Jills #staymotivated Group for Women (588)
Jills #staymotivated Group for Women
Transcript:
Jack Butala: Jack and Jill here!
Jill DeWit: Hi!
Jack Butala: Hey, welcome to the show. In this episode, Jill and I talk about Jill’s #staymotivated group for women. Before we get into it, let’s take a question posted by one of our members on landinvestors.com, online community it’s free.
Jill DeWit: Okay. Sophie asks, “I’m thinking about starting to invest in back tax properties.” Sorry I-
Jack Butala: Red flag.
Jill DeWit: … had to giggle there. Trouble. “And it seems to make sense.” No it doesn’t … Just kidding. “To start at my hometown of Colorado.” I’ll explain why Sophie, I don’t mean to pick on you.
Jack Butala: No it’s not you … nothing … It’s not you personally.
Jill DeWit: You’ve been fed something, Sophie, and it’s not correct and we’re gonna save you here in just a minute, so let me finish this question, “It seemed to make sense to start in my home state of Colorado. However, it’s kind of hard to find information specifically for Colorado. I did read in my research that the state’s policy is to bid up with the premium sales price, but you cannot see any other bids in their system. This all seems weird and daunting to me.” Sophie, you’re correct. “Do you have any experience in buying properties online?” Yes, we do. “Do you have any advice, or is there something I should stay away from?”
Okay, Sophie, fantastic question and I love that you are already … You just answered it yourself. You and your stomach is not feeling right ’cause you said, “Is this something I should stay away from?” You would not say that if you didn’t have a little something in your … gurgling.
Jack Butala: I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say she’s probably really new.
Jill DeWit: Yeah.
Jack Butala: Here’s the good news. You’re asking the exact correct question, if you’re new.
Jill DeWit: Yes. I’m not meaning to tease you or pick on you. This is right, like Jack said. Here’s the deal, Sophie, there are people out there that think that this can be a good property option, but you don’t want to only look for those ’cause you’re missing so much good stuff. There are a lot of reasons why properties are in these back tax situations. Often it’s because they’re the problem ones. There’s something going on. It’s tied up in [inaudible 00:02:18], people have passed on, there’s reasons that it couldn’t be transferred easily.
If you’re seeking out only back tax properties, you’re seeking out, potentially, all the awful ones that are gonna take a lot of time, and a lot of money, and a lot of energy, and you might not even be able to close some of these deals. I can’t tell you how many people have said, “I went down that path, I wasted a week, and oh my gosh, that was stupid, I couldn’t do it … ”
Jack Butala: Or a decade.
Jill DeWit: Yeah. “By the time I got into it, I thought I found a goldmine and then I realized there was a reason why it was sitting there with unpaid taxes for six years, it couldn’t be done.” There’s times too that it sure happens where these back tax properties, they build up so much back taxes that the asset’s not worth it anymore. It’s just not worth doing it. Do you wanna …
Jack Butala: Yeah. There’s this concept and it’s not specific to real estate, where if it’s cheap, there must be something wrong with it. If that house is falling down, it’s gonna be cheaper than the one that’s right next to it that looks perfect. I could move right into that one. I want the cheaper one. I’m gonna fix it up, I’m gonna do some stuff to it and I’m gonna charge money for it.
Here’s the same thing with the back tax situation. The property’s got associated back taxes, there’s a reason for that, but I can get it cheaper. I’m here to tell you, in decades of experience, we’ve almost done 16,000 deals now, Jill and I, that’s really wrong. It’s the wrong way to think about this and it’s the wrong way to go about your life.
What you need to do is reach a tremendous number of potential sellers by sending everybody an offer. Whether it’s cars, or houses or … I just wrote a blog about why driving for dollars is stupid. It’s called Driving for Dollars is Stupid. I just put it in bigger pockets.
In your mind, visualize three houses. One’s falling down, one looks okay, and one looks brand spanking new, and you send them all an offer for $128,000. You know what? The brand spanking new one, maybe the guy just died. Maybe there’s another situation, maybe he won the lottery and doesn’t want the house anymore. It doesn’t have to be a negative situation, but what you’re looking for is a situation. In general, back taxes are a real negative situation. It’s an indicator that there’s a lot of stuff going on that may or may not be in your control. I say … I have so much data to back this up, everybody needs to get an offer, like Jill said.
Jill DeWit: What Jack’s saying, Sophie, I don’t want you to exclude them, I want you to include them and don’t hit your head on the wall, trying to only seek them out. Make your life easier. Send everybody an offer and the whole point is you would be surprised and all of our members have said, “Oh my gosh, I couldn’t believe it, but it’s true.” I can’t tell you how much times I’ve heard that.
