Transcript:

Steven Jack Butala:

Steve and Jill, here.

Jill K DeWit:

Hi.

Steven Jack Butala:

Oh, sorry. Jack and Jill here.

Jill K DeWit:

Thank you.

Steven Jack Butala:

Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I’m Steven Jack Butala.

Jill K DeWit:

Thank you very much. Get to know your name. And I’m Jill DeWit, and we are broadcasting from the awesome Lone Star State. We’re in Texas now. If you’ve been following us, you’re bored.

Steven Jack Butala:

Today Jill and I talk about land investing from the road.

Jill K DeWit:

Yeah.

Steven Jack Butala:

This is week number six that we’ve been doing this on Monday.

Jill K DeWit:

Yep.

Steven Jack Butala:

This episode is called The Mechanics of Doing Business Remotely. For example, I wonder if my internet connection’s going to work today.

Jill K DeWit:

Yeah, I wonder if I’m going to even care about working today.

Steven Jack Butala:

Yep.

Jill K DeWit:

Because there’s stuff that’s just more fun.

Steven Jack Butala:

Full blown, different mindset requires-

Jill K DeWit:

Yep.

Steven Jack Butala:

Different scheduling.

Jill K DeWit:

Okay. Wait, wait. Where were we last week when we were recorded? Were we in Arkansas?

Steven Jack Butala:

Yeah.

Jill K DeWit:

Okay.

Steven Jack Butala:

Yeah.

Jill K DeWit:

When we’re recorded, where were we in Arkansas?

Steven Jack Butala:

I think so.

Jill K DeWit:

I don’t know.

Steven Jack Butala:

That’s another thing about [inaudible 00:01:05]. You just never know which state you’re in, which time zone you’re in.

Jill K DeWit:

Yeah.

Steven Jack Butala:

And…

Jill K DeWit:

I have to go back and look. I believe we were in Arkansas. We could have been in Nashville. I am not sure the last time I recorded, but either way. Last weekend we went from Arkansas, through Oklahoma, here to Texas where we have been for the last four days and having a ball. And I need to knock on something. Everywhere we go the weather’s been great. There’s no wood around here.

Steven Jack Butala:

Well, it wasn’t great when it started, but remember that transformer blew up in the middle of the night in front of us?

Jill K DeWit:

Yeah, but we were safe.

Steven Jack Butala:

In Madison, Wisconsin. Sure.

Jill K DeWit:

We were safe.

Steven Jack Butala:

Just wasn’t the best of weather.

Jill K DeWit:

Well, okay. For most part it’s been good. We haven’t had any snow. How’s that?

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:

Greg wrote, Okay, “I have a very newbie question. I had a couple of parcels that weren’t selling, so I put them back on the MLS and heck, I just got an offer on one of them. So now I have an offer from a realtor slash client, which I will gladly accept. But what is the process for this? Normally I would send signed PAs to my attorney to facilitate, but is this the agent’s job now? Someone please lay out the roles and responsibilities for this type of transaction, so I don’t have to call the agent and ask them.”

Steven Jack Butala:

I can do it if you want.

Jill K DeWit:

Go for it. You want to go first?

Steven Jack Butala:

You got a couple of properties who, depending on how you bought them, either bought them by doing deeds yourself, which is a very old school way. Or you bought them through a real estate agent. I’m guessing you didn’t because this process, Greg, is not familiar to you. So you probably bought them without title insurance. You just got them. You did what Jill talks about in chapter, I think six or seven in Land Academy 3.0. You went through that and you own the properties and now you got an offer on the MLS from a realtor or a realtor driven offer where the realtor’s representing a client. I would absolutely contact the realtor and say, “Yes, send me the documents that you need me to sign.” And let the realtor do their job. Nine times out of 10, they’re not going to do their job right. So what I would actually do is find somebody in your life or on discord that can help you review these contracts and make sure that they do it correctly.

