What we learned from our First Live Event (LA 821)
What we learned from our First Live Event (LA 821)
Transcript:
Steven Butala: Steven and Jill here.
Jill DeWit: Hello.
Steven Butala: Welcome to the Land Academy Show entertaining land investment talk. I’m Steven Jack Butala
Jill DeWit: And I’m Jill DeWit broadcasting from sunny southern California.
Steven Butala: Today Jill and I talk about what we learn from our first live event.
Jill DeWit: A lot.
Steven Butala: Other than the fact that I do need eight hours of sleep a night.
Jill DeWit: Oh. That’s awesome. Yeah. That was funny. We started right off the wrong way.
Steven Butala: So we spaced our beginning event and our intermediate event two weeks apart. And it’s not enough time.
Jill DeWit: Thank goodness. I remember you when we were planning. You’re like, “Oh just do them back to back.” I’m like I’m not sure back to back’s the right way to go and now I’m like thank goodness we have a week in between because there’s so much that goes into this. I mean really a lot.
Steven Butala: In typical form, I believed it was going to fail right from the beginning. And it was a huge success. It was a huge success. So for everybody including us. We’ll talk a little bit about it in a minute. And Jill said, “No, it’s going to be great.” And it was. It’s like everything.
Jill DeWit: I knew it.
Steven Butala: Before we get into the topic let’s take a question posted by one of our members in the land investors online community. It’s free. And as you’re listening to us please drop your questions into the comment section below.
Jill DeWit: Awesome. Carl asks, “After listening to a podcast I wasn’t sure if days on market is available for land or just houses. Realtor.com doesn’t have an option for land. Has anyone figured out how to look up this key stat for land by zip code?”
Steven Butala: Realtor.com absolutely has a category for land if you’re using it in Windows based Chrome. This is what I’ve noticed about Realtor. If you’re using it on an iPhone versus using it on IE versus using it in Chrome on Windows, it’s a different experience. And certain stuff like completed sales even on Chrome on a computer work. It does not work on my Android phone. I don’t have any experience on the Apple products. It doesn’t matter. I just know that all of the information’s in there and the data is actually in there and it’s extremely accurate. But the user experience is a very wide variance based on the browser that you’re using.
Jill DeWit: Thank you. What’s been your experience about the accuracy of the land?
Steven Butala: Fantastic. Realtor.com and Redfin by the way in downloadable format by zip code. Redfin data has no matter what device you’re using it has downloadable data right into Excel. So you can check days on market for just about any product type. I will tell you land is not in Realtor.com at all. I mean, sorry, Redfin.com.
Jill DeWit: Okay.
Steven Butala: You have to piece this together. It’s a puzzle. If it was really easy and there was just one thing to do actually really there is because that’s what land academy 2.0 is.
Jill DeWit: Right. It’s almost the easy button. But if it was an easy button, we almost don’t want an easy button.
Steven Butala: We don’t want to just push a button. That’s crazy. Then everybody would do it and no one would make any money.
Jill DeWit: Exactly. It’s like the comment that we kept coming up with at the live event last weekend was, “I want to be the last land academy member.” Close the door on the last one. That’s it.
Steven Butala: This is such a good idea. I’m making so much money at this. Let’s not share it anymore. What do you say we just close it all off?
Jill DeWit: Exactly. I love it. There’s plenty of property. We got this.
Steven Butala: There’s 150 million pieces of property out there. It’s going to be fine.
Jill DeWit: And other types that we’re working on.
Steven Butala: Today’s topic. What we learned from our first live event. This is the meat of the show. Jill, you took notes.
Jill DeWit: I have three.
Steven Butala: Yeah.
Jill DeWit: Okay, so here are my three. One I’m hiding from you. My first one is I knew it. And it was nice to be confirmed it in person. We have done an awesome job of attracting the right people. I couldn’t… it was so much fun. We got really smart people.
Steven Butala: Yeah, crazy smart.
Jill DeWit: Gosh, engineers, business owners, people with pHd. For the majority of our group, when you just say data they’re like, “Yeah, bring it.”
Steven Butala: Yeah.
Jill DeWit: And that’s how it should be. Because that’s really what we’re doing. So it was so nice.
