Run if You Hear These Four Words from REI Educators

Jack Butala: Run if You Hear These Four Words from REI Educators. 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, welcome to our cash flow from land show. In this episode Jill and I talk about how you should run if you hear these 4 words from an REI educator out there, not us of course. Before we get into the show Jill, let’s take a question posted by one of our members on SuccessPlant.com, our free online community. I’m actually going to read this one because I love it. I’m going to read it today and I’d love to get your opinion and your answer.

Jill DeWit:
Awesome.

Jack Butala:
Tim says, “I was going through some rough numbers on my mailers, tax delinquent versus non tax delinquent. The results? I’ve made 3 times as much money on around 1/3 of the response rate, so less calls but more deals with non tax delinquent mailers. Not only that, but I’ve sent about 40% more tax delinquent mailers and I compare them 1 to 1, so for me, I’m (mostly) done using the tax delinquent lists.”

Jill DeWit:
I love it.

Jack Butala:
Jill, I’ve been saying this for years and years and years I’ve been saying this to people.

Jill DeWit:
I know, thank you.

Jack Butala:
I’m so happy that someone else said this.

Jill DeWit:
Exactly.

Jack Butala:
For some reason people don’t believe me.

Jill DeWit:
They don’t believe you for some reason. They don’t believe us. I don’t get it. It’s like, “Okay, you want to hit your head against the wall. Go right ahead.”

Jack Butala:
If you’re brand new to this, a lot of people can, in household selling and land flipping, there’s a lot of people, the majority, who believe that you should just concentrate on one type of mailer target. Jill and I for years have been saying, for now decades, you’re missing out, send everybody a mailer. Send everybody an offer that you’ve identified, and they’ll come back for years. If they don’t respond to it, they’ll put it in a file, believe me. We get calls for years and years and years on mailers that we sent out a long time ago. Tim, thank you. I couldn’t have written it better myself.

Jill DeWit:
Sorry you had to find out the hard way, Tim, but that’s okay.

Jack Butala:
The truth here, I’m reading between the lines, there’s a lot of competitors. In fact, that’s what this show is about: there’s a lot of competitors out there who I think are teaching the wrong stuff. If you’re just going to send tax defaulted property owners a letter, you’re missing, in Tim’s words, you’re missing 2/3 of it. 2/3 of the deals you’re missing.

Jill DeWit:
I agree. There’s so many headaches and things that could possibly go wrong on a lot of those deals. They’re a lot more work, like Tim just said, so yep.

Jack Butala:
If you have a question or you want to be on the show, give us a call at 800-725-8816. Today’s topic: run if you hear these 4 words from REI educators. Not us, of course.

Jill DeWit:
I love this.

Jack Butala:
This is the meat of the show. What are they, Jill? What are the 4 words? Let’s cut right to it.

Jill DeWit:
All right: millionaire …

Jack Butala:
Yeah.

Jill DeWit:
I love it. Do you want me to do all 4 and then we’ll talk about each one?

Jack Butala:
Yeah.

Jill DeWit:
Millionaire, and then next we’re going to do words like, “No work.”

Jack Butala:
Yeah, “It doesn’t take any work to succeed at this.”

Jill DeWit:
None. No money.

Jack Butala:
Oh yeah, “It’s all for free. Doesn’t cost a dollar.”

Jill DeWit:
And secrets. I love that one.

Jack Butala:
“There’s no secrets.”

Jill DeWit:
“You’re going to have my secrets. This is it, I’ll teach you the secrets.” No, no, no.

Jack Butala:
There’s no secrets. If someone says, “I’m going to let you in on this secret,” there’s no secrets. If you’re new to mailers, if you’re new to sending out offers; there’s the secret right there, that’s it.

Jill DeWit:
What’s the secret?

Jack Butala:
Send mailers out. Send offers out.

Jill DeWit:
Oh, I see, you just answered it.

Jack Butala:
If you’re brand new to this: that’s it. That’s the deal. People have been doing it for years and years in commercial real estate, since the beginning of real estate and the beginning of mail. I don’t think a lot of new people know that there’s this concept of sending direct offers out.

Jill DeWit:
So, millionaire, give me your thoughts on that, Jack.

Jack Butala:
“You can be a millionaire.”

Jill DeWit:
Isn’t that hilarious?

