Benefits of Networking at Live Events and Online Webinars (1031)
Benefits of Networking at Live Events and Online Webinars (1031)
Transcript:
Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here.
Jill DeWit: Hi.
Steven Butala: Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining Land Investment talk. I’m Steven Jack Butala.
Jill DeWit: I’m Jill DeWit, broadcasting from sunny, southern California.
Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about the benefits of networking at live events and online webinars. I have to tell you, before we get started, I didn’t believe in these things. It’s the truth. I didn’t want to have the first live event that we had.
Jill DeWit: Yeah.
Steven Butala: It turned out to be just a smash hit.
Jill DeWit: It’s funny. I’ll have to share. We scheduled it, then we unscheduled it. We were doing it, then we’re not doing it. We’re doing it, we’re not doing it. Then we’re like, “There’s people coming.” I said, “Steven, we have to do this. There are people, they bought plane tickets.” He said, “Fine.” Then, in the end, we did two last year, and it was a hit.
Steven Butala: Huge hit.
Jill DeWit: Huge hit.
Steven Butala: The people that were involved in those events, we’ll get into it [inaudible 00:00:56]. We’ll tell you why they are doing so much better in their careers than they would have done just on their own. Us included. We’re doing partnership and deals with a lot of the people that were at those events.
Jill DeWit: I think that’s the point of this show. It’s the results that we did not even expect that came out of that.
Steven Butala: Hey, 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: Kevin asks-
Steven Butala: This is a share.
Jill DeWit: Or shares, excuse me.
Steven Butala: This is Kevin Farrell, our moderator.
Jill DeWit: Kevin shares, is this a warm fuzzy thing?
Steven Butala: Yeah, it is actually.
Jill DeWit: Since it’s a share.
Steven Butala: Kevin is so diligent and he’s so bright, and such a good writer. He’s a moderator on the site for us. He’s also an active member. He really has something to say here.
Jill DeWit: Thank you.
Steven Butala: It’s very valuable.
Jill DeWit: Hi everybody. I have run into counties where it’s very hard to use their data. I am also seeing this problem when helping others make sense of out of their data. I will try to break down what good data and bad data looks like. This is good.
Jill DeWit: Bad data. Zero percent on improved returns with parcels with houses on them. You think that would make sense. Vacant land returns parcels with houses on them. Acreage is incorrect in the data, and many records have no mailing addresses. Comps vary widely starting low and jumping up rapidly, like one thousand dollars, two thousand, 25 hundred dollars, 45 hundred dollars, eight thousand dollars, 12 thousand five hundred dollars, 19 thousand dollars, 50 thousand dollars and up. Variation in comps does not seem to be related to the location or zip codes.
Jill DeWit: Usually these things happen in counties with no GIS system available. That’s a little tip right there.
Steven Butala: Yeah. Hold on one second please. That’s the key.
Jill DeWit: Right.
Steven Butala: You can separate, if you want to skip along the top on this, and really, you’re kind of a weekend warrior investor.
Jill DeWit: Save some time.
Steven Butala: Save some massive time.
Jill DeWit: And money.
Steven Butala: Save yourself some time and money and stay away from counties that do not have a GIS system in place. All of them say they have a GIS system.
Jill DeWit: Go try to use it.
Steven Butala: Go try to use it. See if it’s functional.
Jill DeWit: Because it’s free.
Steven Butala: GIS counties don’t typically have bad data.
Jill DeWit: Right. Now, and here’s Kevin awesome example of a county with good data. That is, nearly a hundred percent of the parcels are vacant with no buildings on them or houses on them. That means the ones that you download, you test for reason and it’s true. Acreage is correct. I know this stuff. Acreage is correct for all of the parcels. Nearly or close to a hundred percent of the records have correct mailing addresses. Comps vary but remain pretty close together from low to high prices. Like, you’ll find a couple for a thousand dollars each, 11 hundred dollars, 14 hundred dollars, 14 hundred 50 dollars, 15 hundred dollars, and then like three thousand dollars.
Jill DeWit: Variation in comps can be related to zip code or subdivision.
Steven Butala: You can tie it to why the values are so different.
Jill DeWit: Right.
Steven Butala: When he means comps here, what he really means as the value that the assessor has assigned to the property for tax reasons, not necessarily comparison values. What he’s looking for is consistency. That’s what we teach in House Academy from start to finish, but that’s for another day.
Jill DeWit: Or another show. How can you tell if you’re getting good data or bad data? Before you download the data, take some time to look at 12 samples chosen at random. If all 12 had mailing addresses and there are no houses on them, then the data is probably good. If you look at the 12 samples and you find one or two with houses, then you need to look at another batch of 12. If you keep finding a few with houses, you can still use the data, but you want to strip out [inaudible 00:05:02]
Steven Butala: This is brilliant.
Jill DeWit: This is really good. I do that by sorting on the first mortgage and eliminating those records. I will also sort on homestead exemption and delete those records.
