Stay Motivated by Jill (CFFL 580)
Stay Motivated by Jill (CFFL 580)
Transcript:
Jack: Jack and Jill here.
Jill: Hi.
Jack: Welcome to the show today. In this episode, Jill and I talk about staying motivated by Jill.
Jill: By Jill.
Jack: 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: Okay, Jarrett asked, “In the yellow letter/postcard world, many times I tell you to send out letters seven times to get the best responses. I was wondering if any of you have done multiple mailers with unsolicited offers. If so, have you seen any success with doing that?” Well, first of all, we don’t like … I mean, okay, wait. I let me back up here. That’s not the way we roll. We were talking about this a few minutes ago. We actually have not done this because you know why? I mean, we’ve been doing this so long. We have such a good strike percentage that we don’t feel a need to hit the area again.
We move onto the next area. So, now, Jack brought up a funny point about the people that might be telling you to send out multiple offers. Do you want to add about that, jack?
Jack: Well, yeah.
Jill: Multiple letters.
Jack: It does [crosstalk 00:01:09] yellow letters thing. There’s a website called yellowletters.com. They advocate for handwritten letters to make it look like you hand wrote a letter, like you’re some little old lady with a light bulb hanging from a string sitting at a table-
Jill: And nothing else to do.
Jack: … innocently. Which, first of all, now you’re starting out with a lie. You’re starting out with dishonesty. So, I don’t advocate that. What Jill’s point is, whoever owns Yellow Letters, I really doubt that they’ve done 15,000 transactions like we have. I question their credibility as a real estate investor. They might be the greatest printers in the world, but for them to say, “We really suggest that you send out seven … ” The fact is this. Repetition in advertising works. You’ve seen Pepsi and Coke. How many times is it the same car commercial did you see in last week’s football game? Over and over again.
Jill: We could all talk about the Lincoln commercial. We all know exactly how it’s going to go. We know he’s going to walk up now and the door’s going to open and the Lincoln symbol is going to be on crown. We’ve all seen that.
Jack: In the same commercial over and over again to the point where it’s nauseous. It works. These people … it’s been going on since we were all kids. So, repetition in advertising works. I personally can’t stand it. So, we don’t. To answer your question, have we seen any success doing that? No. We don’t teach that and we don’t do it. I’ve never sent a followup mail. The biggest reason is because we’ve never needed to. Our striking yield percentages on a single offer are extremely high by anybody’s standards. So, I’ve never had to or really even thought about setting up a followup letter campaign.
Jill: Well, here’s one.
Jack: You could try it.
Jill: I mean, well, here’s one of the things too. When you send out the right letter, like we do, we’ve had years of tracking this stuff. How do I know? because I still get calls from 2007 from someone that has our letter and we only sent him one. It’s very interesting.
Jack: [inaudible 00:03:12] they got multiple letters since really ’04.
Jill: Right.
Jack: Why did they call us back? I’ll tell you why, because we write a professional business letter-
Jill: Bingo.
Jack: … with respect.
Jill: That’s what’s the most important thing here.
Jack: It’s respectful.
Jill: Not bombarding him. I know that some people think that, “There he is. You’re going to wear him down.” No, you’re not. Let’s be honest. Do you really think if you’re going to mail me a letter four times that I’m going to go, “You know, I really love this house, but I think I might sell it because I’ve got four letters from this guy”? No. That’s not going to change my opinion about whether I want to retire and live in this house forever, right?
Jack: Yeah, you’re getting a little [crosstalk 00:03:43]. I like this.
Jill: Well, it really doesn’t make sense. If you really think that four letters are going to make me decide I want to move. I mean, that’s insane. I’m only moving when I want to move. Then at the time, I’ve already got it in my head, everyone. I’m not doing anything special. All I’m doing is making it easy for people to act on it.
Jack: Has anybody walked up and said, “What do you for real estate investors? Oh really? What’s your angle?” Has anybody ever said that to you?
Jill: No. Have they said that to you?
Jack: “Hey, what’s your angle?” Like, “What’s your smoking mirrors? What’s your trick? What’s up your sleeve?” That really gets under my skin.
Jill: I thought it’s like dating. Like, “What’s your line?”
Jack: Yeah, it’s like that. Nobody wants to be solicited like that. Nobody wants to be tricked.
Jill: A pickup line. That’s it.
