Top Performing Members are Outsourcing to Concierge Mailer (LA 1599)
Top Performing Members are Outsourcing to Concierge Mailer (LA 1599)
Transcript:
Steven J Butala:
Steve and Jill here.
Jill K DeWit:
Hi.
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 how our top performing members are outsourcing to Concierge Mailer.
Jill K DeWit:
And we’ll explain all of this. Don’t worry. Okay with that. I got the top performing member part, I know what outsourcing is. So who’s this Concierge thing that you guys are doing? What is this thing? And we’ll fill you all in. We are talking about this today because I found this out from our staff last week and I’m like, “What do you mean they’re using it?” They’re like, “Yeah, they got some people that you know in the advanced group that are seeing this as a time-saving thing too and a very valuable product.”
Steven J Butala:
Just like every product we’ve introduced, including Land Academy, I’ve been using it for years. I’ve been using this product for years to outsource my data mailer, and I check it at the end, and it turns out everybody else wants to use it too.
Jill K DeWit:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). You know what this is too? It’s all in the name of being more efficient.
Steven J Butala:
Yeah.
Jill K DeWit:
And taking-
Steven J Butala:
Faster, better, cheaper.
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah. There you go. We’ll talk more.
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 K DeWit:
Todd wrote, “Is anyone scrubbing out owners that purchased their properties in the last year?” This is good, and I have another comment that continues this discussion. Aaron answered, “Wondering how often deals come from owners that just purchased though. I have done only handful of deals, but for these owners, mostly purchased decades ago,” or the owner inherited it a decade-plus ago and has no idea why they are still paying the taxes.
Jill K DeWit:
I could see a more recent inheritance turning into a deal, but would that show up as a recent sale? Not that it matters, but some of the most pissed off people seem to have purchase recently and maybe just built a home. Oh, that happens. We have that going on with one of our mailers right now, too as a matter of fact. We sent out a very specific zoning type mailer, and this particular area is moving so quickly that people did build a bunch of homes. And so they’re getting offers for land, and it’s not just land anymore. And they think that it’s us. And I’m like, “Eh, no, it’s actually the data is not caught up with what you just did.” And it’s comical. I don’t know if you saw me open the mail the other day, but that was a lot of the love mail that I got.
Steven J Butala:
Are you being satirical?
Jill K DeWit:
Totally being satirical. So I made a video of me opening the mail and it was funny. I have some new names. It’s great.
Steven J Butala:
Four-letter names.
Jill K DeWit:
I do. I do. No, they made a great play on words on my last name, and our names combined, the BuWit name, and it’s just wonderful.
Steven J Butala:
That was new for me.
Jill K DeWit:
In warms my heart. I don’t care.
Steven J Butala:
So it turns out that BuWit rhymes with dimwit.
Jill K DeWit:
Oh, yeah, and dumb wit. I didn’t know that. Yeah, I did. And it’s so funny because the people that… I find it comical when people take the time to write a mean letter back, spend more postage than I did, and then even one of them was typed up. They had their poor secretary do this and make this label to mail it back to me. I’m like, “Okay, how much did that cost you? You could have just thrown it away.” Okay, so back to the question, do you want to talk about scrubbing out recent stuff?
Steven J Butala:
I’m going to save my advice for the end because this is one of my-
Jill K DeWit:
Why? Go ahead. We’re ready.
Steven J Butala:
Okay.
Jill K DeWit:
We’re all ready.
Steven J Butala:
Let’s say everyone’s right, and the vast majority of the properties that you purchase come from people who own property for 10-plus years, which is in the dataset for the most part. Not all of it, but for the most part it’s in there. But what if you miss one? So why would you want to make a mailer smaller? That’s what I… And by the way, the step-by-step-by-step microscopic, little, tiny steps on how to do a mailer and scrub data, are in the Land Academy chapters that I’ve recorded. Those are my chapters. Jill’s are all about the sales chapters.
Steven J Butala:
So how to do this and why to do it is all in there. And we’ve been succeeding at it for 25-plus years, and now we have hundreds of members that are succeeding it by following in those steps. So anytime you get an idea about, “Well, maybe I can make this a little bit more efficient,” meaning, “I’m going to make my mailer a little smaller, and I’m going to buy just as many properties.” So what you’re actually doing is saving 25 or $30 on a mailer, but then you don’t ever know if one of those people that you scrubbed out was ready to sell.
Jill K DeWit:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Steven J Butala:
So this topic, I’ve never understood it. I’ve never understood trying to be more efficient from a mailer standpoint just for the sake of being more efficient. Believe me, I’m a middle-aged man.
Jill K DeWit:
Here it comes.
Steven J Butala:
Nobody wants things to be more efficient than I do.
Jill K DeWit:
Yes, it’s true.
Steven J Butala:
I pray to the efficiency god to the point of nausea.
Jill K DeWit:
Annoying his family.
Steven J Butala:
Nausea around everyone in my personal and professional life.
Jill K DeWit:
Yes.
