Not What you Choose to Work on Its What You Choose Not To (LA 1098)
Not What you Choose to Work on Its What You Choose Not To (LA 1098)
Transcript:
Steve J.B.: Steve and Jill here.
Jill Dewit: Hello.
Steve J.B.: Welcome to the Land Academy show entertaining land investment talk. I’m Steven Jack Butala-
Jill Dewit: And Jill Dewit broadcasting from sunny Southern California.
Steve J.B.: Today, Jill and I talk about it’s not what you choose to work on, it’s what you choose not to work on.
Jill Dewit: I love this topic.
Steve J.B.: Before we get into it, let’s take a question. This is a little bit, kind of a new setup for us, so we’re trying to work it out.
Jill Dewit: I know. Do you want me to go print out some stuff? That would have been better.
Steve J.B.: Well, we can do it next show. You know what? This is perfect. You can see, if you’re watching this-
Jill Dewit: Us fail? We’re failing.
Steve J.B.: Yes, you can watch us fail.
Jill Dewit: We’re failing right now.
Steve J.B.: Then next week, this is Friday. So next week, it’ll be a little bit more put together.
Jill Dewit: Exactly.
Steve J.B.: But, this is how progress happens.
Jill Dewit: Yes, we have a teleprompter, and we can’t reach the teleprompter, so this is how we’re failing. So, Steven has to lean way over to adjust the teleprompter. Not that we need a teleprompter, none of this is really scripted, but the question, I need to be able to read the question, I do not have that memorized.
Steve J.B.: We’ll do that on paper next time.
Jill Dewit: All right, and I will fix this.
Steve J.B.: Doesn’t stop you from looking good though, Jill.
Jill Dewit: Aw, thank you. I’ll just sit back here and just relax.
Steve J.B.: What’s different from that from the other time?
Jill Dewit: I’m going to get little table here, we’re going to put our drinks and stuff, but that’s going to be fun.
Steve J.B.: Excellent.
Jill Dewit: Cool. All right, go for it.
Steve J.B.: 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: Okay. Skylar asks, “We have all heard about deal funding, but is anyone interested in doing transactional funding? Thanks.” Did anybody reply to this yet?
Steve J.B.: No.
Jill Dewit: Okay.
Steve J.B.: And that’s why I wanted to personally reply to it.
Jill Dewit: What are your thoughts?
Steve J.B.: I honestly don’t understand the question, and this is a big topic for me.
Jill Dewit: Okay.
Steve J.B.: This actually taps into what this topic is today. Jill and I have now the luxury of choosing what we work on and what we don’t. As entrepreneurs, that’s the very definition of, in my opinion, succeeding or not succeeding. One of the things that I’m choosing to work on in a big bad way is funding. I talked about it a little bit, I think on a couple of shows ago or earlier in the week, if we had $100 million to spend, we could spend it and probably double it, or at least throw off a 40 to 50% return on it very quickly.
Jill Dewit: Right.
Steve J.B.: And so, funding is a big deal. Since we had this live event, and just because of the show, we’re getting a lot of people reaching out to us, offering us funding. We haven’t found that perfect fit yet for some reason. There’s a lot of people out there with a lot of money, but there’s very few people that understand land.
Jill Dewit: Right. That’s true.
Steve J.B.: I’m not sure why or how land got this reputation. It gets lobed into commercial real estate, and commercial real estate by the very nature of it is treated on capitalization rates, which heavily rely on rent-
Jill Dewit: Right.
Steve J.B.: … being the model no matter what type of commercial real estate, and rent’s not involved in land, usually, almost always.
Jill Dewit: Right.
Steve J.B.: So it gets cast aside. Hey, yay for us, and yay for you listener, because you figured it out.
Jill Dewit: Yeah, exactly.
Steve J.B.: This is a huge profit center.
Jill Dewit: Right.
Steve J.B.: So transactional funding versus deal funding is the same thing. I’m not sure this person is saying, “We have a bunch of money and we want to get involved or we don’t have any money, but we have some deals.”
Jill Dewit: Right.
