Real Deal on Land Education Courses (LA 1075)
Real Deal on Land Education Courses (LA 1075)
Transcript:
Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here. Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I’m Steven Jack Butala.
Jill Dewitt: And Jill Dewitt broadcasting from sunny Southern California.
Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about the real deal on land education courses.
Jill Dewitt: Okay, this is a direct response. You know who you are, Anthony.
Steven Butala: That’s the question there.
Jill Dewitt: Oh is it really? Oh you put, oh-
Steven Butala: Yeah. I put the actual question here.
Jill Dewitt: Oh, so it’s all going to be one big molded, melded together thing.
Steven Butala: Yeah. Yeah.
Jill Dewitt: All right, so, all right, so let me just explain this real quick. So this is from a soon to be member, if he’s not already a member, because he’s asking everywhere this question, which I’ll read in a moment. I answered it. It was so funny. He put it in Facebook. I just happened to be trolling the Land Academy Facebook. And I was like, “Oh, there’s a message there.” And he was asked this question. I’m like, “All right, so I’ll write this message. My team’s really busy. I’ll write a message.” So I’m sitting here crafting my response, and then before I could hit the little send button, my team put a message. I’m like, “Oh, all right. Well now I got to go back and say okay, PS it looks like my team beat me to it, but I’m still going to give you my answer here.” So I put it in there. And now I’ve seen him ask this in our online community, which I’m really, really glad because I’m dying to see what our members, well actually I know what they’re going to say, but I’m glad you’re asking the community. Yeah.
Steven Butala: We encourage people in our group and not in our group. Our listeners go into landinvestors.com or these, our team just to put together these Facebook groups, are very specific to all the lines that we have, companies, and ask questions like, “What the heck? Is this real?” “This doesn’t make sense to me. Are you having success with it?” “Are these guys a fluke?” “Is it temporary or is this really actually work?” “These guys say a lot of stuff on the podcast. I wonder if any of it’s true at all.”
Jill Dewitt: Right.
Steven Butala: And so that’s what we encourage and that’s what this question is.
Jill Dewitt: And we encourage openness, and you know what we have never ever, ever, and if you’re in bigger pockets, you know this is the opposite, we have never filtered anything.
Steven Butala: Yeah.
Jill Dewitt: What goes in there, stays in there, short of spam and junk. We kick that, kind of like buy these sunglasses, that thing, you know what I mean. But we don’t filter any of the responses. We really encourage, and that’s just who we are anyway, we encourage openness and transparency. And if it’s great, share it. If it’s not great, share it. We still need to know.
Steven Butala: That’s what this episode is about. It’s our, because this is a real source of humor, off the camera for Jill and I. What, how other Land Academy members, and other people in the land business, handle education, where they get education, and probably 80% of it’s wrong. Probably 90%, now that I’m thinking about it. That’s what we’re going to talk about.
Jill Dewitt: Okay. Cool.
Steven Butala: Before we get in to it though, let’s take a question posted by one of our members. The question we just talked about on thelandinvestors.com online community, it’s free.
Jill Dewitt: Okay, so Anthony, I knew your name already. Anthony said, “Hello, land investors community. In your opinion and experience what land courses better than all other land courses out there, specifically? I am seriously looking at a few courses right now and I would love any and all detailed reasons why a course is better than all the others. What stands out? What is your experience? What is very effective? What course is complete? Please be specific. I appreciate any and all feedback. Thanks in advance and have a great rest of your week. Feel free to private message me also. Thanks.”
Steven Butala: So it’s this kind of question, before Jill really launches into this because she can’t wait, that I can tell this person is going to be successful already.
Jill Dewitt: He’s doing his homework.
Steven Butala: Yeah.
Jill Dewitt: And I appreciate that.
Steven Butala: Yeah. And he’s taking his time. And he’s asking the real good hard questions up front.
Jill Dewitt: So there’s really nothing for me to answer here because we’re going to talk about it in the show.
Steven Butala: Yeah.
Jill Dewitt: Just really what makes, what makes people different?
Steven Butala: Hah. This is the meat of the show. Okay. Answer the question.
Jill Dewitt: Okay. You’re so silly. All right, So there are several different people in our space. And I was going to talk about some of the positives, and some of the negatives, and I just, like I said, encourage everything. I want you just to do your homework.