Jack: No one’s going to make a decision, especially about selling their house or their land because they got tricked or because … just be straight with them.
Jill: This is just like dating. It’s a pickup line. You know what? We don’t send pickup lines and we don’t send … We don’t use pickup lines. You better not, Jack. We don’t send phony offers. You know what? This is actually true. When Jack met me and I met jack, it was an instant like, “Hey, you know what? I’d like to get to know you.” Not like it was nothing silly and phony. Then he didn’t try … he certainly didn’t send me phony things for six times until he wore me down. No. You should think about this. Think about these sellers like that. Send them a good respectable, decent offer. Sit back and let it play out.
If they’re interested, they’ll call you. If they’re not, they won’t. Well, a lot of them will save them.
Jack: If you go to offerstoowners.com and dig around that, it’s our printing company, you can download the offer there.
Jill: Forms.
Jack: The form net.
Jill: Go to the menu item forms. I’m used to this very much. I tell people this all the time. Go to offers, the number two, owners.com. At the very top on the menu items is forms. Click on that. Then you’re going to see there our letters. Go ahead and download them and use them.
Jack: Download them. Horse them around with them.
Jill: It’s in Word format, so you could change it and make it yours. There’s one for land and there’s one for houses. If you really want to see two … not to plug it, but I’m telling you what we have at our fingertips is awesome. Go check out, download the spreadsheet-
Jack: Sample data.
Jill: … showing all the lines of data that we have, what’s at our fingertips. This is why we could make these decisions and we can say this stuff. Go look at what we have at our fingertips. I mean, we’re sending offers. We’re not messing around. When you download that data and you look at that data and see what we have and you go to the letters that we’re sending, you’re going to go, “Oh boy. I get it,” and then try it.
Jack: Yellow Letters doesn’t specialize in sending offers to owners. They’re a printing company.
Jill: True. They send anything …
Jack: We’re the only-
Jill: It might be pizza. It might be-
Jack: It might be a Sears’ catalog.
Jill: It might be cars. Who knows? I don’t know.
Jack: We’re the only company … This isn’t a commercial, but Offers to Owners is the only specialized company that-
Jill: We are industry specific.
Jack: We send offers to owners. That’s how apparent we are.
Jill: Thank you, Jack.
Jack: If you have a question or you want to be on the show, reach out to either one of us on landinvestors.com. Today’s topic by Jill is how to stay motivated. This is the meat of the show.
Jill: Staying motivated by Jill. You know what’s funny? Our kids would be like, “Oh no. Here we go again. We’re getting that talk.”
Jack: This topic is so important and it’s so overlooked.
Jill: Thank you. So, the reason I wanted to talk about this briefly is because … believe it or not I keep noticing. This is a common theme. We may all think that we have it together, but you know what? There’s a lot of us that don’t. No one’s stepping up and asking or talking about it, so I’m going to be an advocate here for everyone. Let me tell you why. Let me give you an example. I had a call the other day from a gentlemen. He didn’t even know he was going to get to talk to me, but he did. He called in. He had been with us. He’s been with Land Academy for a year, happily motoring along, but not doing anything, and not asking for anything.
That was his thing too. It’s not like he’s asking for any help. He kept thinking, “Okay, I’ll get to it. I’ll get to it. I’ll do this. I’ll get to it,” and was calling [Yani 00:08:19] going, “I guess I need to stop this now. I’m not doing anything.” Yani’s looking at me like, “I don’t know what to do with this guy.” So, she puts him on hold and she goes, “What do I say?” I said, “You know what? Let me talk to him.” So, don’t be surprised folks, but I might do that. If I’m in the office and somebody’s on the phone, I’m going to get on … I like talking to people. I get on the phone.
So, anyway, I told Yani, I’m like, “Well, let me talk to him.” She transferred the call to me. I said, “Hey, what’s going on?” It was really nice because the guy was like, “I didn’t expect to get you.” I’m like, “I know. It’s all good.” He was explaining to me his situation. He’s like, “I’ve been with you guys for a year. I try every month. You guys gave me a free property a year ago. I haven’t even recorded it in my name. I work real hard in a factory all day. I come home when I’m tired and my computer works half the time. I’m not that good at it.”
