Jill Friday – I’m Writing a Book! (LA 1528)
Jill Friday – I’m Writing a Book! (LA 1528)
Transcript:
Steven Butala:
Steve and Jill here.
Jill DeWit:
Happy Friday.
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 is Jill Friday. And she’s going to talk about the book she’s writing. I can’t wait to hear this also.
Jill DeWit:
Cool. So yesterday I alluded to, I talked about this not long ago. I always have three books on my nightstand. I have one, that’s a high power, kind of business-related, leadership book. And then I often have a self-help book. And then I have a fun book, one of this fun book I’m reading right now, it’s actually really fun for me. It’s called Mouse Tales. It’s Disneyland behind the scenes. And it’s talking about all the stuff that went wrong and all the rats that happened in the beginning, early years and just crazy things that broke, went wrong, stuff he didn’t know about, Club 33 is mentioned for those of you know who that is and it’s just really kind of fun. It’s cool. So anyway, I have all these books on my nightstand. While I’m reading this one book, this is going to tie into this, I promise.
Jill DeWit:
So reading this book from this woman, so I’m going to talk about mine here in the show, but I thought as preface to my book, I’ve found this book on the nightstand. I’m not going to say who it is because I don’t think it’s nice. I don’t want to name names, but I am not impressed by her book. So she wrote this book as a woman in her late forties to help other young women. So you think it’s going to be great. I’m like, I got to hear what she has to say, but as I’m reading the book, I realized, well, hold on a moment. You’re beautiful. You’ve never not got any job that you didn’t want. You are happily married, no kids. She’s just never failed.
Steven Butala:
No life experience.
Jill DeWit:
That’s my problem with this and no real experience. Her parents are still together. No one’s been through a divorce. I think her grandparents and great-grandparents are still alive. She’s never experienced any kind of serious hardship.
Steven Butala:
Who’s that helping?
Jill DeWit:
So what’s interesting is, I’m using the word interesting lieu of other words, but interesting is because she has no real experience, the stuff that she brings to the table is kind of fluff. I’m like, that’s all you got? Her experiences and here’s what I think you need to do to be successful. Have another dress at the office? You can always dress up. That’s in there, that’s in there. It’s stuff have a backup dress for emergencies so you look good.
Steven Butala:
Oh man.
Jill DeWit:
Wait a minute. There’s way more I think people need to think about and know about-
Steven Butala:
Before we get into it.
Jill DeWit:
Why are you cutting me off?
Steven Butala:
Because this is the topic of this show. This is interesting. You know why? Because I really want to get into it with you, but let’s get the question out of the way. 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. If you’re already a member, join us on Discord.
Jill DeWit:
Dana wrote, hi everyone. I joined Land Academy recently and I’m so glad I did. There’s a wealth of information available here on discord and the podcasts, et cetera and it’s so valuable. That being said, I am often guilty of spending too much time absorbing information and researching. I’ve been slow to start taking action on my first mailer. I suspect that may also be spending too much time thinking about how I want to brand my company and deciding on a name. I want to set up a domain for a landing slash squeeze page, along with profiles on social media and listing sites. My first thought was using my last name, but I’m having second and third thoughts because it doesn’t seem memorable or catchy enough. Most of the other ideas I’ve come up with are already taken. I know it’s important to establish a presence online and make it easy for potential sellers and buyers to look me up. Am I focusing too much time on this in the beginning? Or am I right to want to get it right now? Dana.
Steven Butala:
This is a common issue. So you are not alone in this at all. If I had to say, what’s the number one reason people don’t hit their financial goals, it would be this. There’s too much scattered disorganized approach to doing these few things in the beginning that really, really matter. Here’s my short advice and then I hope, because it’s Jill Friday. So my advice is this. Please, please get a calendar. Put the stuff, the little wins, little goals that you need. This week is website week. This week is whatever your W2 job allows or your timeframe allows and put it down. I actually do it in the program, an equity planner where you’re supposed to spend this much amount of time on education, while you’re doing that, you’re supposed to get your dot-com ready and on and on it and put your phone number and all of that.
Steven Butala:
None of this stuff is totally and completely necessary, by the way. We had a member for a lot of years and he’s off on his own now, that never did a website. All he ever did was write letters, use [inaudible 00:05:32] to send letters out and put a sign on every property he bought. And he put ads on Craigslist and stuff for local property. He never moved out of one area and he was incredibly successful. So this is our way of doing it. So don’t feel bad, but you have to have a calendar. Next week, I have a show, we have an episode that it goes into great detail on this. So you’re not alone, but you’ve got to solve it with a calendar.
