Land Investment is Not the Place to Save Time or Money (LA 1758)
Land Investment is Not the Place to Save Time or Money (LA 1758)
Transcript:
Steven Jack Butala:
Stevie, Jill, here.
Jill K DeWit:
Hello.
Steven Jack Butala:
Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I’m Stephen Jack Butala.
Jill K DeWit:
And I’m Jill Dewitt, broadcasting from the Valley of the Sun.
Steven Jack Butala:
Today, Jill and I talk about how land investment, the environment, is not the place to try to save time and money.
Jill K DeWit:
Or even specifically, getting it going. Please don’t… There’s things you can’t skimp on. I know we’re going to go through a list. I’ll ask you. It’ll be fun. We’ll make a list of things that you can skimp on and you cannot skimp on, like how much you spend on a sandwich. Skimp on that. How much you spend on mail, don’t skimp on that.
Steven Jack Butala:
Buy a used car. Don’t buy a new one. Even if it’s one or two years old. We all know this, and we’re all entrepreneurs here. Our whole listening base, I’m sure, is some version of an entrepreneur, and everybody loves to save money. You know where you save money in this environment? When you buy a piece of property.
Jill K DeWit:
Not everybody loves to save money, by the way.
Steven Jack Butala:
Oh, really? You think it’s just me?
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah. I’m not even going to tell you how much I just spent on concert tickets. Let me tell you real quick.
Steven Jack Butala:
Sure.
Jill K DeWit:
All right. I got us tickets for… If you’re listening, I’d love to know if you know who this is. Rufus Du Sol. I personally love, love, love Rufus Du Sol, and I just got us tickets to go see them in Santa Barbara, general admission. Just no seats, on the floor, on the front. You ready? $400 each.
Steven Jack Butala:
Oh my gosh. It’ll be worth it, though.
Jill K DeWit:
I know. I’m like, “I don’t care.”
Steven Jack Butala:
That’s a good break for us, too, just to go out there.
Jill K DeWit:
Ah, yes.
Steven Jack Butala:
I don’t care about saving money about stuff like that, either.
Jill K DeWit:
See? See? That’s the thing. Not going to save money on that. Will I save money on how I get there? Sure. Or where I stay? Yeah. But on the show, on the event? Heck no. That’s an event.
Steven Jack Butala:
Actually, I have a bunch to say about this. Let’s do the commercial first. I think the gist of it is, if you’re saving money, if you’re being frivolous about how personally comfortable you are, that’s silly.
Jill K DeWit:
Yep. [inaudible 00:02:09] hear more about that. Okay. Go ahead.
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 I’m hoping that you know by now 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, let us know. Check out support@landacademy.com and see if it’s for you.
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah. That reminds me, Career Path number five is scheduled for October. It’ll be the week after this event, so apparently, this concert will be our kickoff.
Steven Jack Butala:
Oh, that’s why you just…
Jill K DeWit:
I just thought of it.
Steven Jack Butala:
It fit into your schedule.
Jill K DeWit:
No. Oh, no. I would have moved the schedule to go see Rufus Du Sol there. Don’t even think about that. You know what’s funny? It’s either the next night, or it’s not long after that, they’re playing the Hollywood Bowl. Can you believe that?
Steven Jack Butala:
Rufus Du Sol’s playing the Hollywood Bowl?
Jill K DeWit:
I know.
Steven Jack Butala:
You did the right thing.
Jill K DeWit:
Oh, of course.
Steven Jack Butala:
Santa Barbara’s way better than Hollywood Bowl.
Jill K DeWit:
Exactly. Okay. Enough about our little personal lives. I’m sure you’re like, “Get on with it.” Okay. This is so cool. Josiah wrote… What would he call himself? Josie the…
Steven Jack Butala:
The wetlands pro.
Jill K DeWit:
… Pro or something? Yeah, that was really funny the other day. Josiah wrote, “April was a crazy month. I did $303,228 and 23 cents of gross sales on properties, with a total basis of about $126,000.” That’s just April, everybody. “Most of these properties I had known for more than six weeks. I have an escrow, or purchase, five properties, for a total acquisition cost of approximately $249,000, with approximate resale value, quick-sale price of $750,000.”