Jill K DeWit:

I’m sorry, but I have to disagree. I got a totally different spin on this.

Steven Jack Butala:

Go ahead.

Jill K DeWit:

And I would handle it differently. And this is why you have two of us. So this is not… By the way, don’t get to run to mom, and use mom answer. Run to dad, use dad’s answer. But anyway, I read this as he has an attorney that probably closed the deal for him on the buy side. So he’s like, “normally I would just send the PA to my attorney and let them handle it. But now I got a realtor involved. I don’t know what to do.” I would just still do this, I would do status quo. I would say, “Hey, I normally just do a one, two page purchase agreement. If you want to use your longer one, that’s fine. But I got a great attorney who did the deal one on the buy side. So I want to want to use them on the sell side because it’s faster and cheaper,” and all that good stuff. And that’s what I would do. That would be my first choice.

Steven Jack Butala:

Yeah, Jill’s answer is better.

Jill K DeWit:

And if they dig in, they have someone they want to use, I’m cool with that too. But I would just go with the first one.

Steven Jack Butala:

Well, to one up that, I actually I agree. I like Jill’s answer better. I would just contact your attorney and say, “We’re going to sell one of these properties.”

Jill K DeWit:

Here’s a realtor involved.

Steven Jack Butala:

They have a realtor.

Jill K DeWit:

Here’s their name-

Steven Jack Butala:

Yep.

Jill K DeWit:

And here’s the price.

Steven Jack Butala:

Please close the deal.

Jill K DeWit:

Yeah. There you go.

Steven Jack Butala:

That’s the way to go.

Jill K DeWit:

Thank you.

Steven Jack Butala:

Today’s topic, Land Investing from the Road, Week Six. The Mechanics of Doing Business Remotely, this is the [inaudible 00:04:49] of the show.

Jill K DeWit:

I have a couple points to make here, about things I have learned over the past month and a half about doing deals from the road. Number one, it’s not as hard as you think it is.

Steven Jack Butala:

Oh, that’s good, Jill. Because it really isn’t.

Jill K DeWit:

It’s not. The hardest part… And even internet service, come on, big whoop. I can use stuff on my cellphone if I have to drive to McDonald’s for the day or something like that, I can do that. It’s really not that hard. I don’t need to have, what’s our big fancy thing that we have?

Steven Jack Butala:

Starlink.

Jill K DeWit:

I don’t need Starlink. And I could probably do it with a tablet. I could honestly do land deals with a tablet and my cell phone and a McDonald’s parking lot, if I had to.

Steven Jack Butala:

All true.

Jill K DeWit:

You know what the hardest part is? Is sitting down and getting yourself organized and getting stuff done.

Steven Jack Butala:

Because there’s too much fun stuff to do.

Jill K DeWit:

That’s it. You do need to… If you don’t have an assistant planted somewhere, that is what managing your deals through the process, that’s the hardest part because you’re probably not traveling around taking pictures of your own property to upload them and post them at that moment. That’s usually not what you’re doing, that’s what you hire other people to do. But you do need someone managing and making sure it’s getting done. Even managing an agent or a broker and making sure it’s posted and the deal’s going through.

Signing papers from when you get offers in, hey, welcome to DocuSign. We don’t have to do anything. This whole six weeks, it’s only a handful of times because it’s on the sell side, right. I’ll tell you this is a truth time thing in a second here too. It’s only less than five times have I had to be available for a mobile notary to come to me in my RV.

Steven Jack Butala:

Yeah;.

Jill K DeWit:

No big deal. And I didn’t have to write a check. I didn’t have to shell out any money because my assistant arranged it all and paid them all over a credit card, over the phone, pay, whatever they did. I don’t even know. My assistant just said, “Hey, I need you for three documents. Give me some days and some times and I’ll get someone to come to you.” Great. They print out all the documents and do all that. So that’s even easy. The truth time moment that I’m going to share right now is, and then I’ll hand this back to you. The majority of what we’re doing right now today, in today’s environment with everybody worried about interest rates, and money, and what’s going to happen at the end of this month, the end of this year, going into next year, real estate. I’m buying a lot more-

Steven Jack Butala:

Yeah.