Jack Butala: Me too.
Jill DeWit: You’d be surprised when you send out offers, how many people like your offer, wanna sell, they’ve been happily living there for 20 years, happily paying all their taxes, they’re just done. Like Jack said, there’s some situation, “The kids have moved out, we’re ready to downsize and, gosh, now I don’t have to remodel the kitchen.”
Or like if it’s some of these rural vacant lands that we do a lot of. I often get the people, the sweet, little old couple, they’ve been paying taxes on it for years, they thought there were gonna retire there and, gosh, now they’re not, and they just don’t want it anymore. That’s it. It’s been long paid for and they’re gonna hug you and say, “Thank you for taking this off our hands.”
Jack Butala: They’re literally gonna thank you.
Jill DeWit: Yeah. I’ve literally been hugged and thanked. I literally had a woman, and it was college fund, it was for her daughter’s Master’s degree. It was mom’s property and literally hugged me and said, “You know, I really … you’re a good person, thank you. I hope you go make a lot of money off this.” That’s our point, Sophie. You don’t have to make it hard, like Jack says. There are a lot of great properties out there, hit them all up. That’s why we send out a lot of mail, too, we don’t send 20 a week, we don’t hand write them. We’re sending 1,500-2,000 at a time. Some people are going … whatever volume you can handle, basically, and you’ll figure that out quickly. Send them all an offer, take all the good ones and you’ll do just fine.
Jack Butala: I’ve asked people, I’ve really dug into it and asked people why they concentrate on back tax property. The result, after talking to them for quite some time, and maybe they don’t even know it. Here’s why they do it. In any given market, there’s gonna be … Let’s say in a market where in a small county in Texas, let’s say, there’s 5,000 properties. I’m just throwing out a number. A percentage of those are gonna have back taxes on it. Every single county, there’s 3,144 counties in the country. In this county in Texas … did I say 5,000? There’s 5,000 properties, let’s say 100 of them have back taxes, right? Is it cheaper to send out 100 letters or 5,000 letters?
Jill DeWit: I got it.
Jack Butala: I’m just telling the truth.
Jill DeWit: I know.
Jack Butala: That’s really what goes on, because they don’t want to spend-
Jill DeWit: Is that why they do it?
Jack Butala: Yeah, they don’t wanna spend the money.
Jill DeWit: Well, hold on a moment.
Jack Butala: Hold on, yeah.
Jill DeWit: Okay.
Jack Butala: Let me finish. This’ll take a second, so-
Jill DeWit: I think they’ve been fed that.
Jack Butala: Here’s the truth. It costs 53 cents to send out a letter. I mean, soup to nuts, the whole thing. With data-
Jill DeWit: What did you say?
Jack Butala: Soup to nuts.
Jill DeWit: I’ve never heard soup to nuts.
Jack Butala: Do you live in a vacuum?
Jill DeWit: What does that mean?
Jack Butala: I don’t know.
Jill DeWit: Soup to nuts.
Jack Butala: It’s just a cliché, like end to end, or from start to finish.
Jill DeWit: Soup to nuts?
Jack Butala: Yeah. Thanks for throwing me under the bus, partner.
Jill DeWit: I’m sorry. I’ve never heard that. It’s not like, I would say, salad to dessert. Like the whole meal, but I’ve never heard of a soup to nuts.
Jack Butala: Oh my gosh. Of all the crap that I say, you choose that?
Jill DeWit: There is a crap, Jack. Soup … I’m sorry, I’m writing that one down ’cause that was really good.
Jack Butala: Oh my god. Jill’s in a vacuum dot com.
Jill DeWit: Soup-
Jack Butala: Jill is under a rock dot com.
Jill DeWit: Soup to nuts. I swear you made that up.
Jack Butala: I didn’t make it up. Maybe it’s the Midwest slipping out.
Jill DeWit: I don’t know. I don’t know soup to nuts-
Jack Butala: Anyway, it costs like 65 cents to send a letter out.
Jill DeWit: 53.
Jack Butala: 53 plus data. 10 cents.
Jill DeWit: Oh, okay.
Jack Butala: 65 cents is-
Jill DeWit: Oh boy, go head.
Jack Butala: It’s way cheaper to send out 100 letters, which costs $65, or 1,000 letters costs what?
Jill DeWit: 650.
Jack Butala: $650. By the way, if you do this right and you send out 1,000 letters, you’re gonna buy a house. You wanna spend $600 to make 10 grand, which is what we make.
Jill DeWit: I need to think about that. I think that we answered that. That was a really good question, Sophie, and we can help you. Good stuff.
