Members Jermaine & Faith Hill Share Land Academy Experience (LA 956)
Members Jermaine & Faith Hill Share Land Academy Experience (LA 956)
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 with members Jermaine and Faith Hill, and we share … Hopefully, they’re gonna share their Land Academy experience with us. Welcome, guys.
Jill DeWit: Yes.
Jermaine Hill: Thanks for having us.
Steven Butala: Jill’s got a ton of questions. We spend some time on this because it’s a really unique situation with us. We just got doing a deal with you guys.
Faith Hill: We did. Yay. We’re excited to close before the podcast.
Steven Butala: Is the deal closed?
Jill DeWit: Did we just get this one funded on Monday?
Faith Hill: Pretty much.
Jermaine Hill: Yeah.
Steven Butala: Good. We got paid out, right?
Jill DeWit: Yes.
Steven Butala: Wow.
Jill DeWit: You guys have a check coming. Did your check arrive?
Jermaine Hill: It did. We had to direct deposit it.
Jill DeWit: Perfect. Good.
Steven Butala: Did it clear?
Jermaine Hill: It cleared. When that question with that title company, that’s a good question.
Jill DeWit: You know it’s so funny. Do you want to hear what happened real quick?
Steven Butala: Yeah. Absolutely.
Jill DeWit: As far as Jermaine and Faith are concerned, it could not have gone better. It was perfect textbook how we all went into it. What they said we’re gonna sell it for, how it all played out. Awesome. At the very end, this title company screwed it all up. They sent in the wrong recording fees or something.
Jermaine Hill: Yes, they did. 40 dollars over.
Jill DeWit: Isn’t that hilarious? I was telling Omar. Omar is looking at me, poor guy. He’s getting the brunt of it. I’m like, they’re a professional title company. What the heck? This is what we pay them for.
Steven Butala: [inaudible 00:01:45]
Jill DeWit: It did not record the day we thought it was gonna record. We all didn’t get paid out. Then we had to wait several days for the title agent who was not around. Are you kidding me? Seriously?
Steven Butala: When’s the last time any of us, if ever, had a deal close where there’s just no issues at all?
Jill DeWit: Right. I don’t know.
Steven Butala: Can you name a time?
Jermaine Hill: I don’t know.
Jill DeWit: Often it’s something. It’s often not. Usually it’s they ask for 18 things that we don’t need. I’m ready for that one. This one I wasn’t. I’m like, are you guys kidding me?
Jermaine Hill: It’s very rare that you have a deal close where there’s no issues at all at closing.
Steven Butala: Let’s ask a few questions.
Jill DeWit: It’s so funny.
Steven Butala: We’ll intertwine the answers hopefully with the deal that you guys just got done. I say you guys, I mean Jill and you guys. Give us your back story. Tell us where you’re from and how you got to this point.
Jermaine Hill: All right. I guess I’ll kick it off. We’re generally born and raised in Orlando, Florida. Moved up to Virginia when I graduated college in 2011. Found a position. I actually worked for Hershey as a manufacture engineer. My background is industrial engineering. I moved up to Virginia and met my wonderful wife here three years, two and a half, three years later. We moved up and got married. We moved to Richmond, Virginia. Faith, she’s born and raised in Richmond.
Faith Hill: In Richmond, Virginia. My background, I actually have a legal background. I was an attorney and I worked for university doing compliance work. Jermaine and I hit a point where we both realized that if we continue to move up in our careers that we weren’t gonna have much time for each other, and that was not very attractive being a newly wed. This is when we started thinking, okay what are some ways that we can potentially continue to increase our income but not increase our time into working for someone else? Then that’s when Jermaine and his engineering brain started searching for ways to get into real estate.
Jermaine Hill: It actually we got into real estate actually we had this grand theme idea to just go into residential buy and hold. That was originally how it started. We drove around in the Richmond area trying to buy or first investment property or look into purchase some investment property. We went to a bank. The bank then told us no because you’re debt to income ratio at the time. Then my credit score was not the greatest at that time. They said no. I did some research, got back home, we hit a road block there. I said, okay. How can we still get into real estate? Came across residential whole selling. I did that for almost about a year. We’ve done about ten deals before we came across land. I came across a webinar through another educational individual out there in the land investment space. They talked about how you can also cash flow from land and that really excited me. I told my wife. I said, we got to go from residential to now let’s pivot our entire business model and go into land because this is exactly what I’m looking for. I think it’s gonna help us as far as the lifestyle that we’re trying to build because you’re able to do a lot of the deals, if not most or all the deals virtually. I found you guys, found Land Academy, and signed up for.