Steven Butala: Well said. We’re attracting the right people. Jill’s right. And there’s a handful of people in every group that have trouble logging into a website. And forever will have trouble with that. And it transcends all generations and all types of people. And there’s always those people in the group. But man, the vast majority of people were just… we were amazed. And they were amazed. And it worked out really well.
Jill DeWit: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Steven Butala: And I’m not blowing smoke. Really. Because I thought this whole thing wasn’t going to work.
Jill DeWit: Isn’t that funny? You do that every time. Even Land Academy. It’s not going to work. That’s not going to work. This isn’t going to work. I’m like hold on, hold on. So yes.
Steven Butala: Did you ever hear, like you watch a sitcom and right before the sitcom starts it says, “x, y. Z is filmed in front of a live studio audience.” I always wondered what that was. Well, now I know. Because Jill and I spend a tremendous amount of time talking into a camera and into a microphone with no feedback. Well, for the first time we got some feedback. Live real time feedback about what we were saying and it was great. One of the things that our staff, because our staff was sitting in the back watching everybody’s reactions and one of the things our staff are saying is people really responded well to when you conveyed this concept. If it doesn’t make sense to you and you don’t want to do it, don’t do it. Get a partner that wants to do it. If you don’t want to talk on the phone and sales is not your thing find a partner who does. If you don’t want to do data find a partner who does. That room was packed and will be next weekend. Packed full of people who are on one side or the other. Partner up.
Jill DeWit: Exactly.
Steven Butala: So there’s a lot of partnerships that were developed.
Jill DeWit: That’s true.
Steven Butala: That’s what I learned from this event. Networking is alive and well.
Jill DeWit: That’s so true. So that kind of ties into my two point that we had talked about before this for you also. Getting to have… be able to ask questions. We have immediate feedback and our attendees, our members get immediate answers. And it’s easy to say hold on a moment. Can we please see that one more time? I have a few questions. How great is that. You don’t get to go that in the program.
Steven Butala: Yeah, exactly.
Jill DeWit: That was so beneficial.
Steven Butala: And everybody no matter who you are, including us there’s always stuff that comes really easily and some place where you have a speed bump or a hang up or you’re sitting there saying if I could only get rid of this one thing I could take this thing to the moon. And so it’s different for all people fortunately. And that’s what we were there to try to solve that. Looking back on it now, and I’m sure the next live event’s going to be the same, it’s either sales or lack of money. And I don’t mean I don’t have any money, what do I do? I mean I have $50,000 and I burn through it every single month. And some of it comes back, some of it doesn’t. And then you just need access to capital to do this right. So we have people and they’ll be here, the same people actually.
Jill DeWit: Like we didn’t plan it.
Steven Butala: Yeah.
Jill DeWit: It just happened. It was one of those things. We didn’t plan it. People were just kind of raising their hand like I can help you solve that problem.
Steven Butala: There are people in our group with hoards of money and we asked several of them to come back to this next event because they were solving that problem for most of the people in the room who had it.
Jill DeWit: And everybody wins by the way. They’re winning too.
Steven Butala: Right.
Jill DeWit: That was amazing. The connections that were made were better than I expected.
Steven Butala: You know what nobody had a problem with? No one. Didn’t come up. And it’s never come up. Is acquisitions.
Jill DeWit: Oh.
Steven Butala: Nobody’s sitting and saying, “I sent this mail out and I’m just not buying enough property.”
Jill DeWit: You’re right.
Steven Butala: And no one’s ever said that.
Jill DeWit: No, you’re right. That was never an issue.
Steven Butala: So here’s the good news about that. That tells me then any questionable acquisition that you’re reviewing, because we reviewed a lot of people’s deals there. Just say no. There’s another deal that’s going to come in tomorrow.
Jill DeWit: Exactly.
Steven Butala: If it’s not priced right. There’s something that just it doesn’t feel good. You’re questioning the access. There’s an old man with a shot gun on the porch. Whatever it ends up being. Just move on.
Jill DeWit: There you go.
Steven Butala: Pick the very best ones. And then you won’t have any sales problems.
Jill DeWit: Do you know what the third thing I learned was? If this whole thing comes crashing down tomorrow, not that it’s going to, but you know what I mean.
Steven Butala: No, I like the way you think.
Jill DeWit: This whole thing doesn’t work tomorrow, I have a career in event planning. I know how to throw a party.
