Inconsistency in Sending Mailers Equals Inconsistent Income (LA 1717) RERUN
Inconsistency in Sending Mailers Equals Inconsistent Income (LA 1717) RERUN
Transcript:
Steven Butala:
Steve 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 DeWit broadcasting from sunny Southern California.
Steven Butala:
Today Jill and I talk about how inconsistency in sending mailers equals inconsistent income.
Jill DeWit:
That’s a mouthful.
Steven Butala:
Seems simple.
Jill DeWit:
Say that three times fast.
Steven Butala:
It seems simple. I can easily do it and bore the heck out of everyone. It seems like a simple concept-
Jill DeWit:
Saying it three times fast?
Steven Butala:
Yeah. It’s a very, very simple concept, but it’s hard. It’s harder to do, we’re finding from our members and even with us, once in a while, in our land buying and selling effort, harder to do than it seems. You know why? Because you run into issues.
Jill DeWit:
I don’t think it’s hard, I think it’s discipline.
Steven Butala:
Yeah.
Jill DeWit:
That’s really all it is and this-
Steven Butala:
You know what? That’s exactly right. Discipline’s hard.
Jill DeWit:
Oh, well, that’s true.
Steven Butala:
Well said. [crosstalk 00:00:55]
Jill DeWit:
Who was the last person you disciplined? And please don’t say me.
Steven Butala:
Geez.
Jill DeWit:
Give me your last discipline moment.
Steven Butala:
You know what? I hate the concept of discipline. I always have.
Jill DeWit:
I suck at it.
Steven Butala:
It’s the thing about being a parent that I just… I never have gotten my head around it and never will.
Jill DeWit:
I know. Someone said that once a long time ago and I believe it to be true, the hardest thing about parenting is parenting. I would have easily been one of those parents that just went to bed at whatever time I was tired and let the kids just figure it out. Like, I’ll fall asleep when they’re tired. No, we got to do bedtime, we got to get them… That’s a lot of work. That’s not what this show is about, but anyway.
Steven Butala:
It’s a lot of stuff.
Jill DeWit:
It kind of ties in to-
Steven Butala:
It totally ties in.
Jill DeWit:
…to this too. And I know we’ll talk more about it.
Steven Butala:
We just recorded a show, actually, with a couple of guys, and it aired yesterday, or I guess, by the time this series, last week. And we really ended up talking about this topic. The stuff that it takes to do well, anything in life, is all the same. It’s discipline, and a schedule, and staying on a schedule.
Steven Butala:
We used to say stay motivated a lot. I don’t think that comes up that much any longer, because I think being motivated at this is pretty easy. I just think it’s sticking to a schedule. It’s all some version of that.
Jill DeWit:
I hear you.
Steven Butala:
Why don’t you stick to a schedule? Because stuff goes on.
Jill DeWit:
That’s true. I hear you.
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.
Jill DeWit:
Skylar wrote, “Hi Jack and Jill. I found out about your live event the day before and I could not attend.” You must have saw my note here, too. “I’ve been, however, listening to your podcast every single day. Please, would you consider this live event again? I’m a beginner, by the way, and I would really like to do what Jack says in the podcast.” And then this member is just killing it. That was your note?
Steven Butala:
This member is just killing it? No, they wrote that about themselves.
Jill DeWit:
Oh, that’s funny. Well, I wrote… It’s funny you say this, I’m getting out my calendar right now so I can look it up. So I responded to the person and said, “Yes, because here’s the whole deal, it’s all about our live event.” And it’s cool to get together-
Steven Butala:
The reason I included this question is-
Jill DeWit:
Yeah, tell me.
Steven Butala:
…there’s a bunch of strings in there that, where people are confused.
Jill DeWit:
Oh, they’re confused about my answer.
Steven Butala:
No. Can you just… I’m hoping you can clarify what’s actually going to happen this year.
Jill DeWit:
Okay. That says insight. Traditionally, every October, the first weekend in October, we host a get together here for Land Academy members, new and old, in the Los Angeles area. And this year, for obvious reasons, we can’t do the get together. The hotel’s still not fully open. We don’t know what we can do, what we can’t do. It’s not a big mass event too, by design. Like everything we do, we have a pretty tight community. So we keep it small.
Jill DeWit:
So anyway, I can’t do it now, but, so here’s what I did do. I told everybody, please mark your calendar, put this in Land Investors, for sometime between the dates of March 4th through 7th, that’s Thursday to Sunday, somewhere in there. I’m tentatively booking, coming to Los Angeles, and this is 2021. So that’s it. So 2021, March 4th through 7th would be our carry over live event number three. And I already sent that out to my whole staff. I saw you accepted the invite, so that’s the scoop.
