Interview with Land Academy Million Dollar Member Christine McManus (LA 1359)
Interview with Land Academy Million Dollar Member Christine McManus (LA 1359)
Transcript:
Steven Jack Butala:
Steve and Jill here.
Jill DeWit:
Hello.
Steven Jack 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 Jack Butala:
Today, Jill and I talk with Land Academy member Christine McManus. Christine, how are you?
Christine McManus:
Hi, there. I’m doing well.
Steven Jack Butala:
We were having our Thursday webinar last week, and Christine casually and quietly reported in the chat that she’s about to make a million and a half bucks on a deal.
Christine McManus:
Unheard of.
Steven Jack Butala:
A week later, you’re on the show.
Christine McManus:
Yeah, I appreciate it. I’m really delighted to be visiting with you today.
Jill DeWit:
She just lobbed that in there at the end. It was like, “Oh, yeah, by the way.” I’m sure people at the end of the call were like, “What, what, what? What just happened? What are you talking about?” We do want to hear more about that.
Christine McManus:
Very exciting times for us.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah.
Steven Jack Butala:
That’s great.
Jill DeWit:
Are you house shopping yet?
Christine McManus:
No. In fact, it’s funny because we were talking just yesterday, even before this deal, which doesn’t close until December. We’ve made decent money buying and selling land, believe me.
Steven Jack Butala:
This isn’t new to you. It’s not. You just added a couple of zeros.
Christine McManus:
Right, right. Yeah, we have not purchased anything. Part of it is because I want to maintain a big chunk of money so we can buy more land. The other part is … I don’t know how to say this without sounding a little arrogant, and I hope it doesn’t come across that way … I’ve never had this much money. I mean, we’ve had successful careers and made very decent incomes, but yeah, this is unfathomable to us. It really is. It’s crazy exciting.
Steven Jack Butala:
Boy, I hope you times-10 it next year.
Christine McManus:
Right, right.
Jill DeWit:
“Is this my bank balance? Am I looking at this right? I’ve got to call. There’s something wrong.”
Christine McManus:
Right, right. My business partner actually quit her job three months ago. We did not anticipate that happening until this time next year, but we blew our goals out of the water and here we are.
Steven Jack Butala:
Barring this large transaction, what were your goals, if you don’t mind me asking, for 2020? You obviously exceeded them. Can you share some numbers?
Christine McManus:
Sure, absolutely. If you don’t mind, I’ll back up just a little bit. I was a Land Academy lawyer for about a year before we sent the first mailer. I’m very diligent about my own research on the internet, followed you guys diligently, followed another land person, and finally just bit the bullet, one month before I was laid off from my job.
Steven Jack Butala:
Oh, man.
Christine McManus:
Yeah. You guys literally saved our lives, with respect to roof over the head, food on the table. I did get a decent severance pay, which increased our acquisition funds a little bit, so it became really fun in 2018. From August 2018 to August 2019, our goal was to make $20,000 a month, and we’ve surpassed that. Very exciting.
Steven Jack Butala:
I always say, if you can’t live on 20 grand a month, something’s wrong. Your priorities are wrong in life.
Christine McManus:
Indeed.
Jill DeWit:
If you can’t live on five grand a month, I would say.
Christine McManus:
Right, right, and we were, and quite comfortably. Yeah, we just have not had any big purchase or splurge. We are enjoying writing larger checks to folks we want to donate to, so that’s fun.
Steven Jack Butala:
Oh, that’s great. Excellent.
Jill DeWit:
I love it. Now, coming into this, did you have any prior real estate experience at all?
Christine McManus:
I did not, Jill. My business partner always wanted to flip houses, and that’s how I started. We purchased the house we’re in now five years ago and rehabbed it, and guess what? It doesn’t take 30 minutes, like they show on TV. Anyway, flipping houses got me to Land Academy in a roundabout way. I hit BiggerPockets and then I found you guys, and I started loitering. Then I purchased and I waited longer, and then I bit the bullet and sent out some mailers.
My previous experience was not at all related in land or housing. I am by training a psychometrician. A psychometrician is, for those who don’t know, like a statistician, but we measure things that are unique to measure or difficult to measure. Knowledge, psychological traits, or primarily nowadays it’s used in education and psychology research.
