Confessions of Steven and Jill (LA 871)
Confessions of Steven and Jill (LA 871)
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: I’m Jill DeWit. Broadcasting from sunny, southern, California.
Steven Butala: Today Jill and I talk about our confessions. About everything. The confessions of Steven and Jill. You might be asking yourself, what the hell does this have to do with real estate? Heres the deal.
This week, I wrote the topics myself. It’s a direct result of the constant questions Jill and I are getting. The show is getting bigger, and our group is getting bigger. We’re always saying, you can ask us anything.
Jill DeWit: Yeah. The more members we have, the more they do.
Steven Butala: It’s become a, be careful what you wish for.
Jill DeWit: Exactly.
Steven Butala: In fact, so many questions are coming in. Which I think is great, that’s why we’re here.
Jill DeWit: Right.
Steven Butala: There’s the call that as of this Thursday, we’ll be splitting up for people who have more advanced questions, and people who are just starting out. Guess who is going to run each of those?
Jill is going to run the new people, and I’m going to run the more advanced group.
Jill DeWit: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Steven Butala: The advanced group doesn’t care about what we wear every day. They care about real estate deals. I think that’s great.
Jill DeWit: I don’t think anybody cares about what we wear every day.
Steven Butala: Not that. But, that’s an exaggeration.
Jill DeWit: Okay.
Steven Butala: It’s not like Jill, do you dye your hair? It’s not questions like that.
Jill DeWit: I’ll answer that.
Steven Butala: What is the answer to that?
Jill DeWit: Heck yeah.
Steven Butala: Heck yeah. Not just yeah?
Jill DeWit: Sure, why not. It’s fun. My hair changes. Sometimes it’s darker, sometimes I have high lights, it’s fun. I’m a girl!
Steven Butala: I noticed. 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 DeWit: Joseph asks, “Hi guys. My understanding is that Florida doesn’t allow non-judicial foreclosure. Do you still use seller financing or only do cash sales? Thanks.”
Steven Butala: That’s a very good question. I honestly don’t know about the foreclosure procedure in Florida. But, we do not almost ever … In fact, I can’t think of a single property that we do seller financing on any longer.
Jill DeWit: Exactly.
Steven Butala: It’s because it’s not viable. We have many members. And it’s in … Land Academy 1.0 I know is packed full of advice. We’ve done a lot of terms. We call them term sales.
Jill DeWit: I still have a few that are hanging out there. There’s still payments coming in. Yeah. But, I don’t actively … We don’t actively seek them out now anymore.
Steven Butala: It’s just a lot more work.
Jill DeWit: That’s why.
Steven Butala: But, if you’re that kind of personality, it all comes out of personality. That’s what I talk about in Land Academy 1.0. If you’re that kind of person, like Jill and I have a personal friend in Arizona he’s got like 120 rental houses there, all paid for free and clear. He loves it.
He collects … He makes a couple hundred thousand bucks a month collecting rent, and dealing with all the stuff. That’s just not who I am.
Jill DeWit: Yeah. We don’t want to be handymen.
Steven Butala: No, I don’t.
Jill DeWit: But he loves it. The washer is broken, he shows up and does it.
Steven Butala: Yeah. Personally.
Jill DeWit: I know.
Steven Butala: That’s the kind of personality he has. Every rental house that Jill and I have ever purchased, it lasts like six months. It’s not because the tenants are bad or it’s hard to manage, it’s just we buy it so cheap it’s like … Here’s the methodology that I got through.
Jill DeWit: Yeah.
Steven Butala: We bought this house for $100,000 dollars, it’s worth $200. And the rent, we’re charging $100,000 rent. It’s going to take us … How many years is it going to take? We can sell it for $200 right now, or $225.
Jill DeWit: Right.
Steven Butala: Why would I … I mean, what the heck? The spread on this and all of it. It’s going to take like six years to recoup this cost.
Jill DeWit: Right.
Steven Butala: Yeah. There’s an equity piece, and a balance sheet piece and the whole thing. But, I don’t know. We’re just really good at buying property. And buying it inexpensively. It’s just way more profitable.
The answer is, it depends on you.
Jill DeWit: It’s a personal preference. That’s what I say.