Jack Butala:
We’ve all seen late night infomercials on house flipping, and it’s a bunch of malarkey.

Jill DeWit:
Exactly.

Jack Butala:
I’ve never seen a good one. I’ve never seen anyone stand up there and say, “You know what? This is hard work. It can be incredibly financially rewarding.” You don’t need to say millionaire. You can easily make $10,000 a month after you learn and go through the process and make a bunch of mistakes. Yeah, it costs some money. It doesn’t cost a ton.

Jill DeWit:
You can’t promise that. I think why this is frustrating, or important, to us to talk about is because you can not promise that. However, I can show you a road map. I can show you how we did it. That’s really what we’re doing is we’ve just said, and that’s what we’ve done, that’s why our members are so successful, and that’s the whole reason they’re in our group, we’ve literally shared, start to finish, every last little detail about how we got to be where we are right now. You can take that and do the exact same thing. You could double it, fantastic, I’d love to see it. That’s my best thing is I see people killing it out there, like, “Boy, look how far ahead they are than we were at this point. Isn’t that awesome? We didn’t know and we didn’t have anybody.” That’s a great thing. You can say, “You know what? That’s not my goal. I just want a couple thousand dollars a month. It’s going to pay for my mortgage and my X.” Not my ex.

Jack Butala:
Not e-x. Just X.

Jill DeWit:
“To take care of my ex, because man, I got to get her off my back.”

Jack Butala:
Of all the things to be motivated … Why is it a her? What’s that?

Jill DeWit:
Let’s be honest. There’s not a lot of man walking around getting alimony or anything.

Jack Butala:
I think it would be called palimony if that was the case.

Jill DeWit:
You know what I mean. That’s awesome. That’s my goal, try to get rid of my ex. To pay for whatever that thing is for them, so they don’t want that. People throw that word around a lot, and it’s frustrating.

Jack Butala:
Here’s what’s going to happen with money, and it happens to me still even now. You’re going to start doing deals and you’re going to forget about the money. Then one day you’re going to go look in your bank account and there’s like $700,000 in there. I’m not exaggerating at all. It happened with me. That was a pretty key indicator for me to quit my job. You look at the money only to balance your checkbook so to speak, but then you really step back and say, “Wow, that all happened in 6 months,” or whatever the numbers are. I’ve always said, “After $20,000 a month, after tax, if you don’t have any bills, then it’s just numbers on a computer screen.” Forget about this millionaire thing. Young men, for some reason, they all want a Ferrari or a Porsche or something. That’s great, that motivates them, I think it’s great, but we don’t need to advertise that. At our age, it’s a whole different set of what we want and why.

Jill DeWit:
Your age.

Jack Butala:
This age thing comes up all the time.

Jill DeWit:
Hello, have we not talked about this? All right, no work. Give me no work.

Jack Butala:
This takes work.

Jill DeWit:
Thank you.

Jack Butala:
It’s fun, though. It’s a blast. We had a member, this is about 4 months ago, and they said, “You know, this just isn’t for us.” Remember that, Jill? You and I fell out of our chairs, because it’s only ever happened one time.

Jill DeWit:
That’s true.

Jack Butala:
I’m glad it happened, because they were honest with themselves. I think it was a husband-wife team. They could not stand, they had a real big issue with sending offers out for under market value. That was the root of it. That just puts a smile on my face, because I love doing stuff like that.

Jill DeWit:
I got to say, do they walk up to the store and go to the cash register and say, “I know it’s on sale, but take the sale price off, I’m going to pay full price.” What is that? I don’t understand.

Jack Butala:
I don’t know.

Jill DeWit:
Is that how you roll? Do they walk up to every car dealership and say, “All right, the sticker says X, Y, $35,999, so I guess here’s my $35,999,” is that how they … I don’t get it.

Jack Butala:
You know, I was just in the grocery store, I really was, I was just in the grocery store and they were running a huge sale on water bottles. Bottled water was half price.

Jill DeWit:
Okay.

Jack Butala:
I loaded up like 2 cartons full.

Jill DeWit:
You did the max. Whatever the limit was, you did.

Jack Butala:
I says, “Half price water,” and the cashier said, “You know I don’t even think it should be half, that’s like below cost,” and all this and I’m like, “What? You should go back there and buy some yourself. What are you talking about?”

