Jill Friday – One Third of Our Members have Quit Their Jobs (LA 1498)
Jill Friday – One Third of Our Members have Quit Their Jobs (LA 1498)
Transcript:
Steven Butala:
Steve and Jill here.
Jill DeWit:
Hello.
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 awesome Scottsdale, Arizona.
Steven Butala:
Today is Jill Friday and she talks about how one-third of our members have actually quit their jobs.
Jill DeWit:
This is so cool.
Steven Butala:
Both of us are enamored of this.
Jill DeWit:
Yep.
Steven Butala:
It’s not something I ever, ever really just anticipated in any way.
Jill DeWit:
I know.
Steven Butala:
How do we know this? We sent out a poll.
Jill DeWit:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Steven Butala:
Every year, our team sends out a very detailed poll and people are nice enough to take 10 or 20 minutes out of their lives and send it back. Most members.
Jill DeWit:
Excuse me. Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Steven Butala:
So, I don’t know if… Jill can talk all about it. Before we get into it, let’s take a question posted by one of our members on a landinvestors.com online community. It’s free and if you’re already a member, please join us on Discord.
Jill DeWit:
Okay. Dianna wrote, “Hi. Thought I would post here seeking inspiration. I sent for Land Academy in September 2020. I sent out maybe 2,000 to 2,500 mailers/offers thus far. I had quite a bit of call backs and sellers who were interested. I’ve not actually bought a property for I do not necessarily have the capital to do so.
Jill DeWit:
I, instead, have a few active option contracts and I reached out to a few investors but to no avail on the investors. The properties I have under option have been going now for three to five months. Option’s difficult because a seller wants what the seller wants, so it seems that the price is usually too high.
Jill DeWit:
I figure I’ll go ahead anyway because I’m not losing anything out of it. Now it’s been seven months. I’ve not made a deal. I’m feeling a little disheartened and already looking for other career paths, but I know that this one can be very successful and lucrative. I assume I should send out more mailers. I’m having a hard time putting more and more money into the game and I have yet to see any of it come back.
Jill DeWit:
What I’d love to hear is some advice or words of inspiration, whatever you have got that you’re open to share with me. Thank you.”
Jill DeWit:
Shucks. Okay. Couple things are going on here. Number one, you have the money, Dianna. If it’s a really good deal, then someone will fund it. My thoughts are, you came in, they’re not that good a deals because she said she shopped into some investors and no one was interested. So, did you hit enough people? Did you put it in land tank? Where are we in the situation? Because if you put it in front of anyone, myself included, and it’s a good deal, the money will come. No problem.
Jill DeWit:
So, that’s what I suspect. I suspect that these are a little too high or there’s something else going on that nobody jumped on them. And that you have these option agreements and they’re not selling. You know more than I know about this.
Steven Butala:
I have an opinion.
Jill DeWit:
Okay. I’m looking at you like I heard the exhale and I thought, oh, what else do you know?
Steven Butala:
No, go ahead.
Jill DeWit:
Okay, got it.
Steven Butala:
I know what’s going on here.
Jill DeWit:
Okay, what do you think it is?
Steven Butala:
She’s not following through.
Jill DeWit:
That could be, too.
Steven Butala:
You did everything right. You proved the concept right, you joined, you learned.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah.
Steven Butala:
You got the mail out, and she says here, “Quite a few callbacks and sellers who were interested.”
Jill DeWit:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Steven Butala:
So, it’s not like the mailer failed or the business failed for you or you didn’t set stuff up right. You did everything right and you got a great response.
Steven Butala:
And I put this in here for a reason. We have hundreds of choices of questions and comments every week and I choose five, so I put this in here for a reason, because this, Dianna is me. She’s me.
Jill DeWit:
Really?
Steven Butala:
That’s where I stop. I got a bunch of sellers that call back [crosstalk 00:03:52]
Jill DeWit:
And then you drop the ball.
Steven Butala:
And it’s not that I’ve dropped the ball. That’s where I start loosing interest.
Jill DeWit:
Now I’ve got to do something.
Steven Butala:
And so, that’s where my business partner, Jill, comes in to play. That’s where she starts to have interest. She doesn’t have a lot of interest in researching… I don’t want to put words in your mouth here, but I don’t think that you have a lot of interest in researching new markets, figuring out how to price things from a data’s perspective, and timing it and getting it out right, and structuring all that.
