Networking and Finding Business Partners (LA 823)
Networking and Finding Business Partners (LA 823)
Transcript:
Steven Butala: Steve 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 networking and finding business partners. This is a topic that we’re both extremely qualified to talk about, Jill, ’cause we found each other.
Jill DeWit: We did. And we created a huge network.
Steven Butala: Yeah. And we like separated our responsibilities successfully, so I hope you like your job, I like my job description, I don’t know if [crosstalk 00:00:32].
Jill DeWit: Most days. Well, at the office way more than at home, but we’ll talk about that later. Just kidding.
Steven Butala: That’s a topic for an entirely different show.
Jill DeWit: That’s right. That’s a different show. From the bedroom.
Steven Butala: Wow. Are you happy in the bedroom?
Jill DeWit: Apparently. Yes. Am I just happy in general? Yes. You through in the in the bedroom.
Steven Butala: You said in the bedroom Tourette’s.
Jill DeWit: Thank you.
Steven Butala: Before we get into it, let’s take a question posted by one of the members on LandInvestors.com online community. It’s free. And as you’re listening to us, please drop your questions into the comments section below.
Jill DeWit: Aaron asks, “I have a seller who wants to sell me a large parcel of land they own in Apache County, Arizona. We would like the buy it. The seller is living overseas in Saudi Arabia and has for several years, although I believe they are US citizens. How do I complete this sale? Has anyone used an online notary service for something like this? There are two people on the deed who will have to sign for the sale. Any advice on how best to handle this would be much appreciated, thanks.”
Steven Butala: Well, the good news there is that they’re in Saudi Arabia and not in the Congo, because you can find, believe it or not, American notaries in countries-
Jill DeWit: Other countries.
Steven Butala: … like that. There’s a lot of Americans living in Saudi Arabia, specifically military people. So, you’re gonna … yeah, go ahead, Jill.
Jill DeWit: I’ve had this situation and it’s one of those things that instead of … they usually already have an answer. They’ve already had to do some formal documents. They lived there. Maybe for, even if they bought some property or something there, it’s usually they already have the solution. So, my first advice is don’t go down the path of trying to solve the problem for them yet, because it’s probably not a problem. All you have to do is say, “We need to [inaudible 00:02:26] getting us your signatures notarized here. How does it go in this country?” “Oh, that’s easy. I already know I have to go the consulate, there’s a person there-”
Steven Butala: Yeah, an embassy, yeah.
Jill DeWit: “And they do it for us and it’s just like this ’cause I’m on American territory at the time.” I don’t know that, I don’t remember exactly how it worked out, but usually they already have a solution. So, I would start there before I even started to try to solve it for them, ’cause I don’t want you to spend four hours and you call the person and you say, “I’ve got it all figured out,” and they say, “Why did you do that? I got this.”
Steven Butala: For the record, citizenship doesn’t matter. They don’t need to be American citizens or not to execute deeds or own real estate or any of that stuff.
Jill DeWit: Right. So, they own it and so to my understanding the question is they own it, they’re selling it to him, and they live in Saudi Arabia. And they’re probably US citizens.
Steven Butala: Right.
Jill DeWit: I don’t see this as a problem, and it’s no big deal, and handle it like you normally would.
Steven Butala: Yeah, that’s-
Jill DeWit: Just get them to sign the document and then the only other thing I would do in this situation, I don’t really want to be overnighting a cashier’s check. Normally I wouldn’t do it in this situation. Normally, we worked it out where once, we gotta be all comfortable with each other and once we are, then I just wire the money.
Steven Butala: Yeah. I mean, she’s right. They probably already solved that, too. They’ve sent money back and forth.
Jill DeWit: Yeah.
Steven Butala: Well said, Jill.
Jill DeWit: Thank you. Don’t make it a problem. Don’t make it a big deal and it’s probably not.
Steven Butala: I personally, I don’t remember ever having to deal with this personally.
Jill DeWit: Canada-
Steven Butala: I would’ve answered the question all wrong.
Jill DeWit: Remember it was more … the most international transactions we did were Canada. That came up not often-
Steven Butala: Did you send cashier’s checks up there or did you just do a wire?
Jill DeWit: That I did do, ’cause it was so close, I did a ton of irregular overnight, arranged a Canadian notary, and it was ’cause it was very similar to US.
