What We Spend Our Time On (LA 872)
What We Spend Our Time On (LA 872)
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 Dewitt broadcasting from sunny Southern California.
Steven Butala: Today Jill and I talk about what we spend our time on. This topic and all topics are generally driven from the questions that we get.
Jill DeWit: That’s true.
Steven Butala: This is a big topic in our live event, and it wasn’t one that I anticipated at all because I kept saying, “Stay Organized, stay organized, stay organized.” And so finally somebody said “what the heck does that actually mean to you?”, because it’s easy to say that, everybody says that, “the more organized you are the better you are, and the more money you’re gonna make”. Which is all true. So what does it really mean? This is where this topic came from. I’m gonna tell exactly what I spend my time on, and Jill probably just sit here and listen.
Jill DeWit: Yeah I will. Cause it’s something I don’t usually spend time on is listening. Just kidding.
Steven Butala: You know the truth is, Jill and I, how we approach what we spend our time on is totally different and we both get to the same finish line.
Jill DeWit: That’s true.
Steven Butala: Rabbit and the hare kind of thing.
Jill DeWit: That’s true.
Who’s the rabbit and who’s the hare?
Steven Butala: I’m the rabbit.
Jill DeWit: Okay. The turtle and the hare.
The rabbit and the hare are the same thing.
Steven Butala: Oh sorry, I’m sorry.
You saved me from getting 4000 emails. Thank you
Jill DeWit: “Who’s the rabbit and who’s the hare?” “Oh I’m the rabbit.”
Okay well then I’ll be the hare.
That’s hilarious.
Steven Butala: Let’s make fun of Steve day too. Every day is make fun of dad day.
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: Michael asks, “Hello friends, I’m sure you’ve had many calls with RVers wanting to know if they can visit the land with and RV. If you own smaller parcels and subdivisions, more likely there are covenants that prohibit RVs and mobile homes at any time. Do you have experience with CCNR enforcement? Can Rvers get away with just visiting the land? I suspect living in an RV for a period of time, in a no RV subdivision would eventually trigger code enforcement. I can’t in good faith advertise lots to RV campers without knowing what could happen. Please let me know if you sold anyone CCNRs to folks who have used the land for RV vacations without issue, even thought the covenants prohibit it. Thanks.” Phew, that was a lot.
Steven Butala: The truth of it is this, probably 99% of the time, no probably 99.8% of the time, after we sell that property, we don’t know what happens.
Jill DeWit: Yep, and … I have something to say about it too before you’re done.
Steven Butala: Yeah, yeah.
Jill DeWit: I usually put it on them, because usually in the beginning, or not the beginning, the beginning when I was doing land and I was handling these calls first hand, I would put it on them. I would say “you know what? I really don’t know. I don’t know how long you can keep it out there, I don’t know what’s allowed.” So I would put that … and I don’t wanna know, that’s the other thing too. I don’t wanna spend that much time on it, getting to know all the things ’cause if I do, it slows me down doing more deals.
Steven Butala: Yeah.
Jill DeWit: So I would put that on them and in some circumstances I tested even putting that in the posting. Like, if you’ve got those kind of questions, here’s who you call. Here’s the zoning commission, you can see what the rules are on that property and find out you might be able to park there for up to 30 days, you might be able to park there for up to 90 days, I don’t know. But I would put it on them and let them handle it and figure it out.
Steven Butala: There’s two types of property, there are subdivided properties and there are unsubdivided properties, and how can you tell? By the legal description. So, an unsubdivided property will have a legal description like this “Due north east quarter of the south west quarter of the east half of section 16, range 34, township 29, in the meridian of whatever.” Then a subdivided property will have “Lot 32 of block 14 in the sunset subdivision of Cochise County, Arizona.” You’re not gonna have a lot of luck parking an RV in a subdivided property.
Jill DeWit: Right.
Steven Butala: But the good news is, I don’t know I think Anchorage is … we probably get in more unsubdivided property than not.
Jill DeWit: That’s true.
Steven Butala: For rural vacant land, you can do anything you want out there. Go on youtube if you have some time to kill sometime and look up the word “prepper” and you’ll see how these people use that property, they’re off the grid, look up “off the grid”, it’s amazing.
Jill DeWit: They’re pros at understanding and figuring out ways around, like legal ways, I’m not saying they’re doing anything bad, I think they’ve found ways to make it work like okay if it has to be site built, does that just mean pour, pad, and then we can do X. They’ll figure all that all out, that’s brilliant.
