Outsourcing Land Acquisitions and Sales (CFFL 0246)
Outsourcing Land Acquisitions and Sales
Jack Butala: Outsourcing Land Acquisitions and Sales. 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 with Jill DeWitt.
Jill DeWit: Hello.
Jack Butala: Welcome to our show. In this episode, Jill and I talk about outsourcing land acquisitions and sales. Should you do it? Great show today as always. Jill, let’s take a question before we get into it, posted by one of our members, on successplant.com, our free online community.
Jill DeWit: Luke wrote, this is from a few weeks ago, but I loved it. Someone put it in here. Luck asked, dealing are flying.
Jack Butala: Deals are flying.
Jill DeWit: This is hilarious. Deals are flying. Used the same deed a couple of times that day and one of the times I did not change the grant due deadline. Changed everything else. The buyer got the recorded deed recording the land to a different buyer. I feel so stupid. It’s hilarious.
Jack Butala: One of our start performers in Land Academy.
Jill DeWit: Guess I can get the other buyer to date it to the right person but what about tax and other consequences? Is there an easier way to fix up a goofed up recording?
Jack Butala: I wish I could say I’ve never did this. Mistakes happen in deeds and they get recorded and there’s two solutions. Both involve picking up the phone and calling the recorder. If you’re super nice to them and you send them cookies like we always suggest and once in a while they will answer the question for you, or you can either do a, certain counties in Arizona allow for a corrective deed and it says that’s the title of the document, correct deed, which I’m not a big fan of. Or you can do exactly what Luke just suggested, just send in another deed, conveying the thing from buyer to seller. It’s pretty simple stuff, aside from the fact that it takes a little bit of work. Not really, and maybe cost ten or twelve or five dollars for the recording fees, it’s really no big deal.
Jill DeWit: I think what he did was the first one. I read that and he said the recorder was really nice and really helped them and I did do a corrective deed, and fixed the problem right with them and it was really easy and he did say, should I send them something? Heck yeah. Send them something.
Jack Butala: Send them cookies.
Jill DeWit: Then one of our other people weighed in and it confirmed what you just said and we always say, these relationships are a big deal. You want to be that person and be in with the county.
Jack Butala: If it’s a smaller county they’ll undo it. They’ll say, wait, that never got recorded and they’ll do it the right way.
Jill DeWit: I’ve had that. I’ve had them say, you know what, I’m going to put it on my desk. It’s on the side of my desk. I’ll wait for you to send me the new one and then I’ll just get rid of this one or I’ll mail it back to you or whatever. I’m like, you’re awesome. Thank you.
Jack Butala: Here’s my impression of a typical conversation between Jill and a rural county recorder.
Jill DeWit: Here we go.
Jack Butala: Ready?
Jill DeWit: Yeah.
Jack Butala: Hi, Janice. How are you? This is Jill DeWitt with Land Academy or Land Stay. What’s new? Jill, we were just talking about you. How are you doing? Did you really move to California. Then it becomes an half hour … and then I close the door to my office and an half hour or an hour later she comes out and says, yep, problem solved. Don’t worry about it. In our cash flow from land program, in the actual program, I put in a bunch of actual recordings between Jill and county people.
Jill DeWit: Some sellers. It’s funny.
Jack Butala: I still laugh at that stuff. Yeah, sellers and notary people and the whole thing, because it’s like she’s talking to her aunt that she hasn’t spoken with in four years. I’ve heard her speak with her aunt like that it’s the same conversation.
Jill DeWit: It is.
Jack Butala: You know what’s awesome about that, is that I don’t have to do it.
Jill DeWit: You know what I do, and it’s so silly. I do this all the time and I always tell people, why don’t you do this? What if I’m even calling the DMV, or I’m calling a bank? I don’t know. When you say just something like, hey, how are you today? It’s like, oh. You just don’t throw a problem at them or a need at them, you just get them out of their moment and like, hey.
Jack Butala: It disarms them.
