Achieving Balance in Work and Life (LA 1388)
Achieving Balance in Work and Life (LA 1388)
Transcript:
Steven Jack Butala:
Steve and Jill here.
Jill DeWit:
Hi.
Steven Jack 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 Jack Butala:
Today. Jill and I talk about achieving balance in work, in life. You guessed it, this is a Jill topic.
Jill DeWit:
Thanks a lot. It’s hilarious. Do you struggle with this?
Steven Jack Butala:
Not at all.
Jill DeWit:
Really?
Steven Jack Butala:
Never have, never. And that was actually what I was going to talk about that a lot.
Jill DeWit:
I have a lot of questions then.
Steven Jack Butala:
I think this is going to be a real interesting episode. I think it’s going to be half family meeting, half therapy session, and half… Not three half, there’s three halves.
Jill DeWit:
Half information.
Steven Jack Butala:
There’s three accounts, right?
Jill DeWit:
I like that. Yeah, that’s very nice. Thanks babe.
Steven Jack Butala:
That reminds me-
Jill DeWit:
Five quarters. Good.
Steven Jack Butala:
…of another famous Yogi Berra quote.
Jill DeWit:
Uh-oh.
Steven Jack Butala:
Baseball is 90% mental and the other half is physical.
Jill DeWit:
Thank you.
Steven Jack 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:
Wonder how much times… I want to have many people that are going, “Who is that?”
Steven Jack Butala:
Yogi Berra?
Jill DeWit:
Yeah.
Steven Jack Butala:
Oh, please look it up.
Jill DeWit:
Okay. Well, I know. My point is-
Steven Jack Butala:
Oh, I know you do.
Jill DeWit:
You just separated yourself…
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, from an age standpoint?
Jill DeWit:
Yeah.
Steven Jack Butala:
I don’t think… Actually, I don’t think Yogi Berra…
Jill DeWit:
I think [crosstalk 00:01:30] he’s your dads generation, not really ours.
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, I don’t think we were alive at the same time.
Jill DeWit:
It’s funny. Okay. Brad wrote, “Howdy. I’m looking for a mastermind or accountability group to meet online or by phone?” Huh, funny. We can help with that. “I’m in the Sacramento area. If you know anyone doing land deals nearby, please let me know. I would happy to take them to lunch.” Well, if you’re in Sacramento area the restaurant may not be open. Just kidding.
Steven Jack Butala:
It won’t be open in 2023.
Jill DeWit:
Right. “Sending the second mailer in December. I appreciate the community, Brad.”
That’s great. Well, I mean, I’ll just say real quick that we’re doing that. There’s two levels.
Steven Jack Butala:
You don’t have to say real quick. I put this in here for you to plug our accountability group.
Jill DeWit:
Okay. There’s two levels of-
Steven Jack Butala:
Shamelessly.
Jill DeWit:
Okay. There’s two levels of accountability. Jill continues to speak, just kidding. Two levels of accountability group coming. One is the… Is it free? There’s a free version forming and then there’s a next level version forming. And it varies based on, I think experience? Am I correct here? Because one you’re going to be involved, really heavily involved in.
Steven Jack Butala:
And we’re launching this month, December.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah, on how to describe them the best.
Steven Jack Butala:
A series of accountability groups that are based on your level and how that actually gets released, I’m not sure. There are some people that have doing this for 10 years and they just can’t hire an assistant, that’s ultra advanced. There are some people that are brand new and they need help just getting that first mailer out or even picking a County, and then everything in between. So it’s hard to mix those people. It’s hard for me as a potential instructor, and I use that term lightly, loosely, to teach to somebody who’s got 10 years in and somebody who’s brand new. You just can’t.
So we’re separating the groups, but we are… The point is December. This is the thing that we’re launching. It’s been by leaps and bounds, what’s been requested the most from us. Help with pricing, help with choosing a County, help with getting the correct staff.
Jill DeWit:
Help with getting going.
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah. Help with funding.
