Jill Friday – 8 Hours a Day on the Phone (LA 1792)
Jill Friday – 8 Hours a Day on the Phone (LA 1792)
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 is Jill Friday, and she’s going to talk about eight hours a day on the phone.
Jill K DeWit:
You know what? For some people that is horror, right? Some people are like, “Oh, please don’t make me do that. I’ll do anything. I’ll flip burgers.”
Steven Jack Butala:
That’s me.
Jill K DeWit:
“Don’t make me be on the phone.” And you know what? For other people, eight hours isn’t enough, I’d spend 10.
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.
Jill K DeWit:
Herbert wrote… is it Herber or Herbert?
Steven Jack Butala:
Probably Herber.
Jill K DeWit:
Okay. We’re going to go with Herbert. Herbert wrote-
Steven Jack Butala:
Whoever did the script makes a lot of mistakes, don’t they?
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah, I tell you. There’s lots of little holes here. Thank goodness we’re professional, we can piece this together.
Steven Jack Butala:
You know what I was thinking in the podcast, you know movie credits?
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah.
Steven Jack Butala:
It’s like, key grip director, all of that, so if I ever do credits, this is what it’s going to say, “Written by Stephen Jack Butala. Produced by Stephen Jack Butala. Starring Stephen Jack Butala, and sort of Jill Dewit.
Jill K DeWit:
Oh, thanks.
Steven Jack Butala:
Produced by… And on and on and on, it’s just me. All of it. Post-production, Steven Jack Butala.
Jill K DeWit:
Mistakes by Steven Jack Butala.
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, mistakes by… Imperfections and terribleness, Steven Jack Butala.
Jill K DeWit:
Steven Jack Butala. Here we go, okay, Herbert wrote, “Hey, have any of you guys helped a seller pay for their probate costs if they couldn’t afford it to get the deal done, assuming the numbers make sense? If so, how’d you go about it?” I’d be open to this.
Steven Jack Butala:
This is a great idea.
Jill K DeWit:
I would totally be open to this. I’m trying to think…
Steven Jack Butala:
Before Jill launches why with the story, here’s why. Because the next person, if you say no, they’re not going to go do a probate themselves.
Jill K DeWit:
No.
Steven Jack Butala:
The next person that buys it, or next person that says, “Hey, I want to buy your property.” They’re going to have to go through it anyway. Somebody’s got to do it, or the asset’s going to go back to the taxing authority.
Jill K DeWit:
No one will get it. Then nobody’s happy, and now we’re back to negative attention.
Steven Jack Butala:
You like that, don’t you?
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah. I’m going to use this all day now.
Steven Jack Butala:
You’re right. We didn’t talk about it. Children are packed full of negative attention.
Jill K DeWit:
Oh God! Yes.
Steven Jack Butala:
They don’t get what they want, they’ll do anything, they’ll take a bowl of spaghetti and throw it at the door.
Jill K DeWit:
You know what’s funny about that? Back to the negative attention show, we didn’t even cover this part. How many people come to you? We had a person reach out to you personally in discord, not that they wanted, then come to my team, still not get there, then they get to me and I’m like, “This is stupid, you’re pitting mom and dad against each other. Don’t do that.” By the way, don’t be that negative attention guy. Thank you. Now I’m done.
Steven Jack Butala:
Vast majority of the people in Land Academy who come to us already being successful at something else in their life, whether it’s a business, and they sold it, or they’re a successful mechanical engineer for aerospace company or whatever, we just never hear from them, and then they join career path and it’s like, “Oh yeah, I do $7 million a year.” And I never heard their name, and they’ve never been on discord. That’s not negative attention, that’s the exact opposite.
Jill K DeWit:
That’s who we want to hang out with.
Steven Jack Butala:
That’s a model.
Jill K DeWit:
Isn’t that who you want to hang out with?
Steven Jack Butala:
A model of mental health is what that is.
Jill K DeWit:
Model of mental health. All right. And he knows who he is, I wonder if he’s going to hear this, that’s awesome.
Steven Jack Butala:
He probably doesn’t listen to the show.
Jill K DeWit:
No. That’s true. Yeah, he’s above all that, he’s too busy. Just kidding. All right. So, the whole thing about the probate, I certainly coach people and talked to them about it, and gave them tips about… So what are we talking about by the way? What’s probate? Let’s just say dad died, and in the will, the property’s supposed to go to you. You can’t just run around and sell it saying, “I’ve got a will on my hand.” In most states, there are steps to be taken, and in a lot of states it involves legally passing the property and it’s going through a process called probate to get it from dad’s name, via the will, into your name, so now you own it and you can do whatever you want with it.
Steven Jack Butala:
There’s certain requirements based on what the estate’s value is, and they always change depending on… Just changes on a lot. And then the estate itself, in a lot of cases, depending on how it’s structured, whether there’s trust involved and all of that, has file tax return as a legal entity, the way that we file tax returns, so the estate files a tax return, pays its taxes, and then does a distribution to the heirs of the estate, while not everybody does this, it’s complicated and expensive.