Jill DeWit:
That would be correct, sir. You know me.
Steven Butala:
So, Dianna’s got to make some choices, and she knows that.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah. That’s really it.
Steven Butala:
So, what you need is a Jill.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah. That’s not bad. You know, Dianna, that’s true. If you did everything right to this point and they are priced well and they’re not that high and you just need someone to do the back half of this business, you should be shopping for that, looking for a partner.
Steven Butala:
You’ve got to shop these deals, you’ve got to have long, funny, interesting conversations with potential investors. They need to love you.
Jill DeWit:
[crosstalk 00:04:57] Yeah.
Steven Butala:
Is Dianna on the line again? Oh, I can’t wait to talk to her. She told me all about her two dogs last time.
Jill DeWit:
Well, she’s finding these great deals, but then she’s not taking it to the end. Well, that’s what I’m good at, kind of thing, because there are lots of people out there that are really good at talking to the sellers, posting the property for sale, and moving them, but they’re afraid on the front end. They’re afraid of the data, they’re afraid of sending out the offers, and doing what you did so far.
Jill DeWit:
That’s not nuts.
Steven Butala:
Until recently… this is truth time, Jack truth time. Until very recently, I believed that people, that most people were the same and that their personality types were the same, especially in this business, and that they were just putting up with stuff. So, for years and years, I just put up with the back end of this business, or I hired people to deal with it.
Jill DeWit:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Steven Butala:
And then I met Jill and I really understood, firsthand, that this is her personality. She does like to do it. She wakes up and really looks forward to talking to people on the phone and closing real estate deals and making a ton of money for our family.
Jill DeWit:
True.
Steven Butala:
And it brought it home. One of the things we do in Career Path is we ask everybody to take a personality test in the very first session, and it’s shocking to me-
Jill DeWit:
How similar…
Steven Butala:
Well, there’s a lot of people in Career Path that are… what’s that [inaudible 00:06:28] called?
Jill DeWit:
Eight!
Steven Butala:
Do you know the acronym for that test?
Jill DeWit:
Oh! Enneagram.
Steven Butala:
So, if you get the chance to take this test, you’ll find out really quickly what you are, and Jill and I, obviously, are very different.
Jill DeWit:
He’s an eight. I’m a seven.
Steven Butala:
So, this test-
Jill DeWit:
But it tends to be an eight or a three.
Steven Butala:
This test is designed to smoke out what your interests are in life.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah. Yeah.
Steven Butala:
Much to my total, I was ready to just be satirical and not believe in this stuff.
Jill DeWit:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Steven Butala:
I took the test myself. We all did, and found out that there’s pretty equally people that are on Jill’s side of it and on my side of it and it manifests itself a little differently.
Jill DeWit:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Steven Butala:
And so, I’m fascinated in that. That opened up, when I fully realized that, this is not, probably a few months ago, when I realized that that’s the case, that people weren’t just faking it-
Jill DeWit:
Right.
Steven Butala:
That they weren’t all data people like me that just had to put up with sale part-
Jill DeWit:
Right.
Steven Butala:
That just makes the world a beautiful, better place to make a lot of money. You can get a group of people together that are a different enneagram numbers and truly interesting and ambitious and pursuing whatever their number is like Jill and like me, you can make some money.
Jill DeWit:
Yep.
Steven Butala:
Happily, too.
Jill DeWit:
Mm-hmm (affirmative) Don’t give up, Dianna. You need to get some money going. You’ve got some deals there. We’ve coached people on [inaudible 00:07:51] and found deals, things they pass one, like why didn’t you buy that? Like I didn’t think it was that good. Yeah! It is that good. You need to act on that.
Jill DeWit:
So, keep doing what you’re doing. Reach out to people and pick your best ones Dianna and put them in front of me. Send them to somebody for deal funding. Let’s just get over this hurdle, get you moving in the right direction, get some money coming back into your account, and we’ll figure out all the rest.
Steven Butala:
Yeah, there’s two people in Career Path that are [crosstalk 00:08:20].
Jill DeWit:
Reaching out.
Steven Butala:
They have this story, the same story. We sent this mail out, there’s 20 signed agreements in there, there’s no deals.
