Your Real Estate Company Structure Has 3 Roles (CFFL 0253)
Your Real Estate Company Structure Has 3 Roles
Jack Butala: Your Real Estate Company Structure Has 3 Roles. 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 how your real estate company and really any company for that matter, is structured in three basic roles or responsibilities or personality types, let’s say. Excellent show today. We’re going to talk about real estate as always, blanketed into the topic. Before we do, though, let’s take a question posted by one of our members on successplant.com, our free online community.
Jill DeWit: Chaz asked, says looking through one of my completed deeds and noticed one of my sellers didn’t add his middle initial on his signature. For example, John D. Smith is on the deed and he accidentally signed as John Smith. The deed was recorded but the assessor’s office will catch it. I know because I signed my first deed wrong. Should I have the notary meet the seller again to get this fixed? Or will it just work to sell it and fix it when I sign? The problem I’m seeing is how can the title be conveyed from me to the buyer if it was never conveyed to me? Thanks ya’ll? This happens.
Jack Butala: Thanks ya’ll.
Jill DeWit: I know.
Jack Butala: That’s awesome. I never saw that spelled out. I should get out of the house more often.
Jill DeWit: You put like an apostrophe.
Jack Butala: She just typed it on my screen for me.
Jill DeWit: I did type it on your screen for you.
Jack Butala: What’s the answer here, Jill? This is way more up your alley than me.
Jill DeWit: I know. What I would do in this situation …
Jack Butala: I love your alley by the way.
Jill DeWit: Thank you very much. I would have a backup and I’d put this in successplant.
Jack Butala: We’re tying to keep this rated G.
Jill DeWit: Thank you. Yeah. Pull your head out. You know what I mean. Out of the gutter is what I’m trying to say. Boy, that came out wrong.
Jack Butala: Wow. Is it [inaudible 00:01:57] ?
Jill DeWit: Up here. Eyes up here.
Jack Butala: I’m going to tell a Homer Simpson joke in a minute. Go ahead. I’m sorry. Answer. I’m sorry.
Jill DeWit: Chaz, totally been there. Number one, don’t forge anything. That could come back and bite you. You don’t want to do that. Here’s what you want to do though. Time is on your side now. He’s already signed it. We’re all cool. We’re not in a hurry. He’s got his money. We’re not stressed about anything. It’s super easy just to call him up and say, Mr. Smith, you’re not going to believe, and the county hasn’t caught it yet but I sure did. Here’s what I’m going to do. I’m just going to mail you another one and would you please, next time you’re at your bank, get the notary to sign it, notarize your signature for me real quick for me and just mail it back. If it takes this week that’s fine. Don’t rush down and do it. I’m not going to send anybody to your house or anything because we’re all cool, and Mr. Smith is always going to say, I’ve never had him not, but he’s always going to say, oh my gosh, yes. That’s hilarious. He’s going to feel bad, going, I am so sorry that I missed that.
Jack Butala: A notary should’ve caught it.
Jill DeWit: Right. He’s going to go, I will absolutely do that. Don’t worry about it, because I’ve seriously been there done that. Then you have your new copy to send. You can wait for them to catch it or you could head it off and call them up and say, I’ve got it in my hands guys. How do you want me to get this quickly to you to fix this little problem.
Jack Butala: It’s a good catch, Chaz. That’s awesome.
Jill DeWit: It’s easy.
Jack Butala: You know what happens more often than not in situations like this is, so obviously you bought this to resell it and then you sell the property and everything’s fine. Five years are going to go by and the person that bought it from you is probably going to resell it or something’s going to happen. Maybe they’re going to put a house on it. Anyway, a title agent gets involved and you’re going to get a phone call and they’re going to say, you know what. We need to fix this because we can’t title insure it. Jill and I have done fifteen thousand deals.
I don’t think a month goes by where we don’t get a big thick package in the mail from some title agent somewhere saying, do you remember when you guys sold that property in Texas in 2004, and I just laugh and say, no we don’t actually, because it’s one of fifteen thousand deals. Anyway, once we get all past that they say, you know what? There’s some stuff that’s got to be signed and resigned and your company, so we just do. We sign it all away. We’ve got nothing but notaries in our office and we get it all done. It’s no big deal. Not a big deal at all. It’s one of those paper work things and it’s just how you do it.
Jill DeWit: Exactly.
Jack Butala: We’re going to be entertained by our landscape people while we do this.
Jill DeWit: Exactly. Love it when this happens.
Jack Butala: Today’s topic is your real estate company structure has three basic roles and like I said earlier any company has these roles. This is the meat of the show. Here they are, right up front. A visionary is a person who comes up with the idea for the company and is a forward thinking person. Number two is the organizer or the manager, let’s say. The person that puts all the stuff in place and organizes it. Then, thirdly the work force, the people who execute the deal work. Said another way, the eccentric weirdo, which is me. Or the OCD boss curmudgeon which is Jill. Not curmudgeon.