Jill DeWit: It does. They’re like, oh, i’m having a good day. Thank you for asking. How are you? I’m great. Next thing you know they’re bending over backwards, like, hey, what can I do for you? I’m like, thanks. I appreciate that. I’ve got a problem, I need your help, and they’re like, all right, bring it. That’s how it goes.
Jack Butala: Every time I call a county, it’s usually not the recorder. It’s zoning or something, because I’m trying to do a subdivision. It’s usually for more technical reasons. I start with this sentence. Hey, Ray. Jack, with Land Stay. I put a ton of time in on the website to try to resolve this issue, and I’ll you, I just couldn’t do it. I looked all over the site and I think it’s a simple question. I’m hoping we can chat for a couple of seconds and work it out together. That disarms the heck out of them too. They know they’re not talking to a ding dong.
Jill DeWit: They know you tried.
Jack Butala: I tried. It’s like trying to speak Spanish. At least you try. Not you. No savvy. [inaudible 00:04:56] show in Spanish. We’re losing the rest of the listeners that we haven’t lost yet.
Jill DeWit: My Spanish vocabulary is so limited it would be boring. Gosh. It all reigns around food and alcohol. That’s all I’ve got, and maybe checking into a spa in Mexico. That’s about it.
Jack Butala: Yeah, and don’t murder me or something. I don’t know.
Jill DeWit: How do I pay? What do you need? Great.
Jack Butala: You’re right. There’s a lot of swear words and stuff.
Jill DeWit: That’s the extent of my German too. [inaudible 00:05:28]. That’s about it.
Jack Butala: What the heck is this show about anyway?
Jill DeWit: I don’t know. Hope we answered the question Luke, in en español.
Jack Butala: If you have a question or you want to be part of this freak show, call 800-725-8816. Today’s topic is about outsourcing land acquisitions and sales. This is a trick too, just like the show right before it. You shouldn’t do it.
Jill DeWit: What?
Jack Butala: Yeah. I did a whole show with somebody, their own point in life is to automate, quote unquote, acquisitions and sales, so that you can sit on the couch and watch tv and have money come in and out. Why the hell would anybody do that?
Jill DeWit: Exactly. Here, i’m just going to hand you my bank account and I’m going to hand you my kids. Will you raise them too for me? Let me know how it goes.
Jack Butala: All kidding aside, if you’re not into it, then don’t do it, but if you’re into it, do it. I’m going to quote my football coach again. If you make a mistake, I want to see you make it at a hundred and ten miles an hour. I don’t want to see you running around, you forget the play, and like, my grandmother in her walker. If you’re going do something, I’ll quote my dad. If it’s worth doing …
Jill DeWit: Quote me next.
Jack Butala: Then do it right. Really, if you think about that, if it’s worth doing, do it right. Like, brush your teeth. Do it right. If you’re doing it, do it right.
Jill DeWit: I think this stuff’s too important. There’s stuff that you can outsource, like dumb paper work stuff. That makes sense. You hate doing deed? Big deal. That’s fine. You’re not a notary. You’re not like mailing around. You have a assistant for those kind of things. You don’t like answering the phone. Great.
Jack Butala: Keep going. That’s really what this show is about. What’s worth outsourcing in this whole land operation and what do we keep in-house and always will?
Jill DeWit: I can outsource deeds. I can outsource who does the mailing and the recording and gosh, maybe even keep in track of my spreadsheet. I have an accountant that I outsource that. My tax stuff.
Jack Butala: Awesome.
Jill DeWit: My bills.
Jack Butala: Keep going.
Jill DeWit: That kind of stuff. Sure. I’m trying to think what else.
Jack Butala: Podcast production.
Jill DeWit: Podcast production. Maybe some after situation customer service stuff. Maybe.
Jack Butala: I read an article about that recently, too. It kills companies. How many times have you called, like, I don’t know, customer service and it’s a very difficult time because somebody’s speaking a different language.
Jill DeWit: Don’t do that. Hold.
Jack Butala: Hold on a second. They don’t have the answer to your question at all, and it’s a simple question, and they don’t have the authority to change the situation for you. Everybody’s shaking their head right now who’s listening to this. We all experience that all the time and it kills companies.