Steven Butala: The further out you are, it’s just the CCNR police are gonna leave you alone. But there’s always one guy, and a lot of times, there’s one subdivision in Coconino County Arizona where I actually had to go to court because of how we were selling property, and I lost. And I had to write a cheque. And 16000 properties have that one problem, so I don’t want that to stop you from doing this. But this RV business, we get a lot of questions about RVs and generally property that has been subdivided you can’t do it.
I’ll say this though, there are a couple subdivisions Jill and I avoid, but that wasn’t the case a long time ago and its because there’s local regulations about how large the property has to be to build a house on it, and you know what ends up happening? It becomes an RV park.
Jill DeWit: Right.
Steven Butala: So, you can use those … if somebody says, at the county, “oh, that subdivision’s awful.” They’re all half acre lots and the state says it has to be three quarters an acre to build a property. Oh, great I’m gonna park my RV there and live there. So, Jill’s right, there’s always a way around it and that’s how you should approach it. Should you put it in the title of your posting? I don’t think so.
Jill DeWit: I would be looking at what can I do too in those things, you know, when you have them call the county, maybe coach them and prep them to say “What can I do?”
Steven Butala: I like to use sentences like this, “the use of this property is only limited to your imagination.”
Jill DeWit: Yeah. That’s very true.
Steven Butala: Not, “build a trailer here and stick your middle finger up to society.”
Jill DeWit: Right, a lot of the mobile, what’s great is when you find mobile properties that allow mobile homes, then those are like gold as you can see ’cause it usually tackles all these issues.
Steven Butala: We seek out mobile homes. Mobile home zoning is like gold.
Jill DeWit: I pretty much buy every one that comes in, if it’s a mobile. Yeah, we buy those.
Steven Butala: Today’s topic “what do we spend our time on?” This is the meat of the show. Not so much notes for this show, I noticed, Jill.
Jill DeWit: I think I got it. You know what I was gonna say one thing, I know you have a list that you’re gonna go down about percentage of time, what we usually spend our time on. One thing that wasn’t in there, I don’t know what category you call it in, but we spend a large percentage of our week on recording and calls and shows. I’m gonna say at least 20% of our week …
Steven Butala: I agree. And it’s getting more.
Jill DeWit: … is spent on podcast shows, member calls, all those things that are all scheduled out, they happen every week on a routine. And 20% a full day of your week, that’s a long time.
Steven Butala: Yesterday we spent all day at a photo shoot, for just us. Like a professional photo shoot in multiple locations, and we were talking about it in between shots and stuff, Jill and I, I said “you know, we spend a lot of time in front of the camera.”
Jill DeWit: Yeah.
Steven Butala: And it sells real estate and it sells all the companies we have, but I never signed up for this. I just wanna sit in a dark room and do data.
Jill DeWit: That’s funny, you went from back in the day, this is stuff we share in all of our stuff, we’re all honest, back in the day it was like “hide behind the company, no one should know who works there.” You know, don’t have your name out there, certainly don’t have an address, that kind of thing, and don’t have a phone. Oh my gosh. They should be sending to support at X company, that’s all they need to know kind of thing.
Steven Butala: Yeah.
Jill DeWit: If they wanna ask a question, anyway, now we’re like “well, we’re out there” there’s photos, videos …
Steven Butala: I mean is this healthy? I have to ask myself this question if this is how I want the rest of my life to go, to be in front of a camera constantly, I know you love it.
Jill DeWit: Is your attitude healthy?
Steven Butala: No.
Jill DeWit: Is that the question?
Steven Butala: I know it works, there’s no question about it.
Jill DeWit: Is how you feel about it healthy? I’m not sure.
Steven Butala: You know what would be great? If you doubled the amount of time in front of the camera and mine went to zero and I just hide behind this microphone, I don’t know how this became a video.
Jill DeWit: You can just stand behind me.
Steven Butala: It was supposed to be a podcast, now it’s a video show. And everything becomes a video show, and pretty soon people are just gonna start following around with cameras, ’cause it works.
Jill DeWit: Right.
Steven Butala: I don’t know why people watch or listen to this stuff, do you?
Jill DeWit: No. I do, you know, I think its entertaining.
Steven Butala: I spend probably … talked about how much we spend our time on.
Jill DeWit: What else do we spend our time on?
