We Answer the Same 10 Questions (LA 1505)
We Answer the Same 10 Questions (LA 1505)
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 sunny Scottsdale, Arizona.
Steven Butala:
Today, Jill and I talk about how we seem to answer the same 10 questions over and over again.
Jill DeWit:
Oh, we’ll talk about this.
Steven Butala:
I can’t wait to record this episode-[crosstalk 00:00:24]
Jill DeWit:
I know.
Steven Butala:
… and that’s the truth.
Jill DeWit:
You really are giving me the green light to talk about this? Yes, yes.[crosstalk 00:00:34] Give me the green light.
Steven Butala:
We are going to make sure we keep it humorous, even though Jill right before the show was said… She got a little heated.
Jill DeWit:
We’re not going to name names. This will be good.
Steven Butala:
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, join us on Discord.
Jill DeWit:
Sandy wrote, “In Steven’s state summary…” Remember this?
Steven Butala:
Yeah.
Jill DeWit:
Okay.
Steven Butala:
I created a dictionary.
Jill DeWit:
He did. It went state by state about how the deals get done in that state. “… He indicates whether closing is done by attorney or title company. How do I know if I can do a self-closing, or if I have to close with an attorney/title? Am I able to self-close anywhere? Are there laws against self-closings? And if so, is that at the state- or county-level? Thanks for any help you can give.”
Steven Butala:
Thank you Sandy, this is a great question.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah.
Steven Butala:
And it’s not one of the same 10 questions that we constantly get.
Jill DeWit:
[inaudible 00:01:35] Exactly.
Steven Butala:
Without exception, you can self-close in any state… That’s the answer.
Jill DeWit:
Even New York?
Steven Butala:
Yep… There’s huge misinformation about this out there. You can do it. I’m not saying that the recorder will allow you to record it. I’m not saying that if you asked title companies, they might say, “No, you have to get an attorney,” and if you ask a lawyer, they might, because they’ve all been misinformed.
Jill DeWit:
Wow, that makes sense.
Steven Butala:
A long time ago. There was before… During homestead times, people would just walked in and do their own deeds. The recorder would help them. They didn’t then-[crosstalk 00:02:20]
Jill DeWit:
That’s what I was going to say.
Steven Butala:
… lawyers got involved. Because there were so many mistakes. Or landowners wanted to protect their interests, so they got lawyers. So eventually then title insurance came in, and Escrow and all that much, much, much later. So no, you can close.
Jill DeWit:
This country was founded on that, is what you’re trying to say?
Steven Butala:
Right, that’s right.
Jill DeWit:
That we can do that. It’s like saying, “Oh, I can’t sell you a car because I’m going to go to jail.” You’re not going to go to jail for selling a car on Craigslist. You don’t have to have a dealer’s license.That’s kind of what you’re saying.
Steven Butala:
No, it’s interesting you bring cars up. Because there’s a huge number of laws associated with how many cars you can sell each state by state, before you become a dealer. I think in Arizona, it’s six a year. And then on your seventh you have to get your dealers license.
Jill DeWit:
Because you’re making it a business now, [crosstalk 00:03:07].
Steven Butala:
Get this too, because Jill and I started a company called Car Academy, and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars. Got all the way down to just about ready to release it, and found out that there’s some pretty serious federal laws against using DMV data for any type of marketing. And when you think about it, we all own cars. I’ve never gotten a note that says, “Hey, you owner, I know you’re the owner of a 2007 Toyota 4Runner and it’s about time we need to get your oil changed or you should have about 130,000 miles on it, cause that’s the national average. Now you need a new timing belt.” So we’ve never ever received those.
Jill DeWit:
Not like that detail. Only the ones that I went to the service station and they’re hitting you back up, right. Or the guy you buy it from.
Steven Butala:
And that’s opt in.
Jill DeWit:
Right.
Steven Butala:
So my whole point in this is, it’s amazing how much data we can get and how we can use it for real estate. It’s not anywhere else in the entire world. Like it is in this country.
Jill DeWit:
Exactly.
Steven Butala:
Today’s topic: Why, do we answer the same 10 questions? This is why you’re listening. I know you have a lot to say about this.