Jill DeWit: I’m not talking India, Jack.
Jack Butala: I don’t care if it’s New Jersey. If I have a super negative customer service experience on a simple issue, specifically, I will change companies.
Jill DeWit: I apologize. I didn’t mean outsource outsource. I meant like, my assistant in my office. Meaning, I’m not doing it.
Jack Butala: I mean out of the company.
Jill DeWit: No. I wouldn’t do that out of the company. Absolutely. That’s silly.
Jack Butala: If it’s something that can be taught relatively easy or there’s any repetition to it, then outsource it. Should you outsource acquisition decisions? Heck, no. We all remember who hangs his hat. He’s a prominent member and he does a lot of deals, hangs his hat on this automation concept.
Jill DeWit: You should also always outsource the actual printing and envelope stuffing and postage and mailing of your offers. That is big time. If you’re doing that and licking stamps, that’s a lot of your time and a lot of money.
Jack Butala: There’s a lot of people in this business that for whatever reason, I don’t know if they’re control freaks or they think it’s cheaper, or they want to punish their kids, they sit around a table and lick stamps and have a printer and prints stuff out. First of all, it, in the end, will cost you, I did all the math on it, it’s on our websites, double, than what it costs to send it out. Here’s why. We have a bulk mail license. It costs us like twenty-eight or twenty-nine cents to send your offer out. If you put a stamp on it it cost forty-nine. First of all.
Second of all, we don’t charge for paper. It’s not only us. Every commercial printer out there, they don’t charge you for paper. They don’t charge you for labor. They charge you a price per units. It’s almost always, no, it is always cheaper. I don’t care if you’re doing twenty-two or twenty-two million a day. It’s always cheaper to send it out. The qualities better. They’re in that business. That’s a great one, Jill. We should do a whole show on that. Outsourcing direct mail offers is the only way to go. Period.
Jill DeWit: Exactly.
Jack Butala: That’s another good point. Outsource stuff, where you know people are way better at than you. No one’s better than crunching data than I am. I’ll walk around with my ego hanging over my head about that specific topic. Of all the stuff that I fail at that’s not one of the things I fail at. I would never consider outsourcing, and I don’t think you should either, listener. That’s a make or break deal. You should choose the properties that you send offers to. That’s a talent that will put food on your table for the rest of your life, buying under valued data. Based on data.
Jill DeWit: That was my point, too. That’s too big of a decision. You can’t leave it up to somebody else. That’s got to come from you. Nobody knows it better than you. You need to involved in that, because when the people are calling back or when you’re selling it, you have to know your property inside and out, what you paid for it, what your goals are, what you plan to get out of it. All of that.
Jack Butala: What else do you think you can not outsource, Jill? The data piece of it, to this day I do it and I always will.
Jill DeWit: I know. Hiring your own staff, you need to be involved in that. I’ve seen that go sideways.
Jack Butala: Every once in a while I send something out to be outsourced. Whatever it may be, and it goes that way for a month and instead it ends up being a lot of maintenance because I’ve got to manage it and I take it back in. Then, a year will go by and I’ll send it back out and maybe it’s the right person and now it goes great. I read somewhere that you have to have about four. When you outsource something you’re going to go through four vendors, on average, before you find the right person. You’ve got to set the system up up front. Then when you find the right person it’s going to be more efficient but not that day.
Jill DeWit: It’s someone that we discerned is, like our social media. Like your content, you can’t outsource that. I’m thinking, this business right now, you’re starting your own property investment company. You don’t want to outsource your message and your website. That’s all you. You’ve got to put that together and what message do you want to send, and how you’re going to do things.
Jack Butala: That’s brilliance. I just wrote it down.
Jill DeWit: Thank you.
Jack Butala: You can’t outsource your content. You can’t outsource your message. Everything we outsource, we could never outsource this show. We could maybe. There’s probably somebody, but it’s not going to come from the heart like it does with us.
Jill DeWit: It’s true. It would not be as good. I know that. You can’t outsource you.
