Jack Thursday – Why I’m Never Satisfied in Business (LA 1866)

Transcript:

Steven Jack Butala:
Steve and Jill here. Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I’m Steven Jack Butala.

Jill DeWit:
And I’m Jill DeWit. Coming to you from Steven’s hometown.

Steven Jack Butala:
Detroit, Michigan.

Jill DeWit:
Yup.

Steven Jack Butala:
Jill and I are on a huge road trip, two month, maybe three month road trip. For about three or four weeks into it, we’re in Detroit, coming off of our niece’s wedding. Today’s topic, well, it’s Jack Thursday and I’m going to talk about why I’m never satisfied in business and why I think it’s actually pretty healthy.

Jill DeWit:
Interesting.

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 don’t forget to subscribe on a Land Academy YouTube channel and comment on the shows you like. Why? It actually really works. It helps us develop content that you might want to hear.

Jill DeWit:
I love it. That’s funny. Okay. It’s not funny, I love it. Anyway, Mike wrote, “My land agent has offered to pay for my mailers in order to give him the leads of properties I pass on. Anyone had that presented to them before?” I actually think that’s cool.

Steven Jack Butala:
This is the worst idea I’ve ever heard.

Jill DeWit:
Why? Well yeah, now you’re in bed with the guy and he’s going to weigh in on all the stuff and whose phone number goes on and….

Steven Jack Butala:
Keep going.

Jill DeWit:
…continue, and then so on and so on and so on. Hey, that’s my deal. I did all the work, yeah, but I paid for the mail and we didn’t get the yield out of it for.

Steven Jack Butala:
I paid for the mail and you bought this property without me. I paid for this mail. You bought this property without me. You made $38,000 and didn’t get me involved in this deal. I could have sold that for $68,000. I’m never going to be a partner again. Screw you. That’s how that ends.

Jill DeWit:
Okay! All right. Thank you very much.

Steven Jack Butala:
And that’s me trying to really put a lid on it.

Jill DeWit:
Aw.

Steven Jack Butala:
All these side deals that you do in these handshake deals almost never work. If you’re going to get in bed with somebody, get in bed with him like Jill and I, and be their partner.

Jill DeWit:
Thanks. Or do a deal together. My favorite thing, yeah, this, I get it. So it gets the leads. I mean, I got to say kudos to the guy for thinking of this, because he knows that those properties are gonna pass on.

Steven Jack Butala:
Why doesn’t he just do his own mailer?

Jill DeWit:
Well, you know what’s funny about that? That comes up over and over and over again with a lot of the buyers that I deal with, because they’re going to buy the property and then do something with it. I’m like, you know you realize you’re paying me as a middle man for you to now go sell this on terms or whatever you’re going to do. You could have done this. They’re like, “Yeah, but I don’t want to.”

Steven Jack Butala:
Okay.

Jill DeWit:
No, they don’t want it and that’s okay.

Steven Jack Butala:
They just want it spoonfed.

Jill DeWit:
Yeah, I’m happy with that. And trust me too, by the way, it’s been a while, but I would had several real estate agents in the past that we were doing [inaudible 00:02:59] were really big, doing some house academy stuff and they knew that I bought land, right? And so when they would get any kind of a land deal, they’d just call me and say, “Hey, this guy wants to sell it and I don’t want to sell it for him, but I know you buy it. Here you go.” I’m like, “Hold on a moment, why aren’t you buying this?” Like, “No, I’m just not a land person too.” They just would pass things off because it’s not their thing. They don’t get it, and that’s fine. I appreciate them picking what they do and owning it.

Steven Jack Butala:
Today’s topic: this is Jack Thursday and I’m going to talk about why I’m never satisfied in business. This is why you’re listening. Yet, just like Jill said yesterday, it’s not that I’m never satisfied. That’s like a personality disorder. That leads to long term upsetness.

Jill DeWit:
I’m teasing.