Jill Dewitt: So here’s some of the positives. There are other people out there who do, who flip land or other properties, wholesale like we do, and they have education courses, and they have a whole different spin on what we do. They come at it a different way. They use different tools, resources, things like that. And I think it’s fantastic. I really, really do. And one of the things I think of too is, and even within our community, like what we’re going to talk about at the upcoming live event, there are members in our community that have taken our basic outline, once they got in and figured out and understand it, then they tweaked it. And they’ve gone into a little bit different direction. Maybe they figured out a good way to grow their business that we’re not using. Some other resources. Maybe how to utilize staff in a different way, how to utilize technology in a different way. They use a different CRM. It might be great for somebody. There’s no one size fits all.
Jill Dewitt: So I really, I love that and I encourage that. I think it’s really, really great. And we have, some of these members, like I said, are going to speak at our upcoming live event and share some of their tweaks and nuances and the way they’re doing things. A lot of us are doing things in different parts of the country too. And what goes on on the East coast is sometimes different what goes on in the West coast. And the way they deal with the customers, and get transactions done, and things like that. It’s great. That’s some of the positive things.
Jill Dewitt: Here’s some of the negative things you need to know about in this space. That there are flat out, I hate to say it copycats that, I mean blatant copycats. And they don’t have the experience, and the tools, and just are able to really properly help people, if that makes sense. You want to pipe in, pipe in at any moment.
Steven Butala: Oh, you want me to go? Are you, okay? Yeah. So here’s the thing. There’s only like four or five people in this whole space that, including us, that, this is a very tiny little niche, buying and selling land. It’s been around for a long time. The education portion of it’s really, really new. It’s less than 10 years old. All of it. We’re about, in the education space, about four or five years old. The huge difference between the four or five people in this space, is the type of property that they seek to purchase, the type of land.
Steven Butala: The two major, there’s Jack Bosch, who’s got a program called Pennies on the Dollar, Pennies for Dollar. And he’s focuses on back tax property. Mark Podolsky, who was the original land Academy member. He’s got a company called Landgeek, I think. I encourage you to check these all out and then come join our group.
Steven Butala: Mark was the original land Academy member. He and I worked together long before Land Academy was ever a, and we’d just sit there. If you go through our program, you’ll know how he came about and why he, he doesn’t understand how to send mail and he’s not a data person. He’s a salesperson by trade. He’s not a data, he doesn’t take the data centric approach that we do, which is fine. There’s people that are very successful using both of their programs.
Steven Butala: And then there’s us, I think we’re at the top of it. Our program is all encompassing and our concept is data centric, direct mail, and some other ways to contact owners. Let the stuff come back to you and it’s very predictable and very consistent.
Steven Butala: And then there’s what Jill called these copycats, after, since we started doing this. Some of them are former members, some of them went on their own. But here’s the thing, here’s the real difference between everybody, all of us. What I’m talking about, and this goes with learning anywhere, do you think that you’re going to get better education at Harvard or Detroit Community College? So you can go to Detroit Community College and then you’re probably going to get a good educate, it depends on you. You’re going to learn some stuff there and go off and buy and sell land. Or you can go to Harvard, which is what this is, for a very, I think comparatively, a very small amount of money. Learn the exact way to do this. And then get all the support afterward that you would get going to Harvard because all the people that you’re with are already successful, just by the fact that they’re there anyway. They’re now going to go out in the world and spend the rest of their careers together.
Steven Butala: So I mean that’s really what it comes down to. It’s how seriously do you take this? One of the groups that I mentioned is geared toward brand spanking new people that just want this much information. And another group that I mentioned is geared toward, let’s just send out 20 offers a day and see what happens. This is literal. Get the kids around the kitchen table, get our printer going, let’s print some offers out, 20 a day. Let’s see what happens. It’s kind of a hobby. I’m still going to go to my job forever. And then there’s a other offshoots.
Steven Butala: Jill and I, as a person in front of you, or you’re listening to this and looking at me as a source of information or an instructor, I have a choice to play to the smartest people in our group, the middle of the bell curve, or people who are just learning and don’t know. And I made, a long time ago, a conscious choice to play to the top of the group. Because I believe that that brings the smartest, and the best, and the most dedicated people, up with us.
Jill Dewitt: True.
Steven Butala: Instead of trying to figure it out down here. And so consequently, the people that join our group are those people. They’ve owned businesses in the past, or they still do it, or are they adding this to the business collection? They’re usually bringing something to us and we’re bringing something to them.
Jill Dewitt: Exactly.
Steven Butala: So that’s the real difference between these groups. And I love this question. We get it probably once every two weeks or once every week.
Jill Dewitt: It’s great.
Steven Butala: That’s why we live on the ocean and most of these other people don’t. None of them do.
