Calendar Based Schedules (LA 936)
Calendar Based Schedules (LA 936)
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 our calendar-based scheduling concept.
Jill DeWit: I have to say something funny.
Steven Butala: Yeah?
Jill DeWit: Somebody, I don’t know if it was on a member call or on our online community or what, but they put in a thing, “Hi, this is so and so from sunny such and such, such and such.” I’m like, “Oh, that was very funny.”
Steven Butala: Making fun of us.
Jill DeWit: Yeah, totally. It was really cute. I’m like, “I got that, and I appreciate that.” That made me happy.
Steven Butala: Along those lines somebody-
Jill DeWit: I thought it was cool.
Steven Butala: Recently said, “This is the meat of the show.”
Jill DeWit: Oh, that’s great.
Steven Butala: That’s what they said to me. “This is the meat of what I’m saying,” or something.
Jill DeWit: “This is the meat of the call.” I love it. Hey before we get to the question, I would like to make one more announcement today. Yay. I said something about it on Monday and I’m telling you today on Wednesday, don’t forget 10% off is happening right now until Friday off all of your orders with Offers 2 Owners, which is our direct mail company. 10% off is a pretty big deal. I mean and it’s really cheap. It’s already cheap going into it. Take 10% off of it, it’s awesome.
Jill DeWit: So how do you do it? Go to Offers2Owners.com and get the details there. Thank you.
Steven Butala: That is cheap.
Jill DeWit: It is cheap.
Steven Butala: We’re already like at the bottom.
Jill DeWit: We’re already cheap. I know.
Steven Butala: If you’re sending out 1500 units a month, which is what I recommend. It’s the cheapest place on the planet, plus because we don’t have a scaling system like every other printer in the world, 1500 is … nevermind.
Jill DeWit: Exactly.
Steven Butala: It’s a good deal.
Jill DeWit: Thank you.
Steven Butala: 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: Patricia and Tom, hello. They say, “Hello everyone. We are in the process of selling 78 acres in-” can I say the county?
Steven Butala: Sure.
Jill DeWit: Okay, [“Karin 00:01:57] County, California, and the buyer would like to go through a title company. We decided to finance this deal, but none of the title companies want to insure a land contract-”
Steven Butala: This is very, very typical.
Jill DeWit: “The only way to go-”
Steven Butala: Very typical.
Jill DeWit: “Is a Deed of Trust. And, Mr. Steve Butala is always saying that land contract is the only option. Please advise.” Patricia, with land addiction. And I love this because one of our members, Kevin Farrell who’s a moderator on our site, already piped in and wrote an awesome response. Kevin said, “Patricia, when we do a land contract we do not require the contract. We hold the Deed to the property until all payments are completed. When a Deed of Trust is used, it will be recorded along with the contract. If the buyer stops making payments, there is a difference between the two. With the land contract you simply re-list the property and sell it to someone else. With a Deed of Trust, you have to go through a formal foreclosure process and that usually costs $2,000.00-$3,000.00 and takes time.”
Steven Butala: Six months.
Jill DeWit: Right. “My opinion on that is the higher value of properties, people are going to be more cautious and will want everything done in a title company. If this buyer defaults on this deal, will you be willing to sue for a foreclosure? Will it still be profitable even after expenses if you have to go to do that? It may come down to how you feel about this buyer.”
Jill DeWit: That is awesome. What do you want to add?
Steven Butala: Well you never can predict, as nice as they sound on the phone-
Jill DeWit: That’s true.
Steven Butala: Whether they’re going to perform financially. So what Kevin is really saying … Here’s the math to all that, 78 acre property, they probably paid $10,000.00-$20,000.00 for it. They’re going to sell it on terms for probably $40,000.00-$50,000.00 with two or three $400.00, $500.00 payments a month. If they get a $10,000.00 down payment, let’s say they recouped half of their purchase price, and six to eight months down the road after collecting, $3,000.00, $4,000.00, $5,000.00, the buyer defaults and it costs $3,000.00 to get the deal back on track, get it back in their name so they can resell it. Is it worth it is what Kevin’s saying.
Jill DeWit: Right.
Steven Butala: By the way, Kevin’s answer was perfect. I could not have answered it better.
Jill DeWit: Yeah.
Steven Butala: Think of a house. You buy a house. It gets recorded in your name, and the mortgage company collects the taxes on your behalf and your payment, and submits it all. It does all that stuff. That’s exactly what a Deed of Trust is. Exactly. In fact, when you buy a mortgage in most states it’s a Deed of Trust. A land contract philosophically is the same thing as a buyer. If you bought a house on a land contract, you would also call that seller financing.
Steven Butala: You would move into the house just like you own it, and it would be your own, and you would clean it and maintain it, unlike a rental situation.
