Finance Friday with Steven, Jill & Justin (LA 963)
Finance Friday with Steven, Jill & Justin (LA 963)
Transcript:
Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here-
Jill DeWit: Hello.
Steven Butala: … with guest Justin Sliva. 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 guest Justin Sliva, like we do every Friday, about the transactions that we’re funding and generally what we’re doing this week. How you doing, guys?
Justin Sliva: Good. How are you?
Steven Butala: Excellent. Who do you think did more deals this week, Justin or Jill?
Justin Sliva: Oh, probably y’all. I only okayed three this week on the funding side.
Jill DeWit: You know what? I have one I approved, three I need a few more information on, and several I rejected. I’ll tell you more.
Justin Sliva: Yeah. That sounds-
Steven Butala: Sounds about equal. I guess it’s not a contest.
Jill DeWit: But I sold two, also, which is good. A manager’s [inaudible 00:00:54] but, yeah.
Steven Butala: Before we get into the deals, actually, let’s take a question posted by one of our members on the LandInvestors.com online community. It’s free.
Jill DeWit: Jeff asks, “Hi, everyone. I’ve been adding different Land Investor tools on Google Sheets, and now I have three worksheets. One is a detailed ROI calculator and footage per acre calculator. Two, a comp calculator, which is a basic way to get averages and do the data entry. Three, a payment comparison, which allows you to see and compare up to three different seller financing terms. So here’s the link, if you want to do it.” This is really nice, and he’s shared it with the group.
Steven Butala: Multiple people had a lot of stuff to say on Land Investors, which I didn’t include here.
Jill DeWit: That was really nice.
Steven Butala: It’s not really a question. My whole point is that this freaking group’s awesome.
Jill DeWit: Yeah. It really is.
Steven Butala: Whether you use the tools, or … And you can go there and click on it. There’s an active link in there. Whether you use the tools or don’t, it’s pretty amazing that people will share all their work like that.
Jill DeWit: Yeah.
Justin Sliva: Yep. No, it really is.
Jill DeWit: Well, we’ve all proved that we’re better together. There’s enough deals to go around, and we’re better together. Why not share this with everybody? We’re all just going to get better deals.
Justin Sliva: Yeah.
Steven Butala: Justin, I’m sure your group’s expanding, too, on the financing side. I mean, are you seeing that kind of quality response?
Justin Sliva: Yeah. You tend to see … There’s like a mind-shift about month three or four after somebody’s been actively doing deals. They get through their first, second, third mailer. About their fourth mailer, they realize, “Hey, there’s plenty of deals for everyone,” and you see their mind shift. It becomes more of a teamwork versus a, “I’m going to try to hoard everything for myself,” with that abundant mindset. It’s a neat thing to see.
Steven Butala: Good.
Jill DeWit: Exactly.
Steven Butala: All right. Guys, tell us … Well, today’s topic: Finance Friday With Steven, and Jill, and Justin.
Jill DeWit: Exactly.
Steven Butala: This is the meat of the show.
Jill DeWit: It could be Jack, Jill, Justin.
Justin Sliva: Jack, Jill … The three Js.
Jill DeWit: Exactly.
Steven Butala: Oh, I never thought of that.
Justin Sliva: Yeah?
Steven Butala: [inaudible 00:03:00]
Jill DeWit: We should just call it Jack, Jill, Justin.
Justin Sliva: That sounds like a bad drink, like The Three Horsemen.
Steven Butala: Yeah.
Justin Sliva: Jack, Jose, and … What’s the other one?
Jill DeWit: Oh, my gosh.
Steven Butala: Oh, you mean The Three Musketeers?
Jill DeWit: Kahlua?
Justin Sliva: Yeah. Is it Three Musketeers?
Steven Butala: You said The Three Horsemen. That was a Freudian slip.
Jill DeWit: Justin did, didn’t he? I don’t know. Yeah.
Justin Sliva: Yeah.
Jill DeWit: Yeah.
Steven Butala: Three Amigos. That’s [inaudible 00:03:58]
Jill DeWit: I love that movie.
Steven Butala: All right. Jill, what’s your favorite deal of the week?
Jill DeWit: Okay. My favorite deal of the week is I approved one. 20 acres in an area in northern California, it starts with a T. It’s a county I have never heard of.