Jill DeWit:
Help with pushing the button, kind of thing. Yeah, awesome.
Steven Jack Butala:
Today’s topic achieving balance in work, in life. This is the meat of the show. This is the last topic I would come up with on my own. And I think that all kidding aside, and I’m not saying it’s right or wrong, it’s whatever it takes, get it done. And I really think this is gender specific. And I truly think to most people’s, most women’s credit, I just think they assign… women assign themselves a lot more stuff to do than men do.
Jill DeWit:
I don’t think this is gender specific. I think there’s men that don’t know how to stop working.
Steven Jack Butala:
I do too, but I don’t think… Working, you’re right then that’s all they do is work-
Jill DeWit:
Right. And they don’t have fun.
Steven Jack Butala:
But I’ve never met a man in my life who has hired a cleaning lady on his own.
Jill DeWit:
Never met a man… They just don’t clean.
Steven Jack Butala:
That’s right. So that’s what I’m saying, men don’t assign themselves all this stuff that women do. Men look at some stuff-
Jill DeWit:
That’s not what this is about.
Steven Jack Butala:
Jill and I just talked to a single guy, very successful single guy, who introduced us to Instacart. Instacart, it’s an Uber type app that allows you to go on several websites like Walmart, Costco, or whatever, get a bunch of stuff, the stuff that you need for, let’s say that month or that week. And it gets assigned to a person in the area, it might be an Uber driver.
Jill DeWit:
And sometimes several people. You’ll have one at a grocery store, one at Costco, and one at CVS, all at the same time and you can pick it up what you need.
Steven Jack Butala:
And you can say, “I ordered all this stuff and I’d like it in the next two hours.” And then those people go to work. They go into the store, they pull it off from the shelves, they say, “Hey, you know the thing that you ordered is not… You ordered the blue one, all they have is red. Do you still want to do it?” And so he said… We didn’t even ask him this and this is a single guy who was super busy. He said he can do all his stuff for the entire month, housecleaning, all of it, in two hours on Saturday morning. So he can go enjoy the weekend. That’s just not what most women I’ve ever known are not wired to make it incredibly efficient. And so it’s just balance.
Jill DeWit:
Why does this have to be a gender thing?
Steven Jack Butala:
It doesn’t.
Jill DeWit:
Okay.
Steven Jack Butala:
I mean, I’ll stop saying it’s a gender thing. I’m just saying my experience has been this.
Jill DeWit:
Okay. I don’t think it’s… I think there’s plenty of men that are inefficient and stuff never gets done, that probably needs to get done. I appreciate you because…
Steven Jack Butala:
You didn’t have to soften this.
Jill DeWit:
All right. Well, let’s talk about all the men that have construction things around the house that never get done.
Steven Jack Butala:
Absolutely.
Jill DeWit:
So I just want to give you a… [crosstalk 00:06:37] There are some women that… Let me tell you, if I was redoing a bathroom or I’m even doing something in the house, I’m making a project. It’s decorating for Christmas, how about something like that?
Steven Jack Butala:
Oh gosh. No man is ever going to decorate for Christmas.
Jill DeWit:
I know but I’m just using this as an example.
Steven Jack Butala:
What are we doing now?
Jill DeWit:
We’re going to get the things out, I’m going to get the kid, you do this, you do this, do this. We’re going to get it all done. Now we’re going to go have fun, the house looks pretty. Yay, great, whatever. But I wouldn’t open up all the boxes and then push them in the corner and that… There’s not I’m just… Don’t not that I need to defend women, but…
Steven Jack Butala:
Okay. Let’s just not make it a gender thing, it’s a personality thing.
Jill DeWit:
Thank you. That’s where I’m going with that. So what I was going to say is, and this is how I see the whole topic. Now that we talked about all that, forget it all.
Steven Jack Butala:
Oh, nobody’s going to learn anything from this. This is pure insane.
Jill DeWit:
Hopefully they will. Here is…
Steven Jack Butala:
For me.