Steven Butala: Do both. And see what you like.
Jill DeWit: See what you like.
Steven Butala: Fortunately, you know, yesterday we talked about relationships or working with your spouse. Fortunately, she and I are great.
Jill DeWit: It’s true.
Steven Butala: If we didn’t, we would probably … As deals come in, let’s say Jill loves terms deals. If we didn’t, I think we’d probably just shove some of those deals to you.
Jill DeWit: I would manage them. It’s not that neither way is crazy. It’s just, whatever you want to do. We have a lot of members that that’s their thing. They’re like, “You know what? I’ve been following you guys, I’ve been with you for a year and a half. I’m now at $5,000 dollars a month. By the end of 2019, I’ll be at $20,000 dollars a month. I got it all figured out. I know how to do it.”
Steven Butala: Yeah.
Jill DeWit: Then it all just sellar financing.
Steven Butala: That’s awesome.
Jill DeWit: That’s it. That’s the way they want to do it. They created their own system, actually we show how to do it. And they like it. Now and then one falls through, and they don’t care. They have the stomach for it.
Steven Butala: Yeah. It’s okay.
Jill DeWit: Or a payment, a guy needs to change his payment from the beginning of the month to the middle of the month. Whatever. That’s their thing, because they know it’s going to carry on for years.
Steven Butala: Yeah. Well, forever.
Jill DeWit: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Steven Butala: 50% of the property that you sell on terms you take back. Since we’re talking about foreclosure here.
Jill DeWit: And being honest.
Steven Butala: Yeah.
Jill DeWit: And true confessions.
Steven Butala: I’ve heard some people say it’s closer to 90%. We don’t … We never let it go to term. We always say, “You’ve paid true to form just like the rental houses. You’ve been paying on this for a year, what do you say you pay $1,000 bucks by next Thursday and we just do the teal? Because we’re cool like that.”
Jill DeWit: Exactly.
Steven Butala: Every state has a … Just to wrap this up. Every state has some kind of foreclosure mechanism. Think of it from a single family residence, personal residence stand point. If you stop paying your mortgage the bank has to do something.
There’s judicial foreclosure states, which is what Arizona and California are. And there’s non-judicial foreclosure states. There’s several different ways that you can foreclose. Here’s the takeaway from this question. Before you do term sales, in the state that you’re doing it in. Make sure you know a procedure for foreclosure.
Jill DeWit: Cool.
Steven Butala: There’s usually two ways to do it in every state. As through escrow, or not. Through yourself. Through a land contract. We always do contract, I learned that a hard way a long time ago.
This is a topic for a whole episode, or it’s not the actual venue to go into that.
Jill DeWit: Thank you.
Steven Butala: Because Jill wants to stay awake. Today’s topic, the confessions of Steven and Jill. This is the meat of the show. You want to ask me some questions Jill or should I ask you?
Jill DeWit: All right. I’ll ask you. Let’s start there. What’s your typical day like, Steven? What’s your typical day and what’s your dream day? I want to know both of them.
Steven Butala: My typical day is get up really early. Like 5:00 or 6 o’clock in the morning. Usually brain storm … The stuff that I love to do is the start up portion of new companies. The big picture, wow, what if we had a website that did this? What if we bought real estate? Can this work in Canada? I’m going to spend all day researching whether or not we can the access our data in the Canadian Providences.
By the way, I haven’t been able to figure that out yet. The answer is no, so far. Australia, yes.
Jill DeWit: Didn’t we have some? We had some that we did because we had property on the Eastern side?
Steven Butala: Yeah. But, we can’t send mail out there yet.
Jill DeWit: Okay.
Steven Butala: We can’t get a database.
Jill DeWit: Okay.
Steven Butala: It exists, but nobody sees the point.
Jill DeWit: Right.
Steven Butala: I’ve had a meeting with rail quest about that. They say, “Yeah, the data is there. But nobody cares.”
Jill DeWit: Got it.
Steven Butala: We all love Canada, but you know what I’m saying.
Jill DeWit: Yes.
Steven Butala: My typical day, that would be my dream day.
Jill DeWit: That’s your dream day.
Steven Butala: Yeah. Just research all day, and doing mail and data. And manipulating data, and starting up companies.
