Jill Friday – Investing Like a Girl (LA 1727)
Jill Friday – Investing Like a Girl (LA 1727)
Transcript:
Steven Jack Butala:
Steve and Jill here.
Jill K DeWit:
Hello.
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 this Sun.
Steven Jack Butala:
Today, Jill and I talk about, well, it’s Jill Friday, and she’s going to talk about investing like a girl.
Jill K DeWit:
You came up with this topic. Are you picking my brain here? You want to know what I’ve been reading and what I think about?
Steven Jack Butala:
There’s a book on Jill’s desk by Warren Buffett.
Jill K DeWit:
It’s by a girl who works for Motley Crew or Motley Fool.
Steven Jack Butala:
Crew?
Jill K DeWit:
A brilliant woman who works for Motley Crew, I mean, Motley Fool. She wrote a book, and it’s called Warren Buffett Invests Like a Girl and Why You Should Too.
Steven Jack Butala:
I see.
Jill K DeWit:
It’s not written by Warren Buffett, sorry.
Steven Jack Butala:
Oh, me and the whole world think it’s [crosstalk 00:00:46].
Jill K DeWit:
Oh, you got all excited thinking Warren Buffett wrote a book.
Steven Jack Butala:
No. This is actually even better. I’d rather hear from advice … I think that’s great. 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.
Steven Jack Butala:
Back in the day, it was nearly impossible to find land without a mailing address like 123 Main Street. The reality is nearly all properties that have never been built on, which is what we buy and sell, don’t have a post office address yet. They have an assessor’s parcel number. Well, there is no database for that. Jill and I set out and now have 150 million up-to-date unit assessors parcel look-up database and spatial environment where you can look this up and find any property just in seconds. Like all these products, we’ve been using this for years. We just had never made it pretty enough to present to the public, but we have now. It’s called neighborscoop.com. Go to neighborscoop.com for more information and check it all out. See if it’s for you.
Jill K DeWit:
Dan wrote, “I just got an email from a mailer I sent a year ago, asked if I was still interested in buying. This was someone I had needed to reduce the original offer on, and they initially needed more. They had bought the 40 acres in 2007 for $50,000, and I had reduced my offer from 19,000 to 13,000 due to massive back taxes. They wanted to recoup more of their losses. Well, the property taxes for this year are about due and the assessed value took a hit from last year. So they are now ready to sell. Hooray. That would be the 12th great deal from a mailer of about 900 units.” Wow.
Steven Jack Butala:
Geez, listen to that.
Jill K DeWit:
Holy moly.
Steven Jack Butala:
This guy’s in Career Path too, in this Career Path.
Jill K DeWit:
Wow. This one is a base hit, base hit. I think it’s more than that. Okay. All in for 19,000 and sell within a week comfortably for 30. I got it. I may push the price up a bit on this one.
Steven Jack Butala:
I would too.
Jill K DeWit:
It’s not a huge profit percent-wise, but I’ve sold six exactly like it after buying five to $15,000 range and then selling between 25 and $29,000 range. It will be just so easy because I still have people lined up from missing out on the last couple that were a few parcels over. This is great.
Steven Jack Butala:
This is a direct result of Career Path.
Jill K DeWit:
That’s so good.
Steven Jack Butala:
And I’m not selling anything. I’m just saying this is what we talk about in Career Path all the time.
Jill K DeWit:
And it’s true. You can’t really gauge these mailers sometimes, because you might not get calls for … You get three now. You could buy a couple deals. And then a few months go by and you get another call and another letter. And more time goes by, another call, another letter. And it just keeps going. I love it.
Steven Jack Butala:
Today is Jill Friday. She’s going to talk about investing like a girl. This is the meat of the show.
Jill K DeWit:
Yep. So it’s a good book. I have not finished it, but it’s really confirming what I already know, and I love it. And it’s so cool because this woman, Motley Fool, who works for Motley Fool, studies investments and the market. And she went into a deep dive and got research done, over years obviously, and put this book together that really outlines how women invest. And then she took a step back and realized a lot of these trends and a lot of the things that we instinctly do is exactly how Warren Buffett runs his companies, Berkshire Hathaway.
Jill K DeWit:
So I’m going to give you a couple of the bullet points here and give you things to think about. So we instinctly one, do a ton of research. And even though you’re really, really good at that, you are the best that I know at this, Jack, but most men are not you.
Steven Jack Butala:
I know.