Steven J Butala:
This is one thing, it’s just not worth it. Keep it all in there. Are you going to send a letter to the US government to see if they want to sell their property? No, you’ve got to scrub that stuff out. And again, that’s all in the education, but Jill and I have story, after story, after story about somebody calling us on a mailer saying, “I just bought this property three months ago and my mom got sick.”
Jill K DeWit:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Steven J Butala:
Or, “We just realized my husband got stationed in Guam or whatever, and we just don’t want it. We don’t need it. Yeah. We’d love to sell it. We’re trying. We have to leave on Sunday.”
Jill K DeWit:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Steven J Butala:
Please don’t scrub this stuff out. Please spend the extra $15 just to see.
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah.
Steven J Butala:
Today’s topic, top performing members and how they are outsourcing to Concierge Mailer. This is the meat of the show.
Jill K DeWit:
I was going to add on that thing, you’re right, every time someone’s questioned this, and then they’ve done their own little brief study on this, they go, “Oh, you’re right.”
Steven J Butala:
[crosstalk 00:06:44].
Jill K DeWit:
My favorite one was a couple of years ago, this guy, he did put months into this, and kept track of his numbers, kept track of the mailer, and then posted it for everyone in Facebook. And I thought, “God, this… ” I shared it all over the planet because I’m like, “Thank you.” It was a back tax one. “Should I only mail people that are in the back tax situation?” And he’s, like I said, spent months and compared to that versus our way, and he came to the conclusion of, “You guys are right.” Because what happened? He got all the crappy things. There’s reasons why things are back tax. “These are the problem properties. They took longer to close, and I didn’t yield as much profit.” I’m like, “Okay.” He’s like, “I’m done with that study.” And I’m like, “Thank you for saving everybody.”
Steven J Butala:
And thank him, that was-
Jill K DeWit:
And posting it. It was great.
Steven J Butala:
It was seriously like a technical study.
Jill K DeWit:
It was in-depth.
Steven J Butala:
And his experience over 24 months of sending mailers.
Jill K DeWit:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Steven J Butala:
Because he came from another program where they teach-
Jill K DeWit:
Goal will only do back tax.
Steven J Butala:
Yeah. Both Land Geek and Jack Bosch’s program, originally, I don’t know what they teach now.
Jill K DeWit:
Right.
Steven J Butala:
Just said, “Focus on back tax property.” So he came from those environments, did it that way, then did it our way, and realized that our way is better.
Jill K DeWit:
Exactly.
Steven J Butala:
So I’m not bragging here or anything, we just have 25 years of experience doing this, and I think you need to leave all this stuff out.
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah. Thank you. I mean, what’s my saying? You said the saying. It was like, “I don’t discriminate against back tax people. I include them.” You know what I mean? So keep them all in there like this question.
Jill K DeWit:
Today we’re talking about… I love this, this came to us a week ago. We were having a meeting with our staff about how was Concierge going? What’s happening. She’s like, “You would not believe how… ” Like everything, it was kind of slow getting going while people were figuring out what it is and understanding it. And then it started to hockey puck now. They’re like, “Whoa.” And the people that are using it are some of our really top advanced people. I’m like, “Good for them.” I’m like, “I’m so happy to hear that.” So here’s, do you want to explain what this is? Because you please explain. This is your baby.
Steven J Butala:
Yeah, this product actually happened to be one of my ideas. They’re not all by any stretch my ideas. In fact, most of the time now our staff comes to us and says, “16 people asked for this thing. Can you guys put it together?” And that’s usually how it happens, but Concierge Data or Concierge Mailer, or Concierge Pricing, they’re all the same product.
Steven J Butala:
So what we’ve been… If you’re following us at all, you know that we’re big fans of outsourcing what you can without sacrificing quality to make your life more efficient, and to make your work life more efficient, and just to really focus on the stuff that makes you good at what you do, which is making decisions on whether you should buy property, how much you should sell it for, the big picture stuff, without going through all the mechanics.
Steven J Butala:
Well, there’s two huge components to Land Academy, or just sending out blind mailer campaign, number one is my side, pull all the data, analyze it, scrub it, and ultimately price it, make sure you’re picking the right county, while Concierge Mailer does all that. I’ve been using Concierge Mailer long before it was ever called that. It was me and a guy that works for us. I’d say, “Please go. I’ve done the red, green, and yellow test. Please pull all the data for this county. Scrub out this, this, this, this, and this. This is exactly how I want it. And then do the best you can from a pricing standpoint, and then I’m going to check it when you’re done. And please give me as many notes as you can about, ‘Hey, watch out for this area. While I was scrubbing, I saw this. Just letting you know. I took this out, this, out this out. I left all the churches in, church-owned property or non-profit property like you asked me. I took out the industrial property.'”
Steven J Butala:
So, that’s Concierge Mailer. You just put your order in. It’s a custom situation, and then at the end there’s a default pricing scenario that we all default to, not that I’m saying you should use that. So that’s what it is. And to our surprise, and Jill probably can take it from here, when we were asking about it, the person who runs everything, Aaron, the education company, said like, “Four or five of our top producing members are now using Concierge Data.”
