The Truth about Mailer Haight (LA 1623)
The Truth about Mailer Haight (LA 1623)
Transcript:
Steven Jack Butala:
Steve and Jill here.
Jill DeWit:
Howdy.
Steven Jack Butala:
Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I’m Steven Jack Butala.
Jill DeWit:
And I am Jill DeWit broadcasting from this sweet valley of the Sun.
Steven Jack Butala:
Today, Jill and I talk about the truth about mailer hate.
Jill DeWit:
Why do you say with that much [inaudible 00:00:18]?
Steven Jack Butala:
Because I don’t want to be misconstrued of mispronouncing it. Does it bug you?
Jill DeWit:
No, I just was wondering.
Steven Jack Butala:
You know, why? Because this has been a topic since I’ve been buying, selling property through sending out mailers. I want to say it with emphasis. There’s a lot of hate involved in this business. Jill’s about to dispel that theory that I have here. She’s long dispelled this because she has experience as a customer service person many, many years ago.
Jill DeWit:
There’s always going to be hate.
Steven Jack Butala:
Her theory is there’s hate everywhere.
Jill DeWit:
Oh yeah. Come on, there’s no business that you’re going to 100% make every single person happy. They’re all going to love you. They’re all going to think that they spent way too little for whatever they got back. I don’t think that’s possible.
Steven Jack Butala:
She’s really much more set up, honestly, to manage all this than I think I ever was and some new Land Academy members are set up to do so. It’s something you got to get through. This is a total truth time episode. It’s something you need to get over it or you’re not. Some people are set up for it and some people aren’t. I was not at all set up for sending out my first mailer and the deluge of anger that came back on it. Then I went and bought a bunch of property and made a ton of money.
Jill DeWit:
There’s ways that you can remove yourself too. We can talk about that.
Steven Jack Butala:
Jill’s going to tell us. 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. Don’t forget to subscribe on the Land Academy YouTube channel and comment on the shows you like.
Jill DeWit:
Among the Lord wrote “On the receiving hate side of things, that’s a different battle altogether with your state of mind. I once wondered if I had the thick skin also, and my first incoming hate sat with me for years before I figured out how to shake it. My secret is a little woo woo. But, I did a lot of personal development during COVID and out how to alter my thoughts around it and many other things so it doesn’t affect me anymore in the slightest. I can receive the hate directly or by mail, send out as much mail as I want anywhere I want, and the only reaction get from me even doing the worst hate and threats is a small smile on my face. And then, I forget about it. Sorry for the long reply, but it’s definitely a mental game. The good news is that it’s a game you play with yourself, and you can set your own rules.” That’s great.
Steven Jack Butala:
Here’s my response to this because I respond. This was in Discord. It’s a long time, not long time, but a couple year member who’s this is all worked out for them. I really, I responded by saying this set of reaction, this templated reaction when something like this happens, is so important in life. I have a mechanism like this that I use when there’s any kind of confrontation to diffuse it and try to get everybody to laugh at the end. I don’t care if it’s the checkout clerk at the grocery store. My whole point to putting this question in, really it’s a statement, is you have complete control over this, just like everything else. Total and complete control over what you allow someone to say to you on the phone about a offer you sent as insignificant as that is in life and the offer amount that you sent for a piece of real estate. That’s obviously clearly worth way less than what they think it’s worth.
Steven Jack Butala:
Today’s topic. The truth about mailer hate is why you’re listening.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah. I’m saving it for the show.
Steven Jack Butala:
I hope I can say hate correctly for Jill throughout this episode.
Jill DeWit:
Oh, I just, you have so much emphasis on it. It’s just kind of funny, but I understand it. Some people are set up for it, some are not. Okay, so what the heck are we talking about? How do we? This is how we find our properties. We are sending out offers by the thousands to buy property, mostly rural vacant land but all different types, at non-retail prices.
Steven Jack Butala:
Why are you emphasizing it like that?
Jill DeWit:
Because it’s the nicest way to say it. I’m not trying to insult anyone.
Steven Jack Butala:
I’m just teasing, just teasing.
Jill DeWit:
I’m really actually not trying to. People think like, “Oh, you’re just, you’re bottom feeders. That’s what they all say too.” No, we’re not. So, hold on a moment. We are sending them at a price where we can comfortably double our money. That’s been our underlying easy way to explain it and still have our buyer make some money on it too. That’s the whole point. The reason is because when you buy something so well, you double your money, and the guy who buys it from you is so darn excited, because he’s still buying it below retail. Everybody wins. So, we have to send out thousands and thousands of offers to find those situations where the people are just done. They’re like, “I don’t care. You can have it for a dollar” kind of thing.