Jill DeWit:
Oh.
Steven Butala:
How is that possible?
Jill DeWit:
Yeah, well, let’s think about that for a minute here, everyone.
Steven Butala:
And they say things like, well, how many caller IDs did you get where you just didn’t answer it?
Jill DeWit:
There’s that, too.
Steven Butala:
Well, we got 14 or 15 of those. In fact, we got three of those yesterday. Those are all deals.
Jill DeWit:
Call them back.
Steven Butala:
You’ve got to work those deals on the back end really, really hard-
Jill DeWit:
Call them back.
Steven Butala:
Make them fall in love with you and buy their real estate.
Jill DeWit:
Mm-hmm (affirmative) Exactly.
Steven Butala:
So, there’s a huge component to all that.
Jill DeWit:
You are correct. It’s true.
Steven Butala:
Today’s topic, it’s Jill Friday, how one third of our members have quit their jobs. This is the meat of the show.
Jill DeWit:
This surprised me. Didn’t it surprise you? I guess it did and it didn’t. I knew it was going on, but I didn’t know it was this solid of a number. I love it. This is just one of the things that I knew would happen on the Land Academy. I thought we’d be just teaching people our business, A, B, right? Making their businesses better. Teaching them how to buy properties better. Things like that. But now it has turned into really putting food on the table. It’s amazing.
Jill DeWit:
I remember a couple years ago when the first person said, wow, I got laid off and if I had not started Land Academy, I don’t know what I would have done. And it was so great because then, later on, as time went on and the guy got his job offered back, he’s like, now I’m scratching my head, going, do I even want to go back? He’s like, now I know what’s possible. I’m actually doing better and making more money and I’ve got a great life right now calling the shots myself. I’m not sure I am going back. It’s the greatest thing.
Steven Butala:
Well, we’ve inadvertently created a culture.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah.
Steven Butala:
Like a Land Academy type culture where people are quitting their jobs and becoming lifelong friends, member to member.
Jill DeWit:
Partners.
Steven Butala:
This question that Dianna wrote here is the perfect example. She just needs for the puzzle to be completed.
Jill DeWit:
Right.
Steven Butala:
She’s right on her way. And so, yeah, when one-third of the people who joined quit their jobs or their spouses quit their jobs, that’s a pretty powerful statement, and it’s not anything we shot for.
Jill DeWit:
Didn’t you read the other day? It was so cool. We were on somebody else’s show and it was live streaming and, at the end of it… was it Dan?
Steven Butala:
Yeah.
Jill DeWit:
Okay. Dan posted a comment. Dan, I missed the end of the comment, but Steven told me about it later, which how cool it was about what you’ve been able to do for your family because of this. And it just makes me so happy. It is so great.
Jill DeWit:
So, I want to say, too, congratulations, because to all of you who are in this situation, hey, you know, there’s a lot of moving parts here. I was on a talk the other day and talking to other female investors, and there were new people in there wanting to be at our level and we were all talking and it’s real easy for us to talk and it all sounds so easy and fun and glamorous or whatever you want to… I don’t know if glamorous is the right term, but I said, hey, for everybody who’s listening to this right now, you need to know there’s a lot of moving parts to this like Dianna is dealing with.
Jill DeWit:
She got the front end figured out. Now we got to get the back end figured out. There’s a lot of moving parts and this is not for everyone. But for those of you that did stick with it, stay with it, figure it out, overcome whatever obstacle you had to do, and now you’re one of these people, I’m so happy for you, and congratulations to you. I love it. What else you want to add?
Steven Butala:
There’s over now, I think it’s probably six full years of instructing at Land Academy-
Jill DeWit:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Steven Butala:
I’m still surprised… I learn more about what to say and how to instruct at Land Academy by talking to people that have nothing to do with it, that just want to know, hey, what do you do for a living and why do you live at that big house at the end of the block? Quite honestly, that’s what happens.
Steven Butala:
And when I say we buy and sell land and we have this education product and on and on and they say, so what happens? And I say, well, you send out a bunch of mail and I go through the 30 second elevator pitch on it and a very substantial number of people will come back and say… and these are well off people. These are not people who are… I’m not selling anything. I’m just describing it like how you talk to a neighbor.
Jill DeWit:
Right.