Steven Butala: Excellent.
Justin Sliva: Okay.
Jill DeWit: I went in there, and I looked at this, and I’m like, “This is awesome.” The manager who submitted it has it locked in for 12,000, and they said, “Let’s see it for 34,000.” Well, I looked at it. I’m like, “I think it’s worth 50.”
Justin Sliva: Oh, wow.
Steven Butala: That’s it.
Jill DeWit: So no matter what, it’s going to go fast at that. I think it’s the first time I’ve actually done a start to finish deal with this person, who’s very active in our community. I’m really excited, because it’s a really cool area that … It’s up in northern California that we’ve never touched.
Steven Butala: That’s great.
Justin Sliva: Oh, wow.
Jill DeWit: I love it.
Steven Butala: How about you, Justin?
Justin Sliva: I had one in Idaho come back that … It didn’t hit my normal margin price, like when they’re three times the value. We saw comps. Well, it does closely. There’s some comps supporting $180,000. It’s under contract for 60. It’s 40 acres, and it’s right out of a major city. 30 minutes out of a major city. It’s just a cool little property.
Jill DeWit: I think we’re both looking at that same one, matter of fact. Because I have one … Is it just a few under 40 acres in Idaho?
Justin Sliva: Yeah.
Steven Butala: I’m sure it’s the same deal.
Jill DeWit: And there’s a thing about … We’re both looking at the same deal. That’s … Hey, good for them. They’re shopping us both.
Justin Sliva: Yeah. I got another one in today that was shopped, too. Somebody goes, “Hey, did you see this deal on Land Tank?” I said, “Yeah.” I said, “I saw that last night.” I said, “I wasn’t too impressed with it.” They’re like, “Oh, yeah. [inaudible 00:05:09] their numbers look good,” so, yeah. It’s good that people are shopping it out there.
Jill DeWit: Well, you know what? That Idaho one, I love it, and that was my note here. I love it. It’s only that access, and I’m sure that’s what you’re trying to wrap your head around, too.
Justin Sliva: This one has access. It has a road.
Jill DeWit: But is it legal? I mean, that’s-
Justin Sliva: Yeah.
Jill DeWit: I couldn’t tell.
Justin Sliva: It’s easement, and it’s platted on a survey. It’s got a fresh survey, too.
Jill DeWit: Okay. Well, you want it? Rock, paper, scissors. You want to do it, or you want me to do it?
Steven Butala: [crosstalk 00:05:40] do it together.
Justin Sliva: Yeah. We tapped out on it on the plumb side, so I actually brought in another person to come in partner with me personally on it. It was just one of those deals that I liked it enough to try to push it through and get something on it.
Jill DeWit: Good. I’ll back down. You can have that one. I’ll get the next [crosstalk 00:05:54] That’s cool.
Steven Butala: Hey, there’s enough to go around, like we talked about.
Jill DeWit: There is.
Justin Sliva: Yep.
Jill DeWit: I can’t fight about some of the states and areas that I don’t know.
Justin Sliva: Yeah.
Jill DeWit: It’s all good.
Steven Butala: I’m looking at Land Tank right now. There’s a lot of good deals on here.
Jill DeWit: Yeah.
Justin Sliva: Yeah.
Jill DeWit: It is.
Steven Butala: A bunch of them got snapped up really fast.
Jill DeWit: Yeah.
Justin Sliva: Yeah.
Steven Butala: You can see how fast they’re on there. I’m loving this agricultural deal. It’s been on there for a while. It’s being used right now as agricultural land, so I’m surprised … It’s not the kind of deal that this groups looks at, but it’s cool.
Jill DeWit: Yep.
Justin Sliva: Which one [inaudible 00:06:31]
Steven Butala: 66 acres in Denver, Colorado, or Fort-
Justin Sliva: Oh, wow. Okay.
Jill DeWit: Fort Collins. I like Fort Collins.
Steven Butala: But it’s expensive as hell. I mean, you know how agricultural acreage is. It’s a commodity. It’s not the kind of properties that we usually see.
Jill DeWit: Exactly.
Justin Sliva: Yep. Yeah. I think those are some of the hardest ones to put a value on. Those and the stuff that’s got CRP value to it that you don’t necessarily see the extra money that’s coming in. It generates some revenue, so it pulls the values up. So when you’re trying to comp it, it’s not a fair comp. That makes it a little bit tough on some properties that come back.
