Land Business Can Be Your Legacy (LA 1589)
Land Business Can Be Your Legacy (LA 1589)
Transcript:
Steven J Butala:
Steve and Jill here.
Jill DeWit:
Hello.
Steven J Butala:
Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land and investment talk. I’m Steven Jack Butala.
Jill DeWit:
And I’m Jill DeWitt broadcasting from the valley of the sun.
Steven J Butala:
Today Jill and I talk about how your land business can be your legacy. This is Jill’s idea, and I think it’s actually pretty brilliant. It’s something that she and I talk about all the time personally, but I think it’s worth it’s episode worthy.
Jill DeWit:
It is. Well, thank you. I appreciate that. I have to pause and just share. Is this what goes on in your world? Here’s what my partner just told me: “You sound like crap.”
Steven J Butala:
And I’m trying to help her though.
Jill DeWit:
I know.
Steven J Butala:
I’m trying to find some DayQuil. [crosstalk 00:00:39]
Jill DeWit:
“Do you know you sound like crap?”. Yeah, I do know I sound like crap. Cause I feel like crap, but that’s okay.
Steven J Butala:
Jill’s not feeling well.
Jill DeWit:
I’m Professional.
Steven J Butala:
She’s showing up for it though.
Jill DeWit:
I am.
Steven J Butala:
I’ll carry you if I need to.
Jill DeWit:
Thanks.
Steven J Butala:
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 don’t forget to subscribe on the Land Academy, YouTube channel and comment on the shows you like.
Jill DeWit:
Victor wrote “not sure this would fall under general or resource sharing, but does anyone, anybody recommend a credit card? That’d be great for our business type. It seems like the most expensive operating costs would be mail and online subscriptions. I have checked most business credit cards and none offer more than 1% of cash back for shipping or online services. This is something I never go there.”
Steven J Butala:
This is a very, very long discord.
Jill DeWit:
I don’t have any advice.
Steven J Butala:
Very long discord. There are a lot of comments. I refrain from commenting but somebody.
Jill DeWit:
Until now.
Steven J Butala:
Well yeah, that’s exactly right. Somebody did quote Dave Ramsey and I agree with this and pretty much everything he says, nobody ever got rich on credit card rewards. I can tell you from personal experience, Jill and I have an American Express Platinum business card, and it gives you a tremendous number of points back and for a lot of years, not a lot of years, for a couple of years, until we wised up, we would travel all around and use the points and stay in hotels for free and on and on and on until we realized… until we talked to a main vendor. We have a bunch of other companies that are non land related, where we have to buy cost to consult.
Steven J Butala:
And we were using the American express card to the tune of maybe a $100,000 – $150,000 a month. And we added all the numbers up and so I went to two vendors specifically and said, “Hey, if we stop using this American express card and we actually start wiring you money for all, for this material-
Jill DeWit:
how much will it save?”
Steven J Butala:
He said, “Oh yeah, well, we can knock off, you know,
Jill DeWit:
X percent.
Steven J Butala:
2% in one case in 3% in the other.” and we fell out of our chairs, that’s $3,000 to $5,000 a month per vendor. So if we add that up, it’s real money. So, and then everybody went in Discord and talked about this. So here’s my advice: forget about all that stuff. Just get a debit card. Or if you actually need a credit card, forget about the cash back and the points and all that. It’s just a distraction.
Jill DeWit:
Right.
Steven J Butala:
And in the end, you’re, you’re getting charged for it somewhere. It’s not free.
Jill DeWit:
Good point.
Steven J Butala:
Sarah. You’re not feeling well.
Jill DeWit:
No, it’s okay. No, you have, I’m going to let you run with that. Cause like I don’t want to.
Steven J Butala:
I mean, what do you think?
Jill DeWit:
It doesn’t need mom and dad yelling at them. Just one’s enough.
Steven J Butala:
Am I yelling here?
Jill DeWit:
Just a little bit.
Steven J Butala:
Really?
Jill DeWit:
You know, you don’t need to like bombard the guy, so it’s okay.
Steven J Butala:
Oh, I don’t think it’s this guy. I’m not blaming it, Victor has nothing… Victor just brought it up. Everybody else [crosstalk 00:03:40]
Jill DeWit:
Well you told Victor to read Dave Ramesy.
Steven J Butala:
I just softened this book by 10, compared to what happened on, on Discord and everybody else in the group.
Jill DeWit:
Okay.
Steven J Butala:
Today’s topic: how the land business can be your legacy. This is the meat of Jill’s show.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah, thanks. So I have three different points that I want to make. Arguably, it could have been three shows, but Jack said no.
Steven J Butala:
That’s true.
