Adapt and Overcome like the Marines (CFFL 380)
Adapt and Overcome like the Marines
Jack Butala: Adapt and Overcome like the Marines. Leave us your feedback for this podcast on iTunes and 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 DeWitt: Happy Friday.
Jack Butala: Welcome to our show today. This episode, Jill and I talk about adapting and overcoming like the Marines. It’s their unofficial slogan. I think it’s improvise, adapt, and overcome, which is exactly what we all should be doing.
Jill DeWitt: It’s kind of how we roll.
Jack Butala: It’s our corporate culture for sure.
Jill DeWitt: Exactly. I improvise more than I adapt and overcome.
Jack Butala: I overcome. I overcome a lot.
Jill DeWitt: I improvise and run.
Jack Butala: Yeah, exactly like yesterday.
Jill DeWitt: It doesn’t work out.
Jack Butala: Running away?
Jill DeWitt: Exactly.
Jack Butala: Yeah, you know that’s not the Marine slogan.
Jill DeWitt: Especially since I’m not a Marine.
Jack Butala: When in doubt, run away.
Jill DeWitt: Exactly.
Jack Butala: If that was the Marine slogan, we’d be in a whole mess.
Jill DeWitt: That’s right. Then pretend it wasn’t you.
Jack Butala: Don’t take responsibility.
Jill DeWitt: Not at all. We should rewrite our own slogans, [inaudible 00:00:59] too.
Jack Butala: Don’t get out of bed. That’s my slogan.
Jill DeWitt: Don’t turn on the computer and just go, just go have fun.
Jack Butala: Don’t have any kids.
Jill DeWitt: Oh God, we’ve come full, we haven’t talked about that in a while. All right.
Jack Butala: Let’s say before we get into this, let’s take a question posted by one of our members, at LandAcadamy.com our online community. It’s free. This show is the best way to avoid work there ever was.
Jill DeWitt: Right? Thank you. That’s it. “Yeah, we’re recording today, don’t come in. We can’t see you. Bye.”
Jack Butala: Yep.
Jill DeWitt: “They said they’re recording and they’re no where to be found.” “Gee, really?”
Jack Butala: “I don’t even think they’re in the same state.”
Jill DeWitt: “I know. That’s funny, how does that happen?” All right, Michael asked this question. “If I issue a special warranty deed to a buyer, will they have problems in the future if they plan to build a house on the property and attempt to get a construction loan?” That’s a good question.
Jack Butala: Yeah, again a high level intelligent questions from members. I love it.
Jill DeWitt: Can I answer real quick?
Jack Butala: Yeah.
Jill DeWitt: First of all, you know what? I would issue it and then run. Just kidding.
Jack Butala: Don’t take, yeah you know what? It doesn’t matter.
Jill DeWitt: It really doesn’t.
Jack Butala: Don’t worry about it.
Jill DeWitt: Exactly. You’re thinking too hard about this stuff. I’m just kidding.
Jack Butala: Warranty deed, special warranty deed, yeah whatever.
Jill DeWitt: Yeah, whatever.
Jack Butala: 220.
Jill DeWitt: Tomato, tomato.
Jack Butala: 220, 221. Whatever it takes.
Jill DeWitt: Okay, that’s not the way to do this.
Jack Butala: No, it’s not.
Jill DeWitt: Jack, you want to give us the Marine answer?
Jack Butala: Yeah. There’s all kinds of deeds you can, in most states you have a choice about what deed you can issue. They all really have some serious implied meaning. A warranty deed means that you are warranting, you yourself, are warranting the title, the condition of the title from the beginning of time since there was homestead in America’s case. Is that what you want to do? Do you want to really guarantee your customer that the condition of this title is perfect since the beginning of time? When he doesn’t even know the difference between it anyway, right? Chances are you the lister don’t know either.
A special warranty deed just like that, three words, means that you’re warranting the condition of the title from the time that you own it. If you’re in our group, hopefully you’ve owned for about 20 minutes before you were to sell it and that’s it. It’s a very short amount of time. Much less potential liability. We always issue special warranty deeds unless we’re in a state where you have to do a grant deed. I think Nevada’s like that.
That’s the answer. Are they going to have problems in the future? Well, what ends up happening and it happens to Jill and I all the time. I’ll get a, just blindly get a call or I’ll blindly get something in the mail, the snail mail that says, “You sold a property in 2004 to James X whatever. He’s selling it and the person wants to put a house on it, or so we need to do some stuff to, we need to redo this paperwork so it works for the lender,” and all that other stuff. You know what I say happily? “No problem.” I sign it and all that stuff.