Jill DeWit:
They’re in that mindset. We’re not giving them that and I’m not being that cheap, but they are way less than retail prices. Our whole thing is the more mail you send, the more you’re going to have coming back to choose from. You pick the best, right? Well, what happens? Thousands of offers go out. You’re definitely hitting, oh my gosh, way more than half of the people that you’re hitting, more like 70 to 80% of the people you’re hitting, it’s not going to be received favorably. They don’t want to sell. They don’t like your offer. They don’t like you. You hit them on a bad day. Dream it up, whatever it is. The hate is when they get your offer, they’re walking back from the mailbox, and they’re dialing you on the phone before they even hit the front door to chew you out.
Jill DeWit:
They’ll either do that. They might sleep on it and do it another time to really carefully choose how they want to let you know. They might write you back. I mean, dream it up. They might email you because you have all your contact information there, because you’re saying, “Hey, I’m making this offer for this price for this property. I’m ready to go if this works for you.” The hate is what comes back. The whole point about this is people get, at first you’re kind of like “What just happened? I did what you guys said. I sent these offers. I’m expecting people that are all going to love me and some do, but a lot of them don’t.” The truth is you got to deal with these people that don’t.
Jill DeWit:
You can A, there’s a couple ways you can do this. A, remove yourself. After you try it, I’d say try it first, take some phone calls, see how it goes. See if you’re set up for it. I’m totally set up for it. If you’re not, you can remove yourself. You can easily get, there’s many services out there. I don’t need to name them because now we’re shifting to different services because we’re trying them. There’s lots of phone answering services that will field your calls and take that for you. They’ll ask the questions that you want to get asked like, “Gosh, I’m so sorry. Do you still want to sell? Do you really want to sell? And what is the price? I’ll see if we can make that work, kind of thing. I’ll pass that to the owner.” Whatever it is, they’ll handle that.
Jill DeWit:
But either way, you’re involved and you’ve got to learn how to, like the person who wrote that question took them a long time to figure it out. They weren’t set up for it. They took it personally and had to develop some tactics and some skills to bounce back. I look at it like everything in life. I’m walking around life, no one’s going to be happy with everything that I do. Steven, 99% of the time, he loves everything that I do. More it’s like 20% of the time today, if that. Well, I just, I mean, let’s just truth time. Well, you’re not happy with everything that I do and you’re going to tell me. It’s up to me, how I take that. If I really let it get me down and it was really going to affect me.
Jill DeWit:
The truth about mailer hate for me is number one, protect yourself. Remember it’s not personal. Come up with some ways for you to not let it mess with your psyche. Then two is, you’re still running a business here. You can’t take every hate call and just hang up the phone and go a hate call, hate call, hate call, because there might be something there. You’ve got to… You don’t like where I’m going with this or you want to add in right now?
Steven Jack Butala:
I have no opinion. Why do you think I don’t like where it’s going?
Jill DeWit:
I don’t know. You had a look. I didn’t, I don’t know. Then my thing is the – What?
Steven Jack Butala:
This is right along the lines of what we’re talking about. This is perfect. Like I’m not, I don’t know. I don’t and why would you check with me? Like why would you care what the person on the other end of the line really thinks about the value of your property? The fact is it’s like, this is what it’s worth to me. Your property’s worth $10,000 to me because I’m going to go and resell it for 20. It’s probably worth 30. You have to decide whether or not that $10,000 price is worth it. If it is, we can put a deal together. If it’s not have a great day.
Jill DeWit:
That’s it.
Steven Jack Butala:
It’s as simple as that.
Jill DeWit:
That’s it.
Steven Jack Butala:
There’s a deeper thing going on here. I know this because when I started mailing property, heavily mailing owners of rural vacant land, it’s the first time they ever got an offer like that at all. I had the luxury in the late nineties and the early two thousands of being the first person there. That was a time when you could send a $500 offer on all the properties in a county and get like 40 or 50 offers back, 40 or 50 signed signatures back.
Jill DeWit:
Because no one was doing it.
Steven Jack Butala:
They just had no idea that it had any value, which is just not the case.
Jill DeWit:
That too.
Steven Jack Butala:
Now the internet is all. What I learned, my point in saying all this, is that I’ve had a lot of experience with the hate and I’ve seen it grow over the years, not go down, go up. The source of it, in my opinion, comes from how the person, the seller that’s on the other end of the line, came about owning this property.
Steven Jack Butala:
If they inherited it and their basis is in zero. And most of the time, they never knew that their parents or whoever had it anyway. A lot of times we get calls from spouses are like, “Oh my God, my husband collected property for the last 10 years. He just died last two months. Can you just please, can you solve this for me? I don’t want any.”
Jill DeWit:
“What will you give me for it.”
Steven Jack Butala:
“I don’t want any, I don’t want to even want to talk about price. Can you just make this go away? It’s a lot of paperwork and a lot of stuff I don’t want to deal with.” That person has no hate.