Jill DeWit:
Flat out no. So here are my three points and I will try to get through them in one show. So what point number one is: how long can your land business thrive? So I’m thinking about legacy. When I think legacy, I think of you, longevity, your future, after you’re gone, and your kids’ future, like, all right, everybody, how long can this go? And how long can I do it? You know, kind of thing. So the beautiful thing about this business is you could dial it up, and you can dial it down. So how long can this thrive here? This is my legacy. You know I don’t want to officially retire. Maybe I do want officially retire, but I don’t want to have it just shut off. I don’t want the money to stop coming in, or maybe I do. And we’ll talk about that more in just a minute, in a few minutes here.
Jill DeWit:
But my point is, a lot of people in Land Academy already doing it. They’re already goin, I only want to do this many deals a month and I just want to do this kind of deals that yield this much money. And that’s, by the way, called the equity planner. If you haven’t dug into it, go into your toolbox and sign the equity planner in there. It’s a spreadsheet, download that, plug in your own numbers and play with it. And it’s your way of going “All right? How much I want to make this year?”. Maybe you’re looking at it the other end. You’re not at this legacy point. You’re 21 and you’re brand new going, “Oh, knock it off Jill. I’m all fired up here. I want to look at the other way.”, well, you still can. Use the equity planner and you could put in “I want to make a million bucks this year.”
Jill DeWit:
All right, well, what does that look like? It looks like this many deals a month. And I want to do this kind of deals, you know, I don’t want to work that hard. This is my comfort level. I only want to buy for $10 sell for $30,000. Something like that. Make a million bucks. You can use that equity planner and it works it backwards and you can go, all right, you really can stare at it and go “I guess I’d have to send out this much mail to get this many deals, to close this many a week to make this much a month to make my million dollars a year.” so that’s, that’s how you use that. Whether you’re 21 and all fired up or 61 and winding down, it’s the same thing. So that’s, that’s my, that’s my point number one.
Jill DeWit:
My point number two is talking about legacy in lifetime, think about creating investors, and a lot of you already are and I think cause you see us do it successfully. Think about who you trust, who’s in your world, who’s doing this with you, and it’s probably your family. There are many of us partners, children, parents, working together to share the workload and the wealth, and all the good parts too. We just had the cutest, we had couples in the career path and we had father daughter. And I don’t even think she has a driver’s license yet. So dear Caitlin, you’re a rockstar. And she brought this to her dad, by the way.
Steven J Butala:
Yeah.
Jill DeWit:
She was the reason in Land Academy and she was a reason they were in career path. Mike, talk about a go getter.
Jill DeWit:
I mean, that’s amazing. So you can create investors within your family, they have to get the bug. Hopefully they’ll get the bug. And, and as a tip, if they don’t have the bug, give them, give them a few jobs that they like and let them see it unfold and watch the bank account change one day. And that might give them the bug. So that’s a good way to prove it to somebody. You know, we’ve talked about that. Haven’t talked about in a while, but. Now my third point is when can you retire from your land business? Okay, it can thrive. You can turn up, turn down, you can bring in some people, this is my legacy, I kind of want to be done. How do I do that? And this is where I want to bring you, in because you and I are talking about this a lot right now, you can sock away cash. You can make sure everything’s paid for, you can preplan a lot of things. I’m going to pause here and let you kind of jump in. Cause I know you have a lot to say.
Steven J Butala:
I mean, I have two huge points here. Well, two main points, number one, this business will never go away. It has been around since the history of this country, and it will be around forever. Buying… what will change is how we do it and the tools that we use and maybe the transparency of it might change, but all of it’s for the better, every single point. I’m watching American Experience: The History of Manhattan, New York, which is really, was that was the gateway to the rest of the country, when it comes to land. And somebody on there realized that purchasing all of the island of Manhattan north of the downtown district, which was the original portion, was way more profitable from a land standpoint, and then subdividing it, than any business that could be in it. And that person ended up being the most wealthy person in the world for a brief amount of time.
Steven J Butala:
He’s a fur trader that couldn’t spell his own name. So all through history, there’s this thing called the Stevenson method that I brought up at the live event and this guy in his seventies, he and his wife would go to the assessor’s office, write letters to people, sit there and write letters to people, landowners and buy their property. It’s the exact Land Academy model from like 1972. So this is never going to go away. The tools change.
Steven J Butala:
Number two, the sheer mobility of this, of this business, staggering to me, I’m obsessed with it lately. The way that the internet connection is connecting the world and now it’s going to a satellite situation where just the sheer mo… when you have mobility, where you can go to Southern Illinois and buy a bunch of property and work there for five or eight years, or as long as you want, and then move over to Indiana or go to Texas or whatever else, you’re just not tied down to let’s say, being a plumber, or a doctor, or anything like that. So again, I’m getting that from this American experience where there’s just people piled on top of each other. Even now in New York city, because they have to work there. We don’t have to work anywhere. So from a legacy standpoint, if you show your kids or your business partners, or, maybe you put a business partner in each corner of the country and do this. There’s so many options and it’s so positive and scalable.
