Jill Friday – It’s Too Easy to Get Excited about a Deal and Miss Red Flags (LA 1832)
Jill Friday – It’s Too Easy to Get Excited about a Deal and Miss Red Flags (LA 1832)
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 DeWit broadcasting from the Valley of the Sun.
Steven Jack Butala:
Today’s Jill Friday, she’s going to talk about, it’s too easy to get excited about a deal, and miss the red flags.
Jill K DeWit:
Kind of like dating, “He asked me out, I’m so excited. We went out to dinner, he didn’t open a door for me, he ordered before I got there. He-”
Steven Jack Butala:
“He asked me for money.”
Jill K DeWit:
“Asked me for money.” That’s so true. That’s awesome. But the point is, “I gave him a hotbox, it’s what he needed, he asked me on a second date, isn’t this great? What do you mean there’s a problem?”
Steven Jack Butala:
There’s a guy version of this.
Jill K DeWit:
This is true, this is a true story. A dear friend of ours, I’m sure she does not listen to this, so I’m safe sharing this, we’re not going to say names.
Steven Jack Butala:
Of course not.
Jill K DeWit:
Did multiple blind dates in a day, I don’t know what she was doing, but she had two or three coffee dates in one day, and she was telling about the guy in the middle, that by the time she got there, he was sitting down, drinking his own coffee, never once offered to buy her a cup of coffee. She finally took it upon herself to say, “I’m going to go get a cup of coffee.” And she, because she’s the sweet thing, she just said, “Would you like another cup of coffee?” To which he said, “Yeah, sure.” So she went and got her own coffee and brought him back to coffee, what does that say about that guy? And yes, that was the last time they communicated. She did not miss that as a red flag, and that’s a huge red flag, it was funny, anyway.
Steven Jack Butala:
You know what happens to guys?
Jill K DeWit:
Oh, bring it.
Steven Jack Butala:
They, for whatever reason, starts to date a girl, and all their guy friends are like, “Dude, listen-”
Jill K DeWit:
Oh.
Steven Jack Butala:
“That girl’s a mess, she treats you like crap.” And his response is, “What are you talking about? We always have fun.” And they’re just blinded by the whole thing, and so fast forward 30 to 60 days later-
Jill K DeWit:
I thought you said years.
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, it could be years.
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah.
Steven Jack Butala:
Just a fire ball disaster-
Jill K DeWit:
Right.
Steven Jack Butala:
And it’s all blown up, and he’s like, “Yeah, you guys were right.” I’ve been on both sides of that. I’ve been the victim of it, and the person saying, “Dude…”
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah, “You’ve got to see what we’re seeing.”
Steven Jack Butala:
All of this, it happens with real estate deals-
Jill K DeWit:
True.
Steven Jack Butala:
And new people.
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah.
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 have to tell you about parcelfact.com, without making this complicated, go to parcelfact.com F-AC-T, and it’s new and improved, we recently took two sites that we own, put them together, and made one great, amazing site.
Jill K DeWit:
There’s a day pass too, by the way.
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah.
Jill K DeWit:
Check it out.
Steven Jack Butala:
Check it all out, it’s pretty amazing.
Jill K DeWit:
Interesting. Do I know this person?
Steven Jack Butala:
Nope.
Jill K DeWit:
This is a little shout out to me in here. Okay. So Erin wrote, “Hey, Jill DeWit, and all my phone answering people, dare I say, I am enjoying speaking with potential sellers, at least the people who reach out to us are all pretty pleasant. A good chunk of the people calling me just want to know that there’s a real, not corporate person on the other side of the phone, and I enjoy talking to these people. They tell me great info about the property, of course, but also about the area, it helps me learn a lot. The only thing I’m not sure I’m doing right is perhaps I’m talking too long on the phone with the sellers.” That can happen.
