Scaling at Your Own Pace (LA 1392)
Scaling at Your Own Pace (LA 1392)
Transcript:
Steven Butala:
Steve and Jill here.
Jill DeWit:
Good day.
Steven 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 Butala:
Today, Jill and I talk about scaling at your own pace.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned from all the successful people in the Land Academy Advanced Group, is that they had a plan, they executed the plan. Some of it worked, some of it didn’t. They stayed on course. They hit a plateau. They set another goal, scaled up, did what they needed to take, scaled up. They had a plan. We talked about this yesterday just a little bit. You hit that ceiling. Now you understand what you’re doing, make some mistakes, healthy mistakes, and you just keep scaling. And you have to do it at your own pace.
I think it’s really important, when you’re ready, that’s the time to scale. There’s very rare Type A personalities that can just barrel through this and just become successful at it-
Jill DeWit:
True.
Steven Butala:
… in a couple of months. I’m not that person. I have to do research. This one, maybe. You barrel right into everything.
Jill DeWit:
Feels like a bull.
Steven Butala:
It’s important to have a plan and execute, and that’s all this is.
Jill DeWit:
It’s true.
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:
Tyler wrote, “Hi, all. I’m looking to outsource work and I’m curious to what work you outsource initially with a VA that was easy to pass off, if you’ve used VAs before. I’m trying to free up more time to focus on other areas of the business. I appreciate a response.”
Steven Butala:
This is a fantastic question and incredibly appropriate for the topic today.
Jill DeWit:
I say the best thing to start with with VAs, are the very mundane tasks that don’t involve talking on the phone and don’t involve email. They involve looking up things and inputting them into a column and you need a hundred of them or a thousand of them or 10,000 of them. That is a perfect place to start.
Do you want to add to that first?
Steven Butala:
No, keep going. Keep going.
Jill DeWit:
Then from there, you can start assessing what you want done. You could actually go from there to having them do deeds.
Basically, these are all my favorite things you use with VAs. It’s just really, no phone, no email, but they’re very, very smart so there’s lots of things they can do on website. Say you need pictures uploaded, you can do 10 properties at a time. You could have the pictures in a folder, they can grab them, have them already in the order that you want them, and give them those tasks.
The best thing that I have learned with this from Steven, which is, excuse me, it’s one of the many great things that I’ve learned.
Steven Butala:
Oh my goodness. For every one thing she’s learned, there’s six things she has to undo.
Jill DeWit:
That’s true. There is that.
The best way that we have found to communicate with the VAs is via videos, because sometimes it’s not the same person and they have questions. It’s hard, there is a little language gap, but there’s a video. They see where you put in the website where you’re going and they see you on the camera, on the video where you’re getting the information, how you’re putting in state county [apn 00:03:44]. It’s usually maybe back tax information, copying it, putting into the column here. That, they can do.
That’s it.
Steven Butala:
If you can video it and it’s repetitive, that’s tier one VA stuff. Video yourself doing it a few times and talking to them, and then send the video out-
Jill DeWit:
Screen capture.
Steven Butala:
By the way, if you need, we have a full-blown company in the Philippines. We probably have six people that work for us full-time in this group, and then the rest of our group uses the same group in the Philippines. They know when you say, We need to post some stuff on LandWatch, or whatever, they know what to do. If you need the name of that person, call support at Land Academy, or, email support at landacademy.com though. They’ll point you in the right direction. You don’t have to retrain somebody entirely, like, “What’s land?” You don’t want to start there. We don’t make any money off of this, it’s just a helpful thing.
We have people in our group that use VA’s more and more to actually cold call people, to answer their phones. The group in the Philippines, they’re growing with us. They’re getting more and more adept at filling the gaps for the stuff that we need. This is an integral part of scaling.
Jill DeWit:
Giving away the stuff that slows you down, takes your time, because you need to free yourself up for the more important tasks.
Steven Butala:
That leads us right into the topic.
Jill DeWit:
Cool.
Steven Butala:
Today’s topic, Scaling at Your Own Pace. This is why you’re listening.
You got the program. You’re one of those people that actually is going to send mail out. You’re not an investor. You gave yourself a couple of weeks to learn and ask questions on landinvestors.com. You’ve been watching, hopefully, the podcast, or listening to it. You like the Thursday [inaudible 00:05:38] and you’re convinced that sending out mail to buy land is something that you want to do. You start doing it and you do your first deal, and everybody remembers their first deal. You made a bunch of money or you made a bunch of mistakes, either one’s fine in the beginning, and then you did your second deal. And then you sent another mailer and you’re up to five deals now and you’re in.
At this point, you’re looking in the mirror saying, “Man, this one part of this business. If I could just get rid of this one part of this business, I could probably double how much money I make, because I love doing …” fill in the blank. For me, it was, if I could just get rid of sales and just focus on doing mailers and acquisitions, and just be an acquisition machine and shove off all my stuff to somebody who could just sell it, I could triple, quadruple what I do.