Steven Butala: Yeah.
Jill DeWit: Right. I’m looking for fast ones. I have one right now we just did in one week. Bought for 10, sold for 25. Awesome. Two acres in California in a great area. One in Virginia. Bought for 9,700, sold for 25,500. That went four weeks. So that’s my goal.
Jill DeWit: My ones under review, one of my things I look at is, “How quickly can we do them?” Are you that way, too? You just don’t want to hold them that long.
Justin Sliva: Yeah. I’m looking at what the comps will support, and then pricing it about 80% of that, so I know that it’s going to turn pretty quickly. Then see what’s under contract in that area, and what’s sold in that area, and how long it sat on the market. So looking at some of that to see … We find some that are 6,000. Six grand is what they’re asking for. Then we know it’ll sell for 25 or 30, but at 18, it’s going to sell really fast. So we go ahead and push that and say, “Hey, put it at 18, and let’s get it moved.”
Jill DeWit: What’s the longest that you would … Like some of these big ones we all know. For 180,000, we all know that it could take a few months to sell. What’s the longest that you’ll entertain? 90 days?
Justin Sliva: We have a six month thing in our contract, but we have some property that we’ve kind of got held up on in Wisconsin that the snow … Everything’s kind of [inaudible 00:08:15] now. We’ve got a few owner finance stuff, but we know it’s winter. We’re coming out of that. It was crazy. We were talking to my partner about this two days ago that we look where we bought a bunch of property, got massive snow this year. So Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona all got hit with snow that normally doesn’t get hit this late in the year.
Justin Sliva: Three back-to-back storms, so it slowed down some of the turns that we thought, “Oh, these are going to be quick.” We sold one in like a couple days in Arizona. Then it got snow on it. We couldn’t get photographers out there to get the other one shot. We were like, “Oh, crap,” so we’re kind of holding back on that one now. That’s kind of sitting a little bit longer. But as we start to see the snow melt, I suspect it will start to pick up.
Jill DeWit: Right. So you’re okay. You’ll go into a deal knowing that … I’ll entertain like 90 days to 120 days is kind of my goal for some of those bigger ones, and I expect that.
Justin Sliva: Yeah. We want to turn our money three times in a year, each deal. So each piece of dollar, I want to see it turn three times. But we have a six-month out in the contract on it.
Jill DeWit: Right.
Steven Butala: So do we.
Jill DeWit: Yeah. Cool.
Steven Butala: I guess we’re all kind of looking for stand-up triples and low-hanging fruit.
Justin Sliva: Yeah.
Jill DeWit: That’s true.
Steven Butala: I think that’s the nature of the beast, because there’s such an abundance of transactions coming in.
Jill DeWit: That’s true.
Justin Sliva: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
Steven Butala: Are you having any issues with people getting discouraged, because you’re not accepting just regular old single deals?
Jill DeWit: That’s a good question.
Justin Sliva: Yeah. I’ve had a few people ask, “Are you mad that I keep submitting these deals, and you’re not accepting them?” No. It’s just some of them don’t fit. Or they go into a county, and they price the county a little bit high, and you see that the whole gamut they’re going to get back, it’s going to be tough to find a good, solid deal there. On your own, it might be good, or they’re okay. But they’re just not enough with a partner there.
Steven Butala: Right. Are you, Jill? What’s your percentages on rejections, Jill?
Jill DeWit: You know what? I should add it up. It’s usually there’s very few that I flat-out say, “These are bad deals.” Usually, if they really are bad deals, when we both sit and look at it together, the manager will also go, “Oh, gosh. You’re right. I totally missed that. I get it. I don’t want to deal with that either,” kind of thing. There’s some fatal flaw, if you will.
Steven Butala: Yeah.
Jill DeWit: But the other ones, it’s usually … Gosh. And I’ll tell them, and I’ll work with them. I’ll go, “You know what? Here’s a deal. If it was me doing this right now, I love it at this. I’d do it at this. I hate it at this.”
