3 Levels of Employees (LA 1405)
3 Levels of Employees (LA 1405)
Transcript:
Steven Butala:
Steve and Jill here.
Jill DeWit:
Happy holidays.
Steven Butala:
Welcome to the Land Academy show, entertaining land investment talk. I’m Steven Jack Butala.
Jill DeWit:
And I’m Jill DeWit, broadcasting from sunny Southern California.
Steven Butala:
Today, Jill and I talk about the three levels of employees. Jill’s going to talk about building her dream team.
Jill DeWit:
Yup. As we are counting down the days that we can all kiss 2020 big, fat, whatever goodbye. I’m trying to be politically correct here. I want to say some stuff about 2020, but there might be children around, so I won’t say how I really feel about 2020. But as we’re looking forward to 2021, this might be something that you’re working on. I know a lot people are in our group. We talked about the side hustle yesterday, and when Jack ended the show yesterday, talked about, if it all goes well and you’re into it, your side hustle is probably not going to be your side hustle anymore. At least you could make the decision.
If you want it to be a side hustle or you want it to be your full-time gig. We have a lot of people in our community that… It seems like every month, it’s fun, because I’m revisiting this information. Every month there are people meeting that level and they’re like, “Uh-oh, now I’m taking it. Now this is a company. Now this has been paying our bills for a long time. Now I’m ready to build a team and a staff, and make this even more than just a small family business.” So that’s what I’ve been talking about in our women’s group, and I’m happy to share this with you here.
Steven Butala:
I’ve long said, “This is for me, the hardest component of having any company is building staff.”
Jill DeWit:
It is hard.
Steven Butala:
Jill’s going to make it easy for us, I think. 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:
It is hard, but at least I can tell you what you need and put you in the right direction and give you a lot of help.
Steven Butala:
Yup.
Jill DeWit:
Again, boy, I wish I had us. That’s okay. That’s why we’re here. Jeff says, “I’m closing on a deal to buy a nice six acre lot with great access next to a highway. I sent out a photographer and the lot has a lot of junk going on, like old tires and a destroyed mobile home. I think I could sell it as, buy this great property for an extra low price, because there’s a bit of cleanup to be done. Or perhaps just hire a company to clean it all up for me. I don’t feel like I want to pass on the deal, but I wanted to get some opinions. It is in blank County blank, which doesn’t have many comps, but seems to support a greater than $20,000 sales price. Maybe even higher, because it’s a unique position right along the highway.” I’m excited. I know what I would do.
Steven Butala:
Go ahead.
Jill DeWit:
Not clean it up.
Steven Butala:
Me too. Why?
Jill DeWit:
Someone’s trash is someone else’s treasure, sorry.
Steven Butala:
There’s a million titles that come to my head, like, buy some land and a built-in garage sale also. Or somebody’s trash is your treasure or finder’s keepers. There’s all kinds of stuff.
Jill DeWit:
I know.
Steven Butala:
And I’ll tell you what, the fact that it’s on a highway, it needs one or two signs, at least where it can say, “This trash heap can be yours. Give me a call.”
Jill DeWit:
Right. I’m wondering too, you never know what you’re going to find on somebody’s property. There could be a classic car under a tarp in the back.
Steven Butala:
Yup.
Jill DeWit:
That is dreamy and awesome for somebody [crosstalk 00:03:37]
Steven Butala:
There’s all kinds of-
Jill DeWit:
Like this one.
Steven Butala:
So I’ll tell ya. I mean, anything and I mean, anything that separates your piece of property with the other five that are for sale that are just vacant land or they have trees on them or something is positive, and this is including trash. Do you want it in a high-end… Do you want to buy a piece of trash house in a Beverly Hills neighborhood? No, that’s going to hurt you.
Jill DeWit:
Well, you know what? I would argue though. Remember, we have done houses off and on over the years. And sometimes if I had the dumpier the house, okay. Here’s what we would do. We would buy these houses, mark them up 30, 40,000 bucks, whatever, sell them to a flipper who’s going to come in and then gut the place. And what was interesting is the trashier it was, the more they wanted it.
Steven Butala:
Yeah.
Jill DeWit:
So there is a market for that too. So you can’t guess, and this is something that I’m constantly telling… Well, and it ties into today’s show too, when I’m training new people coming into our world and teaching them selling, they look at these properties and go, “Oh.” And I’m like, “Hold on a moment.” Just because you can’t, you need four wheel drive and it’s way over here. This is a hiker’s dream. This is a hunter’s dream. A campers dream. Just because it’s not your cup of tea, doesn’t mean it’s not somebody else’s.