Steven Butala:
Here’s the source of the confusion in Land Investors. There’s an old string that Joel… I don’t know how this got in there, but Joel said, “Hey, welcome. Can’t wait to join you.” Please join us in October, that’s what it says.
Jill DeWit:
Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Because I was going to, we were going to do it in October.
Steven Butala:
Right?
Jill DeWit:
Even last-
Steven Butala:
So we’re not having a live event in October.
Jill DeWit:
Not this October.
Steven Butala:
You just threw a bunch of dates out. I want to be super clear about it.
Jill DeWit:
Okay.
Steven Butala:
There is no 2020 October Land Academy live event.
Jill DeWit:
Right.
Steven Butala:
It’s been rescheduled to March.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah. March 2021.
Steven Butala:
So we’re going to have to go in there… I’ll go in there and change it, because it’s causing all kinds of people… That they get excited and everything.
Jill DeWit:
Oh my gosh. It’s still… I thought I put in yesterday or the day before, I didn’t know it was not still more clear, so. All right.
Steven Butala:
Today’s topic, inconsistency in sending mailers equals inconsistent income. This is the meat of the show. This topic came up because we interviewed one of our members a couple days ago and he said… We interview many successful members, or any member, I’m like, “What’s the bottleneck? What’s the issue?”
Steven Butala:
He said, “In the beginning, I had trouble having a mailer Monday. Every Monday, I send out mailers. And he said, until I did that, that’s when he was straight down the path to accomplishing what he wanted to accomplish. In his case, it was quitting his job. And he did.
Jill DeWit:
He’s not alone. We have a lot of members that talk about this. So this is when you never, thinking about topics for today. This was something that our staff has expressed to me as well, that a lot of members struggle with this. They struggle with the inconsistent income. And the point of this is, you have to take a step back and realize where it all starts. It starts with deal flow. That’s it. This is deal flow. And if you turn on and turn off what you’re doing, your bank account’s going to go all over like that, too. And you’re not going to have stuff.
Jill DeWit:
What you have to do is, and this is a Steven thing and he’s right, create systems and stick to it. But then I’ll help you too, we’ll talk about it more. There’s ways to make it easier on yourself. And it really starts with the mailers. Why? Because if you don’t have any offers going out, you don’t have the sellers calling you back. You don’t have the deals to review. You don’t have the deals to buy. So you don’t have the deals to sell. That’s what all goes back there.
Jill DeWit:
And what a lot of people do is, they’ll send one mailer out and then they’ll just watch the whole process and they’ll wait. And I can understand that maybe the first time. Say you’re brand new to this and you want to see how it’s going to go. I can totally get it. You send out 2,000 offers, the phone calls come in, you’re trying to gauge how many phone calls you can handle. I understand that, okay, 2,000 offers, it means I’m going to be busy for four or five days. My phone’s going to blow up, whatever it is, then it’s going to be down to this level, I can manage it.
Jill DeWit:
And that helps you, too, you can go, all right, I could have done more this time. I could have doubled that, whatever it is, whatever you think. Or I need to hire more staff so I can handle that, or get help with the phones, even at 2,000. But by doing that, so you’re gauging it, you’re gauging, you want to have, what, 20, 30 offers to review from that mailer? That’s a good gauge, that come back. And then you’re going to buy two, three, five, whatever makes sense to you.
Jill DeWit:
So a lot of people do that, and then they’re sell them, and then they’re, all of a sudden, now they’re sold, and 90 days went by through the whole process, by the time you bought it, post it for sale, sold out, and now you’re staring at yourself going, oh, okay, great. Now I have more money in the bank, I got to do it all over, and do it… it’s almost like every 90 days or 60 days, keep repeating the same thing, and it’s hard to manage your life like that.
Jill DeWit:
So what the point for me of the show is, get into a system. Maybe it’s every other week mail goes out, maybe it’s every week for you, mail goes out, whatever it is. And then you can make your life easier with this too, by doing it in chunks.
Jill DeWit:
So one of the things for us is, it’s hard to sit down and pick a county every Sunday. Do you want to spend every Sunday picking a county, doing all that? No, I don’t. Do you?
Steven Butala:
No.