Jill Dewitt: I love it. Well you know I started to say, I love your, well I think of it too, as you know… I’m glad, Anthony, you’re doing your homework. I want everybody to do your homework. You want to make sure that a couple of things. First you want to make sure this is something you really want to do. You want to dig in and getting answers about what’s really involved. How hard are these transactions? How much money do I need to invest? You’ve got to get all that out of the way first.
Jill Dewitt: And then you want to make sure, when that all passes your tests and your wife’s on board by the way, or significant other, that has to be on there. But then you’d want to make sure that, “All right, am I investing with the right person? Do I connect with them? Do we have the same mindset? Can I learn from these people?”
Steven Butala: Well said.
Jill Dewitt: All of that is so important.
Steven Butala: Do you get a good feeling?
Jill Dewitt: Well, and what does it say? So that’s one thing. And then when you pick a place, I loved your Harvard thing, I think of it like you want to pick an establishment like Harvard, not a popup school that may or may not be here in a year or two.
Steven Butala: Yeah.
Jill Dewitt: So that’s-
Steven Butala: Just strip run the numbers. I mean, Jill, this podcast is almost 1100 episodes deep. Jill and I do almost six hours of, on every Thursday, of webinars and we’ve been doing that. So it’s thousands and thousands of hours that you have access to. So just whoever you, and I encourage you to, you don’t want just one source of education ever, but just run the math. How many episodes do they have? How much experience do they have? How many deals are they doing? How long have they been in business and that will smoke it out?
Jill Dewitt: It still tells you a lot, I think, that people find with us, is the fact that we are the only ones that have our own online community. The fact that we’ve had the longest podcast. The fact that we have the all the tools, and the data, and everything you need to really do this. We’ve created tools like ParcelFact. We created companies to make it easier and less expensive for you.
Steven Butala: And we’re creating new ones.
Jill Dewitt: We’re all in. This is our business. It’s not a side gig. We’re never going to leave this business. We offer the free support. We offer these live events.
Steven Butala: Yep.
Jill Dewitt: Everything, the thing too is, and I believe this and I know our members know this, is that our community you ask, we listen.
Steven Butala: And what we’ll make, I mean-
Jill Dewitt: Yeah.
Steven Butala: We’ll make, create companies around what, if six or 10 of our… First an example, we have an advanced group of, I think 15 people, who we’ve identified over the years, they’re Land Academy members. We put them up in this advanced group with Jill and I, because we believe they’re make us better, as real estate investors. So we’re all on WhatsApp communicating and doing deals with each other.
Steven Butala: So this isn’t a sales pitch, it’s just a, we needed to do this episode. First of all, because Anthony asked a question. But second of all, it’s really funny these fly by night land things pop up, I think largely inspired by this show. And it’s humorous. It’s the same. There’s a lot of direct mail companies that you can go to. You’re free to do that. But we created one, which we think is the best for this. So there’s a perfect example.
Jill Dewitt: Right. Right. I would like to end on this though, just as a positive note. That’s how I am. What is it? Copying is the most sincere form of flattery.
Steven Butala: Flattery, yep.
Jill Dewitt: So we know we’re doing something right.
Steven Butala: The road to hell. Here’s my response to that, The road to hell is paved with good intentions. You know who you are.
Jill Dewitt: Right. Thanks.
Steven Butala: Join us next time for the episode called The Profile of Land Academy Members with senior manager. This has become a weekly thing now. She works with us.
Jill Dewitt: Super cool. And we answer your questions posted on our online community at landinvestors.com. It is free.
Steven Butala: You are not alone in your real estate ambition. I guess we both had a lot to say.
Jill Dewitt: I think so.
Steven Butala: I don’t even think about that.
Jill Dewitt: You didn’t?
Steven Butala: I just, I ranted a little bit.
Jill Dewitt: You did. Well we haven’t talked about this in awhile, and I love it when it does come up, and people really want, and I was just reading something earlier about someone put in our Facebook group, which I think is free to everyone by the way. I think you just sign up and you can get in our Facebook group. I don’t know. But someone put in there about us saying, “That’s the thing about Steven and Jill. They’ll tell you honestly.” Whether it’s good, whether it’s bad, we’re going to be honest.
Steven Butala: Yep.
Jill Dewitt: And I love it.
Steven Butala: You can’t get into this business on the money that you spend for a cup of coffee every day.
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Steven Butala: We are Steve and Jill. Information-
Jill Dewitt: .. and inspiration-
Steven Butala: … to buy undervalued property.
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