Spend Your Time on This, Not This (CFFL 501)
Spend Your Time on This, Not This (CFFL 501)
Transcript:
Jack Butala: Jack Butela and Jill DeWit.
Jill DeWit: Hi.
Jack Butala: Welcome to our show today. In this episode Jill and I talk about spend your time on this, not this. Before we get into it let’s take a question posted by one of our members on the landinvestors.com online community. It’s free.
Jill DeWit: That topic just sounds really funny ’cause you have to explain where you got it here in a minute.
Jack Butala: Okay.
Jill DeWit: Okay. Savannah asked, “I found a couple of counties with giant parcels of land, like 300 to 600 acres and I looked into splitting them up. I found an article on another online community, which made it seem like I’d need to build roads for access and add utilities.”
Jack Butala: Hey, Savannah.
Jill DeWit: This is really good. I got to say something funny about Savannah too. “Is this everyone’s experience with parcel splitting or might there be a cheaper way?” Okay.
Jack Butala: Oh, there’s a cheaper way.
Jill DeWit: Okay. First, before we address the question I want to say one thing ’cause I’m not sure … Do you know who Savannah is?
Jack Butala: No, I don’t.
Jill DeWit: Savannah happens to be the wife of one of our members who is doing so well she’s all in and now she’s asking the questions. Seriously.
Jack Butala: That’s awesome.
Jill DeWit: This is clearly a family business now and they are doing fantastic.
Jack Butala: Hey, which one’s smarter, Savannah or the husband?
Jill DeWit: We’ve had him …
Jack Butala: And it’s funny that we don’t know his name.
Jill DeWit: Oh, I do.
Jack Butala: Oh, okay.
Jill DeWit: You don’t know who it is?
Jack Butala: Just like everyone knows Jill, but who is that guy with Jill?
Jill DeWit: Oh, his first name starts with the letter ‘M.’
Jack Butala: Oh, okay.
Jill DeWit: Okay.
Jack Butala: You really can’t say it?
Jill DeWit: Michele.
Jack Butala: Oh, oh! Oh, this is Michele’s wife?
Jill DeWit: Yeah, see. I know that. See, right now you’re thinking, “Wow look at what they’re doing now.”
Jack Butala: That’s impressive ’cause I know …
Jill DeWit: Right.
Jack Butala: I talk to Michele once in a while.
Jill DeWit: I know.
Jack Butala: They’re killing it.
Jill DeWit: That’s what I’m saying. You want to answer the question now?
Jack Butala: Yes. With parcel splitting … By the way we just got parcelsplit.com, which is going to explain all this at some point and make it easy for everybody. There’s two ways to subdivide property. The way that she’s referring to where you put roads in and you get a survey and you develop the property, you get it set up to develop it, whether you’re gonna develop a strip mall, apartment building, a big massive planned community like Del Webb does out West and in Chicago … that’s the subdivision way. There’s also the parcel split way and the reason that the roots of parcel splitting in this country have to do with farm land and let’s say you marry your last daughter off and you give each of the kids 40 acres to be farmers on. That’s really what parcel splitting is and that’s really what we do.
That said, that’s the back story, kind of the basic, 35,000 foot history. Every single county is different and every single person at any given county is gonna have a different opinion on this and just about every person you talk to is going to say, “No, you can’t do it.” There are several members that are in our group that are excellent at not taking no for an answer.
Jill DeWit: And there are rules … No, I’m just kidding.
Jack Butala: For example, in Arizona you can take any piece of property that is not in a subdivision already, all right? When you read the legal description it says, “The Northeast corner or the Southeast corner of section whatever, range, township.” You can break it down into five smaller parcels and you can do this with basically filling out a piece of paper, rewriting the descriptions if it’s square or rectangle it makes sense without a survey, without putting roads in, without anything.