Steve J.B.: So Skylar, whoever you are, let us know.
Jill Dewit: Okay.
Steve J.B.: We have solutions for both.
Jill Dewit: Right. If it’s a really good idea, you think you’ve got something to share with us, send it to support@landacademy.com.
Steve J.B.: Perfect.
Jill Dewit: If it’s a crappy idea, please send it to not us at land-
Steve J.B.: Send it to support@thelandgeek.com.
Jill Dewit: Oh, yeah. That’s perfect. That’s awesome. That’s so good. All right, I love it.
Steve J.B.: I’m going to skip Trace Jack Bosch and tell him all about it.
Jill Dewit: There we go. There you go. We’ll be over here.
Steve J.B.: We’ll be over here succeeding.
Jill Dewit: Exactly. Oh, this is good.
Steve J.B.: This is more for fun back here for some reason.
Jill Dewit: It really is, yeah.
Steve J.B.: Today’s topic, go ahead. Oh, we got to stump the chump.
Jill Dewit: Oh, yeah, yeah. Okay. It’s your turn to ask me a question. The points are right now, you have 750, I have 1,000 because we weren’t keeping track and you were being nice, and you had took a huge hit on the Weight Watchers comment.
Steve J.B.: I know. So, what is this store?
Jill Dewit: 1,000, 750.
Steve J.B.: Okay.
Jill Dewit: So, give me a question a give me how many points for-
Steve J.B.: Okay. For 500 points.
Jill Dewit: For 500 points. Okay, got it, which is good. Stump the chump, mean, me.
Steve J.B.: On behalf of all mothers out there, what are the top one or two or three most annoying things your children do consistently? Not just one offs, regardless of age? I’m making this harder.
Jill Dewit: Oh, my gosh. Oh, number one, whatever space they are in-
Steve J.B.: Physical space or space?
Jill Dewit: No, no. Yeah, we’ll get to that one. Whatever space they’re in, whether it’s their room, a vehicle, a doctor’s office, I do not care. They seem to walk off and leave anything they don’t care about, and sometimes it’s things they do care about, but they just leave them there and walk off and leave them knowing that the mother is going to take care of it and pick up after them.
Steve J.B.: Boy, that is annoying as hell for me too.
Jill Dewit: It’s horrible.
Steve J.B.: Boy, I concur with that.
Jill Dewit: It’s horrible. Number two, this is actually easy for me. Am I getting these right? What you think, [crosstalk 00:05:59] timer?
Steve J.B.: Well you already for number one.
Jill Dewit: All right. Number two, this is-
Steve J.B.: Didn’t take you long to think about this, did it?
Jill Dewit: No, right. More boys then girls … Hang on, I lost my little train of thought on what was I going to say about-
Steve J.B.: Top annoying things on behalf of all mothers.
Jill Dewit: Right.
Steve J.B.: Regardless of age or gender, but that’s okay. What are the most annoying things that children do consistently? Not just one off.
Jill Dewit: They cannot remember from the moment the words leave my mouth to them exiting the room to go do whatever has been asked of them. What is being asked of them? They can’t remember.
Steve J.B.: They’re they’re just not involved.
Jill Dewit: No, they’re not.
Steve J.B.: They don’t have a vested interest in our family.
Jill Dewit: No, no.
Steve J.B.: I noticed that too.
Jill Dewit: Even if I write down three things and put a piece of paper in their hand, they’ll lay down the piece of paper after item number one … While they’re doing item number one and forgetting number two and three. Remember when we were kids in school, and this is a long time ago, okay? But they used to remember … Did you ever have this stigma where your teacher would … A note would be pinned on your shirt?
Steve J.B.: Yeah.
Jill Dewit: We all know why that happened. I should do that with our children, but that-
Steve J.B.: Could you imagine sending the kids to school in high school with a note pinned on there, they would just get killed.
Jill Dewit: Don’t forget to give this check to the cafeteria lady to catch up your account, I’m going to do that. I’m going to put an envelope … Put it on his shirt.