Steven Butala: That’s true. You’ve been like that since day one.
Jill DeWit: Thank you. That was fun. That was a lot of work.
Steven Butala: Really good attitude.
Jill DeWit: Catering changes. We got it. It’s going to be awesome.
Steven Butala: The number one question people ask me at this event was, “Are you guys going to do this every year?” “Can we come back next year?” “Where do we sign up?”
Jill DeWit: What’s next?
Steven Butala: Yeah, what’s next.
Jill DeWit: So we want to do this again.
Steven Butala: So, we’ll figure it out.
Jill DeWit: That was really cool.
Steven Butala: Yeah.
Jill DeWit: So we’ll… that would be kind of fun. Haven’t thought about it. Maybe a first ever live event, bring everybody together, see who wants to come in, see where they are a year from now. That actually would be really cool.
Steven Butala: That’s a good idea.
Jill DeWit: So that first event was a lot of beginners and some people were brand new. Like they just go the program a week before. They barely cracked the book open and they’re here just absorbing it all. So that would be really fun to do a year later and some people have done a mailer or two, not real sure about it the first one. But a lot hadn’t got that first one out. And that was the whole point of the whole first event. Get over those hurdles, answer those questions, talk about accounting, talk about pricing, talk about scrubbing, get into core logic together. We did all that the first event. So they left with either ready to go or darn near ready to go. Get in the mail this week. So that would be fun to see where they are a year from now. This group is going to be amazing.
Steven Butala: I just wrote it down. I think that’s a fantastic point.
Jill DeWit: Thank you.
Steven Butala: We should do it at the intermediate event. Because the intermediate event, this one coming up this weekend is packed full of people who a year ago, that’s what I’m going to ask them. Where were you a year ago?
Jill DeWit: That’s a good one.
Steven Butala: I hope there’s good stories. I’m sure there’ll be good stories.
Jill DeWit: Yep. That would be really really great. I’m excited.
Steven Butala: Me too.
Jill DeWit: The intermediate event is shaping up to be maybe even larger than the first one. I’m not shutting it down. We’ll see.
Steven Butala: Not shutting enrollment.
Jill DeWit: What’s that?
Steven Butala: You’re not shutting it down.
Jill DeWit: When does the show air?
Steven Butala: The show airs I think Monday.
Jill DeWit: Okay. Well, I’m sorry if you’re listening now you might have missed it. But for those of you who got in. Because my deadline is Monday at noon. So let’s just… sorry.
Steven Butala: Missed it.
Jill DeWit: But you know what, there will be another one. That’s what we learned too at this event. That it was wildly successful. The attendees and us got a lot out of it. And there will be more.
Steven Butala: We also learned, we have all these tools like Parcel Fact, the land pin, offers to owners and on and on and on. And we learned which tools people love. And which tools not so much.
Jill DeWit: Some they understand and some they don’t. Some are still going wait a minute we have D Perfect. Yeah, we do.
Steven Butala: Everybody loves Parcel Fact. Everyone. Everybody loves offers to owners. Land pin not so much.
Jill DeWit: We’re working on that. Thank you.
Steven Butala: And that’s good to get the feedback. We get it all straightened out. Well, you did it again. You spent another ten or twelve minutes or so listening to the Land Academy Show. Join us next time where we discuss the three types of Land Academy members.
Jill DeWit: And answer your questions on our online community, Landinvestors.com. It’s free.
Steven Butala: You’re not alone in your real estate ambition. Well, I can’t wait to address the three types of Land Academy members tomorrow.
Jill DeWit: This will be interesting.
Steven Butala: This will be a chance for me to rant a little bit because two of the types of members I adore. There is a type of member that not so much. It’s not my favorite type of person.
Jill DeWit: I can’t wait to hear what that is. I have no idea what you’re, where you’re going with that.
Steven Butala: You can guess. I’m sure of it.
Jill DeWit: Well, okay. We’ll save it for tomorrow. Hey. Share the fun by hitting the subscribe button to stay up to date on our podcast or if you’re new to our channel like us and comment on what you’d like to see in future shows and if you’re listening on iTunes, please rate us there.
Jill DeWit: We are Steve and Jill.
Steven Butala: Information
Jill DeWit: And inspiration
Steven Butala: To buy undervalued property.
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