How to Teach and Learn – Education in the 21st Century (CFFL 0115)
How to Teach and Learn – Education in the 21st Century
Jack Butala: How to Teach and Learn – Education in the 21st Century. 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.
Steve: Jack Butala here from Land Academy. Welcome to our Cash Flow From Land show. In this episode Jill and I talk about modern education. How to teach, and learn, and educate in the 21st century. Jill this is not your grandfather’s classroom. I don’t-
Jill: Or mine.
Steve: Or yeah, exactly.
Jill: Not even mine.
Steve: I’ve been waiting to do this show for a long time. Before we get into it, let’s take a call. Let’s take a question from a caller.
Jill: You just made me think about, when you said my grandfather’s class, you might think you, it makes me think of Little House on the Prairie. It could have been that.
Steve: Oh, my God. You know where I got that line, a long time ago?
Jill: Yeah, where is that?
Steve: It’s was the Oldsmobile tagline for years and years and years; this is not your grandfather’s Oldsmobile.
Jill: You know what Steven? That line would have been really good for our clichés the other day.
Steve: Yeah. Come up with something better Steve. That’s what she’s really saying.
Jill: Yeah. That’s kind of what I’m saying.
Steve: Think a little harder Steve. I know you got it in you.
Jill: Not our classroom even. You know what? Hold on a moment. I think right now, I’ll get more into it in a minute, but I even think that right now that the classroom, in four years even a lot changes. It used to be ten years for big changes. You know what I mean? Now the gap is getting smaller I think. The kids that are graduating college right now, four years from now what those kids are going to be going through is going to be leaps and bounds.
Steve: Before e get into this topic, let’s take a question from a caller.
Jill: Thanks a lot. That would be Jill, back on track. Okay, all right, all right. Okay, Kelly from Kansas called in and asked, “Can I do this part time and keep my day job? I’m not unhappy, but I’d like to slowly start building up my plan B.”
Steve: Excellent.
Jill: I like that.
Steve: I think you’re more qualified to answer this than me.
Jill: Is it because I work part time? Is that where you’re going with this?
Steve: No, that’s not where I was going, but that’s true too.
Jill: Thanks a lot. I rolled in here like right before the show.
Steve: Yeah. That’s what happens. We have a lot that goes into this. It’s not just 30 minutes of horsing around.
Jill: Do you know what though? Here’s my point though. I’m mentally here. I may not physically be here. Correct? I’m in the car, we’re talking.
Steve: There’s a lot of work to this.
Jill: I know. Okay.
Steve: You can sub out, here’s the thing about podcasts and radio shows, there’s a lot you can sub out. You can sub out the sound engineering, but you can’t sub the talent out, or the writing. All right? There’s some stuff that goes on. It doesn’t sound like, it sounds like this is just we sat down with the tape recorder and did this. Maybe that’s good or bad, I don’t know.
Jill: [inaudible 00:02:44] we talk about over coffee.
Steve: Yeah, but if you don’t like that kind of show, you’re probably not listening to this anyway.
Jill: Exactly.
Steve: That’s fine.
Jill: Okay. Thank you. All right, so Kelly, can you do this part time and keep your day job? Absolutely. We have a number of people in our community that this is their end goal, sooner versus later, but we tell everybody, “Don’t quit your day job yet. Let’s make sure you get this going, you get in the system, you’re financially stable, and then it’s stupid for you to keep your day job,” so for you Kelly, you can tone it up, tone it down however much you want. You want to just do a property a month, or a property every few months and just slowly dive in, you absolutely can. I just say, you get in when you get out, however much you want to commit to it, but you should decide early on how much time you want to commit to it and create a game plan.
Steve: Well said Jill. Whatever you decide, make a commitment and do it. If you want to do one deal a month and make $5,000 per transaction, that’s fine. Make a commitment to do that.
Jill: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Steve: You know what we’re getting? I notice a lot, we’re recently getting a lot of questions about, “Hey, I don’t want to start a real estate business. I just want to make enough money to pay my mortgage every month.”
Jill: Oh yeah. That’s true, just to breathe.
Steve: That’s what I think what this caller is getting at. It makes me think that we need to market some stuff a little bit differently, but I guess these people are finding us, so I don’t know.
Jill: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yes Kelly, the answer is yes.
