Tools that Make Us So Successful (CFFL 0098)
Tools that Make Us So Successful
Jack Butala: Tools that Make Us So Successful. 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 for Land Academy. Welcome to our Cash Flow from Land Show. In this episode, Jill and I talk about the tools that make us so successful. Jill, I love this topic. It’s like answering twenty questions in one. Before we get to it. Let’s take a question from a caller as always.
Jill DeWit: Sure. Randy from Montana called in and asked, “How low of a price can you really offer for land?”
Jack Butala: That’s a good question. You seem to have no bottom on what you will pay for real estate.
Jill DeWit: I won’t go below a dollar. I’m just kidding.
Jack Butala: I don’t know. I always think there’s a fine line between absurdity and reality. No matter how low we send out mailers, and we’ve been doing this for what? Fifteen years, fifteen plus years, almost sixteen thousand transactions, no matter what we seem to send out, with houses and with land, people just sign them and send them back, and we do deals. I used to think that rock bottom was about a hundred dollars an acre, or maybe five or six hundred dollars for maybe a smaller lot, like a quarter acre. These are, not in urban areas, but in fairly rural areas. Anymore man, I just tell you, it’s more about catching them at the right time and circumstance than it is about the money. Back me up here. The vast majority of the people that we end up doing deals with, it’s not really about the price at all. It’s just about checking it off their list.
Jill DeWit: It is. It’s all … It’s a sliding scale too, depending on the property, depending where it is. If you really go … Our success plant members, they have it down. They know how to look for similar properties, and what they should be buying it at, based on what things are selling. It really is kind of a … It’s a variable depending on the property and depending on where it is. If it’s a quarter acre lot in Southern California versus a quarter acre lot in New Mexico, it’s all different.
Jack Butala: That’s the right way to answer that question. Well said.
Jill DeWit: Thank you.
Jack Butala: It has to do with a delicate balance between the stuff that’s for sale in the area, the stuff that’s sold in the area, and then you’ve got to start subtracting from there. I try to, we try to offer less than forty percent of what property has sold for, or is selling there right now. That’s usually our mark. There’s a lot of other ways that we teach. It’s all in our Cash Flow for Land program. There’s a lot of other ways to value property. Our students, our members are actually coming up with some great ways to value property.
Jill DeWit: They’re good. They’re good.
Jack Butala: We kind of specialize out West, but we have tons of East Coast members that are coming up with ways to value property based on SS value, and a lot of different things.
Jill DeWit: They’re also looking at a lot of lake front properties.
Jack Butala: Ocean.
Jill DeWit: Nice areas where you’ve got to up your price because it’s worth that much more.
Jack Butala: Here’s an example. I just had a talk with a guy who, he’s from Florida, but he lives in the northeastern part of the country, I think New Jersey right now. Very successful guy, and he bought our program, and he’s a pro member, and he has a subdivision all picked out in Florida, where the properties themselves are about two to three hundred thousand dollars. They’re all canal lots in a very specific area, but there’s a lot of them.
He’s buying them for a hundred grand. He’s taking the concepts that we provide, and the network of people that we have, and the advice, and the whole system, but he’s applying it to different level of property, with great success, I might add. It’s the same thing that we do with residential houses, Jill, but we just we haven’t put an educational program together yet. That’s …
Jill DeWit: The concept applies, like you just said. What we do every day applies to many different types of real estate.
Jack Butala: This is actually pretty topical for what we’re supposed to be talking about today. The tools that make us so successful.
Jill DeWit: What are the tools, Steven?
Jack Butala: Sometimes you kind of like, you should do this for a living.
Jill DeWit: Thank you. I kind of like that.
Jack Butala: let me tell you want the tools are, Vanna White. Not necessarily in this order. What if we did a straitlaced show where we didn’t horse around at all?
Jill DeWit: That would be so funny.
Jack Butala: We just said stuff.
Jill DeWit: Like it was a newscast.
Jack Butala: We provided real information without all the banter, and we just sat here and talked, and there was no laughing, and no voice intention. We just said, like in Ferris Bueller, this is how you buy. These are the tools that you’re supposed …
Jill DeWit: Then we’d go from eight listeners to one over night. That’s what would happen.
Jack Butala: You know what? You know what would really happen is it just wouldn’t be any fun. That’s the reason this works. It’s fun.