Steven Butala: This is after the data sets in the spreadsheet.
Jill DeWit: Right. Look at the comps before paying for your data. If the comps are widely scattered, you will have to research to find out why. If you can’t make sense of the comps, you might need to skip this county. If you can see that the values vary by zip code, then price by zip code. To avoid some of the problems, you should look for counties with many prices that are similar and have similar comp values.
Steven Butala: Test them for similarity.
Jill DeWit: Yep. Then, spot check the data before you download it. Doing this will help you put a good price on your offers and result in some accepted offers. Zip code pricing and excessive data scrubbing is a little advance if you’re just starting out so keep it simple.
Jill DeWit: This is a beautiful example of the people in our community, the people you will meet at these live events, by the way, and how we all work together, and what’s in our live community.
Steven Butala: Truly a massive help, and blog worthy.
Jill DeWit: Exactly.
Steven Butala: Thank you Kevin.
Jill DeWit: That was awesome.
Steven Butala: We’re going to interview Kevin in a couple weeks, actually.
Jill DeWit: Yep.
Steven Butala: On our show.
Jill DeWit: Yep.
Steven Butala: Today’s topic, as if that wasn’t enough to prove it.
Jill DeWit: Yeah, right.
Steven Butala: Benefits of networking at live events and online webinars. This is the meat of the show.
Jill DeWit: I have to say, for me, this is like reading a book. Maybe someone’s even in our investment space, and getting a little bit involved in their community or their social media, or even getting one of their programs or something, you always get something out of it. We’ve gone to events, other people’s events, we’ve spoken at other events. We have one coming up in a couple weeks here, too, that we’re speaking at. It’s a commercial note.
Steven Butala: It’s commercial real estate note buying scenarios and how that’s possible in commercial real estate.
Jill DeWit: You always get something out of it. I find I walk out with two things. Number one is, wow, I’m doing it right. Who knew how smart I was? Seriously, don’t you find that sometimes?
Steven Butala: No, never. I never sit around and say, “You know, I think I probably got this licked.” Never.
Jill DeWit: Oh, come on.
Steven Butala: I don’t.
Jill DeWit: Well, sometimes, there’s things that you go, “I know I’m doing it right, because that’s the wrong way.” Come on. Also, sometimes there’s confirmation, and sometimes it’s like, “That’s a good viewpoint. I’m going to go back and tweak some things a little bit, maybe just think about it a little bit differently.” I think it’s great.
Jill DeWit: What do you want to say?
Steven Butala: I went to, two in my whole life, I’ve been to two live events that have to do with real estate where you paid. All right? Jill and I have been to meet ups and stuff. We’ve been to several of those, and those are almost always disappointing. You know why? Because they’re too local. This whole notion of this meet up thing is all, we’re only going to buy houses in one little zip code of Los Angeles, so it’s packed with people that do that, and it’s just, I don’t know, there’s no real networking value.
Steven Butala: People have different opinions about this. I think it’s just too low level. I went through two things. I went through a note buying seminar, that I bought a program off of eBay.
Jill DeWit: You traveled to it, right.
Steven Butala: [crosstalk 00:08:32] it was a lot of years ago. Yeah. Then, separately, in a separate time, separate decade, I went to a-
Jill DeWit: Separate girl.
Steven Butala: What’s that? Usually it’s me saying stuff like that.
Jill DeWit: I don’t know. That’s what I’m saying. That’s why I threw it in there.
Steven Butala: I went to a tax lien investing seminar that had like 30 people and I learned more in three days about that kind of stuff there ever was. I’d like to think the stuff that we provide, that’s the reports that we’re getting back. Wow, I learned more in those two days than I could have on my own with self study. It comes down to your personality type. I’m more of a watch YouTube how to do it learner. Jill’s more of a social, talk to people and-
Jill DeWit: Get in there and figure it out.
Steven Butala: -and read a book.
Jill DeWit: That’s true.
Steven Butala: I have to do it and screw it all up in a dark room, and then I’m good. Like, six times. It’s not the most efficient way.
Jill DeWit: That’s funny.
Steven Butala: Once you’re done, you’re in.
Jill DeWit: Yes, that’s true. What are some of the benefits? I think, number one, I have seen and witnessed partnerships being formed. Just like Steven and I, there’s things he’s good at, things that I’m good at, and when you can get in this environment and have a chance to talk to people, meet people like this, it’s huge. We know of several people that have formed a partnership, and a couple of them are like, we have three guys working together. One’s the marketer, one buys property, and one’s the sales guy kind of thing. It’s perfect.
Steven Butala: The thing about this, what Jill just said, you’re really good at one of those.
Jill DeWit: Right.
Steven Butala: You might be good at all three, but you really enjoy one, let’s say. You might be the data person like me, and you’re just not into sales. I can do it, I did it for years and years and years before Jill joined, or had somebody trying to do it, but when you take off, there’s a lot of responsibility and a lot of time consumption and resources when you start down this path. They all pay off, smashingly pay off. It requires organization, a lot of capital and some other stuff.