Now, will the counties process it? This is a statute in Arizona. You can bet you can do this. The counties don’t like it. Some of them love it some of them hate it. My point in all this is it is confusing and you have to do a lot of reading … This ties right into what this topic is for today. Is this something to spend time on, Jill?
Jill DeWit: At their level, I would.
Jack Butala: Subdividing property or splitting it out both ways is some of the most profitable things that you can possibly do and not in this business, but in your life. If you take, I just want you to do real quick math, you buy a 40 acre property for $48,000 out West here like we regularly do, just about every week we do this, and sell it. You have two choices, you can sell the property for $20,000 let’s say and great, you doubled your money. Sometimes more than doubled your money, but let’s say you take the property and you can magically subdivide it down to 40, one acre properties and you sell them for $2,000 each. Now, you’ve turned it into a machine. You’ve turned it into a cash machine. That’s $80,000. Under an $8,000 acquisition … silence was intended.
Jill DeWit: Oh.
Jack Butala: Jill was about to save us.
Jill DeWit: No, it’s so funny …
Jack Butala: That’s staggering.
Jill DeWit: I know.
Jack Butala: Now, do Jill and I do that? No, because it’s very difficult to subdivide it down, where we operate anyway, into that small parcels, but do we cut them up into fives all the time? Yeah. You take a 600 acre or 300 acre property and cut it down into 40, 50, 60 acres you’re gonna dramatically increase how much money you make. It’s very, very worth it to look into this.
Jill DeWit: You know, it’s funny about … I gotta say this. You and I went to a movie the other day and the guy in the movie, it was a silly movie with Will Ferrell and I can’t think of her name now, and anyway he just can’t do math. I just flashed back to that movie ’cause it was just so silly. He’s good in English and stuff, but you bring up any … They’re looking at something he’s like, “That’s $50 million.” She’s like, “It’s $50,000 dollars, sweetheart. It’s okay.” He cannot do math. The whole zeroes are … It’s just hilarious.
Jack Butala: Have you met someone in real life like that?
Jill DeWit: Not that bad, but I do know people that can’t do math. Yes, I do. I’m sure you do too. Don’t you?
Jack Butala: No.
Jill DeWit: Really?
Jack Butala: I think that the root of it is just I think maybe they had a bad math teacher. I don’t know. I don’t know. I just don’t believe they’re trying hard enough.
Jill DeWit: Oh.
Jack Butala: But some people believe that about allergies. “Oh, they just don’t want to go over to the house ’cause they blame it on their allergies.”
Jill DeWit: Oh.
Jack Butala: I don’t know.
Jill DeWit: They just don’t want to go over. They just don’t like them. Let’s be honest, they just don’t like you.
Jack Butala: I don’t know. When I suck at something I try harder.
Jill DeWit: Ah, that’s good.
Jack Butala: Like getting you.
Jill DeWit: Oh.
Jack Butala: I had to try hard.
Jill DeWit: Oh, that’s brilliant.
Jack Butala: You know?
Jill DeWit: Nice job. Good one. Do you need points? What did you do?
Jack Butala: I like you, Jill.
Jill DeWit: Oh, thank you. Just checking. All right. If you have a question and you want to be in the show reach out to either one of us on landinvestors.com.
Jack Butala: Today’s topic: spend your time on this, not this. A long time ago, this is what made the show, Jill brought home a book and it had a lot of pictures in it, so those are the kinds of books that I like. I opened it and it was called, ‘Eat This, Not This.’
Jill DeWit: ‘Not That.’
Jack Butala: Yeah, ‘Eat This, Not That.’ Which is probably what we should’ve titled this, but that’s all right.
Jill DeWit: Yeah well, that’s all right. We won’t go there now.
Jack Butala: You open the book and you have two pages open and on the left side it’s like, “You should really eat this.” Then, on the right side is, “You should never eat this.”
Jill DeWit: Right.
Jack Butala: The thing that intrigued me about the book is that I spend a lot of time, not a lot but a fair amount of time making sure I don’t get really large, and it didn’t make sense. It was packed full of irony.
