Jack Thursday – Land Investing Rules to Live By (LA 1736)
Jack Thursday – Land Investing Rules to Live By (LA 1736)
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 the Sun.
Steven Jack Butala:
Today’s Jack Thursday, and I’m going to talk about land investing rules to live by. It’s the same rules that I live by to get deals done, and have been for many, many, many years. Jill, not so much. Jill’s got her own rules. She kind of just wakes up each day and see what’s-
Jill K DeWit:
Well, what’s that word? R. What starts with an R? What was that word?
Steven Jack Butala:
Rules.
Jill K DeWit:
Oh, I’m not familiar with that word. Please explain.
Steven Jack Butala:
Jill has to have feelings, and I have to have discipline.
Jill K DeWit:
Rules were meant to be talked about after I figure out how I want things to go.
Steven Jack Butala:
All kidding aside, people come to us every once in a while and say, “How the hell can you work with your spouse?”
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah. I ask myself that all the time.
Steven Jack Butala:
And to which I say, Jill and I have the same goal. Way out there, we have a goal together. It’s the same goal. And how I get there is completely different than how she chooses to get there on a minute by minute, moment by moment, day by day basis. And that’s what this show is like. I have rules and I have a way to get stuff done, and she has whole different way of how she works. She’s works later in the evening, I work in the morning, and that’s just the beginning. There’s some very, very different stuff. And we just, most of the time, not all the time, stay out of each other’s way.
Jill K DeWit:
Let me tell you how Jack sees me.
Steven Jack Butala:
Right now is not going to be one of those times that we stay out of each other’s way. Watch.
Jill K DeWit:
This is how Jack sees me. For those of you who are over 40 ish. You know exactly what I’m talking about. There’s a cartoon called Family Circle, and they would draw these pictures and this cartoon in the paper, and you’d see how the kid got from point A to point B, and he would be over the rock, and under this, and picking up that, and swinging on this, and taking apart that, and then eventually would get there. That’s how Jack sees me.
Steven Jack Butala:
That’s true.
Jill K DeWit:
I know.
Steven Jack Butala:
It’s true. And I’ll tell you what, we have goals every month for all this, and she hits or exceeds her goals every single month. And very often does it in the last two days of the month.
Jill K DeWit:
That’s the way I like it.
Steven Jack Butala:
I know.
Jill K DeWit:
I like to make you sweat.
Steven Jack Butala:
It gives me a heart attack every single month.
Jill K DeWit:
Thank you.
Steven Jack Butala:
Before we get into it, let’s take a question posted by one of our members on thelandinvestors.com online community. It’s free, and don’t forget to subscribe on the Land Academy YouTube channel and comment on the shows you like.
Jill K DeWit:
Mike wrote, “Anyone with mobile home experience? I have a property where the seller is living on site and wants to make me an offer. That includes her 22 year old mobile home. She wants to move to a smaller lot and a newer mobile home. So do you increase your offer for a mobile home this old? It’s being lived in, so I know there’s value to the water, septic, and electricity.” I love these. These are my favorite kind of deals that come along.
Steven Jack Butala:
I love these deals. Love them. You know what this is? Bucket two property. So you sent out a bunch of mail. We talked about this two days ago on the show.
Jill K DeWit:
Basket three for Team Jill.
Steven Jack Butala:
You know what, just set out to confuse people.
Jill K DeWit:
I’m sorry.
Steven Jack Butala:
This is a big, huge surprise in your inbox when it comes in, regardless of bucket two or basket seven, whatever she’s talking about. It’s a great gift that you’ve sent out this mailer to buy land, turns out there’s a mobile home on it, and what always goes with mobile homes is how to get water in there, how to handle sewer, which is usually a septic. Water’s usually a well if it’s out on its own land. So those are really valuable things. So heck yes I would increase the value, and value it as an existing older mobile home.
Jill K DeWit:
My first question is hello, Mrs. Fill in the Blank. What do you want to sell it for? Let’s get that number out there too, because I hate making offers where they’re thinking it’s worth 80,000 and you offer 10.
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah. So I think what the question was-
Jill K DeWit:
But am I going to increase it? Am I going to be prepared to add money? Heck yeah.
