Never Let a Good Acquisition Go to Waste (CFFL 456)
Never Let a Good Acquisition Go to Waste (CFFL 456)
Jack Butala: Jack Butala with Jill DeWit.
Jill DeWit: Hey.
Jack Butala: Welcome to our show, today. In this episode, Jill and I talk about never letting a good acquisition go to waste. Before we get into it though, let’s take a question posted by one of our members on a landinvestors.com online community, it’s free.
Jill DeWit: Okay. Ken asks, “Hi there, I’m a bit confused on how I should proceed with creating my websites. Should I start with one website, to sell my properties, and go from there, or should I have both a buying website and a selling website?”
That’s a good question and answer [inaudible 00:00:33].
Jack Butala: It is, and so … If he’s been through the cashflow from LandProgram, dedicational program, I know that Ken has, because he’s a member.
Jill DeWit: Mm-hmm.
Jack Butala: I recognize his name.
Jill DeWit: Mm-hmm.
Jack Butala: We advocate, at some point in a career, having two websites.
Jill DeWit: Mm-hmm.
Jack Butala: And it’s really a personal preference, you know.
Jill DeWit: Mm-hmm.
Jack Butala: We still have an acquisitions website and a sales website. Our sales website now is LandPin and our acquisitions website is something else, but the way the internet … When we started doing this, the internet was not like what it is today.
The first thing that everybody does when they get a letter, is they go to see, checkout on the internet, see if you’re legit. So, I would recommend having one website, for sure.
Jill DeWit: Mm-hmm.
Jack Butala: So, do I think it’s material in your success? No. To have two sites versus one, acquisition and sales? No, but we just like to do it.
I don’t know, for some reason, I like to have two sites. I like to have a lot of websites, in case you haven’t noticed, Jill.
Jill DeWit: Well, here’s why we do it. Number one is, we still have offers out there from years ago, and they were sent out under one of our other entities, which is still part of us but it has grown over the years. So, I always want those people who still are hanging onto those letters, from ten years ago, to be able to go online and say, “Oh, look, they’re still there. Oh, look, it’s still the same phone number. Oh, look, it’s still the same everything.”
That’s really what I need that to do. Now, it’s evolved now, where I just want to be transparent. I don’t need them to necessarily see that, so I want it all to be transparent. Am I worried at all about somebody finding my website and seeing their property that I paid x for and I’m selling it for y? Uh-uh. It’s-.
Jack Butala: They don’t care about that.
Jill DeWit: They don’t.
Jack Butala: We were buying property, they know we’re making money.
Jill DeWit: Exactly.
Jack Butala: They just want a [inaudible 00:02:30] in a problem form, they want to get out of it.
Jill DeWit: Totally. And they’re like, “Wow, that’s cool. I hope they get that.” You know, or “Boy, we could have done that, but we don’t have a website. We don’t have all these resources, we’re not set up to do that.”
Jack Butala: Yeah.
Jill DeWit: That’s it. So, is there any reason I need to hide what I’m doing or anything like that? Absolutely not.
And I think that’s where you … where you’re going with that, Jack, when you say personal preference. You might just have one website, click here for acquisitions, click here for property for sale, you know. Do you have something to sell, click here, you have something to buy, go here. That’s it, and that’s all there is.
Jack Butala: There’s members in our group, one specifically, very seasoned real estate couple, they’re both retired, and they drive traffic to their website to look for sellers. They drive traffic there to fill out a form, and see if … and so these forms are getting filled out daily.
Jill DeWit: Mm-hmm.
Jack Butala: And then that’s an acquisition website, and then they decide what to do with the property after that. They don’t have a sales website.
Jill DeWit: Mm-hmm.
Jack Butala: So, there’s a lot of different ways to do it. It’s very individual. Do I think it … It’s all personal, and do I think it really has a massive difference with how much money you make, or what goes on? No, I don’t.
Jill DeWit: Think about CarMax. CarMax is not secretly buying cars under some other name.
Jack Butala: Right. Well, that’s a good example.
Jill DeWit: Oh, and they’re rolling them out on their lot, pretending it’s a new car and they’ve got whatever. No!
Jack Butala: Yeah, Jill, you’re right.
Jill DeWit: You’re going to walk in the car … You know, if I’d dropped my car off at CarMax tomorrow, and I got eight thousand dollars for it, you’d better believe, I know I’m going to drive by the lot and see it marked up to fifteen thousand. I know that’s going to happen.
