When Its Too Late to Change Your Career (LA 1596)
When Its Too Late to Change Your Career (LA 1596)
Transcript:
Steven J Butala:
Steve and Jill here.
Jill K DeWit:
Hello.
Steven J Butala:
Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I’m Steven Jack Butala.
Jill K DeWit:
And I’m Jill DeWit broadcasting from the valley of the sun.
Steven J Butala:
Today, Jill and I talk about when is it too late to change your career?
Jill K DeWit:
So I put some thought into this. We’ve been talking about this for a while because people come to us at all different ages. We have people in their sixties, we have people in their twenties and even teens, even middle school, Caitlin, high school. Caitlin’s in high school and was in career path. So what’s interesting is … it’s not necessarily, I think, the age, obviously. I don’t think it’s a number, especially because I’m a woman. I don’t believe in numbers.
Steven J Butala:
You don’t believe in numbers?
Jill K DeWit:
But it comes with age.
Steven J Butala:
I believe in numbers.
Jill K DeWit:
Age or the scale, I don’t believe in numbers, but I do believe that there are things about a person that will make a difference and I’ll share. I have two concerns for people of all ages that are starting another career.
Steven J Butala:
So this is largely circumstantial for me, so we’re going to come at this a little bit differently, [crosstalk 00:01:18] which is good.
Jill K DeWit:
I like that.
Steven J Butala:
Before we get into it though, 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 K DeWit:
Okay. Luke wrote, “So at what point should or would you consider entitlements? I was watching a recent interview with Seth Williams and Mike Marshall about this topic. Mike did a good job breaking down the idea and, for example, how it’s different from rezoning. But at what point would a land investor decide to go further into development into entitlements for a particular parcel? Seems like a great topic of discussion.”
Steven J Butala:
Mike Marshall and Seth Williams are both former Land Academy members, and [inaudible 00:02:05] have a ton of respect for those guys.
Jill K DeWit:
Yes.
Steven J Butala:
Mike’s just an expert in this specific topic, both in [crosstalk 00:02:12] California and Texas, so he’s got both perspectives. When should I or Jill or let’s say [crosstalk 00:02:23] yeah, you, or a land academy member could start down or go down the path of entitling real estate? And the answer is never.
Jill K DeWit:
Please explain [crosstalk 00:02:32] what it is, if you don’t mind.
Steven J Butala:
Entitlements are when a large company, let’s say like Shea Homes or Toll Brothers or any developer, could be even just a regular person like us, wants to take a piece of property, let’s say a five acre property, or in a larger case, maybe a 40 acre property, and create a subdivision. Or entitle the property so that it can be developed into separate APNs. On the east coast, it’s called creating a subdivision. On the west coast, it’s called entitling real estate. There’s tons and tons of different ways to do this. It is extremely time consuming and expensive and frustrating as hell, and our whole Land Academy model. And rightfully so, we’ve been proving this over and over, and now hundreds of members are proving it with us and for us. Buy a piece of property as is, sell it as is for more. That’s the model.
Steven J Butala:
Entitlements, it’s real easy to get into a spreadsheet and say, I’m going to pay $25,000 for this 40 acre property. And for sake of argument, if I had 41 acre properties, I could sell them all for $5,000 each, I don’t need to do the math on that. It’s incredibly profitable. It’s also frustrating as heck if you don’t know what you’re doing. And can you hire consultants to do it? Yeah, but it’s going to take you a year to two years later. What can you do instead? Minor split property.
Steven J Butala:
If you go be back in our archives, Jill and I have had multiple shows talking about minor splitting property and minor splitting property, and I’ll try to be brief here, goes back to farming times where two people would have several children to help on the farm. And then throughout that process split up their properties so that your daughter can have the back 40 acres. Your son can have the back 20 acres and on and on and on, so it’s a minor split. It involves rewriting a description, maybe getting a survey. It happens very quickly and you turn one APN into, let’s say, five APNs. Happens in Texas all the time. There’s certain places in Arizona you can do it. All over the country, there’s spotty, little places you can do it. And it’s very profitable.
Jill K DeWit:
And it’s all on paper. You’re not out there blading in roads and putting in a sidewalk or adding any infrastructure.
Steven J Butala:
That’s a great point. So let me leave it … we’ll get onto the topic here in a second. Entitling a property makes a lot of sense if you take it to the end. Entitling property, especially now … entitling property 30, 40, 50 years ago was very simple. You walk into the county, you say here’s a survey, I’m taking this 40 acre property. I’m going to make it into 60 lots. Here’s where the streets go. Here’s where the central park goes. And here’s how we’re going to do the utilities. Okay? Okay. And that’s it. And all of a sudden you’ve got whatever, 30, 40, 50, 60 APNs.
Steven J Butala:
You can’t do that anymore. They want to know that you’re going to finish it. The county wants to know, and I think that’s not bad. Who wants unfinished subdivisions? There’s tons and tons of what … they’re called zombie subdivisions now because of this over entitlement during those times. So when you finish it, it really makes complete financial sense. You take a piece of raw farm acreage, turn it into a ton of lots and then build some houses on it and resell it. But who’s going to do that? That’s just not what we do. So Mike Marshall, bless his heart, is very bright on this topic, but it’s very academic. It’s just not realistic.
Steven J Butala:
Today’s topic, when is it too late to change your career? It’s the meat of the show.
Jill K DeWit:
Would you want to go first?
Steven J Butala:
You go ahead, Jill.