Steven Jack Butala:
So if you sent the mailer out for 10,000, you didn’t know there’s a mobile home on there. And it comes back, and seller says, “Yeah, I do want to sell it, but it’s got a mobile home on it. Make me another offer.” Don’t do that. Just say, “What do you want to sell it for?”
Jill K DeWit:
Don’t try and get out of it.
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, give me a sell price number. I’ll see if I can make it work.
Jill K DeWit:
There you go.
Steven Jack Butala:
Because you don’t want to say 10,000 and then “Well, okay. 15,000.” And the first thing they’re going to say is, “No, that doesn’t work at all.” “Well, how about 20?” “No-
Jill K DeWit:
“No. I still think I can get more.”
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah. “Keep going.”
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah.
Steven Jack Butala:
You don’t want to put yourself in that position, you’re negotiating with yourself. So, ask them to make that initial counter offer, really, technically is what it is.
Today’s Jack Thursday, land investing rules to live by. This is why you’re listening.
Jill K DeWit:
I’m ready. I’m listening.
Steven Jack Butala:
Number one, this never ends. Get educated. I don’t care if you are adamantly against spending a cent on education. That’s okay. Get educated elsewhere. We haven’t said this a long time on the show, but I’ll say it again. You don’t have to join land academy to learn every single part about it. You can listen to all the podcasts. You can consume all the free information out there. It’s going to take you about four years, versus getting involved with the Land Academy Group, and it’ll take you maybe a couple weeks, depending on how fast you want to absorb it. And then you’re going to make a lot of mistakes on your own, versus learning from our mistakes and every one of our members. But you have to get educated.
In real estate, for some reason, it’s largely because we watched our parents buy and sell houses or ourselves, if you’re older like me, have bought and sold a lot of houses, you think, “Oh, I made a hundred grand on that, so it’s easy. I don’t have to do it.” No, there’s a right way and a wrong way to do this just like everything else, and more education’s always better. So you got to get educated. These are rules to live by.
Number two, and this is imperative, it’s imperative for me. I don’t know. I would love to hear Jill’s opinion on this. I have to be organized. I have to know what I’m going to do next week in a calendar, so when I wake up on Monday morning it’s all laid out, and I have long term goals, and all the little steps to get to that goal is in my calendar for that week, or whatever else I’m trying to accomplish has to be scheduled. And other people need to know my schedule, namely Jill, and the people that work for us need to know where we are and when we’re available and when we’re not available, and very, very, very organized. You can’t be too organized. I’m always trying to be better about that. I’m always trying to get educated too, about different types of real estate deals to do.
Number three, forget about money. This is a massive hangup for everybody. It was a huge hangup for me, and honestly, until Jill and I really joined forces together and maybe a few years after that, she was looking at me going, “We’re only buying property because of what’s in our bank account. Why don’t we not go get debt, not take on debt, but go seek out financing from other members who get it. They get, understand it. They understand buying and selling land. They have that mentality, and they have a ton of money, but they’re not as good at sourcing deals as we are. Why don’t we partnership some stuff with them?” And so, we hockey sticked when that happened. So, it was hard for me to really understand that money’s not important.
And I struggle with this as an instructor a little bit, because I don’t want to come off sounding like “You don’t need any money to do this.” There’s so much crap you hear on the internet, like ” It doesn’t take any money to start. It’s all free in the beginning.” It’s just not the case. It’s not free. And you need to really learn and understand it correctly.
But if you find a great deal, I don’t care if you’re brand new or if you’ve done a hundred million deals. If you find a great piece of property and you don’t have the cash, or just simply don’t want to spend your money on it, Land Academy’s packed full of people that would, this is their whole life. They partnership deals. So I got real hung up on money. Forget it. You literally can, if you’re good on the phone like Jill, and you can source deals or turn a mediocre deal into a great one, you’re going to do amazing in this career. That’s not one of the major talents I have. I can do it, but I’m more on the data side.
Number three, you have to set goals.
Jill K DeWit:
That was three. This is four.