Jack Butala: Exactly.
Jill DeWit: So, it’s a given, and that’s all it is.
Jack Butala: Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, [crosstalk 00:04:11].
Jill DeWit: It is personal preference.
Jack Butala: Right.
Jill DeWit: Yeah.
Jack Butala: I like, personally, they have a lot of websites. You know that Dell has two … they don’t have one website, Dell Computer, they have two thousand website landing pages, to drive traffic all over the darn place.
Jill DeWit: So, that’s the thing, when you’re Dell … We are Microsoft.
Jack Butala: There’s real sophisticated, simple ways that you can generate like five hundred websites, tomorrow.
Jill DeWit: Well, that’s a whole nother thing, that’s not … I don’t think that … That has to do with SEO, not to do with where I think where Ken’s going with that.
Jack Butala: Right.
Jill DeWit: So, you know what, Ken? Starting out, I would just have one.
Jack Butala: Yeah, so would I.
Jill DeWit: I would have one really good website.
Jack Butala: I would, too.
Jill DeWit: With a real clear thing, “Hey, if you got one of my offers and you want to give me some information, click here.”
Jack Butala: Yup.
Jill DeWit: And then leave it at that.
Jack Butala: If you have a question or you want to be on the show, reach out to either one of us at landinvestors.com.
Today’s topic, never let a good acquisition go to waste. Boy, isn’t that true.
Jill DeWit: Mm-hmm.
Jack Butala: And if you get real creative and good at this, you can use your acquisitions to build your buyers A-list. Here’s how.
If you go out to … We’ve mentioned this in a few shows ago, we hit on it, but I really want to drive this point home. When you have a property, and it’s a good deal, it’s a great acquisition, use it, celebrate it, use it. Go on a Craig’s List and say, “Hey, I’ve got …” Make sure you hit your keywords, “I have forty acres in Navajo County, Arizona, or five acres in Colorado, or whatever, a great vacation lot in North Michigan, and the buyer wants to close but I don’t have enough money to sell it, or to buy it, and I don’t want to let this acquisition go to waste.”
You’ll get barraged, and the people that are calling you are going to be your A-list buyers in the future. So, I mean, I do this, even now.
Jill DeWit: Mm-hmm.
Jack Butala: To get reacquainted with people who, not end-users so much, but wholesale people. It works great for houses, too. Works great to attract flippers, because flippers, house flippers, the guys with the toolboxes that you see on TV, that’s not what we do, never will. We tried that and that doesn’t work for either one of us. We like to keep money.
Jill DeWit: Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh.
Jack Butala: Big time.
Jill DeWit: We still made money, but we didn’t make enough money to justify it.
Jack Butala: Yeah.
Jill DeWit: We just made so much more money here.
Jack Butala: Right. So, what you do is you go out there and you say, “I’ve got a house for sale. I want to buy this house for one hundred and twenty thousand dollars, in this zip code, and it’s a smoking deal. I think it’s worth one hundred and eighty, just the way it is. I don’t have the money.”
Jill DeWit: Right.
Jack Butala: You’ll get seven hundred phone calls, and five of those people will be your future house flippers. The people-.
Jill DeWit: Yeah, they’ll put in orders with you.
Jack Butala: They’ll put in their orders. That’s right. So, that’s my point in saying there’s nothing better than learning how to manipulate data. Don’t let money stop you. Learn how to use data to get on the right side of an acquisition and then celebrate it. Sales will become a non-issue. I say this throughout the program … We never talk about sales.
Jill DeWit: No, it’s true.
Jack Butala: Because we just don’t have any issues with it, and no one in our group does.
Jill DeWit: Well, here’s another thing. What’s Jack’s talking about is building a community of your people and that’s where we are. If you … I think this is one of the reasons our group is so successful, is we have this community, we lean on each other and our people do this all the time. I see it all the time in the back end of our online community, where someone will say, “Okay, I’m out of acquisitions funds, this just landed in my lap-.
Jack Butala: I’m out of money.
Jill DeWit: … does somebody want to do this with me?”
Jack Butala: Yeah, I do, too.
Jill DeWit: You know, kind of thing. And they do, and it’s great. The reason that, too, we know who we’re working with, you know what I mean, it’s not like … If someone’s in our community, I trust that they know how to buy, they know how to sell, they know marketing, they know all this stuff, because they’re-.
Jack Butala: We educated them.