If somebody wants to build a house on a property, they’ll find you and you’ll help them. What it will either do is help the lender, in the end what you’re going to do is help the title agent. They’re the person who really needs to make sure all of the stuff’s in order.
Jill DeWitt: It’s not going to take a lot of your time.
Jack Butala: As funny as it is, Jill’s right, don’t worry about it.
Jill DeWitt: Yeah. You know you shouldn’t be thinking this far ahead unless that’s your business and you’re going to subdivide and put in streets and things like that, if that’s your business model.
Jack Butala: If you’re going to do that, you need to be, you need to purchase property or title insurance.
Jill DeWitt: You’re doing a bunch of different stuff.
Jack Butala: A new lot, that’s a whole different deal.
Jill DeWitt: Right. For what we’re doing, yes. Thank you.
Jack Butala: I’ve been thinking about doing a whole full blown thing on subdividing land.
Jill DeWitt: That’s not crazy.
Jack Butala: It is so profitable.
Jill DeWitt: We’ve done that.
Jack Butala: I know.
Jill DeWitt: We’ve done it on our weekly member calls which was really cool, everybody loved it. You brought in graphics and numbers and everything.
Jack Butala: It all depends on the county. If you buy a 40 acre property and being oh grossly over simplifying for $48,000 bucks like we do all the time, and you subdivide it, just theoretically into 40 properties that are one acre each, one acre’s big. It’s 45,000 feet almost. Sell them off for a $1000.00 dollars each, do you think like a $1000.00 dollars, do you think you could see property for a $1000.00 bucks? I think so. Then the math is staggering. You make $40,000 dollars on a $48,000 dollar investment. How do we talk about? Why are we … ?
Jill DeWitt: How did we get from that to subdividing? I don’t know.
Jack Butala: Subdivisions. Yeah. If you have a question and you want to be on the show, reach out to either one of us on LandAcademy.com. Today’s topic, adapt and overcome like the Marines or run away like Jill.
Jill DeWitt: Exactly.
Jack Butala: Which one would you like to be?
Jill DeWitt: Yeah.
Jack Butala: No, I came up with this topic because I have a really good friend who’s a commercial contractor for one of the top 10 commercial contractors in the country. He’s the CEO and this is his corporate model. He also by the way, hires a bunch of, always looks for former Marines to hire.
Jill DeWitt: Do I know this individual? I know I know him.
Jack Butala: His name is Conrad.
Jill DeWitt: Oh that, oh got it. Thank you.
Jack Butala: He built all the stuff for Go Daddy and all of it. I just think it’s a great slogan and it’s one that we probably should have in lights around the office here. That’s how I run everything. Stuff’s going to happen. Every once in a while members come to us and say, “Oh my, this whole thing just happened. It’s probably over.” No it’s not. The most successful people in our group, this happens every day.
Jill DeWitt: Right.
Jack Butala: Some stuff’s going to happen and you adapt and overcome.
Jill DeWitt: You find a way, fix it, and your way’s the best Jack because I love it. Your way is, “Okay, let’s fix this A now and B, let’s fix it up right so it doesn’t happen again in the future.”
Jack Butala: Yeah, fix this systemically, don’t just fix the problem. Put a system in place so the problem doesn’t happen again. Yeah, that’s exactly right Jill.
Jill DeWitt: Yeah.
Jack Butala: Well, good point. I guess we can end the show early.
Jill DeWitt: I guess so. No, I’m just trying to think. A lot of people, it’s one thing, my model early on was just, “Let’s not talk about.” I hate talking about stuff like that.
Jack Butala: Don’t take responsibility, that’s just wrong.
Jill DeWitt: Oh, that’s true. Let’s not point fingers, especially at me. Let’s just fix whatever it was.
Jack Butala: Just get past it.
Jill DeWitt: Get past it, solve it. Is everybody happy? Good, done, move on which is great. Yes slash whatever. You also want to have it, now let’s make a procedure, a policy, whatever it is in place so we don’t have to do this again.
Jack Butala: You may be the only female on this planet that wants to just get past it. I’m not joking.
Jill DeWitt: That was me, I just don’t want to talk about it.
Jack Butala: Most women on the planet, they’re not interested in getting past anything.
Jill DeWitt: Painful. As a kid I remember some friends of ours would get in trouble and we’d have to sit down and talk about it. That was the worst thing ever. Please just ground me, do something. I don’t know, take something away, I don’t care. Please don’t make me sit down and talk about it.