Steven Jack Butala:
Consider this another case study, a man and a woman are in their sixties. They bought a piece of prop. They live in Boston. They bought a piece of property in Nevada, because they both love to go to Las Vegas once a year. They had a plan to buy prop, build a house on it and retire there. Well, their plan didn’t work. They paid $30,000 for this great piece of property in Clark county. They just got [inaudible 00:11:38] 30 years, 40 years went by, their kids are gone, all kinds of stuff happened in life. It didn’t work out.
Steven Jack Butala:
They get an offer for $10,000 from us. They’re livid. They’re not livid at us. They’re not livid at our offer. They’re livid that that plan didn’t work out for them. All this hate comes out on the other end of the phone about how dare you crush my dream. They need somebody to blame.
Jill DeWit:
I know. It’s true.
Steven Jack Butala:
It’s not the offer and it’s not the dirt. It just didn’t work out.
Jill DeWit:
That’s true.
Steven Jack Butala:
Another one, this happens in California all the time, is they pay too much. They might have paid too much three years ago. Maybe it was on terms and they finally paid it off. We’re staring at it going, “Yeah, it’s worth $10,000 to us. I’m sorry you paid $60,000.” Now they blame us for that in situation. If you realize that I did this episode intentionally to everybody chill out about it, especially on discord because it’s not you.
Jill DeWit:
That’s it. It’s not you.
Steven Jack Butala:
It’s not. You can’t take responsibility and it’s not your price and it’s not the fact that you spent money on a stamp to get it to him. It’s what it’s worth to you, and I’m sorry your life didn’t work out.
Jill DeWit:
If it works, great. If it doesn’t, I wish you all the best. That’s how you need to end it.
Steven Jack Butala:
However you arrive, you have to arrive to this conclusion, like the person who wrote in Discord in the question or statement today. You have to really smirk about it and just say, “Wow, it’s too bad. It’s great that I’m not that couple in Boston. I’m actually proactively taking steps to make sure that doesn’t financially happen in my life by joining Land Academy or buying and selling land or whatever you do.”
Jill DeWit:
I do feel bad for them. I do. Then they’ll often tell you the story and when you really get them talking, once everybody calms down and they understand where you’re coming from, and you get them talking, they’ll say shocks. You hear these amazing stories like, I’ve used this so many times, “That was where LAX was going to be built.” I’m like, “Darn, that would’ve been great if it worked out, but it didn’t.” There’s all kinds of things that like this subdivision was supposed to be gorgeous and beautiful. It just didn’t happen. I’m like, “I feel bad. It would’ve been great.” You never know how it’s going to go. I try to sympathize with them and understand them, but it still doesn’t change my price. It’s still kind of like, “I’m so sorry, but this is still the best I can do.”
Steven Jack Butala:
It still doesn’t change the fact, this is the Detroit Italian coming out now in me, it doesn’t change the fact or excuse the fact for using horrific language and screaming at somebody on other end of the phone about something.
Jill DeWit:
Oh, that’s true. That’s true.
Steven Jack Butala:
It just doesn’t, that’s not okay.
Jill DeWit:
No, that’s true.
Steven Jack Butala:
I don’t answer the phone anymore for a reason. There are deals in there. Jill’s great at like turning them around and buying their property. I don’t, I’m not interested in that.
Jill DeWit:
But even that stuff, when they come at you like that, just cut it off. Don’t take it. You shouldn’t take it. You protect you.
Steven Jack Butala:
The next call is saying 10,000. The person’s going to say that 10,000 bucks is great.
Jill DeWit:
That’s the funny thing.
Steven Jack Butala:
“I was thinking about selling this property. You just saved me a bunch of stuff to do. Thank you. How do we get this deal done together?”
Jill DeWit:
You have to reset. This is stuff that I talk about, like we’re doing intensives this month. This is one of the things I talked about. You got to get your head together when you answer the phone, because you really don’t know what call’s coming at you. Someone could be mad and someone could be jumping up and down. You got to be ready no matter what and just be open to it and see how it unfolds. Happy you could join us today. Five days a week, you could find us here on the Land Academy Show.
Steven Jack Butala:
Tomorrow the episode, well, it’s House Academy. The episode on the House Academy Show is called Housing Market Predictions for 2021.
Jill DeWit:
Or 2022.
Steven Jack Butala:
Oh, 22. Sorry. You are not alone in your real estate ambition. Everybody came out with their predictions, CoreLogic, Zillow, ATTOM Data, all the big companies. We’ll look at them tomorrow, and they’re very consistent and they’re consistent what I think too.
Jill DeWit:
I’m excited. Thank you for tuning in. By the way, don’t forget, if you’re a Land Academy member, be sure you join us on Discord.
Steven Jack Butala:
We are Steve and Jill.
Jill DeWit:
We are Steve and Jill.
Steven Jack Butala:
Information and
Jill DeWit:
Inspiration.
Steven Jack Butala:
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.
