How to Sell Property Online 5 of 5 – Keep Getting Bigger (CFFL 0160)
How to Sell Property Online 5 of 5 – Keep Getting Bigger
Jack Butala: How to Sell Property Online 5 of 5 – Keep Getting Bigger. 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:
This is S. Jack Butala from Land Academy. Welcome to our Cash Flow from Land Show. We show you how to buy property for half of what it’s worth, and resell it the very next day. Great information and instruction from Jack, that’s me.
Jill DeWit:
Inspiration from Jill. That’s me.
Jack Butala:
Jill, you have some funny stuff that happened recently? You can start the show off right.
Jill DeWit:
I have to say one thing. It was just funny. If you’ve been listening to our show for some time you have noticed that we haven’t played up Steven’s middle name. I was wondering how many people are catching on with that. We didn’t do it for so long because we were kind of like, “This sounds kind of silly. Really? That’s your middle name?” You know what I mean?
Jack Butala:
Yeah.
Jill DeWit:
We down-played it because you can’t walk into a bar and say, “Hi. I’m Jack and Jill.”
Jack Butala:
I know.
Jill DeWit:
Now this is one of those things that we have learned over the time that, “All right. Get over it everybody.” Just go with it. It is Jack and Jill. I just wonder how many people are now catching on about that. That’s not that my funny, but that’s okay.
Jack Butala:
Along these lines, every morning there’s a couple of key people on our staff that I speak with via Skype that get in super early. Nobody in our office listens to our show, thank god. One of them said, “I love this Jack thing,” because he’s producing some of our stuff now. He’s like, “I had no idea.” He’s been working on it for a long time. It’s hilarious. I’m sure it’s confusing as hell for everybody.
Jill DeWit:
It really is. It’s going to get more confusing.
Jack Butala:
It confuses me most of all.
Jill DeWit:
I know because we haven’t been calling you that for a while.
Jack Butala:
For [half 00:01:32] my whole life no one’s called me that.
Jill DeWit:
I know. We’ll get past it. It’s going to be just fine. There’s a little transition and then it’s going to be no big deal. We’ll call that my funny part today because I thought that was cute. I wanted to share that.
Jack Butala:
In this episode Jill and I talk about how to sell property online. This is the fifth episode of a five part series. The last episode, keep getting bigger. Even us after all these years I look back at the number of people in our database, the number of customers that we have, both Land Academy and Land Stay company-wide, I’ll share it with you in a minute, it’s staggering, but it keeps going up. Great show today, Jill. Before we start let’s take a question from one of our members on successplan.com, our online free community. Ha, there’s a joke. I’ll tell you why. I looked through a bunch of questions and I came up with a question myself, so here’s my question.
Jill DeWit:
Oh. I’m like, “Where’s the ha?” The ha is it’s your question not a member question?
Jack Butala:
I’m picking and choosing through a ton of questions. Some of the questions I put on one side and then I had a question. What is the difference between somebody who is just killing it in this business model, buying and selling houses, buying and selling land using data to do it? Not traveling around the silly way, doing it the right way. Some people sign up, the get all involved and they’re making a ton of money three or four months later. Some people you just never hear from again. The whole thing’s just like a big door stop. What’s the difference? What do you think?
Jill DeWit:
You’re asking me?
Jack Butala:
Yeah.
Jill DeWit:
Okay.
Jack Butala:
Yeah, because you talk to these people more than I do.
Jill DeWit:
If I were to take a step back and take a good look at all the people in our world and the ones that are really successful I can think of a few things that stand out. Number one, they follow instructions. Seriously, they go, “Okay, Steve and Jill said I should start with this. All right, I’m going to do that,” which is probably, “I’m going to set up my whole social media. I’m going to set up my website. I’m not going to skip any steps. I’m going to get all this stuff in place. Okay. Now I’m going to work on this and I’m going to do the mailer and it’s going to go this way and da, da, da, da, da. Then I’m going to talk to people. This is who they say to do it, I’m going to do it.” That’s number one, is they’re good at listening and taking our advice because we got this, clearly. That’s one.