Steven Jack Butala:
But being unsatisfied about your own performance as a land investor and being unsatisfied about that perpetually causes, in my opinion, habitually and perpetually could causes you to be better, to get better at it constantly, to constantly improve.
This topic came up in one of the last get-togethers, get-together meetings that we had in the last career path. And there was one specific member who said, “No, I’m not satisfied.” Actually, it was the last call, the last advanced member career path alumni call.
We spent an hour on this, you know, why we’re never satisfied. And my first gut reaction was, this isn’t right. And then I really started thinking about it. I have never been satisfied at work, whether it’s with my boss, how much money I make. Even now we do great. We’re on the road, we’re having a blast. Our life is awesome. And I’m like, “Yeah, but we could probably do something.” We just had a meeting about launching another product.
So a Jack-and-Jill-type product, and we’re always trying to do something new. So, think about it this way. Every time I think about not being satisfied when it comes to business, and think about political activists, and forget about the right or left. I’m just talking about anybody who wants change. I don’t care in what realms it is or anybody who wants things to stay the same.
If, in fact, you have a battle-type victory where you got something that you wanted, maybe you stopped some zoning change, zoning variants, or you got something to stay the same that you didn’t think were supposed to change and you were pretty vocal about it. Are you going to stop there? No. It’s just one tiny little notch in your belt. That’s all it is. Just like I hit my goal this year of buying and selling land and I made the amount of money that I was in my budget.
No one ever says, “Well I’m going to… My budget’s good, I’m going to keep it the same.” No, you say, “I can do better. I’ve worked these kinks out. I don’t have to answer my phone anymore, whatever it is, I found a better business partner to do this stuff I don’t want to do.”
So you reset the budget and you do better. So I don’t think that you should ever really sit back and say, pat yourself on the back and say, “This is great. I’m doing great and I’m not going to change the thing. I’m going to do the same thing next year.”

Jill DeWit:
I think some people do that though, by the way.

Steven Jack Butala:
I know. And they’re very a chronically upset people. They get upset. We had one longstanding member. I’ll never forget it and he was very vocal about it for a while. I keep sending this mail out to the same place and I used to buy 32 properties every time I sent out 10,000 mailers. Now I only buy 28 properties, and then the last time I did it I only bought 24 properties.
Well maybe we try to send some mail, a larger mailer out or maybe in a different place in addition to… Have to roll with these changes in. And that comes from not being satisfied.

Jill DeWit:
One of the nice things when I think about what you’re saying is not being satisfied with whatever it is. If you can be your trigger to be motivated to make a change.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah.

Jill DeWit:
Is that what you’re thinking?

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, absolutely. I’m in a perpetual state of dissatisfaction with business.

Jill DeWit:
Though, you don’t want to walk around like that. Let’s just say-

Steven Jack Butala:
[Inaudible 00:07:08]

Jill DeWit:
So I understand and I agree with the concept. What I don’t want is to walk around going, “Oh he’s never satisfied. Don’t even worry about it. He only got mad at you for that.” Well, you should have seen what he did on Tuesday.

Steven Jack Butala:
This is a risky- exactly. This is a risky title to an episode.

Jill DeWit:
Yeah!

Steven Jack Butala:
And it’s a risky discussion. Just hold, hear me out here. Okay. If you’re never satisfied with your wife’s behavior, that’s really, really bad.

Jill DeWit:
Why’d you pick “wife?”

Steven Jack Butala:
If you’re never satisfied with your child’s performance in school, that’s not good.

Jill DeWit:
Thank you.

Steven Jack Butala:
That means you have a problem. If you’re not satisfied with your own performance because you want to improve it, that’s good. That’s healthy. That’s how we grow. If you’re not satisfied with their caloric intake, then you know could do something about it.

Jill DeWit:
Well, because you can only change you, which is true. You can’t change everybody else.

Steven Jack Butala:
Exactly.

Jill DeWit:
So, yeah. If you’re not-

Steven Jack Butala:
And you can’t expect other people to fall in line according to what you think. That’s your problem.

Jill DeWit:
Right. So, if you’re not satisfied in your business, you’ve got to change something about how you’re doing it, and/or learn to accept whatever it is. If you can’t change it, because some stuff you can’t change.

Steven Jack Butala:
Here’s an example. Several people… There was a group of people that were so dissatisfied in this country for the… Because of the fact that women couldn’t vote, that they changed it.

Jill DeWit:
True.

Steven Jack Butala:
And they changed it and women got to vote. And do you think they said, “Yep, we’re done. Good.” No, they all got together and said, “All right, what else?” That’s a great first step or eighth step or whatever ever ended up being for them. Now let’s go change some other stuff too.

Jill DeWit:
I was thinking like, fill-in-the-blank title agent. That’s a common thing that we’re often… Many of us are upset by. So I could either A, scream at them; that’s not going to help anything. Now my fault, now it’s my clothes is going to take that much longer. Or B, get on the same page with them somehow. Figure out how and ask them how they best communicate.
Is it email, is it phone call, Is it text? Is it teams? Is it Skype? How best can I communicate in your way to get this stuff done and then make all the changes. If I had all the documents upfront and you reach out to me once a week via “da da da,” I will get this done on time. That’s all you need to know.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yup.