“When people call, I ask them questions about the property, and the area, and then sometime, 15 or 20 minutes later, I at last ask them, ‘Well, how much are you asking?'” Oops, yeah. “I’m not sure my conversation before getting to this price is helping me or not. I think it is good for the sellers to learn that I’m a real human, just a family guy, and a family business of buying land, but sometimes I think I need to come at them with the price sooner. I don’t know, what do you folks think?” Better to get straight to numbers, and don’t waste any breath, or make a connection, which hopefully translates into better sales price.
Steven Jack Butala:
Can you really spend some time on this, because I think it would help a lot of people?
Jill K DeWit:
Sure. You can do this in three minutes, you really can. You need to establish rapport, not find out how the family reunion went last summer, and who all attended, and how great grandpa’s new barbecue sauce is, so there’s a line there, and I keep it to just a couple of sentences. So here’s an example, so people are calling in, like you’re saying, they just want to know you’re real person, “It’s your company?”
“Yeah, it’s just me. Did you look on the website?”
“Yeah, actually I did.”
“That is my dog. Yep, you’re right.”
“So where are you?”
“Oh, so you’re a couple states over. Got it. How do you like it there?”
“Oh, it’s…”
“Oh gosh, I heard that’s what’s going on there. Some weather you’ve guys had. Hey, so anyway, I’m glad you got my letter, and now you know who I am, what do you think? And are you ready to go? I love this property.” Do you think I’m kidding?
Steven Jack Butala:
I started thinking about something else, because I thought you were going to get all into this.
Jill K DeWit:
No, [inaudible 00:05:37].
Steven Jack Butala:
I love that that’s how fast it is.
Jill K DeWit:
That’s how fast you get. So it’s not that long, you don’t need to get that far into it, I don’t need to know, “You’re in Kentucky, we heard about the…”
“Yes, we all know about the weather.”
“Oh, it’s tragic.” And, “How much?” And then, “Who did what?” And, “Oh no.” And, “They got displaced too?” No, we don’t need to go down that rabbit hole. Your time is valuable. I know I talk about this in the Cash Flow From Land program, a lot too about, and I have phone calls in there, the right way and the wrong way, because it is easy, you were trying to establish rapport, but I’m just here to tell you don’t need to make it 20 minutes, you can make it three or five, I think three is good-
Steven Jack Butala:
I’ll tell you this-
Jill K DeWit:
[inaudible 00:06:27] reel them back into the point.
Steven Jack Butala:
I’ll tell you this, better to do it this way and talk too long and get a deal out of it, than do it my way which is, Oh, congratulations, you got my letter, does that price work for you?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, good. I’ll send you all this stuff. Thanks.” You don’t want to do that.
Jill K DeWit:
Well, let me back up though, you’re going to get burnout though, if every one of your phone calls is 20 minutes, number one. Number two, the mail hit, I’m missing phone calls right now. There’s going to be two or three calls coming in while I’m talking to this one person, I need to make myself available. By the way, I don’t have time to do my other job if I’m spending 20 minutes on a phone call each day.
Steven Jack Butala:
Here’s a takeaway, get a price out of them. Be as nice as you can. Start down the path of establishing trust.
Jill K DeWit:
I have one little tweak that I’d like to add though, whatever you do get out of them, don’t spend an hour, you know they’re in Kentucky, and you know that grandma weathered the storm, take a note of that, because that’s part of the trust, so when you called them back tomorrow to say, “I opened escrow, everything’s great, we’re moving right along.” You can throw in there, “By the way, how is grandma and her new place working out?” Trust is not in that one phone call-
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah.
Jill K DeWit:
It’s throughout the whole time-
Steven Jack Butala:
That’s I mean.
Jill K DeWit:
You guys are working together.
Steven Jack Butala:
You just build it along the way.
Jill K DeWit:
Right. My favorite one was a cute couple going to an anniversary dinner, you couldn’t talk that long because they’re going to be late for the dinner. So we picked up the next day, and you better believe I’m going to ask, “How was your anniversary dinner? How did it go?”