Steven Butala:
Have you noticed that it’s almost impossible to explain that to somebody.
Jill DeWit:
I know it’s weird.
Steven Butala:
There’s certain type of personality. I think most people are like this, where they have to walk into a house if they’re house shopping, and it needs to be done and smell good and clean and they need to know where to sign their name.
Jill DeWit:
And it has to be their color scheme.
Steven Butala:
They have no vision.
Jill DeWit:
Right.
Steven Butala:
No vision at all.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah.
Steven Butala:
So I love mobile home parks as an investment.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah.
Steven Butala:
And when they’re all dumpy and they need to be cleaned up, that’s even better for me.
Jill DeWit:
Great.
Steven Butala:
How expensive is landscaping? And I don’t know. You just walk into it. I don’t see what’s there. I see what’s possible, I guess.
Jill DeWit:
Right.
Steven Butala:
That’s why Jill’s in a relationship with me, because she sees what’s possible with me, not how I really am.
Jill DeWit:
I clearly did not go for the cleaned up perfect version. I decided I can work with this.
Steven Butala:
How’s that going?
Jill DeWit:
It’s great.
Steven Butala:
Year 15 or something? [crosstalk 00:06:04] you five-year project is now a 30-year project.
Jill DeWit:
I know. Yeah. I had no idea when I got into it what I was… Like you’re doing a renovation and there’s bad wiring behind the walls. You don’t know until you’re in there. That’s what happened to me in this relationship, but it’s okay. I’m working through it.
Steven Butala:
We have a couple of friends, both of them are contractors for some reason, and their house is not done.
Jill DeWit:
Oh, yeah.
Steven Butala:
And it hasn’t been done for 20 years.
Jill DeWit:
Right.
Steven Butala:
And it’ll never be done.
Jill DeWit:
Correct.
Steven Butala:
So if you’re in a relationship like that, like Jill is, you’ve got to ask yourself some questions. You need to finish the renovation.
Jill DeWit:
Or for anyone listening that needs this, I’ll help you here. You have to take a step back, have a good, hard look at them and have a nice whole discussion with yourself, and say, “If this is as good as it’s going to be, am I okay with that?” And if you can do that, you will be happy for the rest of your life like me.
Steven Butala:
Wow.
Jill DeWit:
I’m just kidding. You’re awesome. You know that.
Steven Butala:
I know. We’ve all done that though, and that’s probably why we’re together.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah.
Steven Butala:
I’ve never done that with you, never.
Jill DeWit:
Oh, come.
Steven Butala:
I haven’t, Jill.
Jill DeWit:
I’m sure. Oh, come on. We’ve talked about my flaws behind closed doors.
Steven Butala:
I haven’t.
Jill DeWit:
And in public.
Steven Butala:
You know what I’ve always said to you, “Please don’t change.”
Jill DeWit:
Wow. All right. Thank you.
Steven Butala:
In public, each topic. The three levels of employees. Jill builds her dream team. This is why you’re listening. Got myself out of that.
Jill DeWit:
Oh, yeah. Quickly changed the subject. That’s awesome. So as I was sharing, a lot of people are in the situation or no matter what, you should be planning for the situation. This is the best thing. And I had a great long, two discussions with my Land Academy ladies group. We had to talk about this for two weeks in a row, because we weren’t done. We ran out of time on the first week. We’ve got to change this discussion, because building a team is so important. And our main takeaway was, you need to do it right now. You need to be thinking about it the day you get going. So I’m going to describe the employees in a minute and I’ll describe what they do, and how to work with them and all that good stuff. But as I’m reading these off, I want you to be thinking of who you need and what you need the fastest, and start building your own policies and procedures and streamlining your business the day you take in your first inventory, your first property.
Because if it goes great, you’re going to be handing that to somebody else and you don’t want to have to go back and redo all this. So there’s really three types of employees in our Land business, that’s where this is really focused. One is virtual assistance. They’re awesome. And we use them for all the monotonous routine, repetitive, fill in the blank type of tasks. That’s what they do. The second is a mid-level assistant. That might be someone who is answering customer service stuff. They are doing all the interesting inquiries that are not really buyers yet, or even they feel the buyers, all the communication from your Land postings. They’re reaching out on social media. They ask, “Hey, what are the taxes?” All those little things. They’re hitting all those little questions.