I think he was coming up with all these excuses and I felt bad because he was kind of beating himself up. I’m like, “Okay, hold on a moment. None of this is crazy.” You do have a lot going on. I get it. He said this to me and I didn’t even say it to him. He said, “I’m guess I’m not motivated enough to do this.” I said, “Wait a minute. You can get out of this.” I think for him all he needed was a few steps in the right direction. I gave him real simple, little actionable baby steps. I’m like, “All right. Let’s talk about this property. Let’s get it recorded. You know how to do this. You have all the resources and everything to do this. You know where to mail it and all that good stuff, so let’s get it in your name.”
Then from marketing it, and he was a little worried about the money. I’m like, “All right. Well, Land Pin is free. This is free. That’s free. Look at all these things we could do. Put it on eBay for 35 bucks. Big deal. You don’t have a website? Use ours. There’s all these things you can do to get this going and get this sold and get some money and you can get going in that right direction.” By the end of the call, it was interesting. I was really just trying to help. He presenting little things with me and I was just giving him little tips and he’s like, “Gosh. I wish I would’ve called you six months ago.” I thought that was so nice.
So, I wanted to take a step back and just say that this happens even in me. Jack and I were joking about this. Even I have sucky days, right, Jack? Jack may or may not have noticed, but I had a string of sucky days in a row just recently. Did you notice, Jack?
Jack: I did. I offered to take you to Paris.
Jill: Which was very cool. Last time, jack sent me a message like that we were on a plane the next day. So, it was so funny. Jack sent me this message via Skype and the first thing I did was look at my calendar to see what I could clear off to go. In this instance, Jack meant in theory. He’s like, “I don’t feel … we could do Paris.” I’m like … [inaudible 00:11:26] “No, that’s okay.” It was good that, for me, that was a little wake-up call that it was really coming off to everybody too, that I was a little off kilter or whatever it was. I don’t know. Like I said, even I get sucky days. So, what do you do?
Well, first thing I do is look at my routine. I mean, that’s the easiest thing for me like with this gentleman is start fresh. This is a word that I forget and it’s a good one. Reset. We use this with our kids. We all need a reset button now and then. It’s okay to hit that reset button. What’s that button for OfficeMax? I don’t think they do it anymore but-
Jack: The easy button.
Jill: The easy button. I need one of those. It says, “Reset.” For me, I hit the reset button. I know it’s coming. I know I need to get my act together. I know I’m in a funk. Whatever it is, hit the reset button. For me, it’s get my routine to go on this. The minute I realize it, man, I’m making plans to get back on track. “Tonight, we’re going to have a nice dinner. We’re staying in.” I have these things that I tell myself. “I’m going to get a good night sleep. Tomorrow I’m going to wake up and it’s going be all different.” That kind of ties into the next thing, which is a mantra. I have a talk with myself and decide what I want to do and how I want to be and getting back on track. You can jump in here Jack.
Jack: Okay.
Jill: All right, because I like your insights. What do you have to say? I mean, you’ve experienced this, haven’t you?
Jack: Sure. Absolutely. I think everybody does. I think everybody gets tired. There’s a million ways you could describe it. “I’m burned out. I don’t want to do this anymore.” Some bout of depression. There’s a lot of things you can call it. You have to have, for me, anyway, a system antiquated of shutting down or addressing it. Let’s just say addressing it. For me, I shut it down, but I think … then there’s a way-
Jill: Did you go military on yourself? Is that what you’re saying when you say, “Shut it down”? How do you do that?
Jack: I’m at this point now because I’m older and this is probably a hundredth, the company. Not hundredth. I’m just joking. It’s probably company number 19. I have a lot of ways that I address this along before it happens. So, for me, the thing that really sends me into that situation is lack of organization and lack of sticking through a calendar. In fact, there’s a … we’re going to see a show about the importance of having calendars in a couple days from now.
Jill: Cool.
Jack: For me, if it’s in a calendar, when I look at the calendar in the morning, I’m good. I’m going to do it. There’s nothing that’s going to … unless I’m on my deathbed, I’m going to execute what’s in that calendar. It’s not just that day. It’s all part of a string. So, that’s how I do it and it doesn’t happen to me that much anymore.
Jill: Got it.
Jack: Having a big healthy bank balance helps.
Jill: Does your calendar mean that you’re held accountable? That’s how you hold yourself accountable for tasks? And do you do little things on your calendar or are they big things on your calendar? In a really ironic way, if it’s in the calendar, I’ve pre-thought it, right?