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah.
Steven J Butala:
Which really shocked me because I originally developed this product to help people who are struggling with that part, with the data part and the scrubbing and all that, to outsource it so that they don’t have to struggle, so they can… Maybe they’re great salespeople like Joe, and they just don’t want to deal with it. It was the opposite.
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah, that’s true. I thought it was going to be more of a newbie product, like “Hey, don’t worry about it. We got you covered.” One of the newbie things was, “Oh my God, mail merge is making my head hurt.” Like, “Don’t worry about it. We’ll handle that. We’ll do the mail merge for you.” It is easy to goof it up, and get a line or column off, and all that kind of thing. So we took that over. So this is just like a top-level thing.
Jill K DeWit:
So I thought this is a newbie thing. “Don’t worry about it. We’ll extract the data, so you don’t even have to think about that.” And like you said, everything, and get it to that end thing where you just say, “All right, now I want to come in at this price of this. Take off this percentage. That’s going to be my offer price.” And so, but yeah, it’s so funny that these advanced members who are seasoned pros, they do this with their eyes closed.
Steven J Butala:
Well, I’m a seasoned pro.
Jill K DeWit:
They’ve been doing it this way for years.
Steven J Butala:
[crosstalk 00:12:09].
Jill K DeWit:
They’ve been doing their own stuff for years. And they’re like, “You know what? I see the value here. I am a seasoned pro, but now I don’t have to do it.” That’s the huge, huge, awesome benefit. So yes, you are a seasoned pro.
Steven J Butala:
I’m not bragging.
Jill K DeWit:
You’re a seasoned pro about a lot of things.
Steven J Butala:
No, no, I’m not bragging. I’m not bragging. I’m just saying, I’m trying to make my stuff more efficient too.
Jill K DeWit:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Steven J Butala:
I don’t want to sit down. At this point in my career, believe me, I do not want to sit down. I do run the red, green, yellow test myself. I actually enjoy that part of it.
Jill K DeWit:
I think in the counties is right.
Steven J Butala:
But once I find a county or a zip code, I send it to Concierge Data and they do it all, usually with a pretty quick turnaround, one or two days. And it all comes back, and then I’ll check for flaws and test for reason, and maybe I’ll reprice it, certain sections of it, and do whatever.
Jill K DeWit:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Steven J Butala:
But it takes the grunt work out of it.
Jill K DeWit:
100%.
Steven J Butala:
And there’s grunt work in every project. I don’t care if you’re building a house or renovating a car.
Jill K DeWit:
I thought you said renovating a house. Oh, no.
Steven J Butala:
There’s just, in the middle of every project, there’s like just the grunt work takes forever. That’s what this is. It removes it for you.
Jill K DeWit:
This is just another thing too, that while we’re talking about it, I’m going to end on this for me, which is, we listen. What other ideas have you got? What else is slowing you down? And we want to help you.
Steven J Butala:
There’s a section in Discord, Land Academy Discord, where existing members, it’s called Resource Sharing, and then there’s another one called Topic Requests. And so that’s where I get a lot of these topics, and a lot of the questions, quite honestly, that we talk about in the podcast are from there. And this was one.
Jill K DeWit:
Excellent.
Steven J Butala:
I got a lot of requests for this.
Jill K DeWit:
Excellent. 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 is called Your September Financial Review. You are not alone in your real estate ambition. I just did our September… Every year early in September, I do a whole financial review about where we are in all of our companies, how much money we’re making, how much money we’re losing in some cases, and then eventually start to think about what we need to do to maximize, or minimize, our tax liability. And so we’ll talk all about that tomorrow.
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah.
Steven J Butala:
Right?
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah.
Steven J Butala:
It takes like half of a sentence to talk about financial stuff, and Jill’s eyes just go roll right… literally. Tomorrow, watch.
Jill K DeWit:
That’s true.
Steven J Butala:
She goes like this.
Jill K DeWit:
I know. This is not my favorite thing. We’re making money. Uh-huh (affirmative), got it. That’s all I need to know honestly.
Steven J Butala:
We actually got into a little tiff about this yesterday.
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah.
Steven J Butala:
Like, “Look, it’s September, we need to look at this.” And she goes, “Meh. Yeah, but this is what I want to do.”
Jill K DeWit:
Leave it.
Steven J Butala:
We’ll argue about it tomorrow.
Jill K DeWit:
Yes, we will. Thank you for tuning in. We hope you find our content valuable, and we really, really appreciate your support. So again, if you haven’t already, please check out our YouTube channel and hit the subscribe button. By the way, you can see us, see us filming this here, see the eye roll, see all of the expressions, or if you’re just listening to it, check it out on YouTube. It’s comical. We are Steve and Jill.
Steven J Butala:
We are Steve and Jill. Information.
Jill K DeWit:
And inspiration.
Steven J Butala:
To buy undervalued property.
Jill K DeWit:
I think it’s comical.
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