Steven Butala: Yeah. That’s what I do, too. [inaudible 00:10:36]
Jill DeWit: I give them the option to work on it, and then I also say … There’s a small percentage that I say, probably less than 10, that I go, “You know what? This is a good deal. I do not know this area very well. I really am not sure about it, but I see the potential. Put it on Land Tank, because someone will love it there. You’ll find someone that really knows the area,” like three people I can think of, like the back of their hand. That’s what’s great. I’m able to provide quality feedback and hopefully we all get these deals done.
Justin Sliva: Yeah.
Steven Butala: It all seems to happen in the first 60 seconds. When you pull a property up, you just know.
Jill DeWit: Exactly.
Justin Sliva: Yeah. You get that smile, you’re like, “Oh, yeah.” Then you get into it looking farther, you’re like, “No, next.”
Jill DeWit: Yeah.
Justin Sliva: A guy sent me a property stack. It was 45 properties, and we went line by line through it, just running the them, and it was, “Yes. No. No. Yes. No. No. No. No. No.” And he’s like, “Why so quick?” I’m like, “Well, we saw the access. It’s kind of running through an Indian reservation, and that’s the only way to get there.” I’m like, “I’m not 100% sure if that’s good access or not. It shows a road, but I don’t know that I want to have to go through an Indian reservation every time.”
Jill DeWit: Exactly.
Steven Butala: That’s a deal killer, for sure.
Justin Sliva: Yep.
Jill DeWit: Yeah. That’s the thing. Like right now, I’m prepping with the people … I have a guy that submitted … like that. A 30 acres totally a little over 3,000 total acres. 30 parcels totaling a little over 3,000 acres in California.
Justin Sliva: Yep.
Jill DeWit: I know, right? Which is great. [inaudible 00:12:01] he only gave me a little bit, snippet. I’m like, “Okay. Here’s what I need.” I had to tell him. “I need that spreadsheet with all the lines in there,” so like you’re saying, I’m not going to go guess, and find them, and just … I need more information, and I’m happy to review them. For the record, I like those deals. I’d rather pick up a bunch of acreage from one person, and do one transaction, and make it all clean and neat. I think that’s the greatest thing.
Justin Sliva: Yeah. I saw that one. That one’s a huge deal. It was a huge deal.
Steven Butala: Remember back in grade school where the teacher blew their top? Everybody submitted some stuff. All of it. Everybody submitted their work. Come in the next day, and the teacher blows their top and say, “You know what?”
Jill DeWit: F, F, F.
Steven Butala: “I can’t read this. I can’t read this, and I can’t figure out … Because half of you didn’t put your name on the thing, so I don’t know whose it is. I can’t read it, so I have to go find what an A looks like, and try to figure this out, so, no.” In the last couple of months, I’ve had that experience. It’s not necessarily on deal funding. It’s just emails that I get like, “Should I do this deal?” I’m like, “I don’t what know state it’s in.”
Justin Sliva: Yeah.
Steven Butala: You know, “Would you do this deal for $5,000? It’s 12 acres, and it’s got a county were going through the middle of it. Would you do this deal?”
Jill DeWit: Exactly. Oh, and don’t forget, “Trees. I think the timber’s worth something.” “Hold on a moment. Are you a timber salesperson, or what are we doing here?”
Steven Butala: We get the root of that, Jill. Where do you think that comes from? They just want to see if we’re going to respond? They listen to the show, maybe, and they just want to see if we’ll respond.”
Jill DeWit: I like to think it’s just an oversight. That they just like, “Oh, yeah. I guess that would help.” Because usually when you say … It’s like me saying, “Hey, Justin, you want to buy this car? It’s gorgeous, it’s red, and you’ll look great in it. And it’s $30,000.”
Justin Sliva: Yeah.
Jill DeWit: “Sure. Okay. I’ll buy it.”
Justin Sliva: I love it. I love it at 30.
Jill DeWit: “Well, what is it? What kind of car is it, and how many miles does it have on it?” You can’t really make a good … Until you say that and they go, “Yeah. I guess that would help.”
Justin Sliva: Yeah.
Jill DeWit: I’ve got … The thing is, too … And I think that we’re all at this level. I know all of us are, that we have enough deals, too, that we could … I don’t share all the nitty-gritty details here, obviously, but we share the details.
Steven Butala: Maybe that’s why they submit it that way, because that’s about the level of how we talk on the show like this.