Faith Hill: We got a big pack of CDs that came in the mail. We sat down at the TV and popped those DVDs and just started going through them one by one.
Jermaine Hill: Now we’re 80 plus transactions later. We’ve been doing it almost four years now and here we are.
Jill DeWit: Great. Yay.
Steven Butala: I should tell the listeners, viewers that we stopped sending DVDs.
Jill DeWit: It’s great.
Steven Butala: I still see them laying around the office every once in a while like packaging.
Jill DeWit: We have a few.
Steven Butala: One of them is in a frame.
Jill DeWit: That’s now a collector’s item.
Faith Hill: I know. We’ve been holding onto ours just in case.
Jermaine Hill: Just in case.
Jill DeWit: That would popping the doggy door right behind you there.
Steven Butala: Holding it closed or something.
Jill DeWit: Right.
Jermaine Hill: That was our journey in getting into land.
Jill DeWit: I’m so glad.
Jermaine Hill: That’s how we got here.
Steven Butala: You guys remember your first land deal?
Jill DeWit: That’s good.
Jermaine Hill: That’s a good question Steve. The actual first land deal, I talked about when we got first into residential whole selling. My first deal on a contract was actually a land deal because one of the owners got one of our letters. It was for a house though. He said, this is a house that we’re not looking to sell but I do have land that I want to sell. I’m like, land? What can I do with land? I called up … I said, okay. Let me see try to see if I can do something with it. I put it out there, marketed it, and then I actually found a builder. A builder came out there and we went out to the property. To this day I’m still really cool with him, really close with him. I’ve whole sale quite a few deals with him. We went out there to the land and he showed me what to look for, how to value it. He really taught me a lot. Then he decided to pass on it because of the sold issues. It would’ve been tough getting the land to perk in that potential, in that area so he passed on it.
Jermaine Hill: That was our first deal that we got under contract. Our first deal after that, that we actually whole sale was a property we got also in that same area. Sent some letters out and it was actually, I think it was the same mailer to the residential owners. Anyways, they had a land that they wanted to get rid of too as well. We put it on the contract. I found another builder and he was excited about it. He decided to do it. We just pretty much did a regular residential whole sale type of transaction while we assigned the contract to him. There was a five thousand dollar spread on it. That was our first actual land transaction.
Jill DeWit: Great.
Steven Butala: Was it easy? You must’ve sparked something for you.
Faith Hill: Yeah.
Jermaine Hill: Yeah, it did.
Faith Hill: Yeah. We liked the land because we found that prefer not to deal with people tenants. We did have one experience in the past that didn’t turn out so great. The idea that we could make that profit spread on vacant land and not have to worry about issues from a tenant, that was very, very attractive. After that, those first couple deals, we saw the potential of really being able to make a business out of it and scale it in a way that would make sense for us.
Jermaine Hill: With that deal we found out how easy it was in comparison to residential whole selling. At that time, I wasn’t working with someone that was my boots on the ground so to speak on doing residential whole selling. We were, both my wife and I. We were working full time jobs then. I was going out meeting sellers during my lunch break. Some of my lunch breaks they were, I don’t know if I want to admit this here. They were a little long. They were maybe an hour and a half, an hour and 45 minutes trying to get a deal on the contract. Like I said, when I did that residential, when I did the land whole sale to the builder, it was so much easier. Then once I got into educating myself and we actually started sending letters out to buy land to sell, we found out that this model was a lot easier. We can do it virtually. We have Google maps. We don’t necessarily have to go out there and meet the owners. That was the real critical, pivotal moment and the reason why we decided to pivot away from residential whole selling into doing land flipping.
Steven Butala: Tell us the story in this deal that we just funded and closed down with you guys. I don’t know any of the details on this deal. Whoever wants to go.
Jill DeWit: I’ll let Jermaine go. This is awesome.