Steven Jack Butala:
Like metadata?
Christine McManus:
Exactly. I’m very familiar with statistics. The data never scared me. Honestly, it was talking to folks and the fear of rejection and, I later found out, the fear of success. While we were successful in our own careers and in our own right, you talk about, for example, I think everyone fantasizes about what happens if you win the lottery. Well, this has literally happened to us. We can realize some of these fantasies, but it’s also scary at the same time. We need to find a really, really good accountant.
Steven Jack Butala:
I would one-up, because I felt like I won the lottery several times in my career.
Christine McManus:
Indeed.
Steven Jack Butala:
It’s like I would one-up it, because I think it’s like I feel like I want something, but I kind of earned it. The pieces all went in the puzzle. Earning it is not the right word. It’s one step up from winning something. It’s like, yeah, it all worked. It was more like, “Wow, I never thought this was going to work, and it worked.
Jill DeWit:
Is it like buying a million lottery tickets to win the lottery?
Christine McManus:
To win the $900,000 lottery? Right.
Steven Jack Butala:
No, it’s just … I know that feeling, though. I know what you mean.
Christine McManus:
Yeah. You’re right about the work, and it does take a lot of work, and particularly for not only us, but I suspect a lot of other Land Academy members, is many of us are coming in so green. For me and my personality, that’s why I had to research it to the nth degree before I jumped. Even having researched it so much, I just couldn’t have anticipated how well it works. I know that’s a Land Academy cliche, but it works. We’re proof of that.
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah. I have the same personality type. Do you have to research everything?
Christine McManus:
I do. I do. I can’t even buy a refrigerator without it. I mean, yeah. Not just the big Consumer Reports, but then everybody’s opinion.
Steven Jack Butala:
Me too, same. Where does that come from? You have a bit of a psychology background, ish. I mean, not really, but where does that come from?
Christine McManus:
I wish I had the answer. I don’t know. I mean, I think those of us who are armed with knowledge just feel more comfortable, that we’ve thought out every scenario and can respond to it without being caught off guard. Maybe.
Steven Jack Butala:
It’s like having curly hair. It’s like everybody admires it from afar, but if you have it yourself, you know how difficult it is.
Christine McManus:
I don’t know. I have straight hair.
Jill DeWit:
You two have the same issues, we’ll call it. Coming from my perspective, it’s nice being with someone like you guys, because I know at the very end, by the time it gets to me, you have run the scenarios 18 different times. Even if we halfway do what you think is going to happen, we’re going to be just great, so that part’s good.
Steven Jack Butala:
That said, I think that’s a fancy way of saying trust.
Jill DeWit:
I do trust you. Seriously, I never go and double-check his math or numbers or ideas or anything like that. Like, “We’re buying this.” I’m like, “I guess we’re buying that today.”
Christine McManus:
Right. I have my, quote, Jill too. It is something I wouldn’t rather do with anyone else than my own Jill, and something that I hope everybody can find.
Steven Jack Butala:
I agree. Totally agree with that. It’s life-changing.
Jill DeWit:
It is.
Christine McManus:
Indeed. Indeed.
Jill DeWit:
You were talking about starting out. Did you have any struggles other than the time that you wanted to spend on this? Were there any other business struggles or things that you wish had gone smoother when you were doing this?
Christine McManus:
Definitely, because when we first sent out the initial mailer, the business wasn’t set up. I also have a degree in business and know better, but once we made the commitment, it was baptism by fire. I mean, we did have the website and we had a checking account, but beyond that, we really organized as we went along. Actually, after a string of several successes, we put the brakes on for a couple weeks to get organized. Otherwise, we would have never caught up.
Jill DeWit:
I would argue you did it perfect.
Christine McManus:
Yeah, I was just going to say the same thing.
Jill DeWit:
Honestly, because you want to test the water a little bit, not spend a whole lot of time in it and have your business cards made up and realize, “Yeah, I don’t want to do this,” so I like that. I think that’s perfect, that you did a couple of deals and were like, “Okay, now we’re in.” You just circle back around.
