How to Win in Life (LA 1368)
How to Win in Life (LA 1368)
Transcript:
Steven J Butala:
Steve and Jill here.
Jill K DeWit:
Howdy.
Steven J Butala:
Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I’m Steven Jack Butala.
Jill K DeWit:
And I’m Jill DeWit, broadcasting from sunny Southern California.
Steven J Butala:
Today, Jill and I talk about how to win at life. What does that have to do with real estate?
Jill K DeWit:
How are we going to cover this 10 minutes or whatever? How funny. Yep, this is it. 10 minutes, we got this.
Steven J Butala:
This is going to be fun. It’s Friday.
Jill K DeWit:
Okay.
Steven J Butala:
It’s Friday, and at the time of Jill and I are recording this, which is the 29th of October, it’s pre…
Jill K DeWit:
Election day.
Steven J Butala:
It’s pre-Halloween, and the elections are done by the time this airs.
Jill K DeWit:
Oh yeah, that’s true.
Steven J Butala:
So-
Jill K DeWit:
Hasn’t happened yet.
Steven J Butala:
Maybe the whole world’s on fire right now, we don’t know.
Jill K DeWit:
We don’t know.
Steven J Butala:
We’re happily sitting here on October 29th telling you how to win at life, but we could all be dead right now.
Jill K DeWit:
Oh my gosh, thanks.
Steven J 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 K DeWit:
Okay, so Colin put a clip, is that what this is?
Steven J Butala:
This is an excerpt from the newsletter that I wrote and I’ll read it, because I wrote it. But you can read the headline.
Jill K DeWit:
So, Colin wrote, a clip below from the Land Academy Newsletter. I’d like to understand the strategy a little bit better. Can anyone unpack it a little more? Thank you.
Steven J Butala:
Yes, I will unpack it, happily. In quotes, this is what I wrote. “I’d like to see properties with no improvement value, which is land, in ZIP Codes where the spread between the average completed sale value and the for sale values is the largest.” Let me paraphrase. I go to ZIP Code 85258, which is Central Scottsdale, and I take all the properties out of the dataset. This is all free and I can do it in seconds on DataTree. Take all the properties out that have structures on it, so now I just have vacant land that’s theoretically buildable in 85258.
I look at the for sale values of those properties. So, there’s going to be a bunch of properties that are for sale, and I look at the ones that have sold. Here’s all the values of those that have been sold, and you can do this on Zillow in seconds. Then I divide by the square footage and say, all right, the stuff that’s for sale is $42 a foot, and the stuff that’s been sold is $82 a foot. Oh my gosh. I can pay retail and still make money.
Well, wait a minute. I’m going to pit 85258 against 85251, which is an adjacent ZIP Code, and on and on and on. Why stop there? Why don’t I just do every single ZIP Code simultaneously in the country and the first top five that have the widest variance where there’s an accurate dataset, that’s where I send mail. Then I go on to say, this tells me where to send blind offers. This is what I just said. Then I’d like to see within those geographic parameters what acreage range is the widest. So, if I just look at five acre properties, is that gap that I just described wider than 10 acres or less?
This tells me which owners or to whom to send the blind offers, the owners of the larger or smaller acreage property, however the data comes out. After scrubbing down the dataset, I’d like to know what the actual prices are. This tells me how much to send each offer and how to price it.
Jill K DeWit:
You know what this tells me?
Steven J Butala:
Jill, partner in life, I was just going to ask you, does this make sense to you?
Jill K DeWit:
Yes, but you know what this tells me? There’s not an Easy Button for this. You got to think about some of this.
Steven J Butala:
If this is what I had to do today, if I assigned myself the task of what I just described here, I’d be the happiest person alive. This is what I want to do today.
Jill K DeWit:
Well, the thing is, it’s like imagining if there was a… What if every medical procedure was automated? No, your data don’t know until you get in there. Things-
Steven J Butala:
That’s a great way to put it.
Jill K DeWit:
Exactly. People are always trying to make an Easy Button for this process. And sure, there’s things that you can, parts of it you could probably automate, but there’s just still so much intelligence, brainwork, free thinking nuances that are going to come up, that you’ve got to be there for.