Jermaine Hill: All right. Great. I actually found this deal Steven when, last year. This was a mailer that we did I would say sometime in August or September of last year. The owner reached out to us and said, I got your letter. I’m interested in selling. I think my offer was like 7900 dollars. He said, can you come up to ten thousand? At the time, we didn’t really have … we didn’t want to allocate that much capital to it because that was around the same time the end of last year we were on the verge of closing on our first self storage facility. We needed that access capital to be able to fund that deal. I was like, uh. Then we had all these other weigh in deals that we were doing too. I said, well let me hold off on it but I built up a repertoire with them. I said, hey give me to the end of the year and then I’ll touch base with you and see what we can do. I said give me until November, December period and I’ll touch base and see what we can do.
Jermaine Hill: November, December came. That’s when Land Academy, you guys start promoting partnering on deals. As soon as I saw that I said, man. I said, we’ve got to reach out. We’ve got to send this deal to Jill and then see if they’ll be willing to fund it because that was another way for us to scale our business too as well. I knew it was a good deal, I just didn’t want to allocate those funds to the deal. Exactly. Sent the information over to Land Academy and I guess it through Jill’s analysis. I guess the deal worked out. I knew that we could probably sell it. If we held onto it, I knew we could probably sell it within 60 to 90 days. 30, to 35 thousand. I said, I think this is a deal that I can sell within 45 days. At least get 25 thousand. We ended up getting 255 within that 45 day period. That was how the deal pretty much, the journey of that deal was the guy reached out to us. We got it under contract and then reached out to you guys to help fund it. It got funded, we sold it. It was pretty much picture perfect type of deal.
Faith Hill: Absolutely. Just to touch on the marketing a little bit. As soon as we got that deal funded, we moved quickly to post it literally everywhere. For this one we don’t always do this, but for this one we did use an agent, a real estate agent in the area who was familiar with land value. Of course he teased us by saying he already had a potential buyer in mind. We’re like, okay. Let’s go ahead and list with him as well. Actually we think we did get our value out of the agent because the person who ended up buying the property was someone who did want to physically see the property.
Jermaine Hill: With an agent.
Faith Hill: With an agent. Our agent met them out there and showed them the property, had state the property. We think that, that did help then us being able to sell that property quickly to that buyer.
Jermaine Hill: That was actually a Facebook lead that came in. A guy reached out to us through Facebook because we do. My wife and her marketing transaction department do, we post everywhere. We also post on Facebook. He reached out to us and it’s funny because you never know the buyers who are gonna close on properties. The buyers who I think are gonna close, they don’t close. Then the buyers who end up closing, I’m like okay they’re just wasting my time.
Jill DeWit: Exactly.
Jermaine Hill: The guy reached out to us on Facebook. He was like, how much would you take? Would you take this? I think it was like 27 thousand. I said, yeah sure. Okay, whatever. I’ll take it. He said, let me talk to my wife and we’re gonna go out there and look at the property. Two days later he says, my wife will see it. I said, okay. Let me set up with my agent. She can meet him out there. She met him out there. I didn’t hear from him. Then five days, I think like a week later the husband reached out to me through Facebook. He just text me, where can I send the check? I’m like, nice. Those are the kind of deals that you like. I said, you said where can I send the check? We got the paperwork ready and sent them the paperwork to get everything signed. That’s how the deal closed.
Steven Butala: You guys did every … excuse me. Every single thing right because they had a sense of urgency to close on the deal because they probably believed that you didn’t realize what you had.
Jermaine Hill: Yeah.
Steven Butala: That’s exactly we want this to always go.
Jill DeWit: Exactly.
Steven Butala: The reason that was possible is because you bought it for so cheap.
Jill DeWit: Marketed it and did everything right. Not just put it one place. You were out there working all different things. That’s how you do it.
Jermaine Hill: Even our realtor. He called me just a couple weeks ago. Or was it a week and a half ago? About another deal. He said, man how did you get that property so cheap and how did you sell it so fast?
Steven Butala: Did you tell him the truth?