Steven Jack Butala:
He’s going to have a multimillion dollar year.
Jill K DeWit:
What’s his year going to be like? Yeah. “Between vacations and weddings…” They didn’t even work that hard. “… I didn’t even work that hard. This business continues to blow my mind.” I love it.
Steven Jack Butala:
Me too.
Jill K DeWit:
“Hiring a bookkeeper has been extremely valuable for me. What gets measured gets managed.” That’s good.
Steven Jack Butala:
That’s an accounting principle.
Jill K DeWit:
Hey, congratulations. I love Josiah. Yeah. He was Career Path two or three?
Steven Jack Butala:
No, three. Last one.
Jill K DeWit:
Three. Okay. Career Path three, and…
Steven Jack Butala:
And we’re in four right now.
Jill K DeWit:
A neat, neat guy. You know what’s so great about Career Path two is then, we toss you into the advanced group after that, and we all get together as a group once a month and get to catch up with everybody. And so, we all stay in touch. You’re never really done with us.
Steven Jack Butala:
Josiah’s a musician, too, and we just did an interview with him, and it aired, I think two, maybe three weeks ago. It’s on wherever you listen to the podcast, or on YouTube, and he’s always in a hammock. He’s in a hammock during the interview.
Jill K DeWit:
He’s awesome.
Steven Jack Butala:
Today’s topic: land investment, and that environment, is maybe not the best place to save time or money. This is the meat of the show.
Jill K DeWit:
I was going to say Josiah’s example. Josiah’s point, what he wrote. Always in Discord or Land Investors, but it was valuable to this show. It’s like, “You got to spend some money to make some money.” You have to spend 80, $90,000 sometimes on a deal to sell it for 200. That’s how you’re going to make a hundred and not work that hard. Think about it. Do one deal and make $100,000, or do 10 deals and do $10,000, $10,000, $10,000, $10,000. I haven’t said it, I don’t think, in a while, but man, as fast as you can add a zero, your life will get better and easier, because you’re doing less transactions, but bigger numbers.
Steven Jack Butala:
Especially if you’ve got this… Land Academy’s packed full of deal funders, Jill and I included. It’s hard for people to get their head around going from a $10,000 profit to a $100,000 profit without getting another set of eyes, or maybe even bringing in a funder who’s really used to doing this, and not a passive funder, more of an active funder like us. I’m not selling anything, here.
Jill K DeWit:
Oh, I’m a passive funder.
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, but you’re very active in the deals that you choose to fund. That’s my point. It’s like, If you’re sitting…
Jill K DeWit:
Well, I’m medium. Sorry. I don’t don’t know if you knew that, but I…
Steven Jack Butala:
No, I didn’t.
Jill K DeWit:
No, I don’t really weigh in a lot unless there’s a problem.
Steven Jack Butala:
Still, you have to like the deal to do it. That’s my point.
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah, but I don’t babysit it at all.
Steven Jack Butala:
No, no. You’re not going to do a bad deal. You’re not going to fund a bad deal. You’re going to spend a ton of time and really look at the deal, but then, after that, you’re gone.
Jill K DeWit:
That’s right. That’s what I mean. Yeah. I’m going to make sure it’s good, and then I say, “See ya. Call me when you need me to wire the money, and call me when it’s sold.” That’s about it.
Steven Jack Butala:
Money in, money out. We’ll spend 10 minutes with each other.
Jill K DeWit:
Totally. That’s funny. That’s true. You know what’s so interesting? I’ve read an article today. In Philadelphia… I don’t why this was a big deal, but… Year over year, increase in land values. [inaudible 00:07:27] land in Philadelphia, they just reported 21%.
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah. It doesn’t surprise me at all, because Philadelphia’s land value started out at $1, so now it’s $1.20.
Jill K DeWit:
I don’t think so.
Steven Jack Butala:
I’m telling you, Philadelphia’s… Anyway.
Jill K DeWit:
But still, it’s a good… We’re all experiencing these. This, I think, ties in. We’re all experiencing these crazy numbers. And so, what do you need to spend on as a land investor? What do I spend my time on? What do I spend my money on? Let’s look at it that way. I say, you spend your time on research.
