Land Business 401: Staff in Place and Partners Fund Acquisitions (LA 1332)
Land Business 401: Staff in Place and Partners Fund Acquisitions (LA 1332)
Transcript:
Steven Butala:
Steve and Jill here.
Jill DeWit:
Hello.
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 hazy Southern California.
Steven Butala:
On fire Southern California.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah. I was going to say sunny. I’m like, shucks. I can’t really say sunny because I can’t see the sun right now. It’s crazy.
Steven Butala:
Today Jill and I talk about your land business 401. Your staff’s in place and your partners are now funding acquisitions. Why? Because you don’t have any money left if you’re doing everything right at this point in your career. You’re spending half of your time looking for new people, which is way more hard, to work for you. Way harder than it. You’re a recruiter. And number two, finding partners or using the partners that you have so that you can do more real estate deals.
Jill DeWit:
Because all your money is allocated.
Steven Butala:
How ironic is that? You do everything right, you don’t have any money.
Jill DeWit:
Right. So this is the 400 level, so all week you’ve been doing like freshmen, sophomore, junior. Congratulation, 400 level. You’re now a senior. Tomorrow’s masters level. We’ll get to that. So right now you’re taking your final classes. You’re kind of just, I look at it like I’m just learning the last little bits of information. Maybe some tweaks. Because I’m going out into the world.
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:
Mike wrote, “I have an accepted offer on a rural property and I’m trying to confirm access. If the county GIS parcel report shows a street address, can I assume there is legal access, even though the satellite view on Google maps does not show a road? I have some buyers that don’t care how difficult it is to get to the property. They just want to know they can legally get there.”
Steven Butala:
There’s a 98% chance that what you’re saying is true. Can you absolutely assume that there’s legal access if it has an address? No, but that’s a huge step in the right direction. What you want to do is take a look at a plat map that you can hopefully get from either it’s either been scanned in online or ask the county to send you one, and you’ll see on the plat map the property’s either got straight lines. Straight, single lines. Think of it like lines in a road, or it’s got dotted lines. If it has a dotted lines, those are the easements or that property that’s the real estate, actual real estate that’s been allocated. Maybe there’s no road there at all. It’s just raw land, but a road’s supposed to be there. That is the definition of legal access. In my career, I don’t want you to just take my word for it. In my career, I want you to go check. In my career I’ve never seen a property without a US post office address, if everything’s correct on that, who doesn’t have legal access.
Jill DeWit:
And for those of you who are members and you want to know, “Where can I get that quickly?” I jump into TitlePro, so just so everybody knows, as a Land Academy member, you have access to TitlePro 24/7, which is AgentPro 24/7, but expanded for title agents so it has everything you could possibly want in there, and I can go in and I can pull. I just did one today, a property report, and I get all kinds of information. More than what I want, but there’s usually plat maps in there too.
Steven Butala:
It’s a great question.
Jill DeWit:
Thank you.
Steven Butala:
That’s a, I know you’re going to be successful, probably already successful question.
Jill DeWit:
Thinking ahead about it. It’s important, and I like that. Those are some of the … Isn’t that funny? That brings up a good topic too. You think that, who would want a property that I can’t get there? But there’s so many people that love that. This is a perfect example. They want legal access to know that they’re not going to be breaking any laws, but they love the thought of, “I don’t want my neighbor rolling up. I don’t want it to be paved.”
Steven Butala:
Nobody knows where I am.
Jill DeWit:
You know, I love the four wheel drive part of it here, and I can be lost on my land.
Steven Butala:
I don’t think there’s ever been a time that I’ve been alive where it’s more attractive to get lost.
Jill DeWit:
That’s so true. I learned a long time ago, never assume. Just because it doesn’t appeal to me doesn’t mean it’s not going to appeal to somebody else. You never know.
Steven Butala:
Just right. There are tons and tons and tons of people out there who want to buy property that you can’t get to, and there’s a ton of reasons for that. To let your mind wander.
Jill DeWit:
Oh my goodness.
Steven Butala:
Today’s topic, land business 401. Your staff’s in place and your partners are funding acquisitions. What’s that look like? This is why you’re listening.
Jill DeWit:
What’s that look like to you?
Steven Butala:
Well, I’ll tell you. The euphoria is over and now you pretty much know what your workweek looks like. Yesterday or in your last, in your 301 phase, you were working on your business, not in your business. That all worked, and what you were doing from an efficiency standpoint, staring in the mirror like I asked you to, it worked. It’s efficient. Now, it’s like, “Great. I’m making tons of money every month. The machine is in place. I’ve got some staff in place. What if I took this module and repeated it right over here? So now I need some more staff. I need to even be a better recruiter.”