Steven Butala: When you bring a person in, and you eliminate 60, 70 percent of your responsibility now, and you’re a part of a partnership where all you do is data, or all you do is sales, or all you do is raise capital, the sky’s the limit.
Jill DeWit: It’s true.
Steven Butala: This is how we actually structure our house deals. There’s three people involved, the person who finds the deal, which is us; the deal locator, or their manager, that boots on the ground, they manage the actual acquisition and sale in front of the people that are selling it and in front of the people that are buying it; and the money guy. Everybody wins. Everybody’s on a hundred thousand dollar spread, everybody makes 33 thousand bucks, or thirty grand after fees.
Jill DeWit: Yeah.
Steven Butala: You can just mechanize it. That’s the real beauty of this. When you get the right people, right partners, you can mechanize this, so you can do a lot of properties, and just do your little part.
Jill DeWit: Another benefit of these events is you find that you’re not alone. It’s interesting, wherever you are, whatever you’re getting into, whatever it is, it’s nice when you’re like, “Oh, somebody else is in my same shoes,” or someone that was two months ahead of you, you can learn something with, and then someone that’s two months behind you, you could help them, too.
Steven Butala: Yeah.
Jill DeWit: That, I’ve got a lot of feedback from our members saying, “Gosh it was so nice, I thought I was the only one on the east coast doing this,” or the only one in Georgia, in Maine, or whatever it is, and I’m like, “I’m not alone. It’s so nice.”
Steven Butala: Can I go?
Jill DeWit: Yeah, yeah.
Steven Butala: I guess we can go every other one.
Jill DeWit: Yeah.
Steven Butala: The huge benefit for our last event, that I’m still shocked over, and now I’m really looking forward to in October the next one, is that there were several times where I was standing in front of the room, and I bring up on the screen, a data set, let’s say, this is how it happened last year, and I looked at it, and started to explain to everybody why it’s beneficial and how it works. Very, very quickly it became a group discussion in the room, and it started out with somebody saying, I think it was Justin, saying, “That’s not how you do this at all.”
Steven Butala: I said, “Great. I’ll stop right here, how do you do it?”
Steven Butala: Then, somebody else said, “Well, that’s not how I do it at all.”
Steven Butala: It became this, I learned more from that than I could ever have possibly learned sitting in a dark room somewhere doing it the same way I’ve been doing it for the last seven or eight years. When you can get someone else’s opinion, who you respect and who’s actually succeeding and improve on your own stuff, that’s amazing.
Steven Butala: I read somewhere recently, actually probably a couple years ago, that the drummer for Rush, Neal Pert, takes two drum lessons every year. He’s widely considered the best drummer in the world ever, ever of ever, and he takes two drum lessons a week, from two separate guys. Just constantly improving.
Jill DeWit: There you go. That’s it. That was my final one. You just learn other strategies, like you just said.
Steven Butala: Oh, I stole your thunder.
Jill DeWit: No, it’s okay. I thought you were cheating from my notes.
Steven Butala: No. Actually, I mean, I’m passionate about it.
Jill DeWit: I know.
Steven Butala: Somebody else can do something in your business more efficiently than you can, and they’re willing to be your partner because they dig it, that’s what scaling and leverage is. You just get to do the data and these deals just keep coming back and coming in and coming out. It’s the greatest thing ever.
Jill DeWit: The beauty I think, too, of this business, is there’s enough property to go around. It’s very beneficial for us all to help each other, and do bigger and better deals together. That’s why I’m here.
Steven Butala: We know your time’s valuable. Thanks for spending some of it with us today anyway. Join us next time for the episode called, Our Current Flip Tool Lineup.
Jill DeWit: We answer your questions posted in our online community found at landinvestors.com. It is free.
Steven Butala: You are not alone in your real estate ambition. I can’t wait for this live event.
Jill DeWit: Me too.
Steven Butala: Last year I was dreading it. That’s the truth.
Jill DeWit: I know. It was comical.
Steven Butala: Seriously excited about this year’s live event and the partnerships that will be formed and the new ways.
Jill DeWit: Yeah.
Steven Butala: Somebody said they have automated a mailer, in Excel with macros and stuff. I think it was Joe Martin. I can’t wait to see that presentation.
Jill DeWit: Yeah, and that’s what’s great about it.
Steven Butala: [crosstalk 00:15:02] that’s something I will personally benefit from in my life.
Jill DeWit: Yeah, this next one, we’re going to have some of those top people, [inaudible 00:15:08] group are going to be presenting, and it’s going to be really, really, really cool. I’m excited, too.
Jill DeWit: Wherever you’re watching, wherever you’re listening, please subscribe and rate us there.
Jill DeWit: We are Steve and Jill.
Steven Butala: We are Steve and Jill. Information.
Jill DeWit: Inspiration.
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