Jermaine Hill: I did. I told him. I told him what we do. He knows what we do. He works with a lot of whole sellers. I did give some of our trade secrets. He’s probably not gonna follow it. But I did tell him pretty much how we were able to get the property at the price that we’re able to get it at. I did tell him the story the seller was motivated. The seller moved to Michigan, actually moved back to Michigan because of a job transfer. He bought that property at the peak back in 2007, 2006 ish. He decided to just let it go. I think on the tax records I think he bought it for almost 40 thousand back then.
Steven Butala: I never heard the sentence move back to Michigan before.
Jill DeWit: What kind of job-
Jermaine Hill: Usually you’re moving from Michigan to warmer climates.
Jill DeWit: That’s really wild.
Steven Butala: You guys have done 80 deals. What’s the next 12 months look like for you?
Jermaine Hill: That’s a good question. That’s a good question. The next 12 months we really have buckled down into scaling our business for 2019. We’re looking to do more partnerships.
Jill DeWit: Send more my way.
Jermaine Hill: Exactly. We will. We will. We actually, there’s a few deals that are coming our way next week that we actually have in the pipeline now. The next 12 months is really scaling our business, doing more partnerships with friends, family, and Land Academy too as well. Because the previous 80 transactions, my wife and I, we’ve been closing on our deals and selling them ourselves. At some point in time, you do run out of money. There’s some deals that come in and you just can’t close on them because you don’t have the cash flow or the cash to be able to close on them. We actually just did our first investor deal opportunity campaign this morning. We have three deals under contract. I mean, sorry. We actually closed on two. We’re about to close on a third one but we sent out an investment opportunity deal sheet to our friends and family that we’ve built a relationship over time and told them what we do. We just got all of them funded just right before the call.
Steven Butala: That’s fantastic.
Jill DeWit: Wow.
Steven Butala: That leads me to my next question. You’re an industrial engineer. You’re middle name must be try to make things more efficient.
Faith Hill: Pretty much.
Jermaine Hill: I try to do that in my personal life, but it doesn’t go that well sometimes. But yes.
Faith Hill: I appreciate because you know there are times when some days Jermaine will notice, you just look extra busy today. It’s because usually I’m not delegating like I should be. I appreciate the fact that he can spot inefficiencies with my work at least.
Jill DeWit: That was recorded by the way.
Jermaine Hill: With her work it’s easier than being more efficient at my work.
Jill DeWit: Got it.
Jermaine Hill: That’s definitely what we try to implement in our business to be more efficient.
Jill DeWit: I got to ask, what’s been your experience working together?
Faith Hill: It’s good.
Jill DeWit: How many days … you know how it is. There’s days it’s great, there’s days you’re like, what have I done? You know?
Faith Hill: Yeah.
Jill DeWit: Uh, huh.
Jermaine Hill: I guess that’s more me because being together 24 hours now. We’re always together. We do take time to give each other space every now and then. My wife probably gives me more space than I give her because I’m the joker. I like to mess with her and tease her a lot. We definitely try to give each other some space. What we’ve learned too is how to really designate each other roles. That has really helped in the evolution of our business and our partnership together.
Faith Hill: Also too, we have a pretty set schedule that we try to stick to. So we have certain meetings that we try to stick to every week to make sure that we’re hitting on certain things that we need to talk about. We have a finance meeting. We have a systems meeting. I think those are the two main ones.
Jermaine Hill: Then we got our land strategy.
Faith Hill: Yeah, land strategy meeting. We have these meetings weekly to make sure that we’re on the same page. I noticed that if we, for some reason, don’t have a meeting then we can start to go off the rails. We found that it’s very important for us to have those weekly touch base meetings to make sure we’re on the same page definitely.
Jill DeWit: That’s excellent.
Steven Butala: You guys nailed it. It’s separate and conquer, and then schedule everything out. Those are the two things, two major things. That’s the reason any of this is possible.
Jill DeWit: You have to trust each other. When you let go and you put the other person in charge, you have to just walk away, know they’re gonna take care of it, and not get involved and do what you’re supposed to do. That’s awesome.
Jermaine Hill: That’s so true.
Faith Hill: Stay in your lane.
Jermaine Hill: That’s so true because we actually struggled with that at the beginning. Because when the business first was birthed, it was pretty me that started the business, started the residential whole selling. Faith did not come in until …
Faith Hill: Until he closed no the first deal. That’s all there was to take it. That’s when I said, hey what do you need help with?