I’ve never been able to successful outsource recruiting. It’s something you have to do yourself. And, I’m always out of money. No matter how much money I throw into this thing, I spend it, because the acquisitions are so good. And so at this point, you’re looking at things like, “In my inventory I have a value of land and a value of cash, and it’s going like this. Cash is coming in. Cash is going out. Land is coming in. Land is coming out.” And at some point by this time in your career, a few times you will have had to pass on good acquisitions that you would have bought anyway, because you don’t have the money left because you spent it all that month.
You never want that to happen again, so you need to align yourself with partners, and that’s what Land Academy is for. Jill and I just got off of an interview. Somebody interviewed us, and we’re going to be on their show, and-
Jill DeWit:
Sean Pan.
Steven Butala:
Yeah, Sean Pan is his name.
Jill DeWit:
Sean Pan.
Steven Butala:
And you know, Land Academy in the end for Jill and I was to create business partners for ourselves, and that’s manifested itself in all kinds of different strange ways. Some are funding partners. Some are partners in mobile home stuff, and it’s worked out great for us, so aside from the satisfaction of getting people into the business and everything else. So partners. I can’t imagine a situation where you get … You know, I feel bad for this young generation for a lot of reasons, and one of them is-
Jill DeWit:
Stuck with phones in their hands and-
Steven Butala:
You hear about Mark Zuckerberg and guys like Elon Musk, and they’re such heroes to young people. And the fact is, and they had this like, nomadic cowboy thing about them. It’s just one guy. He’s a bajillionaire. He’s sitting in a house like Bill Gates. Not necessarily Bill Gates, because Bill Gates has been and is loud about his partnerships.
Jill DeWit:
Right.
Steven Butala:
Believe me, these guys have tons of business partners. They have the original crew that they started with before they went public, and they just never, they get no media attention. There’s no cowboy. No one’s ever really done well by themselves, so please, you need partners.
Jill DeWit:
I want to know more about what other ways you feel bad for this younger generation. I want to circle back around to that for a second. So, here’s what I heard. Their heroes are not accurate heroes. Is that what it is? Batman had Robin.
Steven Butala:
Oh, keep going there.
Jill DeWit:
Thank you. The Lone Ranger had Tonto. Who else? Wonder Woman … Had a lasso. I don’t know.
Steven Butala:
I don’t know if it’s really honestly generation specific. I mean, I think that-
Jill DeWit:
Why do you say that? I’m just curious.
Steven Butala:
My generation, their heroes were sports figures. They weren’t necessarily business people. My business heroes were people in my neighborhood that were just crushing.
Jill DeWit:
That’s it.
Steven Butala:
They were usually my friends’ parents. Who were your heroes?
Jill DeWit:
That’s what I was going to say. My heroes were, this is good. I like this question. No one’s ever asked me this. It’s kind of funny. I never really thought about it, but I’m sure my heroes were people that I knew of that, because of where they lived. Usually it’s what they had. Like, “I want a house like that.” Like growing up, I grew up in Garden Grove, and Nellie Gail. I had learned about Nellie Gail in Laguna Hills, like, “Oh.” You know? That was like, “Wow, those people arrived.” So that would have been like, “What do they do?” And it was 99% of the time real estate kind of thing.
Steven Butala:
Oh really?
Jill DeWit:
Yeah. Especially in Southern California. That’s exactly. That’s pretty much what it was kind of thing, so those were my heroes.
Steven Butala:
The tragedy in having a hero like Jeff Bezos or, I hear Mark Zuckerberg more than anything for some reason. Not so much anymore, not Elon Musk, is that it’s like having Michael Jordan be your hero or Kobe Bryant. You know, those guys are … Or Wayne Gretzky. They’re not just professional. They’re at the tip top of maybe the best hockey player in the world. Maybe the best IPO.
Jill DeWit:
They’re the elite of the elite. It’s hard to-
Steven Butala:
Maybe Tesla was maybe the most successful IPO there ever was, ever, and so it’s so out of touch. It’s not a normal person. It’s not your friend’s dad, or that person who owns a house at the end of the block that your dad knows.
Jill DeWit:
Right.
Steven Butala:
It’s like, you’re never going to do that. I’m just sorry. The chances of you doing the next Facebook are so small. However, the chances of you buying a piece of real estate and reselling it for twice as much as you paid next month are incredibly good, and so there just becomes this unrealistic thing of what an entrepreneur is. Jill and I taught a class.