Jill DeWit: Oh, that could be.
Justin Sliva: I think they get excited, then they’re just trying to push it out. Like, ‘Hey, hurry up to get a response,” and then we’re like, “Well, we need some more details,” you know?
Steven Butala: Yeah.
Justin Sliva: Then they’re, “Oh, okay.”
Jill DeWit: “You mean I have to do some work?”
Steven Butala: Like, “Where is it?”
Jill DeWit: “You do.”
Justin Sliva: Yeah. “County and state, please. County and state.”
Jill DeWit: You know what? I’ll tell you right now, for the next person, maybe we should … You know what? I don’t know. If you could send me a spreadsheet that has every little detail on there, including give me a quick GPS coordinate for the set-up point, I’ll know you know how to do this. That would be awesome. That I would be like … That would make my day, and I could review this so fast. And by the way, I would want to do your deals. The more detail you come to me and showing that you know your stuff-
Steven Butala: Yeah. That’s my whole point here.
Jill DeWit: … that’s going to make me want to partner with you.
Justin Sliva: Yeah.
Steven Butala: I mean, it’s just like getting a job or anything other thing that you want to accomplish in your life, just take it seriously. Present yourself and the whole thing that what you want, like you care about it, and it’s going to happen. Or some version of it will.
Jill DeWit: Exactly.
Justin Sliva: Yeah.
Jill DeWit: Yeah. That’s it. That’s good.
Steven Butala: What else is going on, Justin? How’s your new eBook doing, and your talk show, and everything?
Jill DeWit: Yeah.
Justin Sliva: The eBook was cool. For the first few days on Amazon, it hit the number one spot in small investments. Then real estate, it went to the number one spot in the book for a few days there, as well, so that was pretty cool.
Steven Butala: Excellent.
Justin Sliva: It got on Amazon this week, but when this airs, it’ll be last week. So the first four days of the week, it stayed in a number one spot in three different categories. So that’s pretty cool to see.
Justin Sliva: The podcast is still doing well. It keeps growing every week, so we appreciate people coming out and following us and doing the like, rate, and review on Casual Fridays, so that’s great to see.
Jill DeWit: Awesome.
Justin Sliva: But as you all know, pumping out content every week and trying to keep it going, and like, “Okay, what’s next? What do we want to talk about?” Get feedback and push it out to make sure it’s still relevant. That’s the fun part of it.
Steven Butala: Right.
Jill DeWit: I haven’t heard Justin say anything about doing another live event.
Justin Sliva: We’re not opposed to it. We had a good time.
Jill DeWit: Really?
Justin Sliva: Yeah, we really had a good time.
Steven Butala: Oh, yeah. They’re a lot of fun.
Jill DeWit: It is a lot of fun, if somebody else does it.
Justin Sliva: Yeah. It was nice how we had it all together. And it was cool to get to see a lot of the people and put names and faces together. As you all know, it’s different high-fiving somebody in person versus talking to them on a webinar or talking to them on the phone.
Jill DeWit: Totally.
Justin Sliva: We had some key takeaways from it. I know we got asked if we’d be interested in doing one in Houston, so we’re looking at it. We try to make it not interfere with any dates you all have. Then as you know, soccer, and T-ball, and sports are all going on right now, so we’re probably looking fall. We may look at something in the fall. But I’ll coordinate with y’all to see what y’all’s dates look like for anything you are going to do, and then go from there.
Jill DeWit: Yeah. I’m throwing around the idea of doing a second annual … You know? Because that might just make the most sense. Maybe it’s just going to be a once a year, and if you can come, great. If you can’t, I understand.
Justin Sliva: Yep. Is April not taking place now?
Jill DeWit: No.
Justin Sliva: No?
Jill DeWit: Yeah. I’m too busy with House Academy in a really good way.
Justin Sliva: Okay. Okay, cool.
Jill DeWit: And I’m really trying to up some of our things, some of our [inaudible 00:17:39] if I should share it here, but kind of did.
Steven Butala: Yeah, share.
Jill DeWit: I’m working on Parcel Fact and getting that tiled.
Justin Sliva: Oh, nice.
Jill DeWit: Neighboring property thing, I’m working hard on that. Right? Oh, it’s awesome.