Jill DeWit:
Is it my turn now?
Steven Butala:
Yeah.
Jill DeWit:
Okay. I have a totally different response. Dana, let me help you. So you’re number one, you already answered your own question. You know that. You know darn well you’re spending so much time thinking of a catchy name instead of just sitting down, I agree you just need to cut yourself off. I need you to sit down, come up with your top three, give yourself three hours, whatever it is. I want you to Google them all, make sure all the dot-coms are available. All the social media stuff’s available, everything that works with it. And then maybe take a poll with your family, your friends, somebody. Let it unanimously and one will rise to the top, whether it sings to you or not, go with it and move on. That’s it. So you know that you’re doing this.
Jill DeWit:
Is it important? Sure. I want you to have this because I want you to have your website kind of just a shell of it. I want you to have your dot-com. What your name is. It’s all going on your mailer. So just have that little things figured out. It’s not going to be perfect. So pick it, get the name dot-com, social media, all this stuff, get the basics on there and then get your mailer out.
Jill DeWit:
Then I want you to later on, when you have more time, come back, make it pretty, maybe change your colors. I don’t know, fill in all the pieces that you didn’t have time to, but just get that mail and that mailer outgoing. And then at some point, because you’re going to change it six times this year, I guarantee it, because as you move on and you get a staff and you have time to focus on things, or you could hire the right people. Hey, money’s coming in now, things are really moving, I need to step up our game on our website and hire somebody to do that. It’ll all fall into place and you will change it again anyway. So that’s another reason I don’t spend too much time on it now, just get the basics. So thank you very much. And you know what you’re doing. I don’t need to focus on the name or whatever it is. So thanks.
Steven Butala:
Everything Jill said is totally dead on. You just need to put it in the calendar. If you’re going to spend three hours on it on Tuesday, then put that in the calendar. That’s what you’re doing from one to four o’clock.
Jill DeWit:
Give yourself a cut off time.
Steven Butala:
At four o’clock, if it’s not done, move it to the next day. Move the task to the next day. Don’t let it bleed into five o’clock. If it bleeds into five o’clock, whatever you have scheduled at five o’clock does now not going to happen.
Jill DeWit:
The one thing you have to be careful is because I’m guilty of this. You can’t move it a day and a day in a day, in a day in a day, and just keep moving it forever for 30 days. You do have to cut yourself off. I’m doing that right now with my book. Seriously. So let’s jump into the topic and I’ll give her truth time.
Steven Butala:
It’s Jill Friday and how she’s writing a book. This is the meat of the show.
Jill DeWit:
So, I’m in the middle of a move. We’re in the middle of a move. We’re moving to multiple states. We’re doing a house renovation. We’ve got career path number two coming up. We are revamping products. We’re merging sites. We are hiring staff. We’re bogged down. I mean, these are all positive things, by the way, we’re bogged down in sales and acquisitions for stellar properties. So that can’t stop. So something gives sometimes. You just have so much going on. And my thing is, honestly, it’s my book and the way I need to write it, I can’t half ass it. Sorry. Oops.
Jill DeWit:
I have to. That was, did you make a note there at 9:20? Okay. So I have to really be into it and focus on it. So I was starting to talk about somebody else’s content or I was reading somebody else’s content to kind of do some more due diligence and research on the direction I want to take on this. And it was funny because I’m picking up books going, this is it? This is all you got? It’s making me feel better slash however, I need to get going on it. But that’s not what we’re here about today.
Jill DeWit:
The topic I just want to share with you a little bit about, my team said, just give us real high level what it’s about. And high level stuff, again, this is because you ask, this is always stuff that we do. I’m not going to say I have a bleeding heartfelt desire to share my story of why I was traumatized as a child, because my little brother locked me out of the house every afternoon. Some people do that. That’s real. Oh, that’s real. We would race home to see who got there first because we would lock the other person out, and the other person had to go to the neighbor’s house, call mom at work and complain about.
Jill DeWit:
My mom always knew at 2:45, here come the kids, the phone calls would start pouring in because we’re home from school and we’re crying, complaining about what the other person’s doing. So anyway, but that’s not what this is about. I’m writing a book because so many people have asked, can you give a little more information about that? Can you talk to us more about these relationships? How do you get people to fall in love with you in 30 seconds or less and want to sell to you? So that’s the underlying root of it all. It’s cultivating, creating these relationships really fast.