Jermaine Hill: I had to close on the first deal before she got on board. I was so used to doing everything. When my wife came on board, it was a little tough for me to let go of the reigns. Even though we agreed on the title that she would take over marketing and transactions, but since I was so used to doing it, it was kind of hard for me to let go. That was a learning experience for us. We had to sit down and really talk about. I really had to trust her taking the reigns over for that department. When she’s taking over the reigns, that’s when our business really started to grow and our land business really started to grow.
Jill DeWit: That’s awesome. Faith, did you ever have any doubts going into this? You mentioned waiting for that first deal. Did you really want to see how it would play out?
Faith Hill: Yeah. Absolutely. I had doubts. I guess I had doubts at two distinct points. I guess first when he started residential whole selling at was sitting at the table with yellow legal pad and red pens writing hi, I’m interested in buying your house. I was like, this doesn’t look professional. I don’t know what he’s doing. I don’t see this working. I think we had a conversation. I said, Jermaine, we can give it six months. If you don’t close on a deal, we might want to look at another strategy. He did beat that six months time frame. Then I remember the second point I had big doubts was when Jermaine came to me and said, I discovered land. We can flip with land and we can make cash flow through land by selling finance notes. I was like, land? I guess when I had thought about land, I thought of people who basically land bank. I just didn’t understand the concept of being able to make quick flips or quick cash off of land.
Faith Hill: Again, Jermaine was really passionate about this. He was sure about it. I just watched with him. Watched the CDs that came in from Land Academy. Then I was convinced that it could work.
Jill DeWit: Here you are.
Faith Hill: There’s definitely there have been doubts. Certainly I’ve jumped on board full throttle now because I’ve seen the results.
Jill DeWit: That’s so good.
Jermaine Hill: Now she pushes me. She pushes me to do bigger deals and land. I’m more of the conservative type in the business. Patting the zero. Yeah. Faith, she’s more of a risk taker. I’m more conservative. Now she’s pushing us, pushing the business to really grow and to do bigger and more deals.
Jill DeWit: That’s awesome.
Steven Butala: This is almost exactly, different time frame, but almost exactly the roles and what happened with Jill and I.
Jill DeWit: Isn’t that funny? There’s a reason why I took over the deal funding and he’s doing some of the other things. I get the rush out of it. I’m not afraid. I love it.
Steven Butala: I’m way more conservative now on the deals that we choose to do and don’t do. We’re at a point now where it’s a slam dunk if we do it. I remember approving that deal that you sent to us. I personally was still involved in it back then because we just launched it. I remember green lighting that immediately. It was a great deal. It was a great deal for the person who bought it and it was a great deal for all of us.
Jill DeWit: Exactly. Absolutely.
Jermaine Hill: It was.
Steven Butala: There’s probably still ten, 15 thousand dollars of equity in the deal for the person who bought it.
Jill DeWit: For him.
Jermaine Hill: Oh yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely.
Jill DeWit: That’s so good. What’s happening? What’s new this year? If you don’t mind sharing what goals you guys have, what’s coming?
Jermaine Hill: What’s new this year? As I mentioned … go ahead.
Faith Hill: On the land side, I guess one major goal we had is to try to continue to push ourselves to build up our cash reserves and our business. We really are trying to do higher volume of deals. That’s one of the reasons why we partnered with you all. We’re definitely looking to do more partnerships because we know that’s one way to continue to grow, to be able to scale. Just looking ahead, we don’t know what the economy is doing so we want to make sure we’re on sure footing since Jermaine are in this full time. We don’t have W2 income. We want to ensure that we saw a foundation there. Then I guess on the other half of our business for self storage.
Jermaine Hill: Yeah, self storage. That’s gonna be a continued journey for us. It’s gonna be self storage. Really we’re breaking down the three main buckets within our business. It’s gonna be land flipping, selling financing notes, we’re still gonna keep a portfolio of selling financing notes. Really the selling financing notes we’re using that as pretty much our income that we take from the business. Then we use the land flipping cash and then convert that cash into buying long term assets that have better tax depreciation. That’s self storage. We love self storage. We looked at apartments too as well to invest in and single family homes. We really love the self storage business because it’s very similar to when we sell and finance our land. We don’t get calls about tenants and their things. We’re gonna continue to divert that land flipping cash into long term investments and into self storage. Then continue to build up our note portfolio and then using that note portfolio to help fund our lifestyle and our expenses.