Jill DeWit:
That’s what the sign says.

Jack Butala:
I don’t know, maybe we’re missing the point. Maybe, I don’t know.

Jill DeWit:
I don’t know.

Jack Butala:
I don’t suffer from that at all.

Jill DeWit:
No. No work, no money. Talk about that one.

Jack Butala:
Hey, it costs money. Do you have to have $100 grand in the bank? No, not at all, but it costs a little bit of money. People ask me all the time, “How much does it really take to get started?” I think you could do it with as little as $1,000 bucks after you get educated.

Jill DeWit:
And data …

Jack Butala:
What you’re doing is you’re just, it’s taking so much longer. It really is. In the end, find $5 grand. Let’s just say the number is $5,000 bucks.

Jill DeWit:
That’s good, and that’s all in.

Jack Butala:
Yeah, that’s it.

Jill DeWit:
That’s education, getting some data, some mailers out there; that’s perfect.

Jack Butala:
You’re going to make that back in the first month if you follow our program and you get into SuccessPlant, more importantly, or equally as important, and before you even spend a dollar start asking a ton of questions: how does this work? What are the mistakes you made? We see it all the time every day. SuccessPlant is our online community, and it’s free. You just get a username and start asking people all kinds of stuff. They’ll tell you.

Jill DeWit:
Exactly.

Jack Butala:
They might even front. There’s a lot of money people on … I shouldn’t say that. You could do this with no money after you get educated. You can go on SuccessPlant, I wouldn’t recommend it, go on SuccessPlant and say, “Look, I don’t have any money, but I can find a ton of deals.” There’s a lot of money people out there. We just read a question from one of them on an earlier show a couple days ago. Say, “Hey, I’ll find a deal and you fund it.” People do that all the time. I watch this on SuccessPlant all the time, have conference calls with them.

Jill DeWit:
Back to what you said, it’s not no money. You’re going to do this right. You need an education, you’re not going to walk up and be a doctor tomorrow, or a whatever tomorrow; you need to be educated on that. There is going to be an initial investment to do it right. If you want to save time … It’s being honest. That’s what I think this is about, Jack, thank you. This is all you and I being honest about this stuff. Speaking of being honest, what’s the secret? That’s the last word.

Jack Butala:
Secrets. There’s no secrets. If somebody says, “There’s secrets. I’m going to let you in on a secret on this whole thing. You’re going to get the whole inside track from me,” they’re lying.

Jill DeWit:
I’ve heard people talk about the secret county list.

Jack Butala:
The secret counties.

Jill DeWit:
The secret counties. There’s no secret counties.

Jack Butala:
There’s no secret counties.

Jill DeWit:
Oh my gosh, that’s the funniest thing.

Jack Butala:
What you need to do is learn how to choose counties for yourself. We have a wide variety of ways that our members … I’m cracking up, even us with the experience we have, our members are coming up with some extremely creative ways to locate the counties that they work in. It’s amazing. I thought I had it all figured out, and we do fine, but they have some very unique and creative ways to find the counties that they like to work in.

Jill DeWit:
It is.

Jack Butala:
There’s one guy, one member, I had a conference call with him, a deal review call, and he bought the program because he wanted to buy a house for himself to live in. He ended up buying 2, sold one and he netted out at zero. He used the program and the data for a very specific subdivision where he wanted to live in Florida, that he thought was a little bit undervalued anyway. He bought it for, he told me, $200,000 less than it was worth; sold it, and then he spent $200 grand on a lot and they’re building their dream house right on the ocean.

Jill DeWit:
That’s awesome.

Jack Butala:
There’s all kinds of ways to do that. If I sat here and said, “Elko, Nevada is the county that this works in,” he would never have done that. He would never have sat down and thought it all the way through. It just makes so much sense, I think, to learn how to do this for yourself.

Jill DeWit:
Exactly.

Jack Butala:
Learn your version of it, I should say.

Jill DeWit:
There are no secrets. It’s hard work. It’s knowing what you’re doing, hard work, yeah, you’re going to need to invest and man, if you have support, that’s going to make a difference, and that’s why we’re here.

Jack Butala:
Yeah, even SuccessPlant support, family support; the whole thing.

Jill DeWit:
Yeah.