Steven Jack Butala:
What’d he say?
Jill K DeWit:
“Great, it was wonderful.” This was a guy too. What’s going to happen is, you do it right, and you establish trust, and he’s going to not only invite you to lunch at his house next time you’re in town, but if anything gets quirky down the road, he’s going to call you, because he trusts you.
Steven Jack Butala:
That’s the real deal deals go sideways sometimes, you can fix them.
Jill K DeWit:
Escrow agents can scare sellers-
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah.
Jill K DeWit:
And you want him to call you?
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah. Today’s Jill Friday, she’s going to talk about how it’s too easy to get excited about a deal, and miss the red flags. This is the meat of the show.
Jill K DeWit:
This call, what Aaron’s talking about, could be something like that too. Aaron’s established relationship with him, he’s got stuff, he’s all excited now. Imagine this, all excited, everything’s great, you befriend this person, you know all about him, 20 minutes later, we get to the price, they say, “No, this doesn’t work.” Or whatever it is, the number, and you’re like, “I just love this person, we’re going to do this deal.” Hold on a moment, you can’t get excited, you can’t rush in, you want each seller to think that you send out a handful of letters carefully, carefully, done every time you do this, like there one of five or one of 10, but, “I still need to make sure I did everything right, let me get back to you after I look it all over.”
Why? Sometimes it’s like, “Yeah, we love it. What do you want me to do? Do you want me to sign it, and…” “Great, I’ll do it right now on the phone. Here’s a picture. Got my picture?”
“Great.” Da, da, da. You’re like, “Yes, this is great. Oh my gosh, this is awesome.” You hang up the phone, and you’re like, “Oh, okay, we’ve got to open escrow.” Well, hold on a moment, a couple of things you need to check, because there are things that could go wrong, and you want to make sure you’re doing it right. What if you overpriced it? This is the one number one thing I want you to think about. What if you overpriced it, and that’s where they’re so excited? It might not be, but what if it is? We need to check and make sure this… What if you skipped an A?
And these are things that I have uncovered in helping Land Academy members going through the thing, they’re all excited, this is partially why we do the… On our Thursday member calls, have lots of, Would You Do This Deal? With him and I, with Jack and I, so we can look at them with you, members, and help you kind of make sure you’re picking up on all the things you need to do, so you need to make sure you didn’t skip an A. Or what if it has everything? You’re so excited, the price looks good, everything looks good, but there’s no access, eh, minor detail, let’s move on, I’m too excited. Okay, this could be a problem, you need to make sure. What if there’s just some huge flaw? There’s something, but you’re like, “Big deal, I’ve got all this other stuff.” Things can go wrong. What if the person you’re talking to, this happens, you get so excited, it’s got all the A’s, you’re moving along, everything’s great, but there’s a will, there was no probate, this person doesn’t even actually have the power-
Steven Jack Butala:
They don’t-
Jill K DeWit:
To sell this.
Steven Jack Butala:
They don’t know that.
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah, shoot, they thought they did, but they don’t. So what I want you to do, and this often happens with… Let me slow it down for just a second here. This is a very common situation when you’re new, and you’re first mailer doing it our way. So I have some best practices, I want you to know that you’re not alone, you’re not nuts, this happens to the best of us.
Steven Jack Butala:
Has happened to me for a year.
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah, to the best of us, and I’m going to give you some best practices to save you from this, this is the whole point here. Send a ton mail. Why? Because the more deals you have coming at you, the more you’re going to have to sift through, and you’re going to pick the best one. So I want you to send a ton of mail, I want you to do your best to answer or call back every single person that you get a response from, and get a number out of them. I want you to objectively line them all up on a spreadsheet, don’t review them, this is another thing that a lot of people accidentally do, every deal comes in, drop everything, review it, every deal comes in, drop everything, review it. It’s so much easier when you’re doing a bunch at a time, because the cream will rise to the top.
Steven Jack Butala:
Batch them up.