Jill DeWit: That’s awesome.
Steven Butala: You guys are in that instant, what I call the institutional phase of your company. I think it doesn’t matter if it’s step three or step four. You’re all past the fact that you know it works. It’s all proven. The proof of concept is done. You pretty much have the systems in place, but probably not the systems that you really want. You’re institutionalizing the whole thing. Then there’s only one step after that, which is just bring it on home.
Jermaine Hill: That sounds about right.
Steven Butala: You’re young enough so that this phase, I would say take your time because I’m a little bit older than you. I would say take your time. Take a decade, maybe more. Then bring it on home. Really get all the systems in place. You guys are way ahead of everybody by the way.
Faith Hill: I don’t know about that. Some days it looks like day one.
Jermaine Hill: This business, it is a roller coaster boy. Some days it does feel like we’re just starting.
Jill DeWit: Isn’t that funny now? And then things are like well, I’ve never had that before. Here we go.
Jermaine Hill: Exactly. Exactly.
Jill DeWit: That keeps it fun. I’m never bored, right? You’re never bored.
Steven Butala: Jill just used an example of the stuff that changes all the time. Jill just got off the phone with one of her, a friend from high school who just got out of a meeting where they’re trying to redesign the MLS. Pretty high level stuff.
Jermaine Hill: Oh wow. Wow.
Jill DeWit: Really what’s funny is we were just chatting recently back and forth. He’s like, he said, I just looked up your website and you’re not gonna believe where I used to work. He was at Core Logic when they were a startup. I can’t remember the name but he was the first project manager of the original company, I can’t remember the name of it. It’s on his LinkedIn. Then it became Core Logic. He said, I watched it go from a small little office shared space to [inaudible 00:30:12] building. I’m like, what the heck? Now he’s working on all these other big things. He is working with a company right now on ways to replace the MLS. I’m like, okay. We’re gonna talk.
Jill DeWit: Actually it was him who said. He said, you know what? I need to do some homework. He’s like, I may have some questions for you. I got this meeting to go to. I might hit you up. I’m like, heck yeah. We’ll talk.
Jermaine Hill: Nice.
Jill DeWit: It’s really cool. Who knew? Look where we all are now and what we’re all able to do and what we’re working on. It’s just amazing.
Jermaine Hill: It is. It is.
Jill DeWit: It’s great. There’s nothing. Especially I feel like now too, there’s nothing you can’t do. You figured this out, man.
Steven Butala: Yeah. That’s exactly my point. They’re institutionalizing it now.
Faith Hill: Also, it’s easy to have confidence when you see that you all have already paved a path for how to get there. It’s like, we can see that Steve and Jill can do it. We can do it too. It really is something to that. To see folks who are further along than you so that gives you something to shoot for.
Jermaine Hill: That’s absolutely right. When you see people and when you hear people, you guys have the finance Fridays with Justin Sylvia. Then Luke Smith. We’ve been following him for a few years now on landinvestors.com. You just see the amazing things that they’re doing. It’s like, you look at each other. Faith and I would look at each other. We’re like, yeah we can do this too. If they can do it, we can do it. It does give you that level of confidence to tackle the world almost.
Steven Butala: You guys are putting your own twist on it too. You guys are at a different part of the country then most of the people I can tell you for sure. Than most of the people in our group are doing it anyway. You’re coming at it from a legal background and from …
Jill DeWit: Engineering.
Steven Butala: Actually a really specialized type of engineering background. I’m sure you’re putting your own twist on it, which is great.
Jermaine Hill: Yeah, we are. We are. We’re definitely utilizing our strengths to really make the business more efficient and put in processes and systems to continue to help grow the business. That definitely has helped us I would say in our journey is our background to tell you the truth.
Jill DeWit: Can I ask one last question?
Steven Butala: Of course, yeah.
Jill DeWit: What parting advice would you give to someone, rewind four years, who’s thinking about doing this? What would you tell them?