Jill DeWit:
Some of it’s nature, but a lot of it’s nurture and I can help you get there to get these sellers and get these buyers to want to work with you and only you. And then it spills into escrow agents. It spills into your life. It spills into people that work with you and want to work with you. And so that’s the main component of this. The other underlying theme of this is women in business, women entrepreneurship and empowering those people. That’s so, for obvious reasons, near and dear to my heart. I want to help other people. There’s so many people out there brilliant that I’ve met and know and yet to meet, that just need a little leg up. Maybe just need a little inspiration. Maybe you need $10,000. I don’t know. But I want to talk about that too in this, it might be a series of books.
Jill DeWit:
I’m still kind of laying it all out right now. I have my e-book done and have chapters all figured out. Now I got to to go in and do the content for that. But now it’s kind of morphing into a series of other things and it’s going to tie into you, too. Because it’s going to go into our relationships. And it’s part of ties into, this is a preface for me, for the Jack and Jill show that’s coming up. Because all of this ties into who we are, why you trust us and we do not take that lightly, by the way, too. I want to say that right now for all of you listening and watching to hear. I can’t tell you, it gives me goosebumps right now.
Jill DeWit:
It’s more than 75% of the time, more than 90% of the time, I’m picking up the phone and getting on a call and talking to someone about something around the gate is, thank you. And I want to say, thank you, back to you. So thank you for getting us. We are real people. We are here to help you. And we’re all going to tell the truth, whether you it or not, we’re going to tell you the truth and that comes across and that’s part of this.
Jill DeWit:
So that ties into why I’m writing this book. Things that you could be doing right now today, things that we do in our relationship. And that’s a lot of what makes us successful. So the Jack and Jill show is coming later this year in the fall. And we’re going to, because there’s so many people that are, especially now, more and more couples are doing it like us and working together. And you might be in the same building we are. And they’re like, how the heck do you guys do this without killing each other? I’m like, yeah, it’s tough. I know. But I got some tricks, I can help you. Not tricks, but I’ve got some tips. There’s there’s things that I can do can help you. And unlike the woman that wrote that other book, oh, I messed it all up.
Steven Butala:
Jill and I have collectively and separately failed way more than you ever will. Yeah. And so I have a lot of opinions. I have a lot of hindsight is 2020 that both of us do. We talk about it in these books.
Jill DeWit:
I don’t know if this is the best term, but I’m just thinking of right now, I’m not going to take couples advice for people that going through a divorce for someone who’s never been in a divorce or coming together. Or being a mom. I remember, long time ago, had a baby number one and had baby questions and my doctor had never had a child. I’m like, you’re telling me to put this kid on a feeding schedule. How many do you have? Zero. Let’s talk after you have one.
Steven Butala:
Big issues with that.
Jill DeWit:
I kind of do.
Steven Butala:
There’s a lot of people on the internet who give a lot of advice about buying and selling land who’ve either never bought and sold the deal, they just have appointed themselves as some type of a person that’s going to give advice, some academia, or they’ve done six deals. And they just feel compelled to start up their own land academy. It’s cracks me up.
Jill DeWit:
It’s hard for me. They may have great advice, but it’s hard for me to take them seriously when you’re 20.
Steven Butala:
Please be careful who you learn from. That’s all I have to say.
Jill DeWit:
So I want someone who’s been there, done that and we’ve been there and done that. And I think that ties into Land Academy material. That’s why people are here with us. When you do this many deals, I’ve been there, done that. If I was coming to you saying I got this licked, I’ve done 20 deals. Follow me. I can help you. Hold on a moment. 20? Let’s talk about this. Have you experienced that? No. Have you done this? No. But at 16,000. I think I got a handle on it. And if I don’t, I know how to recover from it. So we could help with that. Do you have any questions?
Steven Butala:
What’s the name of the book?
Jill DeWit:
Oh, I haven’t done that yet. It will have Jillify in it, actually, I’m wearing the hat today. Because you came up with this term and it comes and goes in the Land Academy community people like, oh, I Jillified this. Good. We use that, we all know what it is.
Steven Butala:
The original Jillification. I coined the term because there’s, every once in a while, more than often, a property comes in, I want to buy it, but the price isn’t right. And so we send Jill in now less and less, but that was the original, see if she can Jillify this. Let’s see if she can get that property for X and more often than not, she did.