The second thing is I’ve noticed, they have some confidence. There’s something there, they don’t hesitate. Even though we’re all kind of nervous when we’re first starting out, like, “Oh, my god. I’m going to call the county and ask these questions. I know Jill told me I need to do this and I need to make sure because I’m sending in to record and I want to make sure I get everything right.” Sorry about that. My audio went a little weird for a second there. “I want to make sure that I’m doing this correctly. I’m a little nervous, but I’m just going to do it.” They just do it. They blindly, not blindly, but they have faith and confidence and know, “I did A, B, C, D. I’m sure this is going to be fine.”
Jack Butala:
Blind confidence.
Jill DeWit:
They go with it. Blind confidence.
Jack Butala:
That reminded me of something. I heard somebody a long time ago, a multi-billionaire, giving a talk and somebody asked the exact same question, “What does it take?” He said, “The people that I’ve seen succeed don’t when to quit. They don’t know when they’ve been beat.”
Jill DeWit:
It’s true.
Jack Butala:
I agree with you, but I think that in a word it’s commitment. First, you have to believe that what’s going on … Here’s the problem, there’s so much bad information out there, way more bad information. There’s way more, I’m not going to use the G word. It’s g-u-r-u. People have emailed me with this stuff.
Jill DeWit:
I thought the word was going to be gay, like silly.
Jack Butala:
What?
Jill DeWit:
I don’t know. I didn’t know what you were going to say. I mean silly, like that kind of thing.
Jack Butala:
I have been called that. I’m called that on a weekly basis and that’s not what we are at all.
Jill DeWit:
No.
Jack Butala:
We’re people that are rooted deeply in real experience, daily experience flipping properties and buying property for half price. You just have to believe us. If you don’t believe us, then that’s fine. I think there’s probably something else better out there for you. There’s a lot of dry cleaners for sale.
Jill DeWit:
You know what I say?
Jack Butala:
The second thing is commitment. Once you do believe it just make a commitment and a plan and a calendar and just get it done, man. That’s the difference between people who super succeed and people who don’t, I think.
Jill DeWit:
My thing is go look at what everybody else is doing. There it is right there and that’s what we love about Success Plan. We were talking about one of our members the other day putting in all his numbers in there. I don’t know if it’s in the everybody-can-see-it area.
Jack Butala:
It’s everybody-can-see-it area.
Jill DeWit:
Okay. Got it. Throwing in those numbers there was just so cool to share with the world. These are not one-offs.
Jack Butala:
Yeah. There’s lots of people who do one or two deals. This guy had multi-unit deals and made 25, 30 thousand bucks in 30 seconds.
Jill DeWit:
Right.
Jack Butala:
Yeah, that’s hilarious.
Jill DeWit:
Cool.
Jack Butala:
The topic today is how to sell property online. It’s a five-part series. This is the fifth episode of a five-part series and we’re wrapping it up by saying, “Look, keep getting bigger.” I looked up my numbers and we have between 14 and 15 thousand different sellers. I mean different buyers, excuse me, in our community over since the 90s. It started with one, just like you. You got to start with one buyer. If you treat them right and run everything the way that it should be then you’re going to do just as well as we did, probably better. I would argue we have members that maybe, well, they’re doing it a lot faster but they’re doing it better than us.
Jill DeWit:
Because they have us. We joke about that, “Wish we had us. Man, do you know where we would be two years in if we had us? Holy-moly.”
Jack Butala:
Right. Here’s the meat of this show, it’s all about sales in this series. It’s imperative that you keep growing your audience in your sales. How do you do that? How do you do it so you don’t have to anymore go out and get these people, they just come to you? This is how you do it. We talked about it all through the other four episodes before this. You post your property everywhere on the internet and you collect the names. Collect names everyday whether you use an email service like we do, which is called AWeber.
For every property that you sell or that you post you should be collecting multiple people who are interested or are expressing interest in buying it. What typically happens to us in our numbers is we post it, it gets sold very quickly. Then 19 or 20 or 25 people contact us over and over asking if they can buy it or if they can be informed the next time something like that comes up. It’s very automatic once you figure it all out. Check out AWeber. It’s not very expensive at all. You can collect everybody’s email in a pretty efficient system, Jill, unless you have a better way. We’ve been using that for a long time. It works really well.