Jill DeWit: True. There’s some funny things in there like you can go to whatever establishment. This had a lot of different sections like fast food sections and going to a Chinese restaurant. It’s not like you can’t go there, but don’t get this, get this.
Jack Butala: It gave nutrition …
Jill DeWit: Calories.
Jack Butala: … label of information for each one and some of the stuff is staggering. What sticks in my mind is that thing at Chili’s or I don’t know TGIF, one of those where that onion explosion thing.
Jill DeWit: Oh.
Jack Butala: There’s like 4,000 calories in that.
Jill DeWit: Yeah.
Jack Butala: And it’s a vegetable.
Jill DeWit: Yeah. ‘Cause every little wedge of that thing is deep fried.
Jack Butala: Right, it’s deep fried and then you dip it into mayonnaise or something.
Jill DeWit: Exactly.
Jack Butala: Yikes.
Jill DeWit: Like a bloomin’ onion kinda thing or whatever they call them.
Jack Butala: The other thing too is any Asian food is packed full of calories and even if it’s just noodles and vegetables, tons of calories.
Jill DeWit: Mexican too, Sodium.
Jack Butala: Yeah man.
Jill DeWit: There’s a lot of Sodium and salt in [crosstalk 00:08:45].
Jack Butala: Anyway.
Jill DeWit: That’s funny we’re talking about food.
Jack Butala: This topic …
Jill DeWit: Making me hungry. Can we eat after this?
Jack Butala: Yes, we can. Always.
Jill DeWit: Okay.
Jack Butala: Jill and I put together a little, short list of stuff that you should be working on and not be working on to really maximize the velocity of transactions that you do. Go ahead, Jill. How about I just throw a bunch of things out and you should say work on it or don’t work on it.
Jill DeWit: Okay, love it.
Jack Butala: Acquisitions.
Jill DeWit: Yes.
Jack Butala: Data.
Jill DeWit: Yes.
Jack Butala: Talking to sellers on the phone.
Jill DeWit: No. Not that long.
Jack Butala: Reviewing acquisitions on Earthpoint.us.
Jill DeWit: No.
Jack Butala: Reviewing plan maps.
Jill DeWit: No.
Jack Butala: No, no, no. All the back office stuff that you have to deal with should be outsourced.
Jill DeWit: Downloading plan maps that’s the kind of stuff …
Jack Butala: We have built company after company solving these problems for our members.
Jill DeWit: You know for me what the main point of this whole show is efficiency. That’s the bottom line. You need to save yourself, your energy and your resources for the things that only you can do. All the silly stuff like answering the phone, going through the mail, scanning any offers, calling a county, double checking your courting fees, putting deets together … all that stuff, that’s not the best use of your time. That should be outsourced.
Jack Butala: Yep.
Jill DeWit: In a system, have somebody else doing it, whatever because you need to be … Being a data pro, number one, and finding the counties and getting the offers out there, and spending time pricing them, so you know that they’re gonna be well-received.
Jack Butala: Exactly.
Jill DeWit: And making the deals.
Jack Butala: That’s right.
Jill DeWit: That’s really it. What’s great about this too is, this is not even where we were going with this show, but a lot of our people they don’t have 40 hours a week to spend on this.
Jack Butala: Right.
Jill DeWit: They have 10 hours a week maybe and it’s hard to do. They come home from work and they gotta go to work. We’ve done that, I’ve done that. I mean, it was the funniest thing when I really had two desks. I was working from home for a while. It was the funniest thing where I had a desk set up facing East and I had a desk set up behind me facing West. Seriously, and I would swivel my chair around.
Jack Butala: I know.
Jill DeWit: Depending on what I was doing.
Jack Butala: We should’ve filmed that.
Jill DeWit: It was hilarious. I should have. I don’t have any pictures of that.
Jack Butala: It was long before Land Academy.