Steven Butala: Once a month I sit down for maybe, probably a whole day, let’s say six hours, maybe eight, and do a mailer. I love that day. How I spend my day is absolutely, categorically dictated in my outlook schedule, I’m a schedule fiend. I take a look at, let’s say a product launch like House Academy, we’re gonna launch House Academy when Jill tells us it’s okay. And then I work it all the way backwards, so I do these products, or these programs, or these websites, long before they get launched, we just put them in a can and Jill launches it when she’s ready. And so I spend a tremendous amount of time in front of a camera, like Land Academy 2.0 is me in front of a camera for a week and that whole program myself it’s like eight hours or something? Maybe less than that, six hours.
Jill DeWit: Yeah.
Steven Butala: And I produce it, I produce audio, video, I edit it, there’s nobody else that works on it, and then we get it live on the website with the help of our staff so, we spend a lot of time on that. Fortunately I probably spend 15 minutes or so, a day, approving or rejecting real estate deals that come in. I’m fortunate Jill and I don’t work on those deals anymore at all, which is what we teach in Land Academy 2.0 you should be shooting for that, you should have not a staff but people in your life, whether they’re virtual assistants or whatever, doing all the work for you and you just do the mail, and the pricing.
Jill DeWit: Right.
Steven Butala: So that’s really why I wanted to do this show about … ’cause people ask us “what do you guys spend your time on?” And the fact is we spend very little time doing real estate deals, and you shouldn’t spend time doing real estate deals either.
Jill DeWit: Not later on.
Steven Butala: You should spend a lot of time doing market research, like “should I send mail to Indiana.” Or whatever. And implementing the mailer itself, doing perfect mailers, and then managing, just watching, getting reports, making sure your people are doing what they’re supposed to be doing. I don’t think I spend 15 minutes a day doing real estate deals anymore and we do a ton of them. Tons of real estate deals. What do you spend your time on?
Jill DeWit: Well, today’s a hair day. Just kidding.
Steven Butala: Knew you were gonna say something like that. How much time do you spend on personal grooming a week? And money?
Jill DeWit: Looking at money.
Steven Butala: I should’ve asked this in true confessions a couple days ago.
Jill DeWit: I don’t, that’s not fair. It is important to look good but I don’t think I’m over the top. Am I over the top?
Steven Butala: No.
Jill DeWit: Oh, you’re like, you paused and I’m like “come on.”
Steven Butala: No I was thinking about a lot of really derogatory questions to ask you.
Jill DeWit: Oh, thank you.
Steven Butala: Like “how many pairs of shoes do you have, ballpark?”
Jill DeWit: Oh, I like shoes. But you know what, I still …
Steven Butala: It’s nothing compared to most women.
Jill DeWit: No, that’s the thing, I’m …
Steven Butala: I mean, do you have 20 pairs of shoes, do you think?
Jill DeWit: Where we currently live, I do have 20 pairs of shoes, yes. Where we currently live, more than that definitely. But space is … I have limited closet space, I do not have a walk in closet in this home.
Steven Butala: You live in a 1920s shack bungalow right on the ocean.
Jill DeWit: It’s not a shack but it’s small. And there’s two different buildings. It’s a campus that’s really what it is, so anyway … but ’cause it’s more of an outdoor living space. We have more outdoor space than we do indoor space, and that’s the way it should be ’cause we live at the beach. So, the garage takes up a lot of space, which, again, is perfect for our lives. You know what’s funny? Our garage, the number of vehicles and the space for all our vehicles are way more than our bedroom, and our living room combined. So, what does that say about us?
Steven Butala: It says what our priorities are.
Jill DeWit: Exactly. It’s kinda funny. So, what do I spend my time on? Actually i spend my time on research too, which is good, I like that. I do some of my time researching, and what I’m researching is marketing, better ways to do customer services, I’ve forever been working on the right format for texting in our world to text our members and text messages, and heck, maybe even text buyers and sellers, and not have to do it the old fashioned way of literally texting.
Steven Butala: Marketing is a big thing both of us are spending a lot of time on right now, because we never have.
Jill DeWit: That’s true.
Steven Butala: That’s the truth of it. Throughout my career we have just never been marketing … we have a Facebook presence now, and for a long, long time it was very dormant. We just relied on organic …
Jill DeWit: Well, it was all organic. It was just organic, and its still a lot of organic, which I love.
Steven Butala: Yeah, vast majority is, I think. People find us.