Jill DeWit: I think that’s still you.
Jack Butala: Or the paid associates who actually do all the work.
Jill DeWit: That’s me.
Jack Butala: There has to be a weirdo in every company. You notice that? Who’s the guy that owns Virgin Islands? Cranson?
Jill DeWit: Branson. Richard Branson.
Jack Butala: Richard Branson. What a nut case. Who’s the guy that owns that electric car company, he started Yahoo?
Jill DeWit: That Tesla guy?
Jack Butala: Tesla. Yeah. He’s nuts. There’s always a weirdo at the helm.
Jill DeWit: then there’s the one that falls up behind them, sweeping up the mess and making sure stuff gets down.
Jack Butala: Steve Jobs is mentally ill. He was mentally ill. Serious. I’m not joking.
Jill DeWit: Got it.
Jack Butala: Sometimes people that are successful have some problems.
Jill DeWit: Who was the foreman in that movie that we were talking about? Remember that movie, hit the drum set and he whipped his … ?
Jack Butala: Yes. I love that.
Jill DeWit: It was that crash, that movie … Shoot. I should remember that.
Jack Butala: The actors name was, it doesn’t matter. I’ll think of it in a second.
Jill DeWit: Bail. Christian Bail.
Jack Butala: Christian Bail. He just had a drum set in his basement. He is brilliant. He’s a genius literally. He called the whole market downturn and bet against it and he’s a multi-billionaire. He made four or five billion dollars.
Jill DeWit: Exactly. He got a multi [inaudible 00:06:50] insurance. All those insurance things against that stuff happening and they’re like, that’s never going to happen and he was right.
Jack Butala: He had a drum set in his basement and they took it out on the drum set which I think, is brilliant in and of itself.
Jill DeWit: I agree.
Jack Butala: You don’t take stuff out on your people you love. Take it out on a drum set. Take it out on a checkout lady at a store you’re never going to go to again.
Jill DeWit: My gosh. Don’t do that. Back into someone that you don’t like. I don’t know. What the heck. No. That’s hilarious. I’m going to take it out on my gardener here in a minute.
Jack Butala: I forgot to tell the Homer Simpson thing. There’s this scene in the Simpsons one time where there’s an extremely attractive cartoon figure that’s talking to Homer and he’s just staring at her chest and she’s talking away and he’s staring at her chest. She says, Homer, my eyes are up here, and he said, I’ve made my choice.
Jill DeWit: I remember that. I’ve hear you tell me that one before. It’s so funny. That’s so silly. It’s good. A lot of good stuff.
Jack Butala: A lot of companies have to have, it’s a business development person. I think the person who is coming up with these new ideas and new products and stuff and in almost all cases, they are not the best person to run everything. They’re not the best person to put electronic files in place in the systems where there’s payroll and all that. That’s for the number two person. The vice president or the operations or the manager. Really, it’s operations, and that position doesn’t have to be industry specific. There’s office managers slash, I don’t know, senior managers, then you can jump from real estate to manufacturing to whatever.
It’s really just keeping everybody calm and focused. Then, obviously the people who are actually doing the work, I don’t care if you have a mine, or a manufacturing company, or some type of office company like we do, all the works got to get down. It’s pretty simple stuff. This does not get discussed enough. I think people go off half cocked and think stuff’s going to get done. I was like that. I used to be like that. It takes a lot of intent to run something like this.
Jill DeWit: The book I’m reading right now is talking about, when you’re starting off and you have your own company, you’re actually wearing all three hats and you have to learn to separate the roles as you go on if you want to succeed. That’s what so cool about this book. The whole gist of it is, if you think you’re going to continue wearing all three hats you will burn yourself out and fail.
Jack Butala: Yeah. It’s very rare that you’re actually good at all three things. The sooner you plan for it and budget for it and save some money, or wherever capital’s coming from to get the right people in the right place, whether they’re vendors or virtual assistants or full time employees or whatever, the better off and the happier you’re going to be. Chances are, if you started a company like me, you’re the visionary. You’re coming up with the new product lines, and new websites, and new ideas all the time. Hopefully at the request of your existing customers. That’s where we get all of our business ideas, or I do. Then, Jill screams at me until we get it implemented. Here’s what happens. Oh my gosh. This is me talking. We should do this, this, and this. We have a product called deed perfect. This is a perfect example, where you input all your stuff, because all of our customers hate doing deeds and so do I.