Jill DeWit:
Back in the beginning, though, when I didn’t have that I just actually had a spreadsheet. I really made a spreadsheet that would have the name and the email and the phone number of the person. I would put in there what areas they liked. I really put state, county, where they wanted and what size they wanted and I kept a growing list. It was my super, super hot list because it was people I’d talked to that were ready to pull the trigger but I just sold it kind of thing. That’s what I did in the beginning but it grew into this.
Jack Butala:
You know that you can buy more, right?
Jill DeWit:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Jack Butala:
We’re all past that. Acquisitions, I don’t care if they’re houses or land or anything, are incredibly simple using the data-to-doorstep program. You send a bunch of offers out and you see which ones come back. Buying property of any kind with the way that we’ve been doing it for years, there’s no issue. Is there any issue with sales when you’re buying it for half price? No. You know what this is more about? Staying organized, because when you buy a property and sell it three days later for twice what you paid or a substantial number you get lazy. It happened to me. You don’t keep people’s numbers. You think you’re Super Man. You buy the next one. You sell it to a guy, the first guy. “Oh, I didn’t capture a list. Now I have two customers, now I have four,” instead of 40 or 400. You could have had if you-
Jill DeWit:
Keep that growing.
Jack Butala:
… stick to the system. You got to keep that thing getting bigger. Jill’s heard this a million times, so, Jill, if you want to go get a cup of coffee it’s fine. I had a high school football coach who said this to me, I obviously never forget it, “Tomorrow morning you can wake up and you can be better at this or worse, but you can’t stay the same.” I think that’s great advice. I also heard a weight-loss person do it.
Jill DeWit:
Who was that?
Jack Butala:
I don’t know. It was a few years ago.
Jill DeWit:
[All the nerve 00:11:13].
Jack Butala:
It’s like, “Tomorrow morning you can either lose weight or gain weight, but you can’t stay the same.”
Jill DeWit:
That’s hilarious. I zoned-out a little bit. I just noticed you have sand on your desk.
Jack Butala:
You love that, don’t you?
Jill DeWit:
I do love that.
Jack Butala:
I have beach sand.
Jill DeWit:
We’re actually sitting here barefoot and there’s sand on Steven’s desk. This is awesome.
Jack Butala:
How cool is that?
Jill DeWit:
I know. It’s really, really cool.
Jack Butala:
This is the if, then segment of the show. If you do x then y what will happen? If you want to make it easy for your buyers then set up a huge on-going list and email them frequently. How much is frequently, Jill?
Jill DeWit:
That’s a very good question. Once a week is good.
Jack Butala:
I think [crosstalk 00:12:02]. You think once a week?
Jill DeWit:
I think once-a-week is good. Shucks, I tell you, I’m not a three-times-a-week, five-times-a-week and three-times-a-day [inaudible 00:12:15] to me email person. I really do not want that much communication. You send me those many emails there’s a good chance I’m going to unsubscribe to your thing, slash, however, I think because people just find us, obviously, because of who we are I end up on all kinds of lists. People search me out and they put me on their list.
Jack Butala:
That happens to me a lot.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah, and I’m okay with that. Often people, they’re trying to lend me money which is the funniest one because that’s the last thing I need.
Jack Butala:
Or invest with us. That’s the one I get most.
Jill DeWit:
That’s right. The ones that I like, and I even keep those. They don’t blow up my email, so I glance at it and go, “Oh, that’s cool.” It’s just good to stay in touch with what other people are reading. Then I go, “Okay, that’s cool,” and I delete it. The ones that I do like and I do look at, and it’s pretty much once-a-week, is there’s other people out there that are flipping and different things like that, bigger properties, apartment buildings. I like to see, “Hey, look what just went for sale that this guy obviously cleaned up. Look what he’s selling it for in LA or Phoenix or Chicago or Detroit.” You and I end up on a variety of lists and I like those. They’re not too frequent and I appreciate seeing them.
Jack Butala:
Once-a-week or once-a-month seems to work better for me. I’m glad you brought that apartment building thing up. There’s a group called Orion Real Estate in Scottsdale. They post what’s sold, like apartments, because Jill and I are specifically apartment investors and they send out a sold notice for apartment buildings that have changed hands all over Arizona. This is what I do. I find out what’s sold and then I find out if it was listed before. Never. The stuff that’s listed for sale on LoopNet or wherever else you list properties it’s never. Here’s why. The commercial real estate guys have the inside track just like you do. They do deals that are off market deals. All we’re doing is applying this mailer concept that the commercial guys have known about forever for buying land and buying houses.