Steve: We have many, many members who do exactly that.
Jill: Mm-hmm (affirmative). I know we talked about a lot of our programs in the works, but one of the ones that we’ve talked about that it’s on the list. We just haven’t got to it as your schedule, your thing that you’re going to put together Steven, because I think-
Steve: Mm-hmm (affirmative), success calendar.
Jill: Yeah, because it’s going to be, “Do you want the two year plan? Do you want the six month plan?” Whatever it is, the five year plan, and if you commit X amount of hours a month, this is what you can expect. I love that. I think you even do it by week that you’re working on, and I think everybody will love that.
Steve: It’s by day. It depends. If you want to try to get this done in 30 days, which is very, very feasible, in my opinion, it’s by day. If it’s a longer one, six months, or it’s on the weekend.
Jill: Mm-hmm (affirmative), yep.
Steve: It’s all written, I just have to get, you know what’s holding me up? Maybe you can help me with this. Now this has turned into meeting.
Jill: Uh oh. Oh no. I’m happy to help Steven. What do you need? No, I’m serious. I wasn’t sarcastic.
Steve: That was totally sarcastic.
Jill: All right.
Steve: That’s the thing about Jill. She’ll say some sarcastic stuff and say right after it, “Oh, it’s not sarcastic at all.” It’s all confusing. Men have been confused by women for a long time.
Jill: Oh silly. What do you need? I’m happy to help.
Steve: The binder.
Jill: You need me to go buy you a binder?
Steve: No, I want it to be like a real leather binder that looks really, really nice where you open it and you say, “Somebody sent me a gift.” I want it to be in a custom made box. Maybe I’m over thinking this. I don’t want it to be in a plastic three ring binder with three hole punch. I want it to be nice.
Jill: Like a journal? A fancy journal?
Steve: Yeah, something like that.
Jill: Where you document?
Steve: Yes.
Jill: That’s not hard.
Steve: I know, because you’re a woman.
Jill: I can do that.
Steve: Men struggle with this stuff.
Jill: If you give me the outline, I’ll make it pretty. I love to do that.
Steve: Okay, all right, deal.
Jill: Thank you. Back to education in our classrooms.
Steve: Yeah. How to teach and learn, how to teach and learn, this is a new age we’re in, and I think it’s now, more than ever, easy and fast to learn stuff.
Jill: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Steve: There’s a few ways that you can learn in life. What are they Jill? We talk about them in The Cash Flow From Land program, actually.
Jill: Are you talking about the adult learning stages?
Steve: Some people learn by reading a book and taking notes, and they just get it that way. I’m not one of those people. Some people have to give their, literally have to work with their hands, do it on the computer, and some people are much better at looking at videos, watching videos, or watching other people actually do it. My whole point to this show is all of those combined are an option for the first time in … before the internet that was not the case.
Jill: True. You were stuck with a classroom.
Steve: Yeah, and reading, and taking notes, and regurgitating it on a test.
Jill: Here’s some interesting things, because I know people in an automotive engineering school, and they’re even doing that. Most of those learners are very hands on, that’s why they’re automotive technicians. That’s their thing, but they’re starting to combine education with, and it frees them up so they can do stuff on their own time where they watch some videos and things online, and then they show up at the shop. They have hours of online time watching and seeing it, and hearing it, and they can even hear engines and things like that online, and then they show up and do it in the real world classroom environment. I thought it was really cool that they’re really taking that to a whole new level and a new way of learning even with that.
I’m trying to think what other unique-
Steve: As instructors or teachers, which is what I guess we’ve given ourselves now that role Jill, you and I. It’s our responsibility, in my opinion, to teach all those ways. We need to provide videos, we need to provide these podcasts, we need to lead by example, like “Yeah, we’re doing it every day,” and instructional videos, and the whole thing, I already said that. I think that this is the 21st century way of doing this.
Jill: I look at even-
Steve: To followup to the last point, as a student or a pupil, you kind of have a responsibility to use all those ways to learn too, not just one exclusively and expect it to all work.
Jill: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Steve: I see we have a few members that think that for some reason they needed a textbook, because that’s how they learned.
Jill: Yes, it’s not that way.
Steve: While we do provide a pretty comprehensive, extremely comprehensive, in my opinion, written book that goes along with the education programs that we do, I think there are certain people who-
Jill: There are.