Jack Butala: If you’ve ever had a wife, you know what I mean.
Jill DeWitt: Oh my feelings. How does that make you feel?
Jack Butala: It makes me feel like punching you in face when you ask that question, that’s how it makes me feel.
Jill DeWitt: Right? I hate that.
Jack Butala: I really do take Jill. You’re so the girl for me. The only time we really talk to each other is on the show anyway.
Jill DeWitt: Could you imagine if I walk around like that. I’m going to try that on somebody and just see the look on their face and I’m going to go, “Well, how did that make you feel?” I’m going to bring it up on a member call.
Jack Butala: Yeah, so on the member call, one of the things that we do on the calls, we talk about some of the hate that we get back from these owners.
Jill DeWitt: Or anything. I want to say that first of all I’m going to say, “Well, how did that make you feel when you got that back in the mail?”
Jack Butala: No, I think you should bring it up when we have the top of the call. “Were your feelings hurt by that owner? That angry owner?
Jill DeWitt: Exactly.
Jack Butala: We have to do this, how does it make you feel? It could be a segment.
Jill DeWitt: Sure, how do you do that [inaudible 00:09:35]? Oh, this is just so painful. All right. This is where we’re at here is just how we roll. Adapt, overcome, get it over with, fix it, move on.
Jack Butala: Get through it.
Jill DeWitt: You know what? You’re never going to get ahead.
Jack Butala: Hit your numbers.
Jill DeWitt: You know what? When you stand around, this is a thing too, and some people and in life, if you stand around over analyzing things, you’re never going to get anywhere, you just won’t. Whatever it is.
Jack Butala: You just have to throw it out there and kind of see what happens, then adapt.
Jill DeWitt: Right.
Jack Butala: There was no Land Academy when I started, right? I was just doing stuff, making a ton of mistakes. I had no idea at the time, how big the mistakes were. I just fixed them as I went.
Jill DeWitt: Yeah, now there’s some big mistakes. Just kidding.
Jack Butala: Now the vast majority of the mistakes I make in my life are in my social life.
Jill DeWitt: That’s very good.
Jack Butala: Business is fine.
Jill DeWitt: I like that. The business is great. Exactly.
Jack Butala: The most recent mistake I made was deciding to have children.
Jill DeWitt: Oh my Jack. Oh my goodness. Oh boy. I’m not sure where to go with that.
Jack Butala: They don’t listen to the show, so it’s fine.
Jill DeWitt: Okay, good. Thank goodness.
Jack Butala: “Oh my God, dad.” That kind of thing.
Jill DeWitt: Yeah, totally. All right.
Jack Butala: Join us on another episode where Jack and Jill discuss how to use information, that’s me.
Jill DeWitt: And inspiration, that’s me.
Jack Butala: To get just about anything you want.
Jill DeWitt: We use it every day to buy property for half of what it’s worth and sell it, immediately.
Jack Butala: You are alone in your real estate ambition. At least we didn’t talk about the closet today.
Jill DeWitt: Oh thank goodness.
Jack Butala: Going in and out of the closet.
Jill DeWitt: Or size. It was an interesting week.
Jack Butala: It really was.
Jill DeWitt: That’s funny.
Jack Butala: The overtone for today, for this week was stop negotiating and just do it. Just sign it, just do it, or move on.
Jill DeWitt: Yeah.
Jack Butala: Either one is fine. If you don’t like the deal just open the next letter.
Jill DeWitt: Exactly.
Jack Butala: There’s nothing to talk about. That’s hard for people to really digest, brand new.
Jill DeWitt: I think because they’re worried that there’s not going to be another one. All I’ll have to do is check tomorrow’s mail.
Jack Butala: There’s going to be another one.
Jill DeWitt: Hang in there.
Jack Butala: Right.
Jill DeWitt: You have to send out, and by the way, we’re sending out a minimum of 1500 offers. We have members that send out 3000 a week, not kidding. If you’re sending out a 100 offers a month, your phone’s not going to ring a whole lot.
Jack Butala: Yeah, then you really have to concentrate on that deal. If you’re driving for dollars and you find one, you probably are going to have to make it work.
Jill DeWitt: You’ve got to hang on to every last thing.
Jack Butala: This is the most inefficient garbage I’ve ever seen.
Jill DeWitt: Exactly.
Jack Butala: That’s where this comes from. This whole culture.
Jill DeWitt: It does, yep.
Jack Butala: Information and inspiration to buy undervalued property.
Jill DeWitt: Up your numbers.
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