Steven Butala: Oh, okay.
Jill DeWit: So, that I did kind of normal. But still, there’s a little bit, there’s a few little different nuances ’cause it’s a different country.
Steven Butala: Those are good, unique questions.
Jill DeWit: And then we had to work out together, work out the dollar amount, just make sure it’s Canadian dollars, US dollars, make sure we were on the same page. But no, it’s not a big deal.
Steven Butala: Today’s topic, networking and finding business partners. This is the meat of the show. Boy, this is so important.
Jill DeWit: Oh, gosh.
Steven Butala: This falls into that category of when you start out doing something, you think there’s all this stuff that’s gonna be important and hard and you’re never right. It’s all this … and then you never think about how this kind of stuff and how important it is, and how easy it is to solve solutions with business partners. Jack Walsh, I think his name is, who turned General Electric around in the ’70s, ’80s. Maybe even ’90s. Wrote a book called Partnership. It’s actually worth reading. I don’t read a ton of books. I read that covert to cover, and the importance of surrounding your self with people who know how to do stuff and partnershipping with the right people, it’s way, way more efficient to own 50% of something, but never have to do the stuff you don’t want to do ever again, than own 100% of it and be miserable all the time. In the end, you’re just gonna, you’re gonna grow faster business wise and personally.
Jill DeWit: One of the things that I see people doing is trying to do this a little too soon. You don’t say, “I’m gonna be an investor tomorrow” and go find a partner. This partner, you haven’t proven yourself yet. So, I see this, this kind of comes along. I notice it more in the second phase of your business. It’s up and running, you figured it out, you know what you’re good at. You know what you’re not good at. So, now you know the kind of partner that you’re looking for, number one. You gotta figure that part out. And then number two for the networking, people will take you serious when you already have a thriving business and you’re ready to take it to the next level and now this is gonna catapult you both.
Steven Butala: Right. You have to know what you need. In this business, you need analytical skill, core analytical skills. That’s something we can’t teach you. You have to come to us with those analytical skills. And you also need to know how to talk to people. And then you need to, after you’ve done that let’s say 10 times, bought and sold 10 pieces of property, sent out a few mailers successfully, then you can really, this is what we teach you in Land Academy 2.0. Then you can really take a step back, exactly what Jill just said, and say, “Answering the phone’s not for me,” or “I love to price property, but I’m not really thrilled about selling it or posting it on the Internet.”
Steven Butala: So, good news is that we have ready made virtual assistants that we make available to everybody in our group that have done most of these tasks for us and for other members, so it’s not super foreign to them. They get it. But there’s still, of course, you still as a business owner have to be involved in what makes the thing successful from 35,000 feet.
Jill DeWit: Right. I brought this out into three parts. So, now we know when you need to do this, what you already have done, and you have an idea of who you’re looking for. So, I have a who, and a where, and a how.
Steven Butala: Oh, great, Jill.
Jill DeWit: For this, okay.
Steven Butala: You’re prepared.
Jill DeWit: I am prepared.
Steven Butala: See how many notes I wrote for this?
Jill DeWit: Yeah. I’m looking. Who is … Who should you be networking with? Should be like minded people and from the same community. You’re not gonna go and hit up a toilet paper exec and say, “Let’s do this real estate thing, because you built your toilet paper empire, I’m sure we can do this over here.” That’s hard. You have to teach them your whole business model and how it all works, and all the nuances. They gotta do their own deals and fail on their own 10 times. Or you don’t want them failing on your dime now, too. Let’s be smart about this.
Jill DeWit: And that’s what’s so great about our community, which ties into the where. The next one is the where. And one of the things is in an online community like our Land Investors, like our meetings, like meetups that people go to, other real estate events. That’s the where that you find them. And then finally, the how for me is just pick up the phone or do an email and start the conversation. People don’t do that. Isn’t that funny? People will sit in the back of the room and know what they need and know that that person can help them, but they don’t reach out.
