When to Walk into the Bank (JJ 632)
When to Walk into the Bank
Transcript:
Jack Butala: Jack and Jill here.
Jill DeWit: Hey.
Jack Butala: Welcome to the Jack and Jill Show, entertaining real estate investment advice. I’m Jack Butala.
Jill DeWit: And I’m Jill DeWit, broadcasting from sunny Southern California.
Jack Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about when it’s appropriate and when it’s not to walk into the bank.
Jill DeWit: Preferably not armed. Preferably? Just kidding. I’m just joking.
Jack Butala: That would be great if we could just rob banks.
Jill DeWit: Remember that show. I loved it. The Jumpers. Was it Jumpers? Was it a show?
Jack Butala: Yeah, it was called Jumper.
Jill DeWit: Thank you.
Jack Butala: It was a movie.
Jill DeWit: He could jump … That’s what he would do. He would jump into the bank, fill his backpack, and leave.
Jack Butala: Yeah.
Jill DeWit: I want to do that.
Jack Butala: He could do it from here to France and then back.
Jill DeWit: Exactly. I love it. They couldn’t do it in different time periods, though, right? It was like still current day.
Jack Butala: There’s a lot of different variations, though, but the one that I find most interesting is there is a limit. You can only jump to a place that you’ve already been. I think that limits it, limits the writer in a good way. You actually have to have a story.
Jill DeWit: Very interesting.
Jack Butala: He had to fly to France. Like he took this girl to France and Italy. It was all under the guise of doing recon. He didn’t tell her.
Jill DeWit: Okay. I remember a little bit about that. That was fun.
Jack Butala: Really good movie. I’ve seen it a couple of times now.
Jill DeWit: Has nothing to do with our topic today, but …
Jack Butala: Before we talk about absolutely nothing that can help you …
Jill DeWit: That’s right.
Jack Butala: … let’s take a question posted by one of our members on the jackjill.com online community. It’s free.
Jill DeWit: Because this is good information.
Jack Butala: This right here is [crosstalk 00:01:32].
Jill DeWit: This will help you. Okay. Roscoe P. asks … Is that really their name?
Jack Butala: Yeah.
Jill DeWit: Okay. Roscoe P. says, “Hi all. I’m relatively new, but I have a couple of questions. I sent my first mailer and bought five properties off of it.” This is great.
Jack Butala: Good stuff.
Jill DeWit: Can I share all this stuff?
Jack Butala: I would leave the county name out.
Jill DeWit: Okay. “2.5 acres in blank county, Arizona. I purchased them for $525 each. I sold one for $2,000 cash, but I have not have luck selling the other four. I’ve had them online for about three months, Craigslist and LandWatch.” I hope he has some other places, too.
Jack Butala: Me, too.
Jill DeWit: “The lowest price comps on LandWatch are $1,100. I have mine at $1,100 cash or $1,500 on terms with $99 down and $99 a month for 15 months. It’s a low terms deal, but I still turn $500 in acquisition into $1,500 in a little over a year.”
Jack Butala: This is great. Good stuff.
Jill DeWit: “I hardly see that kind of return in the stock market.” Hallelujah. “I’m kind of astonished they didn’t sell immediately at that price. They all have dirt road access. Basically, my entire model is to buy cheap properties and sell them on terms. I’ll take cash if offered, but I’m mostly wanting to do terms deals. I sent another mailer, and I’m about to buy another five parcels so far in another Arizona county. My question is how long is the average sale time? Should I be doing anything differently? My website is blank.”
Jack Butala: You can say it.
Jill DeWit: Okay. “Landwhip.com if you would like to give constructive criticism on anything I could do better. I’m slightly worried about jumping in too deep and the properties not selling. I have plenty of capital. Should I just keep buying property and increasing my pipeline and letting the sales side work itself out? I would feel much better if these would sell and I could have four people paying me monthly. Any input would be greatly appreciated, advice in general, etc.”
Jack Butala: This is a great question. Thank you for providing … Wording the question properly. Like here’s the example. We gave you all the information. What should I do differently? Here’s the very short answer, and it will solve the whole problem. Make yourself … And you started doing it here in this forum. Make yourself available. Make these deals available to everybody else in this community. That’s one of the great things about the Land Academy community and the LandInvestors website is that there’s people that will probably have buyers and stuff right now. You can do deals with other people in this community.
