Jill Friday – What Jill Learns from Her CEO Club (LA 1642)
Jill Friday – What Jill Learns from Her CEO Club (LA 1642)
Transcript:
Steven Butala:
Steven and Jill here.
Jill DeWit:
Hello.
Steven Butala:
Welcome to The Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I’m Steven Jack Butala.
Jill DeWit:
And I’m Jill DeWitt, broadcasting from the Valley of the Sun.
Steven Butala:
Today, Jill and I… Well, it’s Jill Friday. And Jill talks about what she’s learns, learns in a future tense, in her CEO club.
Jill DeWit:
Okay. We’re going to talk about our November meeting, basically.
Steven Butala:
I hope you’re stuffed full of turkey.
Jill DeWit:
I know, that’s it. I hope you’re shopping. I hope you are enjoying-
Steven Butala:
Not shopping.
Jill DeWit:
Well, hold on a moment. I hope you’re enjoying Black Friday deals from the comfort of your couch. And watching football, and eating leftovers, and shopping on your computer. And it all arrives on time.
Steven Butala:
You know the Detroit Lions play on Thanksgiving?
Jill DeWit:
Thanksgiving. As do the Cowboys.
Steven Butala:
And the Lions lose. The Cowboys are so dope.
Jill DeWit:
And not lose to the Cowboys.
Steven 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 please don’t forget to subscribe on the land Academy YouTube channel, and comment on the shows you like.
Jill DeWit:
Erin wrote, “Short update on my first deal. Sure seems like it will be a success story. Closing on Friday at $13,800. I paid no attention to the legal description until I got my [inaudible 00:01:28] commitment back. Found out it’s five lots on one PID.” What’s a PID?
Steven Butala:
The five lots on… it’s his-
Jill DeWit:
Parcel ID or something?
Steven Butala:
Yeah, yeah. It’s the [crosstalk 00:01:41]
Jill DeWit:
Okay. Just for tax purposes? Okay go it. “Can be split back into five lots for $175 bucks. And no wetlands or site evaluations needed. This is phenomenal. Neighboring lots sold for $19,900 last March. Thinking I’ll make as much gross on selling the five lots as I do with my two in one year. And this is my first deal on my second neighbor.”
Steven Butala:
It’s outstanding.
Jill DeWit:
I love it. So you didn’t… How sweet is this? Your seller didn’t know. They would’ve told you, “You didn’t know.” [inaudible 00:02:18]. I’m closing. I’m like, holy moly. I’m actually buying five, I’m not buying one. This is great.
Steven Butala:
I had a similar story. I don’t want to take the wind out of anybody’s sail and I’m not trying to up the story here.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah. Don’t take it away from Erin. Just kidding.
Steven Butala:
No, I’m telling you when these things happen. And you’re starting to really exceed your regular job. And I’m not telling you to quit your job at all. But I’m saying-
Jill DeWit:
Talk about breathing.
Steven Butala:
Wait a year. And make sure you like it, and you can and continue it. But when you’re starting to do single deals that exceed your whole salary for the year, it’s time to think about leaving.
Jill DeWit:
Isn’t that amazing? I just think about how well you’re going to sleep now. Going, I just put, okay, great… No, it’s so hard though because I’ve been in this situation. You realize your land business is now doing better than your day job. It’s really hard to walk into the office with a smile on your face. Especially, when you’re like every conversation, “oh, I want to tell them to shove it right now.” You think I’m kidding?
Steven Butala:
No I’m too.
Jill DeWit:
Because I can afford to.
Steven Butala:
I lived it. Really.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah, I know. You know, what’s so funny. So this is my truth time too. When I did leave, it was like I hung in there. Right. And everybody knew there was something going on. So when I finally sat my boss down and said, “I got to go.” They’re like, “I knew it.” And then three people on the way out the door, are like, “Can I come with you? Can I work for you?” It was the sweetest thing. I’m like, “Sit tight. If I have a place for you, I’ll let you know.” But they’re like, “Can we come too? We knew you were going to go.” It was very sweet. So yeah. Thanks.