Jill DeWit:
Okay. Thank you. So once you do that, pick several counties. You can only do this, maybe one Sunday a month, you spend on it, or Monday a month, I don’t know what it is for you. Once a month, you’re doing it all. Maybe even once every two months, because you’re doing it that much volume. You could do that and scrub it all down and get it priced, get it ready, so then it’s just ready to go out in a smooth, consistent way. And then you put it on the calendar when you’re going to do it again.
Steven Butala:
There’s a bigger issue here and it’s twofold. And this is a fantastic example, a working example of either you’re listening or watching this, of why you should have a business partner. Because what Jill just described is operations. The day to day operations of organization, sending mail out, choosing a county and getting it into a system with consistency, which is in the title of today. But here’s the bigger picture, that’s not what I do. I’m not the operations person. I’m the person who put all this stuff in place, make sure that there’s enough money, make sure that we have a podcast so we can attract the vestors.
Steven Butala:
And here’s how on this topic that manifests itself. When I started this company a long time ago, I made a huge commission, a real estate commission, on a large portfolio of long-term care facilities. I took a portion of that. I’m just going to call it a $100,000, but it doesn’t matter what the real numbers are. And I put it into a bank account and I started an LLC. And that LLC had a $100,000 in it and I started to draw salary.
Steven Butala:
So here’s where the confusion is, and here’s why I think a lot of new people, it’s like their income goes up and then it goes down, up, down, that’s hard to swallow for anybody.
Jill DeWit:
That’s true.
Steven Butala:
Throw some money into a bank. Maybe you and your partner do. Draw a tiny, little salary, enough to live on. Back then for me, it was like $25,000 or some crazy number like that.
Jill DeWit:
For your annual salary.
Steven Butala:
Yeah.
Jill DeWit:
Not a month.
Steven Butala:
Annual salary. You’re paying your rent, you’re buying ramen noodles, and you’re off to the races. And now you’ve got nice other income to buy and sell real estate with. And as deals happen, money goes out, money comes in, money goes out, money comes in. Theoretically, if you do stuff right, six to eight to 10 months later, 12 months later, you should have a heck of a lot more money in there than you put in. Especially in this business, it’s not hard at all.
Steven Butala:
So, what does that hedge on? I had this discussion in a bar about five years ago, this exact discussion. We were watching this golf tournament-
Jill DeWit:
Was it with me?
Steven Butala:
No. It was somebody who was a lot younger than me, but very intelligent from a business standpoint. And they said, “This golfer just won $20 million. Can you imagine winning $20 million?” And I just chuckled and said, “Look, it doesn’t work that way.” Same thing with actors, they get $20 million to do a movie, it all goes into a company. And there’s an office somewhere where there’s a lot of people working there, just like our office, and they’re drawing a salary. And so that was just one little line of revenue for them that day. Great, they got a big check for 20 million bucks. I bet it doesn’t compare to what Nike was paying that guy. So, or KPMG in his case, the winner.
Steven Butala:
So that’s really what this is all about. It’s about consistency. Who likes stuff that’s inconsistent? No one, everybody wants consistency. Consistency of revenue. So this becomes a business structure thing for me. And I hope that, if you’re new at this, I’m trying to remove the risk that people see.
Jill DeWit:
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Steven Butala:
We have a lot of new people right now, Jill and I.
Jill DeWit:
That’s true.
Steven Butala:
For some reason, I think it’s post-COVID, do you see that, too? For whatever reason, there’s a bunch of new people that are signing up.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah, I love it.
Steven Butala:
And a lot of people that aren’t members-
Jill DeWit:
It’s like, yay.
Steven Butala:
…but have shown an interest in this business model, whether it’s land or houses. So I’m trying to peel away the layers of mystery, because I don’t see this as mysterious or risky.
Jill DeWit:
It’s true.
Steven Butala:
Do you?
Jill DeWit:
No, not at all. No.
Steven Butala:
But these are good questions. So from an operation standpoint, you have to be what Jill said.
Jill DeWit:
Right.
Steven Butala:
Send out consistent mailers to get consistent income, but do yourself a favor, put some money into a bank account and draw a tiny, little salary and make sure you can live off of it, and it takes the stress out of it.
Jill DeWit:
That’s true. That’s really good.
Steven Butala:
Then, get some freaking mailers in there.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah. And don’t stop. That’s my thing. Get it going, and don’t stop and force yourself. [crosstalk 00:13:40] Oh, sorry.
Steven Butala:
I’m sorry. Do you think this was one of those things that’s easier said than done?