Jill K DeWit:
We women instinctly do so much research that it’s overkill before we invest in something. We make sure every possible scenario has been thought out and analyzed. So we feel as best as we can that we’re not going to lose or make a mistake. That’s number one. Number two, we instinctly don’t flippantly change our course of direction or back out often. We instinctly go all in and ride it. So that’s another thing. We’re going to hang in there through the highs and the lows. We’re not going to listen to other people. We’re not going to watch other people. We’re going to trust our gut, trust that we made the right proper decision and see how it plays out. Tell me if I’m wrong when we’re done here, how men-
Steven Jack Butala:
Sure.
Jill K DeWit:
… do this. And then our number three, my number three point is women instinctly don’t let our egos guide our decisions.
Steven Jack Butala:
That’s a big problem with men, all men who I’ve ever met, including myself.
Jill K DeWit:
So tell me, what do most men, because you’re not most men, tell me most men about how much research will they put in before investing.
Steven Jack Butala:
Most of the guys I know will research something to the point where they’re comfortable with the risk level, but I don’t think that’s most men.
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah. I think most men get a tip from somebody and think it’s great and then run out and do it.
Steven Jack Butala:
I think that’s right.
Jill K DeWit:
Okay. And then number two, how about changing course of direction and so moving on?
Steven Jack Butala:
Most of the men I know are fair weather fans. You can really put them in two camps. There are some people, some guys I know, that they’re Red Sox fans to the end, totally loyal. For some reason that sports thing doesn’t translate to-
Jill K DeWit:
Trading.
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah. Or I’m going to see this position that I have at some company through. I know I have a jackass boss right now, but I know the guy’s not going to last long, so I’m going to stick it through. Most guys that will not do that that I know. I might be included in that.
Jill K DeWit:
And that’s in this book. It really talks about how things start to change, fear factor sets like, “Oh, we’re going to jump over here and try to recover,” instead of waiting a little bit and riding it out. It’s interesting.
Steven Jack Butala:
Well, women are more patient, just in general.
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah. And then the number three, the ego thing. We all know that happens. I hope people know that happens. You do now.
Steven Jack Butala:
One thing that men tend to do that women don’t do, which you can take it how you may, is swing for the fence. And so I’ll swing for the fence a lot more than Jill does, but I only swing for the fence if my batting average is great. And I know how to hit singles. I hit them all day because baseball games are won with singles. Home runs sell tickets, so that’s part of it, but you win a baseball game by hitting base hits all day long. And that’s exactly how real estate and business is.
Jill K DeWit:
Well, it’s funny you brought this up because we are right now in March, and March Madness is happening, which I love. So that’s a common thing that you and I talk about. How many guys make these three-pointers that should not be trying to make a three-pointer? Knock that off. Go for the twos please.
Steven Jack Butala:
And I agree with that, but that’s the conventional wisdom. I’m reading, not reading, but talking in a barroom setting about basketball and how three-point shots and percentages are now just completely part of the game.
Jill K DeWit:
I know.
Steven Jack Butala:
I think that the three-point line should be taken away.
Jill K DeWit:
I understand.
Steven Jack Butala:
And I got a lot, for instance of when … I shouldn’t probably even say this on the show because people, that blows their mind.
Jill K DeWit:
I know.
Steven Jack Butala:
Does it blow your mind?
Jill K DeWit:
I know. He’s the leading three-pointer in the da, da, da. I’m like, ach.
Steven Jack Butala:
That makes coaches nuts.
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah. So we’re all saying the same thing.
Steven Jack Butala:
You know what’s great is if you have two people invest together. I don’t care if it’s two men or two women, but two people are almost always, in my opinion, better than one when it comes to investing, which is at the upper echelon of all this. If you asked Sam Walton or Sam Zell or probably even the guys now, Elon Musk, they’re probably all going to say, “There’s no way I could have gotten this far if I had a co-pilot.” Because those types of personalities that go to the tip top, swing for the fence, they’re like that. But for what we do, the upper one probably half percent, which is nowhere near that multi-billionaire level, which I never aspired to in the first place, I’d rather build it with somebody, have a blast, laugh the whole time, clink glasses week and count our money. And so I would much rather have a partner to do that, and I think women are like that too. I don’t think they want to go it alone.
Jill K DeWit:
Well, I have a question about that. I’m going to end on this. It’s a question for you since you had me on the hot seat this week a little bit. I had to like, shoot, am I going to get in trouble? Am I incriminating myself? So I’m going to ask you a hot seat question. Where do you think you would be, and this is … Don’t flatter me. Please don’t.