Steven Butala:
Today’s Jill Friday. She’s going to talk to us about what she learns from our CEO club. This is the meat of the show.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah, so it’s really interesting. I recently joined a CEO club. There’s a local chapter here in Arizona, and then there’s a nationwide chapter. And we do one of the things… This is all kind of new to me by the way. So I’m still as it progresses and I get more into it I will share with you how it goes.
Jill DeWit:
But we have these monthly leadership get-togethers. And they brought in some very interesting speakers. I’m not sure who pays for this too, by the way because one of them a former Olympic person. I mean they’re published authors.
Steven Butala:
Well, you probably pay for it, right?
Jill DeWit:
Yeah, but it’s not that much.
Steven Butala:
It’s probably a lot of members.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah, that’s true. But they bring in some-
Steven Butala:
Do they check to see if you were the CEO of anything?
Jill DeWit:
Yeah. I had to apply. There’s an application.
Steven Butala:
Oh, there is an application.
Jill DeWit:
No, it’s not just like check… Like check this box if you’re a CEO, and pick out the five pictures that have a train in it. That’s not the application process. So yeah. That’s pretty funny though. That’s good. So anyway… It was just interesting I was on this call and we had to leave the house. So I’m like… You got to hear some of it too. So I want you to weigh in on this and bring up some of the things that you have to share. Because we’re getting in the car, I’ve got this, “What are you doing?” I’m like, “Shh, I’m on a call, I’m listening.” And then I put it on speaker so you could hear too. And the gist of the meeting this month was further confirmation that… I didn’t know I was going down the right path years ago. I didn’t really understand it. I didn’t know. I thought on accident, my people skills were getting deals done. I thought other people were doing it different ways. And it’s further confirmation that no you-
Steven Butala:
Ah, you second guessed yourself?
Jill DeWit:
Yeah, because I thought everybody could do it. I didn’t think I was anything special.
Steven Butala:
Wow, jeez. I never second guessed anything that you were doing, not for a minute in that side.
Jill DeWit:
I thought everybody can talk to people like this, can’t they?
Steven Butala:
Oh jeez, Jill. No.
Jill DeWit:
I have all these great conversations with all these people. I assume that every person I hang up with has the same experience and the same conversation with everyone that they talk to. And everybody else is doing deals like I’m doing, no matter what it is. The gist was it was all about soft skills. You know, this meeting this month. And you know, it was really, it’s all the touchy feely stuff.
Jill DeWit:
And this author spoke for a long time about his decades of research. And you know, confirming the soft stuff. And not only the women’s stuff, he actually went into a deep dive on women and how we perceive things and how we tackle things, how we connect with people, how we kind of put people first. And get to know people in our organization. Think about this, that creates this loyalty. And it creates this basically a teamwork and a glue where people are going to want to stay with you. We have people that work for us that I think want to be here for a life. I know they do.
Steven Butala:
Oh yeah.
Jill DeWit:
I know. And they have said that. And I want them too.
Steven Butala:
Me too.
Jill DeWit:
And they support us. They stand behind us, and I stand behind them. Whatever decision they make, my first instinct is, I’m sure you did the right thing, period. You have my support. So it was very interesting. Another thing that he talked about was some of the studies he did where men were training to develop soft skills. He talked about the MBA programs. It’s a common thing in masters programs. He’s like, you know who you are, you’re in your MBA program. Everybody signs up for the finance courses, the math courses, the accounting courses, the business courses. Not everybody’s all excited to sign up for the soft skills, the social part of it. And that’s the important part-
Steven Butala:
It is for you.
Jill DeWit:
Study… No, no, no. In everybody. I’m just saying in business, somebody mentioned going to meet HP decades ago in Palo Alto and meeting the head of HP. This is probably in the 1970s. And at the time he went in to meet the president of the company who was in a cubicle sitting with everybody else. And the value of that back when they were building HP. He mentioned the plaque on the wall, and I thought that was so good. I remember this. And it was M-B-W-A, which is, “Managed by walking around.” And it was just the value of getting to know people walking around, getting your team, what you pull out of them. And then there’s more and more I can talk about, I’m not going to dive deep into this. But like Google studies, it made me do some of my own research on my own too. Google’s doing studies about what makes the best team. It’s not necessarily the brightest people. It’s who communicates, how they communicate and listen to other ideas. Because as a group, they collectively do better, if everybody gets to talk. Go ahead.