Jack Butala: Do you have a question or you wanna be on the show, reach out to either one of us on landinvestors.com. Today’s topic, which is a breath of fresh air to me, Jill’s #staymotivated grope … grope, Freudian. Jill’s stay motivated group for women.
Jill DeWit: Whoa. That was a huge Freudian slip. Where were you going with that one?
Jack Butala: Maybe I wanna grope you.
Jill DeWit: Oh my gosh. Hello, all right-
Jack Butala: I thought you were gonna say, “Hell no.” No, hello.
Jill DeWit: No, no. I’m not gonna say no to that, but save it for the break, Jack.
Jack Butala: My pleasure.
Jill DeWit: I started a motivational group for professional women and business owners. Why? Because we need that. You guys have one and it’s … Guys do it all the time, you’re just nailing it together, you talk about stuff. Whether it’s over beers or poker or a football game, but-
Jack Butala: Yeah, it’s not a formal group.
Jill DeWit: This is true.
Jack Butala: Sometimes it’s called fishing.
Jill DeWit: That’s true. It could be fishing, but-
Jack Butala: Or drinking.
Jill DeWit: I’ve noticed a need for this and so I started one. Here’s where it came from. A year and a half ago, I had a conversation with one of my great pals from when I was in my 20s who now runs a very big company in the south. I’m gonna keep it very …
Jack Butala: Generic.
Jill DeWit: Yes. A very professional company in the south. Anyway, hundreds of employees. She’s third generation. When she stepped in though, boy, ’cause it’s the south, it was a woman taking over this company. It did not go well. It was a good old boys’ group, club, the board, and they were not nice to her, let’s just say that. She was telling me crazy stories about what went on in the boardroom because she’s a woman and it’s the south. That’s not what this is about but, I said how’s she get through all this? She’s like, “You know, I found this group of other professional women. One woman owns a major sports team, a woman does this, a woman does that, and man, we all really got together and helped each other. In this group we would have different meetings, talk about different topics and all this good stuff.” I’m like, “This is brilliant.”
I came back and started to search for this. I’m like, “I could use this, too.” It’s not like I have to deal with the same things, obviously, but … I’m like, “You know what? There’s times that I’m standing around, I’m looking for another female business owner next to me and I don’t have anyone to help me.” What’s funny is, I find myself helping other professional business women that I’ve run into. In my world, I have other owners, they look to me for advice, and I’m like I think could use some … we could bounce stuff off each other kinda thing.
Jack Butala: Yep.
Jill DeWit: I created one. That’s what this is all about. It’s not just business owners, but it is … I say professional women and maybe wannabe business owners. That’s cool. It’s all good. If you check out my website, it is done, it’s jilldewit.com, if you want to. We just got it all finished.
We had our first group just recently meet. I was just noticing, I brought with me one of my employees to help me hold the group and all that good stuff set up and everything. She just wrote me a really nice, beautiful email about it and she’s telling me, “Thank you for letting me be a part of last night. I loved every bit of it. Also, thank you for being such great women to look up to.” She’s younger than us and so she like wants to start her business. She’s started to go down that path several times and just got hung up on things. She came to really help me and I’m like, “No, you’re in this.” I threw her in it and she’s like, “This is just what I need.” She said, “I’m so excited to see how this next chapter will be going and I’m ready to help in any way you need me.” Like I said, I wanna help her too.
The point of my group is motivating women, because I do it every day too. This is my other thing about this. Jack, we joke, but it’s true. Jack’s information, I’m inspiration. That’s a lot of how we walk around and how we work with our people in our community, our staff, all kinds of things. Jack gets those calls, in our world, people are setting up consulting calls and things with Jack because, “Hey, I’ve got this far. I’ve pulled the data. I think I got it priced right. I’m about to push the button. Can you eyeball this? Does this county look good? Does my strategy make sense?” That kind of thing. Those are the details that Jack really deals with.
For me, I get a lot of calls and chat with a lot of people, men and women, that are just … they don’t even got to that point. “I’ve watched your stuff, I’ve been doing this forever. I’m afraid to take that first step. I wanna be an investor, I’m calling myself and investor, but I don’t wanna … on the first property I try to buy, I don’t wanna sound like I’m not a knowledgeable investor.” They’re a little hung up on that taking that first step, so they need a little motivation, they need a little kick, a little inspiration. That’s what all of this is about. I don’t mean to make this a commercial about what we are doing but-
Jack Butala: Well, it’s hard to have a commercial about something you don’t make money on.
Jill DeWit: Oh, I don’t make money.
Jack Butala: That’s what I’m saying.
