Life Restarts When You Leave (LA 1273)
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Steven Butala:
Steve and Jill here.
Jill DeWit:
Happy Friday.
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 about How Life Restarts When You Leave.
Jill DeWit:
It’s funny. When I saw the title, I wrote it down. I wrote, Life Starts When You Leave.
Steven Butala:
It’s the same thing.
Jill DeWit:
I know.
Steven Butala:
That could have been the title, actually.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah. Or like, restart? No, no. Sometimes life just starts. Sometimes you’re in a bad situation for years, maybe decades.
Steven Butala:
Yeah.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah.
Steven Butala:
Maybe it’s-
Jill DeWit:
Maybe it’s your childhood.
Steven Butala:
And maybe it’s your whole life, and it just never got restarted.
Jill DeWit:
Maybe. And now life starts.
Steven Butala:
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:
Cupid Gave Up On Me wrote, this also goes onto the life starts when you leave [inaudible 00:00:00:57], “I was offered to purchase a property in Southern Colorado that is rural, heavily-treed, and very pretty. But when I was looking into it, I see it’s classified as range land. I’m unfamiliar with this type of property. It’s confusing, since a lot of it is forest. I tried looking it up on the county, but I can’t seem to find any information as to what this means to me, as a possible investor. Is this a red flag for anyone? I’m thinking if I bought it, would I have a hard time selling it, because the buyer would be limited in its use.”
Steven Butala:
You want to go first?
Jill DeWit:
Okay. We have two options. The way I see this, one is, and I personally might do a little more digging, because I always want to know what’s possible with a property. Can I put a mobile on it? Can I put a camper on it? And looking at it online, I can see if there’s a buildable spot. Are there things around there? There’s things that I can do. So I don’t want to dig too deep, because my time is really valuable. But I am going to dig a little bit further and just, again, find out what’s possible.
Jill DeWit:
My other thoughts are, if I hit roadblock after roadblock after roadblock, where I can’t find out, can I put a mobile on there? Can I do this? Can I do that? It’s just so many confusing things. Then I would probably offer a crazy low price, then if they say yes, I have to buy it, and I don’t really care at this point, because I know I can do something with it at that price.
Jill DeWit:
I’m passing the baton.
Steven Butala:
Yeah. I mean, I’m going to say, the data version, but the answer is still the same as Jill’s. So she’s got issues with, in quotes, range land. So to some extent, well, to every extent, you can control this by how you send out offers. And in the House group, we send out info lots, or maybe in the Land group too. We all know that houses aren’t going to be built on these info lots. We do it. That’s how we do the mailer. So we know what the use is when offers come back. She did, as I do, in a mailer, sent out a parameter, she built a parameter, either in Real Quest or DataTree, and sent everybody an offer, regardless of use. Or let’s say-
Jill DeWit:
So Cupid, so this is a girl?
Steven Butala:
Yeah.
Jill DeWit:
Okay. Thank you.
Steven Butala:
Yeah, for sure.
Jill DeWit:
Okay.
Steven Butala:
Well, the picture is.
Jill DeWit:
Oh, I didn’t know that. Okay.
Steven Butala:
And she’s not a member.
Jill DeWit:
I thought you were talking about, for some reason, I think you said she, I thought you meant me.
Steven Butala:
No, no.
Jill DeWit:
No, you meant the writer. Okay, good.
Steven Butala:
So you can control the types of offers that come back, but why? Why not send it to all the uses that are acceptable, and see what comes back and test it? So the variable here is range land. But it could be, as Jill alluded to, agriculture land, industrial property, parking lot, cemetery, on and on and on. It can be all-
Jill DeWit:
Hunting property.
Steven Butala:
Hunting.
Jill DeWit:
There could be a lot of valuable uses.
Steven Butala:
Recreation only, mobile home only. So it’s not just a range land. This question is bigger than what the person who asked this question really thinks. The question really is, in my mind, “I got this strange use, or alternative use, or X use property back. And should I be concerned about that?” And Jill’s answer is correct. Probably not, but you should find out what it is.