Jill DeWit: Exactly. So, it’s not just somebody off the street that I go, “Uh, I don’t know if this guy really knows what he’s talking about. You know, he may or may not.” And so, that’s just another way that I see our people already doing this, and you don’t want to let them go to waste.
But, you can also time them, by the way. One of the things that we talk about is, yes, some great acquisitions. One of the things you want to find out is, how fast are these people … need to sell the property. Some people are like, “I need the money, yesterday,” and some people are like, “I don’t care, you just make me an offer. If you could do it in six months, I’m thrilled-.
Jack Butala: Yeah.
Jill DeWit: … Just before I get my next tax bill.” Or whatever it is. “By the end of the year, because I need it off my plate for taxes.” Something like that. Then you can prioritize them.
Jack Butala: Exactly. I mean, we do deals with people, all the time, in our group.
Jill DeWit: Mm-hmm.
Jack Butala: That’s one of the reasons we created LandAcademy, is to create a group of people who know what they’re doing.
Jill DeWit: Right.
Jack Butala: I just got off the phone with a guy who once [inaudible 00:09:09], Dave, this morning, and he said, “I have to tell you that we have a lot of customers, and we do a lot of mails.” They’re not a real estate specific, they’re a mail merge company, and he said, “Your group of people are some of the most educated, bright, articulate people I’ve ever deal with, as customers.”
Jill DeWit: Isn’t that interesting. You’re right. We have a really smart group. It’s funny how it worked out that way.
Jack Butala: And open, big hearts.
Jill DeWit: Yeah.
Jack Butala: You know, when was the last time you’ve ever heard anybody, even not people not in our group-.
Jill DeWit: That’s true.
Jack Butala: … ask questions, or ask for help, in success planner, or anywhere. Has anybody ever contacted you, Jill, and said this doesn’t-.
Jill DeWit: No.
Jack Butala: What you guys are providing lacks quality and it lacks like, I don’t know-.
Jill DeWit: Support.
Jack Butala: … dedication. I mean, not one time have I ever heard anyone say that.
Jill DeWit: No.
Jack Butala: All right, maybe you guys keep it from me, now. I don’t know.
Jill DeWit: No, we really don’t. No.
Well, you know, something too, on this … Thank you, and I appreciate that, and you’re right.
One of the things about these good acquisition is, now this is the reason, we have too many. Let’s be honest.
Jack Butala: We have way too many acquisition opportunities.
Jill DeWit: We officially have so many acquisitions we cannot fulfill, period. That’s a fact. Now, so what are we doing about that? It’s going to be later this year, but that’s where Jack’s coming up with LandCrowdFund.
Jack Butala: That’s right.
Jill DeWit: It’s going to be an awesome site for people-.
Jack Butala: LandCrowdFund.com
Jill DeWit: … that have money, because we have the acquisitions, too many, and there’s some people out there that have the money and not the acquisitions. We’ve all seen them standing in the back of a meet-up, or real estate group, they’re the ones standing in the back, listening to hear who’s got some good deal-.
Jack Butala: Who’s got the deals, that they can make money.
Jill DeWit: … that needs some money, because they don’t-.
Jack Butala: Definitely more money people out there, than [crosstalk 00:10:53] people.
Jill DeWit: … They have money. And so that’s where this is going to … We’re going to do this, because we even can’t pull the trigger on them fast enough. Our people can’t pull the trigger on them fast enough.
Jack Butala: Yeah.
Jill DeWit: So, we’re going to bring in this and it’s going to be awesome.
Jack Butala: Essentially, it’s going to be an auction.
Jill DeWit: Mm-hmm.
Jack Butala: But, instead of the auction starting after you do the acquisition, the auction’s going to start before you do the acquisition, and it’s meant to bring people together that understand this business.
Jill DeWit: Cool.
Jack Butala: It’s going to work great. People call me and ask me all the time, “When’s that going to happen? When’s it going to happen?”
Jill DeWit: Right. Well, you know, this could be another good resource for all of our people in our organization, that have … you know, they start talking this up at parties, and with their friends and family members, and the next thing you know, their family members and everyone are coming out of the woodwork with money-.
Jack Butala: Yeah, right.
Jill DeWit: … and saying, “Can I give you some money and you do this for me?” And that’s kind of, for me … you’ve got to be careful there, because you don’t want to be doing, you know, when you’ve got your family involved, or your co-workers involved, or something like that, you know, it could be a nightmare.