And then when it becomes a bigger level, like this guy sounds like he’s ready to buy, push it to the next person. They will do deeds, and they will do all kinds of little admin tasks, like arrange the notary, make sure the bank is going to be open. Because you’re going to go down to cashier’s check, make sure the bank wire amount is correct, little things like that. And then you have your top level, and these are, I call them, your specialized individual. This is your marketing team. This is your IT person. Someone’s got to keep track of your websites. You may have a transaction coordinator, and maybe operations. These are all things that we use right now today. Each of these, I have multiple of them, not just one in each of these roles. Do you have any questions before I go on?
Steven Butala:
There’s no better person to teach these people how to do this than you. And the best way that you can be the teacher is to have done it yourself. I’ve had all these jobs, every single one. And I suck at all of them. I’m very good in the job that I have now, which is doing this show and delegating.
Jill DeWit:
And pricing [crosstalk 00:10:42]
Steven Butala:
And pricing. [crosstalk 00:10:42]
Jill DeWit:
And teaching.
Steven Butala:
And pulling data, which I could teach, and I do.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah.
Steven Butala:
But I like doing it myself. I actually really enjoy it. And choosing where we’re going to send mail, and what the next big thing is going to be.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah.
Steven Butala:
Are we going to go buy mobile home parks and see? What are we going to do?
Jill DeWit:
Right.
Steven Butala:
But you need to do these silly little jobs in the beginning, and we’re seeing more and more. Jill and I are seeing more and more with really new people, really young, new people. They expect this stuff to happen overnight.
Jill DeWit:
Right.
Steven Butala:
There’s a lot of moving parts to this business. It keeps a lot of people out of it.
Jill DeWit:
It’s true.
Steven Butala:
But if you can go the distance and learn these jobs, and actively choose which ones you like and which ones you don’t like, you’re going to prepare yourself to do very, very well.
Jill DeWit:
Exactly. Do you want to talk more about where to find them and how to work with them?
Steven Butala:
Yeah.
Jill DeWit:
Okay.
Steven Butala:
I want you to talk, whatever you think.
Jill DeWit:
Okay. So where to find them? If you’re in Land Academy, you have absolutely been approached via VA. Even people just in social media, I’m constantly getting approached by VA’s. They’re really good at finding us. And there’s a [crosstalk 00:11:49]
Steven Butala:
There were no land VA’s.
Jill DeWit:
That’s true.
Steven Butala:
Before Jill and I.
Jill DeWit:
We made one company.
Steven Butala:
We should talk about this more often. There were no people who invested in land and sold it on the internet before Jill and I started doing this in the 90s.
Jill DeWit:
Right.
Steven Butala:
Before I started doing it. I was the first person with the exception of one other person who’s no longer in business.
Jill DeWit:
Thank you.
Steven Butala:
Why do I say this? All of a sudden, you make fun of yourself, then you brag, Steve? What is that? There’s all these education groups and it’s cute little software apps and stuff that are popping up constantly. And they are all former members of Land Academy.
Jill DeWit:
Yup. Thank you.
Steven Butala:
Is that good? I don’t know. You decide.
Jill DeWit:
You know what I think? Here’s what I think. Here’s my standard thing about that. This is a whole little side topic. For me, every person that that is successful and takes it to another level, it’s further proof of, “Yeah, this works and look how good you are.” That’s it. So it is tough to brag about.
Steven Butala:
It depends on the level of intelligence that you bring to the table.
Jill DeWit:
Right.
Steven Butala:
Who you choose.
Jill DeWit:
Right. So with these employees [crosstalk 00:13:08]
Steven Butala:
I choose Jill.
Jill DeWit:
So with these three levels, employees VA’s are easy to find. Mid-level assistants, those are not hard to. There’s all kinds of great new places that are popping up, like Hire My Mom, WayUp is a new site I learned about for interns. There’s always Craigslist. There’s Glassdoor. There’s Indeed. All the normal places are really good for finding these people. I’m a fan of testing people out too on all levels.
Steven Butala:
Oh, yeah.
Jill DeWit:
Test them out.
Steven Butala:
Absolutely.
Jill DeWit:
Hire a couple, test them out, see what works the best, maybe put a couple competing with each other and then hire the best ones.
Steven Butala:
Excellent advice, Jill.
Jill DeWit:
Long-term. And then especially for the specialized positions, those I go to the higher level, like Indeed, I go to LinkedIn. If I’m looking for a marketing guy who really knows how to market, a guy that really knows IT, really is a project manager, really is a transaction coordinator, and formally has been doing transactions from somebody.
Steven Butala:
So at that level, that highest what Jill’s calling, I think the highest level, they need to be way, way better at whatever you’re hiring them for, than you are.