Jill DeWit:
And it’s easy [crosstalk 00:04:16].
Steven Butala:
Just get to the bottom of it.
Jill DeWit:
The best thing I would say here too, is just pick up the phone. I like to do my own digging too. So it sounds like you’re like me. I like to do my own research, try to find what I can. So then, even if I call the county, at least I got a lot of the questions answered on my own. So I’m not bugging them with the stupid stuff. And then I can say, “Look, I’ve looked high and low online, and I cannot figure out for the life of me what range land is.” And they’re going to go, “Oh, you’re not alone.” And I’m going to say, “Look, I’ve got X amount of acres,” because that might make a difference, “Of range land. What can I do with it?” And then they will, be careful, because it could be a 20 minute phone call.
Steven Butala:
It’s always a 20 minute phone call with Jill, because women never call the county. It’s always men.
Jill DeWit:
Oh, thank you. Yeah. There’s times I have to. I have a hard time. That’s true. I have a hard time getting them off the phone. I’m like, “Thank you, uh-huh (affirmative). Thank you. Thank you. Wow, really? Oh, thank you.”
Steven Butala:
It’s Wednesday. I’m at my stupid job. I never really wanted this job in the first place, and a pretty girl just called me. Am I going to do my stupid job, or talk to a pretty girl?
Jill DeWit:
Thank you. Well then, and I think, and since Cupid Gave Up On Me, is it a girl? She’s going to be just fine.
Steven Butala:
Right. The real issue, and I’ll end it on this, is does your range land, or whatever land you’re looking at, have good access? And by the way, the county, they’ll look it up right on the screen while they’re on the phone with you and say, “Yeah, range land is really a great piece of property to own, but you don’t have any access here,” or, “You have fantastic two-side access to a county road here. Your range land can be used for dah dah dah, dah dah dah dah,” a half hour later, you’re like, “Okay.”
Jill DeWit:
Yep.
Steven Butala:
Today’s topic, How To Handle Calls From … oh, that was an incorrect. Today’s topic, Life Restarts When You Leave. This is the meat of the show.
Jill DeWit:
Life restarts.
Steven Butala:
Life restarts when you don’t make errors in scripts.
Jill DeWit:
Or life starts, either way.
Jill DeWit:
I wrote down two things. You have voluntary and involuntary. And a lot of it’s happening right now for people. A lot of involuntary things are happening, like you have to work from home. You don’t have a job. You have to be home and homeschool. Your finances just got severely cut. There’s a lot of things like that, that are involuntarily happening. And then voluntarily happening right now is, “Hey, I don’t have to commute anymore. How great is this? Now is the time that I’m going to start my own business. I didn’t need these clowns anyway. I was looking for a reason to leave,” a lot of things like that. I’m not going to get into relationship stuff.
Steven Butala:
I would.
Jill DeWit:
Okay.
Steven Butala:
If I were you. I mean, I will.
Jill DeWit:
I know. What do you have to say?
Steven Butala:
Look back on your life. Here’s a few examples that every single one of us have gone through.
Steven Butala:
We graduated in some form. We either graduated or we left school. And so, and then you had a lot of choices to make, some of them voluntary, some of them involuntary. Most of them have involved getting a job. Most or all of us got a job after school. We either voluntarily-
Jill DeWit:
Voluntarily.
Steven Butala:
Terminated school first, in lieu of getting a job, or graduated from high school and went to college, or got a job at that point, or and then graduated from college and got a job. And so my question is this. Did your life get better? Did your life restart, or did it get worse?
Steven Butala:
And so there’s other, maybe you got married, maybe you got unmarried. Did your life get better after that, or worse? You had kids, better or worse? You lost a job, better or worse? You left a job for a new career. Was that a good decision or a bad decision? Was it better or worse? No matter what, your life restarts when these events happen, voluntary or involuntary.
Jill DeWit:
It’s my reset button.
Steven Butala:
So I can look back almost with every single example and say my life got better. Was it fun? No way. Was I out of my comfort zone? Absolutely, every single time. Did it drive me to tears? Sometimes yeah, especially the involuntary times. But you recover. You restart, and you have control over this. It’s Friday, so it’s all philosophical.