Jill DeWit: I do, I read those things. When you sign up to read our eBook it asks for your name and your email address, and optional is like if you wanna put in the city you’re in and the state and how you heard about us, and I’d say more than 80% of the people, maybe more than 90% fill that in, which I think is awesome, and I look at that, and it’s awesome to see where people found us. It’s still a lot of organic, which is great like “I heard about it from a friend.”
Steven Butala: Yeah.
Jill DeWit: The other day someone put in, actually, put in the word “mentor” and I was like “Well, who’s your mentor?” And that’s kinda cool, its almost like I wanna bust out a call to that person like “Who is your mentor? What’s going on here?” So I read that stuff. I’m looking at all of that and getting … you know, its just getting the word out now. We still … don’t worry, I want our current members to know, don’t worry we’re not gonna go crazy here, we’re not trying to make Land Academy a mass household name ’cause it never will be.
Steven Butala: No, no, no.
Jill DeWit: So, ’cause we joke about that. Everybody says “I wanna be the last member.” You know? Like close the door, don’t let anyone else in, lets just keep this as our own little community. So we’re still hellbent on that, but we could let a few more in, it’s okay.
Steven Butala: Especially with House Academy. There’s 150 million pieces of real estate in the country, there’s enough to go around. Its hard to get your head around that if you’re new.
Jill DeWit: Right. We’ll still keep it … right, as an intimate. And now we’re having intimate sub groups so that’s what we’re spending our time on too. Now we’ve identified advanced, intermediate, beginner, you know where you are and we’re now really pushing forward and getting the extra attention, and support, and tools, to those other groups. That’s kinda where the 2.0 came from. By the way, too, it’s another level, another layer in another …
Steven Butala: Do you like what you’re working on? In general?
Jill DeWit: Oh yeah. I do.
Steven Butala: I do too.
Jill DeWit: I wouldn’t be doing it, I wouldn’t show up.
Steven Butala: Like my role in this company, I love doing these education programs and I like doing live events, especially the writing part and all that. I like how many real estate deals we’re doing, we could always do more. I always sit around and say “man, we really could be doing more.”
Jill DeWit: That’s true.
Steven Butala: Because it’s so scalable, truly in a scale sense. I have three books that are half written, I know you do too.
Jill DeWit: I know, exactly.
Steven Butala: That those things need to get finished.
Jill DeWit: They do.
Steven Butala: You know, once you get out of the whole “we’re actually making money” especially in your real estate career, then everything just … you start to work on the stuff that you want. That’s a huge reward we never talk about.
Jill DeWit: That’s true.
Steven Butala: We do what we wanna do in general during the day, with few exceptions. We have a staff that is fantastic now too that really helps.
Jill DeWit: Yep. Thank you.
Steven Butala: Well, you’ve done it again, you’ve spent another 15 minutes or so, listening, watching the Land Academy show. Join us next time where it’s Finance Friday, episode one actually with Justin Sleva.
Jill DeWit: That’s tomorrow. Yay.
Steven Butala: That will be a thing now.
Jill DeWit: It will.
Steven Butala: Every Friday we talk about funding your deals.
Jill DeWit: If it goes well, let’s see how it goes, see what the numbers come back with. Just kidding. And we answer your question, post it on our online community Landinvestors.com, its free, and I’m just teasing Justin, you’re awesome.
Steven Butala: You are not alone in your real estate ambition. Wait, wait, we keep going over our time.
Jill DeWit: I know, we’re having so much fun. Hey, I wanna share just one thing real quick here, because I announced it yesterday, and I want everyone to know what’s going on. I am getting ready for a big, blowout, end of the year special, ’cause I’m gonna close it up at the end of 2018 for a few weeks while we prepare and get rolling in 2019. So I am gonna close out on enrollment, but B, before I do that …
Steven Butala: Oh yeah? You’re closing that?
Jill DeWit: I am gonna close it. Surprise.
Steven Butala: Awesome.
Jill DeWit: B, I’m giving away a program, I just announced it on my live show this week so if you’ve not, go to Facebook live Land Academy, watch my show, episode nine, my weekly live show and you will get the details on what you need to do to be enrolled, just sign up for a free program that I’m gonna give away. And by the way when I say free, it’s 1.0 and 2.0. thank you.
Steven Butala: Awesome.
Jill DeWit: And while you’re at it, please wherever you’re listening or wherever you’re watching, please rate us there. We are Steve and Jill.
Steven Butala: We are Steve and Jill. Information,
Jill DeWit: And inspiration.
Steven Butala: To buy undervalued property.
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