Jill DeWit: Okay. What’s your actual day now like?
Steven Butala: We have a 10:45 stand up meeting that I go to 50% of the time with all of our staff. All of them. Some of them are on Skype, some of them are in our actual office at 10:45. Then I, true to form, like we teach I just do what … It’s an outlook. I do what my calendar says.
Some people put stuff in there for me to do, and I put the vast majority of it. Right now for whatever reason marketing is just all of what we’re doing. We figure out everything. That’s the truth of it. This is confessions.
We have absolutely figured out how to buy cheap real estate. When you really think about that, that lends itself to just being filthy, stinking, jet rich. Really.
Jill DeWit: I understand.
Steven Butala: If you can buy a house for $100,000 that’s worth $200 and you can do it 25 times a day, that’s billions of dollars that are going to happen. Here is the problem. Since all of this is confessions.
There’s people involved, and people will disappoint you.
Jill DeWit: Yeah.
Steven Butala: That’s my true challenge.
Jill DeWit: People get in the way of deals sometimes.
Steven Butala: That acquisition position, the root of being a good acquisition’s person is wanting to do deals. Every acquisition person, I was an acquisition person for years. I still am. They always have stuff going on to the side. They always think in the back of their head, “Wow. This deal came in, I’m going to do it myself. I don’t need Steve and Jill.”
It’s a very, very difficult position to fill in house, that acquisition / transaction coordinator.
Jill DeWit: It’s true.
Steven Butala: It ends up just being Jill and I because we obviously trust each other.
Jill DeWit: It’s true.
Steven Butala: It’s a pain in the butt. Doing deals is a pain in the butt. But, it’s crazy profitable. It’s better than flipping burgers. That’s why we’re here.
Jill DeWit: Hey, true confession. At one time, we discussed flipping burgers. You know, we have a home here in California. We have a home in Scottsdale. Each time it’s a lot easier … It’s a lot cheaper, let’s just say it’s a lot less expensive to operate the home in Scottsdale.
Steven Butala: It’s 1/10th. It’s 10%-
Jill DeWit: Than it is to operate-
Steven Butala: It costs 10%.
Jill DeWit: … the home here. We have discussed this. [crosstalk]-
Steven Butala: It’s crazy.
Jill DeWit: … said flipping burgers. We said, “You know what? I might consider flipping burgers and living in Scottsdale.” That was years ago.
Steven Butala: That was a funny-
Jill DeWit: We just joke about that.
Steven Butala: [crosstalk] driven.
Jill DeWit: Yes. Well, full disclosure.
Steven Butala: Jill and I know how to have fun.
Jill DeWit: That’s true.
Steven Butala: We do not suffer … We do a lot of horsing around.
Jill DeWit: You know what’s funny? Full disclosure, we have not been horsing around as much as have.
Steven Butala: I know.
Jill DeWit: As we-
Steven Butala: I noticed that.
Jill DeWit: … consistently used to. We used to have so many days where I felt like three days a week we didn’t go in because we’re just having so much fun. Because you wake up, and we’re having breakfast. Next thing you know, brunch, next thing you know it’s lunch, and I might take a shower. I’m not going in, are you going in? I’m not going in.
Steven Butala: We all have offices, there’s offices there.
Jill DeWit: Let’s get on our bikes.
Steven Butala: Yeah.
Jill DeWit: We haven’t done that. We used to do that a very healthy amount. We’ve been so focused right now, probably because of the live events.
Steven Butala: The live events-
Jill DeWit: And House Academy. And 2.0.
Steven Butala: Land Academy 2.0.
Jill DeWit: And Land Academy Lite, and all the things that we have that we just released or are in the works right now. We’ve been busting it. I actually, it’s funny because even last night we had a conversation over champaign in the kitchen. Which some kitchen karaoke with champaign in our hands.
Steven Butala: Yep.
Jill DeWit: I said, we need to goof off a little bit more. We haven’t had many of those … It’s been a long time since we had a day where we just went to the movies and that was our day. Maybe we should hurry up and do that today.