Steve J.B.: Let’s do that, I’m going to take a picture of that and put it all over social media.
Jill Dewit: I think I will. You know what I want to do, actually it’s happening right now with lacrosse, he needs a slip or he needs his physical stuff, or something like that or something for lacrosse and we’ll put it on his shirt and make him show up like that.
Steve J.B.: He would immediately go from starting center to fourth string defense.
Jill Dewit: Okay, what is that? Here we go. All right. I’m trying to think of if I have a third one. Another very annoying thing with children. And then my third thing is every kid says I don’t care what we have for dinner, but then they always have an opinion when you come up with, “All right, we’re having this.” “Oh not that, oh I really don’t like that.” Really? You said you didn’t have an opinion.
Steve J.B.: This is a Jack and Jill moment, this is a good time for me to bring this up-
Jill Dewit: Uh-oh.
Steve J.B.: … Because you can’t hit me on the air.
Jill Dewit: Oh.
Steve J.B.: I have never understood this about you, this food thing.
Jill Dewit: Oh.
Steve J.B.: My whole life until I met you, whoever was making dinner, because half the time it’s me or choosing to go to dinner. That’s it … If we didn’t discuss until I met you, what we’re having for dinner, whoever was making it just made it and then you ate it.
Jill Dewit: Oh, so in past relationships?
Steve J.B.: Everything, all while I was growing up.
Jill Dewit: I will say it’s a character flaw in me.
Steve J.B.: Oh my gosh, you’re going to admit this?
Jill Dewit: Well because you know what it is, I’m trying to make sure you’re happy.
Steve J.B.: Oh, that’s the biggest malarkey I’ve ever heard in my life.
Jill Dewit: What?
Steve J.B.: I call it B.S.
Jill Dewit: Hold on a minute.
Steve J.B.: That was absolutely a Dale Carnegie pile of crap Jill.
Jill Dewit: All right. Well, but you know what though?
Steve J.B.: Absolutely, you’re trying to please me.
Jill Dewit: I use this [crosstalk 00:00:09:23].
Steve J.B.: I would eat cardboard.
Jill Dewit: All right.
Steve J.B.: I would eat cardboard tonight with some mustard on it.
Jill Dewit: This is a Jack and Jill moment. There are times you act like the kids and I say, “Fine then we’re going here,” and you go, “No, I don’t want Mexican again.” Because I’ll eat Mexican every day.
Steve J.B.: Oh my gosh.
Jill Dewit: There we go.
Steve J.B.: That’s just not the case.
Jill Dewit: You will have Mexican everyday with me?
Steve J.B.: After about 30 days in a row of eating fajitas. Yeah, I really liked to have something else.
Jill Dewit: Would you eat them three days in row with me? I mean going to test you.
Steve J.B.: Absolutely, yes.
Jill Dewit: All right, you heard this. Let’s get to the show.
Steve J.B.: And honestly do kids care about food at all?
Jill Dewit: Let’s get to the show.
Steve J.B.: So how did this food … All right. This is it, we got to do a Jack and Jill show.
Jill Dewit: I got the [inaudible 00:10:00].
Steve J.B.: Today’s topic … Somebody is going to … Every time we go a little bit this way.
Jill Dewit: What?
Steve J.B.: The people who are actually listening to the show to learn how to buy and sell land-
Jill Dewit: Are gong to be like, “Cut to the chase.”
Steve J.B.: They pipe in, they’re like, “Can you guys stop for a second.”
Jill Dewit: “Hurry up, just get to the …”
Steve J.B.: I need to send a mailer out.
Jill Dewit: Exactly.
Steve J.B.: Today’s topic, it’s not what you choose to work on. It’s what you choose not to work on. This is the meat of the show.
Jill Dewit: Okay. This has come about probably … It comes about often, at least once a quarter we catch ourselves, we get distracted and we’re working on the wrong stuff and we’re working on too many projects. And what ends up happening, none of them get done as well or as fast or at all completed as they should. This has come up for us again, and we want to share this with everybody because if it’s a struggle with us, I’m pretty sure it’s a struggle with you. Sometimes it’s not about what you’re working on is what you’re not working on, you really need to focus. So I made some notes, I’m going to rattle off my notes and then I would love for you to weigh in wherever you want.