Jack Butala:
If you’re not a deal maker, if you’re not innately a deal maker, if you’d rather work in a grocery store and that’s it; this is not for you. We sit here and do deals all day and we love it.

Jill DeWit:
Exactly.

Jack Butala:
It’s mechanized now, the real estate piece of this is mechanized; Land Academy sure isn’t. Why the heck are we doing this, by the way?

Jill DeWit:
I don’t know.

Jack Butala:
If we didn’t have Land Academy, or the whole Jack and Jill thing, we could just be sipping mint juleps somewhere right now.

Jill DeWit:
This is way more fun. You know it, you love it. It’s not you, you can’t sip … I’m the one that can sit back and sip things, you can’t.

Jack Butala:
Sip things, cracking me up.

Jill DeWit:
Yes I can, I can sip things very well. I could sit on a beach and drink something for a long time.

Jack Butala:
Yes you can.

Jill DeWit:
Thank you very much.

Jack Butala:
This is the technical 2, it’s 2 minutes of property investment advice from our 15 year, 15,000 transaction experience, and here it is: learn first and then buy. I see this backwards all the time, and people wonder why that it goes south. You have to learn first. Think of yourself as a surgeon. Surgeons learn first and then they do surgery. You want to learn about real estate, go through all the steps that you need to. Learn as much as you can, I would highly recommend from multiple sources, not just us. Then start buying some real estate.

Jill DeWit:
Yeah, people go out looking for deals and they’re doing them all wrong. “I think I found a great deal.” How do you know if that’s a great deal? You don’t even know that yet. Somebody told you that?

Jack Butala:
I see it in bigger pockets more than anywhere. “I bought a piece of property, I went through this whole thing, and it’s just not working.” My first question is, “Who told you how to do this?” “My parents did it, and they made $300,000 on their house when I was a kid.” That’s almost always what they say, or, “My sister-in-law just flipped a house and she made a ton of money.” Yeah, that’s not … You need to be involved in a community.

Jill DeWit:
There’s more to it.

Jack Butala:
Yes, there’s much more.

Jill DeWit:
There’s more to it than that.

Jack Butala:
Be involved in a community where people are doing this all the time, and learn from them, learn from their mistakes. Ask some tough questions, there’s no such thing as a silly question.

Jill DeWit:
Exactly.

Jack Butala:
Hey, if you have a question, speaking of questions, or you want to be on the show, call 800-725-8816. Jill, inspire us.

Jill DeWit:
Do this only when the time is right. I have just been in communication with a really nice woman, actually northern Arizona. She’s sweet. She’s written me really nice, long, heartfelt emails about her situation, all the stuff that she’s been working on. She’s got the excitement and everything, but I can tell, right now, this is not the right time financially, so I told her-

Jack Butala:
That’s excellent advice and inspiration, seriously.

Jill DeWit:
“Do not spend anything.” She’s got kids, a big family. I’m like, “This is great.” I said my advice to her is, “Spend some time, soak up all the free stuff that you can. I want you to put a budget together, plan. What if this takes 6 months? What if it takes a year? I don’t care, we’re not going anywhere.” It’s way more important to take a step back and do this right.

Jack Butala:
That’s outstanding, Jill.

Jill DeWit:
Thank you.

Jack Butala:
That’s fantastic advice. Take it seriously.

Jill DeWit:
Don’t jump the gun, and don’t put yourself in a pickle. Don’t borrow against something that’s not what that’s there for financially. It’ll all work out. Thank you, I’m glad you liked that.

Jack Butala:
That’s outstanding.

Jill DeWit:
Thanks.

Jack Butala:
Hey, join us on another episode where Jack and Jill discuss how to use information, that’s me.

Jill DeWit:
And inspiration, that’s me.

Jack Butala:
To get just about anything you want.

Jill DeWit:
We use it every day to buy property for half of what it’s worth and sell it immediately.

Jack Butala:
Get there first. Good show, Jill.

Jill DeWit:
Thank you.

Jack Butala:
That’s great advice about timing.

Jill DeWit:
Yes.

Jack Butala:
Timing’s everything. It’s such a cliché, it really kind of gets on my nerves when people say it, “Timing’s everything.” Old guys say it all the time, “Timing’s everything.”

Jill DeWit:
It’s true.