Well, that’s what happened with Jill and I. Joe was my initial scale. This was before Land Academy. This was before LandWatch. It was before CoStar even existed, land.com. Before the VAs, before all of it. Joe was my scaling springboard, and it worked out for both of us, socially and professionally. You have to figure out, you have to really ask yourself, If I could just get X, then I could do it. So we did, and literally times tenned it.
When that happened, we times tenned it. And then, I guess, probably a year later, I don’t know, we never sat down and really did it, but in my head, I’m like, Wait a minute, what if we got rid of this? What if we got Jill, a transaction coordinator, so she could just do this other part? What if I got an assistant that actually did mailers for me, and I was only ever now making decisions on where to send mail. The real important stuff, Should we do this deal?
And that’s what happened. So we had each of us, this was years ago, she had a key person, has now, it’s the same person, and I have a key person. The four of us, we times 50. Then we ran out of money, as you should, so we scaled up again and said, What if we had business partners? And we had … Well, maybe we should start a group but we teach some stuff, and then we get our own business partners. The creation of Land Academy in 2015 was a direct result of Jill and I saying, We need to find really good business partners from a money standpoint. Then we found out, soon after that, if we educate them our way, the cream will rise to the top. And that happened.
That’s my version of scaling. This is a hot topic. It’s a huge topic for people. That’s the name of the show, Scaling at Your Own Pace, or, Your Own Version of Scaling. This person who asked the question here, Tyler, he sees, for some reason, that VA’s are his first step to pass off the stuff he doesn’t want to do. It’s very organic.
Go ahead.
Jill DeWit:
My way of seeing this topic is picking goals and then, this is some of your thing, and you break them into smaller steps, and then upping your goals every time. Here’s my thing, how I see scaling at your own pace is, you’re here, you got Land Academy. You’re in, you want you to figure this out, you want to start buying property. You have a goal between now and the next six months, you want to make X amount of money. Okay, “How am I going to do that?” And then you think, “If I got to buy for this and sell for this, and I know this is possible because I’m watching 300 other people do it,” or however many, whatever, 500 people do it, “Now how many can I do a month with my commitments, my life, everything? Now, I know that in the next six months I want to do 25 deals or 24 deals, so that’s four a month.”
Am I doing the math right?
Steven Butala:
Yeah, let’s just say you are.
Jill DeWit:
What the heck.
Steven Butala:
It’s two, but okay.
Jill DeWit:
I can’t even do the math. Anyway, that’s funny.
So, “I want to do X amount,” and then you hit that goal. And then even just hold yourself to that goal, and then you can adjust it up or down. But I think once you hit that goal, you should try to double it, if you can, or maybe 25%. I don’t know. Again, you know what? This is called, Scaling at Your Own Pace. You hit that goal, now you reassess how much work was involved, how much you want to do, what you need to outsource, what you need to change now to move it forward. And you need to push yourself, give yourself a percentage, and give yourself a new timeline.
We haven’t talked about this in a long time. So often if you have a goal that’s a realistic goal and you write it down and stick it on your computer, you can even put a date on it, watch yourself hit it. It’s weird, but it happens.
Steven Butala:
We talk about this in that first program. If you say it to yourself, as weird as this sounds, I’m not all voodoo at all, she’s right. If you write it down every day and you say it to yourself, “It’s going to happen. I’m going to make a million bucks this year. I’m going to do 12 deals, I’m going to make $80,000 each deal, I’m going to do that.”
Jill DeWit:
I said a version of that-
Steven Butala:
I’m going to do it this month.
Jill DeWit:
… on December 1st was our first Land Academy Ladies meeting. We have a closed group built for all the ladies in Land Academy. I said, Everybody, write this down. I didn’t put a time limit. I didn’t put a amount to it, but I just said, It’s December 1st, 2020, I can’t wait to see where we all are on December 1st, 2021.
Next, I’m going to tell everybody we need to set some goals. I want to write down some numbers and we’re all going to see where we are when we come up on December 1, 2021 of this.
Steven Butala:
That’s good.
Jill DeWit:
And see how many of us-
Steven Butala:
Did you share?
Jill DeWit:
Weil, you know what’s funny? I just said at the end in closing, We have such a strong group and I’m so excited at what’s possible. It was our first meeting and we were just all getting to know each other a little bit. I think I’m going to ask us in an upcoming meeting, We need to set some goals for each other, for ourselves.
Part of it is holding each other accountable. It’s a lot of helping. It’s a lot of support for us emotionally and financially. I still want to put some stuff on paper and see where we are at that, because I bet we’ll hit them.
Steven Butala:
Oh, yeah.
Jill DeWit:
My whole thing is that you don’t have to try to compete. You’re only competing with yourself. I don’t want you feeling you’re competing with us or you’re competing with somebody else that you know in Land Investors, or somebody else in your accountability group. I want you to set your own goals and feel good about it. And then watch, as you hit these goals, what I think naturally happens, is your momentum increases and you’ll find yourself going, “Well, shoot, now I can do it in three months. Well, shoot, now I can do that in a month.” And then hold onto your hat, wait until you see what happens.