Jermaine Hill: You got one? I got one.
Faith Hill: You can start.
Jermaine Hill: One thing that I’ve noticed Jill, when we go to these [inaudible 00:32:52] meetings and these boot camps. We meet people out there in the residential space and just in general, just real estate investors in general where people who are trying to get into the business. One thing that I’ve noticed is the fear that people have of taking action. That’s what I’ve noticed that really separates people from really being successful in the business and really taking that step forward. It’s just taking action. That will be the advice that I would give. That’s the advice that I do give to people when I’m out there in those meetings. Hey, don’t be afraid. Take action. The one thing that I like about land business is that you can take the action with very little risk in comparison to other real estate models.
Steven Butala: You said it.
Jermaine Hill: That’s one thing that I actually try to push people to say, hey have you ever tried land investing? You can buy a piece of property from … we bought them as less as 150 dollars. You can get in and buy land 150 dollars to two thousand dollars. Even if you do everything wrong, you still own the land. Then you’re only out 150 to two thousand dollars. When you compare that to a residential type of an investment, the risks are a lot greater. Taking action is one of the main things that I see that people kind of get their self in a rut and don’t really do. That hinders them from really being successful in the business.
Faith Hill: I definitely agree with that. The advice that I would give that touches on that a little bit is this is something you really want to do, to don’t be scared and just focus on the next step. I’m one who sometimes I like to try to plan way out and then I start worrying. Then I don’t take action because I’m way ahead of myself. If you just focus on doing the first thing you need to do and then once you do that, okay now move to the next step. Then move to the next step. Then you won’t get so, at least for me. Then I don’t get so overwhelmed. Then when I’m on step ten, I look back and I say, hey actually I completed a transaction. That would be my advice to just focus on one step at a time to try to limit that fear that you may feel.
Jermaine Hill: That’s perfect. Taking action and focus. Focus on one. Become good at it and then you can move onto the next.
Steven Butala: What’s yours Jill?
Jill DeWit: Oh, you’re asking me?
Steven Butala: Yeah.
Jill DeWit: Mine would be don’t get hung up on … that’s good. When I talk to people, I often have people get hung up on extenuating circumstances that they allow them to get in their way. It’s all motivational for me as well too. You said, Faith, we’re here to lay out the steps. We all know what the steps are. It’s getting from A to B to C to D. Some people spend too much on A. They didn’t make it to B so they’re mad at themselves. So they spend too much on A and they spend more time on A. They can’t just get out of their own little funk. Then something happens in life and then they’ve done nothing. You’ve got to just … you know. That has to come from us. It really has to come from you. I talked to a guy the other day about it. I said, something about having a sit down talk with himself. He said, you know what Jill? That’s why I’m here talking with you right now.
Jill DeWit: He was a member that life get in the way. He was very honest in sharing that. He scheduled a consulting call with me because he was coming back. He’s like, you know what? I sat myself down. I gave myself that talk. I am not gonna let myself back. Stop. He just wanted to talk to me for a little less cheerleading. Here he comes.
Jermaine Hill: Great.
Jill DeWit: What’s yours?
Jermaine Hill: Great.
Steven Butala: Mine comes from a much more old man driven non positive place.
Jill DeWit: Is it people should suffer?
Steven Butala: No. No.
Jill DeWit: He tells the kids that. The kids should suffer. A way to learn to pick yourself back up in a good way.
Steven Butala: I can say this without exception. Everybody that I’ve met, and we’ve met a lot of people including you guys, who have been involved in this group since we started in 2015. They have all succeeded at whatever they are trying before they got to us. You guys obviously went to college, a lot of college. You obviously completed what you were doing. You learned for whatever reason, that you didn’t want to do it for the rest of your life. You didn’t say, I suck at this, I want to go try this. The people that don’t do well in this, they’re not coming to us already having succeeded at something. They’re looking to us to say or this program to save the situation. That’s a sign of other stuff going on.
Jill DeWit: That’s true. Very true.
Steven Butala: How negative is that?
Jill DeWit: You know what? Hold on a moment.
Jermaine Hill: There’s a lot of truth to that.