Steven Butala: There’s two places that bottleneck most of our members, if not all of them. A sales lull, you gotta solve, some times you gotta solve sales, and then the number two is, “I ran out of money”. So, there’s tons of people in our group that are expert salespeople at this, and there are also a lot of people in our group who love to asset backed lend money, lend money against the actual asset. Not provide venture capital, but if you needed $25,000 to buy a piece of property that everybody knows worth is $50,000, people come out of the woodwork trying to give you that $25,000. Which, by the way, is very efficient for them and it’s very efficient for you. Now you don’t have to come up with the $25,000, you sell it for $50,000. You guys split the $25,000 of profit margin. Man, I’ll tell you what.
Steven Butala: Then you get a person in there who can sell it and you just buy it but the other person’s selling it. You got three people just moving around and around and around like that, you get a lot of stuff done. And everybody’s happy with their role. So, partnerships, networking is the way to find business partners. I wrote this topic-
Jill DeWit: That’s a good way to do it.
Steven Butala: Because you don’t have to do the stuff that you don’t want to do, you only sit there and do one thing 100% of the time instead of spending 33% of your time raising money, 33% buying, and 33% selling.
Jill DeWit: Where I thought you were going with this, which I think is also brilliant, is like in your networking and you’re finding business partners. So, this happens with us. We will do different transactions with different partners, right? Some work out, some don’t work out. So, this is a great way for somebody to learn to do it. Do a couple deals with different people. If you’re looking for a long term partner, because someone will rise to the top and you will just get it. You’ll realize, “Oh my gosh, we work the best together. We don’t even talk. He knows what needs to get done. I know what needs to be done. It’s just seamless. Let’s do even more together.”
Steven Butala: Yeah. Here’s how public accounting and consulting, to this day it still works where you get great grades, you get recruited by a huge company for a really good salary, you work there for two years. The whole time you’re working there, you’re working for other clients. Almost all the time, you’re not in that office. You’re working in the office of other clients, whether you’re in the audit field, or consulting, or whatever. And all the time, you’re getting job offers.
Steven Butala: At some point, somebody’s gonna really click with you, one of these clients, and you’re gonna accept that job offer. It’s the same thing with finding a partner. You shouldn’t ever marry the first girl you kiss.
Jill DeWit: I knew it. It always goes back to that. Why does it always come back to that?
Steven Butala: You can marry her, but make sure you kiss a bunch of other girls first and then go back. If she’ll have you. And she won’t, trust me.
Jill DeWit: Yeah, no. That ship has sailed.
Steven Butala: Jill has a whole long list of guys that have come back after they went back out there and just came back and said-
Jill DeWit: Why did that keep happening?
Steven Butala: “You know, it turns out, you’re the best girl ever.”
Jill DeWit: Thank you.
Steven Butala: “Yeah, sorry. You’re gone.”
Jill DeWit: I moved on.
Steven Butala: “Good luck.”
Jill DeWit: Sorry. It’s funny, I’m like, “I tried to tell ya.”
Steven Butala: Well, you’ve done it again. Spent another 15 minutes or so listening to the Land Academy show. Join us next time where we discuss Land Academy Live just for the fun of it.
Jill DeWit: Share the fun by hitting the subscribe button to stay up to date on our podcast or if you are new to our channel. Like us and comment on what you would like to see in future shows, and if you’re listening on iTunes, please rate us there.
Steven Butala: You are not alone in your real estate ambition. You are not alone-
Jill DeWit: You brought that up. I can’t believe you brought that up.
Steven Butala: You are not alone in not being able to read the teleprompter.
Jill DeWit: No. No, that’s good. You are not alone at driving your staff nuts by quick changes. I’m just kidding. That’s kind of for both of us, and not you.
Steven Butala: Our marketing staff changed the script and they just said, “Oh, by the way, been a bunch of changes in the script and good luck.”
Jill DeWit: I personally like it.
Steven Butala: Yeah, I do, too.
Jill DeWit: It’s not like they threw commercials in there. I’m like, “Thank you.” So, it’s just kind of, “Let’s all share it.”
Steven Butala: I really like when our staff does stuff and then they tell us afterward, especially after it’s working instead of saying, “Hey, what do you think about this.”
Jill DeWit: Yes, just do it.
Steven Butala: Just do it.
Jill DeWit: Share the fun by subscribing on iTunes and YouTube. And while you’re at it, rate us there.
Steven Butala: We are Steve and Jill.
Jill DeWit: Steve and Jill.
Steven Butala: Information-
Jill DeWit: And inspiration.
Steven Butala: To buy undervalued property.
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