Jack Thursday – Distractions from Success (LA 1625)
Jack Thursday – Distractions from Success (LA 1625)
Transcript:
Steven Jack Butala:
Steven and Jill here.
Jill DeWit:
Hello.
Steven Jack Butala:
Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I’m Steven Jack Butala.
Jill DeWit:
And I’m Jill DeWit, broadcasting from the Valley of the Sun.
Steven Jack Butala:
Today is Jack Thursday and I’m going to talk about distractions from your success.
Jill DeWit:
Oh, I bet you have a whole lot to say.
Steven Jack Butala:
What’s the biggest distraction that you experience? What’s the thing standing in your way? Besides me, standing in your way of being the successful woman I know is inside of you.
Jill DeWit:
Wasting time on deals that are too small.
Steven Jack Butala:
Beautiful answer. Wow, that didn’t take long for you to answer.
Jill DeWit:
No, it didn’t, because it was perfect timing. I just came in from my desk and I’m looking at-
Steven Jack Butala:
Tell us the story.
Jill DeWit:
I’m looking at deals… Here’s the good news, some of these are coming in and I have… My transaction coordinator has been with me long enough now she knows what my answers are going to be. I just wrote her back saying, “Hey, you know what, you’re right, this, this, this and this. You know what I’m going to say no to. Please take ownership of that and only loop me in now when we’re at this level.” Because I’m wasting time going what the heck, I shouldn’t even be looking at this. And some of them is like, it’s too small a deal and we’re not even sure about the access. Why am I even looking at that?
Steven Jack Butala:
My answer is, it’s just working on stuff that doesn’t yield a dollar.
Jill DeWit:
That too.
Steven Jack Butala:
And so that’s, we’ll talk about it in a minute, but it’s hard to… This show doesn’t make any money. It doesn’t make a dollar. In fact, it’s a total time suck and it’s a money suck, but it really works. It really helps people and it converts the right people to becoming Land Academy members where they can make a ton of money for themselves and contribute to the group, so that makes money. It makes everyone money. So there’s this balance between, in Jill’s case, and I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but it’s like, should I do this deal that’s really small and kind of risky, but I know this person that’s submitting it is going to be a superstar. That’s what this show’s about. Are they distractions or not? We don’t know. You just don’t want to go down a rabbit hole, that’s my point. Right?
Jill DeWit:
Well, I’ll tell you another truth time thing. As a matter of fact, I have one deal that I fund. I just got an email from an agent today saying, you might lose money on this one. I’m like, yeah, I’m prepared for that. It’s a deal in a county, in California, that I funded for somebody else who realized later on they paid too much for it, and they kind of threw me the keys and ran away and said, oops, sorry, here you go. I made a mistake. It was your money, not mine and then they backed. I’m like, thanks a lot.
Steven Jack Butala:
Threw the keys at you. It’s a great visual.
Jill DeWit:
Thank you.
Steven Jack Butala:
I hope our post production guys can do a little-
Jill DeWit:
I throw some keys in there.
Steven Jack Butala:
A little cartoon of throwing keys.
Jill DeWit:
Me with keys bouncing off me.
Steven Jack Butala:
[inaudible 00:02:50], throw some keys in Jill’s face. Before we get into it, let’s take a question posted by one of our members on thelandinvestors.com online community, it’s free. Don’t forget to subscribe to the Land Academy YouTube channel and comment on the shows you like. That’s correct.
Jill DeWit:
Okay. I’m going to take a guess at how to pronounce this.
Steven Jack Butala:
It’s first initial, last name.
Jill DeWit:
Oh, thank you. Okay. So G Corley wrote, I was going to call it Guh Corley, “Hey everybody. I just joined Land Academy two weeks ago and I’m very grateful to be part of this group. I would’ve joined about a year ago, but unfortunately life got in the way but in the meantime-”
Steven Jack Butala:
That’s what the show’s about, life got in the way.
Jill DeWit:
“I’ve been trying to research and watch the podcast as much as possible. Fortunately I was able to save up enough money to get myself started. I’m currently in the process of choosing counties and from what I learned from one of the moderators, Kevin’s, posts, I’d like to target four to six acre size properties in less competitive areas, which I can hopefully sell anywhere from $30000 to a $100000-”
Steven Jack Butala:
Excellent.