Jill DeWit: Oh, that’s what you’re saying.
Jack Butala: There’s no danger-
Jill DeWit: This is true. There’s no money involved.
Jack Butala: … of you shamelessly plugging something here.
Jill DeWit: Thank you. There’s just a need for this. Whether you’re a man or a woman, I’m personally taking a step back and addressing it for women because I’m a woman.
Jack Butala: I’m gonna come clean on everything here. When we started this two years ago, we said, “All right, well, you’re clearly inspiration, I’m clearly information.” I said to myself, probably subconsciously, “Whatever, it’s really all about the information anyway.” Let me tell you something. I have never been so positively turned around on any concept. I see people … Jill and I get maybe one or two physical, in the mail, thank you gestures from people who are buying and selling property. Like we have a massive-
Jill DeWit: Change their lives.
Jack Butala: Yeah, change their life, massive gift basket on the table right now, on the kitchen table. People send us T-shirts. I mean, there’s all kinds of stuff. They send us stories about how I’ve changed their life.
Jill DeWit: I love it.
Jack Butala: We have multiple emails. We don’t talk about-
Jill DeWit: We so appreciate all those gestures by the way, thank you.
Jack Butala: Yeah. You wouldn’t know it by listening to the show ’cause all we do is rant and complain, but here’s what I-
Jill DeWit: Well, we’re trying to tell the truth.
Jack Butala: In the end, they’re not thanking for information. They’re not sitting around saying, “Wow, that’s the only place I learned how to send offers to owners,” or, “I didn’t know you could compile assessor data.” You don’t get a gift basket for that. What you get a gift basket for is presenting in a format that keeps people motivated and it’s a place they can check in with … this is all Jill now, not me.
Jill DeWit: Like our weekly call.
Jack Butala: Yeah, all that stuff.
Jill DeWit: And our online community.
Jack Butala: Yeah.
Jill DeWit: Those are free resources to keep you on track-
Jack Butala: That’s right.
Jill DeWit: … and help you with all the little hangups. Wow, thank you Jack. That was really nice-
Jack Butala: It’s true.
Jill DeWit: … of you to say and I really appreciate that.
Jack Butala: All the stuff I know you can put in one textbook and that’s it. The stuff that you do … I mean this. The stuff that you talk about daily on this show and otherwise is what people need to actually do it. Me included.
Jill DeWit: Thank you.
Jack Butala: We launch website after website and believe me, Jill and I sit around once in a while and say, “This is just not worth it.”
Jill DeWit: Yeah.
Jack Butala: We’re done financially, why are we doing this? That keeps me motivated.
Jill DeWit: Oh, this is why I’m here. I wrote that on my website. I mean, here’s the bottom line ’cause my … I love what I’m doing in my business, and I love what I’m doing personally, because at the very end of the day, I want to help people. You know what? For two and a half years, I’ve got to help people with Land Academy and man, it feels so great. Helping people that are really out there, changing their lives, telling their wives that you can quit your job and helping them get to that point is awesome. I get to do that all the time. I just want it.
What this group is, is me getting to take it a little bit of a step further for me personally and help inspire women. What I’m trying to do is not only inspire women. Here’s my goals, everybody. I’m here to really inspire … and I use the word ignite, and I also wanna invest in women. This is the direction I’m going with this group, too. If anybody wants to help me and be involved, please reach out to me ’cause I would love it. I just met with a great group the other night and they were all on the same page. Whatever I wrote in my meetup description to get them there was exactly what needed because I got the right people there. It was awesome.
Jack Butala: It’s women only, too. I can’t even go.
Jill DeWit: Yeah, you cannot go ’cause there’s tons who want to close the door and just talk about our stuff. I said that and they’re like, “Really? Can we close the … ” I’m like, “Yeah, we can close the door and talk about whatever we want.” Absolutely. It’s ’cause there’s stuff that’s different about us in the business world. Let’s be honest. We do things differently and it should be celebrated, I think.
Jack Butala: Yep, I do too.
Jill DeWit: ‘Cause we make good decisions. Let’s be honest, we all know women make business better … not better necessarily, excuse me, we make different business decisions and sometimes-
Jack Butala: There’s no debating that they’re less risky.
Jill DeWit: Thank you.
Jack Butala: When is less risky worse? I ask you.
Jill DeWit: Thank you very much.
Jack Butala: I can’t think of a reason.