Jill DeWit:
Right.
Steven Butala:
So when she says IT or website development or web app management or whatever you’re into, they need to be infinitely better than you are.
Jill DeWit:
Right.
Steven Butala:
Or else-
Jill DeWit:
Or why would you be doing it?
Steven Butala:
Yeah.
Jill DeWit:
Why would you?
Steven Butala:
Especially with marketing. There’s marketing professionals out there, especially now all over the internet that they should be teaching you. They should be coming in and saying, wow, respectfully, this is how you’re doing it. I’ll tell you, I just did it for this company over here, and we got amazing results. In fact, you should call the guys and talk to them about it because I did this, this, this, this, and this, and I tripled their sales.
Jill DeWit:
I’m going to leave it on this, because I have some more information that I’m going to share on this. I could really talk for hours on this, but I want to save it because I’m going to do this as one of my live things. If you have not checked it out, I’m now doing YouTube and Facebook lives every Tuesday at three o’clock Pacific time. So six o’clock Eastern time. And I deep dive into some stuff. Right now, it’s been a little bit on, getting people. Who am I? What’s going on? A lot of people don’t know who we are. So I’m going to save this and do more of a deep dive in that environment, because I love when people can ask me questions too. So I’m trying to think. I think I’m just going to end on this. Hire fast, fire fast. That’s it.
Steven Butala:
That’s outstanding, Jill.
Jill DeWit:
You like that?
Steven Butala:
Yeah.
Jill DeWit:
I just made that up.
Steven Butala:
I love it.
Jill DeWit:
Because those are the two things that I’ve learned. I wish I would have done this. And you could hire these people, hire fast. You don’t have to make them 40 hours a week and make them W2. And oh, now they’re dependent on me. You could pay them hourly. “Hey, I need you 10 hours a week. I’m going to do 1099, PayPal kind of thing. And let’s just see how it goes.” So you could turn it on, turn it off. You could also hire them for a project. I’ve done that.
Steven Butala:
We just did that today.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah. And you can also hire people based on what your needs are. Hey, I need this right now and we’ll see how it goes. If this goes well, kind of thing. There’s so many people out there that are available. So do that soon, and then the minute it’s not feeling good and you’re not connecting, it’s not working out. It’s 99% of the time, it’s not you. Fire them. Replace them. Move on.
Steven Butala:
Well, that’s the best advice I’ve heard in a long time.
Jill DeWit:
Thank you.
Steven Butala:
Where it’s just not working out, it’s not working out. A lot of times it was just turn around, it’s two years later. And it’s like, I think we had the same conversation a lot of times, several times.
Jill DeWit:
Right.
Steven Butala:
That’s true with your social relationships too.
Jill DeWit:
That’s true.
Steven Butala:
And your children [crosstalk 00:16:54] how many more times do we have to have this exact conversation before some kind of change happens?
Jill DeWit:
Right. Oh, don’t get me started there. And I don’t mean you.
Steven Butala:
I know. I don’t mean you.
Jill DeWit:
Oh, happy you could join us today. Monday through Friday, you can find us right here on the Land Academy show.
Steven Butala:
So now the episode on the Land Academy show is called, offer campaign saturation. Is it fact or fiction? You are not alone in your real estate ambition.
Jill DeWit:
That sounds-
Steven Butala:
There’s 3,200 counties in the country. 27,000 active zip codes in 1.55 million properties in this country. And there’s about six or 700 of us doing this total. Do you think it’s saturated?
Jill DeWit:
I’m pretty good. I can’t wait to hear your math. I know going to do it. There’s going to be a spreadsheet involved tomorrow.
Steven Butala:
You know what’s saturated?
Jill DeWit:
What?
Steven Butala:
The six or seven or 10 counties that people believe for some reason, they should be sending mail to you.
Jill DeWit:
Wait a minute. Aren’t the secret County’s good?
Steven Butala:
I just wrote a blog on this. You know what? Tomorrow I’m going to the County’s.
Jill DeWit:
Okay, good. Thank you for tuning in. We hope you find our content valuable and we really appreciate your support. If you haven’t already, please get on over to our YouTube channel and hit the subscribe button please.
Steven Butala:
And your comments and suggestions help us to create the type of content you’re here for, hitting the like button helps to support our channels algorithm, engage your interests for future shows. We are Steve and Jill. [crosstalk 00:18:29]
Jill DeWit:
We are Steve and Jill.
Steven Butala:
Information…
Jill DeWit:
And inspiration.
Steven Butala:
To buy undervalued property.
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