Jack: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Jill: If it got scheduled, let’s say even a month earlier. Or in some cases like the show, we record every Thursday, it’s scheduled like a year early. So, I’m off the hook. I get up in the morning, every morning and I say, “All I have to do is exactly what’s in the calendar.”
Jack: That’s your reasoning.
Jill: I’m killing it. I’m killing it.
Jack: You know what? I have “go fishing” in my business calendar.
Jill: I have to tell you. I have known you how many years now? That I did not know. I just learned something about that your way-
Jack: Execute what’s in the calendar.
Jill: You know what you need to do. You put it in the calendar. If you wake up that day and there’s only little things or three little things, you’re like, “Woohoo.” But on big scheme of things, you’re know you’re doing … everything’s great.
Jack: Well, let’s talk about those little things because I really think that’s why people are hung up.
Jill: That’s cool.
Jack: Because every morning there’s something, and it’s usually in your email that you look at and you’re like … So, now, you’re off your calendar. Now you’re onto whatever fire there is.
Jill: True.
Jack: So, this is what I do. If it happens more than two or three times and it does, I hire somebody, or I outsource, or I assign to somebody that already works for us, or I address it myself. If I have to address it myself multiple times, now it’s in the calendar. Reviewing your email is now in the calendar, so it’s not taking away from what the other I’m supposed to be doing.
Jill: I love it.
Jack: So, I’m totally off the hook.
Jill: That’s good.
Jack: You know how we launch all these new companies all the time and stuff?
Jill: Yeah.
Jack: It’s all in the calendar.
Jill: I know that. Oh boy, I’m well aware of that.
Jack: Here’s how you fail it [crosstalk 00:16:20].
Jill: Do you know what else is in the calendar?
Jack: I didn’t even think about that. Jill, that’s hilarious.
Jill: So, think I’m against the calendar thing by the way, because I’ll throw a few things in there. Why is there something scheduled for 10:00 p.m.? Oh.
Jack: Mommy and daddy time.
Jill: Yes, it is.
Jack: I’ll tell you what doesn’t work with calendar is assigning to other people. You can’t have a calendar and assign it to even employees. That’s just not how it works. I think what really Jill is saying here is develop a system that works for you. It’s probably not going to happen the first time out, but whatever your system is, maybe it’s talk to your sister. I don’t know. Have you ever noticed people on the way to work? They’re talking and talking. I don’t know who the hell you’re talking to. Remember when we lived in Arizona on a cul-de-sac, like people would all go to work?
Jill: Yeah.
Jack: You could see them and they’re all like get on the phone as soon as they’re on the driveway. I swear, every day, they’re like talking to somebody like their brother or something or their mistress. I don’t know. It’s happening like in the morning. So, maybe that’s something that works for people.
Jill: Yeah, that’s a good idea.
Jack: It could be a tiny little silly thing like that that just keeps you out of the doldrums.
Jill: Exactly. I love it. So, that could be … whatever your routine is and helping yourself. The other thing I thought about and it just kind of hit me this morning, when we get in these lack of motivational oomph slumps kind of thing, sometimes I feel like something’s missing. This is me personally and I have to take a step back. I really do. I go, “Why am I like this? Why am I in a funk? Why am I snappy about the littlest little things?” I don’t even realize I’m snappy.
Jack: I want to hear this.
Jill: But Jack points that I’m snappy. He’s the only one … I got to tell you it’s so funny. The other days like, “What did that employee do?” I’m like, “What are you talking about?” He said, “You were kind of hard on him.” I’m like, “I had no idea,” because I do not want to be that person.
Jack: Because that’s now your regular self.
Jill: No. I quickly went, “All right. I got to fix this now.” So, that was one of the things I do. I’m like, “I had to take myself, like to give myself a Jill timeout.” Seriously, I did a personally timeout to myself saying, “You sit in the corner and figure out what’s going on.”
Jack: [crosstalk 00:18:51].
Jill: No, I kind of do that. “Why are you in a funk? Is there something missing? What’s going on? What’s upsetting you?” Then when you realize it, and it could be even something like, “God. I’ve been trying to diet. I’m sick of it. I know I’m not at my goal.” You don’t even know it, but you’re a bear with everybody else. It could be anything like that. Taxes are coming. You’re way behind or what you need to do to get your stuff in order. I don’t know, but there’s often something.
Jack: When you own a lot of real estate, property tax bills are in the mail every single day. I had an employee one time. This is really on topic actually. After like a year they worked here, they’re like, “You know what? You are the most irresponsible [crosstalk 00:19:40].”