Jill DeWit:
So what’s interesting is… right when we released Land Academy, within 30 days, we had people saying, “We have some follow-up questions? I’d like to communicate with you.” Great. And they even said, “Can we have an online community?” I’m like, “Great.” And I looked to Steven, I said, “Can we have an online community?” And he’s like, “Whoa. Okay.” And he did. Made it. It’s called LandInvestors.com, used to be Success Plant. Remember that.
Steven Butala:
Yeah, I built it.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah.
Steven Butala:
She went on vacation for 36 hours and I sat home and did website and we both won.
Jill DeWit:
It was so funny. I think I was with the guy that we found… Remember, you guys were setting it up with the guy that had the restaurant, we went into the restaurant the other day…
Steven Butala:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Jill DeWit:
I think you two were sitting there, getting it going and getting people to write questions and posting answers. And it was so funny.
Steven Butala:
Right.
Jill DeWit:
Anyway, so…back to the topic. So we created this online community so you could write, you could ask a question. And here’s the whole point, and I wanted to answer everybody’s questions. Obviously we still do, but I don’t want to do one-by-one. There are hundreds of Land Academy members. Do I need to call every single one when we introduce a new tool? No. “Hi, making sure you know we had a DataTree. Okay, good. Making sure you know we had a DataTree. Okay, good.”
Jill DeWit:
We’re not going to do that. You know, things change. Hey, now we have NeighborScoop. We do email obviously and things like that. So we made this online communities so you could ask a question and then everybody could benefit because the question we just answered today from, was it Sandy?
Steven Butala:
Yeah, Sandy.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah. From Sandy. I want everybody to hear that question. And so where did that come from? It really came from the online community. And you should be able to trust that, go there, search self-close and you can see, right. And that’s one of the things about… It’s even different than our internal thing, Discord with our members. Land investors it’s free, it’s open to the public. You can search, you can get your answers. We’re all right there.
Jill DeWit:
We’ll get to the second part in a minute. First of all I want you to know it’s there. It’s searchable. You can go get your answers. And there’s lots of different responses and spins and we’re in there and our community is in there and you can get answers right away. You don’t have to wait. You don’t have to retype a question, by the way and then wait, but people do. So this is where this show is going. Why is that? Why do people,… And I’m asking you, Steven, your mom was in the psychology field [crosstalk 00:06:58]
Steven Butala:
Doesn’t mean I know anything.
Jill DeWit:
So I’d like to know what you think. What did your mom tell you about this? No, but why do you think people don’t trust the answers? Sometimes they’re there. Are they lazy? And they’re not searching the answer[crosstalk 00:07:10]
Steven Butala:
No, I don’t think it’s lazy.
Jill DeWit:
… or is it that you just don’t trust the answer? It’s like, Oh, that was 90 days ago. It can’t still be true. Yeah, It can. Or that was three years ago. Can still be true? You know what? I can say in any situation it is, that hasn’t changed.
Steven Butala:
Every single one of us listening to this or are in our group have went to school at least for some time and in every single class, I am speaking from just my experience now, there’s a couple of people who have to ask questions. They have to be heard and they’re not interested in reading the textbook or waiting to get the answers in the lecture. And so that’s why.
Jill DeWit:
You know what I want. Your classroom example is perfect. So I’m thinking about me as a student or just you, if you want to be that star student, you should be reading everything, devouring everything, holding back, answering the questions. YouTubing it, searching it, trying to get everything yourself. And so you should be raising your hand for one or two reasons. One is you looked everywhere and you really did your best. And this should be in life.
Steven Butala:
Yeah this is life stuff, it’s not [inaudible 00:08:22]stuff.
Jill DeWit:
Please don’t come to me and say, “Where do I go to get an oil change or something?” You shouldn’t come to your husband and say, whatever. There’s lots of stuff you can figure out. So one is you really searched everywhere. And I like it when you tell me, “I looked here and here.” And I do this, when I call the County, look, “I went on the website, I searched this, I did this. I cannot figure out for the life of me, what this zoning code is.” And you know what? Now they appreciate you. Instead of calling up every time like, “Hi, what’s the Zoning 400?” I’m sure they get it, try it yourself and then come to them.