Jill DeWit: That’s true.
Jack Butala: You’re really missing the boat by not posting it on LandPin. I don’t know if you’re a member, Roscoe, or not, but you get free access to LandPin.
Jill DeWit: [inaudible 00:04:22] so much traffic. It’s awesome.
Jack Butala: And LandPin is a community of only our people with very few exceptions.
Jill DeWit: I have something else I was going to say about this, too. There’s a couple of things that I don’t know without digging deeper. Like Jack just said, the beauty about LandPin is if you use LandPin as your template, you know you have all the pertinent information that you need. I can’t see your posting right now to say make sure that do you have the elevation in there? All the little details that people might ask and want to know about the property. How good your description is. I don’t know that. It’s not rocket science. You don’t need to be an English major and write those kinds of descriptions …
Jack Butala: That’s right.
Jill DeWit: … but you need to accurately say what it is and say some of the nice things in the area.
Jack Butala: Hopefully the pictures are real good.
Jill DeWit: Exactly. That kind of thing. If you follow all that, that’s good. Here’s one of the beauties about our community, by the way, and it’s not just us, because everybody can use this. If you go through us, we can help you set up to take credit card payments for this.
Jack Butala: You have to take credit card payments.
Jill DeWit: You want to do that, especially if you’re building up and do a lot of cash things. The last thing you want to be doing is sending out invoices to people every month to get them to pay, and then they have to go in and actively do something. You want to make sure. This is one missing thing that might really help you. Set that up now.
Jack Butala: This will change your life.
Jill DeWit: Yep.
Jack Butala: Go to LandInvest. Are you going to tell them how, Jill?
Jill DeWit: That’s what I was going to say. You go ahead.
Jack Butala: No, go ahead.
Jill DeWit: Okay. On LandInvestors.com, right on the front page, does it just say, “JillPay, click here”?
Jack Butala: Yeah. It says JillPay. Take credit cards. You’ll see it. It’s on the right side.
Jill DeWit: Okay. Yeah. Click on that. There’s a link to give you all the information that you need to go through our credit card processor. This is like game-changing. This took us two years to get set up for not just us. For everybody here. Everyone I mean any kind of properties. People … We finally found a credit card processor who is a true processor. It’s not like going through somebody else. Someone who understands our product type and is willing to do credit card payments for even stuff like this.
Jack Butala: For land.
Jill DeWit: And it’s huge. Whether it’s a cash credit card payment or it’s a terms credit card payment. You can get your people set up on autopay, and they don’t have to think about it. Then when you do that, by the way, broadcast the heck out of that, because when someone looks at your thing and they see I just put my credit card here. It’s going to be charged $99 right now and then $99 a month for the next 15 months or whatever months you had said. It’s nice and easy and click and done.
Jack Butala: I want you to do two other things. Consider selling one of these assets on eBay. That jump starts a lot.
Jill DeWit: That’s a good idea.
Jack Butala: It’s great advertising. It’s expensive. It’s going to cost $90 bucks to post it on an auction. Consider that. Number two, more importantly, you already purchased the data before you sent the mailer out in this county. Look at that data. It’s not going to cost you a dollar.
You’re going to see that in the same subdivision or in the same county, there’s a couple of people who own properties like 1,000 properties or maybe more. There’s probably five to 10 pretty substantial asset holders. Find those people and call them and say, “Hey, you want a couple more? I’ll cut you a smoking deal if you buy all of them for cash right now.” Jill and I do this all the time, even at this point in our career, to find new buyers, and this is how we find buyers for houses. We pull the data for Scottsdale, Arizona, and we see that there’s probably 10 people that own a ton of houses there. They’re landlords or they’re house flippers or both. That’s who our buyers are. It’s no secret.
Jill DeWit: The thing is, too. I would even say let’s start building up. If this is the only property he has, I want to start building up your inventory. Don’t get hung up on these properties. Go keep moving forward and roll them into your inventory with now you’re going to do these, and now you’re going to add these in. You just said that you’re okay with your acquisition funds. I want to diversify your stuff. Before you know it, you’re going to turn around, and [inaudible 00:08:15]. Someone’s go, “Oh.” You’re going to go, “Oh, look. Someone checked out and bought that one. Cool.”