Steven Jack Butala:
Learning. Yeah.
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah. You spend your time on…
Steven Jack Butala:
That’s free.
Jill K DeWit:
… learning what you’re doing. You spend your time on picking an area to send mail. Those are all very valuable. Then, you spend some money and get real good data. Somebody made a comment the other day that the old way, even, of calling a county and trying to get a list… I think the county laughs at them, or at least this county did, because the counties all know, and we all know, that we can get data ourselves through DataTree, and stuff that we use.
Jill K DeWit:
That’s where you spend the money, too, getting really good quality data. Then, you’re going to spend the money on the mail. Don’t mess around. Spend some time, again, making sure you price it right to get these offers in the mail. That’s your time. And then, spend your money on getting the mail out. Please don’t do 1,000 here, 500 [inaudible 00:08:56], 200 here, and 300 there. Man, blasted. We were just talking to a guy the other day. I don’t know if we did an interview with him recently or not, but he does what? 12,000 a week, I think, was his average right now. That’s a lot, but hey, depends on what you want to make.
Steven Jack Butala:
I just manually approved a very slight but important price reduction for somebody on Offers 2 Owners, which I almost never do, because he’s sending out 50,000 units a month.
Jill K DeWit:
Is it the person I’m talking about?
Steven Jack Butala:
It was just a few cents. Maybe. I don’t know. Actually, I don’t know their name. I know that the guy who runs O2O, Aaron, he’s like, “Can you approve this?” We almost never do that, because it’s so cheap already, but this is so much volume it’s [inaudible 00:09:42] silly. But the reason I wrote this topic is because there’s a constant undercurrent. Not so much right now, but there’s always an undercurrent of questions in Discord, which I understand. When you’re new, you have a lot of questions, which I think is great. That’s what it’s there for. There’s this gut reaction and response, and I had this in life, to try to save some money on… “Where can I save some money on a mailer? Where can I save some money on data?” I’m a decade past that now, but…
Jill K DeWit:
It’s not the place.
Steven Jack Butala:
This is not the place for that. This is the place to overspend on data and mail, because one deal’s going to pay for all of it.
Jill K DeWit:
We can save on office space. Do this from your kitchen table.
Steven Jack Butala:
Yes. Yes. Yes.
Jill K DeWit:
Business cards, don’t need them.
Steven Jack Butala:
All that.
Jill K DeWit:
Website, spend $500. Get a guy an offer up. Good enough for now.
Steven Jack Butala:
As much time as you can spend researching, like Jill said earlier. Going through old podcasts, not just with us, but everywhere else you can find information on the internet is great. The more time you can spend… I know I’m going a little… Talking out both sides of my mouth, here. The more time in this hot market that you can spend researching a land with your boots on the ground, and maybe make a weekend out of it, is better. That’s time really well spent, when you can go look at where you’re sending mail.
Jill K DeWit:
Spend money on the tools, too. Have NeighborScoop. Have everything you need so you can quickly do your due diligence. Some of the times, too… I’m a firm believer of this, and even more so as I’ve gotten older. Let me tell you this: I pull in experts all the time. Sure, I could spend a week and learn… Fill in the blank. I’m not going to do it. Airtable’s a great example. We just paid big bucks to have a pro reconfigure our Airtable for us and make it great.
Steven Jack Butala:
Boy, what a difference.
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah. Right? I could do it, but no. Now, I’m past it. There are things like that that… Even your website. Even though you’re going to skimp and have somebody just for $500 do a decent… It doesn’t have to be beautiful and fancy, and it doesn’t have to be you to save $500. Your time is worth more than that.
Steven Jack Butala:
Here’s one of the things that’s great about this business, that I was really attracted to when I started out. When you look at a company like Lyft… Lyft started as an idea, then they raised capital, and they got a development team, a tech development team, to write an app that’s on your phone for one city, I think it was San Francisco, to launch to prove the concept, and then they got a bunch of drivers.