Jill DeWit:
You know, it’s funny you said that. So you don’t have any positive situations like this, where it was like, you’re excited and fun and-
Steven Butala:
Every single one was positive.
Jill DeWit:
Oh good. Okay. You said-
Steven Butala:
Because I believe that-
Jill DeWit:
Yeah, you said something like, was it horrible? Yes.
Steven Butala:
Yeah.
Jill DeWit:
Was it this? Yeah.
Steven Butala:
Did it work to my benefit? Let me be real clear.
Jill DeWit:
Okay.
Steven Butala:
Did it work? And I’m not just talking about myself here. I’m asking everyone listening to this, let’s ask themselves the same question. Did it turn out to be a positive, not a negative? For me, heck yes. But was it easy? No. It sucked most of the time. That’s the truth of it.
Jill DeWit:
I’ve been lucky. I’ve had some really good situations, where-
Steven Butala:
You just have a real good attitude, Jill, about everything.
Jill DeWit:
I’ve had things just fall into place. Like the first house I wanted is available. The first this is … I got a job just like that. I’m excited to go to a new city, because it was a bigger city. It may be true, right, ’cause I went from, one was an involuntarily move, which moved me out of Southern California into Arizona. But then when I moved from a smaller town in Arizona to a bigger town in Arizona, that was voluntary. It was awesome. I had a really good time. I got to go to bigger city, more jobs, more to do, more opportunity. It was great.
Steven Butala:
Yeah. I mean the transition is always hard. The outcome is almost always better. I know for you, we’ve talked about this a million times. Not on the air and not under this title, but-
Jill DeWit:
Right.
Steven Butala:
That’s why we’re together.
Jill DeWit:
Thanks.
Steven Butala:
We just move forward. You got to keep moving forward, even if it’s difficult.
Jill DeWit:
That’s the whole point of this. No matter what, whether it’s voluntary or involuntary, stuff’s going to always happen, and you have to pick yourself up and move forward.
Steven Butala:
Yeah. Rocky Balboa has-
Jill DeWit:
Don’t let it break you down, so-
Steven Butala:
Rocky Balboa has got a great speech in the last Rocky movie about, with his son, his grown son, he said, “Life will beat you down and it’ll keep you there if you let it.”
Jill DeWit:
Yeah.
Steven Butala:
And that’s just what this is. That’s what this COVID thing is. That’s what this economic downturn is. And this won’t be the last virus thing. Whoever caused this, or however this started, the outcome was, this is the desired outcome. So this is, unfortunately for this generation, is going to see it many times, and the generations to come are going to see this happen over and over again.
Jill DeWit:
I don’t want this to break them down and scare them or something. I want them to always keep moving forward, and know they can push through and find solutions to all of these things. We’re perfect examples of, we never thought our office could be remote. Nope. We needed everybody to be there every day. Had a great office, we provide coffee, lunch on Fridays. And then this hit, and I was dragging my feet on the day. I’m like, “When are we sending everybody home? What are we going to do? Our efforts are going to fail.” And it didn’t. So I hope that everybody is also feeling that, and learning and moving forward.
Steven Butala:
Yeah.
Jill DeWit:
I hope that you’re not sitting in, I hope you are looking for new jobs, and making new decisions, and coming up with new ideas. I know we are. That’s where, you know, it’s interesting, as I felt so blessed and so lucky, ’cause this is the whole Land Academy community. We already have that same mentality.
Steven Butala:
Right.
Jill DeWit:
We’re in it.
Steven Butala:
That’s right.
Jill DeWit:
We are already those people. The reason that people are in Land Academy and House Academy is because they’re looking for something better, and making their own changes, and setting up their own businesses, and getting better at flipping properties and finding properties and all of this. So it was like, “Ah, great. I already had this fallback plan. No big deal. Now I’m going to go at it even harder.” And so I’m lucky that I am surrounded, and with you, and all of these people. So my community is kind of like, “What’s … We’re cool.”