Steven Jack Butala:
We launch all of our products, and we probably have no business launching these products in the state that they’re in. Then it just forces us to adjust as you go. I guess you run a risk of really just turning everybody off right in the beginning. I think it’s easier to recover from that than waiting six more months or a year.
Christine McManus:
Right, right. That’s a great point.
Steven Jack Butala:
It’s the ask for forgiveness, not permission thing.
Christine McManus:
Right. Right. Well, and you know what, your course, the one thing I loved about it is that it provides a tremendous foundation for what we’re all doing, but it leaves plenty of room for everybody to put their own mark on it. We do it differently than other folks, and it’s working for us.
Steven Jack Butala:
It’s so interesting you say that, because I think that’s the pillar of education. All the types of education that I’ve ever had any respect for, the instructor says, “Here’s the framework. This is what’s possible. Here’s a few examples of what’s possible. Here’s some examples of how it didn’t work out, and you’d be better suited,” hopefully. The really good ones will say something like, “Your personality type, if you have this type of personality, you’re probably do better at this than if you have this type of personality. By the way, everything’s a bell curve. This isn’t for everybody.” I’ve always done really well in that environment.
What I’ve found since we started Land Academy is that there’s a substantial number of people that they just want an instructional video, and they want to know exactly how to do it, where to do it, exactly what parts of the data to scrub out and why. It’s really just an if/then statement. That’s not what I want to do. I don’t want to teach that. I don’t think they should be doing that anyway. They’re just going through the motions. They’re not learning anything.
Christine McManus:
I couldn’t agree with you more, yeah. I think that if, for whatever reason, you can’t or don’t want to move beyond the foundation, then there’s probably something out there for you that’s different, that is a better fit.
Steven Jack Butala:
I think we lost you right at the last sentence.
Christine McManus:
Oh, can you still hear me?
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, yeah. Go ahead.
Christine McManus:
Oh, I was saying, with respect to the foundation of the course, if it’s something you don’t want it to do or for some reason can’t do, there’s probably something out there that’s better for you.
Jill DeWit:
Exactly.
Christine McManus:
This does take work. I mean, honestly, we crushed it with some of these mailers and we’ve had help, believe me. This is a team effort. We found some amazing investors. We’ve worked with them on several deals. In fact, we’ve changed our approach to the funding for some of these deals and the payouts for some of these deals. I’m learning just as much from investors and even buyers. I mean, if I stop learning, I’m doing something wrong.
Steven Jack Butala:
That’s how I think.
Jill DeWit:
Totally.
Steven Jack Butala:
You’ve got to be flexible constantly. The market constantly changes. It’s a very interesting conversation. I mean, I spent the better part of this week going to webinars from our data providers, both Black Knight, First American and RealQuest CoreLogic. I’m shocked and amazed at the differences between the three and their presentation, and then the quality of where they think that their companies are going.
Man, I’m so impressed with Black Knight and the data from your data person, what’s going to happen in the next 24 months with data. We take this data, we pull it down, we put it in a spreadsheet. That’s what we do. We’ve probably been doing that since the ’70s or ’80s. That’s not how this is going to go in the next 24 months. You set up a dashboard for yourself and it alerts you and tells you what to do, based on your own parameters.
That really bodes well for what you just said about education, because if you’re not a creative person and are not constantly looking for new ways to do things or new ways to finance things or whatever, ways to look at data, let’s just say, you’re going to miss out on that. This is not an if/then statement. That’s a really good point that you bring up. I thought we were just going to talk about Ferraris and getting rich there.
Christine McManus:
I have a Ford. Two of them. I just sold my F-150 that had 213,000 miles on it.
Steven Jack Butala:
Good for you.
Jill DeWit:
Wow.
Steven Jack Butala:
We had to say goodbye to a Lexus that had 300,000 miles on it too. It wasn’t safe anymore, you know?
Christine McManus:
Yeah. Actually, I say I sold it. I gave it to the neighbor’s kid. He graduated high school this year, and he’s having fun with it.
Steven Jack Butala:
We did the same thing.
Jill DeWit:
We paid it forward.
Steven Jack Butala:
We gave it to a struggling bartender that we liked in Arizona.