Steve J.B.: Before you do that-
Jill Dewit: Because you will.
Steve J.B.: Before you do that, this is my big takeaway from the live event. There are some people that … The advanced group and some other people that just were pretty vocal in the group and rightfully so said, “We only do this kind of deal and that’s it, and we only do two deals a month and we make sure that we make $50 to $1000 on each of them.
Jill Dewit: Yep.
Steve J.B.: So I haven’t, for whatever reason, and I was talking about this with somebody else, I just don’t know when to stop. Actually it was Travis, if my goal was to make 1 million bucks a month, then it’s going to be 2 million after that. So anyway, go ahead.
Jill Dewit: I’m very familiar with that. All right, so here’s what I think and some of what we’ve talked about too. A, all right, this is all great guys. How do I do this? What, what do I do? Well, the easiest way, pick one thing, for us it’s one that makes the most financial sense. It might be something for you, maybe for you, it’s even like, I need to focus on my family, I’m not giving my family enough time. That needs to be my focus right now. I don’t know. Whatever it is, something, pick one thing, zero in on it and, and stay with it. Don’t get distracted. Don’t be focused on your family and start three new businesses next week, that’s not going to work. And for us, this is our version. We’re focused on a financial project and we’ll still start three new businesses next week. That doesn’t do us any good either.
Steve J.B.: Right.
Jill Dewit: It’s the same thing, it’s pulling us away from the other thing that we really should be focusing on. And then my final thing is follow through to completion or alter as needed, because sometimes as you get into it you are going to need to make some changes. You don’t have to steadfast headstrong, I wrote down the what it’s going to be and I’m not going to waiver. No, because we know there’s going to be things you need to adjust or shift to get to that goal, whatever it is. But just you got to pick something, and then a lot of us like us, I didn’t mean this to be the Jill show … Okay. You and I, we can successfully do couple things. How do I know this? We have our shows, we have our staff, we have Land Academy, we are buying and selling property. There’s other things we’ve done … We could probably handle, safely five. What happens is we try to do 15 that’s where I think that for me, that’s where I get spread too thin. What do you think?
Steve J.B.: Well, I think that it’s habits, it’s all about habits. And Jill and I, for whatever reason are … This happened when we met, we individually are used to go in a hundred miles an hour.
Jill Dewit: Right.
Steve J.B.: I don’t mean that you can’t do 10 companies, because we have eight lines of business … Eight or nine, I think nine strong lines of revenue right now. You just can’t do them on all at the same time.
Jill Dewit: Exactly.
Steve J.B.: You got to to start one, put the right person in place to run it and literally, figuratively and literally walk away. You can’t work there anymore and you’re just watching the numbers and that’s it.
Jill Dewit: Can’t get bogged won on the details.
Steve J.B.: Maybe having a Zoom conference call maybe once a week or once a month.
Jill Dewit: Right.
Steve J.B.: And you have to accept this, this is a [inaudible 00:14:25] for me, the whole thing, you have to accept that whoever is running the thing isn’t going to do as good of a job as you.
Jill Dewit: True.
Steve J.B.: You have to have that conversation in the mirror with yourself. Yep, she’s going to do about 80% of what, maybe if you’re lucky, 75 to 80% of what you’re capable of, and she’s probably not going to have the creative ideas and the stuff that … The creative juice that caused to start the company or at the line of revenue and in the first place is probably not going to be … That’s not in a skillset for somebody to run a company.
Jill Dewit: Right.
Steve J.B.: They need to run stuff, they need to tell people what to do, make them accountable, put some systems in place, that talent, usually that’s operations talent. That’s how it doesn’t usually go with that entrepreneurial startup talent, which is really what I excel at.
Jill Dewit: Right.
Steve J.B.: And frankly you do too, in the beginning I would dream up these crazy things and Jill would implement them and that worked for awhile. I don’t think personally Jill’s an operations person, she might think she is, but I think she’s got more of an entrepreneurial startup talent than the other.