Jack Butala: That’s right. Then you want social media. You need to post this. There are like … I don’t know … 20 groups of land buyers, asset buyers on Facebook alone.
Jill DeWit: Tons.
Jack Butala: You’ve got to hit those hard.
Jill DeWit: There’s a lot more than 20.
Jack Butala: Yeah.
Jill DeWit: Yeah. There’s a ton of people out there. Yeah. That’s part of what we talked about on this show yesterday about putting things into a system. Your marketing needs to be 10 things. You need to really …
Jack Butala: That’s right, Jill.
Jill DeWit: You need to be going, “Okay. Put it on LandPin first. Done. Now I’ll put it on LandWatch. Done. Put it on here. Done. There. Done.” And then maybe once a week … This is a perfect thing for a VA, by the way. You want to have a VA going and blast it on social media once a week on every Friday. That will cost you maybe $20 a month. You could do that.
Jack Butala: The system that we’re operating in this country, this MLS real estate agent system is ancient, and it’s being propped up falsely by groups in Washington DC, advocate groups, to continue it. It’s inefficient and it’s expensive and it’s a house of cards, in my opinion. But the problem with that is, and we really look at it, is we are all exposed to the concept of get a piece of property and post it for sale on the MLS and let the agent do the work. We’re just going to go about our lives. Well, we don’t do that with anything else. If you have a garage sale, you post signs all over the place. You do all kinds of things. You put it in the paper or wherever you do it.
Jill DeWit: Craigslist. You do all that for …
Jack Butala: Facebook, but you hustle.
Jill DeWit: Yeah.
Jack Butala: The short of it is you hustle. For some reason, and I’m not picking on you, Roscoe, its everybody does it. They buy a piece of property, post it on the internet, and you think it’s going to sell.
Jill DeWit: Right. Just sit back.
Jack Butala: It’s just not how it works. It’s just not. The most successful people in our group hustle.
Jill DeWit: You need to be driving traffic to your site, and this is the thing. This is what’s happening with LandWatch. We are personally, and then because of the properties and everything, driving a lot of traffic there. Your site’s not getting a lot of traffic right now, because there’s only those five properties potentially. You need to get it out there more.
Jack Butala: Exactly, Jill.
Jill DeWit: Thank you.
Jack Butala: You need to get it out there more. Well said. I agree.
Jill DeWit: Are you picking on me?
Jack Butala: No. I think sometimes it’s the most beneficial advice or the simplest-
Jill DeWit: Is the stupidest?
Jack Butala: Is the simplest.
Jill DeWit: Okay. I was like thanks a lot.
Jack Butala: That’s stupid advice, Jill. Thanks.
Jill DeWit: Okay.
Jack Butala: When would I ever say that?
Jill DeWit: I am happy to lend stupid advice all day long.
Jack Butala: When would I ever say something like that? Have we met?
Jill DeWit: You know what, Jack? I never know what you’re going to say, so I have to be prepared for anything and everything. So that’s what that was.
Jack Butala: That was like a preemptive defense, then?
Jill DeWit: Totally, because I don’t know what’s coming. Seriously.
Jack Butala: Today’s topic. When you should walk into the bank and when you shouldn’t. This is the meat of the show, and here’s the short answer. Never. You should never walk into the bank, but if you have to, the bank is a bigger, larger … It’s not necessarily just the bank. It’s all the things that you need to cut out of how you’re going on in your operation that’s slowing you down.
Jill DeWit: That’s funny.
Jack Butala: You have to get a cashier’s check if you’re going to close a deal, the way we do it, anyway. You’ve got to find somebody else to do that. You’ve got to find a notary every single time. Do you want to do that or should somebody else be doing that? That’s really what this topic is about for me. I don’t think you should ever really walk into the bank except once to set the whole thing up. Even then, I think you can do that online. You should be constantly looking for ways to outsource the stuff that can be outsourced and as cheaply as possible and consistent. We can end the show.
Jill DeWit: Okay. You know what I was going to say was funny is it used to be-
Jack Butala: Jill’s going to talk about something else.