Jill DeWit:
“I’m hoping to find good enough deals that would be able to get these deals funded. I feel my money would be better spent on mail rather than buying properties at this time. Right now I’m currently looking at a few counties in a few different states and my goal is to send at least three separate 2000 unit mailers to three different states just to diversify-”
Steven Jack Butala:
That’s textbook [crosstalk 00:04:26].
Jill DeWit:
[People 00:04:26] put a lot of stuff into this, that’s great [crosstalk 00:04:27].
Steven Jack Butala:
Congratulations, because you really [crosstalk 00:04:28]-
Jill DeWit:
I’m glad you took that time off.
Steven Jack Butala:
Paid attention to the educations here.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah, you have a good plan.
Jill DeWit:
“My biggest question right now is, would it be better off sending each 2000 unit mailer to one county in each state, or should I split those 2000 mailers into two or three neighboring counties in each state? All of the counties I’m looking at passed the red, yellow, green tests and have low days on market, but I’m unsure of the best way to approach these mailers as a beginner. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you all, and I apologize just for the long post.” That’s so sweet.
Steven Jack Butala:
If you were in second grade, I would put a star on your forehead. If you were in eighth grade, I would move you up to the front of the class to help me teach.
Jill DeWit:
And if you were in college?
Steven Jack Butala:
If you were in 11th grade, I would write you a recommendation letter. And in 12th grade, I fully expect you to have an academic scholarship somewhere, even if it’s a small school.
Jill DeWit:
And then after college I’d hire you.
Steven Jack Butala:
Well said, Jill. That’s the cherry on top. It doesn’t matter, either way you’re going to win. You’re sending out 6000 units, and neighboring counties, it’s a little bit more risky. If it’s all passing the red, green, yellow tests, then the days are low. The only issue they could possibly run into is like some weird quirky thing you missed about some state. But if it’s a state that you see in discord, that people are buying and selling land and it’s not weird, like West Virginia is very weird because it has some problems with partial ownership. Please don’t mail anyone… This is for everybody, please don’t mail any mail to West Virginia. It’s not anything against West Virginia, I actually personally love the state. There’s a partial ownership recording issue there that, you get a bunch of property back, you’re ready to buy it and you find out that the person owns half. There’s some other long lost person that owns the other half and you can’t do the deal. Either way is fine.
Jill DeWit:
I know what my answer is.
Steven Jack Butala:
Separate the states?
Jill DeWit:
Well, I would rather as you’re starting… I want you to be able to learn to pick the best ones, do due diligence and the easiest way is if you do one area at a time, so they’re all kind of like properties coming back.
Steven Jack Butala:
This is the person who answers the phone’s answer. Person who’s doing the data’s answer. Send it all with extreme prejudice.
Jill DeWit:
I’m just saying, as you’re getting started and you’re lining them all up on the spreadsheet, it’s easier when they’re all similar properties, similar size, similar areas, to then pick out the best ones. Because when you have three different areas, like this one might be good over here for this reason, this one for this reason. I mean, there’s no wrong way. You’re going to learn all three.
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, exactly.
Jill DeWit:
Thank you for not doing 10 or 10 sizes and 10 zoning types, or I’m going to throw a commercial with residential and this and this. I’d be like, hold on a moment, let’s make it a little bit easier. But the way you’re going at it, you can let them all rip at once.
Steven Jack Butala:
There’s two stories in discord right now about people that have a similar story to you. Actually I think last week we read one of their stories where they just sent 50000 units out and now they’re buying like 25 properties and they couldn’t be happier. I don’t answer the phone though, so she does. I would send all 6000 out, probably in the same state and just pick the best five or six properties, buy them and resell them quickly… With intent and vindictively. That’s how I do everything in life. I don’t think Jill agrees sometimes that, that’s the best-
Jill DeWit:
Vindictively?
Steven Jack Butala:
Today’s Jack Thursday, and I’m going to talk about distractions and success, this is why you’re listening. So last week I wrote… I get the luxury of writing the Jack Thursday title, and so I’m sitting at my desk, this is like last week sometime, I’m not sure when, and all this week, being distracted, with everything and anything. Being distracted by contractors in the house that we’re redecorating, distracted by my teenager’s lack of fill in the blank.