We hired a web developer. It’s live. Go there, deedperfect.com. You can put all your stuff in it and at the end of you can send it to the county and get recorded. That was the topic of some pretty serious, I’m going to call them discussions, between Jill and I, because like an idiot I go on the air on one of these shows or one of our calls and say, we’ve got this thing. It’s going to happen, and then she’s shaking her head going, this is a mess. You never announce something like this, and by the way, she’s a hundred percent right. You should never announce something like this flippantly. You should get it all worked out and figured out and it’s done and then announce. Instead, it’s just a whole fire drill of a process to get it where it works right. That’s what I mean by eccentric weirdo. That’s me. I do stuff like this to my staff all the time. She’s over there looking at me.
Jill DeWit: No. In a really good way, because you know what? You’re actually apologizing it sounds like, on the air, and I really appreciate that. Thank you very much for saying that.
Jack Butala: I bring up deed perfect because that one actually worked, and it’s working and it’s awesome and people love it. For every one like that there’s ten where I said, oh, we got this whole thing and then it’s like, my whole staff has to stop what they’re doing, back peddle, and explain to everyone why it’s not working and doesn’t even exist except for in my head.
Jill DeWit: You know what we should do? I’m going to put a bulletin board on the office and it’s going to say, things that Steven said, we’re going to do free and tomorrow.
Jack Butala: I think everything wants to be free. I really do.
Jill DeWit: You know what, Jack, you are always on the right path. You have a very big heart. You want to solve everybody’s problem. I love it, and you want it all to be free and available tomorrow, and I appreciate that, slash however, who’s going to do it?
Jack Butala: You are.
Jill DeWit: Thanks. I know. This is the thing. Yikes. Can we take turns? We’ll do rock, paper, scissors, and every other month, I get to be the weirdo and come up with the ideas.
Jack Butala: Honest to God, I think everything should be free except for access to the data. Data to doorstep. It’s just a simple incredibly low cost for our customers, will cost a monthly payment to access the world’s data.
Jill DeWit: You know what? It’s got to get paid for somehow.
Jack Butala: That’s right.
Jill DeWit: The work that’s going in behind the scenes …
Jack Butala: Yeah, we’ve got to get paid. That’s right.
Jill DeWit: We’re adding a whole new product and I’m not going to say it right now, to do the door step and we had to get some training on it formally yesterday and this product i thought was subpar but now I’m rethinking it and what we’re adding as far as data and access right now is off the charts. I’m sitting there, going, wow. It’s really cool, and it’s so fun. She knew her stuff by the way.
Jack Butala: I was really impressed with her.
Jill DeWit: I was too.
Jack Butala: she on the cuff gave an online presentation to Jill and our staff and I wasn’t even going to be there and I overheard it going on and it was half of my day, because she did a great job.
Jill DeWit: It was a three and a half hour conference call and you and I were into it.
Jack Butala: We high fived each other like then times, because that is going to be a great product for our listeners.
Jill DeWit: If we can have that access, awesome it’s really cool.
Jack Butala: Why can’t you say the name of it?
Jill DeWit: I want to save it.
Jack Butala: I see. I let the cat out of the bag too fast?
Jill DeWit: Yeah. I want to save it.
Jack Butala: I see what’s going on.
Jill DeWit: Saving it. Building up higher.
Jack Butala: You know what? I’m zipping it. You’re right.
Jill DeWit: Saving it. They’re going to want it now. Now everybody knows that we did some, three and a half hours for us to get through this stuff, it’s got to be good. It’s awesome. Thank.
Jack Butala: This is the technical two, two minutes of property investment advice from our fifteen year, fifteen thousand transaction experience. Again, not so much about real estate but darn good advice. Know which one of the three people or personality types you are here. Are you the eccentric weirdo, visionary organizer, or visionary manager? Are you the OCD organize, dot your i’s, cross your t’s, boss type person or you just want to work there and get a paycheck and get out at five o one every single day? Which one? Lead, follow, or get out of the way? That’s what makes a super efficient profitable company. Silence from Jill. If you have a question or you want to be on the show, call 800-725-8816. That was actually a compliment. Let’s hear from Jill right now so I can stop talking about the inspiration she shares with us everyday.
Jill DeWit: Jack, first of all, do you know that the date that you and I rolled into town here in California, right now, the day that we are recording this, it’s been exactly one month?
Jack Butala: Yes, I did know that. You know that this company is one year old this month, too? The Land Academy thing?
Jill DeWit: Is it?
Jack Butala: Yeah.
Jill DeWit: from where we were rolling out the product? Yeah, where we launched it?
Jack Butala: Right.
Jill DeWit: That’s true.
Jack Butala: It’s really fifteen years old in my head but it actually was available and the whole thing …
Jill DeWit: In July of last year? That’s very true. My inspiration is, you and I have been here for a month now and I know that I set out with some goals for myself that I was going to do here …
Jack Butala: I love where this is going.
Jill DeWit: Now I’m thirty days in and I’m reevaluating it and I realize, I’m dropping the ball.
Jack Butala: What?
Jill DeWit: No, I’m serious.
Jack Butala: Self evaluation.