Christine McManus:
Nice. Nice.
Jill DeWit:
We’re expecting to get a lot of drinks in return out of this. We’ll see.
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, then we’ll close the bar.
Christine McManus:
You ought to, yeah.
Jill DeWit:
That is so true.
Christine McManus:
Jack, when you talk to the folks at Black Knight at all, how do you think or see the data changing in the next 12, 24 months?
Steven Jack Butala:
Well, I took a webinar a couple of days ago specifically about mortgages, because it’s such a hot topic with forbearance and foreclosure, and now the feds are involved in stopping foreclosure. It’s like nothing we’ve ever seen. Never have we ever. Not necessarily for us, but never has that industry needed such real-time data, meaning pick a ZIP Code, what specific mortgage holders are foreclosing on their properties yesterday? Who missed a payment yesterday? I mean, I’m talking about just amazing.
Christine McManus:
Wow.
Steven Jack Butala:
It’s 15 minutes. It’s not super real-time, but it’s 15 minutes in delay, and you can set up the dashboards between Power BI, and actually you could hire a programmer within that company. Let’s say if you’re only interested in Southeastern Illinois or whatever you’re interested in, you put together a dashboard that’s going to tell you, “Hey, all the mortgages that you hold in this area, it’s getting worse,” and then a day later, “It’s getting better. It’s getting worse, it’s getting better.” It really can stay on top of it. Or if you’re a mortgage broker even, where the foreclosures are or the potential foreclosures. It’s not limitless, but it’s a tremendous amount of data.
For us, it opens me up. It opens me up as an investor. It’s not necessarily I’m buying rural vacant land or recreational land any longer. We’re already doing that very successfully. It starts to get me thinking there’s other lines of revenue where timely data like that could really help. Or if there’s some pockets of … I know there’s pockets around the country where land is selling really well. I’m throwing examples out. These aren’t real, but let’s say South Central Maine, the State of Maine, for whatever reason, 40% of the land got sold that month, or last month, or whatever indicators that make sense to you.
It’s no longer spreadsheets. It’s back-end. It’s a data feed like an API that goes into a database. Then it allows you to create the dashboard, let’s say, like in your car, of what you want to see and what’s important to you. That’s where I see this all really going.
Christine McManus:
That sounds exciting, and as close to real-time information as we’re going to get in a while. Very exciting.
Steven Jack Butala:
There’s some communities in Florida that, for whatever reason, lenders felt like it was okay to lend against rural vacant land or raw land, because usually that’s not the case. Usually lenders won’t, really. They don’t want to have anything to do with that, so of course all that stuff’s getting foreclosed on again, like it was in 2010. How can we make money on that? Or do you even want to? I’m not a Florida fan, as you know. I’m just using that as an example.
Or you really have to sit down and go through what I call the dreaming stage. That’s how I came up with this silly business model in the first place. It’s like, “What if there’s some company out there that has a database of all the people who own real estate in the country?” It turns out there was, and this one got them to give it to us.
Christine McManus:
Thank you, Jill. I’m glad your dreams come true.
Steven Jack Butala:
That was in the second meeting, not the first one. Whatever she did in that first meeting, it was like I don’t even want to know what she did, but it worked.
Christine McManus:
Yeah. Some sort of Jill magic, that we all need a touch of that.
Jill DeWit:
It feels like I’m over here and you only call me in when you need me. “All right, you can go off now.”
Christine McManus:
“No, come back.”
Steven Jack Butala:
Jill’s a finisher. She’s a closer.
Jill DeWit:
That’s true.
Christine McManus:
Yeah.
Jill DeWit:
I’m good to get the foot in the door, and then the end. That’s, I think, my forte. I can get any meeting you want. I’ve always said that. I’m like, “Well, just tell me what you want. I’ll get us in there,” I do, and then you do the stuff and then we wrap it up.
Steven Jack Butala:
Everybody’s dying to know where you’re finding these money people, or are they approaching you or are you digging around in our group?