Steve: That’s fine.
Jill: There are.
Steve: I personally take responsibility for that, and the next program that we do I’m going to beef it up a little.
Jill: Yeah. Some people are a little bit, it goes back to what you just said, the learning way. I’ll tell you Steven, I’m one of those that if I’m really studying for something, I have highlighters and flashcards. I’m not kidding. That’s how I do it. That’s like I’m studying, well here’s an example, when I was getting my private pilot’s license there were flashcards in my world. You know what? I saved those flashcards. I still have them, because it’s good to brush up on and everything. I was reading, and then you go and apply it. You get up, you get in the plane, and you do it. That’s me, I’m not a video person so much.
Steve: I’ll tell you, I don’t know what life would be like before YouTube.
Jill: That’s all you.
Steve: Many times a day, I find what I’m trying to learn, usually it’s IT driven. I find it on YouTube and I play it on one monitor, and whatever I’m trying to accomplish, I look at it on the other monitor, and close the gap and get it done.
Jill: Right.
Steve: If you try to read that in a book … Microsoft is famous for doing the textbook type thing where that’s their way to help is to show you, they say, “Go here, do this, type in this, find this,” it takes five years. Google’s famous for doing instructional videos.
Jill: I like those. You know what’s so funny? It took you and I, how long did it take you and I to figure out, you used to get so mad at me going, “Just go on YouTube,” and I’m like, “That’s not the way I learn.” I finally got it I think. I hope I finally got it. I’m just different and that’s okay.
Steve: Even then, it’s the point of failure. I tried to change a headlight on a Lexus LS once, and trust me, it cost me more money in the end than if I just would have taken it. That’s beyond my skill.
Jill: It would have been a five minute job.
Steve: It’s a big job man, well it’s a big job for me.
Jill: I have a couple points. When i was thinking of this topic, I was thinking a little bit bigger, and I was thinking even, education in the 21st century, not just how you’re learning, but the value of real world experience and real world versus a book. You know? The value of diving in and starting your own company and writing your own business plan, versus just being in a classroom in a book and looking at the overhead projection dissecting somebody else’s business plan. Even in, because we’ve done this, we’ve taught classes and done stuff like this. Going over the budget, remember the budget Steven?
Steve: Yeah I do.
Jill: What was really funny, was we were teaching a class for Northern Arizona University here. It was an upper division business class, and what we were called in to do that day was this fake company budget. Steven found a couple things that were missing from the budget.
Steve: Yeah, like rent.
Jill: Yes. It was the funniest thing. Here we are, the professor had left us to kind of review, make sure everybody had a really working knowledge of this. We kind of go through and talk about all the different things, and you have to think about insurance, and your management fees, it really went into a lot of detail.
Steve: Mm-hmm (affirmative), too much detail.
Jill: Too much detail I think we kind of, they were a little overwhelmed, but we found a few things that were missing, and you don’t know that until you do it.
Steve: You know what I remember about that class?
Jill: Yeah.
Steve: Nobody learned anything, I don’t think, and a lot of people went on Twitter afterward and said, “Man that was a lot of fun.”
Jill: We did get some Twitter feedback after that. That was actually funny.
Steve: Wait a minute, so we’re fun, but you didn’t learn anything, but it was a lot of fun.
Jill: I know.
Steve: They didn’t specifically say that. I just think, you know what happened is, if I could have, if somebody said, “Steve, teach these kids about a budget,” boy I would have used a different budget. They handed that to me and said, “Make this kids understand that this is the budget that they’re going to use for this class.” It was the first class of the year for them for that term.
Jill: Mm-hmm (affirmative). That was a little difficult, but you don’t, my thing is, boy until you do it and you’re out shopping, there’s so many moving parts. When you’re out looking at your burger joint, and you’re really assessing the building, and the rent, and the lease, and all that stuff, there’s a lot to think about. The equipment, the insurance.
Steve: My opinion is, the only way to do that is to stand right next to somebody who’s already done it 25 times. You’re going to save so much money and time.
Jill: You’ll save.
Steve: You have to stand there next to somebody. Maybe even partnership with them so when the downfalls that you experience, somebody’s already been through it, and they can go right through it.