Steven Butala:
I mean, I have a lot to say.
Jill DeWit:
You’re like sitting on your hands and I want you to go.
Steven Butala:
I mean, I sat there quietly and listened to this with Jill, which is usually how I do everything with Jill, quietly.
Jill DeWit:
Of course. This is the only time he really has something to say. Every other moment in my life, all he just says, “Of course, on whatever you think is best.”
Steven Butala:
This guy comes from a background what I would call corporate training, cross-motivational. Whatever that little subsection is of motivation or self-help. It Comes from the corporate end of that, and I don’t. So I couldn’t get out of corporations fast enough. But we were all… Most of us worked for corporations or maybe we were even high up in corporations. We knew these CEOs that would walk around, kind of like with their arms spread out like their Jesus and stuff. And you know, I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. So I never wanted a big corporation. I never wanted to be at the top of a big corporation. If I did, we would have one. I’d wake up tomorrow and within any year we would figure out how to do this, take a company public or whatever else.
Steven Butala:
What I want is what I have. I want one or two to five lieutenants right under me that buy and sell land. And now facilitate by popular demand. This with the Land Academy scenario and these education companies, and O2O, and NeighborScoop and all of it. So I don’t believe in a lot of that. The fluffy-
Jill DeWit:
It’s not fluffy.
Steven Butala:
Well, for us. There’s a place for it in the companies like… I’m saying this for land people, that there’s a point to this. How it manifests itself, what the guy said was not wrong. How it manifests itself for us is different. It’s not a Jesus thing. It is a talking to a seller, or talking to a buyer, or talking to the people under you that work for you in a way that keeps them entertained, healthy-
Jill DeWit:
Motivated. Inspired.
Steven Butala:
Keeps them in a place where they feel appreciated and compensated correctly. Ready to get up in the next morning and take on the challenges. So it has a huge place. Just not… I mean he took it to a place that… but that’s the nature of huge companies. I mean, it becomes a sort of a cult.
Jill DeWit:
So it’s interesting. You’re right. Because I have been for big organizations. I worked in them where they had a 100,000 employees. I was one of a 100,000. That’s great. Yeah, and then I’ve been one of two, one of three, one of 10 employees. So it’s important to see the whole thing. I’ve never led a 100,000 employees. Clearly. Nor do I want to lead a 100,000 employees. If someone tapped me on the shoulder tomorrow and said, “Hey Jill, we want you to run American Express.” I would say, “No thank you.”
Steven Butala:
Me too, jeez.
Jill DeWit:
Could you imagine? No way. So I love it, but there’s take aways. There’s things that we all can learn and help people. And you know what, I’m going to end up on this. That’s why I’m in this organization because you know what, I’m the way I have this small little… Compared to a lot of other people in my group here. I’m small potatoes, but I do big numbers.
Steven Butala:
Yeah. Yeah.
Jill DeWit:
And I love it.
Steven Butala:
Well, you can certainly end it on that.
Jill DeWit:
Exactly.
Steven Butala:
That’s what you want.
Jill DeWit:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Happy you could join us today. And we hope you had a great Thanksgiving week. Five days a week you can find us here on the Land Academy Show.
Steven Butala:
Join us next week for another interesting episode. You are not alone in your real estate ambition. I think that it was a great talk and I think it’s a great… We’re lucky because we can divide and conquer. And I think that CEO club is perfect for you.
Jill DeWit:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Thank You. And thank you for tuning in. We hope you find our content valuable and we appreciate your support. If you haven’t already don’t forget, check out our YouTube channel, hit the subscribe button.
Steven Butala:
We are Steven and Jill information.
Jill DeWit:
And inspiration.
Steven Butala:
To buy undervalued property.
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