Steven J Butala:
Oh, my God, Steve. Yesterday, you said, “Make it simple. Don’t complicate it.” Now today, Jill says, “There’s not an Easy Button.” Which one is it? There’s 10 steps to this, like I said yesterday. Separate them all, deconstruct them, one or two steps, like in this case, this is running an analysis to find out where to send mail. There’s a lot of different ways to do it and there’s a lot of components to it, or can be. But it doesn’t mean it’s complicated. This doesn’t seem complicated to me at all. It’s running a bunch of algorithms to see where there’s the greatest range, price range of completed sales of for sale property.
Jill K DeWit:
Exactly.
Steven J Butala:
So, it sounds complicated, or it can be complicated for certain people, but creating an Easy Button, which is what Jill just said is maybe the worst thing you can do. There’s too many variables once you get in there to see. Let me give you an example. If you go to a ZIP Code and there is one for sale property and there’s one completed sale and that’s the entire dataset and there’s $2,000 a foot difference in that because one’s in a swamp and one is in a central business district, it’s going to rise right to the top and tell you you should send mail there. Do you send mail there?
That’s the problem with these Easy Buttons and these things that these young developers put together. They say, “Look. Look at the dataset. It’s great.” No, it’s not a complete dataset. There’s not enough data. You have to tell the algorithm that you’re running that you need more than 30 comparison values for the for sale, or whatever number you determine, 30 is probably good. Then you’re going to get real data.
Jill K DeWit:
Thank you.
Steven J Butala:
That’s the problem with an Easy Button.
Jill K DeWit:
You’re my Easy Button.
Steven J Butala:
Yeah, me too. Today’s topic, how to win at life, is the meat of the show.
Jill K DeWit:
You know what? Keep talking like this and-
Steven J Butala:
They like to see-
Jill K DeWit:
We’ll compare Easy Buttons later.
Steven J Butala:
[inaudible 00:06:34]. I knew that it was going there for some reason. How to win… It took me decades to figure this out and I still don’t fully understand it about myself, you got to sit down and find out what you want. And I think that’s where everybody misses winning at life. I think what happens is they stick their head up at some point and say, “Whoa.” They look around at the people and all the stuff around them and say, “Wow, this is not what I want.”
Jill K DeWit:
That’s true. That’s very true. There’s a huge percentage. If that’s you right now, I’m sorry. We did not mean to bring this up.
Steven J Butala:
The divorce courts are packed full of people who say, “I didn’t know this is it. But no, this is not-”
Jill K DeWit:
This is what it’s like living with this person full-time? Hell no. Oh my gosh.
Steven J Butala:
I watched an interview with, I think it was either a boxer… I think it was a boxer. I think it was Mike Tyson. Somebody was interviewing… this is a lot of years ago, and said, “How did you… You’re Mike Tyson, so how did that happen?” And he said, “When I was real little, like a tiny little kid, like in kindergarten, somebody came in and sat down and gave a talk to all the children in the class about, and he was rich.” And he’s like, “You know what? I’m going to be rich. I want to be rich and have a suit like that, and come and talk to people.”
And so, for him obviously it was becoming a professional fighter, and so that’s all… He didn’t care about school. He didn’t care about anything. He just became a fighter because that’s what he knew how to do, because he wanted to be rich. And I love that. I’m not a Mike Tyson fan. I don’t care. I’m not a boxing fan, but I just love how simple he just made the whole thing.
Jill K DeWit:
I appreciate that. This is a tough topic.
Steven J Butala:
I don’t think so.
Jill K DeWit:
Well, I’m-
Steven J Butala:
I don’t think it’s tough at all.
Jill K DeWit:
Well, I’m trying to figure out what I have to contribute.
Steven J Butala:
I think people, and I’m one of these people, thought that all this other stuff in life was going to make you win, like getting married and having kids, and becoming an accountant at a big company, and going to work. And you just don’t think it through. All you have to do to win in life is think everything through while it’s happening, and ask why constantly.
Jill K DeWit:
That’s why this is a tough topic for me. I hate that.
Steven J Butala:
Thinking stuff through?
Jill K DeWit:
Yes.
Steven J Butala:
How do you do it, Jill? Because you seem pretty happy to me. Or maybe you’re not. Maybe you’re one of those people that just stuck your head up recently and said, “This is not what I want.”