Jill K DeWit:
I want you to sit down, maybe it’s once a day, maybe it’s twice a week, depending how many deals you have, I’d like to have at least five to look at at a time. When you’re new, that will really help you, because you’re going to go through five and go, “Oh, paved road over here, side of a mountain over here.” Well, hello, I’m going to push the paved road one forward, and start working on that one. If I had done the side of the mountain one on Monday, and that’s the only thing I had to review, I’d be pushing through the side of the mountain one, and wasting a lot of time.
So that’s why I want you to do that. So you’re going to line them all up, please try to do five at a time, and then pick the best ones, you are going to start… The cream rise, and it’ll make it really easy for you. Kind of like the red, green, yellow test, you think you know, you’re like, “Oh, I know the areas. I know exactly what’s hot. I know what’s hot over there than over there, based on my experience, I got this.” But until you do what Jack says, and you dig into the data, and you put your stuff aside, this is all of Land Academy. Land Academy as a whole is putting your preconceived notions aside and trusting us, and letting the data tell you what to do. So when you do that, you download the data, and you do the red, green, yellow test, you’ve done this, and you put these zip codes against each other, you go, “I get it. Those two zip codes are way better than the one that I thought I was going to do.” That’s the place to send the offers.
Steven Jack Butala:
We live in a culture right now that’s the result of 80 years of 22 minute sitcoms, where we watch, all of us, we watch, our parents watched, and our grandparents watched people succeeding in 22 minute little spurts at everything they did, or if they failed, they fixed it really fast, all success, no failure. To make it worse, in the last 10 years or so, let’s call it 15, but really 10 years, we’ve watched things on the internet where everybody’s got an opinion, and we watch people who make these tiny little movies on YouTube succeed at stuff because they’re good at it, or maybe they’re trying to convince you of something and they’re not good at it at all, but they make it look like everything’s great.
This is all my opinion, the subconscious result of all this years of these people succeeding is that you send a mailer out, five deals come back, you don’t know what to do about all of it, you’re not going to succeed at all of it, and we’re just hardwired, because of all this media, to expect ourselves, and maybe our spouses, our partners, to just know how to do a real estate deal, because we were born that way, and that’s just not how this works. You need years and years of experience. “Well, that’s great, Jack, I don’t have years.” I know, you have Land Academy.
Jill K DeWit:
Right.
Steven Jack Butala:
Because we do have the years and years of experience, and the people on Discord that are part of our group have years and years, and years, and years of experience, so we’re going to tell you, we won’t let you fail at this if you submit these deals to us.
Jill K DeWit:
And local expertise.
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, and local expertise. We’ve got it all covered, so please be really, really conscious of the fact that you don’t have to succeed at the first 10 deals. You’ll get one or two of them right, I’m sure of it, if you just listen, and use the Land Academy environment.
Jill K DeWit:
Yep. 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:
Good week.
Steven Jack Butala:
This is really helpful, I mean, man, I wish somebody told me this a long time ago, you don’t have to do every deal perfectly.
Jill K DeWit:
Or you don’t have to do every deal.
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah.
Jill K DeWit:
That’s another thing, if you’re really struggling… This comes up too, you’re on the fence, your gut’s telling you one thing, but your bank balance is saying, “You need to get some money coming in, so you better buy this, and double it.” Hold on a moment, I’d say trust your gut. Don’t make a decision that you’re not 100% sure about. And if you aren’t, you can also, again, bring it up on our Thursday call.
Steven Jack Butala:
We are Jack and Jill-
Jill K DeWit:
Oh, sorry, I didn’t know we were going there.
Steven Jack Butala:
Oh, Jill, you’re such a tease.
Jill K DeWit:
I’m sorry. One, two, three. We are you’re Jack and Jill.
Steven Jack Butala:
We are Jack and Jill. Information-
Jill K DeWit:
Inspiration-
Steven Jack Butala:
To buy undervalued property.
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