Three Mandatory Tasks to Complete Every Day in Your Land Life (LA 1718)
Three Mandatory Tasks to Complete Every Day in Your Land Life (LA 1718)
Transcript:
Steven Jack Butala:
Steven and Jill here.
Jill K DeWit:
Hi.
Steven Jack 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 Jack Butala:
Today Jill and I talk about three mandatory tasks to complete every day in your land life. I think they’re going to be kind of surprised about some of this stuff.
Jill K DeWit:
All right. I’m excited. I know you put this together and you have some thoughts on this. I’m just going to let you run with it.
Steven Jack 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 did you know that Jill and I personally instruct a handful of new and existing Land Academy members in a live class called Career Path? If buying and selling land is your career, or you want it to be your career, this may be for you. Check us out on the internet at LandAcademy.com and give us a call.
Jill K DeWit:
I would also like to add a little follow-up announcement that we are doing a live all about Career Path tomorrow because we have some great changes that we’re making to it. This is actually session number four that is starting in April. So, tomorrow’s the big announcement. Check out YouTube or Facebook live under the Land Academy pages at four o’clock Pacific time, eight o’clock Eastern time. So, that’s Tuesday, March 15th, four o’clock Pacific time, 8:00 PM Eastern time. Go to Land Academy on YouTube or Facebook and you could see us live and ask us all kinds of questions about Career Path. And we’re going to fill you in with some exciting new things that we’re doing this time. Thank you. And back to the show. Okay. So, Casey wrote “$16.53 cents net profit. Be careful of HOA properties, as mentioned a lot.” Aw, yeah.
Steven Jack Butala:
I have to tell you this. So, Casey’s been with us for a while and I don’t like all this rah-rah peaches and cream. So, Casey has a little story here about a property where he basically broke even and I think the world needs to hear it.
Jill K DeWit:
Yep. So, here’s the story. “I bought this lot a year ago, assuming values were around $3,000, as was all the information that I could find. That included MLS access, which I have. After buying for $750, which I bought a second lot for $100 in the same HOA and sold a few weeks as the price was too good to pass up, I learned that the HOA had a board of property for sale at $1,500 or less. Thankfully, I was able to find a buyer this weekend who loved it. After all the fees I made a whopping $16.53 cents. I’m happy this one was a net positive and no matter how small, it’s off my plate, but the point is watch out for those HOA properties.”
Jill K DeWit:
That’s one of the reasons why we kind of like… Unfortunately, initially I have a negative feeling about HOA stuff because of this and it may not be that bad. Some of the HOA rules are not that bad. Maybe just some nice, common sense, like let’s not trash the place up, and I don’t disagree with that. But some have really hefty transfer fees every single time and the way we do it, we buy the property, we own it, and then we try and sell it. So, I’m paying those transfer fees twice and they can be a couple thousand dollars each time. I’ve been hit with that. So, you got to really budget for it.
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah. This is still the land of the free and the home of the brave and HOAs kind of throw a wrench in all that with their fees and their rules and all of that. So, we’re rural vacant land people. It just goes against what land represents.
Jill K DeWit:
It kind of does. Isn’t that funny? I know. Exactly.
Steven Jack Butala:
That cowboy type freedom.
Jill K DeWit:
Do you think Yellowstone has an HOA? Could you imagine? I’m sorry. I’m sorry. That back 40 over there, it’s getting a little tall. Whatever.
Steven Jack Butala:
Can you imagine?
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah.
Steven Jack Butala:
That would be some something else.
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah.
Steven Jack Butala:
Today’s topic, three mandatory tasks to complete every day in your land life. This is the meat of the show. I’ve been thinking about this and thinking about this and thinking about this. When I have my instructor hat on, which is kind of right now, and not my land hat on, I always teeter between teaching about how to buy and sell land and do a mailer and data and the whole part, or really talking about stuff that dances along the line of motivation. And so when I did this list and I did a bunch of research on it, not every podcast episode, but this one I actually researched and all my stuff, every single one of these things that I think should be going on every single day, is motivational.
Jill K DeWit:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). I was thinking about that, because we’re coming up to week eight, I think, right now in Career Path, week eight of ten with the current group. And I was thinking about what are the important things I always want to make sure they part with, and that’s part of it. I mean, on week 10, we talk about big picture stuff and how big you want to take this, but the very end of the day, so much of what we do is get up and do it. It’s like, yeah, there’s a lot of moving parts. There’s a lot of moving parts to most businesses if you own it and run it. This is no secret to that. There’s going to be stuff, and people fail because they just don’t power through.