Jill DeWit: It was before Land Academy ’cause I had a day job and I was flipping land on the side and then it got to the point, like we tell everybody too, if you do this correctly like what we’re saying at some point you’re gonna be going, “All right, I need to quit my day job now because it’s ridiculous. I’m losing money now because I can’t focus on my land gig and I have so much money in the bank, now, that I’ll be fine for just quite some time.”
Jack Butala: Right.
Jill DeWit: Yep.
Jack Butala: You have to systematize everything or you’re gonna really just continue to do menial tasks constantly. I read an article in Fast Company quite some time ago that said, “Businesses fail because the owners and the decision makers are not working on the right stuff.”
Jill DeWit: Yes, I believe that.
Jack Butala: I’ve seen a lot of people who start businesses just working on stuff that they want to work on, the fun stuff and you just can’t do that. I mean, you could outsource most of it, but I’ll tell you, to this day, I still download data, review, scrub it and send it to the printer.
Jill DeWit: Right.
Jack Butala: I mean, could I outsource it? Yeah. Would I recommend that anybody outsource that? No, because that is imperative to shaping the business and types of properties that we buy.
Jill DeWit: Right.
Jack Butala: Do I talk to sellers anymore? No.
Jill DeWit: Right.
Jack Butala: Not even at all. I approve the dollar amounts that we say. What ends up happening is it all goes into a database and I review the deal, I review the maps and the deal to see if it’s a good piece of property and I review the ending sales price. Those are things that I probably will never outsource.
Jill DeWit: I have a compliment to you too, Jack, by the way ’cause I like you.
Jack Butala: Oh.
Jill DeWit: One of the things that you have taught me and that you do very well is, I read this somewhere too, you should have the mindset that every company, every business, you should think of it as you’re trying to franchise it. You should be setting up systems and putting procedures in place.
Jack Butala: Whoa, that’s great.
Jill DeWit: That anybody could step in and you could recreate this six times if you need to. That’s what you do. You think big, you think franchise and have a clear system and that has really helped us, I know.
Jack Butala: Yeah, what’s coming along those lines, what’s coming in 2018 is Offers Academy. We have Land Academy now and Land Investors and we have tons of members and people are doing great. It’s time to expand. You can do any database, any data driven assets like cars, boats, planes, all that, houses, apartment buildings. They all have a data set and the offers need to be submitted.
Jill DeWit: Yep.
Jack Butala: And a system needs to be set up. I mean, we have it all, but that’s why we’re here to spread the word.
Jill DeWit: Exactly.
Jack Butala: Systematize the acquisition and sale of those assets based on data.
Jill DeWit: Right. You know what else, one quick thing too is, when you spend your timing on this and not that it’s okay if you’re not good at something there’s a reason to not spend time on it. No, seriously. Maybe it’s something you should be doing, but you’re really not that good at. Don’t beat yourself up over it. Hire it out, get your partner to do it, something like that. That’s okay too.
Jack Butala: I would highly recommend that you learn how to drive a manual transmission, but that doesn’t mean that the car that you have right now has one.
Jill DeWit: Right.
Jack Butala: But you should know how to do it.
Jill DeWit: Learn how to do it and then you can pass it off.
Jack Butala: Right.
Jill DeWit: Love it.
Jack Butala: 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 every day to buy property for half of what it’s worth and sell it immediately.
Jack Butala: You are not alone in your real estate ambition. Thank you, Jill.
Jill DeWit: You’re welcome.
Jack Butala: We like each other.
Jill DeWit: We do like each other.
Jack Butala: People are vomiting all over the country right now.
Jill DeWit: I’m sure they are. It’s like our kids, “I just threw up in my mouth a little bit.”
Jack Butala: I know.
Jill DeWit: I’m like, “I know, sorry.”
Jack Butala: That’s why we said it.
Jill DeWit: “That’s all right. Get over it.”
Jack Butala: Information and inspiration to buy undervalued property.
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