Jill DeWit:
Getting to school on time.
Steven Jack Butala:
Distracted, no offense, Jill, by whatever Jill has questions on at the time and all of our staff and all. So I’m like, you know what? I read a long time ago and it stuck with me, or maybe it was a lecture or a Q and A session with the woman wrote Harry Potter. What’s her name?
Jill DeWit:
I forgot.
Steven Jack Butala:
Somebody will flash it on the screen, like hey idiots, her name is… In post-production. Rowling, DL Rowling, something like-
Jill DeWit:
Oh, J.K. Rowling. She lives here.
Steven Jack Butala:
Oh really?
Jill DeWit:
Yeah.
Steven Jack Butala:
In Arizona?
Jill DeWit:
I think she moved here, correct me if I’m wrong, because I think one of her kids went to a High School one of our kids went to.
Steven Jack Butala:
Somebody asked her what the biggest-
Jill DeWit:
Or it could have been the vampire lady. I don’t know. Don’t quote me. Sorry.
Steven Jack Butala:
Oh, it’s the vampire lady?
Jill DeWit:
It’s the vampire lady, that’s it.
Steven Jack Butala:
She lives here for sure.
Jill DeWit:
Vampire book lady. Okay. Sorry.
Steven Jack Butala:
Asked her, a lot of people want to be writers and successful writers. Why you? What? And she said, I learned how to control all the distractions that go on that’s keeping me from writing, which are children, and stuff that goes on in life and dinner and just all of it. And it’s not just personal stuff. It’s stuff at work and now we have this Land Academy group, so if you let it, if you don’t control it, it’ll consume you. You will spend eight to 10 hours a day answering questions, addressing people’s concerns and all of that. You really have to take it and keep it under control. That’s one kind of distraction.
Steven Jack Butala:
Second kind is what Jill’s talking about, where it’s like, I shouldn’t be… I’ve got 62 deals going on. I’m only concentrating on buying. I’m not concentrating on selling them or some version of that. I guess what I’m saying is, the cards are stacked against you when it comes to being distracted and keeping you from what you’re supposed to be really working on. You have to get a calendar in my opinion, and you have to get a, that’s connected to a phone app, that allows you to have alarms and allows you to stay organized and you have to say no. It’s very hard to say no to people or no to people that submit great deals to you or say no.
Steven Jack Butala:
I read a story in discord yesterday, super, super bright, very successful member, under the rant section was talking about an hour and a half conversation that he had with the realtor, where it failed. This realtor is failing and they’re not even two months into a one year contract and the realtor is being an absolute, I can’t use the word on air, from every different way. They won’t cancel the contract and they won’t work on the deal. So they’re stuck, he’s stuck and he knows he’s going to sell it. This guy’s super bright and very… But he’s complaining about this hour and a half conversation and he’s like I wasted an hour and a half with this person, they’re never going to change. There’s a lot of realtors in the market right now that are really sucky and are making money, because there’s so many deals going on. That’ll flush itself out at some point.
Jill DeWit:
I have one right now where honestly too, it’s a deal funding deal that we did a while back. And the email is like, they’re not happy with them. I’m like, you might have to help them. You might, I hate to say it…
Steven Jack Butala:
[crosstalk 00:12:32] You might have to do their job for them [crosstalk 00:12:33] and suck it up and say…
Jill DeWit:
Exactly, and then you just don’t use them again. You learn, so I understand that. So what is your biggest distraction keeping you from doing what you think you should be working on?
Steven Jack Butala:
I have a, and it’s just because of where we are in our life right now, it will solve itself, but I have been ridiculously distracted for probably 20 months about moving from California to Arizona. Just personally distracted about where’s my stuff, I know my toothbrush is here somewhere. So that’s gone and it’s solved. We’ve got that solved. That was a huge distraction. I don’t want to even look at how much money we didn’t make because of that.