Jill DeWit: Right.
Steven Butala: At the end of when you paid off the house, at the end of the 30th payment, 30 years or whatever you negotiate it, it would get recorded in your name.
Jill DeWit: Right.
Steven Butala: So it’s just a different way to skin a cat. A different way to get the deal done. So you have to decide. Here’s what Jill and I have decided, not to sell on terms anymore at all.
Jill DeWit: Right.
Steven Butala: It really complicates these deals.
Jill DeWit: It does.
Steven Butala: Yeah, it’s easier, it’s faster, it’s easier to sell these properties, especially if they’re really large like that and close to an urban area like Los Angeles, but have to ask yourself, “Is it worth it?”
Jill DeWit: Right.
Steven Butala: We have people in our group who make a career out of this.
Jill DeWit: It’s true.
Steven Butala: They’re all set up for it. They have customer service people.
Jill DeWit: Maintain it and manage them.
Steven Butala: They’re making $10,000.00, $50,000.00, $80,000.00, $100,000.00 a month in payments they’re taking in, but that just happens to not be our thing.
Jill DeWit: Right.
Steven Butala: So Tom and Patricia are going to find out at the search thing here real soon.
Jill DeWit: Exactly. Thank you very much.
Steven Butala: Today’s topic, calendar-based schedules. This is the meat of the show. I am secretly a little bit excited about talking about how we do all this stuff. People constantly ask me, constantly, “How do you guys have so much time?” That was a big topic. Whenever there was a break at the last live event, people were saying, “How do you actually have a Land Academy and stuff? How do you keep the schedule on this podcast?”
Jill DeWit: Right.
Steven Butala: “How do you get so much done during a day?” We’re going to answer that right now. I mean, here’s what happens, and I alluded to this yesterday, everybody’s got a bunch of stuff to do. There is inbound things that pull you away from the stuff that you’re supposed to be working on. We all know that. If you’re in Land Academy, and you’re reasonably new, you hopefully have yourself all scheduled out about the things that you need to do to get your first deal done, or your first 10 deals done, or wherever you are in your career.
Steven Butala: But the phone rings, and it stops me from doing it. So what do we do? There’s all these inbound distractions from what you’re supposed to be doing. Immediately when they come in, you delegate them or schedule them to complete on your time. You don’t immediately react to them almost ever. That’s a lot easier to do if you’re a one or two person show and the second person that’s working with you is sitting right next to you, so you can say “Do this,” or they can say, “Hey, what do you think about this?”
Steven Butala: So you’ll never grow if you don’t do that. Here’s what you need to do. When these things come in, you need to schedule them in a calendar-based system like Microsoft 365 where there’s no talking. There’s no communication with the person that you’re delegating. They understand it pops up into their system automatically. If you’ve never used a system like this, I would encourage you to try Microsoft 365. It’s been nothing but a Godsend for us.
Jill DeWit: Right.
Steven Butala: That’s how you have to use the calendar. I mean we would never survive.
Jill DeWit: Right.
Steven Butala: The other thing is that, and this is where I think a lot of people can’t get to the next level, it’s another thing that people ask us all the time, “How do you guys get to the next level? How do add a zero to these deals that you’re doing?”
Jill DeWit: Yeah.
Steven Butala: You have to eliminate this inbound traffic that’s annoying, by replacing outsourcing and giving it to someone on your staff, training them and then walking away. You know, give them the peace sign and saying, “I trust you.” Are they going to do it as you did it?
Jill DeWit: Nope.
Steven Butala: Never. They were never … I struggled with this for a long time-
Jill DeWit: I know. I know.
Steven Butala: They will never do the stuff as well as you, and you have to get over that over you’re never going to move forward.
Jill DeWit: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Steven Butala: You should be chasing zero. You should be delegating and assigning, and scheduling stuff that … There’s only certain stuff that I can do in these companies. Very few things, like pricing a mailer. If I really wanted to outsource that I could, because there’s probably people in our group that are better than I am at it. You have to get to the point where you are actually doing nothing, except the absolute imperative things.
Jill DeWit: Exactly.
Steven Butala: So then what do you? “Oh great, Steve, so you want to just-” yeah. Then you’re going start another company because that’s what you do. That’s what I do. You’re an entrepreneur. That’s why you’re here. It’s hard for me in an audio format like this to show you how we do this in Microsoft 365, but keep this in mind, after someone’s trained, or after you know what you’re doing, remove the communication.
Jill DeWit: Right.
Steven Butala: I see people spinning their wheels for years because they’re looking over somebody’s [inaudible 00:09:25] shoulder trying to make sure that they do it right-
Jill DeWit: Exactly.
Steven Butala: Instead of just trusting them.