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah, that’s going on right now.
Steven J Butala:
What happened in my life that I get stuck doing episode number 1368 with him?
Jill K DeWit:
Wow. What happened? Oh my gosh. That’s why this is a tough topic. It’s actually a pain point for me right now. I didn’t even realize where I was. Oh, no. I got to make some changes. Just kidding. No, I don’t… Oh, you know how it is. I hate talking about stuff, which is funny. Welcome to the podcast world. I hate… I was always the kid, “Can we just get rid of… I want the punishment. I want it swift and whatever you think is appropriate, let’s just do it and move on. Please don’t make me sit and feel my way through it. And gosh, understand why I made that decision and really let’s dive deep into your psyche about this.”
Oh gosh, no. I’m not that kid. I’d rather, like I said, let’s just figure it out and move in. And this came up with us last week, well, and for the last several months, even years, we’ve been thinking about, where’s our next place going to be? We’re almost going to be, have all the kids out of the house here in two years. What do we want to do? And I’m ready to go. I can pack a bag. I don’t need six months, six weeks or six years to plan this. I can do it real quick. And I’m up for an adventure. I’m always up for an adventure. So, I’m like, let’s go, let’s figure this out.
So, I don’t know how this ties in with the topic. So, how to win at life? But you’re right. There’s always some core something that each individual person needs and it’s different from everybody else. You need very different things than I need. You are way more structure, I’m way less structure. But it works. I guess you just got to figure out what that is. And you got to not let yourself down and you’ve got stay true to yourself and make sure you’re feeding that. For me, part of it… What’s so funny?
Steven J Butala:
Because I have a whole template on this, about how to win at life. Assuming that you want to be rich and you want to be happy and live a long time and be-
Jill K DeWit:
Oh, you don’t like my little answer?
Steven J Butala:
… healthy. No.
Jill K DeWit:
Oh.
Steven J Butala:
It doesn’t have anything to do with feeling your way through anything. Here’s the order in which you should probably do stuff. And I’m writing… I’ve had this… I’m writing a book on this topic and it’s almost done. You need to go to high school in a ZIP Code that is not a disaster. So, first thing you to do is get yourself into a ZIP Code that, from a census tract standpoint is not socioeconomically depressed.
Jill K DeWit:
Fair.
Steven J Butala:
And if your parents didn’t do it for you, it’s your job to get out of it, especially through college. So, you need to go to high school and get reasonably good grades and surround yourself with people that are like-minded about this, moving forward and winning at life. Number two, you need to go to college. I don’t care if you go to a community college or whatever version of it for you is, and you need to do it with a topic that you really care about. You know, I did not do that. I did it with a topic that someone told me is in accounting, a topic which is going to generate a lot of money. And it did for me.
But I realized later that it’s just… It’s hard to get up and do stuff you don’t want to do every day. So, you went to high school, you went to college, you got into college, and for the first two to four years out of college, you’re going to suffer and you’d better suffer. You’d better get the best job that you can possibly get from a payment standpoint, and everybody there is going to be miserable because they chose something like that. I mean, unless you’re incredibly lucky and a very young entrepreneur type like Mark Zuckerberg. And I’m so tired of hearing that because it’s like, yeah, you should go be Michael Jordan.
It’s just not going to happen. It’s just not. I don’t care how you slice it. So, once you get those two to four years out of the way in the workforce… By the way, you’re what, 22 now or 24-ish, you’re going to have a tremendous amount of early experience. You’re now in the 99th percentile of everybody in this country who tries to win at life. You’re winning beyond whatever. You’re going to decide to either take the company over that you’re with right now or become a partner in it.
Or you’re going to say, “This is for the birds. I’m going to go do my own stuff. I’m going to take all this stuff that I learned and go do it in whatever vehicle.” However it’ll be, it’ll smack you in the face. So, now you’re moving on to going on your own or taking over the company or being a partner with the company that you’re in. What I didn’t mention, during these years between post high school, college and getting to the end of that first part of your career, is getting married or having children. That is the single thing that’s going to stop you from succeeding. For some reason, people do that. I don’t know why. Do you know why?
