Jill Friday – When is the Right Time to Leave Your Job (LA 1578)
Jill Friday – When is the Right Time to Leave Your Job (LA 1578)
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 Dewitt, broadcasting from pretty Phoenix, Arizona.
Steven Butala:
Today, Jill and I talk, well, it’s Jill Friday. And Jill talks about when is the right time to leave your job. 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. And if you’re already a Land Academy member, please join us on Discord.
Jill DeWit:
Stephen wrote.
Steven Butala:
I really think it’s Stephan. With an A here.
Jill DeWit:
Okay. Excuse me. Did you just correct me on that?
Steven Butala:
It’s an offshoot.
Jill DeWit:
What if it is Stephen?
Steven Butala:
It’s an offshoot of-
Jill DeWit:
What the heck was that?
Steven Butala:
The name Jill. Jill says.
Jill DeWit:
What the heck?
Steven Butala:
I’m just horsing around.
Jill DeWit:
Stefan. There’s no-
Steven Butala:
It might be Stephan.
Jill DeWit:
There’s no dots or anything above the A. Should we clarify this? What the heck is that?
Steven Butala:
The root of all this is that I have one of the most silly common name there ever was, so when there’s just a slight off shoot on it, I’m happy. Anyway.
Jill DeWit:
All right.
Steven Butala:
Whatever.
Jill DeWit:
You know who you are wrote, and please, as I read this question, and you identify that it’s you, would you please be so kind as to send him an email, or please put it in Discord, or somewhere.
Steven Butala:
Yeah. Please don’t [crosstalk 00:01:41].
Jill DeWit:
The correct pronunciation of your name.
Steven Butala:
Please don’t send me emails.
Jill DeWit:
Okay. Because this one apparently would like to know and make sure we get it right. Because okay, are we done now?
Steven Butala:
Yep.
Jill DeWit:
Okay. It reads, “Pro tip. If you use the first search function on Land Academy, it will also search podcast transcripts. I recently found a great paralegal for handling a probate issue by searching the word heirship. Come to think of it, jill says the words, ‘neighbor letters,’ at the end of every podcast, since Neighbor Scoop was released, so it might not work for this.” That’s funny. That’s cool. So, on our website, you can just search, and then all that stuff comes up. That’s good.
Steven Butala:
There’s some amazing search tools on Discord, and all kinds of places for all kinds of information, to get really, I mean, it’s one of the, that’s why I put this in here. We should talk about it more. There’s thousands and thousands and thousands-
Jill DeWit:
Of hours.
Steven Butala:
Of pages of content.
Jill DeWit:
Of content.
Steven Butala:
And there’s transcripts for, beginning from Episode 0. And we were on, this is Episode 1578. And the transcripts are all in there, every single one. So, if you do have a specific question about, I mean, I’m betting, we probably talked about it just about everything.
Jill DeWit:
So, someone right now is listening going, “You mean I don’t have to listen to this? I can just read it?”
Steven Butala:
Yes.
Jill DeWit:
“Oh, my life just improved. I can skim the cliff notes and not have to go through this torture?” Yes, that’s true.
Steven Butala:
Because I’d rather be listening to Led Zeppelin anyway.
Jill DeWit:
Oh, my goodness. All right. Moving on. Today is Jill Friday. When is the right time to leave your job? This is the meat of the show. Okay. One of the things that I do is, still do, not very often. It’s really a part of Career Path. We’ve gotten busy, in case you didn’t know. So, us and our normal consulting is not readily available, but it is inside of Career Path. So, I did a consulting recently for a person inside of Career Path, and this was the gist of the conversation. This person is in a wonderful position. I mean, great job, W-2, brilliant man, young. I mean, really did a good job setting himself up. Got a great son.
Steven Butala:
Really great. Amazing [crosstalk 00:04:23].
Jill DeWit:
Really contributing, excellent in Career Path and to the community. And bless his heart, he’s flipping sick of his job, and I get it. So, without, we don’t need to go into more about that. So, the conversation was like, when’s the right time? So, I wanted to share this with other people too, because this comes up. You get started in Land Academy and you’re doing everything right. This is a normal progression. You start realizing, “Wow, look how much money you’ve already made. Huh? Imagine if I devoted way more time to this, what I could make.” I want to hurry and speed this up. So, I want to just talk about, because I want to make sure you do it right. I want you to, basically the gist is, I want to talk about how you get there. I want you to leave your day job.