Jill DeWit: Training them and moving on. Exactly, you have to do that. I was going to add a couple of things too I love about the calendar-based schedules. It syncs everywhere and we use it all the time.
Steven Butala: On your phone.
Jill DeWit: For personal things and business things. All staff, including kids we have-
Steven Butala: Our kids are in our system.
Jill DeWit: Mm-hmm (affirmative), in the system. It’s not fair, I don’t know you had a game. How am I going to know? I’m glued to this calendar. It’s all one calendar. It’s not crazy. Do it. Include your kids.
Steven Butala: “I thought you were supposed to drive me there, mom.”
Jill DeWit: Right.
Steven Butala: No. It’s in the calendar.
Jill DeWit: If it’s in the calendar, now I know.
Steven Butala: “Hey Steve, you’re supposed to be getting dressed for the opera that we’re going to tonight.”
Jill DeWit: Ding, ding.
Steven Butala: It’s not in the calendar, Jill.
Jill DeWit: I know. Well, we got over that. I know to use the calendar, trust me.
Steven Butala: “Oh great Steve, I told you 13 times three weeks ago that on March 15th we’re going to go to the opera in Sydney, Australia.” No, actually Jill we’re not, because it’s not in the calendar.
Jill DeWit: Isn’t that funny? I know. I didn’t do that, but that’s a beautiful thing. That’s what you get. We have to think like that.
Steven Butala: One or two times with the kids, or with your spouse, and especially with your employees where if it’s not on the calendar I’m not going to do it.
Jill DeWit: That’s good.
Steven Butala: If it’s not in the calendar, I’m not doing it.
Jill DeWit: Exactly.
Steven Butala: That’s where I’ve gotten to at this point.
Jill DeWit: No, that’s good. That’s so good. That makes it so easier for you and I love that.
Steven Butala: And it’s stress-free.
Jill DeWit: Yeah, you don’t have to think about it.
Steven Butala: Now the if the stuff catch on fire and you have to go address it, yeah. So you schedule time for that too.
Jill DeWit: That’d be funny. Fire in calendar. Hold on, [inaudible 00:10:59] this is the calendar.
Steven Butala: The massive majority have blocks of time now, two and three hours. This is where I wanted to go in the first place. I had a vision for this in the first place, blocks of time in my life right now that are called account and creation. That’s what everybody on the whole calendar system sees. My availability is red. It all connects to Instant Messaging and Skype for Business, and it’s actually a very, very inexpensive way to organize all this.
Jill DeWit: It’s true. It is. It’s not a plug. We don’t get any money out of this by the way, yeah.
Steven Butala: We have no affiliation for this. I’ve tried a lot of systems-
Jill DeWit: This is just what we use.
Steven Butala: And this is the best one.
Jill DeWit: It’s way better than Google. We used Google for a while, and that was years ago, but that never really … It wasn’t as robust and-
Steven Butala: Well it didn’t all connect.
Jill DeWit: Exactly, I mean somewhat.
Steven Butala: If it’s free-
Jill DeWit: Yeah.
Steven Butala: Don’t use it.
Jill DeWit: Yeah.
Steven Butala: If it’s like $25.00 a month, I think that Microsoft 365 is-
Jill DeWit: That’s hilarious. You just … excuse me, you just uttered … That’s like a female mantra-
Steven Butala: I know.
Jill DeWit: Which is, “You get what you pay for.”
Steven Butala: I know. I know, I’m not saying pay $300.00 a month for Salesforce, which I think is a joke by the way. I think Salesforce is a joke. I’m saying, pay $25.00 a month per user and get the greatest product on the planet, Microsoft 365.
Jill DeWit: Right. Thanks. You’re hilarious. I love it.
Steven Butala: I have actually a lot more to say.
Jill DeWit: Well you-
Steven Butala: Can I keep going?
Jill DeWit: It’s up to you. I’m out. I had three notes.
Steven Butala: I have this theory about going to free events like the state fair.
Jill DeWit: Okay.
Steven Butala: The state fair is free.
Jill DeWit: Is it?
Steven Butala: Have you ever been to the state fair?
Jill DeWit: I thought you had to pay some money to get in there?
Steven Butala: You might have to now, but-
Jill DeWit: Oh, okay.
Steven Butala: If you’ve ever been to the state fair and you enjoyed it-
Jill DeWit: Okay, what’s good that’s free-
Steven Butala: You’re probably not a good Land Academy member.
Jill DeWit: Wait a minute, I have been to several museums if I happen to find them on the right night. Like Friday night in New York, was it MoMA? I can’t remember. But the Museum of Modern Art, it was free. That was good, but normally you have to pay.
Steven Butala: What was the crowd like?
Jill DeWit: It was packed. Darn it, you’re right. I’d rather go on Tuesday and pay.