Steven Jack Butala:
Now, they’re millions and millions and tens of millions of dollars into this thing upfront to see if it’s going to work. Uber and Lyft is what I’m talking about. Lots of upfront capital. We don’t know if it’s going to work. It turned out it worked. Then, they expanded it, and they were able to effectively get drivers and get riders. This is diametrically the opposite in this business, which is what I love about it. For a couple $1,000, you’re in. Maybe less. And now, you’ve got a sea of people wanting to fund your deals in a discord environment, so you can scale up. Josiah’s a great example. When he started, he’s a musician. And he was in Career Path saying, “Yeah, I came from the LandGate group. This is really wasn’t for me.”
Jill K DeWit:
“I’m a licensed agent.”
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah. And so, now he’s probably going to make a couple $1,000,000 this year.
Jill K DeWit:
Doing things are all different, and [inaudible 00:13:15].
Steven Jack Butala:
And I’d be really interested to know from him… I’ll ask him next time we interview him… how much money he had into this business. Not buying land, because if you wanted to, you wouldn’t have to spend any money on that at all.
Jill K DeWit:
But experience and education.
Steven Jack Butala:
Just education, and time, and research, and all of that.
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah. That’s very interesting.
Steven Jack Butala:
And I bet it’s not $5,000.
Jill K DeWit:
That’s good. I love it. 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 an interview with the Land Academy member James Beckman. We had a blast.
Jill K DeWit:
Cool.
Steven Jack Butala:
You are not alone, and your real estate ambition.
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah. It’s going to be you and James.
Steven Jack Butala:
You didn’t ask me what I like to save money on, what I like to spend money on.
Jill K DeWit:
No, I didn’t. Okay. Okay. What do you like to spend money on?
Steven Jack Butala:
Good alcohol, fast cars.
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah. I was waiting for that one. Garage.
Steven Jack Butala:
Real estate. I’ll spend money. Yeah. Man stuff. Old shotguns.
Jill K DeWit:
What do you like?
Steven Jack Butala:
Even then, I still have to get those cheap.
Jill K DeWit:
What do you penny pinch on?
Steven Jack Butala:
Food.
Jill K DeWit:
Underwear, clothes, hair products.
Steven Jack Butala:
I have a life partner sitting next to me that… If it was just me, I might spend a little more on that.
Jill K DeWit:
Do you know what? You’re going to go high-end on car stackers, and things like that, but on the other stuff, “No, no. Dollar store.”
Steven Jack Butala:
Let’s talk about you, Jill.
Jill K DeWit:
Okay. Sorry. All right, go ahead. Throw me under the bus.
Steven Jack Butala:
What don’t you look at the price tag on, and you don’t care how much it costs, you’re going to buy it?
Jill K DeWit:
Makeup.
Steven Jack Butala:
That’s good. That’s a good answer.
Jill K DeWit:
And face lotion.
Steven Jack Butala:
I think that’s actually okay, because…
Jill K DeWit:
Thank you. Quality.
Steven Jack Butala:
… you need that. I don’t want to out you to the world, but Jill has very sensitive skin, so I think that’s money well spent.
Jill K DeWit:
Thank you.
Steven Jack Butala:
Is that bad?
Jill K DeWit:
I agree.
Steven Jack Butala:
I don’t think you look the price tag in Cartier.
Jill K DeWit:
I do. I pay attention. Doesn’t necessarily stop me, but I do pay attention, and take a step back, and breathe, and think, but yeah.
Steven Jack Butala:
Now that I’m thinking about it, all the cars that I own, their value is less than the single car that Jill owns. All my cars combined.
Jill K DeWit:
Not true.
Steven Jack Butala:
I think so. It’s pretty close.
Jill K DeWit:
I don’t know. All right. Thank you for tuning in. By the way, we recently reduced… Excuse me, reduced… released our newest and up-to-date, latest educational project for Land Academy, and it’s called Land Academy 3.0: Catching Up with Land Academy. We spent months creating the most up-to-date for 2022 educational program you can find out there to help you succeed at doing what we do: buying and selling land. It’s five hours of how-to video. It’s free to existing members, and when you join, it’s there for you. If you want to find out more, call 833-522-5545, or send a note to support@landacademy.com.
Steven Jack Butala:
We are Jack in Jill.
Jill K DeWit:
We are Jack and Jill.
Steven Jack Butala:
Information…
Jill K DeWit:
and inspiration…
Steven Jack Butala:
… to buy undervalued property.
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