Christine McManus:
All from the Land Academy group except one. I have a partner who was sending mail, and he was unable to continue with Land Academy because of family. He reached out to me. He reached out to several members, that’s my understanding. I replied to him and we connected. We were both from Minnesota. We talked and he said, “Can you finish? I sent out these mailers. Will you work on these deals?” I looked at it and I was like, “Holy crap. This guy had the cojones to mail to large acreage out in California, very, very expensive parcels. He is really the reason that we got into this large acreage, and we’ve kept going from there.
Of course, from a couple of parcels that we purchased there, we’ve purchased others either by word of mouth, “Hey, I have a friend who wants to sell his 600 acres,” or, “Oh, I forgot to tell you my brother and I have 900 acres over here.” We’re closing on the 15th on a 600-acre deal out in that area from somebody else we purchased from. Those figures look a lot like this home run we’ve been talking about, so we’re excited.
Steven Jack Butala:
Isn’t it amazing, the way that happens? It’s like it’s just a chain.
Christine McManus:
Indeed.
Steven Jack Butala:
I mean, you make yourself available. You’re open to new deals. She’s famous for that. “Hey, what else do you have?”
Christine McManus:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, before we needed funding, I’ll just share it. We had $30,000 to invest. The very first mailer we did was in Arizona, like most everybody else. We bought two one-acre parcels from a church in Indiana. One of their parishioners had donated the land to them and they didn’t want it. We were 4,000, 2,000 each, for each parcel, and we sold it for 36 and that was the, “Holy crap, this works.”
Then pretty soon, at that time, your 30,000 becomes 60,000, and then 60,000 becomes 120. I was very happy with our progress before we even got into these big deals. Yeah, but it sure does change your perspective. I mean, for the rest of 2020, for some reason, because we really hit in August, I’m thinking of our fiscal year from August to August. We are looking at monthly gross, 120,000.
Steven Jack Butala:
Excellent.
Christine McManus:
Yeah, as our goal. We’re, of course, well on path for that.
Steven Jack Butala:
It’ll go up from there, I’m sure of it.
Jill DeWit:
A lot of people, Christine, have trouble with that, adding a couple zeros. What advice could you give them? Because you just got over it, quickly.
Christine McManus:
That’s a good question. I think that the money is there, it’s finding it. Then once you find it, to take care of those folks like they take care of you. We give first right of refusal to three main funders that we have. We have also restructured our approach to funding. Instead of the 50/50 type, we are straightforward percent in, percent out. This big deal that we’re talking about, the 1.9 million, we paid 240 for that. We had 70% of those funds, but needed 30% of it. We had two funders, one at 8% and one at 15%. My numbers aren’t right, but you get the gist. They’re 8% in, 8% out. That person invested 20,000, and they’re going to grow to about 150,000.
Steven Jack Butala:
Boy, they’re never going to leave you alone.
Christine McManus:
Right. We restructured it a little bit that way, particularly if we have the bulk of the investment. Otherwise, we’re willing to work on the back end with folks. Like if we have a very small percentage of the investment, we might say, “Hey, we would like $100,000 for this, but we’ll take it on the back end. Once it sells, you can pay us.” Because I have a good relationship in most instances with the buyers, and I want to maintain that and fulfill our commitment with them and the investors also.
Steven Jack Butala:
Great. Speaking of buyers, is it an inside thing, or do you throw it on the MLS? What’s your regular way?
Christine McManus:
We have an excellent, excellent Realtor in the area. You don’t always like them until you need them, but this Realtor has been working with us now for four or five months. I can now send him an APN and ask him about what he thinks about days on market … he’s a land-only expert … what he thinks about days on market and what we could sell it for. I don’t tell him what we’re buying it for. He’s a great check. “Hey, we can buy it for a hundred. What do you think you can sell it for?” He’ll come back and say, “Four or five.” “Okay. We’re closing on that one.” That is part of getting a great team together.
Steven Jack Butala:
That’s exactly what we do. I mean, exactly.
Christine McManus:
Interestingly, we made a business decision not to put these high-end … by high-end I mean dollar amounts … on our personal website, to help manage image. We want to stay with that family-oriented image. We may change that later down the road, but for now, because we’re still very, very young. There is a lot we don’t know, but for now we want to maintain that small-town image.