Jack Butala:
It really is just …

Jill DeWit:
This is just something basic. You don’t want to jump into something that you can’t really fully commit to and follow through with. It doesn’t make sense, because you won’t.

Jack Butala:
That’s right.

Jill DeWit:
You’re setting yourself up for failure if you don’t do it right.

Jack Butala:
Yeah.

Jill DeWit:
What makes me angry is that some … Not even in our world, in every world, there’s people out there, businesses, that like, for … Imagine this, you’re going to a used car dealership, or you’re just on a car lot, they don’t stop to say, “Can you afford this?” first, you know what I mean?

Jack Butala:
“Have you talked to your wife about this? Are you sure?”

Jill DeWit:
Could you imagine? “Hi Mr. Jones. I see you came alone. Are you married? Where is your wife? Can we get her on the phone, make sure this is good?”

Jack Butala:
That’s got a TV show all over it.

Jill DeWit:
Could you imagine? That would be hilarious. That would be a funny show, you’re right. The guy fall over like, “What is he asking me?” “I’m trying to get on speakerphone, your wife probably doesn’t know you’re here looking at Porsches today.”

Jack Butala:
“In fact, can you give me your number, because I’m going to call and make sure it’s okay with her.”

Jill DeWit:
“By the way, I want to see your bank balance, because I want to make sure you can afford this, otherwise this is not happening.”

Jack Butala:
That’s awesome. Where else do you have to stand in front of a salesperson? A dealership is one place, but where else do you do that? Wherever it is, we should have a TV show that does that, like a Candid Camera thing.

Jill DeWit:
That would be so good, like, “Stop, put the credit card down.” How about applying for a credit card? I don’t know. Say you’re applying for a credit card, and they call you back and say, “Hey, we got your application. We just want to go over a few things with you. Okay, number one: did you really graduate? Number 2: I need to talk to your boss about how secure we feel about you in this position that you’re in, because I need to make sure for myself that you’re going to have this job and you’re going to be able to fulfill any credit that you take out on this credit card.” I would love that.

Jack Butala:
You ever see that movie where the whole world can’t lie? Everyone has to tell the truth.

Jill DeWit:
Wait, I remember that, I thought it was just that one guy. It was the one with Jim Carrey.

Jack Butala:
The British guy.

Jill DeWit:
Oh, I’m thinking of a different one.

Jack Butala:
Maybe I am, too. I’m thinking of 2 different ones.

Jill DeWit:
Jim Carrey one where he couldn’t lie.

Jack Butala:
Yeah, I know what you’re talking about. This is a different movie.

Jill DeWit:
Oh, I don’t know, then.

Jack Butala:
No one in the world could lie, and how the world was very different.

Jill DeWit:
It was a mess, I bet.

Jack Butala:
Yeah, it was a mess.

Jill DeWit:
“How do I look?” “Horrible.”

Jack Butala:
Yes, that’s exactly right. “You need to lose 20 pounds.”

Jill DeWit:
Exactly. “That is not your color.” “Who taught you how to drive?”

Jack Butala:
“You should really not eat that second pizza.”

Jill DeWit:
“This career? Bad move.” Oh my gosh.

Jack Butala:
Oh my gosh.

Jill DeWit:
That’s so good.

Jack Butala:
I can’t even say the words.

Jill DeWit:
That’s so great. “She’s really into you for your money. She does not think you’re attractive.”

Jack Butala:
“It turns out that size does matter.”

Jill DeWit:
This is good stuff. I was going to go somewhere there, too. “You know what? It doesn’t happen to everyone.”

Jack Butala:
“You’re the first guy, ever, for this to happen.”

Jill DeWit:
Yeah, “You know what, can we just stop right now, because I do not feel like faking it? I’m going to be late.” Oh my gosh.

Jack Butala:
That’s worse than my ex-wife. There’s all kinds of terrible stuff we could say.

Jill DeWit:
We should do that tonight, this would be great. This is like an airport game moment. I want to do this with our friends, like 10 minutes of telling the truth, although I don’t know if I want to do that because it might hurt.

Jack Butala:
No.

Jill DeWit:
That’d be great. “Baby, you can’t cook.”

Jack Butala:
There’s a million things that are running through my head.

Jill DeWit:
Yeah, we could go on this for a long time.

Jack Butala:
Jack and Jill, inspiration and information, and finally, let’s go buy some property.

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