Land Academy Tools Explained (LA 1823)
Land Academy Tools Explained (LA 1823)
Transcript:
Steven Jack Butala:
Steve 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 DeWitt, this time broadcasting from The Valley of this Sun. I got to say something funny about that. I was informed yesterday by our staff. I think there’s a little contest that they kind of mimic me. They go, like, “Valley of the Sun,” or “Sunny Southern California.”
Steven Jack Butala:
Ah, jeez. So they make fun of us?
Jill K DeWit:
A few people, oh yeah, yeah. Oh yeah, yeah.
Steven Jack Butala:
As they should.
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah. Someone came over and said, “You know, Cody’s really good at imitating you.” I said, “Yeah, I bet he is.”
Steven Jack Butala:
Imitating you?
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah, he’s got it down.
Steven Jack Butala:
Cody’s all right. Super guy.
Jill K DeWit:
So if he’s listening to this, Cody, yeah, we get it. Bring it.
Steven Jack Butala:
Oh, those poor guys have to post-produce all this audio and video.
Jill K DeWit:
I know, and hear it all the time.
Steven Jack Butala:
So they hear this, all of it.
Jill K DeWit:
I know, and one of our guys the other day, bless his heart, he’s new with us. And I kind of razzed him yesterday about something, and then I don’t know if he was ready for it. I’m like, “Sorry.” I’m like, “I hope that’s okay.” I can take it, so give it back, whatever you got, give it back. So I’m-
Steven Jack Butala:
Did he?
Jill K DeWit:
Not yet. I’m sure he’s saving it up. He was probably like, “What just happened?” I was only teasing him about something. Anyways, funny.
Steven Jack Butala:
Before we get into the topic, let’s take a question posted by one of our members on the landinvestors.com online community. It’s free, and I’ve been asked to inform you that it’s Monday.
Jill K DeWit:
I’m excited.
Steven Jack Butala:
It’s Monday, and we have rereleased Concierge Data-
Jill K DeWit:
What?
Steven Jack Butala:
… which allows you, as a member or a non-member, it allows you to put your order in and we’ll do your mailer for you.
Jill K DeWit:
I thought that was on the down low.
Steven Jack Butala:
They asked me to talk about it.
Jill K DeWit:
Well, I still thought we were like … Is it open for new customers right now? We’re catching up.
Steven Jack Butala:
It’s a little late now, so yeah. Contact support at offers2owners.com, and ask them, and they might say “Yes,” but it might take a couple of days.
Jill K DeWit:
And that would be your opportunity to say, “Well, Jack said …”
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, throw me under the bus. Just like, apparently, our employees do.
Jill K DeWit:
That’s great. There we go. That’s awesome.
Erin wrote, “General question. Anyone have an opinion one way or another? If you want to, or need to, lower your offer price for a parcel, would you negotiate all the way down to the price you want before going into contract?” Huh? I’m a little confused on this. Let me read more and we’ll see if we figure it out. “Anyone having success getting one price drop before escrow and then asking for another one while in …” oh, now it’s making sense … “while in escrow.” Oh, I have a lot to say about this.
Steven Jack Butala:
I know you do. That’s why I put it in here, because this is right up your alley.
Jill K DeWit:
Uh-huh. “Maybe the seller will cancel the deal after a second drop, or maybe they will never enter into the deal if you go in for the full price cut.” Chicken and egg problem? Okay.
Here’s the deal. This person is asking a question like, “Okay, I sent out the offer. We agreed on a price. It’s not the price I really, really want, but I agreed on it. Now we’re going to go into escrow, and I’m thinking that maybe partway through here, I’m going to throw it out to them, like, ‘You know what? I know I said 10,000. I really mean eight, and now because we’re in escrow,'” you know? And that poor seller is kind of stuck, and their question is, “Should I do it while I’m in escrow? Or should I do it before escrow?” Well, you know what? Before, because you don’t want to be that guy. I have been on the receiving end of that. If you’ve not been on the receiving end of that, which I’m guessing you have not, Erin, let me tell you, it sucks. It’s raw.
Steven Jack Butala:
I have some stuff to say at the end of this too.
Jill K DeWit:
It’s mean, and I think it’s really slimy, sorry, so I would never do that.
Steven Jack Butala:
Oh, you covered what I was going to say. Please don’t play these games.
Jill K DeWit:
Nope.
Steven Jack Butala:
If you send an offer for 30,000 and the guy says, “I will not take a penny less than 50,000,” that either works for you or it doesn’t.
Jill K DeWit:
Or it doesn’t.
Steven Jack Butala:
Don’t sign the offer at 50,000 with the intention of at the very end-
Jill K DeWit:
I’m going to get him to convince now.