Jill DeWit: I’m serious.
Jack Butala: How many people have wives who self evaluate and say you know what? I need to improve? No one except me. Go ahead.
Jill DeWit: Thank you very much. My inspiration today is, are you giving yourself some reevaluation time and are you sticking to your goals? Or do you need to maybe make some changes? One of mine was spending a lot more time, I was going to do early morning walks on the beach, drinking my coffee. Stuff like that. When I do those little things it just gets my head right and I’m a much better person. I’m a much better boss. I’m a much better everything If I can just get out of my head a little bit and out of my workspace a little bit and get outside for a little bit. I am not doing it like I should.
Jack Butala: Why do you think?
Jill DeWit: I am not making the time that I need to.
Jack Butala: I take a motorcycle ride at five-thirty every single morning. Or I surf, or something like that. No, probably ninety percent of the time. That really gets me in the straight, usually I go up in the mountains and look at the ocean and stuff or wherever we happen to be and that really just straightens it all out for me. Plus, it’s the only time anywhere in Los Angeles that you can drive anywhere.
Jill DeWit: Good. I’m glad you’re doing that. Yes, you’re on track? Your goals are good? I can tell you mine are not. It’s good for me because I need reevaluate and I want to share that with everyone because you need to check on yourself, and thirty days is a good time. You don’t want six months to go by.
Jack Butala: Or every minute. You don’t want to check every minute.
Jill DeWit: Yes, it’s true. Like, you’re on a diet. You don’t want to get on the scale everyday. Don’t drive yourself batty. That’s silly, but get on the scale once a week, sure. Once a month, where are you.
Jack Butala: Just have a plan. Have a plan, execute it, and check yourself.
Jill DeWit: Check on yourself and then maybe another thing that’s important is was it a realistic goal to begin with? That’s another thing too. If you said, I’m going to quit smoking or, I don’t know what it is. Dream it up. I’m going to have a new job. Let’s say my new career I’m going to be off or I’m going to be a millionaire by now. Whatever it is, cut yourself some slack too and think about was my goal really realistic?
Jack Butala: I’m glad you said that.
Jill DeWit: There’s two parts. One, it might not be a realistic goal and number two, maybe you are really dropping the ball and either way something’s got to change.
Jack Butala: I’m really glad you said that millionaire thing. Don’t have vague goals like, I want to be a millionaire. I have a peeve about that. You need to know how you’re going to become a millionaire, by having a mechanical engineering firm, and then what are you going to do? Deconstruct it. Look at somebody who’s down it already and deconstruct it backwards and then put a plan together. Then you won’t be a millionaire, you’ll be a bigillionaire. That’s how to do that. I’ve asked little kids this sometimes. Not little kids, but ten, twelve, fifteen years old, what are you going to do for a living? I don’t know. I’m going to be rich. I’m like, okay. Now you just wrecked the rest of the day. Sit down. Oh, my God, dad. That’s what they say. Not again. Join us in 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 everyday to buy property for half of it’s worth and sell it immediately.
Jack Butala: You are not alone in your real estate ambition. Jill, you outdid yourself.
Jill DeWit: Thank you.
Jack Butala: That was an awesome inspiration. I don’t think you’re dropping the ball anywhere, for the record.
Jill DeWit: Thank you. I’ve got to tell you something funny right now. This is not a political thing. I do not support or deny anything political. I just think this is funny.
Jack Butala: I do not deny.
Jill DeWit: I do not deny. I’m not going to support. I’m not going to say anything. I just think this little tidbit is funny. We have visitors here with us and they’re going to go down and they want to check out Hollywood today and they want to see the stars on the sidewalk and do all that. I’m laying in bed last night and I’m surfing Facebook and looking in Twitter and some stuff like that and this thing popped up that they don’t know about and there’s this one place they want to go see, Trump’s star on the walk right now Jack, there’s a whole photo there. Somebody built a little wall around his star.
Jack Butala: For what? What’s the point there?
Jill DeWit: It’s like a six inch high wall around the Trump star.
Jack Butala: That can be pro or against.
Jill DeWit: Isn’t that hilarious? Also I didn’t tell them. They’re going to go.
Jack Butala: I wonder if it’s to stop it from being defaced.
Jill DeWit: No, it’s a little six inch joke. It’s a stab at him about building wall around [inaudible 00:21:23] .
Jack Butala: I see. Building a wall around the country?
Jill DeWit: Yeah. That kind of a wall. I’m like, that’s hilarious. They have a photo and they show people standing there. I’m like, oh my gosh, that’s great.
Jack Butala: I’m going to save it for another show. Donald Trump has an awesome business model. Like him or hate him, I don’t really care. Personally, I don’t have an opinion about it but his business model rocks.
Jill DeWit: Cool.
Jack Butala: Information and inspiration to buy undervalued property.
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