Jill: Right. You know, here’s a point, if someone came up to me, and I have been asked this, here’s my thing, I’ve been asked this and I’ll be honest, I have yet to say yes-
Steve: What? I’ve never heard you say no. She can’t even say no. she couldn’t say no in that sense. I have yet to not say yes.
Jill: I’ve yet to say yes. I said no.
Steve: Let me help you Jill. It’s N-O. It’s the same word in Spanish and stuff.
Jill: Okay. Here is my point, and I’m being honest. I have been propositioned by people who want to walk in my shadows and follow me around, and the reason I have said no, I’ll tell you why. This is a good thing for everybody else. If you really want to do this, and you want to learn from somebody, you can’t just say, “Oh I want you to be my mentor. Can I follow you around?” Uh-uh.
Steve: What they’re saying is, “Can you do this for me?”
Jill: No, I want to learn from you. I’m okay if I want to learn from you. No, I’m serious. I think my people really want to learn from me. They didn’t bring me anything. I did not feel it. I didn’t feel it. I didn’t feel that they were there for the right reasons, and I didn’t feel they could help me in any way.
Steve: Mm-hmm (affirmative), I agree with you completely.
Jill: My point is, I’m agreeing with what you say. I’ll tell you, the best way you can really learn something, whatever it is, you want to learn that guy’s glass installation business, you want to mentor the guy. You can’t just call him up on the phone and expect him to say, “Sure, show up tomorrow. You can just follow me around.” Hm-mm. You need to really do your homework. You got to show him that you’re in it, and you got to bring something to the table like, “Hey, I’ve been studying six people in your area, and you know what? This guy does it better, or I noticed this guy does this,” don’t want to say better, but bring something to him of value and then you stand a much better chance for him saying, “You know what? All right, I will let you follow me around for a little bit. Let’s do this.”
Steve: Right. We’re in the planning stages of teaching an in-person class to a select number of people. The number we keep throwing around right now is like 10 or 13. We’re putting together an interview process to be let into that class with a Skype video interview, and yeah Jill, I absolutely agree with you. You need to bring some ambition and commitment to the table and really show that you’re going to follow through with it. That concerns me too. There’s a lot of people that say, pull up in an expensive car and your life’s going great, and there’s a lot of people, they say, “Hey there’s something shiny. I want that. Hey, can you show me how to do that?” It’s just a flipping thought. Ten minutes later it’s going to be something else shiny.
Jill: Right, or they’re just not into it. I’m not going to do it.
Steve: Yeah. I did that one time a long time ago, and I would never do it again.
Jill: Ask somebody?
Steve: No, they said, “Hey I want to learn about this,” and they just didn’t show up at all. That’s the name of my book by the way.
Jill: I know that.
Steve: You need to show up, and I don’t just mean stand there and pick your nose. Show up and give it your all.
Jill: Mm-hmm (affirmative). I don’t know if you remember this, my very first office job when I was 20 was working for a couple of real estate developers in Santa Ana, California and I really wanted that job. Who knew how it would lead to all of this. You know? I had a really good foundation with those guys. One of the reasons that I got that job is I was persistent. The guy who eventually, Todd, who hired me, later on said, “Jill, one of the reasons I hired you is because you wouldn’t stop.” I would call everyday, I followed up, I sent the letters.
Steve: Good for you Jill.
Jill: Back then it wasn’t email and stuff too, it was physical writing letters. I wrote thank you letters, I did all the right stuff, and I really wanted that job, and I got that job. What’s really funny is I did not look the part.
Steve: Did you have a nose ring?
Jill: No I didn’t, but I had the punk rock hair, so I had to flatten my hair, I had to make it look presentable kind of thing.
Steve: How old were you?
Jill: 20.
Steve: Who was your favorite band when you were 20?
Jill: Depeche Mode.
Steve: Were you all punked out like Black Flag?
Jill: No, I wasn’t all punked out, but I could dress the part on the weekends, I did.
Steve: Did you have like three kinds of mascara in your purse?
Jill: No, but I had bleached hair. I was growing out my bleached hair. Oh, it was awesome.
Steve: Did you have combat boots?
Jill: I did not have combat boots. Holly wore the Doc Martins. I had some other funky shoes though. They h ad the thick soles though, they looked like [inaudible 00:19:09]. I had some fun shoes, it was good. I wore a lot of black, of course. I had an ammunition belt. That was one of my favorite things.