Steven Jack Butala:
… where either we’re not going to close, unless you do 38, after the whole title’s process is done and all that?
Jill K DeWit:
Right.
Steven Jack Butala:
That’s sneaky and terrible and will catch up with you karma-wise.
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah. It will happen to you. So, you know what? And the point is, if there’s … Let me follow up with this. If there’s something that comes up during escrow that does warrant a change in price, that’s totally different.
Steven Jack Butala:
Like lack of access.
Jill K DeWit:
Right. What if you think you had legal access and you found out it doesn’t? And that’s fair, and that’s just a conversation you have, like, I didn’t know that. We all thought, and you included, thought you had legal access. Guess what? Title’s found out you don’t, or some other thing like that.
Steven Jack Butala:
That’s very common, actually. Not common, but it’s very possible, and it’s totally like, look, I didn’t know. I thought the car … I was going to buy the car for $20,000 and it looks great, and then I got in there and found out it needs a new transmission.
Jill K DeWit:
It’s a salvage title.
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, or it needs a new transmission, so you’re going to have to adjust accordingly or just get out of the deal.
Jill K DeWit:
That’s it. But to go into it with the other thing, don’t do that. Thank you.
Steven Jack Butala:
Today’s topic, the Land Academy tools explained. This is the meat of the show. Jill’s got a bunch of stuff to say, but before I launch into this, all week, these topics, they were requested that Jill and I cover these topics all week by our customer service staff.
Jill K DeWit:
Yup. Okay. I want to just say about our tools, all the tools that we have, number one is, we didn’t have them in the beginning. When we created Land Academy, we started writing it in 2014 and we released it in 2015, it was just our education. It was just what we do, how we run our business, and just telling everyone, and here’s what we use for data. Best wishes. I wasn’t a licensed provider of anything. I just would share where I get my data. What happened was, from that point, you asked, we listened. Our group started to grow quickly. You know, it was people saying, “I can’t do a good job like you if I don’t have access to these professional level tools.” So guess what? We said, “Yeah, you’re right.” And now I’ve got enough people behind me, I can go do this.
How it started was we went, we negotiated, we either negotiated on our dime, with huge contracts, which I still have to this day, by the way, that’s why our membership is an annual thing too, because my contract’s an annual thing. So, we negotiated these to be licensed providers of some of this amazing … these tools that we have. Or again, you asked, we listened. If it didn’t exist, we created it. So, that’s how we got to where we are today.
Steven Jack Butala:
We are not gurus. We are not coaches. I’m going to cover this at the end of this topic.
Jill K DeWit:
Oh. No, I’m an investor, like you.
Steven Jack Butala:
We are people just like you who … Jill and I have been buying and selling land since the late ’90, for me. Jill, since around 2009. We joined together and decided to do it together, and we started this in 2015, Land Academy itself. So, now we’ve been doing this for, what, seven or eight years, and improving on it. It’s not like we do this show and then we have some online education program. Although we do have that, every minute of the way, we’ve been improving it based on the changes in the market and how people want to learn.
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah.
Steven Jack Butala:
Here’s some tools. We have an online community that’s hosted by Discord, and about every minute or so, somebody has a question and it gets answered in there. It could be anything. Where do I start? It could be that. It could be-
Jill K DeWit:
Does anybody have a good broker in XYZ county?
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah. North Dakota, for instance. I need a title agent over here. This property doesn’t have access. Should I even be buying it at all? I don’t have any money. I want to get this property-
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah, could somebody fund this deal?
Steven Jack Butala:
Well, please fund it. And so we’re all in there, coming from … We have the similar interests. It’s what social media should be. We all have a similar interest and we all have issues of the day that we need to get past or resolved or help with, and they get addressed, without exception.
Jill K DeWit:
Right.
Steven Jack Butala:
There’s not a dull moment in our Land Academy Discord, so it’s an amazing tool. I’m not aware of anybody else who has that. There’s all kinds of land education programs that are popping up everywhere. It seems like every time I turn around-
Jill K DeWit:
And some pop up and some turn off, I’ve seen, since we’ve been around.
Steven Jack Butala:
And none of them last. They don’t have comprehensive tools like this.
Jill K DeWit:
That’s okay.
Steven Jack Butala:
This is not a sales pitch for Land Academy. Our customer service people are daily explaining this, and so they asked us, “Hey, can you guys just do a show on it?” So, we’re explaining it.
Jill K DeWit:
Give us some more tools.
Steven Jack Butala:
Training. We have four full self-education programs. Catch them from Land Program, Land Academy one, two, and three, and House Academy. They’re all five to 10 hours each. They take six months to do.
Jill K DeWit:
For us, not you.