Jill DeWit:
And then number two is, the other second reason I think you should really raise your hand and answer… And we want to be there. I don’t want to discourage you, but I want you to just maybe try a little bit harder sometimes and see what answers you can find on your own. And it’s going to be faster that way too, by the way. The second thing is, for some reason, it’s not clicking for you. And that’s okay too. If you’re like, you know what? Everybody says, this and this. And then they say, this and this. I’m not grasping the concept.
Steven Butala:
Mm-hmm (affirmative)
Jill DeWit:
Can you help me?
Steven Butala:
That’s a total valid question.
Jill DeWit:
Totally. So those are the two reasons you tried and you’re exhausted or two it’s, it’s not clicking in your head. So you need to talk to somebody for a minute and maybe they explain it a different way. They show you something. And you’re like, Oh, now I see it. Okay.
Steven Butala:
You know, I’m glad that you kind of turned this around. This isn’t a rant [crosstalk 00:09:54]
Jill DeWit:
[inaudible 00:09:55]
Steven Butala:
… but I’ll tell you what a great question is so much so that we designed an entire weekly webinar on it is, should I be doing this deal?[inaudible 00:00:10:02] If you’re new, I don’t care how much research and time is spent. Let’s say you’re a new investor, you’ve spent a hundred hours doing this stuff, got a mail out. And those properties start coming back. That’s one of the reasons you joined Land Academy, you need some expert opinions on whether or not we should be buying these properties. So that’s a very, very
Jill DeWit:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Steven Butala:
…valid question. And it’s an extension of your education.
Jill DeWit:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Steven Butala:
But I’ll tell you what, if you’re asking questions before you’ve gone through the education and before you’ve attended, I don’t know, let’s say two or three or four of the weekly webinars. That’s not good. You know what that tells me? That you’re not taking accountability for yourself, that you’re not putting the education process on you, that you’re expecting us or specifically our staff to answer these questions. I’m talking about a handful of people now out of the hundreds and hundreds of people that are in our group, this is probably just a handful of people. That’s going to stop it from being successful.
Steven Butala:
I can tell you the profile of the people in the advanced group and the people who are on career path. And I can tell you this now career path is an advanced kind of one-on-one-
Jill DeWit:
Community.
Steven Butala:
Yeah, Jill and I personally teach it.
Jill DeWit:
Of 15. Small community.
Steven Butala:
Yeah, it’s 15 people every 10 weeks, without exception. There’s maybe two, maybe one or two exceptions in the entire career path/advanced group. They all have owned businesses in the past, or they are pretty high up in whatever company they’re working with. They take complete and total responsibility and make themselves accountable to learn these things, to learn how to do this before they ask questions. And then they come to us, as they should and say, “Hey, I’m doing all this stuff. I think I’m doing it right. I just want to confirm it with you.”
Jill DeWit:
You’re right.
Steven Butala:
What they don’t ever do is say, “How do I pick a County?”
Jill DeWit:
“Or do you like my website? Do you like my website name?”[inaudible 00:12:18]
Steven Butala:
“I’m having trouble logging into landacademy.com.”
Jill DeWit:
“I need password help.”
Steven Butala:
“I forgot my password.” Not a single time has anyone in those groups ever said any of those things.
Jill DeWit:
That’s true. And you know what you’re right. This goes back to life, and you want to be successful. That’s why you’re here.
Steven Butala:
Here’s another thing, Jill and I made a very conscious decision to quite some time ago, we have the cash flow from land program. We’ve got House Academy, we’ve got Land Academy, 1.0 2.0 a mobile Academy’s coming this year, mobile home Academy. And so, the very first program I recorded it in 2015. So this is the Information Age, things change all the time. So we made a choice. We could either constantly go back into the studio and record and record and record every time there’s a change in Google Earth that we talked about yesterday, a change in DataTree, or RealQuest or how we use these tools. Or we can do a daily podcast, which is what we do, and try to keep up with these things. We also have Career Path now for people who are real serious, and this is their career, they’re not just testing it. And then we have this weekly webinar that very frequently, if not always goes three hours on Thursday. So there’s some serious content. We’re on, I don’t know what show number it is.
Jill DeWit:
1505.