Steve: I still have an ammunition belt for very different reasons.
Jill: I think I saved mine, and my black leather jacket with the fringe.
Steve: I use it to put ammunition in there.
Jill: Oh I didn’t, mine was not real. I was all decorative, but it was heavy.
Steve: You crack me up man. It’s kind of like a southern California washed out version of London punk.
Jill: We were punk. [inaudible 00:19:40]
Steve: Depeche Mode is not punk.
Jill: Did I tell you what my mom told me?
Steve: Yeah. Now you’ve got to tell everybody. Every chance you get, you tell me this.
Jill: Oh. Is this a bad thing?
Steve: It really made an impression on you.
Jill: It did. Here I am, walking down the street in LA late at night. I’m like, “What’s everybody’s big deal? Why are they so afraid of being out at night?” Even if you’re alone walking home from, I’m not walking home, but I’m leaving a club going to my car kind of thing. My mom said, “Jill, because you’re the one they’re afraid of.” I’m like, “What?” It was silly. It was a long time ago. I hope that wasn’t too much information to share. It’s a little late now.
Steve: Hey, Disneyland bad ass, you got anything else you want to say about education?
Jill: Yes. Experience versus real world, what we even see in students versus even our own employees, that was my last note that I had. I see it in our employees, and we hire this way too. You need to show up and want to be here. Even though you’re really, really good at books or whatever, it’s an education where you go to work.
Steve: Well said. I had a football coach in high school, he had a bunch of one liners throughout my silly football thing in high school, and one of the things that he said to us that always stuck with me, obviously forever was, “If you’re going to make a mistake,” all of us were in high school constantly forgetting the plays. He’d have complicated, I mean complicated in a good way, playbook. He said, “If you’re going to make a mistake, if you’ve got the play, you better make it at 100 miles an hour.” That just stuck with me. I think it’s true.
Jill: You’re committed no matter what. You were committed to it.
Steve: Yeah. Don’t do it halfway because you forgot the play.
Jill: Good advice.
Steve: I think that applies here. Our whole crew’s like that in Land Academy. If they aren’t, then they’re not here for long. Join us in another episode where Jill and I discuss your all important success in real estate investment and in life.
No, I never heard the last, I’ve heard that story a lot, but I never knew that you had to exercise all that persistence to get it Jill. I think that’s a cool part of it.
Jill: I did, and I was there for a couple years. They went off and did other things. They were buying strip malls, they would buy the land and develop into strip malls, and they moved to other locations and things, and took me with them. I had a really good time and a good foundation.
Steve: You know, it’s funny. The first commercial real estate job that I got was for the same reason. I had an interview, guy called me the same day and said, “I’m sorry. It’s just not going to work,” so I just called him for like ten days straight and he said, “All right, well you’re giving me no choice now. You have to work here.”
Jill: Exactly, yeah. I loved it.
Steve: Which, by the way, is what it takes in commercial real estate. It’s all presence and commercial real estate, if you or the listeners don’t know, is way more disorganized than residential real estate. There’s not one real place to go and get listings like the MLS. Commercial real estate, even this day and age, which is kind of timely for this topic, this 21st century education topic, even this day and age, it’s very much who you know.
Jill: Yeah.
Steve: After you do a couple deals with a guy that makes sense, like there’s land guys, and there’s office building guys, and on, and on, and on. After you do a couple deals with a contractor that you like, they’re stuck. It’s an old boys network forever.
Jill: That’s what this was.
Steve: yeah.
Jill: Exactly.
Steve: It’s still like that.
Jill: Yeah. It was office buildings and strip malls.
Steve: I’m not saying that’s bad. I think it’s good.
Jill: We had the same group all the time, the same bank lender, everybody knew everybody at that point, so exactly. What are we going to do now together kind of thing.
Steve: Hollywood is like that. I was talking to somebody recently about making a movie, and it’s all accidental. It’s all in passing. There’s a million scripts in Hollywood and there’s a million actors, and it’s all just in passing. I talked to this guy who’s got a gap in time because he’s not doing anything in March, and we’re going to put, this script looks good, and it’s just a big huge accident.
Jill: Got it.
Steve: Which doesn’t make sense. You would think it’s a little more organized than that. I don’t know. Let’s go buy some property.
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