Jill DeWit: I appreciate that. My goal with this group is not only to do that, but I personally want to get together. If it’s me paying for it, I’m happy to do that. Financing some people, and that’s part of my … taking a step further, giving back, is helping them get their businesses off the ground ’cause we all know that there’s a lot of people out there with really good ideas and, man, $5,000 is keeping them from starting this company and getting this going, all that good stuff. Well, c’mon, we can come up with that. I want to help some people. You know what? They’re gonna help some people. That’s our community. You know what? I see it happening every day, Jack, in our online community and on our member call. Every single one of our people … and it’s us.
Jack Butala: She means our members.
Jill DeWit: Our members. I see all day long, people piping in … like our questions. We read these questions on the show and we answer them on the show, but they’ve already been answered by six people in our online community, helping them out and they don’t have to.
Jack Butala: Right.
Jill DeWit: But they want to.
Jack Butala: I’m amazed by that, too. Landinvestors.com is a free … We don’t make a dollar off of it, Facebook for land investors. It’s a community forum where you can say anything you want on there, like ask technical questions or motivational questions or anything.
Jill DeWit: Yeah. Does this sound crazy?
Jack Butala: Shocked and amazed-
Jill DeWit: Does this look good?
Jack Butala: At the volume in the number of members.
Jill DeWit: Exactly.
Jack Butala: We just passed like 2,000 or 2,500 members.
Jill DeWit: Like you said, I wanna add a point here, too. I had a discussion with somebody and this is true. We joke about you need to have technical ability and you need to be able to do this and do that but, man … and we even talked about this just today about hiring people. The right attitude and the right energy and motivation. If you’ve got a little spark in you that you’re gonna figure out and learn how to do this, that trumps the knowledge.
Jack Butala: That trumps experience and technical skill.
Jill DeWit: It does.
Jack Butala: You bring the right attitude to anything and you’ve got the right people pointing in the right direction, giving direction like us-
Jill DeWit: Exactly.
Jack Butala: You’re gonna just knock it out of the park.
Jill DeWit: Yep, there you go.
Jack Butala: It’s all about motivation and attitude.
Jill DeWit: Thank you very much. That was my group and I met with an awesome, awesome group of like-minded people. We all took away that we really wanna help people, and so I’m gonna work on this, too. We’ve talked about this before, as a company, I’m gonna work on … We do things, little one-off things, as far as donating and giving back to charities and things but I’m gonna … Jack doesn’t know this yet, but I’m working on some bigger things that we’re gonna do as land investors as a whole and make it a big deal, so all good stuff. This is why we’re here, like Jack said. This is something that I just wanna do.
Jack Butala: Awesome.
Jill DeWit: Thank you, Jack.
Jack Butala: Join us on the next episode where we discuss … or where Jill and I talk about a start to finish transaction walkthrough.
Jill DeWit: Awesome.
Jack Butala: From the second that you send that letter out, to when you actually sell the property.
Jill DeWit: Awesome. We answer Joshua’s question about a road going through the middle of the property. Oh, boy. That’s a good thing, hold on a moment.
Jack Butala: Well, we’ll answer it tomorrow. It’s never been a bad thing. You are not alone in your real estate ambition. Good show, Jill.
Jill DeWit: Thank you.
Jack Butala: I mean that. I don’t care who you are, you still need to stay motivated. I don’t care what age you are or where you’re coming from, you have to do that.
Jill DeWit: Jack, I’ve talked to people of all ages and all economic situations and all educational situations about that exact thing. You could be the most brilliant person, have all the stuff and you’re just like, “I wanna do this,” and you just need a little kick.
Jack Butala: There’s a lifecycle on every project. I don’t care if you’re building a dog house, or going through a college class, or trying to become a real estate investor. At one point in every single thing that you’re working on, there’s a middle and it’s a lot of hard … Now, you’ve learned, you know it’s possible and you make it a choice to be there. Now, it’s a lot of work. I call it The Hard Work Segment. You have to stay motivated during that time. We all know people who just can’t finish projects.
Jill DeWit: Yes.
Jack Butala: They love the upfront rah-rah part and maybe they love the research part in front, but when it comes to that hard work part-
Jill DeWit: It’s like, “Oh, I gotta work on this now?”
Jack Butala: … a lot of attention and it’s gonna take a long time and you’ll probably have to fail it a few times. That’s where you need the motivational help.
Jill DeWit: That’s true.
Jack Butala: Everybody needs it.
Jill DeWit: That’s true.
Jack Butala: It’s too easy to just drop all those tools and go start another one.
Jill DeWit: Yeah, I failed, I’m out. I can’t do that.
Jack Butala: Or just get all juiced up about a new project.
Jill DeWit: Exactly.
Jack Butala: The first 10% of everything is all blast always, like marriage.
Jill DeWit: The last 10%, too. Like our show? Please subscribe and rate us on iTunes and wherever you are listening.
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