Steven Jack Butala:
Jill has guests at her house that I live in every once in a while.
Jill K DeWit:
Oh, thanks. That’s hilarious.
Steven Jack Butala:
For some reason they all bring books and they leave them here. They read the books, and one of the books that somebody left recently was called Make Your Bed in the Morning. I’m paraphrasing, that’s not the exact title.
Jill K DeWit:
I bought that book?
Steven Jack Butala:
Oh, did you?
Jill K DeWit:
Oh my goodness.
Steven Jack Butala:
I don’t know, I thought they’d just leave it around.
Jill K DeWit:
I bought that book for our guests. I think it’s good.
Steven Jack Butala:
So, I picked it up and skimmed through it. This is a long time ago. And essentially it says, make your bed in the morning. Get yourself right from the time that you wake up mentally ready to win. So, a lot of little wins. And when I read that it just hit me like a ton of bricks because I do that anyway. I’ve been doing that for years. I just have to win at some stuff and I don’t care if it’s empty the dishwasher. So, believe it or not, I really believe that’s one of the things that needs to happen every single day, all throughout the day, if it’s tiny little things. You need to win.
Jill K DeWit:
So what are the three? Are there three?
Steven Jack Butala:
I have three.
Jill K DeWit:
Oh, okay. Got it.
Steven Jack Butala:
This is number three.
Jill K DeWit:
Okay. I was waiting. I’m like, “I want to make sure I didn’t miss it.”
Steven Jack Butala:
Which rolls me into the second part of number three. And you really need to understand this. It really helped me from a very young age. You’re either going to get it better today at what you’re doing or you’re going to get worse. You’re not going to stay the same. And so that’s along the lines of making your bed or just getting yourself in this winning attitude. And I’m not saying give yourself a little speech in the morning in the mirror and give yourself a little rah-rah thing and make up little mantras. I’m not saying any of that. I think that’s new age weirdo stuff. I’m just saying win.
Jill K DeWit:
Okay, so that’s number two.
Steven Jack Butala:
That’s number three.
Jill K DeWit:
Okay.
Steven Jack Butala:
I’m going backwards.
Jill K DeWit:
Okay. Got it.
Steven Jack Butala:
Number two is make freaking decisions. Don’t get up in the morning and wonder about what you have to do that day. Make a decision about whether or not you’re going to do a mailer that day, what parts of the mailer need to happen before you actually get it out in the mail. Do you have all the other stuff set up in your land business for people to answer the phone? Or however you’re going to orchestrate all that we teach in the formal education, but make a decision about it. I see a lot on the Thursday call and this is by our design, Jill and I have a Thursday webinar call where members… It’s a closed call for members and they submit transactions, and I see a lot of wishy washiness. And in the beginning you have to have that, but you really need to make a conscious goal to get over whether or not you should be buying a piece of real estate or not as quickly as possible.
Jill K DeWit:
You know what? You know what I think about that? If you’re having trouble making the decision, then it’s probably no.
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah. It’s probably better [crosstalk 00:08:20]. It should be smacking you in the face.
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah, if you’re struggling to make a decision about something you might not should be doing it or that’s your answer.
Steven Jack Butala:
I got a bachelor’s degree at Michigan State. I graduated from there, and so you get to see firsthand how people handled their day because you live in a dorm. It’s community living, or wherever you live. And it’s amazing to me how many people wake up in the morning and they kind of take their own temperature check and, say, see how they feel today. And then they decide whether they’re going to go to classes or whether they’re going to go to work or you’re just going to kind of have a day. That’s never registered to me.
Jill K DeWit:
I understand.
Steven Jack Butala:
Number two and a half.
Jill K DeWit:
I’m sorry.
Steven Jack Butala:
I actually have four.
Jill K DeWit:
This is hilarious.
Steven Jack Butala:
I have four.
Jill K DeWit:
Here’s the top three things. Here’s the top three things to do every day, broken into five things. That’s what I’m hearing. Oops. I meant five.
Steven Jack Butala:
I added one after I wrote the title and processed all the podcast, all of it, produced the whole thing, I found out there’s four, not three.
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah.
Steven Jack Butala:
And then, then number one’s coming, but this is two and a half.
Jill K DeWit:
Okay.
Steven Jack Butala:
Micromanage your money. Get into your bank account every day. This is really hard for me, believe it or not. I have an accounting background. It’s hard for me even now.
Jill K DeWit:
Isn’t that funny? It’s easy for me. I do that.
Steven Jack Butala:
I know. Jill does it for us.