Jill DeWit:
I want you to make this a full-time thing, when you think you should have done it six months or a year ago. I want you to really over budget, over plan, over have everything going on, so there’s no way you’re going to fail. You already have three different product lines and all the different things go, so let me back up. I was going to explain my story. I’m going to have you share your story, and then I’m going to talk about advice and some goals. So, my story is, I was very lucky. I had a very good mentor. I already knew about real estate growing up in Southern California. My dad dabbled in it. He was a pilot, and some of the guys he flew around made a whole lot of money, and it was in real estate. So, I already had like, “Whoa, okay, I get that.” So, it was in me already. My very first job, my real full-time first job, not in Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory, was working for some developers in Orange County. It was great.
Jill DeWit:
And I would manage these projects. They would build strip malls and office buildings. And I learned to read plans, work with construction loans, and the banks, and the contractors, and the subcontractors. It was so much fun. Then I got tied up in another job, and then I met you. And you gave me some stuff to play with on the side. I had a full day job making a great salary, but it was a salary. It varied a little bit, because it was a sales thing, but not as much as it could have. And I was doing deals on the side, and I was doing more and more deals with you. And it got to the point where I was, we had to look at each other and say, I had to say to myself in the mirror, “You’re now losing money, because you’re dumb day job. Think about what your day job is and how much money you made last month. And the month before, the month before, the month before, doing land deals.” And then my day job was starting to cost me money. And that’s when I said, “Okay.”
Jill DeWit:
And we talked about it. It was a big decision.
Steven Butala:
Yeah. Extensively.
Jill DeWit:
Big decision. And I know I pushed it. I pushed it until I was worn out. I was worn out doing the two different jobs. I’d get done with one job, and I’d dive into the land thing, spend the weekends on it. I remember we would be out, back then I’d have all kinds of, I would leave where we were to step outside to answer a phone, and then a call, and then on my phone, I’m sending a guy an invoice to check out and pay me. Back then it wasn’t all on the website, and give me the deed details, and I would wake up and do them the next morning kind of thing. So, it was just chaos, but it was the best thing ever. And I don’t regret that for a second, and I never looked back. Please tell me there’s [crosstalk 00:08:05].
Steven Butala:
That’s super important. And I was going to say that too. It’s not so much when do you leave your day job? It’s really what happens after you do.
Jill DeWit:
Right.
Steven Butala:
And so, but and [Jill’s 00:08:18] nailed it. I mean, you need to be able to say, “Wow. Man, I should have done this a year ago.” Then you know that that was the right time to leave. You never want to look back and say, “I ran out of money.”
Jill DeWit:
Right.
Steven Butala:
“And by now I got to get another job.” So, you want to be overly cautious about this. And you need to have, I left my incredibly lucrative investment banking job, incidentally enough, Mark [inaudible 00:08:45] and I worked together in an investment bank at the end of, in the late nineties and very, very early 2000’s. Up until then, it was just a side hustle for me, buying and selling land.
Steven Butala:
And I had half a million bucks in the bank, cash. And that that was enough security, I’m not saying that that’s right for you. Just like yesterday, it’s like, this varies. All of it varies. It’s all personal preference. But that worked for me. That was enough cash. I didn’t have, my expenses were ridiculously low. They were less than $1000 a month, and you could get away with that back then, especially in Phoenix. So, it’s all personal preference, but you do not want to do this too early. You definitely want to do it too late.
Jill DeWit:
Right.
Steven Butala:
And then I, it was just, that’s how it worked for me.
Jill DeWit:
Right.
Steven Butala:
I mean, I could get into a lot of details about this topic, but I really think it’s personal preference. If you have other people-
Jill DeWit:
And it’s Jill Friday.
Steven Butala:
Did you have people depending on you? I didn’t have anyone depending on me at all, no one. I was not in a relationship, and I certainly didn’t have any children. So, those decisions are a lot easier to make. I was driving a ten-year-old car around, a lot like I still am. And with no real mortgage, no mortgage at all, in a tiny, tiny, little one bedroom apartment, which I was happy with. Those are the things that matter. I mean, you really have to look at it factually and not emotionally.