Jill DeWit:
It’s interesting.
Steven Butala:
I asked everybody, “Who’s an example of an entrepreneur?” And they all said one of those three people. That’s the furthest thing from an entrepreneur that they should, and I did everything I could to dispel that to that class. You know who an entrepreneur is to me? Am I freaking out?
Jill DeWit:
No, I was like, it’s okay. Don’t take it personally, sweetie. I’m lightening the mood.
Steven Butala:
Oh, sorry.
Jill DeWit:
No, you’re okay.
Steven Butala:
I think somebody who is a great example of just a grassroots entrepreneur pays cash for a duplex, lives on one side, and leases out the other one and everything’s free. That’s what an entrepreneur really is. Now all their bills are paid. Their wife’s hopefully happy, or whatever the situation is. They don’t have to have a job because the basic stuff’s done, and they can go on and do land Academy without a ton of pressure, or they can start a convenience store chain or whatever. Getting so far off topic here, but I feel bad. This generation has so much stuff to sift through and so much misinformation.
Jill DeWit:
That’s the problem.
Steven Butala:
Start to finish, fake news everywhere. I just read a whole article.
Jill DeWit:
Social media junk.
Steven Butala:
Listen to this. I just read a whole article. I got duped.
Jill DeWit:
Duped?
Steven Butala:
Duped.
Jill DeWit:
What’s duped?
Steven Butala:
I got fooled.
Jill DeWit:
Duped. Okay.
Steven Butala:
I read an article. The title was Disneyland’s Moving from California to Texas.
Jill DeWit:
I saw that too.
Steven Butala:
Did you? I read all the way through the whole thing, and they said, “Oh, by the way, this is an advertisement for this company that spoofs news.” And you know, I love my phone, so I didn’t throw it into the ocean. So that’s just an outrage. They stole my time, and I did what I was supposed to do on that and marked it as spam and all that. It’s interesting you got the same newsfeeds.
Jill DeWit:
I saw that too. Well, I get Disneyland for obvious reasons.
Steven Butala:
Oh yeah.
Jill DeWit:
Of course I should get it.
Steven Butala:
Sure.
Jill DeWit:
I like to go there. It’s weird that you got it. That’s more … For you, it popped up as another business going out of state.
Steven Butala:
Partnerships are absolutely necessary, and changing directions quickly on the fly is necessary. I mean, there’s a lot of grassroots stuff that this generation, even when I stand in front of them and explain it, they’re like, “You’re just an old man. You don’t get it.” Like, “You don’t understand the Internet of how this works,” which is ridiculous because I was around when it was created and there every step of the way. So, it’s not about me. I don’t care. I don’t take that personally. I just wish that everybody would stop saying Mark Zuckerberg is an entrepreneur. He’s not.
Jill DeWit:
Well, give me some other … Okay, so the people that you know.
Steven Butala:
You know who’s an entrepreneur? Jack Bosch.
Jill DeWit:
Cool.
Steven Butala:
Comes from another country.
Jill DeWit:
That’s true.
Steven Butala:
Doesn’t speak the language.
Jill DeWit:
That’s good.
Steven Butala:
Marries a woman from South America, doesn’t speak German. Does a bunch of real estate deals, and launches his career to become independently wealthy inside of five or eight years from being a full blown immigrant on a work visa.
Jill DeWit:
That’s very nice of you.
Steven Butala:
That is an entrepreneur. Or somebody, you know, Jill and I, through this COVID, Jill found a person who does her hair and her nails and stuff, and she comes to the house and I was talking to her and she does my hair now, obviously. And she said, “Yeah, this is it now. I’m never going to go back and work in the salon. I charge double. I only work for people who are willing to pay for it.”
Jill DeWit:
“It’s now my own business. I have my own website.”
Steven Butala:
That’s an entrepreneur. She’s putting food on the table. She adjusted, and she could take that, who knows? She could have 50 trucks full of people going out and doing hair and nails, and it’s very realistic and possible. I think the real tragedy in saying, “I want to be Elon Musk” is no, it’s never going to happen, and what’s never going to happen also is that you’re not going to buy and sell real estate. You’re shooting so high.
Jill DeWit:
Too high.
Steven Butala:
Yeah.
Jill DeWit:
Why do you say you can’t buy and sell real estate though? How does that tie in with this statement?
Steven Butala:
Maybe I misspoke. You should be buying and selling real estate. It’s stopping you. If you’re all starry-eyed about Elon Musk or anything else like that, you’re not going to join a group like this and buy and sell land and actually make a couple million bucks a month a few years from now.