Jill DeWit:
That’s right.
Jack Butala:
You want to make it easier for your buyers to inform them? Set up an automatic email system monthly or weekly that keeps them informed and it automatically grows your list. Hey, if you have a question or you want to be on the show call 800-725-8816. Jill, are you going to inspire us today?
Jill DeWit:
I am. I hope so. I’m going to try. Here is my inspirational thought for you to think about today. Do you celebrate how smart you are about some things? You see, Steve is laughing because he doesn’t know what I’m going to come up with every day. I really do write these right before the show, I really do. I seriously spend a few minutes quietly and I think about what’s going on right now and that’s on my mind. It’s funny because-
Jack Butala:
I have so much to say.
Jill DeWit:
All right. We’re going to get into this for a second. Hold on. One of my staff members and I were just texting before the show this exact topic. I realized-
Jack Butala:
Hold on. What’s the topic? I laughed [inaudible 00:15:51] you.
Jill DeWit:
The topic is do you celebrate how smart you are about some things because you should. That’s my point because we were having a conversation and the text going back and forth was, “How is this person not getting it?” I’m like, “You know? It’s okay. For whatever reason it is we need to explain it like this.” Here’s the deal. I’m not, obviously, going to name anybody or their situation but I’m just saying sometime we have to dumb things down. I said, “We just need to dumb it down,” and then I texted her and I said, “P.S. Then we’re going to go quietly. Celebrate how brilliant we are.” She’s like, “Heck, yeah.” That’s my point.
Jack Butala:
Do you ever see people walking around with shirts on that are self-described?
Jill DeWit:
Oh, here we go again.
Jack Butala:
I’m going to get a shirt that says, “Very smart.” I’m going to put it on. I’m going to wear it around just in case anybody’s confused.
Jill DeWit:
Really?
Jack Butala:
How about a shirt like this? No, how about a pair of pants that says this on the bottom, “Juicy”?
Jill DeWit:
Oh, my gosh.
Jack Butala:
I’m so juicy. How about I get a shirt that says, “Gorgeous”?
Jill DeWit:
Here it comes.
Jack Butala:
“Oh, wait. Oh, I didn’t really realize it. You’re gorgeous? Oh, it says that right there on your chest right there.”
Jill DeWit:
Oh, my goodness. I can’t believe five shows went by that you hadn’t brought that up.
Jack Butala:
Celebrate your smartness today.
Jill DeWit:
Oh, my gosh. That’s not the point.
Jack Butala:
Am I missing it? What’s the point?
Jill DeWit:
Yes you are.
Jack Butala:
I missed it.
Jill DeWit:
No. Okay. Let me dumb it down for it you, Steven.
Jack Butala:
Yes, thank you, because I’m not that smart.
Jill DeWit:
Your not, about this. Just kidding. Steven, do you take time to celebrate how [technologic 00:17:36] …
Jack Butala:
Technological?
Jill DeWit:
Technologically inclined you are-
Jack Butala:
I don’t.
Jill DeWit:
… about many, most things.
Jack Butala:
If I took even a moment and stood in front of the mirror any day, just even one time, and said, “Man, you’re smart, Steve.” I wouldn’t get anything done. I’d be like, “Yeah. You’re done. Your cooked.”
Jill DeWit:
No, that’s not the point.
Jack Butala:
“Stop learning.”
Jill DeWit:
Hold on a moment.
Jack Butala:
“You’re smart enough.”
Jill DeWit:
Hold on, that’s not the point. The point is, appreciate what you’ve got, Steven.
Jack Butala:
Oh, okay. I get that.
Jill DeWit:
All right. You are smart about a lot of things.
Jack Butala:
I totally appreciate. I appreciate you.
Jill DeWit:
Thank you.
Jack Butala:
I appreciate our members. I appreciate our bank balance and all that stuff. Our staff, I totally appreciate or staff and friends, but I don’t look at myself and say, “I’m smart.”
Jill DeWit:
No, I don’t want you to do that. I don’t want you to get a big head. I do want you to realize that you have a lot going on up there that a lot of people don’t. You should appreciate that about yourself, A, and, B, don’t get pissed off because other people don’t get it. Seriously.