Steven Butala: The goal for Parcel Fact is to basically consume and overtake PARLEY.
Jill DeWit: That’s the only thing that’s missing.
Steven Butala: So we got the APIs all in place. It’s just [inaudible 00:18:01] a tech … It’s actually-
Jill DeWit: That’s it. I’m already paying for the data. I already have the data. It’s just connecting it.
Steven Butala: It’s just an IT development project, the result of which will be just nothing short of amazing, but in the scope of things, isn’t that complicated. Really, it’s an ArcGIS overlay, plus like some stuff, which is really not … It sounds complicated, but it’s not.
Justin Sliva: Okay.
Jill DeWit: I also tasked him with getting the mobile access figured out.
Justin Sliva: Okay.
Jill DeWit: So, yeah. It sounds like … I literally, today right before this, just got off a call about it. I’m like, “All right, you got this, right?”
Steven Butala: It’s a beautiful deal. When Jill’s a project manager on something, she just comes at it with this cute sense of naivety, like [crosstalk 00:18:46] like a blonde approach to it. She totally pulls it off. And I come at it like, “Okay, I think I know half this stuff. Let’s get this …” And she’s always more successful at it than I am.
Jill DeWit: Thank you.
Steven Butala: I’m all worried about it. I’m like, “No, man. We got to get it … Look at …” And she just gets it done. She’s like, “Whatever you guys think, it’ll be fine,” and it ends up being fine.
Jill DeWit: Thank you.
Justin Sliva: Yeah. That’s how you let the professionals do what they’re good at, just let them take it and run.
Jill DeWit: Yeah. It’s a project, to say the least.
Justin Sliva: Yeah?
Jill DeWit: Yeah.
Steven Butala: Well, it’s one of 20 projects. We’re just neck deep in a really good way.
Jill DeWit: Oh, I know.
Justin Sliva: Yeah.
Steven Butala: House Academy. House Academy’s going to be an entirely different-
Jill DeWit: I can’t wait.
Steven Butala: … concept providing a national and regional state-level statistics on a really frequent basis, weekly if not more often. And the website itself, what it’s going to provide is …
Jill DeWit: It’s going to be amazing.
Steven Butala: It’s a culmination of all the stuff we’ve learned since the ’90s, plus what we’ve learned what people want from Land Academy, so I’m super excited about it.
Jill DeWit: Right. It’s going to be incredible.
Justin Sliva: Oh, cool. I look forward to it. I look forward to it.
Jill DeWit: [inaudible 00:19:54]
Steven Butala: Well, you’ve done it again. You’ve spent another 20 minutes, or so, listening to The Land Academy Show. Join us next time for another interesting episode.
Jill DeWit: And we answer your questions posted on our online community, LandInvestors.com. It’s free.
Steven Butala: You’re not alone in your real estate ambition.
Steven Butala: How much are you coaching right now, on a personal note?
Justin Sliva: Quite a bit. Quite a bit. It died down a little bit this week. The last few weeks have been real busy. Probably two to three calls a day, right now, so it’s staying fairly busy with that. But most of it’s, “I just want to know how to pick a county by margin and price a county.” That’s all it seems to be. That seems to be the brunt of it. Then they see me use like Land of America, and just say, “Okay. Hey, I used 19 to 21 acres, and if I want $1,000 per acre, I say 20 grand for that top. Just list it by state, and then list the county.” They’re like, “Well, does that cost money to do that?” I’m like, “No. Lands of America’s free. You can just kind of search it.”
Justin Sliva: That seems to be the common question I get is, “Well, how do you get to that point so fast?” The idea is that, “Hey, we’re going to build a road map for the next six months. We got 20 counties in the state. Let’s just keep working through them, and then we’ll go to the next state and just keep working through it,” and just kind of build that machine.
Steven Butala: That’s how you do it.
Jill DeWit: That’s right.
Justin Sliva: Yep. A lot of people get hung up, because it sounds so simple. They’re like, “It’s too simple. It can’t be that simple. We got to get this shiny CRM. We got to get this over here and put it all together.” I’m like, “No, no. Just do it this way.”
Jill DeWit: Exactly.
Justin Sliva: Yeah. That’s been the brunt of it. Nothing too major off that.
Jill DeWit: That’s good. Cool.