Jill DeWit: No. It used to be the bank, like they wanted you to be … They wanted the transactions to be quick and efficient, because there was a long line. It was almost like impersonal. Next. Next. You know what? And I miss that. I wish we could go back to that, because now it’s like every event going to the bank is an ordeal. They want to know what you’re doing. They want to know about your … “What kind of business do you have? What is this?” I’m like so obviously somewhere from the top down told them to talk to us. I personally don’t like it. There’s too much chatter [inaudible 00:12:54]. It’s taking too long. Maybe … I just thought of this. Maybe the goal is by making the trip into the bank so darn painful, we’ll use online banking. Then it was right. If that’s the top down strategy, B of A, then you did everything right.
Jack Butala: Punish your customers.
Jill DeWit: Punish your customers by holding them up, making them late for everything they need to be doing, talking their ears off about stupid stuff, asking them silly questions about their business. I only know it because this is what happens to us. I’m like, oh. And then every time, too, every time I go in there-
Jack Butala: Listen to this rant.
Jill DeWit: Right?
Jack Butala: This is awesome, Jill.
Jill DeWit: Geez, because it just happened to me. I’m like, are we-
Jack Butala: Take it out on our customers right now.
Jill DeWit: Every time we go in-
Jack Butala: You’re punishing our listeners.
Jill DeWit: We have to review every single detail about the account. “Is this still the phone number?” Well, why don’t you call it and I’ll answer it and we’ll find out together.
Jack Butala: That actually … That upselling piece really annoys me.
Jill DeWit: It’s painful.
Jack Butala: “It looks like you have a lot of money in this account, Mr. Butala.”
Jill DeWit: Here we go.
Jack Butala: “Have you considered payroll?”
Jill DeWit: I have something funny to-
Jack Butala: No, you idiot. We have 19 payrolls right now.
Jill DeWit: Exactly. We can help you with whatever business services.
Jack Butala: When did they start hiring 12-year-olds?
Jill DeWit: I know. This was so funny, because I love this. Speaking of 12-year-olds. I go up to the bank to get a cashier … This is a while back. I was getting something. A check, I’m sure. Anyway, they pull it up, and there’s two accounts linked together. One has substantially more money than the other account. As I’m talking to them, they’re going, “Okay. So you want it out of the …” I said, “Hi. I want to take X amount of money,” I said, “out of the bigger account.” They said, “They’re both big.” It’s funny, because I look at one as the main like mac daddy account, and then one’s like it’s just operating stuff kind of thing. They went, “No, they’re both big.” I’m like, “Okay.” I thought that was cool.
Jack Butala: Everything is relative, I guess.
Jill DeWit: It’s true, because to them, that was a lot. I’m like, “Okay. Got it.” I think it’s a good thing. Like you said, when you have to … A good thing to go to the bank is opening up a business account. That’s like, “Yay. I’m moving on. I’m making steps.” You’re right. If you can do it online, save yourself.
Jack Butala: I’m old enough to remember when ATM, when machines started popping up so you didn’t have to go to the bank and stand in line on Friday to get cash for the weekend.
Jill DeWit: Right. You are old.
Jack Butala: I know. Then the internet … I remember when the banks started getting internet sites you could actually do stuff on. You can do wire transfers that way now. It used to be you had to fill that paper out.
Jill DeWit: Oh, do you do the text transfers?
Jack Butala: Yeah.
Jill DeWit: You can totally text money.
Jack Butala: That’s my whole point to this.
Jill DeWit: They don’t have to have an account with your bank. They go in and they go grab it somehow. I don’t even know.
Jack Butala: That’s my point to the show, aside from the fact that we’re trying to be entertaining. There’s a solution. Not just for the bank, but there’s an easier solution to every single thing that you’re doing to the point where you should actually be doing nothing except for exactly what makes you successful that you can’t replace. That’s really my whole point to this. When is it appropriate to walk into the bank? Never. It’s never appropriate.
Jill DeWit: Now I see.
Jack Butala: The reason that you do walk into the bank is you’re too lazy to put a system together that involves somebody or something or scale your business up so you can afford a system to not do it.
Jill DeWit: Brilliant.
Jack Butala: I am just as guilty of this. “Oh, I’ll go do it again. It’s all right. I don’t feel like hiring another person.”
Jill DeWit: We do that.
Jack Butala: Everybody does.
Jill DeWit: Yeah. You have talked about. You came up with the thing the other day about the laundry thing. When you really take a step back, like you’re talking about with business, you could do it with your life too. Should I be doing my own laundry?
Jack Butala: Jill and I just hired for the first time a person to run our house. I can’t … We’ve had a maid and stuff, but somebody to actually do everything.