Jack Butala:
Am I making you mad here?
Jill DeWit:
You are making me a little mad.
Jack Butala:
I don’t mean to make you mad.
Jill DeWit:
You know what, Steven? That’s my thing. It’s not about how smart you are and how dumb you might think everybody else is. It’s just about, “Wow. I didn’t realize how smart I am about that.” That’s kind of cool.
Jack Butala:
Somebody told me along these lines, all kidding aside, really recently that you don’t know how smart you are until you start teaching. This company’s not that old. We’re not teachers. We’re just kind of like guidance counselors more than anything. Yeah, you’re right. It turns out we know a lot about this. We’re experts at it. I never even looked at myself that way, though. I’m like, “Oh, man. I really could be doing more.”
Jill DeWit:
No, it’s not about that. I think you’re exactly where you should be. I really do. I think you’re exactly where you should be. It’s just important for everybody to take a step back and realize, “Wow. How lucky am I that that comes easy to me and, boy, am I going to use it.” That’s it.
Jack Butala:
Right. Join us on another episode where Jack and Jill discuss how to use information, that’s my part-
Jill DeWit:
And inspiration, that’s my part.
Jack Butala:
… to get just about anything you want.
Jill DeWit:
We use it everyday to buy property for half of what it’s worth and sell it immediately.
Jack Butala:
That’s hilarious, Jill.
Jill DeWit:
I know. I didn’t mean to push any buttons over there. Did I?
Jack Butala:
Honestly, I think that this part of the show we’re not supposed to agree. That’s half the fun of listening to this show and making it with you. I agreed with that and said, “Oh, my gosh. That’s great. Yes.” If were just the whole time saying, “Yeah, man,” like we’re hippies, I think that it would be no fun to listen to or do. I take an informational approach to everything and you take an inspirational approach. That’s what it’s all about. There’s a ying and yang and we talk about it.
Jill DeWit:
It’s true.
Jack Butala:
I’m going to get a sweat shirt that says, “Steve, you’re very smart.”
Jill DeWit:
Oh, no. Here we go. No, don’t worry about it. I’m sure our staff has already ordered it. Seriously. The minute you said that somebody ordered it, so don’t worry.
Jack Butala:
Cross out the word smart and put an adjective in there.
Jill DeWit:
You know what they added? They added Smart A-*-*.
Jack Butala:
I was thinking arrogant or something. I’ve been called arrogant in the past.
Jill DeWit:
I don’t think you’re arrogant. You know what?
Jack Butala:
I get impatient as hell.
Jill DeWit:
Can I share, please?
Jack Butala:
Yeah.
Jill DeWit:
I think that you just get seriously frustrated because you are so smart and you do things so quickly. We joke about this. You have conversations in your head that I’m not involved in.
Jack Butala:
I know.
Jill DeWit:
You get mad at me because I don’t know what’s going on. I’m like, “Wait a minute.” You don’t get mad. You get frustrated and that’s okay. I guess that’s my point. Not everybody’s on the same page. Then the same is for me. I look at things very differently and I wonder, “Why doesn’t Steven get this?” Because that’s not how you’re wired.
Jack Butala:
I’ll tell you when that happens the most with me. We’ve been doing this 16 plus years. When you count all the real estate investments more than 20 years, but Land Stay for 16 plus years. Did you ever have a teacher, it’s usually an older teacher, and they’re teaching the thing again and they’re just not into it at all? They just go through the motions and they can’t stand it. They don’t really want to be there. They’re like two years from retirement. I’m not that way with Land Academy because it’s so new. I love teaching and explaining all this stuff, I love it. The actual mechanics of buying and selling land for myself is so mechanical now that it’s like I just don’t want to deal with it. Does that make sense?
Jill DeWit:
Yeah, and I get it. It’s not exciting for you anymore.
Jack Butala:
That’s why we started Land Academy.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah, and that’s on autopilot now. We have all the right people. That’s the way it should go. It should grow. You should teach somebody else, remove yourself and do something bigger, and that’s exactly what we did.
Jack Butala:
That is how you earn yourself a sweat shirt from your staff calling you a Smart Ass.
Jill DeWit:
It’s coming.
Jack Butala:
Let’s go buy something for half today and resell it. Jack and Jill, information and inspiration.
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.