Jill DeWit: Well, wherever you are watching or wherever you are listening, please subscribe and rate us there. We are Steve, and Jill, and Justin ..
Steven Butala: We are Steve, and Jill, and Justin. Information …
Jill DeWit: … and inspiration …
Steven Butala: … to buy undervalued property.
Steven Butala: All right, man. Cool.
Jill DeWit: Cool. That’s good.
Justin Sliva: Yeah? Have you got something to … It’s something that can wait? [inaudible 00:21:47] you got something for me?
Jill DeWit: No. No. I got nothing.
Justin Sliva: Okay.
Jill DeWit: [inaudible 00:21:53] some weeks. No. Some weeks are just moving right along, and this week must have been really moving right along. We got a lot accomplished. At least, I know I did.
Justin Sliva: Yeah.
Steven Butala: There’s a lot of intensity in our environment right now, because we’re trying meet these deadlines.
Justin Sliva: Okay.
Jill DeWit: Numbers.
Steven Butala: The content’s just … House Academy is so much more data-intensive, and I don’t know why.
Justin Sliva: Is that going to lose some people, do you think? Is it going to go over head?
Steven Butala: You know what?
Jill DeWit: No.
Steven Butala: I hope so. I mean, I love that you’re taking the brand new people and telling them how to pick a county.
Justin Sliva: [crosstalk 00:22:24]
Steven Butala: House Academy itself is designed for people who are already very familiar with how to buy and sell houses. There’s a billion people out there doing it.
Jill DeWit: Like the guy downstairs.
Steven Butala: They just need the data. They need to know how to use it, and they need to … It’s for a different customer.
Jill DeWit: Yep.
Justin Sliva: Yep. No, you’re exactly right. I think people think that we’re trying to make that transition for them. We’ve done houses. We’ve done that. For me, I’m even using a direct mail piece to help roofers right now. When they get a hail storm, we’re taking it and driving it, so that they’ll lay the hail map over the top. They say, “Give me a radius of this,” and then we hit every owner. The cool thing about that is you have so many subdivisions that have corporate owners that never get talked to, because the roofer goes and knocks on a door. So it’s the same thing a wholesaler does. We just take it and move it to the roofing industry and run with that. Then you’ll see a bunch of single-page letters come out. They send it out, and everybody’s happy.
Steven Butala: Right. Is it working?
Justin Sliva: Yeah. They’re getting calls back from property managers like, “Hey, we’ve got seven houses in that area. Can you check all of them for me?” Then the guy’s like, “Holy crap.” We did it last year outside of San Antonio, and the guy … He put his advertising together for me. I sent it out. The company he was working for thought he was trying to undercut them, and they took the Google number they gave him away for that local area, and took it away and gave it to another salesman. That salesman had a record year, and that company ended up having a record year. They would never tell him how many it sold, because they thought … It had their company name, but he just put their company name, “Of San Antonio,” versus the company is based in Dallas-Fort Worth. So they thought he was trying to do something outside of them. Well, they still got all the business, but they thought he was trying to do something funny, so it got weird.
Justin Sliva: So we just redid it with another company. In the first five days, he had 19 appointments, I think, because of it. So a salesman, he gets up there, he’s giving them a free roof. He can sell that. It’s, “Hey. Yeah. Oh, yep. You got some damage. I can get this sold.” Then from there, you just knock on the doors next to you while you’re there, and you have somebody you actually sold [inaudible 00:24:19] right next to you.
Steven Butala: Awesome.
Jill DeWit: That’s cool.
Steven Butala: That’s another creative way to use the data.
Jill DeWit: Exactly. Exactly.
Justin Sliva: Yep. Yeah. I y’all’s show last week, and I was thinking in my head, I was like, “Oh, I should have talked to them about this before that.”
Jill DeWit: Yeah. That’s good.
Steven Butala: Awesome. All right, man.
Jill DeWit: Thank you.
Steven Butala: Maybe we’ll see you later today on the calls, or maybe not.
Jill DeWit: Yeah.
Justin Sliva: Yes, sir. You should. I got some little things going on, but nothing major.
Steven Butala: Awesome. All right.
Jill DeWit: Cool.
Justin Sliva: Later.
Steven Butala: [inaudible 00:24:41] soon. Bye.
Jill DeWit: Bye.
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