Steven Butala:
Exactly. Here’s some real examples of people in our group that I’ve actually interacted with over the years, whether it’s at live events or the interview. If you haven’t listened to the interview with Catherine and Michael [Alon 00:13:24] that aired three or four days ago, please go do that. That’s where this topic came from with me. They are setting their own goals. They hit them. Together, they hit them. It took them three years and they’re happy with that. They talk about it in that episode, resetting their goals to get to half a million dollars net a year, and they’re on track for that.
They’ve done good deals and bad deals. They’re now focused on how to do these good deals to get them to that goal. They have a goal. We didn’t even talk about scaling. They just innately, organically, now keep raising the bar and keep allowing themselves, and this is key, allowing themselves the tools, finding the tools that are going to make this possible. Michael flat out said, “All I have to do is just send out more mail.” I’m paraphrasing, but he said, “We finally have the stuff in place, the procedures in place, and my wife finally stopped working at a regular job, so she’s freed up.” So they’re giving themselves slowly the tools and the time and planning to hit it.
Jill DeWit:
I love it.
Steven Butala:
That’s the key.
Jill DeWit:
I love it. This is part of this which is so fun. Just getting started into business is a big deal. You need to think about not just short-term, you need to think about long-term. I really love that. I want you to even think about, give yourself six months plans, as you’re just finding your pace, and then your 12 month plan, and a two-year plan, and maybe even a five-year plan. It’s not in stone. Have dates and milestones at those times, “Did I hit it at six months? What do I need to tweak? What do I want? How do I want to adjust it?” Because you’re going to probably find adjusting up those goals.
The other thing I was going to add, too, which is really great, scaling can be deals. Scaling can be the number of transactions, the number of deals that you’re closing. Scaling can be the dollar amounts that you’re doing. There’s a lot of variations here. Scaling can be the size of your company.
Steven Butala:
The product type.
Jill DeWit:
Scaling can be, how many people work for you? What you’re doing. There’s a lot of things to do. This is stuff that we talk about in our close community and it needs to be talked about more.
I think that’s why we’re doing this too. This is coming up right now, again, because so many people are like, “I’m not new anymore.”
Steven Butala:
Yes, Jill.
Jill DeWit:
“Now I’m thinking big picture. I’ve been with you guys for five years.”
Steven Butala:
Like, “I know I’m going to do this for the rest of my life.” It’s, “I’m successfully [inaudible 00:16:17] my table, but now I think I can get rich doing it.”
Jill DeWit:
Exactly, “It’s not at my kitchen table anymore in a corner that I bring out my laptop now and then. Now I have a dedicated office and I have someone answering my phones, and I have this, this, this. My wife stopped working a long time ago and we’re in. Now I want kids’ college paid for.”
Steven Butala:
That’s it, Jill.
Jill DeWit:
“I want my retirement set up. I want to not ever think about healthcare.” Whatever it is. Dream it up, “We want to start thinking of where we’re going to move in 10 years when the kids all are in college.”
Steven Butala:
The last live event that I had, I had this conversation with two separate members. It went like this, “I didn’t join Land Academy to work harder. I did that at my W2 job. I joined Land Academy to not work as hard and to do some stuff that I’ve wanted to do.” And these are not coming from old people. These are people that are in their 30s and 40s.
What they did, and this is a separate conversation, in one case, this guy said, “I send out a ton of mail and I only buy one property a month that I know I’m going to make a hundred grand on it.” And so he makes a million dollars a year and he works four or five hours a week. That’s his thing. He’s actually left the group because he’s so successful. He uses O2O and he uses the data piece, but he’s just on his own.
Jill DeWit:
That’s his niche. That’s what he wants, that’s what’s his Zen and works for him and his family, and it’s great.
Steven Butala:
Exactly. You can easily do that with houses, with House Academy. You’re going to have to pay seven or eight or $900,000 for a house to make a hundred grand on it, in general. Not always. Actually, we bought three or $400,000 houses and made a hundred grand.
There’s a lot of different ways to do it. That’s why it’s called Scaling at Your Own Pace, or according to you and what makes sense to you.
Jill DeWit:
Love it.
Happy you could join us today. Five days a week, you can find us right here on the Land Academy Show.
Steven Butala:
Tomorrow, the Land Academy episode is called, Restarting Life With a Plan. You are not alone in your real estate ambition.
Jill DeWit:
Kind of another big picture topic but it’s really, really timely right now because there’s a lot of people that are displaced job-wise, housing-wise. They’re having to take a step back and regroup.
Steven Butala:
I’ve been writing a book about this for young men for too long now. I have to finish it and get it published. I have a lot to say, I’ll say it tomorrow.
Jill DeWit:
Okay.
Steven Butala:
Thank you for tuning in.
Go ahead, Jill. Sorry.
Jill DeWit:
That’s okay.
Steven Butala:
I got excited.
Jill DeWit:
I’m so glad you’re excited. He’s excited. I’m excited. We hope you’re excited. We hope you find this is all valuable, and we really appreciate your support. Please check out our YouTube channel and hit the subscribe button when you have time.
Steven Butala:
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Jill DeWit:
We are Steve and Jill.
Steven Butala:
We are Steve and Jill.
Information.
Jill DeWit:
And inspiration.
Steven Butala:
To buy undervalued property.
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