Steven Butala: I agree. The way that we do deals now is actually really conducive to our lifestyle. We send mail out, which is easy by the way. After you do one or two mailers, especially with offers honors how we have it, we basically … Our staff does it for us. I just price it.
Jill DeWit: Right.
Steven Butala: You can do that to, to some degree. If you’re not, if you’re a member you should use that to your benefit. Call offers to owners, and you’ll get Omar, and he’ll hook you up.
Jill DeWit: Yep.
Steven Butala: The mail goes out. Our transaction coordinators, wherever they may be. Some of them are in house or local, some of them aren’t. They answer the phone. The good, the bad, and the ugly. They answer it, bring the deals in. Jill usually talks to the seller one or two times just to make sure that it’s a real deal.
Then, that’s it.
Jill DeWit: Yeah.
Steven Butala: I approve it or don’t approve it, and we don’t do anymore work.
Jill DeWit: Then we can go have fun. I’m going to get back to the true confessions.
Steven Butala: Yeah. Well, that was a confession about how we do our deals.
Jill DeWit: Okay. Got it.
Steven Butala: People ask me all the time. Come on, really. What do you do? That’s what happens.
Jill DeWit: Thank you. I want to know, do you have an end game money goal in mind?
Steven Butala: Yeah.
Jill DeWit: How far away are we?
Steven Butala: It’ll happen in 2019. But, I’ve changed if 15 times. It keeps going up.
Jill DeWit: It does keep going up. We’re a year away from 2020, by the way.
Steven Butala: I know.
Jill DeWit: That’s pretty scary.
Steven Butala: 2019, this is my plan anyway.
Jill DeWit: Okay.
Steven Butala: I plan on working crazy like we are now all through 2019. Then that’s it. I don’t mean retire at all, but I mean hours.
Jill DeWit: You know my goal?
Steven Butala: I mean hours are going to dramatically reduce. Like nine to three, Tuesday through Thursday and that’s it.
Jill DeWit: Okay. My goals are going to change for 2019, by the way. Mine are going to be mine confession time. I need to better balance having fun, because I haven’t been doing that as well. But, I’m still going to get a whole lot of work done. But, I’m going to throw a lot more fun in there for me personally. Then, I will be that much better at work.
Steven Butala: Just starting a no show, which is basically Jill’s lifestyle. It’s more of a, correct me if I’m wrong here-
Jill DeWit: No.
Steven Butala: More of a motivational / …
Jill DeWit: It’s fun for me.
Steven Butala: Yeah, I know.
Jill DeWit: That’s why, even though it’s more work and it’s a whole new show, and a whole different thing, it’s going to be a YouTube thing. It will still be around what I do here with Land Academy. But, separate offshoot. Like me personally helping people in other businesses.
Steven Butala: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Jill DeWit: I’m excited. It’ll be really good.
Steven Butala: I’m excited too.
Jill DeWit: Even though it’s kind of more work, it’s a whole new project. It’s fun for me, so it’s an outlet. You want to-
Steven Butala: [crosstalk] real estate deals, go ahead.
Jill DeWit: You want to ask me some questions?
Steven Butala: No. I think we pretty much covered it. The big question I have for you is what do you like about what you do for a living and what don’t you like? Please, be super honest. Because you usually sugar coat stuff.
Let’s start with what you don’t like. See. Can’t even … That’s what I thought.
Jill DeWit: What?
Steven Butala: You just, you really have to think about it.
Jill DeWit: I know. What do I don’t like? You know what, I don’t like being a slave to my calendar. Right now, to get things done I have to be a slave to my calendar.
Steven Butala: It’s the only way.
Jill DeWit: It sucks.
Steven Butala: It’s not just right now. It’s just how the world is.
Jill DeWit: For my personality type, it sucks. That’s my point.
Steven Butala: Jill, you’re wealthy enough to not do anything.
Jill DeWit: Yes. I know. But, nothing will get done. There’s things that I have to do. I have to work on.
Steven Butala: We need to work on replacing you, or getting the existing people-
Jill DeWit: It’s okay. This is not a vent. This is not a, you solve my problem.
Steven Butala: I don’t want you to be unhappy.
Jill DeWit: I’m just telling you, I’m a slave to my calendar. I don’t like it. But, I’m … I’ve learned to accept it. I’m poking through. I’m working through it.