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, for you, it takes you-
Jill K DeWit:
It takes you one weekend. Yeah, if you speed it up, if you speed it up and do it 10X, you’re done in … Could you imagine? You can 10X and it takes us six months. Oh, my gosh. Too bad I can’t do that with us at the dinner table or just whatever, in meetings.
Steven Jack Butala:
There’s some relationships I wish I would have 10Xed.
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah. That’s true. Say that again.
Steven Jack Butala:
We all have a program called Career Path, which is a 10-week course, four hours a week, where Jill and I … if this is your career, if you want this to be … I don’t care if you’re brand new, or if you have … The vast majority of the people in Career Path are like, “Look, I’m making $800,000 a year doing this. I’d like to make 10 million.”
Jill K DeWit:
I want to make three, or whatever.
Steven Jack Butala:
How do I do that? And so, it’s your career. That includes lifelong, as long as we’re breathing-
Jill K DeWit:
And as long as you’re a member.
Steven Jack Butala:
Office hours, yeah.
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah. Right.
Steven Jack Butala:
We have a fairly discounted rate with, I think, what are the two best data tools in the country for aggregated assessor data, which is how we do-
Jill K DeWit:
For right now, for today, 2020, 2, or 2022.
Steven Jack Butala:
2022. DataTree and TitlePro, we teach you how to use those in the programs.
Jill K DeWit:
Yup.
Steven Jack Butala:
We recently discontinued RealQuest because we don’t believe that it works anymore.
Jill K DeWit:
It’s not the best. No, we’re decommissioning that right now, and that’s okay. Got us where we needed to be.
Steven Jack Butala:
We have a full blown printing company, a professional printing company, where we-
Jill K DeWit:
I’m sorry.
Steven Jack Butala:
… send your offers out. Jill and I were … This came out of the fact that we were really frustrated sending our own mailers to a printer who didn’t understand our business. They were going to run our print job and then they were going to run a printing job for a hospital. It’s just such a different animal. And then that wasn’t enough for a lot of people. They wanted us to, as I mentioned earlier, do their mailers for them, so we have Concierge Data now [inaudible 00:11:41]
Jill K DeWit:
They wouldn’t do mail merge. They couldn’t do … There’s a lot of things that we rolled in there to make it great. Yeah.
Steven Jack Butala:
We have discounts, too many discounts to mention. A good one’s PATLive. You get 10% off of PATLive, so if you’re not into answering-
Jill K DeWit:
20.
Steven Jack Butala:
Is it 20%?
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah, no, we keep … PATLive said you could have 20% off. “Do you want you 10, them 10? However you want to do it,” and I said, “No, everybody gets 20.” [inaudible 00:12:05]
Steven Jack Butala:
And so, we’re not necessarily advocating using PATLive to answer your phones.
Jill K DeWit:
[inaudible 00:12:09]
Steven Jack Butala:
In fact, we’re pretty loud about, at least in your first year of mailers, answering your own phone so you can learn. But there’s many, many, many tools that are just like that. You need money for funding? Go to landfunding.com, or if you’re a member go into Discord and you know-
Jill K DeWit:
Pop it in.
Steven Jack Butala:
There’s not a deal. If the deal’s good, it will get funded. There’s two or three people in there, I won’t mention their names, that as funders will fund any deal.
Jill K DeWit:
[inaudible 00:12:36] yeah.
Steven Jack Butala:
Within reason. We have multiple places for consulting, where you can-
Jill K DeWit:
Have one-on-one phone calls with people and say, “Here’s where I’m stuck. Can you help me through this?”
Steven Jack Butala:
Jill and I don’t-
Jill K DeWit:
“I don’t understand why.” Yeah.
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah. Jill and I don’t do it personally anymore. I used to, and I allotted certain hours every week, and there are people that went in there and ordered every single possible hour.
Jill K DeWit:
That was funny. I know.
Steven Jack Butala:
And those people went on to do amazing stuff. What we are not, and I’m going to explain why, are personal coaches. And what’s popping up are personal coaching, they’re personal coaching sites, and here’s why we don’t do it. We did it in the past.
If you have the personality where … It’s how you learn. We’ve all been in a class, or in my case, 50 classes, where there’s somebody up front who monopolizes the teacher’s time, asks questions about every other sentence. The teacher explains something and they say, “Well, wait a second. Now, I need to know about why this is.” That’s how they learn, and that is ineffective for the rest of us. And in the end, I don’t think that person will amount to a very successful land investor.
Jill K DeWit:
Understood.
Steven Jack Butala:
And so, I mean, if you are that kind of person, I think you should ask yourself if this is for you, because our group is packed full of people who go into a dark corner-
Jill K DeWit:
And figure it out.
Steven Jack Butala:
Yup. Don’t take a shower for a weekend, come back out a land investor.
Jill K DeWit:
Yep, and you can do that.