Steven Butala:
And they say, well, why would anyone want to quit their job? And that always just floors me. And so, if you don’t have any interest in quitting your job and you love your job, Land Academy’s not for you.
Jill DeWit:
Well, hold on a moment. Hold on a moment. Let me just back up here. There’s plenty of other people who are here and they just want to do it to pay for their vacation home.
Steven Butala:
You’re right.
Jill DeWit:
They want to be here to pay for their kids’ college education. They want to be here to set up their child with a career. There’s lots of other people that are in Land Academy that… maybe they’re teachers. Maybe they’re full time regular professors at a University or something. I don’t know, and they just love teaching and they’re happy with that and they don’t want to change it/however, this is great on the side and they love doing it, whatever level they want to do it.
Jill DeWit:
We have people that are full on retired.
Steven Butala:
Yeah. Makes sense to them. Tons of retirees.
Jill DeWit:
Retired. Done. Paid for. But they’re bored. Or they just have the time. And/or they’re just setting up their family to make them even more successful down the road. So, they jump into this.
Steven Butala:
Honestly, I don’t think we’re narrowing our opportunity here for creating Land Academy partners for ourselves. I don’t think that that’s what I’m doing.
Jill DeWit:
No.
Steven Butala:
What I’m doing is telling the truth.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah.
Steven Butala:
There’s a pretty serious profile of the type of Land Academy member that joins our group and stays forever.
Jill DeWit:
Yep.
Steven Butala:
And thanks us every week.
Jill DeWit:
Yep.
Steven Butala:
And that’s who we’re interested in having new members, and I cannot think of a single [inaudible 00:14:49] that’s in this group.
Jill DeWit:
Well, there could be. We just don’t know.
Steven Butala:
I’m not closing the door, Jill. I’m just being honest. Let’s just be honest.
Jill DeWit:
I don’t know. Remember the first time, I’ll never forget sitting in the old office here in Scottsdale, up the road, overlooking the lake behind me, and I did a… it was the new Twitter live streaming thing, it started with a P, I can’t remember what it’s called now. Do you remember that? Parascope!
Jill DeWit:
I got on Parascope and I was all nervous and on Parascope, you were asking me some questions, you were interviewing me, and I read a letter, a handwritten, sweet little thank you note that someone had written us and it was early on in Land Academy days and I will never forget the first time hearing this person, heartfelt, telling thank you because of what you guys shared with us, your program, and how you lovingly shared what you guys do and your business, I learned and now it’s changed my life and changed my family.
Jill DeWit:
And I just remember that letter, it’s going to make my cry again, it made me cry, it was so cool.
Steven Butala:
Yeah.
Jill DeWit:
So, that’s the point of this for me today, too. Number one, congratulations to you. Number two, thank you for sharing with us, and number three, we’re not going anywhere and I want to help that many more of you because there’s enough property to go around. We got this.
Steven Butala:
Oh yeah, for sure.
Jill DeWit:
Yay. Happy you could join us today, five days a week, Monday through Friday, you can find us right here on the Land Academy Show.
Steven Butala:
Join us next week for another interesting episode. You are not alone in your real estate ambition.
Jill DeWit:
It’s so good to hear this stuff. It keeps us moving forward.
Steven Butala:
You never get tired of it.
Jill DeWit:
I love hearing these stories, so please keep them coming. And I love the notes that you guys send us. [crosstalk 00:16:40] The emails…
Steven Butala:
Jill and I never sat around and said, we should create this thing called Land Academy because we’re going to change people’s lives. They’re going to quit their jobs and they’re going to write us a thank you note.
Jill DeWit:
No idea.
Steven Butala:
That was never, ever what we tried to do. All we tried to do is just help people understand that you can send blind offers out.
Jill DeWit:
People were just saying, hey, will you please teach me. And we said, sure, okay. Why not? And here we all are.
Steven Butala:
Yep.
Jill DeWit:
Thank you for tuning in. We hope you find our content valuable and we really do appreciate your support. If you haven’t already, please get on over to our YouTube channel, hit the subscribe button and please comment on the shows that you love.
Jill DeWit:
We’re Steve and Jill.
Steven Butala:
We’re Steven and Jill. Information-
Jill DeWit:
And inspiration-
Steven Butala:
To buy undervalued property.
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