Jill K DeWit:
And the best way to do it is an attorney. Usually get an attorney involved, the right guy who does this all day long, this is his thing. And so what I have done in the past, I’ll coach and ask, “Okay, when dad died, who helped you guys?” “Oh, it was uncle Mark. Uncle Mark’s an attorney.” “Okay, we’re calling uncle Mark.” That’s when you do know, this one slipped through the cracks, we need to get uncle Mark back in and get this done kind of thing. Now, so say this is a situation and it’s not uncle Mark. And it’s like, “Okay, no, it was Mr. Wallace. I still have all his paperwork here.” And so I will coach them, call Mr. Wallace, see how much it’d be, and then maybe they say, “Mr. Wallace says it’s $1,000, I don’t have it.” This is the situation Herbert’s facing. All right. We know it’s 1,000 bucks to get this done, it’s going to take three weeks, whatever it is, he’s got it all ready to go, it’s just, do I give him a thousand bucks? So what would you do?
Steven Jack Butala:
Well, it’s all in the numbers, feels exactly right in the time. So if you have an asset that, what the seller will usually say is, “Yeah, I’m happy to sell you this for $30,000, that’s what you offered. I’m happy to sell it to you, it needs a probate situation, and I don’t want to go through it, and I don’t want to pay for it. If you want to do that, go for it.” And so now, probate’s a lot more expensive than $1,000. So-
Jill K DeWit:
I’m just throwing out a random number.
Steven Jack Butala:
… if the asset’s worth, buy for 30 sell for 90, then you can easily spend a few months, or however long it takes, and $5,000 to get it done, as long as there’s a purchase agreement in place, that’s what stipulates, I am selling this property to you, probably through the attorney that’s doing the probate, they need to manage that to make sure they don’t change their mind at the end. That’s the real fear in all this stuff, it’s like, “I’m going to go through it, Am I going to get this deal?”
Jill K DeWit:
You know what I’d do? I would do it. Here’s what I would do, and I would think you can get the attorney involved on this, so here’s we’re all going to sign something, we’re all on the same page, I’m going to buy this property, you’re going to help with the probate, hopefully the attorney could even close the deal, too.
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, that’s what I think, exactly. Or they know another attorney.
Jill K DeWit:
Right. And then, that attorney who does the probate is going to get paid out at the purchase. At the time I’m buying this because I’m buying it for $30,000.
Steven Jack Butala:
Great idea.
Jill K DeWit:
You like this?
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah.
Jill K DeWit:
So attorney A is going to get paid out at the top point of purchase when the probate’s done-
Steven Jack Butala:
Out of escrow.
Jill K DeWit:
Out of escrow, on the buy side, you get a couple 1,000 bucks, and now I’m only paying $27,000 or whatever it is, to the seller. Everybody wins. And you feel good about, and then the attorney by the way, that attorney doing the probate is going to make sure this gets done because his money’s tied up in it too.
Steven Jack Butala:
So literally, the probate’s closed and the deal closes at the same time, and you own it.
Jill K DeWit:
And now you own it, and it’s done.
Steven Jack Butala:
And then you go free to make your 60,000 bucks.
Jill K DeWit:
Exactly.
Steven Jack Butala:
Or 55,000 in this case.
Jill K DeWit:
Exactly. Glad we had this talk.
Steven Jack Butala:
Today’s Jill Friday. Me too. Eight hours a day on the phone. This is the meat of the show.
Jill K DeWit:
It’s true. You know what I told you? I think this came from the other day, correct me if I’m wrong because you and I were in my office and we were talking about something and you’re like, “Wait a minute, you don’t want to do this. You don’t want to do that. You don’t want to do this Jill.” I’m like, “Hold on a moment.” And I said, “Actually I do. I like it. Bring me the calls, let me handle it.” I said, “Here’s where I get hung up. As long as I have somebody right here right I can hang up the phone and go, ‘Make that happen.'”
Steven Jack Butala:
So that’s Jill’s thing. Everybody’s got a thing, and she has a woman named Jan who just does all the work. And so Jill knows she befriends the person, negotiates the deal, gets a purchase agreement signed and hands it over.
Jill K DeWit:
And then I’m out.
Steven Jack Butala:
Because we’ve all done all of it. Then it’s like, all right, she just wants to go make another call.
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah. I’ll get more deals. Yeah. And that’s what’s great about, that’s what I’m good at. You don’t want me bogged down with paperwork and opening escrow and getting this done and that done and sending DocuSign all over the place, you don’t want me doing that. That’s not good use of my time. You want me on the phone market on the next one and the next one.
Steven Jack Butala:
Making deals, screening real estate deals.
Jill K DeWit:
So that’s my happy space. And that’s why I said, as long as I have that person and I do or that team and I do, I have an amazing team, not just on the land [inaudible 00:08:55]
Steven Jack Butala:
I learned a lot about that conversation about you.
Jill K DeWit:
Thank you.
Steven Jack Butala:
And about-
Jill K DeWit:
And that’s funny-
Steven Jack Butala:
… this episode because you just-
Jill K DeWit:
You thought I hated it. I just struggled, though I actually like it.