Jill K DeWit:
I’m like, “Who spent $18. 45 cents.” And you’re like, “Really?” I’m like, “I see a couple things on Netflix. I want to know what they are.”
Steven Jack Butala:
So, it’s imperative to do this, especially in the beginning of your career, because you might have one or two bank accounts, depending on how you’ve got everything structured, but you got to be counting pennies in the beginning. And so you can’t develop this habit, which is what I did. If it’s bad news in there, I don’t want to know. And this is years and years and years ago. Now, it’s like it’s fun to go in there and see how it’s growing, but you can’t avoid the money management part of this at all, and the tax management part of this. So, if it becomes a daily thing, then it’s not as hard. It’s like brushing your teeth. You’ll avoid a lot of problems way down the line in the future if you do it.
Jill K DeWit:
Every day, not just before a date.
Steven Jack Butala:
Every day.
Jill K DeWit:
Not just before a date, or an airplane trip.
Steven Jack Butala:
That’s awful.
Jill K DeWit:
Like our 18 year old son
Steven Jack Butala:
And the number one thing, and this is most important and this will change your life, it’s changed mine, and it’s constantly growing in my life is to set, reset and manage your goals in a calendar system. You need to wake up in the morning and know exactly what’s going to happen that day and what you’re supposed to be working. The tiny components of a mailer, those need to be scheduled out in all of your work week or work day or however it is. And the whole big thing, when you step way back, is going to yield tons and tons of revenue.
Jill K DeWit:
Love it. Good list.
Steven Jack Butala:
You got to implement that stuff too.
Jill K DeWit:
Good list. Thank you.
Steven Jack Butala:
Stay amazingly organized is what I mean. Just, you should-
Jill K DeWit:
You know what’s funny? None of this is like, “Get your due diligence there. Set up this. Have that.”
Steven Jack Butala:
No.
Jill K DeWit:
This is not that kind of a show.
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah.
Jill K DeWit:
This is really more because that stuff should be… If you can’t handle this, you won’t get that, meaning if you can’t wake up and motivate yourself and get stuff done and follow a calendar and know that you have to have your credit card payment system processing or when you post these properties, people can’t check out. If you can’t get to that part, who cares what the details are that are involved there?
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah. And I really think, too, probably four out of the five weekdays, work days, I end the day, whatever time that ends up being, and I’ve checked off all the stuff that I’m supposed to be doing on my calendar, really refreshed, like, “Wow, I am organized. All the stuff in my email box went to zero. I’m making decisions about this. Jill’s happy.” How many companies do we have now? It’s a lot. So, there’s a lot of stuff that we are responsible to do. This is new. This is maybe 24 months old for me. It used to be just a disaster, like a circus, all day. And so a lot of that’s now we’ve got a lot of people working with us that show up. It’s not that hard to accomplish, but you have to start out to accomplish it and get everything in a schedule.
Jill K DeWit:
I agree. Happy you could join us today. Five days a week, you can find us here on the Land Academy Show.
Steven Jack Butala:
Tomorrow, the episode on the Land Academy Show is called Why Sending Blind Land Offers Within a Price Range Backfires. You are not alone in your real estate ambition.
Jill K DeWit:
You know what’s funny? I’ve never got one of those.
Steven Jack Butala:
I never have. I’ve never received one either.
Jill K DeWit:
I hear people all the time doing them. They talk about them in social media and other groups, but I have yet to receive one in the mail.
Steven Jack Butala:
Me too. I’ve received postcards.
Jill K DeWit:
Apparently it’s a very small group.
Steven Jack Butala:
Have you received postcards?
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah, not as many, not that many, though. The big picture is, as many properties that we own and how many years we’ve owned them, I still get a shockingly small amount of mail.
Steven Jack Butala:
I could not agree more.
Jill K DeWit:
That’s it. It’s great. Thank you for tuning in. By the way, we recently released our newest up to date educational product for Land Academy 2022, by the way. And it’s called Land Academy 3.0 or lovingly, we say Catching Up with Land Academy. Jack and I spent six months creating the most up to date educational program on the market to help you succeed buying and selling land. It’s almost five hours of how to videos and it’s included free to new and existing Land Academy members. Give our team a call at (833) 522-5545. In case you’re wondering it’s 833 Jack Jill, seriously. Or you can email support@landacademy.com and they will answer all your questions. You can see if this is for you. We are Jack and Jill.
Steven Jack Butala:
We are Jack and Jill. Information…
Jill K DeWit:
And inspiration…
Steven Jack Butala:
To buy undervalued property.
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