Jack Butala: You can’t outsource you. There’s a lot of stuff we still do. Jill does way more phone work in talking to sellers than we need to from a money standpoint. For a lot of years, before Jill I had a lot of people involved. That job was outsourced, and to their credit they did a great job but it’s not any way the way Jill does it.
Jill DeWit: Thank. I like it.
Jack Butala: I know you do. That’s what I mean.
Jill DeWit: It’s funny because I do answer the phone a lot more than you want. I get involved in some stuff sometimes. I’m like, I’ll answer that. It’s ringing. It’s not my desk but I’m going to answer it.
Jack Butala: I think it’s great. Really. I know it’s going to get done when you do it.
Jill DeWit: That’s a good point. It even ties into this. It keeps me in check with what’s really going on. If you outsource some of the big things, now you’re not in the loop of maybe some big transactions that are coming your way, some stuff, and you don’t want to not know about something. A missed opportunity. You got to be in the loop.
Jack Butala: There’s no replacement for boots on the ground. You want to have boots on the ground in your company, within reason.
Jill DeWit: Right. You can’t wear all the hats.
Jack Butala: You don’t want to do all the work but you want to be in the loop.
Jill DeWit: Touche.
Jack Butala: This is a technical two. Two minutes of property investment advice, from our fifteen year, fifteen thousand, transaction experience. Don’t outsource data analysis. Learn that skill. For some people it takes twenty seconds. For some people maybe two weeks. I’ve never heard of it taking, I don’t know, let’s say longer than a month if you put some serious time in. That skill, and I’m talking specifically about taking a look at a data base that you’ve created, hopefully from data to doorstep and choosing and sorting for the properties that you want to send offers to. That is your lifeline in this business, whether you’re flipping houses, wholesaling land, buying apartment buildings, or any of that stuff that has to do with real estate.
Who gets an offer. What property owner gets an offer from you and for how much, that’s what it’s all about. That’s making the deal. There’s a lot of other things you can outsource, but not that. It will treat you well as a career and probably put millions of dollars in your checking account if you take it anywhere near the level that Jill and I have, but you can’t outsource that. I don’t why. It’s a lot of fun anyway. Why would you want to? If you have any questions, you want to be on the show, 800-725-8816. Jill your nails look great.
Jill DeWit: Thank you.
Jack Butala: If you’re done doing your nails during this show, inspire us.
Jill DeWit: Thank you. My part today, it’s funny. I wrote down don’t be negative, but then as I sat here and looked at it, I realized that’s negative.
Jack Butala: I was just going to say that.
Jill DeWit: Isn’t it hilarious? Then I crossed it off, then I wrote, be positive. You know what, that’s going to be graphic. Watch me. I’m going to make that a graphic. Don’t be negative, I’m going to cross it off, and going to put be positive right under it. We’re going to do that. It’s funny.
Jack Butala: Awesome.
Jill DeWit: It goes a long way. It’s silly, maybe, for some, but I seriously walk around and rephrase things constantly, like I just did, so they come out in a positive way and it makes a difference how it’s received by others. No matter what you’re saying. You may be trying to give someone the best compliment on the planet and when you say something like, that looks so much better than the ugly, blah, blah, whatever negative thing that you wore the other day …
Jack Butala: Oh, my gosh. You don’t want to say that. Just say you look beautiful today. Then get out of there.
Jill DeWit: I just try to, and you hear me do it with you Jack all the time, or maybe you don’t know it. I sit there and I rephrase things in my head all the time.
Jack Butala: I know you do.
Jill DeWit: Thank you. To make sure it comes out positive, because it sounds nicer. It’s easier to receive. You’re going to get more out of that person by the way. You’re going to get them on your team a lot faster. Then you don’t sound like you’re complaining. Otherwise, you’re negative all the time, you sound like you’re complaining.
Jack Butala: It’s a pretty good way to get what you want too, by the way.
Jill DeWit: Yeah. It works. Just saying. That’s it.
Jack Butala: I have a story about this. Can I tell it?
Jill DeWit: Yes.