Jill DeWit: No, you’re very realistic. That’s why actually we’re a good yin and yang. Because you know what? I look at it one way and you look at it another way. It’s all good. I’m California. I’m a little bit country, you’re a little bit rock and roll. Just kidding.
Jermaine Hill: There’s nothing wrong with different perspectives.
Jill DeWit: You got my reference there?
Steven Butala: Yeah. Donny and Marie Osmond. I hope these guys are too young for that. They probably don’t even know who that is.
Jill DeWit: You don’t know who that is, do you?
Jermaine Hill: Yes, yes.
Jill DeWit: Oh gosh.
Jermaine Hill: We know who they are.
Jill DeWit: Don’t know where I got that.
Jermaine Hill: He was on Dancing on the Stars, wasn’t he a few years ago?
Jill DeWit: He won Dancing with the Stars.
Jermaine Hill: He won. He won over the person I was rooting for. Maya. She came in second.
Jill DeWit: He’s way older than we are by the way. I’d like to point that out as well.
Steven Butala: Feel like dinner again. You spend another 15, probably 30 minutes now listening to the Land Academy Show. Join us next time for an episode called start to finish, land deal reviewed.
Jill DeWit: We answer your questions posted on our online community landinvestors.com. It’s free.
Steven Butala: You are not alone in your real estate ambition. Jermaine, I remember … go ahead Jill.
Jill DeWit: Say, this is the after show.
Steven Butala: Jermaine, I really remember doing a consulting call with you guys. I think maybe both of you, right?
Jermaine Hill: We did. We did.
Faith Hill: [inaudible 00:39:39]
Jermaine Hill: We were in, no, Richmond because I think I was at Chick-fil-a. I was in the car because Faith was … you were in Charlottesville. I was in Richmond.
Jill DeWit: He remembers he was in the car eating Chick-fil-a.
Faith Hill: [inaudible 00:39:49]
Jermaine Hill: It was on a lunch break.
Faith Hill: Something else we were doing our lunch break.
Jermaine Hill: It was like two, three years ago Steven. Yeah, yeah. Two, three years ago. It wasn’t last year. It was like three years ago.
Jill DeWit: That’s awesome.
Steven Butala: Did I say anything worth while?
Faith Hill: Oh yeah.
Jermaine Hill: Oh absolutely.
Faith Hill: We walked away on a high. We were like, we got this. We were really excited. It was really, really good.
Jermaine Hill: Last week actually I was just bringing up, I was like, man I wonder if Steven and Jill still do the consulting calls. Because now it’s like, we’ve gotten past the point, I’m not saying we’re true experts. But we’ve done quite a few deals. Now it’s really about moving onto the next level. How do you really grow the business and building a team? Those are some of the things that we’re like, okay. I think if they’re still doing consulting calls, I think it would be good to reach out to them to get some consulting on those things. Those are some of the things that we’re finding as challenging. The next challenge for us in our business growth.
Steven Butala: I have an idea.
Jill DeWit: Awesome.
Steven Butala: Let’s do a consulting call in this format on that topic and you don’t have to pay.
Jermaine Hill: All right.
Faith Hill: We’re in.
Jill DeWit: That’s good. I’ll have my team schedule another podcast session basically. It’ll be a consulting where we talk about this.
Steven Butala: That sounds good.
Jill DeWit: Growing your team. I love it. Done.
Steven Butala: If you guys want.
Jill DeWit: They’re down for it.
Faith Hill: You’re awesome. Thank you. That’d be awesome.
Jermaine Hill: That’d be great.
Jill DeWit: I think a lot of people get a lot out of that.
Steven Butala: That’s what I think. It’s more fun. A little bit more formal. We get to horse around.
Jill DeWit: Totally.
Jermaine Hill: It seems like that’s what you guys like doing. I like it because like I said earlier, I mess with my wife all the time.
Jill DeWit: Yes. It’s awful. He’s like, can we go now? Can we go now? Can we go now? I’m like, I can’t say no. I’m like, heck yeah. This can wait. [inaudible 00:41:57]
Steven Butala: You got to go have fun.
Jill DeWit: You do.
Jermaine Hill: Exactly. You do. You do.
Jill DeWit: Wherever you’re watching, wherever you’re listening, 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 under valued property.
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