Jill DeWit:
Right.
Steven Butala:
Which is hard.
Jill DeWit:
Right.
Steven Butala:
Because everyone hates their job. I mean, if you love your job, you’re not listening to this show.
Jill DeWit:
Right. Or maybe you are? I don’t know. Who really loves their job? When it’s a job. That’s a whole nother thing, by the way. That’s another topic for another show that-
Steven Butala:
We see people that-
Jill DeWit:
[I guess, yeah. 00:10:30]
Steven Butala:
In a little neighborhood we lived in in California, that talk about, they’re in a Hollywood production type environment, so they love their jobs. But I mean, I came from Detroit. I never grew up with somebody who said, “I have the greatest job ever right now.” Never. I’ve never, I grew up with everyone hitting their job, hating their employer, and hating their union [set 00:10:47] that they have to pay every week.
Jill DeWit:
Right.
Steven Butala:
Did your dad like his job?
Jill DeWit:
Yeah. Okay, you’re right. He loved his job. Because he loved to fly.
Steven Butala:
Did your mother, did she have jobs?
Jill DeWit:
Oh, yeah. And she loved not having a job. So, that would be yes. Her job was taking care of my dad, and she loved that. That is very true. So, I want to go on and talk about, I have a little bit of, more advice, and I have some goals, ways for you to know when you’re ready. So, my advice is this. Like we talked about, push it. I want you to really push it. I want you to give yourself six months to a year of trying to not only replace your current income, but maybe double your current income. And I want you to put that aside. I want you to get many deals going. And I, when you start Land Academy, it’s like, we often start with one product type. And then we, which is true. A niche will find you. You’ll find after a year, or while doing this and a number of deals, you’re going to realize, “Huh. No one’s taking down this type of property,” or “No one’s solving these problems,” or “No one is doing it the way I just figured this out,” or “No one’s,” whatever it is.
Jill DeWit:
And that’s moving on into second year kind of thing, where you’re going, and you’re making it your own. I want you to do that first gear, get all that stuff moving and humming and money coming in. And then I want you to go into second gear when you’re like, “No, I’m taking this to a new level. I’m doing it my own way.”
Steven Butala:
Jill, this is priceless advice.
Jill DeWit:
Thank you.
Steven Butala:
And I mean that.
Jill DeWit:
Thank you very much.
Steven Butala:
This is great advice.
Jill DeWit:
Now I know you’ve got a different revenue stream, and you’re learning how to solve problems, and you’re really moving your company forward. Between that second and third gear, now we can start having this conversation with ourselves. “All right. I need to start looking at my, I really got this now. I see my company. I see where it’s going to go. I figured it out. Now I’m starting to lose money.”
Steven Butala:
Yeah. Maybe you missed some calls. You failed at some stuff because you’re at work.
Jill DeWit:
Right. So, what I want you to do at this point, when you’re in second and third gear, somewhere in between there, I want you to set some monetary goals for yourself, like Jack did. His was half a million bucks. That was his sweet spot. I’ve heard people describe it as, “I have a year’s worth of income in the bank. And I knew when I had two years worth of all my expenses in the bank, then I would be comfortable, because I want to spend some for acquisitions,” whatever it is. So, set out whatever goals that you have for yourself at that point. Make them good. I do not want you to worry at all. I want a year, preferably two, of no worries. So, when you take your foot off the gas from your day job, and you really put it on this, it’s just going to hockey puck. That’s what I want. And that’s when I say it’s okay to leave your day job.
Steven Butala:
This is just my opinion. And this is a personal preference for, it’s your personal preference, but I’m not sure I would do any of this unless you already did a deal.
Jill DeWit:
Oh, gosh. Yes.
Steven Butala:
I think that there’s this conventional wisdom for startups. And here’s a person that has a ton of money that wants to do startups. Here’s how startups in Silicon Valley get funded. You fund 50 startups, and two of them, or one of them work. Nevermind, there’s 50 startups where 50 people work, that are banking on thinking that this is it. They’re going to get stock options, the whole thing’s going to work. But the person who’s lending the money, or the owner who’s shelling out all this money, it’s just a numbers game to them. So, you don’t want to be on the receiving end of that.