Jill DeWit:
So find out. Find out. And that’s something…. Isn’t that funny? That’s a change that you initiated an interest.

Steven Jack Butala:
Constant improvement. So I could have called this, here’s the root of constant improvement. Dissatisfaction. But.

Jill DeWit:
That’s confusing.

Steven Jack Butala:
It is.

Jill DeWit:
Yeah.

Steven Jack Butala:
Being not satisfied with your own performance is really healthy, I think. I think ask any athlete, “Oh, after they won the masters, how’d you shoot? Oh, I think there was the best round of golf I ever played.” No, they’re never going to say that.

Jill DeWit:
That’s true. That’s kind of funny.

Steven Jack Butala:
Say on hole two, I thought I lost the whole thing, or I have a lot to work on next week. I’m glad that I won this and I’m going to enjoy this today with my family and everybody I work with. But next week, I’m going to be out there trying to do this better.

Jill DeWit:
I’m sorry. So the topic should have been how an investor is just the same as a professional golfer. I like that. I don’t know, I’m just kidding.

Steven Jack Butala:
I know she’ll tries to make a sunshine version of everything and… I don’t-

Jill DeWit:
Well, and you’re just going to have to not be satisfied about that, are you?

Steven Jack Butala:
The show would be boring if we were happy all the time. Maybe it is boring.

Jill DeWit:
Would it, now? I don’t know. I don’t know. There’s a show, there’s a podcast I used to listen to a long time ago. It was called The Happiness Project, and I listened to one or two episodes. It was bright yellow. I don’t know if it’s… You know what I’m now I’m going to go look it up. I’m curious if it’s still…

Steven Jack Butala:
They didn’t ask to be on that show.

Jill DeWit:
No, they did not. Happy you could join us today. Five days a week. You can find us here on the Land Academy Show.

Steven Jack Butala:
Thank God, because Jill Friday tomorrow. And she’s going to talk about how she loves everything about your land, but the price.

Jill DeWit:
Yup. And I’m going to update you on The Happiness Project.

Steven Jack Butala:
I hear Jill say this all the time. “I love everything about this deal but the price!”

Jill DeWit:
Yup. Happens a lot.

Steven Jack Butala:
You’re not alone in your real estate ambition.

Jill DeWit:
Yeah, I do that a lot. And I’ve given a lot of tips over the years, in our programs and on our member calls, and I’m happy to do it again too, on how to talk, how to help you through that conversation. There’s a couple ways to do it when you’re talking to sellers and getting that across. Like you know what, shucks.

Steven Jack Butala:
Your perpetual dissatisfaction with the price of land.

Jill DeWit:
Yes.

Steven Jack Butala:
Is one of the reasons we’re here.

Jill DeWit:
This is true.

Steven Jack Butala:
It’s positive.

Jill DeWit:
Thank you. Hey, and by the way, I want to give one more little shout out to Career Path. It’s coming soon. I know there’s a lot of you that are in it and excited and prepping for October 12th on Wednesday, our first session. Yay. It is a 10-week… If you want mentoring, this is it.
That’s really what this is. If you want the Land Academy version of mentoring with Jack and I, personally, for 10 weeks straight, like four to five hours a week on the screen with us and asking us anything and learning all the ins and outs of what we’re doing right now today and how we’re doing it… Welcome to a career path.

Steven Jack Butala:
And with other successful Atlantic Academy members.

Jill DeWit:
Yup. And it’s a small group. I will not let more than 20. It’s 15 to 20 that we run and we only do it three times a year. That’s it. Because it’s a lot and it, we put a lot into it.

Steven Jack Butala:
It’s a lot of work for us.

Jill DeWit:
And we’re bringing up new things this time. We have a guy coming to talk about, we have a… tax…

Steven Jack Butala:
Self-directed IRA expert.

Jill DeWit:
Yup. Going to come talk. I have different sessions with my team. My transaction coordinator has a beautiful presentation about what makes a great transaction coordinator and how to hire one. And then our concierge.

Steven Jack Butala:
The guys concierge data, how would they do our mailers, and other people’s mailers all the time.

Jill DeWit:
It’s really, really cool. So if you think this might be for you, go to atlantacademy.com/careertpath. Everything is right. They’re including payment plans. We are Jack and Jill.

Steven Jack Butala:
Information.

Jill DeWit:
And inspiratio.

Steven Jack Butala:
To buy undervalued property.

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