Steven Butala: Pay $10.00, $15.00 or $20.00. Nobody’s there. Everybody smells good.
Jill DeWit: Oh man, I hate it when you do that.
Steven Butala: Have you ever been to a free concert.
Jill DeWit: [inaudible 00:13:19] totally right. No I don’t think that I … wait, I’m sure I have. Yeah, yeah and appear all the time.
Steven Butala: See?
Jill DeWit: Yeah, you’re right. Darn it. Shoot.
Steven Butala: Free stuff is bad.
Jill DeWit: Well I do remember always talking to the kids, “But mom, it’s free. We saw it on TV.” “Oh, trust me sweetie. Nothing’s free.” I only have to pay shipping and handling. Remember those commercials? “Free, you just pay the $23.00 of shipping and handling.”
Steven Butala: That’s not free.
Jill DeWit: For a $0.99 cozy.
Steven Butala: That’s not free at all.
Jill DeWit: I know. I had something to say.
Steven Butala: There’s always … no free [crosstalk 00:13:53]-
Jill DeWit: They hear “free”. You know what? That’s personally why our program is not free.
Steven Butala: Oh yeah, we have a lot of stuff that is free leading up to it.
Jill DeWit: Right, a lot of free information.
Steven Butala: But in the end we cover our costs-
Jill DeWit: We do need to.
Steven Butala: And it’s just like everybody covers our costs, or it’s just not going to be around.
Jill DeWit: I swear you feel differently when there’s skin in the game too.
Steven Butala: Yeah.
Jill DeWit: I know that. I know I feel differently about some stuff.
Steven Butala: Jill and I used to … We started Land Academy with a whole free property program. You have to order our stuff and we will give you a free property that’s kind of left over from our inventory-
Jill DeWit: Right.
Steven Butala: Because we bought for so cheap, $10.00 in some cases, and it backfired on us.
Jill DeWit: I stopped doing that.
Steven Butala: People didn’t want it.
Jill DeWit: They didn’t want the property.
Steven Butala: They didn’t understand it.
Jill DeWit: I had people that got a free property, signed up, and they’re like, “Okay wait a minute, I don’t want to take it on yet. Can you hold it for me for a bit?” I’m like, “What are you talking about?” And some [inaudible 00:14:44] said, “I don’t want it.” I’m like, “You know what? And that’s okay.”
Steven Butala: I don’t know how this whole thing became “Free is bad.”
Jill DeWit: I know. This is you. Let’s wrap it up.
Steven Butala: So anyway, I have chunks now that the whole world can see. You can see all your people’s schedules and what they’re working on and the whole thing. If you look at mine, it’s big chunks of content. “Content Afternoon” it says right now, or “New Business Development.” And they are two and three hour chunks because the small stuff is getting done. The daily tasks are getting done elsewhere. But I can see within my content creation that no one else can see, what I’m supposed to be working on.
Steven Butala: I stay on a schedule every day. I will drop what I’m doing if the … And it’s all set with alarms, so your phone’s going off saying, “Hey in 15 minutes, you’re about to have to do … Hey idiot, it’s eight minutes. You better think about leaving or doing whatever.” Then is it too much?
Jill DeWit: It’s good. Thank you.
Steven Butala: I’m calling myself an idiot.
Jill DeWit: It’s okay.
Steven Butala: Jill’s tapping me under the studio desk. She’s like, “Just too much, man.”
Jill DeWit: It’s okay. I think you hit your point home. Well, you’ve done it again.
Steven Butala: Oh, she cut me off.
Jill DeWit: You’ve wasted another ah, 15 minutes or so listening to the Land Academy Show. Join us tomorrow for the episode called Learning from the Land Investors Community.
Steven Butala: And we answer your questions posted on our online community, LandInvestors.com. It’s free.
Jill DeWit: You are not alone in your real estate ambition.
Steven Butala: Hey, we did change it up a little bit there.
Jill DeWit: We did. I kind of like it when we do that anyway. That’s more fun.
Steven Butala: Then I get into a rant.
Jill DeWit: A little bit.
Steven Butala: I was too preachy?
Jill DeWit: A little bit. It’s okay. No, preachy’s good. I think you hit it home, but I think our third time we got it. First time, okay. Second time, all right [inaudible 00:16:29] you’re stating it. Now the third time, like “Got it, Dad.”
Steven Butala: The real reason is it’s like 365 changed my life.
Jill DeWit: I know that, and I know that you are a huge fan and I’m very happy for you. I will get you a shirt that says that.
Jill DeWit: Wherever you’re watching, wherever you are listening, please rate us there.
Steve & Jill: We are Steve and Jill.
Steven Butala: Information.
Jill DeWit: And inspiration.
Steven Butala: To buy undervalued property.
Jill DeWit: 365-
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