Jack Butala: Recently, with number three, our twelve year old, I was in an electronics store. It’s my heaven. it’s called Fry’s Electronics. It’s basically a Best Buy but out west and it’s bigger and it’s more techy. You can build computers and stuff. I was looking for a very specific time and I asked this guy at the store. There’s a hundred thousand people working there, I asked this guy if they had this item and he said, no. I said, what do you think? You think Home Depot might have it, and he said, how the hell should I know? My kid was like, what the heck? I said, you know what, we’re going to ask four more people in this store. We’re going to go around the store and we’re going to check their responses and see who’s positive and who’s negative and the whole things. We did it four more times. Now, I know they don’t have the item. I did this to teach him a lesson.
The other four people, to their credit, were the nicest people ever. They were like, yeah, I saw that in Home Depot last weekend. Then i started thinking, and I’m talking with him. Maybe it’s the way I presented it to this first guy. I’m just bringing a point home that you made. Just be positive. Throw some positive stuff out there, positive stuff comes back. Negative out, negative in. Nice work, Jill. Be positive. Sounds like, those guys are seriously in a desperate situation to have content to talk about on their show, but it really matters.
Jill DeWit: It does.
Jack Butala: Be positive. Join us in another episode where Jack and Jill try to come up with unique content and discuss how to use information, that’s me.
Jill DeWit: And inspiration, that’s me.
Jack Butala: You get just about anything he wants.
Jill DeWit: We positively [inaudible 00:20:11] everyday to buy great property for way less than what it’s worth, like half, and sell it immediately.
Jack Butala: You are not alone in your real estate ambition when you’re with us. Good talk today, Jill. Be positive. Don’t outsource your career. I read an article. There’s an urban business legend out there about when the internet started. This is in probably mid ’90’s, late ’90’s where this IT guy in New York, I’m pretty sure it’s rooted in some truth but who knows how twisted it is now, but this IT guy was getting paid a hundred and eight, two hundred and eight thousand bucks a year, and outsourced his whole job to somebody in India. He was paying this guy twenty-two thousand bucks a year.
Jill DeWit: Did it work?
Jack Butala: I don’t know. Eventually, obviously …
Jill DeWit: This is going to break.
Jack Butala: They found out about it and then outsourced the whole damn thing to tech guys in India.
Jill DeWit: I figured somebody failed and it broke. Seriously. That could happen.
Jack Butala: I’m just saying, why outsource? Don’t outsource important stuff. Maybe if they’re small tasks, outsource it.
Jill DeWit: Little things.
Jack Butala: It’s an urban legend.
Jill DeWit: I think that eventually it will catch up with you and just break.
Jack Butala: That’s what I think.
Jill DeWit: Or the other person, if they are any good, they’re going to figure it out. If they are that good they’re going to figure it out and they’re going to go do it for themselves, and they’re going to take everything that you taught them with them.
Jack Butala: If you’re outsourcing stuff, it’s because you don’t enjoy it.
Jill DeWit: That’s okay.
Jack Butala: It is okay.
Jill DeWit: Do that. Do outsource the silly stuff.
Jack Butala: If you don’t enjoy all of it and you want everything to be automated so you walk around or watch tv all day, you’ve got to ask yourself some serious questions. This whole concept of retirement, I just don’t get it.
Jill DeWit: There’s some stuff you have to do. There’s some stuff, and even for us, there’s stuff that we don’t want to do that we have to do and that’s just the way it is. You’re not going to get out of all that. If you think there’s a magic pill or there’s something great, or this is going to happen. No. The secret county or something like that. I hear that one a lot. It’s the funniest thing.
Jack Butala: There’s no such thing as a secret county by the way, listeners.
Jill DeWit: It’s hilarious. The secret county is somewhere you’re sitting in.
Jack Butala: There’s no secrets. You hear these people, join us on Wednesday and you’ll learn all the secrets insiders do. There’s no secrets. It’s hard work. It cost some money and it’s worth it in the end, if you do stuff right.
Jill DeWit: Just learn it the right way.
Jack Butala: That’s the secret right there.
Jill DeWit: Thanks.
Jack Butala: Information and inspiration to buy under valued property.
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