Jill DeWit: Not only that. It’s fun, and we’re really giving out real, good information. It’s not, we’re not just reporting something or just reading stats or talking about who knows what. It’s good stuff. All right, give me something.
Jack Butala: Here’s a bunch of tools that we’ve developed over the years. Believe me, I did this all wrong for a lot of years until I figured it out. It was just a trial and error situation. Number one, most importantly, you have to have grade A quality data. I mean data that is fed directly from …
Jill DeWit: County.
Jack Butala: The county web … The county assessor. Unfortunately, Jill and I, for a lot of years, been using what used to be the First American Title data, which is now the same database as it’s always been, but it’s been. It’s a live feed, almost … It’s as live as it gets. Let’s say that. As live as it gets feed called CoreLogic, and we’re licensed providers of this data, so you can get it though us. All we did here is took our business, our incredibly successful business, and made another business out of it called Land Academy where we provide the exact same tools, in the way that we do business day in and day out. That’s data. We have a product called data2doorstep.com. Data, the number 2, doorstep, which is a group, a very large now, are growing larger every day, group of people who pay for access to the same data that we use.
After that, the tool after that that you really need, and again this is part of Data2Doorstep too is a reliable, specialized mail/direct mail/printer to get your offers in the mail inexpensively. In fact, we do it cheaper than the price of a stamp for a bunch of reasons, which includes everything.
Jill DeWit: I have to tell you something, I talked to Guy the other day. Not to interrupt you, but how good this is. He was spending forty-nine cents on a postcard.
Jack Butala: Oh my gosh.
Jill DeWit: We do-
Jack Butala: Two page offers.
Jill DeWit: Right, in an envelope, windowed envelop. I mean everything personalized, two pages.
Jack Butala: Geeze.
Jill DeWit: Yeah, I thought that was really interesting.
Jack Butala: For cheaper than [crosstalk 00:07:20].
Jill DeWit: Cheaper than that, exactly.
Jack Butala: Forty-nine cents. It’s like, your signature’s on there. It’s very professional.
Jill DeWit: It does. It looks-
Jack Butala: You don’t want to send postcards out.
Jill DeWit: I know.
Jack Butala: We haven’t talked about that.
Jill DeWit: It’s kind of funny, because I was asking him.
Jack Butala: Those guys are silly.
Jill DeWit: I was like, “Well, can you put all the stuff on? I mean do you put it on the postcard?” He goes, “Yeah, I put everything on there, make it personal.” I’m like, “Well, [crosstalk 00:07:40].”
Jack Butala: How is a postcard personal [crosstalk 00:07:41]?
Jill DeWit: That’s what I’m thinking. A, am I even going to look at it, since it’s a postcard? B, I may not be thrilled with you for having some of my personal information visible on a postcard.
Jack Butala: I tried all that, and it doesn’t work.
Jill DeWit: Exactly. It was so funny. Then I said, “But.” I said, “What’s your response rate?” He goes, “Well, yeah, there is that. [inaudible 00:08:01].” He kind of agreed that the response rate on the postcard is much, much, much lower than on a letter. I went, “All right, okay.” He’s like, “I know.” It was good. He wasn’t arguing the fact. He just kind of was bringing it up. I was like, “How’s that going?” He’s like, “Well, you know, it’s a cheap way to try to get something, but it doesn’t work as well.” I said, “That’s kind of what we found.” Yep.
Jack Butala: Right. Yeah, so cheap and reliable direct way to … Direct mail company., Direct or bulk mail company. We have a relationship with a company that, I’ve tried fifty of them, and this one’s the best. You also need a lot of help. If you’re going to do this with any type of volume and consistency, so we also provide people who can do your deeds for you and a very specialized personal assistant who can take a lot of the work, like the heavy lifting out of this, so you can just do deals.
Jill DeWit: Coming. Can I please say? Yeah.
Jack Butala: Coming, yeah [crosstalk 00:08:58]. Yes, yes.
Jill DeWit: Don’t call our office yet. No, not quite yet, but it’s coming.
Jack Butala: You need specialized, in our case, we spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on a custom database solution to track all this stuff. You need a good graphics person, which we provide, and the data in the virtual assistant scenario. This isn’t a commercial about Land Academy. It’s just the tools that you need, they’re evident. You need to know how to choose the right target area. We show exactly how to do that in our education material. You can go off on your own, and try to do all this stuff, or you can learn from us, I guess.