Jill DeWit:
Here is the problem I personally have. And I’m sharing this because I think there’s other people listening that also have this problem. I truly love what I do and I have a hard time turning it off. A property comes in, here’s a beautiful example, whether you’re a guy or a girl, we all do this. If you’re an investor like me and you’re in Land Academy, a property comes in, you cannot wait. You have a signed purchase agreement, you cannot wait to get somewhere where you can look up this property and see what it is.
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah. Oh, I’m like that.
Jill DeWit:
See, this is a perfect example of work-life balance. You might be at dinner and now you’re like, “Everybody [inaudible 00:08:13], let’s go,” Seriously, am I right?
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, I’m right there with you.
Jill DeWit:
Or you’re on your phone trying to make it work or you’re running out to your car to get your laptop and bringing it up at the table while you’re eating. And your family’s trying to have a conversation and you’re looking it up on your thing because you can’t stand it. You can’t say, “Well, no, no. I only look at properties between 8:00 and 10:00 AM every day,” which would be the more efficient way to do it. Do them all at one time and you just can’t stand it.
Steven Jack Butala:
Or in the same light, and this happens to us all the time. Jill’s transaction coordinator sends her a text or an email that pops into her phone at dinner that says, “Hey, we just got an offer on X, Y, Z County.” She can’t. Whatever Jill’s doing, she has to stop and look at the numbers and respond and say, “Okay, I accept that or I don’t,” and I understand that.
I think this is the therapy, the family meeting part.
Jill DeWit:
This family meeting half.
Steven Jack Butala:
We are lucky as hell, Jill, because I get that.
Jill DeWit:
Right.
Steven Jack Butala:
I absolutely get, “oh my gosh, let’s…” You know because the truth is I get high off of that.
Jill DeWit:
Right. We both do.
Steven Jack Butala:
I get high from bringing in a good property and selling a property, mostly bringing it in. What I don’t understand is lingering hours and hours of lingering work that is unnecessary.
Jill DeWit:
I’m going to get to that in a minute.
Steven Jack Butala:
Oh good. Okay.
Jill DeWit:
So, for the first one, if you have that condition like we do where you love everything about this business, the rest of your family doesn’t quite get it. I would say try a version of something like this, which we do with each other very easily. “I need 15 minutes. I’m very sorry, this is really important. Can I have 15 minutes? I will get right back to you.”
Steven Jack Butala:
And I know it’s 30 to 45.
Jill DeWit:
No, try to be realistic. I’m just saying try to warn the other person to tell them-
Steven Jack Butala:
Are you saying that to me?
Jill DeWit:
No I’m saying it to-
Steven Jack Butala:
Your family?
Jill DeWit:
No, to the listener. Oh, who am I saying it too?
Steven Jack Butala:
I need 15 minutes.
Jill DeWit:
Yes, saying it to your wife, [crosstalk 00:10:15] your partner, your friend, your… “I got to take this call. Shucks, I’m so sorry. I need to get back to you in five minutes, 15 minutes,” even if it is 30 minutes.
Steven Jack Butala:
If you’re not with somebody who doesn’t understand that, you’re trying to make your life better and the family, your family life’s better. That’s not good.
Jill DeWit:
Well, that’s a whole nother therapy session. So that’s for me, I was just sharing that’s what… I should probably be better at it, but I get so excited at it.
Steven Jack Butala:
No. You shouldn’t-
Jill DeWit:
That’s okay.
Steven Jack Butala:
You don’t need it to change. Don’t change a darn thing, Jill.
Jill DeWit:
But there’s times… Hey, I’m not going to leave the altar and I’m not going to… “I do, but I got to take this call.”
Steven Jack Butala:
Oh my gosh. If we ever get married, we got to stage that whole thing.
Jill DeWit:
That would be awesome. So yeah, “I’ll be right with you, a deals just came in that I got a handle.”