Jill DeWit:
I have to think about that for a second. I mean, if I have to think about it then probably yes. It’s discipline. I don’t know why we have a hard time with that.
Steven Butala:
It’s disappointing?
Jill DeWit:
Yeah, that, too.
Steven Butala:
It’s why?
Jill DeWit:
Disappointing. You know what, yes. Discipline is disappointing.
Steven Butala:
Oh, discipline.
Jill DeWit:
Yes, it is. You know why? It’s disciplining yourself. That’s hard. It is hard. I have trouble with that. Heck yes. Do you have trouble with that?
Steven Butala:
No.
Jill DeWit:
Oh. Why is that?
Steven Butala:
I don’t know.
Jill DeWit:
You enjoy it?
Steven Butala:
I don’t mean discipline with a paddle. Discipline… I call it just organization. I wouldn’t call it discipline. I don’t have problems being organized at all. Somebody told me this a long time ago about organization, because that’s really what this is all about.
Jill DeWit:
Okay.
Steven Butala:
If you schedule to do a mailer, to do the data part of a mailer between 9:00 in the morning and 12 noon, and it didn’t go the way that you wanted it to, nothing ever goes the way you want it to.
Jill DeWit:
True. Or life.
Steven Butala:
I’ll tell you what, we’ve been doing this show for five years. This is one of the few things that Jill and I do where it just works out pretty easy, it’s like clockwork. But right now I’m going through a mailer and Jill handpicked a few counties for me, and I’m having a lot of trouble with it. And we’ll get it done. We’ll get it done on time.
Steven Butala:
If you start at 9:00 on Monday and you have until 12:00, and it’s not done, here’s the mistake I see everybody make. 12:00 becomes 1:00, 1:00 becomes 2:00, 2:00 becomes 3:00, and all the stuff that you scheduled between 12:00 and 5:00 that day is just obliterated.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah.
Steven Butala:
So what you need to do, and somebody told me this a long time ago, it obviously stuck with me. If it’s 12:00 to noon to do mailers, stop at noon if it’s not done and move it to the next day, and move some other stuff around and get the stuff done between noon and 5:00 that you have regularly scheduled.
Steven Butala:
It’s called block something, I don’t know. Blocks of time. And I really think that’s going to help you get mailers out with consistency and get the other stuff done that you need to get done. Otherwise, it just becomes this bleeding into days and days of stuff. And then nothing gets done.
Jill DeWit:
I know. And then you’re frustrated.
Steven Butala:
Yeah.
Jill DeWit:
That happens to me. So here’s what happens to me. This is truth time. Today’s part of the show is truth time.
Steven Butala:
Oh, we should get truth time.
Jill DeWit:
That’s great, Steve and Jill, now we want to know what really goes on. We heard the stupid show, now what really goes on.
Steven Butala:
Truth time.
Jill DeWit:
Truth time. Okay. I’m way more of a free spirit and even more than I can handle sometimes, I’m like, what’s going on. Because now I’m not getting anything done. Like you just described, things get moved around. Oh, sure, we’ll do it this day, now we’ll do it this way. And then, what happens then, I get so frustrated I snap. And then it’s like, what just happened?
Steven Butala:
This is truth time.
Jill DeWit:
This is truth time. I’m trying to save you. Don’t snap like I do, because you’re like… and you’re mad at yourself, that’s only who you’re mad at. Because it was you who let mailer Monday become, I guess this is what I’m doing Saturday night, and then you’re really pissed.
Steven Butala:
That’s right. And then nothing gets done.
Jill DeWit:
Oh, yeah.
Steven Butala:
Not only-
Jill DeWit:
Then you’re like, screw it.
Steven Butala:
…are you delayed in the mailer… see, here’s the thing. If you had mailer Monday, let’s say it’s 2,000… Jill’s exactly right. It’s 2,000 units. Okay, great, some stuff happened with pricing or maybe it’s the macro failed that you designed. These are actually two things that are exactly happening to me right now. The macro that I originally designed is not working in Excel, it’s slowing me down. And the counties that Jill drew me, strangest pricing I’ve ever seen.
Steven Butala:
Will I get through it? Yeah. Will I fix it? Yeah. So that block on Monday didn’t work. I went to do my regular stuff the rest of the day, and I moved it to Tuesday and it still didn’t work. And I moved to the block to Wednesday, and all the while I’m getting this other stuff done. My financial world’s not falling apart. I’m supposed to do 2,000 mailers on Monday. Well, guess what’s going to happen, I’m going to do 4,000 the next Monday. And we’re going to make up for it that way.