Jill DeWit: You know what? Steven, it’s like any business. Say I wanted to open an ice cream shop. I could go through all the pain of figuring out, “Am I going to make my own ice cream? Am I going to buy it pre-made? Where am I going to buy it? And then how do I get a store, a place? Am I going to be in a stand? Am I going to be in the mall? Whatever.” There’s a lot of different pieces.
Jack Butala: How are you going to get customers?
Jill DeWit: Right, and customers and advertising, promoting, and it’s-
Jack Butala: You could just use ours.
Jill DeWit: I could spend ten years. That’s why franchises exist, because they’ve done all the work for you. They’ve got it all filled out, and there’s a plan, and there’s .. What am I trying to say? A proven track record. Do you know what I mean? Which I like. I know that if I wanted to open an XYZ store, I’m sure they have criteria, because they know what works, and they know what doesn’t work, and I’m paying for that, and I get it. You know what? I’m going to make more money in the end, by the way, and quicker if I follow their steps, because they’ve done it all wrong, I’m sure, to get to the point that they are, you know like we have.
Jack Butala: The last tool, at least on this list, and there’s probably more if we really drill into it, is a sales venue. You can do all this work, and buy this cheap property, and then start like we did, from nothing, or you can use our sales venues, which there’s tens, and tens of thousands of people that we reach on a weekly basis that are going through our websites. You can start on your own, or you can utilize ours. Either ways, you’re going to need a sales venue.
Jill DeWit: Right.
Jack Butala: I’ve spent, you and I have spent a ton of time on that. I’ve spent sixteen years collecting a list of people that want to buy this type of property. It’s not a small list. Am I going to email it to you? No. I’m just saying we have a program coming that allows, if you want to be in the group, it allows you to have access to that stuff.
Jill DeWit: More stuff’s coming. Basically this is just about, just kind of sharing with you some of the tools that we utilize every day that make us successful, and it’s stuff you need to think about. We can help and provide these tools too, if you want to ramp up fast and be successful like we do. That’s really the whole [crosstalk 00:12:06].
Jack Butala: What did I miss? What’s like … What you do at land [say 00:12:11], as an acquisition person, what …
Jill DeWit: You know, the only thing that’s missing? I’ll tell you from this. There’s one thing we can’t provide. That’s you and your enthusiasm and your ambition and your determination. We could spell everything out for somebody, but we can’t make sure they’re going to pick up the phone and complete the sale or buy something or whatever. We can even bring money to the table, by the way. That’s a tool that’s not on here, that we promote with our members. If you’ve got a great deal, and you need some funds, this is one of those you can’t get to the bank fast enough, but you don’t have enough in the bank to do it, call us.
Jack Butala: Money should never, ever stop you from doing a deal.
Jill DeWit: Yeah. The money’s out there.
Jack Butala: Believe me, our group [crosstalk 00:13:00].
Jill DeWit: That’s a tool that we have.
Jack Butala: We are not by any stretch the only people in our group who say that. Our group is packed full of people that are really, really interested in that, Jill. Thank you for bringing that up [crosstalk 00:13:12].
Jill DeWit: You’re welcome. You’re welcome.
Jack Butala: Hey join us in another episode where Jill and I discuss your all important success in real estate and in life. I think that ended up being pretty dry and boring after all.
Jill DeWit: I thought so too. I’m like, “Oh my gosh.” I was trying to bring it up a little bit. It was kind of dry. I hope people, I hope they like that. It’s good. It’s informative.
Jack Butala: I guess we have to do these shows, these informative shows. We have to, don’t we?
Jill DeWit: I do get feedback.
Jack Butala: We could just have horsing around time. Go ahead.
Jill DeWit: I get feedback though of people that do want to hear some valuable … They want to learn something on these podcasts. I thought it was all entertainment too. A lot of people do want to learn something.
Jack Butala: What did you want to hear? What do you want to talk about?
Jill DeWit: Nothing but entertainment.
Jack Butala: That’s what I think. That’s how I am.
Jill DeWit: I want to laugh, tell stories. By the way, I can’t wait for the next show because the next show is going to be hilarious.
Jack Butala: What’s the next show?
Jill DeWit: The crooks we met last night. It is really funny and really true.
Jack Butala: Yeah we did.
Jill DeWit: Okay, let’s hurry up and do that.
Jack Butala: All right. Let’s go buy some property.
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