Steven Jack Butala:
Exactly.
Jill K DeWit:
You know what you didn’t mention? Can I throw in there, ParcelFact?
Steven Jack Butala:
Oh, jeez.
Jill K DeWit:
That’s okay. I’ll help you.
Steven Jack Butala:
That’s why there’s two of us.
Jill K DeWit:
Exactly. Yeah. And you got everything that I was thinking of, but ParcelFact. I mean, boy, back in the day, this is one of the things that it didn’t exist, so we made it. And right now, as you’re listening, we’re combining Neighborscoop and ParcelFact, so you know it’s coming. Really soon, you’re going to get emails on this. It’s going to be-
Steven Jack Butala:
We needed a tool to, while Jill was on the phone with somebody who’s responding to a mailer, to see if we want to buy their property, we needed a tool where you could sit in front of a computer, type in the state and the county and the assessor’s parcel number. Because it doesn’t have a post office address, like 123 Main Street? Have the property pop right up, and all the stuff that you need to make a basic decision is right in front of you, within seconds.
Jill K DeWit:
A map, flood zone, I mean, all kinds of different layers on there. It’s wonderful.
Steven Jack Butala:
What they paid for it, how long they’ve owned it.
Jill K DeWit:
Maybe there’s a mortgage on there, that’s in there. It’s awesome.
Steven Jack Butala:
If the person that you’re talking to on the phone is the actual owner, you can check all that stuff in seconds.
Jill K DeWit:
Wow. Zoning.
Steven Jack Butala:
In about 30 seconds, you can decide, yeah, I think this is priced right, and it’s just a great tool.
Jill K DeWit:
And I’m sitting there. I click one thing, it drops it into Google Earth with the whole outline. It’s great. That covers it. Happy you joined 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 How to Hire a Great Transaction Coordinator, by Jill.
Jill K DeWit:
Thanks.
Steven Jack Butala:
You are not alone in your real estate ambition.
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah. I got to think about that. Man, that’s one thing about my transaction coordinator, my TC? I got it right. We are a well-oiled machine now, and it took us … It should. It takes time to figure out how everybody works.
Steven Jack Butala:
Took us about 20 years.
Jill K DeWit:
And then every now and then someone, this one goes, “Hey, I need something from your TC …” I’m like, “Hold on a moment. Wait a minute.”
Steven Jack Butala:
I have very, very restricted access to Jill’s people.
Jill K DeWit:
Oh, yeah. Yep, because we have our groove. If you would like something, let me know, and I’m happy to help, but we have our own way of doing things and it works great. And we don’t communicate that much verbally, and when we do, it’s pretty kind of social and fun.
Steven Jack Butala:
I wasn’t happy about that in the beginning, and then I really sat down with myself and said, “So, I have to work less, and these guys are getting all these deals done? I think I’m going to go over here.”
Jill K DeWit:
Isn’t that great. We pretty much said, “Stay out of my lane,” and you’re like, “Done.”
Hey, thanks for tuning in. By the way, just a reminder, it’s still 2022 and it’s still new and fresh, and how we’re doing deals today. What am I talking about? Land Academy 3.0, it’s new, updated for 2022. It shows you all the stuff that we’re doing now. It’s DataTree, it’s Screenshot, it’s trolling for properties, all the things that you need to be successful like we are. So check it out at landacademy.com, or send a note to support@landacademy.com.
Steven Jack Butala:
And my staff asked me to say this. If you’re new, please start with Land Academy 3.0.
Jill K DeWit:
Oh.
Steven Jack Butala:
The same way that you’re using Windows 10, not Windows 3. Don’t-
Jill K DeWit:
Can I go 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10? Is that how I do it with Windows? No, you’re right.
Steven Jack Butala:
The most fresh is Land Academy 3.0. Start there. The vast majority of people don’t even go to 2.0 or 1.0. They don’t need to, just like we don’t need to go back to Windows.
Jill K DeWit:
Thank you.
We are Jack and Jill.
Steven Jack Butala:
We Jack and Jill. Information …
Jill K DeWit:
And inspiration …
Steven Jack Butala:
… to buy undervalued property.
Jill K DeWit:
I’m sure our team makes fun of that one too. Information and inflammation.
Steven Jack Butala:
Inflammation? Information and inflammation.
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah. I got to think of tough stuff. Inclination and inflammation are [inaudible 00:18:32]
Steven Jack Butala:
Cody and Alex, give it your best shot. See if you can [inaudible 00:18:36]
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah, tell us what it should be.
Steven Jack Butala:
See if you can mimic us. We’re having a huge company get-together, so-
Jill K DeWit:
I was going to make that a contest.
Steven Jack Butala:
We’ll have a contest.
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah, like, who could best imitate us?
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.
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