Jill DeWit:
Well, okay. I would …
Steven Butala:
Do you think that it motivates people?
Jill DeWit:
I don’t know. It feels like it’s something you had to get off your chest.
Steven Butala:
I guess I did.
Jill DeWit:
Okay. Well, because I think our group, I don’t know anybody in our community that’s like that.
Steven Butala:
Exactly.
Jill DeWit:
Okay. Thank you.
Steven Butala:
I don’t think our group.
Jill DeWit:
Okay, that’s what I’m wondering. I’m like, where are you going with this?
Steven Butala:
Our group [crosstalk 00:15:18] regardless of age or anything, or any background at all. The people in our group made it.
Jill DeWit:
Right.
Steven Butala:
They get it.
Jill DeWit:
They’re here, doing the work, putting in the time, and back to the topic. Back to the topic.
Steven Butala:
Sorry.
Jill DeWit:
Your land business 401. You know, this is where you should be now. You got through the startup. We talked about the two years thing on Tuesday. Yesterday, we talked about being a specialized pro. What niche are you in? How’s it going now? You’re at level four which is, hey, things are running smoothly and you got other people funding deals for you because you got that much deal flow going on, as you should, and maybe you’re funding deals for other people too, as you should. That’s all because then they’re doing the work and making money for you also, so then tomorrow, I’m excited for tomorrow’s show and I’ll leave that for you to say.
Steven Butala:
Well, we’re at the-
Jill DeWit:
Wait, wait. This is the part where if it’s running smoothly too by the way, you could be thinking ahead if you still want to do some other different types, and/or you just don’t want to go to work on Tuesday.
Steven Butala:
Yes, that’s true.
Jill DeWit:
Thank you. I had to get that out.
Steven Butala:
You know, our staff is maxed out.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah.
Steven Butala:
I’ll be the first, and I know it, and they know it, and I’m paying them extra, and we’re quickly trying to either find them assistants to work with them and helping them hire for that, or we were setting up a whole separate module and having them train. So it’s a great place to be in. We are very, very fortunate to have a person at the tip top of all these companies that is very, she behaves like an owner, and he’s making decisions like an owner. That’s how I know I’m really in stage five.
Jill DeWit:
Well, we’ll talk about that more tomorrow. Happy you could join us today. Five days a week you can find us here on the Land Academy Show.
Steven Butala:
Tomorrow the episode on the Land Academy Show is called Land Business 501, Planning for Your Exit. You are not alone in your real estate ambition.
Jill DeWit:
That was me giving you like a stage presence.
Steven Butala:
I know. What is that?
Jill DeWit:
Like, “And here it is.” Because I kept alluding to what tomorrow is and I’m excited for tomorrow. I’m like, “Here it is. You’ve been waiting to hear what it is.” That’s why I was making a hand gesture. For those of you who are not seeing me I was making a hand gesture. Yay!
Steven Butala:
The most fun is stage three.
Jill DeWit:
Stage three is the most fun for you?
Steven Butala:
Just trying to lighten this up. I can tell.
Jill DeWit:
I don’t know. You’re just kind of like … Four, I think at this level it should be fun and you like, got mad about it, which is not bad. That’s how you roll. I understand.
Steven Butala:
Sorry.
Jill DeWit:
No, no, no.
Steven Butala:
I didn’t get mad about stage four.
Jill DeWit:
That’s just how you roll. That’s okay.
Steven Butala:
I didn’t get mad about anything.
Jill DeWit:
Okay, cool.
Steven Butala:
Hey, I hate to see people have just pie in the sky dreams-
Jill DeWit:
I understand.
Steven Butala:
With no real plan to execute and move toward that. That’s all it is.
Jill DeWit:
Right. I know you’re right.
Steven Butala:
And it really actually upsets me.
Jill DeWit:
I want to save people.
Steven Butala:
Yeah, me too.
Jill DeWit:
I get it. Thank you for tuning in. We hope you find our content valuable and we appreciate your support. If you haven’t already, please check out our YouTube channel. Hit the subscribe button.
Steven Butala:
And your comments and suggestions help us to create the type of content you’re here for and hitting the like button on your favorite episodes is helpful for us to support our channel’s algorithm and gauge your interest for future shows. We are Steve and Jill.
Jill DeWit:
We are Steve and Jill.
Steven Butala:
Information …
Jill DeWit:
And inspiration …
Steven Butala:
To buy undervalued property.
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