-together way is better. You got the tape-together way and I call the other one the Wall Street way.
Jill DeWit: What I like about our tape-together way is we own everything along the way, there’s no big debt, or I’m not owing anybody, or there’s investors that I have to answer to. The Wall Street way, they’re looking to me going, “Hey, you promised this. You brought me this rocking business plan. I gave you a million dollars where I’m expecting.”
Jack Butala: Yeah, I make 50% of your [inaudible 00:08:18]. It’s the shark [tank 00:08:21] way.
Jill DeWit: I’m expecting this out of it.
Jack Butala: I own you.
Jill DeWit: Right.
Jack Butala: I’d rather screw something up for 10 years, but it’s all mine.
Jill DeWit: Right.
Jack Butala: Versus having somebody own me and tell me what to do after a while, and micromanage everything I did.
Jill DeWit: It’s scary. I’m with you.
Jack Butala: That’s why I left my job in the first place, because I didn’t want someone to tell me what to do. I really it’s replacing a job for a job. Long time ago, you can see my resume on LinkedIn. I was involved as a partner in a healthcare company that we took public on a stock exchange and I was very young. What I learned from that is to never do that.
Jill DeWit: Hey, how does it feel at the time? I got to ask you, how did you feel at the time? You were what, early 30s?
Jack Butala: Oh no, I was like 24 years old.
Jill DeWit: Seriously? Oh my goodness, that’s scary. You’re walking around, talk about a big head. I can just imagine. Weren’t you like walking around, going “I just took a company public and I’m 25 or something.”
Jack Butala: I didn’t have time to think about anything like that. The answer’s categorically, no. If you talk to people maybe back then, they might say, “That guy’s arrogant.” I doubt it. I mean maybe, I don’t know.
Jill DeWit: I’m just curious. I mean didn’t you like, “Oh wow, I killed it. Look what I just did and I’m not even 30.”
Jack Butala: I’m so glad you asked that. The answer is no because all I thought about during that time was I want to be a private investor. I want to own my own company, have my own money, and privately invest in the stuff that I want, and that’s it, and maybe have a partner like you. I mean I got what I wanted. It was between like the early 90s, and 1999ish, or 2000, I mean I actually realized that. I mean I made a realization. No, I wasn’t sitting around saying, “This is great, I’ve arrived.” I’ve never said that, not even now. Maybe that’s a character flaw.
Jill DeWit: That’s very interesting. I think that was such a good thing to share because I’m sure there’s a lot of people out there in your shoes that they might be in their early 20s, and they’re trying to make that decision which path I want to go. Do I want to do A, like you just did. From the outside looking in, it seems really glamorous and cool, and look at all you have and all that. Seriously.
Jack Butala: I know, you’re right.
Jill DeWit: It really does, but in the end, here’s a lot that you give up to have that and the stress, and the hours. This is back when you told me too is that or when did it happen you ever telling stories about you had so much fun/however, you work so many hours, there was nothing in your fridge, you just unplugged it. It wouldn’t even make sense. You’re just basically, your apartment was a place to shower, change your clothes, and leave.
Jack Butala: I had a 1 bedroom apartment with no TV. There’s nothing in the refrigerator. In fact, I unplugged it and opened the door. It didn’t look like anybody live there. I had no furniture like a futon or something. It was not because of lack of money, it was just everybody should go through this. Yeah, I’ve rewritten that. That’s how bold my life was like. We don’t have [inaudible 00:11:32] because we had a healthcare facilities all over the place. We’re flying all over the country constantly. No, I didn’t hate it. That was actually a good experience. I like that job and I love the people I worked with. I’m still friends with a lot of them now, but I’d always knew I didn’t want that.
Jill DeWit: That’s just interesting. Looks real glamorous again, the traveling all around, but versus just having the security.
Jack Butala: I have to tell a funny story.
Jill DeWit: Tell me.
Jack Butala: Jill and I, we have some full time people on [tech-staff 00:12:06] now for the first time ever, I have a decade list of tech projects that I’ve never [inaudible 00:12:12] or sent to VAs or whatever. This guy, one of the things was I want you to put up a website for JillDeWit.com and put up a website for my website, StevenButala.com so the kid does it. We’ve been working with this kid for a while. He puts up our whole resume and he never knew what our resume is, we only just saw his. He looks at me a few days ago and says, “You’re the real deal. You have some real experience. You like have real jobs at big companies and counting. Just correct me up, man.” He thinks I’m a ding-dong walking around the office who should never own anything.
Jill DeWit: That’s funny. Doesn’t realize that all that went into all those.
Jack Butala: Here’s another funny story. I had a person a lot of years ago, this woman who worked for me come up to me and actually walk up to me. This is when we had a ton of employees and say, “What is it about you that you get to do all this?” What she was really saying is you and I are no different at all. “What the heck is it about you? What’s different about you that you get to do all this?”
Jill DeWit: I get it.
Jack Butala: You know what my answer was to her?
Jill DeWit: What?
Jack Butala: Data.
Jill DeWit: Really?
Jack Butala: I close the door, close the office door.
Jill DeWit: Wow.
Jack Butala: That is the answer. That’s the difference between me and everybody else.
Jill DeWit: It wasn’t your dashing good looks.
Jack Butala: It was using data. No, jeez.
Jill DeWit: Just kidding.
Jack Butala: Jeez, Jill. Look, trust me, you’re the one in the family now with the looks.
Jill DeWit: Thanks. Now.
Jack Butala: I mean I might’ve been okay back then, but [crosstalk 00:13:43] tape together mess now.
Jill DeWit: Taped together mess.
Jack Butala: That’s a good [per-le 00:13:51]. How did this whole podcast become about me, my resume, and my looks instead?
Jill DeWit: No, because it’s really informative for people to think about what path you want to go when you’re setting out. I know because I talk to a lot of these people when they’re just getting into our programs, that’s what they want, you just described which is what we do now is what they want, and they know it. Kudos for them. I didn’t figure it out at 25.
Jack Butala: What is it? What is it that they want? Freedom, money, maybe a decision maker? What else?
Jill DeWit: A lot of it’s freedom. A lot of it is just knowing everything’s taken care of, not struggling, not maybe worrying and now, in this day and age. Back when I was 20, I never worried about my company going under. Nowadays, you got to think about that stuff. What would I do if my company goes under? What would happen if I got laid off tomorrow? That wasn’t such a big thing when I was that age. I never thought about it, but nowadays, it happened so much in the last few years, people really think about that.
A lot of it is the security. I hear a lot of people just saying, “If I could just get a way to have $5000 coming in a month that I don’t have to think about, I can breathe.” It’s not even that they want unnecessarily quicker day job. They may enjoy their day job, but they want that fall back.
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.