Jill: They said that?
Jack: You pay your taxes.
Jill: That’s hilarious.
Jack: They just didn’t get it. Property taxes, when you own property free and clear. By the time like we do, they just never … they endlessly come. It’s not because you’re in trouble.
Jill: That’s so funny.
Jack: You didn’t do anything wrong.
Jill: That’s hilarious.
Jack: There’s a lot of property tax bills.
Jill: That’s so funny. That was not nice of them to say … that was bad. I’m assuming they got … Did they stick around long after that?
Jack: Did you ever hear that story before?
Jill: No, I hadn’t heard that one seriously.
Jack: It’s because they don’t work here anywhere.
Jill: Well, I know that. That’s a given.
Jack: They might be having a real bad motivationless day.
Jill: Right.
Jack: Guess how much I care?
Jill: Exactly. You know what? Here’s something else to say about this topic. Nobody can do this but you, and you can’t blame other people other. That is not fair. You can’t walk around saying, “It’s all because this person is making me this way or causing this or something,” because you know what? Whether or not … They are who they are, and they’re going to act that way. How you go into every event and every conversation, you can have the outcome be however you want it to be. You can walk into a meeting with the most horrible boss in the most horrible situation and as long as you have it in your head, you’re walking in going … and you’re prepared. This could go this way or go this way and be ready for it.
You’re going to go, “Even if it goes this way and they’re going to chew me out, whatever it is, I’m ready for it. I know what to do. I got this. It’s going to be just fine.”
Jack: I think what you’re saying … and it’s really true … is you have control over way more stuff than you really think. It’s not what happens in life. It’s how people react to what happens and then how you deal with it. So, we’ve all had or have horrific bosses. My gut reaction … recently, I went to look for something. I think it was the [onessjef 00:21:50] fishing pole. I went into the closet and I knew it was in there. My initial reaction was to clean the whole closet out. I had to solve the whole problem forever of finding this fishing pole and everything else and I did. I stopped for a second. I’m like, “You know what? This is how I approach everything”
So, don’t just deal with the boss at that moment. Solve the problem. Get a new job. In severe cases, maybe they need to get reported. There’s all kinds of ways to deal with, but don’t just over and over and over just sit there and deal with it a really bad boss.
Jill: What if it’s a spouse?
Jack: That’s your problem, Jill. All kidding aside, if you have a really bad spouse, do something about it. There’s a lot of ways. The law is on your side.
Jill: Oh my gosh.
Jack: Careful if you ask these questions, I’ll answer them.
Jill: I know. That’s good.
Jack: If you have a really good spouse, make sure she stays happy. Take her Paris.
Jill: I like that. We should leave it on that.
Jack: Should we?
Jill: Yeah. Take her to Paris.
Jack: Join on us the next episode where we discuss wholesaling houses, our live six-part online course.
Jill: Cool. And answer Tom [Sea’s 00:23:09] question about data scrub, the same person with multiple properties.
Jack: You’re not alone in your real estate ambition. Take two in that show is much better, don’t you think?
Jill: Yeah.
Jack: Take one.
Jill: You know what’s funny? This is good that we’re sharing this. We rarely do that, but every six months maybe?
Jack: Yeah.
Jill: I’m going to say every six months-
Jack: That’s about right.
Jill: … we go, “That show was not our best. We need to redo that one.” As I’m saying this, I’m sure a lot of our listeners are saying, “You should probably do more than one every six months,” because we had a few-
Jack: It would be good [crosstalk 00:23:45] show.
Jill: Because we had a few that we didn’t like.
Jack: In fact, here’s a list.
Jill: Yeah, exactly. Could you imagine? It would be hilarious. Dear Jack and Jill-
Jack: Please do show 420-
Jill: Thanks a lot. This one sucks. This one sucks. This one suck. This one sucks. You need to review these.
Jack: And consider doing shows 122 through 321.
Jill: Yeah, exactly. You guys are really off base. Good. Thank you.
Jack: By the way, you know how you guys are thinking about doing a video show? No.
Jill: Don’t.
Jack: Don’t do that. Save us.
Jill: Hey, if you’re hanging in there and you liked take two of the show, please subscribe and rate us on iTunes on whatever you are listening.
Jack: Information and inspiration to buy undervalued property.
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