Steven Butala:
So, it’s not tragedy. The sky’s not falling. All the other stuff that I’m supposed to get done in my life, like this podcast… if you’re a regular listener on this podcast, we never miss it. Never. And that’s because it’s blocked in this time frame. And sometimes we do miss the Thursday recording, we’ll move it to Friday in the same slot. So there’s solutions to all of this stuff. There’s non emotional, oh, shoot, I just whatever, I missed it, stuff happened, I’m moving to the block over, all right, onto the next thing. And so Jill’s right, you won’t snap if you do it that way.
Jill DeWit:
Well, truth time. Don’t beat yourself up.
Steven Butala:
Exactly.
Jill DeWit:
Because you know what, here’s what’s going to happen, I’ll tell you right now. And if you can’t give me 4,000, because none of them, I’m not ready for it. So we did lose a week. We’re going to catch up though. We’ll fix it.
Jill DeWit:
And my whole point is, if you do miss a week, it’s not the end of the world. If you miss one out of 52, it’s not the end of the world.
Steven Butala:
Exactly.
Jill DeWit:
If you miss 50 out of 52, now we have a problem.
Steven Butala:
Or if you miss it… And this is what I see more often than not. And when I was young, a young professional, a lot of years ago, this is what would happen to me. It wouldn’t work. I see young people… I don’t think it’s generation specific. I just see this happen to young people all the time. 12:00 came, and it [inaudible 00:19:24] mailer, there’s some stuff didn’t go the way it should have, I’m not doing it then, forget it. I suck at this. I suck at business. I suck at mailers. I suck at Land Academy. This is awful. And you just throw it in, you throw in the towel.
Jill DeWit:
That’s sad. You know what I’d rather see? I’d rather say, this is the best I can do, noon’s up, I’m pretty sure I got it. I would just say, go with it. Wouldn’t you?
Steven Butala:
In my earlier career, I have done that. And if you work for somebody else, you got to do that. If you talk to any artists, especially in Hollywood and filmmaking and stuff, you know what they say? The only reason we released that film when we did is because there was a deadline, because I really could have used two more months to finish it.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah.
Steven Butala:
Does anybody know the difference? No. No one knows the difference.
Jill DeWit:
Exactly. That’s good. I like that. Happy you could join us today. Every day, Monday through Friday, you can find this right here on the Land Academy show.
Steven Butala:
Tomorrow, the episode on the Land Academy show is called recessions weed out unnecessary businesses. You are not alone in your real estate ambition. You always seem shocked by my titles. Are you shocked by this one?
Jill DeWit:
Sometimes. What’s funny is I know what we sit down and think about, what they’re going to be. And then you change them, as you should, that’s your thing. And then you change and put them in a way that I forgot what the original topic was. Again, truth time. It’s all truth time. Truth time, I’m like, what the heck is that about? And you’re like, don’t you remember, you said XYZ. I’m like, oh, now I see it.
Steven Butala:
So, put yourself in the listener’s shoes, what do you think this about tomorrow?
Jill DeWit:
Recessions weed out unnecessary businesses. Well, you kind of told me.
Steven Butala:
Okay.
Jill DeWit:
Okay, recessions mean… okay, then, if I’m the listener and I have no idea, I’d be going, crap, I hope I’m one of the ones that make the cut.
Steven Butala:
Oh.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah. Shoot, right?
Steven Butala:
[crosstalk 00:21:28].
Jill DeWit:
…recessions, and my business might not be necessary, because there’s enough land people to go around. What if I’m not good enough?
Steven Butala:
Wow.
Jill DeWit:
It could be, but that’s not what it is, don’t worry. I promise. I promise.
Jill DeWit:
By the way, thank you for tuning in. We hope that you find our content valuable and we appreciate your support. If you haven’t already, please check out our YouTube channel and hit the subscribe button.
Steven Butala:
I wonder how many people on these intros and extros just fast forward. Yeah, I know what they’re going to say.
Jill DeWit:
Well, I don’t know, try it.
Steven Butala:
And your comments and suggestions help us create the type of content that you’re here for. Hitting the like button helps to support our channel’s algorithm and gauge your interest for future shows. And you know me, I’m all about the data. So please contribute.
Jill DeWit:
We are Steve and Jill.
Steven Butala:
We are Steve and Jill. Information-
Jill DeWit:
And inspiration-
Steven Butala:
…to buy undervalued property.
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