Steven Jack Butala:
When we place equity, which is what I think we’re really all doing here, I try to make it … I guess it’s subconscious … I try to make it relatively equal from a risk standpoint. If we have $300,000 in place and we do 10 deals … this is a perfect situation for my risk, how I would see risk. You have 10 deals at 30,000. A vast majority, all of them, are going to make money. Hopefully they’re very separated geographically, but not too separated. Maybe within one Realtor or two Realtors’ jurisdiction. Then I feel really comfortable from a risk diversification standpoint.
Jill and I’ve done some pretty large deals in the past. Every time, it’s like I hold my breath through the whole thing. I’m like, “I’m not sure I want to do that again.” I’d really rather do just 10 or 20 of these and make the same amount of money. What are your thoughts on that?
Christine McManus:
You know what, it is a little nerve-wracking to be playing with this finance, and to make sure that it closes, I mean, it’s not over until that check’s in the bank. It was I don’t want to say easier, but emotionally it’s easier for me to work with 20, 30, $40,000, and then it’s ours and you own it.
I would also like to be able to help some folks out who are just starting, because my very first deal … that’s not true, my second deal … we could have used $20,000. It worked out that we ended up getting the funding and made a nice profit. We made a $90,000 profit on a $45,000 investment.
Steven Jack Butala:
That’s great.
Christine McManus:
Yeah. I’m sorry. I know I didn’t answer your question. I’d much prefer, me emotionally, I would like to do 20, 30, $40,000 deals all day long over these big ones. One, they’re much faster to turn around. Again, you talk about your team. We have a couple of great escrow agents. We do pay a little more for those escrow agents, but they will handhold and get the deal done. That’s invaluable when there’s just two of us doing this. I would rather do that all day long, emotionally.
Steven Jack Butala:
That’s our business model right now, try to do … I don’t know what, we’re doing 20, 30 deals, maybe, a month ish, maybe 20, buy for 30 or 40 and sell for a hundred.
Christine McManus:
Perfect.
Jill DeWit:
Easier, yeah. Where do you want to take this now? Do you have a big end goal, Christine?
Christine McManus:
Well, one of the reasons this whole thing started about let’s flip houses, and hey, look, what I found was land, was as a side gig so that we could retire early. I wanted to retire when I was 55, and guess what, it’s not that far off, so I sent that first mailer in June, 2018. We could, if we wanted to, retire in December, but we are having so much fun.
Jill DeWit:
For us, we’re not of the mindset of growing the business, with respect to hiring staff and expanding in those areas. We are comfortable doing what we’re doing, and the dollar amount will likely go up every year with our goals, or actually maybe the number of parcels, not the dollar amounts. Yeah, we’re happy doing what we’re doing right now. I know that may seem odd.
Steven Jack Butala:
It doesn’t seem odd at all. Jill and I have this conversation all the time. It’s like retire from what?
Christine McManus:
Right.
Steven Jack Butala:
Really, I’ve been doing this for decades. I’m going to give you some unsolicited advice. When you feel like you want to retire, just hire a couple people, like maybe one person under you, one person under your partner. Train the hell out of them, somebody you trust. Then you can just like 85% of the time retire and just look at numbers for an hour a day, which is almost where Jill and I are now from a land perspective. Land Academy has changed a lot of that because it’s a lot of work, but that’s what I would suggest.
Jill DeWit:
That’s kind of what I do now with the land and the deal funding things that I’m doing. I have a really good team. I’m making a few phone calls or viewing a few deals a couple hours a day, maybe an hour a day even sometimes. It’s perfect. I love it. I just told him this today. I’m like, “I don’t see me ever not doing land deals, because I get such a kick out of it.”
Christine McManus:
It is fun. I mean, it is really fun.
Jill DeWit:
It’s the buying part of it. The selling, I’m like, yeah, I knew that was going to happen.
Christine McManus:
Right. Right, that’s going to happen.
Jill DeWit:
It’s the buying part of it. I literally personally dropped everything on Friday and was running and getting a cashier’s check, because half of our office, they’re only in certain days of the week. Most of the time they’re remote, and it was a run to the bank thing. I’m like, “I’m on it. I’ll print it out. Give me a deed and a label. I’ll do it,” so I did.