Steven Butala:
You want to be on the giving end of that. And so, don’t try to be that one in 50, be the one. And that’s what real estate is. So, yeah, I mean, if you’re really one of 50, if you were one of the founders of, let’s say, Stripe, geez, you’re a multi-billionaire now. So, that’s not why we’re here. We’re not here to become billionaires. We’re here to buy property for $10,000 or $12,000, and sell it for $40,000 every month, and have a happy life. And so, try one. Get one done and see if you like it. See if you like talking on the phone, or if you can get a partner. I hate talking on the phone. I got a partner to do it. I love the data part of this. So, really approach this with no emotion and logic. And don’t leave your job because you hate it. Leave your job because you did a couple of real estate deals, and now you know.
Jill DeWit:
I want more than a couple.
Steven Butala:
Okay, good.
Jill DeWit:
No, that’s my point. I’m sorry. I don’t want you to leave your day job after a couple of real estate deals, and you know what’s possible.
Steven Butala:
We’re on the same page on this.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah. No. I want you to leave your job when you’ve done 100 real estate deals, or something like that. You’ve done some-
Steven Butala:
100?
Jill DeWit:
Maybe 100.
Steven Butala:
I think between 5 and 10, and then you’re sitting there in the mirror saying, “If I had enough time, I could actually do 10 a month.”
Jill DeWit:
I differ from that. I really want you to be, because after 10 deals, I don’t have this much saved up. I don’t have that much set aside. I don’t have that much experience. I mean, I’m serious. I’m want more experienced. When I left-
Steven Butala:
[crosstalk 00:16:12] Land Academy, so-
Jill DeWit:
I had done-
Steven Butala:
I had to figure this stuff out myself.
Jill DeWit:
Many, probably, okay, let’s say 50 to 100 deals. 50 to 100 deals, I’m happy with that.
Steven Butala:
Well, Jill easily did 50 to 100 deals.
Jill DeWit:
That’s what I’m saying.
Steven Butala:
She had me sitting next to her, and we also had about 80 properties in inventory that needed to be sold. So, we could sit there and say-
Jill DeWit:
Yes.
Steven Butala:
“We’re going to put Jill to work to sell these properties, and generate a quarter of a million bucks.”
Jill DeWit:
Correct.
Steven Butala:
Actually it was $400,000, I think.
Jill DeWit:
Correct. That’s when it was like-
Steven Butala:
We had hoards of money in the bank.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah. You even came to me. What was so funny too? It wasn’t my idea. I’m like, “I can keep burning this candle. I got this.” And you’re like, “I think you should talk about it.”
Steven Butala:
I pulled her aside and said, “Honestly, you just need to leave.”
Jill DeWit:
Yeah.
Steven Butala:
And she’s like, “Really?” And I said-
Jill DeWit:
I’m like, but do you remember that? I was bummed, because I just got a raise, too. I was bummed. I’m like, “I just got this great raise.” He’s like, “I know”
Steven Butala:
What a good decision that was.
Jill DeWit:
It was. Isn’t that funny? I’m like, “Shucks.” I was making more money than I’d ever made in my life. And I was really proud of that. I’m like, “Okay.” And you’re right, and I did. So, get many, many deals. Don’t test the water and leave your job. I’m going to leave it on this. You cannot just test the water-
Steven Butala:
Absolutely right.
Jill DeWit:
And think I got this, and I got money in the bank. My wife’s on board. I want you to push it. I want you to be exhausted.
Steven Butala:
Jill, that’s so right.
Jill DeWit:
And then I know you, it’s the right time. Thank you. Happy you could join us today. Five days a week, you can find us 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. I’m glad that Jack Thursday goes before Jill Friday. So positive and uplifting, and all my Jack Thursday is, is like, what the hell?
Jill DeWit:
So, we can leave everybody on that. What a happy note. Have a good weekend. You wouldn’t want to have Jack Friday be like, what the heck is that? And then this is all I’m thinking about all weekend like, “Wow, what else am I doing wrong? God, I hope I’m not that guy, whoever he’s talking about.”
Steven Butala:
Yes. “Is he talking about me?”
Jill DeWit:
“I hope it’s not me.” Oh, no. Thank you for tuning in. And we hope you find our content valuable, and we really appreciate your support. If you haven’t already, please check out our YouTube channel, hit the subscribe button, and give us some feedback on the shows that you love.
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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