Steven Butala:
This is 1500th podcast. But I mean that Thursday call we’ve been doing once a week for three hours every single week. There’s an amazing amount of content.
Jill DeWit:
Probably 300 to 400 of those webinars.
Steven Butala:
I think it’s like 450. So if you multiply that times three hours or two hours.
Jill DeWit:
There’s a lot of content.
Steven Butala:
And so every single one of those episodes is on LandInvestors.com. So there’s huge, huge content. I’m not sure anyone now would have enough time to go through it all, but all the answers are there. Every single answer, especially if you do the Thursday course backwards. So you do the most recent one. And as if that’s not enough we have-[crosstalk 00:14:31]
Jill DeWit:
We’re not giving you homework. You don’t have to go do all that, hold on a moment.
Steven Butala:
In real time, you can ask your peers in Discord or on LandInvestors.com and use the search function because I’m pretty confident everything’s single things have been discussed in there.
Jill DeWit:
My main point is I want you to get your answers too. I want you to do your homework, get your answers quickly. How do I get my answers quickly? Not retyping the question and waiting for someone to chime in, because that could take a couple hours, take a couple of days, maybe in the middle of a deed right now. And you have a quick little question about how do I list this LLC? It’s in there. I promise, go into Land Investors. Do you use the search function find LLC and deeds and you’ll have it. Now you can finish what you started and go about your day. How’s that?
Steven Butala:
I can say this with extreme confidence also, and then talking about myself more than anything, you’re going to screw some stuff up. So if you have the personality type where you need everything to be perfect, you’re a perfectionist. You follow all the rules and you expect this whole thing to go off without a hitch. This is not for you, being a Land Investor is not for you. I was talking- [crosstalk 00:15:40] What is for you?
Jill DeWit:
What is for you? Whoa back up, I want to ask what if I’m that person I need perfection. And I don’t want to work that hard at it. What job should I get?
Steven Butala:
I want you to go back to school and become a mechanical engineer.
Jill DeWit:
But it’s not going to still go perfect all the way, is it?
Steven Butala:
I don’t know. For some reason to mechanical engineers, we have a ton of mechanical engineers in our group.
Jill DeWit:
Wait you’re not following me on my fun game. Give me a fun game. I want perfection. I want everything to go the same way. All that I can think of is librarian because the Dewey Decimal system is not going to change. And it still hasn’t changed.
Steven Butala:
Go into public accounting. Although that’s not perfect at all, because I was in that.
Jill DeWit:
Hey, I gave a librarian, come up with another one. I need one from you.
Steven Butala:
I mean, don’t be a parent. I’ll tell you that. You’re going to be really disappointed. And don’t get married. If you want to talk about going off without a hitch, marriage is not for you.
Jill DeWit:
That’s how we should end this. If you can handle a marriage, you can handle this. There’s people right now going well, that’s it. Not doing it.
Steven Butala:
If you don’t already know, Jill and I are going to launch a show in the fall called, showing up for life. And that’s what a lot of this stuff is about. And I’ll tell you why. Every time someone leads Land Academy, we do a short little exit interview and not a single person. Since we started Land Academy said this doesn’t work or it’s too hard, or I don’t get it. None. No one has ever said that. What they have said was, “My wife’s having another baby. I had to take an extra job.” It’s all life situations. And so that’s what that new product is going to be all about.
Jill DeWit:
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 episode in the Land Academy show is called, the power of answering the phone. You are not alone in your real estate ambition. This is Jill week.
Jill DeWit:
Yes it is. I sat down and pick these topics with our team and I’m glad to cover some, maybe a little bit different stuff. [inaudible 00:17:52].
Steven Butala:
When I started the original land investment company, I was very loud and proud to not even have a phone number. We would send out mail. We were probably one of three people in the entire country that was still utilizing this methodology at that time. And I was beating my chest saying, ha ha. We don’t have a phone number. We’re buying all this property. And when we’re selling it on the internet and we don’t even need to talk to a person. Boy, that’s changed.
Jill DeWit:
Totally. If you’re interested in learning more about us or what we do, check out landacademy.com or houseacademy.com. We provide the education tools and support you need to be flipping property like the pros. We are Steve and Jill information and inspiration
Steven Butala:
To buy undervalued property.
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