No, so this is part of work-life balance. There’s a few situations where you go, “All right, two hours is not going to… and I have to tuck everybody in and then sneak out of bed to go look at this property.” It’s not going to hurt, two hours of waiting to review a signed purchase agreement is not going to kill everything. So you got to figure that out kind of thing. So, the other thing that I was… There’s three points, did you want… Can I go into the next point?
Steven Jack Butala:
Absolutely.
Jill DeWit:
Okay. My other point is…
Steven Jack Butala:
I have to say to defend your gender, you don’t need to ask me anything, this half of the show is yours. I’m really serious.
Jill DeWit:
Thank you.
Steven Jack Butala:
If you think it’s important and knock yourself out.
Jill DeWit:
Okay. The second thing I want to say-
Steven Jack Butala:
It’s not important I’ll tell you from my gender.
Jill DeWit:
That’s great. This is why I preface this.
Steven Jack Butala:
I had to wreck it, didn’t I?
Jill DeWit:
This is why I prefaced this. Okay. Second point I wanted to say is balance. I have found… So that’s your whole dealing with the family, right? Because you love it so much, you’re nuts and you’re doing it too much.
Second thing is where are you doing it? I would like you to have a separate workspace and I would really like you have it, not in the bedroom, if at all possible. If it has to be the dining room table, that’s the only situation, I’m open to that. But please don’t put a… Because I’ve done that, I put a desk in the bedroom, you know what happens?
Steven Jack Butala:
This is interesting for me.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah, you lay in bed, staring at your desk and it’s really hard. Or because you’re in bed, when you’re in bed, you’re in your workspace and your mind just goes there.
We don’t have a TV in our bedroom and it’s so much better for us not having a TV in our bedroom. You have to have separate… I like getting up and going to a place to watch TV, coming in the bedroom there’s a fireplace.
Steven Jack Butala:
It’s for sleeping.
Jill DeWit:
There’s a view.
Steven Jack Butala:
And relaxing and reading.
Jill DeWit:
There’s a fireplace, there’s a place to put my coffee, there’s a place to put my wine, where’s a place to put it’s really whiskey, not really wine now. It’s whiskey that I drink FYI, but that’s a whole nother show, I can share on more on that later, but have a space for it and that’s going to help you with your work-life balance. And then my third and final point is if all else fails, try to use your calendar and force the issue and this is what I do.
This happened even yesterday. Truth time. Steven sent me a calendar invite for Friday morning. I’m like, “Shoot. I just committed to go Friday mornings now my walk the strand time with all my girlfriends. Hell no, I love you, but I’m not doing this meeting on Friday morning and interrupting my goal times.”
Steven Jack Butala:
That is exactly what you should’ve done. I think that’s fantastic.
Jill DeWit:
I did and I wrote him back and I said, “I’m sorry, I am not available. I’m available between one and three,” whatever it is on Friday.
Steven Jack Butala:
I think that’s great Jill.
Jill DeWit:
And then what I immediately did too, is I went and blocked my calendar.
Steven Jack Butala:
Good.
Jill DeWit:
That was where I did it. I didn’t have it on there. So he wouldn’t see that one of us is not available for the meeting. Now it’s on there. So that’s my thing, lean on your calendar. What do would you like to add?
Steven Jack Butala:
I think that’s…. Achieving balance in work, in life, for me, is all about scheduling period. And it’s all about make when some stuff comes up, and it always comes up, I don’t care where you are in your career, you have to take a look at what it is and schedule it and then try to eliminate it so you don’t have to do it next week. Unless it’s something like this show where there’s really just nobody else that should be doing it except Jill and I. And so after… It’s taken five years, but Jill and I are very comfortable now recording in one slot on the same day of the week at the same time and there’s no discussing it. So that’s balance for me, but there’s stuff that goes on that that needs to be eliminated, that can be eliminated by having by calendar event.