Jill DeWit:
And then it’s this book-
Steven Butala:
That applies to everything in life. [crosstalk 00:17:01] You know what is really unique about Jill that I’ve never seen in anyone else to this extent, she’s just fearless about going …. It’s the exact opposite of the question today. Dana says, am I overthinking this stuff? Am I spending too much time on this and this and this upfront? Jill is exactly the opposite. Jill will fly in headfirst at a 100 miles an hour and just look a mess, not physically, but just make a mess of the whole thing. Everybody’s looking around saying what happened? What was that?
Steven Butala:
She does it’s a real estate deals. That’s why we’re good together because I don’t do this and she’ll mop it all up and get what she wants in the end. She’s just fearless about going into stuff. So I’m sure this book is going to be that too.
Jill DeWit:
That’s so true.
Steven Butala:
That’s a personality trait. I don’t have it. I have to get organized and have a calendar and say, I know what I’m going to do and send out. I’m very, very good about being an organized and falling on a calendar. And so Jill’s way and my way, they meet at the end with the same result. But I think it’s going to be, you’re going to sing to certain people.
Jill DeWit:
I got to share this. This is a conversation that we had at breakfast today. You said to me, look, I can not sit down. You could, but you don’t like it. You said, my way is not like you. Sitting down in front of Canva 15 minutes before you have to present and whipping up these great slides. And I’m like, yeah, I can do that.
Steven Butala:
She will sit down, let’s say for not career path, but the accountability groups that we do and Land Academy ladies, not all the time, but 15 minutes before the cameras are supposed to be online. She’ll do the whole presentation. She’ll do all of her makeup and whatever she has to do, slap it all together. Totally pull it off. This has been her whole life. This is why she continues to do it. Everybody thanks at the end and says, I know what to do now. And so that makes me nuts. I mean, there’s certain small talks or impromptu things, I’m happy to do that. And everybody gives input and that’s fun, but not things how to do a mailer. You just can’t do that. I use data and data tree. So that’s why I’m on this end and she’s on that end. I know this is going to sing to a lot of people, both genders.
Jill DeWit:
I think I’ve told this before, but when I was a kid, the most painful thing was my parents were not this, when we get in trouble at my friend’s house at Cammie and Taryn’s house, Laurel and Chuck would sit us down and say, we need to talk about this. Let’s all discuss quietly why you felt the need to do X like, oh God, don’t make me do this.
Steven Butala:
Why do you feel the need to lock your brother out every Thursday?
Jill DeWit:
That too. Whenever we got into whatever shenanigans we got into, why did you feel the need to shove mud in the tailpipes of our cars? I don’t know. It just seemed the thing to do at the time. So we just go on with some crazy things and then we’d have to talk about I’m like, let’s just rip the bandaid off. I got it. Done. Move on. I’m always speed it up, man. But this book is not a speed it up thing. Maybe that’s part of it too. I promise you. I’m spending a lot of time and energy on this and it will be good. I’ll make it great.
Steven Butala:
Oh, I’m sure.
Jill DeWit:
Thank you.
Steven Butala:
I’m sure of it.
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:
Join us next week for another interesting episode. You are not alone in your real estate ambition.
Jill DeWit:
You know, it’s funny. I write down mock titles, I’ll have five of them and then I’ll choose a variation of that, like writing a blog, it comes at the end. It’s hard to do the title for me because I’ll change it six times. So I’ll write down a bunch of them and then I’ll pick the one at the end of, this is what it’s about.
Steven Butala:
I write the whole outline in Excel and then I build on it over a course of, let’s say several months. When I have downtime, I’ll go in there and build on it and build on it, build on it. Or if I think of something in the shower, I’ll build on it and find a place for it in the book. And then I put it into Excel and then somewhere in that process, when I feel like I’m about done, where I can pack in whatever, 110 pages, there’s a phrase in there that becomes the title. And it just sings to me. I can title stuff and dot-com stuff, you know that. Land Academy is a good example, but Stuff Your Fathers Never Told You. I think that works as a title. It says that’s right.
Jill DeWit:
Totall.y It’s perfect. Thank you for tuning in. We hope you find our content valuable and we really appreciate support. If you haven’t already please zip on over to our YouTube channel and hit the subscribe button and comment on the shows that you love. We are Steve and Jill and inspiration to buy undervalued property.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
If you enjoyed the podcast, please review it in Apple Podcasts . Reviews are incredibly important for rankings on Apple Podcasts. My staff and I read each and every one.
If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to email me directly at steven@BuWit.com.
The BuWit Family of Companies include:
I would like to think it’s entertaining and informative and in the end profitable.
And finally, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts.