Steven Jack Butala:
Number two is lack of clear direction to my staff. For example, we have a lot of properties, this is truth time, that need to be sold. Over the years properties, and when you look at it, it’s millions of dollars worth of real estate, and we can’t get the right people to focus. This is a 100% my responsibility, by the way, as a person at the top of this company, can’t get the right people to focus on selling a property. The truth is they’re not the right people. The people that work with us are not the right people to do this and the deals are too small to get a realtor, so it’s those deals that just got caught in the middle. Meanwhile, we’re not starving. We’re making money to put food on the table and we’re moving deals [crosstalk 00:14:04].
Jill DeWit:
There’s this extra stuff on the side that should get posted and sold.
Steven Jack Butala:
It’s like having a storage unit. There’s a bunch of stuff in the storage unit. You sort of know what’s in there. Chances are, if you go to the storage unit you’re going to say, wow, I forgot I had that, and geez, I need to get rid of that now, today. It’s like that and that’s a distraction for me.
Jill DeWit:
So you talked about your distractions, you talked about how you solve it with a calendar. There’s a piece in between that. Once you sit down and isolate what your distractions are and you put them on the calendar, how do you hold yourself accountable?
Steven Jack Butala:
By following what’s in the calendar. By saying, you know what? The calendar event might not be sell these properties, it might be start down the path of the three month process of hiring somebody that’s capable of selling these properties or giving them away. There’s a bunch… It’s like a garage sale thing, or maybe the best way to get rid of the storage unit is to give everything away in there and forget it. It’s not going to change our lives. Well, millions of dollars, you got to address that. But whatever it is, it is a calendar event. That’s all there is to it.
Jill DeWit:
I agree with that too. That’s where I see some people falling short is they… First it’s hard to sit and be honest with you and to figure out what all your distractions are. And then to sit and figure out, okay, you know what the end goal is, but then you got to figure out and take some time and put steps in place to get there. Because you can’t even say, on Thursday I’m going to hire somebody. No, that’s not going to happen. No, that’s silly. So Thursday is, okay, I got to sit down and figure out what kind of person I need. What are the skills and the talents. Friday I got to write the job description, and it’s got to get posted on Indeed. Then starting Monday through that next Friday, I got to go through and field through the applications. Then the next week after that, I’m going to call back the ones I like request this further information, whatever it is, it’s a month, at least a month.
Steven Jack Butala:
I call that deconstructing the event. Deconstructing the event starting with the result. There’s a desired result, and so you got to break that all down in a lot of steps and it’s not fun.
Jill DeWit:
No, it’s not fun, but if you do it right, and you really stick to it, and you don’t beat yourself up if you miss a day, pick up where you left off the next day and you can stack a bunch of these up too. This is what I see people and I don’t want like… First I’m going to hire someone. Okay, now I got that. Then I’m going to do this, now I got that. Then I’m going to… Then a year goes by like, hold on. You can overlap this stuff, and that’s what you should do.
Steven Jack Butala:
If you’re brand new, it’s a huge luxury. You don’t have any of these issues. If you’re brand new, the distractions that you’re experiencing are changing a baby, which I’m not discounting. It’s a huge distraction, we’ve all done this. Or [crosstalk 00:16:54] in Rowling’s case, she said, I had to get up, for years, at two o’clock in the morning before I went to my job, before my kids got up and I wrote the book. You got to do whatever it takes.
Jill DeWit:
I agree, thank you. Happy you joined us today. Five days a week, you can find us here on the Land Academy show.
Steven Jack Butala:
Tomorrow is Jill Friday. She’s going to talk about a Land Academy support group. You are not alone in your real estate ambition.
Jill DeWit:
Kind of ties in with what we just talked about.
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, it actually is a good extension because I know you… Jill wrote this topic and I love when she writes the topic heads, which doesn’t happen every week.
Jill DeWit:
Thanks.
Steven Jack Butala:
Usually I do it and I… I can’t, I’m going to zip it.
Jill DeWit:
Thank you for tuning in. We hope you find our content valuable and we appreciate your support. If you haven’t already, please check out our YouTube channel, hit the subscribe button.
Steven and Jill:
We’re Steven and Jill…
Steven Jack Butala:
Information…
Jill DeWit:
And inspiration…
Steven Jack Butala:
To buy undervalued property.
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