Steven Jack Butala:
Oh, geez.
Jill K DeWit:
No, I’m serious. I want you to be totally honest with me. I can take it. Where would you be right now if me, as your business partner, I was a man?
Steven Jack Butala:
Oh, if you were a man. I thought you were going to say if I just wasn’t around. Oh man, it would be so different. Well, I probably wouldn’t have Land Academy. We would not have Land Academy.
Jill K DeWit:
You don’t think so?
Steven Jack Butala:
No, we would just be buying, selling land, probably doing pretty well. And probably things would be a lot more teched up than they are. Our tech level is way below where I think it should be and I will-
Jill K DeWit:
I agree.
Steven Jack Butala:
I know you do. I’ll get that where it needs to be here soon, but there’s just huge tech opportunities out there. I don’t need to say this even out loud.
Jill K DeWit:
I’m slowing you down tech-wise.
Steven Jack Butala:
No, no. The question would be your man equivalent. And so no, I think probably would have taken a lot more risks. I think we would be buying and selling land in a more risky way, which is not good. And there would be no Land Academy or none of this education would be happening.
Jill K DeWit:
Hmm. Would it be better or worse?
Steven Jack Butala:
It would be way worse because you know the kind of people that are in Land Academy and how much capital now is available to us and all that.
Jill K DeWit:
Thank you.
Steven Jack Butala:
It’s a …
Jill K DeWit:
Just making sure.
Steven Jack Butala:
I had guy partners before you. You know that.
Jill K DeWit:
That’s true.
Steven Jack Butala:
You’ve met them all.
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah, that’s true.
Steven Jack Butala:
It was very myopic. It was like, we buy and sell land and that’s it. What do you mean we don’t buy and sell data? Yeah. We just buy and sell land. We do this one thing. Men are like that. Men are like, let’s do this one thing. Let me drill a hole in the side of this car for eight hours a day and collect a pension. That’s a man thing.
Jill K DeWit:
Got it.
Steven Jack Butala:
Women need flavor and pretty stuff, and I think we’re going to get our asses kicked for talking about this like this.
Jill K DeWit:
We should stop.
Steven Jack Butala:
We live in a world where gender is supposed to be … Everything’s supposed to be the same. And we just blew the top off of that with this episode.
Jill K DeWit:
I don’t think so. Well, that’s true, investing. But you know what? Hold on a moment. You can identify with however you want to identify with. I think that’s great. Because you know what? I’m going to argue that, because we are plenty of men in Land Academy that say, “I’m the Jill in this situation.”
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, that’s right.
Jill K DeWit:
And there are plenty of women that say, “I’m the Jack in the situation.” So it’s really not gender. We’ll be very clear and PC.
Steven Jack Butala:
It’s personality type.
Jill K DeWit:
It is. So when we say investing like a girl, it’s in our gut, but it could be in other people’s guts too.
Steven Jack Butala:
Well, we’ll leave you, listener, with this question. If you think men and women are the same, more power to you. If you think there’s some innate differences, that’s okay too.
Jill K DeWit:
Well, and I think each individual can swing one way or the other you could.
Steven Jack Butala:
So do I.
Jill K DeWit:
Thank you.
Steven Jack Butala:
Absolutely totally believe that.
Jill K DeWit:
So it’s not all everybody. I think we saved that okay.
Steven Jack Butala:
Yes. I hope we did.
Jill K DeWit:
Happy you could join us today. Five days a week you can find us here on the Land Academy Show.
Steven Jack Butala:
Join us next week for another interesting episode. You are not alone in your real estate ambition. I don’t know if we saved it.
Jill K DeWit:
I think it’s fine.
Steven Jack Butala:
I do too.
Jill K DeWit:
You know why? Like the other day, look, we’re running around trying to do the right thing. If I accidentally put my foot in my mouth, you know my intentions were not to do that.
Steven Jack Butala:
That’s correct. Well said. That’s great.
Jill K DeWit:
There you go. You know us, and thank you for tuning in.
Steven Jack Butala:
We’re not in the business of upsetting people.
Jill K DeWit:
No, no. Hey, my last little note, stay tuned. We’re still working on it. We’re trying to figure out the best way to make this a thing. We’re working on being able to worldwide handle online recording. So you could sit at your desk and get a thing notarized, or your buyer or your seller can be sitting at your desk and have a document online notarized. So stay tuned for more on that.
Together:
We are Jack and Jill.
Steven Jack Butala:
Information.
Jill K DeWit:
And 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.