Jack Butala: Or even better, fall through.
Jill DeWit: Oh, yeah. For me, it’s a nightmare, because they’re calling all the time. You know, they can do that and say, “How’re we doing?” And you’re like, “No, this is not how this works. When you get the cheque, you’ll get the cheque.”
Seriously, if I-.
Jack Butala: Wow, if you get that cheque, you’ll never [inaudible 00:12:09].
Jill DeWit: … if it were me, I would say, “Great. You know what, thank you, Uncle Bob, I’m so glad that you’re supportive, and yeah, isn’t this a great business, Uncle Bob? Look, I’m busy right now, I’ve got my own stuff going on, I’m making a good living over here, but go check out LandCrowdFund, it’s my people and you want to make some money, there you go.”
Jack Butala: You’re selling me on this.
Jill DeWit: Thank you.
Jack Butala: You’re a natural salesperson.
Jill DeWit: That’s what it’s for and it’s going to be great.
Jack Butala: I know.
Jill DeWit: I’m not selling anybody-.
Jack Butala: And honest, Jill, honest to God-.
Jill DeWit: I’m not selling anybody anything-.
Jack Butala: I know you’re not. You’re just-.
Jill DeWit: I’m putting people together and I’m making easy.
Jack Butala: I know.
Jill DeWit: That’s all this is.
Jack Butala: I know, but you’re … you have that LandCrowdFund.com-.
Jill DeWit: Slogan. Yeah.
Jack Butala: … fully developed, in your head, more than me.
Jill DeWit: Oh.
Jack Butala: And I’m the one that came up with it.
Jill DeWit: You know why, Jack?
Jack Butala: It’s so much [voodoo 00:12:54], isn’t it?
Jill DeWit: My team, my staff, are the ones answering the phones.
Jack Butala: Oh, sure.
Jill DeWit: I see the deals coming through every day. They don’t hit to your desk, because you have enough going on.
Jack Butala: Yeah.
Jill DeWit: But, you know where they are.
Jack Butala: Oh, you’re right.
Jill DeWit: But I’m literally managing these, and I’m like, “Boy, I wish I had time to buy that. Boy, I wish I had time to buy that.”
Jack Butala: Mm-hmm.
Jill DeWit: Don’t have time.
Jack Butala: Wow.
Jill DeWit: Yeah.
Jack Butala: LandCrowdFund.
Jill DeWit: Yeah. That probably just went up on the list. It probably went-.
Jack Butala: That’s exactly what happened.
Jill DeWit: … it went higher on the list of our priorities, right now.
Jack Butala: Jill, that’s exactly what’s happened.
Jill DeWit: I do-.
Jack Butala: I’m glad we had this meeting.
Jill DeWit: You got it, on air … Oh, good.
Jack Butala: Join us in another episode, where Jack and Jill have a meeting, right in front of you, or in your car.
Jill DeWit: That’s right.
Jack Butala: And just about anything you want.
Jill DeWit: That’s right. And Jack’s information, and I’m inspiration, and you’re not alone in your real estate ambitions.
Jack Butala: Yeah. Now I really want to go work on this.
Jill DeWit: Yeah. There’s a … boy, I could use that. Do you imagine, if I could just sit and have my people populate all the open deal that I have, and I could do? It’s awesome. I could bundle them up-.
Jack Butala: My wheels are turning.
Jill DeWit: Dude, I could bundle up all the little ones-.
Jack Butala: I know.
Jill DeWit: Imagine this … Not just the big ones, here’s ten little deals that need x amount of funds.
Jack Butala: Right. Not a lot.
Jill DeWit: Uh-uh, you know, three thousand dollars, five thousand dollars, ten thousand dollars, will buy all these deals right here in this bundle. Can you imagine?
Jack Butala: No, I think that it’s really workable.
Jill DeWit: Mm-hmm.
Jack Butala: And then anybody can get in the business, too, that’s the whole thing. There’s a lot of people that are just afraid to get into this, because they don’t have any cash. But now-.
Jill DeWit: Or they don’t have the smarts.
Jack Butala: Yeah.
Jill DeWit: Or they don’t want it, or the time?
Jack Butala: Right.
Jill DeWit: So, everybody around here … I think, I like to think that now everybody understands the value of real estate and property.
Jack Butala: Yup.
Jill DeWit: We’re kind of over that.
Jack Butala: Information and inspiration to buy undervalued property.
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