Steven Jack Butala:
You just don’t want to… You want to do stuff that you want do.
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah.
Steven Jack Butala:
I have no doing mailers and directing all that and doing the data and finding new places to send mail and pricing stuff and all of that. I actually enjoy it.
Jill K DeWit:
Well that’s-
Steven Jack Butala:
I could do it on Sunday.
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah. So within, not only within our land companies, but within Land Academy and House Academy, I’ve got an amazing team that I can just talk, make deals, negotiate stuff, get better contracts for data prices, who knows? Fill in the blank, work on the thing that you’re working on, if you want to say it, but.
Steven Jack Butala:
Car Academy?
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah, you did. So work on the data for Car Academy. I’m happy to now do, I want to sit and then now wait for the contracts and do this and do that.
Steven Jack Butala:
I’ll do all that.
Jill K DeWit:
That’s what I’m trying to say. We’re saying the same thing. As long as I have the team and support to do the other stuff, put me in coach, I’ll be on the phone 10 hours a day because that’s fun for me. It really is. I know some people wears them out, me it gets a little bit, I get jacked up, I mean, sure there’s days that after a while I’m like, “Okay, now I’m a little tired.” But it doesn’t mean it was a bad day, it means it was a lot. I talked to a lot of people, and if you had these positions or you’re in this position, you know what I’m talking about, making 85 and 100 outbound calls a day piece of cake, that’s not hard, and people look at me like, “What?”
Steven Jack Butala:
Let me say this, and this is really why I wrote this title. If you are not on the phone, the vast majority of the time.
Jill K DeWit:
Yes. Ding, ding.
Steven Jack Butala:
You are not going to do a lot of real estate deals.
Jill K DeWit:
Correct.
Steven Jack Butala:
If you’re like me, that’s just not an option, I’m not going to do it. I would’ve when I was younger, and I did do it when I was younger, and it worked because I would do anything when I was younger to get rich quite honestly, within reason. But if you’re older and you’re not going to do this, or you’re going to get burned out after doing it for two weeks, you have to find somebody to do this for you or this will not work. For some reason, I would rather have you not join Land Academy than-
Jill K DeWit:
Fail.
Steven Jack Butala:
Than join, send out a bunch of mail, and wonder why it doesn’t work? And so I’m being really straight here. You have to have somebody on the phone working these deals.
Jill K DeWit:
That’s true.
Steven Jack Butala:
Working them, and working them, and working them, eight hours a day would be good. If I sent out 50,000 mailers, I just had this conversation because we have a business partner on some of the deals that we do, and I said to him, “If Jill answers the phone…” Because we just reviewed the whole mailer, he did the mailer, I reviewed it, we’re testing it, and I’m looking at it, and it’s like, I’m looking at it with dollar signs in my eyes and in pure admiration for this group that we have, and I said, “If we have Jill answer the phone on this, we’ll probably pull half a million dollars out of this mailer.” And he’s like, “Really?” And so, you should be launching a mailer having that same feeling like, “I’ve got a superstar. I have a superstar.” Maybe it’s yourself, superstar answering the phone to create these real estate deals. These people call you back, they want to sell their land, they don’t want it.
Jill K DeWit:
No.
Steven Jack Butala:
They might not be happy with the price, they might be unhappy with themselves for paying too much when they bought it, maybe they’re so disappointed, they were going to retire there and some stuff happened in their life, so it’s not necessarily that they are mad about you and your price, they’re just disappointed, and Jill can solve that.
Jill K DeWit:
Thank you.
Steven Jack Butala:
And does solve it. You need somebody on the phone for hours and hours and hours a day full time probably. I don’t think that, I communicate that.
Jill K DeWit:
No I don’t. No because people know that you don’t talk on the phone and then they know that we don’t let you talk on the phone, so they go, “I want to be Jack, hold on a moment.” You’re just going to be successful. That’s the whole point. You got to work these deals, you got to work them.
Steven Jack Butala:
A lot of people are saying, “Maybe you should stop being in this podcast too. Maybe you just stand behind Jill.”
Jill K DeWit:
Maybe we just don’t let Jack talk. Leave it at that. Just take off the on the phone.
Steven Jack Butala:
[inaudible 00:13:11] turn around so we can see the back of your head and then Jill just talks.
Jill K DeWit:
That’s hilarious. It’s good. Thank you. 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.
Jill K DeWit:
The back of your head. What the heck?
Steven Jack Butala:
That would just lead to, maybe you should just get out of the shot entirely.
Jill K DeWit:
That is so darn funny. Hey, I’m going to end it on this today. Don’t forget it’s… And what are we right now? I don’t know. I’ll just say coming up very shortly, there’s going to be an awesome 4th of July special going on. So if you’ve been thinking about it, you need that little push to join Land Academy. You’re like, “Boy, if I can get the little money off here, I’d be in.” Then don’t worry, it’s coming, get on our email list by getting the ebook off landacademy.com or houseacademy.com, and you’ll be notified when it goes live for 4th of July. 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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