Jill K DeWit:

Right now, that I’m more focused on the buy side than I am on the sell side. And for buying properties, I’m not notarizing anything. So that’s even easier to do from the road. And I can wire money from my phone like I did today, if I need to. What’s your thoughts?

Steven Jack Butala:

So this is a mindset. Working on the road is a mindset. It’s really easy to go on Google maps. Man, when you have a full-time job or when you’re buying and selling land full-time and look at Google Maps and say, “Wow, wouldn’t it be cool to be in the Ozarks right now? I’m stuck in Los Angeles. It’d be cool to have…” So there’s a big step, bigger than I thought from that thought, which I obsessed, past tense on, for actually, quite honestly a few years. That adventurous spirit kind of wanderlust kind of thing to actually doing it.

And when you do it and get out there and you are pretty far out from where you live or stuff that’s familiar to you, it takes a change in mindset. And you just don’t know what’s going to happen next, especially if you’re with somebody like Jill. This is no adjustment for Jill. Jill loves to be in a situation where she doesn’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow. She does not necessarily care where we stay.

Jill K DeWit:

True.

Steven Jack Butala:

She certainly doesn’t care about where the electricity comes from, whether or not we have an internet connection or a water and sewer connection, which is kind of my job. Does that cause any real stress? No, I’ll tell you that the real issue is Land Academy and recording these shows, like right now we’re in a hotel because the last time we did this, it didn’t work as well as it should have from Starlink.

Jill K DeWit:

Yeah.

Steven Jack Butala:

You test Starlink the night before you’re ready to record and go on… Today’s Thursday, where we’re recording all this and we do our Thursday call and there’s a lot of computer resources that this equipment needs.

Jill K DeWit:

Bandwidth.

Steven Jack Butala:

Yeah. And so Starlink is not incredibly consistent. I’m sure it will be at some point. To do your land business, if we were just buying and selling land, a cellphone connection.

Jill K DeWit:

It’s great.

Steven Jack Butala:

And I can’t imagine, I can’t think of, and you know more than me, if you were in a situation where for one, maybe two days or just didn’t have a cell connection at all, which is great, by the way.

Jill K DeWit:

The wheels aren’t going to fall off the bus.

Steven Jack Butala:

Yeah, that’s what I mean. The seller, or the buyer, or their agent or whoever-

Jill K DeWit:

They’ll figure it out.

Steven Jack Butala:

This is land. It’s not like somebody’s-

Jill K DeWit:

[inaudible 00:10:17].

Steven Jack Butala:

It’s not like somebody needs to move in in a house-

Jill K DeWit:

Right.

Steven Jack Butala:

On Sunday because they have to go to work on Monday.

Jill K DeWit:

Good point. Yeah, very, very good point.

Steven Jack Butala:

But my whole point actually in writing this title was, you need to change your mindset, because I’ve been preaching in Land Academy since we started it. You need a schedule, you need to be on outlook. You have to have your meetings all scheduled out and on and on and on. I think that in the beginning of whatever you’re doing is imperative, but at this point in our career, I don’t know what… We work because of Land Academy. We work-

Jill K DeWit:

He’s coming to the dark side.

Steven Jack Butala:

Well, I just think at our age and at this point in our career, I care a lot less about maximum efficiency and care more about having fun. So Wednesday is our Career Path day right now, we work all day that day. And Thursday is Thursday.

Jill K DeWit:

Right.

Steven Jack Butala:

We record these shows and do our, what?

Jill K DeWit:

All our member stuff, and clubhouse.

Steven Jack Butala:

So we’re in an environment with a consistent internet connection for those two days. And then we can just go horse around anywhere we want, in any situation that we want to for the other many days of the week.