There are issues that come up… I’m responsible for marketing right now and sometimes, some day Jill will be responsible for it or we’ll switch back and forth and we’ll get somebody in there that’s so much better than us that we just look at the report and that’s it. So you have to be of the mindset to reduce the number of stuff, number of things that you’re responsible for or doing, and just put yourself in a delegation role. Then you can go horse around more or you can fill that slot with starting a new company or buying a different product type or building a team on the side that does startups, which is what I do. That’s my role in this and it’s only because I’m so efficient at scheduling, and I think that Friday thing blocking a whole day for you, I think is just fantastic.
Jill DeWit:
Just the morning. I should do the whole day, but we’re busy right now, it’s good. But just my morning, I need my morning free, I’ll see you in the afternoon. Thank you.
Steven Jack Butala:
We just drove back from Phoenix and our number three kid. I got to drive in his car with him driving and I spent six hours talking to him and I realized I should be doing that more often. He’s 17, I’m not going to have the chance to do this much longer. As far as scheduling life stuff, you just said it, you scheduled… You blocked some time for life. And so then, if you know, on Friday from eight o’clock in the morning to, let’s say one o’clock or whatever the numbers are, that you’re supposed to be… along the lines of a computer in the bedroom then you can just enjoy it. You can just… I’m not supposed to work, I’m not going to take my phone and for five hours, I can go do whatever the heck I want.
And then for this block of time, I know I have to do this. So you just flush your mind out with anything else. That’s the beauty of scheduling. And then when you’re done… I remember in all through school, in high school and college, it was just never done. “I could be studying more. No, I’d rather go to the bar.” That’s always what would happen and then you feel bad about it or you don’t do as well in this class that you should have. Your life can’t be like that or you’ll just be unhappy constantly and that’s what scheduling removes for me.
Jill DeWit:
That’s really good. You don’t worry about it, you know where you’re supposed to be, you know you’re where you’re supposed to be and everything else is going to work out just fine.
Steven Jack Butala:
Most days my inbox is absolutely empty by the time I’m done with work and it’s all… whatever I’m supposed to do in the inbox is scheduled out. And I don’t allow my inbox to become my to-do list because you’ll just… It’ll never work. And I think I’ve spent years allowing other people to control my time through my inbox or through my phone or whatever. All that stuff’s flushed out into zero in the Outlook schedule by the time I’m done with work. And then I know everything’s taken care of or it’s shot to other people in our organization, I know they’re taking care of it and with a time deadline that’s in the calendar and they’re going to report back to me. Teams is the greatest thing that’s ever happened to our organization. If you don’t have Microsoft teams or 365, I highly recommend taking a look at it. I think there’s a free version.
Jill DeWit:
I do not know, I don’t know. Awesome. Happy you could join us today, five days a week and finish right here on the Land Academy Show.
Steven Jack Butala:
Tomorrow the episode on the Land Academy Show, next week, I should say is called an Interview with Advanced Members, Catherine and Michael [Atlanta 00:18:31]. You are not alone in your real estate ambition. Long, long time members, right?
Jill DeWit:
Yeah.
Steven Jack Butala:
Maybe since… Maybe year two?
Jill DeWit:
Couple of live events. It would have been three live events actually, but we didn’t get to have one this October. So hopefully we’ll have one early in 2021, I’m kind of standing by.
Steven Jack Butala:
I just read, just this morning, that there are five vaccines that are about to be released.
Jill DeWit:
I did too, that some in England are already… They’re getting them quickly like in weeks, maybe days.
Steven Jack Butala:
I don’t care which side you’re on on this thing, whether you think it’s real or not, or any version in between. I just want it to end.
Jill DeWit:
Me too. I think we all agree on that.
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah.
Jill DeWit:
Thank you for tuning in. We hope you find our content valuable and we appreciate your support. If you haven’t already, please get on over to our YouTube channel and hit the subscribe button.
Steven Jack Butala:
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We are Steve and Jill.
Jill DeWit:
We are Steve and Jill.
Steven Jack Butala:
Information.
Jill DeWit:
And inspiration.
Steven Jack Butala:
To buy undervalued property.
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