Steven Butala: Just like with me, I’ve learned to accept Steve.
Jill DeWit: I’ve learned to accept Steven. I’ve learned to accept my calendar. I’ve learned to accept a lot of things.
Steven Butala: Well, you’ve done it again. You’ve spent another 15 minutes or show listening to the Land Academy Show. Join us next time where we discuss what we spend our time on.
Jill DeWit: We kind of covered a little bit there, but we’ll answer more. And we’re going to answer your questions. Plus on our online community at Landinvestors.com, it is free.
Steven Butala: You are not alone in your real estate ambition.
Jill DeWit: You didn’t get me to finish what I do like.
Steven Butala: Go ahead.
Jill DeWit: Okay.
Steven Butala: I’ll save it for the after show.
Jill DeWit: You kind of cut me off there. I’m like, is that bad? Did I say something wrong?
Steven Butala: No, no. Nothing. Just, can’t be bad. It’s true [crosstalk]-
Jill DeWit: You know what I do like? Number one, I absolutely love doing shows. I love, especially the live shows. I get butterflies in my stomach. I put my heart and soul in my Wednesday little 30 to one minute, one hour … 30 minute to one hour Facebook Live Show. We’re working on expanding it to YouTube.
We did it one week and the quality wasn’t as good. We’re going to work on that and bring it back. But, I love that. I love the anticipation, and the questions, and the little bit of nervousness. It’s so much fun for me. I love it.
Steven Butala: Awesome.
Jill DeWit: I love … I do love, it sounds cliché. But, I love the part of helping people. And I love getting feedback. We get it several times a week. I’d love it several times a day, personally, because every time I get a little something. It’s like it just makes me take a step back, breathe, and just go wow. Little notes that peoples life’s are changed, even a little bit makes me so flipping happy.
Steven Butala: That’s why we do this.
Jill DeWit: I’m able to afford my pet, my sick vet bill. Or something. I don’t know.
Steven Butala: You know what? If you’re a member, we have so many members who we just never hear from ever.
Jill DeWit: I know.
Steven Butala: If you’re a member, and this worked for you. I know there’s the vet, you know.
Jill DeWit: Yeah.
Steven Butala: We get probably once a week we get a heartfelt, “Thank you, you changed my life. We don’t work anymore. This is what we do.” If this is your case, and you haven’t sent us a note, or you haven’t done it recently, please send us a note because we collect them. It really motivates our staff.
Jill DeWit: It does.
Steven Butala: It really keeps-
Jill DeWit: Yeah. Motivates me.
Steven Butala: I will say this, we will do this forever. If people continue to send the feedback that they send right now.
Jill DeWit: It’s awesome.
Steven Butala: I mean, is that fair?
Jill DeWit: Yeah.
Steven Butala: It might at some point just be … We work our tail off. That’s the truth, both of us.
Jill DeWit: We do.
Steven Butala: We probably work … I don’t know, 10 to 12 hours a day. I’m not exaggerating.
Jill DeWit: Yep.
Steven Butala: I’ll continue to do that if everybody who loves it, and it’s working, and the male piece is working. All of it. It’s rewarding.
Jill DeWit: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Steven Butala: It’s not about money anymore. That’s the truth.
Jill DeWit: Thank you.
Steven Butala: We’re past all that.
Jill DeWit: Speaking of which, by the way, because today is Wednesday. I have an announcement. If you have not watched my Facebook Live that aired a little while ago today, please go watch it because if you’re thinking about doing this, I’m giving away a program.
Steven Butala: Are you really?
Jill DeWit: I am.
Steven Butala: Good for you.
Jill DeWit: Yep. I’m giving away a program. I just announced on the show earlier today. I gave out the details of what’s involved and what you need to do to be thrown into the drawing for a free program, which I’m going to announce the next Wednesday.
Steven Butala: Outstanding.
Jill DeWit: Yay. A week from today. Thank you. Hey, wherever you are listening or watching, please read us there.
Steven Butala: We are Steve and Jill.
Jill DeWit: We are Steve and Jill.
Steven Butala: Information.
Jill DeWit: And inspiration.
Steven Butala: To buy undervalued property.
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