Jill K DeWit:

Exactly.

Steven Jack Butala:

I’m okay with that.

Jill K DeWit:

Totally.

Steven Jack Butala:

And if it’s not-

Jill K DeWit:

Try it.

Steven Jack Butala:

But maybe for you, I guess my point is maybe for you, when we’re working at home seven days a week, I’ll work from 9:00 in the morning to about 11:00, maybe two, maybe three hours. And honestly, is all of that work? No, a lot of it’s just research and horsing around.

Jill K DeWit:

And movies.

Steven Jack Butala:

Yep.

Jill K DeWit:

I was going to say too, the other thing, there’s a couple ways to do this. Like we just said, they do it the way we’re doing it or… Because we’re going on, when we’re done, it’ll be two months that we’re totally on the road. Some people, if you don’t have that time right now, there’s a lot of you I know that are here in Land Academy, they’re still hanging onto your day job, which I’m glad you are until it’s really time to cut that cord and you have enough money in the bank that you’re like, “I have six fallbacks, I’m fine.”

Steven Jack Butala:

Yeah.

Jill K DeWit:

I have enough money to last me three years, we’re good. So if you’re in that situation and you only have a week or two [inaudible 00:12:33], do it. So your other scenario is you could kind of really not shut down your business but really, really scale down your business and then catch up when you get back. That’s not nuts too. We just talked about that in Career Path the other day.

We have a really awesome, been with us for years member, who will take a week off and not really… There’s probably a couple little things that he’ll do in there, but for the most part, nah. He’s like, “I’ll just catch up on the calls.” He’s like, “I have learned that someone live is answering the calls, AKA Pat Live.” If I get to him Tuesday or if I get to him a week from Tuesday, I don’t think I’m losing that much traction.

Steven Jack Butala:

He’s got a lot of experience too.

Jill K DeWit:

Exactly. So that’s the other way to do it. Would I do that for two months? No. See, I can’t do that. And for me, I don’t mind. And this is, so you have a couple ways to do it. You could put it on hold and really focus on the family, or you could focus on the family and mix this in, which is what I do, which I love. He cracks up at me. I’ll go, “Hey, go and get a seat. I’m just going to take this quick call and I’ll be there in 10 minutes.”

Steven Jack Butala:

Right.

Jill K DeWit:

No problem. So it works.

Steven Jack Butala:

Yeah.

Jill K DeWit:

That’s the best part.

Steven Jack Butala:

It’s amazing how much being on the road, for me personally, and I’m pretty sure Jill too. It opens your mind up to new things like, new ideas about buying and selling land, new ideas about how to live your life. It’s shocking to me the number of families that I see in pretty sizable RVs, who are homeschooling. You can see them sitting in the picnic table being homeschooled.

Jill K DeWit:

It’s true.

Steven Jack Butala:

So whether you agree with that or not, it doesn’t matter. It’s just, it’s like-

Jill K DeWit:

You have options.

Steven Jack Butala:

It’s just new ideas or new… What I’m seeing, because we’re in different parts of the country on this trip. I’m seeing how land is getting used in Michigan. It’s very different. Maybe it’s the regulations that are a little bit looser. Maybe it’s just creative people, I don’t know. But we’re going to come back from this trip, I am with a big, yellow pad of notes and make some changes about where we buy land, how we buy it, how it gets used, how we market it, and who we sell it to.

Jill K DeWit:

Yeah.

Steven Jack Butala:

And so think about the value of that.

Jill K DeWit:

Yeah.

Steven Jack Butala:

That’s really what this trip has been about. We’re not talking in past tense yet because we’re about to wrap this up. We’re going to go back to Arizona, I think soon here.

Jill K DeWit:

Couple.

Steven Jack Butala:

But not for long.

Jill K DeWit:

And I don’t know anywhere between seven and 14 days.

Steven Jack Butala:

Right.