Steven Jack Butala:
I’m sorry. Number four. Yes. Four. Sorry. Sorry. Thank you. You have to set goals. You can’t just say, “I’m going to see how this is going to go this year.” In fact, yesterday we talked to Brandon, and I bet if you asked him, “Hey, what are your goals?” He’s just subconsciously setting goals for himself, which I think he didn’t even set out to set goals. It’s like, “Yeah, I did 24 or 30 deals last year. I made…” What, I think he said, “half a million dollars”?
Jill K DeWit:
Every year he doubles his revenue. Every single on land. And so, it’s obviously conscious, but I think he says subconsciously, “Oh, look, I want to double it.” And then it happens. And it’s every single flipping year, starting from like 50,000 to a hundred, to then he did 250 to 500. Fill in the blanks. So yeah. He’ll show that tomorrow. Or yesterday he shared it. So, yeah.
Steven Jack Butala:
And this is, I think, number five, Jill?
Jill K DeWit:
Yep.
Steven Jack Butala:
This is a rule that I’ve always lived by, and most people from the Midwest understand this better than most. Execute. You have a plan, the stuff’s in your calendar, you got a budget, you know where the money’s coming from. You’re very organized. Nothing’s going to happen unless you execute what’s in that calendar. Namely, it’s the stuff that we talked about on Monday, sending out mail and answering the phone and getting these deals done. You know, I have a very stress free life because everything I’m supposed to be doing and where I’m supposed to be is in my calendar. I went to college all wrong. Never had a calendar. And I was a stressed out mess during college. Where am I supposed to be today? Darn, I didn’t study for that class. I missed-
Jill K DeWit:
That’s called a 19 year old boy. That’s what that is. No wonder.
Steven Jack Butala:
Jill and I-
Jill K DeWit:
Actually, it’s funny, because we’re watching our 18 year old boy right now run around like a crazy person. The phone call’s like, “Oh no, I’m late.” Every time. It’s so funny.
Steven Jack Butala:
So execute. Those are my rules. Do you have any?
Jill K DeWit:
Huh? Huh? You covered it. I don’t. You did a lot of big picture things. I had some little things that I was going to throw in, like mail solves problems. One of the things in our world that solves 90% of our problems are sending out more mail. Deals are bad. Not enough deal flow. Maybe I screwed something up. Whatever it is, the more you push yourself and send out more mail and just keep it going, you’ll get there. That’s the number one thing. And then, my other thing was don’t be afraid to build a team. There’s a lot of people that that’s a big hangup. You’re going to need a team around you, and maybe your team doesn’t necessarily have to be employees. You can outsource your team. Have a broker who’s selling your property. Figure out what your hangups are.
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, that’s good.
Jill K DeWit:
So maybe that’s the rule. Figure out your hangouts, and solve it. For ours, as much as I love selling, I don’t like taking pictures and posting property. That’s a bit of work. But those brokers do and they’re good at it. So, use them. That was a great show, thank you.
Steven Jack Butala:
Sure.
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:
Tomorrow’s Jill Friday, where she takes a crack at it just like I did. She’s going to talk about how much land research is appropriate. You are not alone in your real estate ambition. I love research.
Jill K DeWit:
I know it. I’m going to talk all about that tomorrow.
Steven Jack Butala:
I live for research.
Jill K DeWit:
I know you do.
Steven Jack Butala:
Huge blocks of time in my calendar for research.
Jill K DeWit:
Research for you is your fun time.
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah.
Jill K DeWit:
That’s it.
Steven Jack Butala:
It’s true.
Jill K DeWit:
What you go and do on your downtime, like “I just want to relax, and let’s just see what’s going on over in this area.” You’re researching, when other people are like, “Oh God, I got to sit and figure out what’s going on in this area.” So maybe there’s a mindset thing there, too. So hopefully you love it like we do.
Thank you for tuning in. We hope you find our content valuable and we really appreciate your support. If you haven’t already, please check out our YouTube channel and hit the subscribe button. And if you are currently a Land Academy member, don’t forget to check out what the heck, all the craziness that’s going on inside our hidden private Discord channel. So if you’re not sure where to go, what to do, or you just need some help, or you want to ask some questions, you always know, go to support@landacademy.com.
Both Jack and Jill:
We’re Jack and Jill.
Steven Jack Butala:
Information…
Jill K DeWit:
And inspiration.
Steven Jack Butala:
It’s by Undervalued Property.
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