Jill K DeWit:
Okay. So here’s the scoop. Like I said, we have a lot of people come to us, a lot of different ages and they’re like, God … and they may have had three, not only in one past career and one past life, if you will, but they may have had multiple and they’re here now. We have a lot of people too that are full and retired and happy, but bored. And then they’re like, I could be making some more money and having some fun. I can flip some property. I’m 70, whatever it is. So does that mean … is there an age number to do it? No. No, there’s not. But I want to tell you, I don’t think you can be too young. I don’t think you can be too old, but I have two concerns that I want to address. And if you can solve this, I say, go for it. You ready?
Steven J Butala:
This is great, Jill. You did think about this.
Jill K DeWit:
Okay. My concern number one is your energy. You think I’m kidding?
Steven J Butala:
Wow.
Jill K DeWit:
No. Yeah.
Steven J Butala:
No. I love this. You’re just … This is truth time with Jill.
Jill K DeWit:
It is. How much energy do you have? Are you really going to be excited about this? There’s a lot that goes into this. Are you really going to sit down and spend all weekend like everybody else does, watches all the education, learns about this? Are you going to spend the next weekend picking a county and diving into that? Do you have the energy? You’re going to wake up in the morning and jump out of bed and want to do this? Or are you going to stay up late, making sure your property’s posted so it gets sold? Or even just managing it. Do you have the energy to do that and the mindset and the determination? There’s some people that are like … they aren’t 75, 80 and they’re like, I’m not done. You don’t look it. It’s amazing how many actors we see too. I’m like, that’s one thing in that profession, I’m like, wow, he’s 80. Look at what’s her face on Frankie and Grace. I’m like, she’s remembering her lines. How much work goes into this?
Steven J Butala:
Jane Fonda.
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah.
Steven J Butala:
She’s in her nineties.
Jill K DeWit:
I know. I’m like, I don’t know. I don’t know if I would do it in my nineties, but maybe it keeps her young. So maybe this will keep you young, but I want to make sure you think about this stuff because it’s a commitment. And then my second concern is, do you have the technical skill to do this? It is truth time.
Steven J Butala:
Yes, it is.
Jill K DeWit:
If you are handing your cell phone to your grandchild saying, I don’t know how to mute this call, we need to talk about that. And it’s not like you can’t do it, but I need you to get yourself there. I want you to take some Excel courses, and if you’re struggling, it might be hard. I mean, it’s true, so it’s not age again. You might be great at it and it might take you longer too. I don’t care if it takes you longer, but I need you to get there.
Jill K DeWit:
And there’s some things you don’t have to be a pro at. I do not need you to know how to build your own website from scratch, but you need to know enough that someone makes a website for you and you get property posted on there. And you have to go in and change the price. I need to be able to do some little changes like that on your own. Those are my concerns.
Steven J Butala:
So when I said it’s not an age number, I said it’s largely circumstantial, it’s exactly what Jill said. These are circumstances that has nothing to do with the age. I can tell you what the profile of a regular career path member is. And the career path people tend to … they’ve chosen this as their career. It’s called career path and so they take it very serious. And they show up hardcore for these sessions every week as they should to get as much out of it as they possibly can. And we have lots of pilots, retired pilots, tons of mechanical engineers and accountants, or finance people, and we have lifelong career sales people. And they’re usually not the same. The pilots usually are not the salespeople and vice versa. The salespeople aren’t really the technical people.
Steven J Butala:
They have somebody with them. In one person’s case, in Tony’s case, he’s got his daughter. Jill mentioned her earlier.
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah.
Steven J Butala:
I think, and she’s 15. So she’s helping him with the technical part. He’s a career insurance salesperson and they’re doing great. And so it’s a circumstance. The other thing that Jill didn’t mention, and I want to drive this point home, is money. There’s been a few times in my life where there’s less money coming in every month and more money going out. And so that’s no way to start anything.
Jill K DeWit:
No.
Steven J Butala:
You got to work that out somehow.
Jill K DeWit:
True.
Steven J Butala:
Joining Land Academy and working at it 40 hours a week won’t get you out of that. In fact, it’s probably going to get you deeper into the hole.
Jill K DeWit:
Right.
Steven J Butala:
So you need to be in a money scenario where … and I don’t mean you need to have few hundred thousand dollars in the bank because you’re going to buy your own property, because that’s not what I mean at all.
Jill K DeWit:
Right.
Steven J Butala:
But I do mean that you need to have some other gig or have set up something, especially if you’re older. It’s probably more likely, only because [crosstalk 00:11:24] you’ve had more time. Yeah.
Jill K DeWit:
You have money, you’re okay.
Steven J Butala:
And so if you got that all worked out, you can really, really make this work for yourself.
Jill K DeWit:
Exactly. This is good. 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 the Land Academy Show, well, it’s Jack Thursday, and I’m going to talk about the concept of capital. You are not alone in your real estate ambition.
Jill K DeWit:
I love Jack Thursday.
Steven J Butala:
Why is that?
Jill K DeWit:
It’s all technical, and I just get to sit back and let you talk.
Steven J Butala:
You know what? I love Jack Thursday too because I get to talk about the stuff I want.
Jill K DeWit:
Exactly. I’m sure there’s a healthy 10% of you that love Jack Thursday also.
Steven J Butala:
Well, it depends on where you’re coming from.
Jill K DeWit:
Right. Thank you for tuning in. We would love to connect with you tomorrow on Clubhouse, by the way. Join me, maybe it’s us, every Thursday at one o’clock Pacific time in the Land Investing Club found on Clubhouse.
Steve and Jill:
We are Steve and Jill.
Steven J Butala:
Information …
Jill K DeWit:
And inspiration …
Steven J Butala:
To buy undervalued property.
Jill K DeWit:
Are we going to change it to Jack and Jill at some point?
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