Jill K DeWit:

And all we’re going to do is go back and plan the next trip.

Steven Jack Butala:

And the truth is, and I’m going to wrap my part of this up on this. Jill and I have determined and shook hands on our next business.

Jill K DeWit:

Yeah.

Steven Jack Butala:

And we’re both convinced it’s going to be a smash hit based on this trip.

Jill K DeWit:

Oh, yeah.

Steven Jack Butala:

Based on the stuff that we saw on this trip.

Jill K DeWit:

Yep.

Steven Jack Butala:

So the more you can get out. I always say, “Wow, don’t leave your computer. If you leave your computer, you’re losing money.” That’s probably. Well, it is-

Jill K DeWit:

Partially true.

Steven Jack Butala:

True, for sure.

Jill K DeWit:

Depends on what you’re doing.

Steven Jack Butala:

Until you’re like, yep, I got that licked. I got this buying and selling land thing licked. I’m ready for kind of a new fresh area to send mail. Maybe you go out there and check it out.

Jill K DeWit:

Excellent. Happy you could join us today. Five days a week, you can find us here on the Land Academy Show.

Steven Jack Butala:

Tomorrow’s episode on the Land Academy Show is called What is the Real Time Commitment You Really Need to Run Your Land Business. You are not alone in your real estate ambition. Plus it’s a freaking blast.

Jill K DeWit:

Oh, yeah.

Steven Jack Butala:

That’s the whole thing of it.

Jill K DeWit:

Isn’t it interesting? Here’s what else we’ve learned. RVing is not an inexpensive hobby.

Steven Jack Butala:

Yeah. Well, the way Jill does it. Jill doesn’t do anything the inexpensive way.

Jill K DeWit:

That is so not true. That is not true. And you need to know. I’m telling you right now, he is making that up. We are saving money on the road. I’m not kidding.

Steven Jack Butala:

We really are.

Jill K DeWit:

And nobody’s buying anything. And if anybody wanted a new rig, it was you.

Steven Jack Butala:

Yeah. We got a new rig.

Jill K DeWit:

So you’ll see.

Steven Jack Butala:

And a new Jeep to pull behind it.

Jill K DeWit:

Yeah.

Steven Jack Butala:

Not that none of it’s new, new. It’s just new to us.

Jill K DeWit:

Exactly. But don’t say “Don’t put that on me.” But I’m just saying, hold on to your hat if you think, oh, we’re going to take cheap vacations. Let’s buy an RV. Not so much.

Steven Jack Butala:

We tested it.

Jill K DeWit:

Not so fast.

Steven Jack Butala:

We earned our… We earned our no longer newbie RVers.

Jill K DeWit:

Yep.

Steven Jack Butala:

We earned it.

Jill K DeWit:

We got the badge.

Steven Jack Butala:

We’re intermediate now.

Jill K DeWit:

We have the badge, the boots, and the scars to prove it. I’ll leave it at that. Hey, but-

Steven Jack Butala:

At the used dealers, the RV said, “Do you guys want to consign this or do you want just trade it in?” If you trade it in, it’s going to be less money.

Jill K DeWit:

Right.

Steven Jack Butala:

If you consign it, it’d probably take a little longer, but chip more money. And both of us in unison said, “Trade it in.”

Jill K DeWit:

Have it. It’s yours.

Steven Jack Butala:

Take it away. Please take it away.

Jill K DeWit:

Yeah. It’s been good. Hey, if you think by the way, as you’re listening to all of this, that land investing just might be a good fit for you, get our free ebook via the landacademy.com website and join our free online community pat landinvestors.com. You can also reach us directly by sending any questions to support@landacademy.com. We’re Jack and Jill-

Steven Jack Butala:

We’re Jack and Jill.

Jill K DeWit:

Information…

Steven Jack Butala:

And inspiration…

Jill K DeWit:

[inaudible 00:18:01] by undervalued property.