Jill K DeWit:
Life tells it… I think for me, it was peer pressure. It’s like, this is what you’re supposed to do now. You’re supposed to do this. And then it’s different for a girl. Girls are told different things too. At least they were my family.
Steven J Butala:
So, it’s that point where hopefully, and I’m not saying don’t go out on dates. I think male or female, you should go out on a whole mess of dates, man-
Jill K DeWit:
Right.
Steven J Butala:
… and have a blast. That’s what weekends are for. But really, really focus on your career and having a blast. And then those latter years of your 20s are when you should be eating ramen noodles and living with 25 people in a one-bedroom apartment, wherever you choose to, building… Look up Mark Cuban. Mark Cuban says it on the air every time I hear it, and I didn’t get this from him. We just happen to share a different version of the same thing.
Because by the time you’re 30 and you’re going to have the world by the neck and you’re going to be able to choose whoever you want to marry and have as many kids or don’t have kids or whatever you want, because you’re so financially stable doing something that makes sense to you and moving forward, that’s how you win at life. I feel honored to be the person who is helping people in the form of Land Academy, with Jill, explaining all this.
Jill K DeWit:
Thank you. Me too.
Steven J Butala:
You know, I don’t think that you feel your way through it. I think you need a map for most people, they need a map or they need somebody to say it doesn’t make sense to have kids when you’re, when you’re 20 or 22. And if you do, there’s all kinds of ways to work around it. Especially if you’re working together with your life partner. That’s how you win.
Jill K DeWit:
Awesome. Happy people-
Steven J Butala:
Jill has nothing to say about this.
Jill K DeWit:
No.
Steven J Butala:
You’re kind of leaving me hanging out here.
Jill K DeWit:
No, because I went at it a different way and you didn’t like my way, and I love your way. I think it’s perfect.
Steven J Butala:
No, I’m not saying my way is right. I’m just saying, have a plan. If you’re very young listening to this-
Jill K DeWit:
You kind of said no to my way.
Steven J Butala:
Well, I mean, look, we both ended up in the same spot.
Jill K DeWit:
I know. I know. Well, look, in my defense, I still have a cold right now and I have a little foggy head. I looked at this and I went big picture with it. I didn’t-
Steven J Butala:
Well, cool. I want to hear what you have to say.
Jill K DeWit:
No, it’s okay. No, it’s all good. I love what you had to say and I think it makes a lot of sense and I think that you are correct. You do need to have a plan. That was great. Happy you could join us today. Five days a week you can find us right here on the Land Academy Show.
Steven J Butala:
Join us tomorrow for another interesting episode. Actually on Monday, join us. You are not alone in your real estate ambition. Some classic stuff, Jill. You just said, eh, whatever. We’re done.
Jill K DeWit:
Well, seriously, you wrote this show. You had a very good reason behind it. You gave a beautiful explanation. And I just think it’s important to leave it at that.
Steven J Butala:
Here’s my whole point. Buying and selling real estate is just a tiny little component of winning at whatever you’re doing in life. Some people do it full time and kill it. We have people all over the map. We have people who just do one or two deals a month, very, very successfully because that’s it, that’s to them, that’s winning. We have a couple in our advanced group who live in the woods in a trailer. They seemingly are the happiest people there ever was doing this, buying and selling land, and I know they’re killing it financially. Every time we interview them, they’re happy.
Jill K DeWit:
Thank you-
Steven J Butala:
You’re just done, huh?
Jill K DeWit:
Thank you for tuning in. We hope you find our content valuable. We appreciate your support. If you haven’t already, please get on over, check out our YouTube channel and hit the Subscribe button.
Steven J Butala:
And your comments and suggestions help us to create the type of content you’re here for. Hitting the like button on your favorite episodes helps to support our channel’s algorithm and gauge your interest for future shows. We are Steve and Jill.
Jill K DeWit:
We are Steve and Jill.
Steven J Butala:
Information-
Jill K DeWit:
And inspiration.
Steven J Butala:
… to buy undervalued property.
—————————————-
If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to email me directly at steven@BuWit.com.
The BuWit Family of Companies include:
I would like to think it’s entertaining and informative and in the end profitable.
And finally, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts.