Christine McManus:
That’s awesome. That is so cool. Jill, I wonder because we’re women, that we have a slight advantage on the phone. I’ll give you a little anecdote. I sign my offer letters Chris McManus. An androgynous kind of name. I cannot tell you how many times during the first two weeks when the hate wants to come in. I’ll answer the phone and somebody will say, “I’m calling for Chris McManus,” and I’ll say, “This is she.” You can just hear them go, “Chris McManus?” “Yes, this is she.” “Oh, well, yeah.” Then I’m like, “Thank you, estrogen.”
Jill DeWit:
Took the wind right out of their sails. You can’t yell at a girl.
Christine McManus:
I know. It’s so funny. Of course we can’t tell age over the phone, but I suspect they’re guys older than me. It’s just it always tickles me when I get that phone call where somebody wants to talk to Chris McManus.
Jill DeWit:
They’re hopping mad. They’re waiting for you to put them through. I love it. You should, “Hold, please. Chris McManus.”
Christine McManus:
Right, right.
Jill DeWit:
I’ll never forget the time that I had a guy in New York call me back just to apologize. It was the funniest thing. He literally hung up, called me back and said, “I want to apologize for my behavior.”
Christine McManus:
That’s awesome.
Jill DeWit:
It was so funny.
Christine McManus:
Oh, that is awesome.
Jill DeWit:
It was very sweet.
Steven Jack Butala:
I think it doesn’t stop there with women. I think women are predisposed to finish what they start. Men are usually not. I think women dot your I’s, cross your T’s. They will look at it. They won’t slap a deed together so fast just to get it done. They’ll actually look at it and check it and see if it’s right or wrong. I think there’s all kinds of things that are a women advantage to this whole thing.
Jill DeWit:
Thank you for admitting to doing that, by the way.
Steven Jack Butala:
I’ll tell you too … I’m going to get so many comments on emails.
Christine McManus:
Yeah, we all knew that.
Steven Jack Butala:
There’s no brawn to this at all. It’s totally set up for women. When you renovate a house, there’s all kinds of stuff. You’ve got to yell at people, and there’s contractors and stuff flying around. You did it. There’s nothing like that here. I think it’s a good thing.
Christine McManus:
Yeah. It worked for us. Hey, estrogen on.
Steven Jack Butala:
That’s the title of the show.
Jill DeWit:
I love it. Well, do you have any last questions for us before we end today?
Christine McManus:
I do not. I just want to thank you both. It’s been a delight visiting with you. I mean this so sincerely, that when I chose Land Academy, it was because of your integrity and your authenticity. Every time I see you on the weekly call or if I watch the podcast, or if I watch you on someone else’s podcast, you are so authentic.
Steven Jack Butala:
Thank you.
Christine McManus:
I thank you. You have changed our lives. I know I’m not the only one. Truly, truly. It’s the way with which we operate our business. We don’t have any problems because we’re not lying to folks. We’re transparent. They know. Yeah, that’s a cool, cool gig you have.
Steven Jack Butala:
Well, you seem like you have a philanthropic flair, so I’ll tell you. Every time we have anybody on, you can expect many, many emails from people who … let me put it this way. I’m sure, after talking to you for 45 minutes here, you’re going to be a huge inspiration to people.
Jill DeWit:
Yes. Thank you.
Christine McManus:
Oh, I hope so, particularly my peers, and I promise soon I will give back to those starting with some deal funding of our own.
Steven Jack Butala:
That’s great.
Christine McManus:
Yeah.
Jill DeWit:
That’s so sweet. Thank you. What an amazing community that we have. Thank you so much, Christine.
Christine McManus:
Yes, and it is a large part of that community that’s also carried me to where we are.
Jill DeWit:
I’m so glad. Thank you.
Christine McManus:
Cheers.
Jill DeWit:
Cheers. Happy you could join us today. Monday through Friday, you can find us right here on the Land Academy Show.
Steven Jack Butala:
Join us tomorrow for another interesting episode. You are not alone in your real estate ambition.
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If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to email me directly at steven@BuWit.com.
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