Jill Dewit: Thank you.
Steve J.B.: Problem with us-
Jill Dewit: I think you’re right.
Steve J.B.: … Is that we can get away with being operations people, So sometimes we do it-
Jill Dewit: Exactly.
Steve J.B.: … And we shouldn’t, we should bring in operations expert and just walk away and go start the next one.
Jill Dewit: Exactly, exactly.
Steve J.B.: So we’ve actually learned from that. I mean we have … There’s four companies, companies that we have that are non-land and non-real estate related. They’re real estate related, but they don’t involve buying and selling real estate.
Jill Dewit: Correct, ParcelFact.
Steve J.B.: ParcelFact, Land Academy.
Jill Dewit: Offers 2 Owners.
Steve J.B.: House Academy and O2O.
Jill Dewit: Right.
Steve J.B.: All of those now have … I guess it all happened since the live event. Line heads, we call them lines of business, they have line managers and so we’re picking up some of the slack … Land Academy itself does great.
Jill Dewit: Right.
Steve J.B.: House Academy isn’t where it needs to be at.
Jill Dewit: It’s coming.
Steve J.B.: ParcelFact and O2O constantly grow every month, but they could be doing double.
Jill Dewit: Exactly.
Steve J.B.: I’m just happy that those two companies operated at a loss for a year, more than a year when we started out.
Jill Dewit: I want to end on this for me, we did this that we did this a week ago. We talked about, we went away. One of the things we did in the drive out of town was we wrote down all the 20 things that we’re working on. And then we pick the top three and we and all the other ones, we crossed them off.
Steve J.B.: Crossed them off, God, that makes me feel good.
Jill Dewit: Should we be doing this? Nope. Should we be doing this? Nope. Should we be doing this? Nope. And it was a bummer because we had to send out several emails for people that were going to do some separate projects with and everything and we had to nicely say, “We’re not doing it.” We have to put this on hold for a little while, these other things are more important and that’s it. It’s the right thing to do, as hard as it is, and as frustrating as it is, you need to do that. And I look at it as a positive thing, my last thing is here’s the good news. We are focusing on the top three things right now that really make the most financial sense. And sense for our members, our community, our companies, all those things are aligned … And make sense to us and we and we enjoy them too.
Jill Dewit: Yeah, that’s part of it.
Steve J.B.: It’s really good. And then what I know is we crossed off 15 things that should we ever get bored someday or whatever. We got 15 more projects and more companies and stuff right there, ready to go. It’s a good feeling.
Jill Dewit: Exactly.
Steve J.B.: Thank you. Hey join us next time for another interesting episode.
Jill Dewit: And we answer your questions posted on our online community found at landinvestors.com, it is free.
Steve J.B.: You are not alone in your real estate ambition.
Jill Dewit: You look funny going back and forth, if you’re watching this, it’s hilarious. If you’re not watching it, you should. We changed our set up just a little bit, it’s got the same background but we pushed our chairs back because I’m going to start … I want to start making this more of a different setup and environment. Maybe bring in another camera, make it more conversational. It’s definitely going to happen for the Jack and Jill show, that’ll probably happen for this show and the House Academy show too.
Steve J.B.: I love the idea of two cameras.
Jill Dewit: By the way, this Land Academy show still remains commercial-free for you, our loyal listener. So wherever you’re watching or wherever you’re listening, please subscribe and rate us there. We are Steve and Jill.
Steve J.B.: We are Steve and Jill. Information-
Jill Dewit: And inspiration-
Steve J.B.: To buy-
Jill Dewit: … To buy undervalued property. Sorry, I’m walking for you. I’m just changing it. You want to do that again?
Steve J.B.: Sure.
Jill Dewit: Okay. We are Steve and Jill.
Steve J.B.: We are Steve and Jill. Information-
Jill Dewit: And inspiration-
Steve J.B.: To buy undervalued property.
Jill Dewit: Better?
Steve J.B.: Crack me up Jill.
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