Steven Butala:
Yeah. If you haven’t listened to it, either two days ago or three days ago, where we interviewed a member, Lori Phillips, who talks about the changes that she’s made during this whole COVID thing, all voluntarily, fortunately for her, and how she’s made it work for her. And it’s a real good example of just going through that change. This isn’t the last change that, involuntary change that Jill and I will go through. I think you, to some degree, to the bitter end, there’s going to be changes, and stuff you have to deal with that you don’t want to deal with.
Jill DeWit:
Thank you. Happy you could join us today. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday we are here on the Land Academy Show. Tuesdays and Thursdays you can find us on the House Academy Show.
Steven Butala:
Next week, join us on the Land Academy Show for another interesting episode, You Are Not Alone In Your Real Estate Ambition.
Jill DeWit:
I didn’t finish my little story-
Steven Butala:
Go ahead.
Jill DeWit:
From sixth grade.
Steven Butala:
Oh yeah.
Jill DeWit:
Do you want to tell the story from sixth grade?
Steven Butala:
No, I want you to. It’s perfect.
Jill DeWit:
I don’t know if it really ties into the voluntary … Well, I got in trouble for talking. Let’s just … always been a thing.
Steven Butala:
Now you make a living at it.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah. It’s always been a thing. And my teacher, Mr. Tinsman, was sick of my talking. So he decided to move me to the front of the room, put me right front and center, thinking that’s going to do it. Nope. It didn’t matter. So then he moves me to the back of the room. Does that make a difference? Nope. Still didn’t matter. So then he moved me off to the side of the bathroom and put a bookcase in front of me. And so, of course I’m bored. I’m dying for something to do, an interaction. I was actually a good student too. I mean, I apparently had a lot of free time. I’d get my work done and I still had free time.
Jill DeWit:
So I made some signs, and I put signs all around the bookcase. And I started renting out the books and charging 25 cents. It was like anywhere from 10 to 25 cents to rent a book on the bookcase. There were encyclopedias on there. There were dictionaries on there, that kind of stuff. So Mr. Tinsman says politely, he calls me up to his desk in the afternoon and says, “Here’s the deal. Here’s my cut.” And we did a whole business plan. And he told me it’s his room, his books. “I respect your business. But to lease the books from me, and the space that you’ve got, and all this stuff …” Anyway, the way he spelled it all out, the money that was left over, that profit that I would make, wasn’t worth the whole deal. So I politely took all the signs down.
Steven Butala:
That’s like the real estate agent model. “Here’s the deal. I’m going to get in the way of your transaction, do nothing, and demand 6%.”
Jill DeWit:
Yeah. He wanted way more than 6%.
Steven Butala:
What was … Do you remember the term?
Jill DeWit:
It was like 20%. Like I’d get pennies left. I’m like, “Well, I’m not doing it for pennies. 25 cents a book I can handle. I have $3 right now.” But-
Steven Butala:
So obviously you remembered this your whole life.
Jill DeWit:
I did.
Steven Butala:
Do you think it was … and you got crushed by the fees.
Jill DeWit:
I did.
Steven Butala:
Those are life lessons. This seems like a good teacher.
Jill DeWit:
Geez, man. He was a great teacher.
Steven Butala:
Do you think his motivation was to make any money, or just to like-
Jill DeWit:
Teach me a lesson.
Steven Butala:
To get you to stop.
Jill DeWit:
Get me to stop. And you know what’s interesting? He could have said, “Take the signs down. We’re not doing this.” No, he just chose to-
Steven Butala:
Yeah, he could have called your parents.
Jill DeWit:
Give me a little business lesson in there.
Steven Butala:
Yeah. He gave you a lifelong, memorable education experience.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah. He was good. I’ll never forget him.
Steven Butala:
Actually, I respect that.
Jill DeWit:
Mr. Tinsman, he was really cool.
Jill DeWit:
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Jill DeWit:
We are Steve and Jill.
Steven Butala:
We are Steve and Jill. Information-
Jill DeWit:
And inspiration-
Steven Butala:
To buy undervalued property.
If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to email me directly at steven@BuWit.com.
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