Jill DeWit:
Exactly. I was going to share, I had a conversation with number two the other day, who is doing really well. He isn’t a facet of our business. I’ll call it that. And he’s like looking at me now going, “I think I’m going to start saving for a house.” I’m like, “You should absolutely start saving for a house.” I said, “If you keep this up”, nevermind by the way, this is really good. He’s got no children and no, no girlfriend, no nothing, which is crazy. I’m like, don’t change. Don’t, you’re only 22. So leave it the way it is. It’s so funny. Like have some fun, which is what he’s doing. So, but he’s also thinking of the big picture, and I don’t know where he gets this because at his age I was not like this at all. It’s not the last thing I want to thought about.
Jill DeWit:
If I was 22 and had dough coming in, I’d be planning vacation after vacation, after vacation or concert is what I was doing. So, but he’s thinking ahead and I’m like, “This is awesome.” If you put your head down and really focused, you can be done by thirties. Like, no mom, I’m going to be done by 25.
Steven J Butala:
I think I’m going to say that.
Jill DeWit:
This is kind of funny. I know. So I’m like, “Go.” So I’m like, “I’m not going to squash your energy.”
Steven J Butala:
Yeah.
Jill DeWit:
You want to, you know.
Steven J Butala:
And that’s the right thing to do.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah. If you go for it, aim for 25.
Steven J Butala:
And it happens by 30.
Jill DeWit:
Hit it at 28 or 30, yeah. It’s totally fine. I’m like, could you imagine you could have a house paid for, have everything paid for, and you know, money in the bank that, you just, flip burgers.
Jill DeWit:
You could. I mean, if it all went sideways, which it wouldn’t, but you could do something like flip burgers if you wanted to, just to pay for gas now, someday. Doesn’t matter. Anyway, it’s legacy. This is what you can be doing. I hope you are doing that. That’s my point here too. This is something like you said, and we’ve said, it’s not going to go away. It’s going to change. It’s going to evolve. The way we do it and our customers, maybe. There’s going to be things that are going to change, but we’re always going to need shelter, food, these things you’ve got to have.
Steven J Butala:
How you reach out to people to see if they want to sell their property, in our case right now we use the post office to send offers. That’s sure to change. As sure as I’m sitting here, that’ll change with technology. Number one, how you analyze property. Once you do find out that somebody wants to sell it for the right price, that’s absolutely going to change. You know, not so long ago, I was looking up meets and bounds and property and atlases because we didn’t have Google Earth or anything else. That’s going to change and how you sell it. Absolutely going to change. So, what’s the current theme here. Change, change, change, change. There’s going to, everything’s going to change. But the actual core business of buying inexpensive land and reselling it for more.
Jill DeWit:
Won’t Change.
Steven J Butala:
Won’t ever change.
Jill DeWit:
Happy you could join us today, five days a week. You can find us right here on the Land Academy Show.
Steven J Butala:
Tomorrow the episode on Land Academy Show is called “Public Records and How They Affect Your Next Land Deal ; You Are Not Alone in Your Real Estate Ambition.”
Jill DeWit:
Well, I’m excited for that. Can you give us a little teaser about tomorrow?
Steven J Butala:
You ever driving down the street? Jill, have you ever been driving down the street, and somebody is sitting next to you and they call off a property and they say, “Oh, this house they’re selling for $6.2 million.” And what do you say? Would they pay for it? Would they pay for it? Would they pay for it? Jill said, that’s Jill’s favorite sentence when we look at real estate. That’s very true. So it’s a matter of public record in most places. And there’s a lot more to that public record, but Joe’s obsessed with their selling it for six and two years ago, they bought it for 3.2. They’re going to make $3 million on this deal. And the next time we drive by two weeks later, there’s a pending sign-on.
Jill DeWit:
Yep. Or you see them drop a million bucks and people go, “What do you mean they dropped a million bucks?” Again, they could afford to do that. Look what they paid.
Steven J Butala:
Darn, they’re only going to make $2 million not 3.
Jill DeWit:
People wonder how this happens, that’s how it happens. Thank you for tuning in. We hope you find our content valuable and we appreciate your support. Again, if you haven’t already, please check out our YouTube channel and hit the subscribe button. We are Steve and Jill.
Steven J Butala:
Information.
Speaker 3:
And inspiration.
Steven J Butala:
To buy undervalued property.
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