Jill DeWit: We tried this once before, but this one’s different.
Jack Butala: I’ll tell you. When you really step back, at a certain income level, it makes sense to have a $10 or $20, $15 an hour employee do everything you don’t want to do in your life.
Jill DeWit: Exactly, including manage the kids.
Jack Butala: Yeah. Outsource child raising. That’s excellent.
Jill DeWit: Exactly. Did you feed a kid? I don’t know.
Jack Butala: That’s what military school is.
Jill DeWit: Ask you know who. Okay. There we go.
Jack Butala: You done again? You’ve wasted another 20 minutes listening to the Jack Jill Show. Join us tomorrow where we discuss how to be transparent to your customers. They’re going to appreciate it. Trust me.
Jill DeWit: We learned that one. And we answer your questions should you have one posted on jackjill.com. Please go put something there.
Jack Butala: You are not alone in your real estate ambition. Boy, I can’t wait until she starts.
Jill DeWit: I know. I know. I’m excited. I have a … I’m sure you do too. Have a laundry list.
Jack Butala: I do.
Jill DeWit: Yeah. Of things not laundry.
Jack Butala: Laundry is on there.
Jill DeWit: Not doing our laundry, but you know what I mean. So I have a nice long list of things for her to go. I need help with this and help with that. Take over this.
Jack Butala: When I was in public accounting, I made so much money that … I was completely single and I lived in an apartment. I think it cost $500 a month. I just had no … There was a lot of money coming in and very, very little responsibility. I had all my … I had all my laundry done at the dry cleaner. They’d come and pick it up. Did you ever do that in your life?
Jill DeWit: A little bit. Just like when I’m traveling and stuff like that and long … We’ve gone and stayed months at a place and just did it like that, but I didn’t have [inaudible 00:18:32] system. I never had a system like that.
Jack Butala: Do you think women have a tough time letting stuff go like that? They kind of justify their existence of [crosstalk 00:18:38].
Jill DeWit: Some do. Oh. There’s a … Should I say this?
Jack Butala: I think you should.
Jill DeWit: We all know-
Jack Butala: This is the after show. Nobody listens. They always stop listening a half hour ago.
Jill DeWit: Oh, okay. Good. Yeah, the beginning.
Jack Butala: They all stop listening at, “This is the Jack Jill Show.”
Jill DeWit: Click.
Jack Butala: Click.
Jill DeWit: [inaudible 00:18:54]. We all know those women that, “Oh, but I have to pick up the kids.” Never mind he’s 18 and has a license and everything. You need to do this stuff.
Jack Butala: Oh, my gosh.
Jill DeWit: “I needed to go get Johnny’s whatever. He needs a special bread.” Come on. We all know-
Jack Butala: Special bread?
Jill DeWit: Seriously? Seriously. You know this exists.
Jack Butala: Special bread?
Jill DeWit: Yes. “Oh, we only drink this coffee. I have to go to this place three hours away to get this coffee.” That’s justifying your existence because you don’t want to work or something.
Jack Butala: None of us want to work.
Jill DeWit: True.
Jack Butala: That’s why we do this show so we don’t have to work.
Jill DeWit: Yeah, but you know what though?
Jack Butala: I’m not arguing with you. You’re right.
Jill DeWit: But we’re lucky.
Jack Butala: What is it? It’s generation specific.
Jill DeWit: I want to work because I get to work on the stuff I want to work on. Oh. Is it generation specific?
Jack Butala: That’s what I think.
Jill DeWit: I don’t think so. I think it’s a … No. It’s individual specific, seriously.
Jack Butala: Okay.
Jill DeWit: Totally.
Jack Butala: I don’t see that happening in my parent’s generation. I don’t think anything went on like that.
Jill DeWit: Oh, I’m sure it did. When they would go to the bakery. They would go to the bakery for this and the meat market for this and the special store for this and then we do this. Then we have to spend all day making the special sauce.
Jack Butala: That was ridiculous, wasn’t it?
Jill DeWit: I know. I’m just saying.
Jack Butala: I think you’re speaking from experience a little.
Jill DeWit: No. I never did that. My mom didn’t do that. My mom worked her rear off. I will say that. She worked and managed the home, managed the kids, did it all in … It tires me now thinking about it.
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