Transcript:

Steven Jack Butala:
Jack 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:
I’m Jill DeWit, broadcasting from the Valley of the Sun.

Steven Jack Butala:
Today, Jill and I talk about assessing your professional life at the end of 2022.

Jill K DeWit:
It sounds a little bit… It’s high level. We’re going to make it. Steven and I come at things differently.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yes, we do.

Jill K DeWit:
That’s what I’m trying to say.

Steven Jack Butala:
I wonder how this topic’s going to go today.

Jill K DeWit:
Well, here’s going what’s going on with me right now. I just had a little bit of a panic because I’m like, “Crap, am I getting assessed here on the air?” I don’t know.

Steven Jack Butala:
Are you serious?

Jill K DeWit:
I don’t know.

Steven Jack Butala:
When do I ever assess you?

Jill K DeWit:
Well, I’m just wondering what questions you’re going to ask and how much you want to know because I did not prepare for this.

Steven Jack Butala:
Jill, are you happy in your professional life?

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah.

Steven Jack Butala:
Okay. That’s it.

Jill K DeWit:
Oh, God. Thanks a lot. I’m like, “Should I have written an executive summary before I sat down?”

Steven Jack Butala:
Are you more or less happy with your professional performance this year, 2022 or 2021?

Jill K DeWit:
This year.

Steven Jack Butala:
Absolutely.

Jill K DeWit:
Keeps getting better.

Steven Jack Butala:
It’s not church. No one’s judging you.

Jill K DeWit:
Oh God, thanks. I wasn’t sure.

Steven Jack Butala:
You’re the only person who can say, “Yeah, I’m doing pretty well. I’m going to do a victory lap, or I got some work to do.”

Jill K DeWit:
Okay. Thank you.

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s it. Nobody else can do that.

Jill K DeWit:
That’s fair. Good, because, again, I have notes but I don’t have executive summary.

Steven Jack Butala:
Jill’s joking. 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:
Hey, can I please add a little note in here?

Steven Jack Butala:
Sure.

Jill K DeWit:
About what’s going on with Land Academy?

Steven Jack Butala:
Yep.

Jill K DeWit:
It’s awesome, and I want to hit this home right now because this week is big with this promotion because I’m not going to do it again. I don’t know if I said it the other day, but I’m closing up Land Academy at the end of the year. That’s what I don’t think I got out. I’m going to hit my cap right now, and we like to keep Land Academy at a real cool small number that we can handle so we can give you the attention and the support that you need and you deserve. That’s why there’s a cap. Having said that, I have room right now for people to join through the end of the year.
I know I’m going to hit it. I know I’m going to hit it on or before December 31, but I’m keeping it open. G to LandAcademy.com, check it out there. You’ll see a coupon code that says half off. Yep. It’s half off the whole education bundle. There’s four programs in that, by the way, that you’re getting half off. It’s awesome. Yes, you look at that and go, “This can’t be right. It’s a little too inexpensive.” You’re right. That’s very true. From what you get, it’s kind of weird, and that’s going to change too. That’s why I want you to know about it. Check it out. Thank you.
Okay, back to the question. Michael wrote, “Hi all. I wanted to introduce myself. I had to take a personal hiatus from Land Academy, but I am back. I’ve done a few mailers over the years, but never pulled the trigger. Looking to make some friends/partners. I have intent to send 4,000 to 5,000 mailers a month for a while and hope to be able to find some funding partners when the mail starts to come back. Question to those members that are funding deals, are you generally okay with non-disclosure states in hot markets? Price point is typically above the six figure list price, even at wholesale. I have a real estate agent friend in the area. Just realized my handle is not descriptive.”

Steven Jack Butala:
I don’t know what that means.

Jill K DeWit:
I don’t know, but I’m like, “Yes, yes, and yes.” I’ll do all that. I’m comfortable. Whatever you find, I’ll do.

Steven Jack Butala:
I’ve been in acquisitions my entire life and my first acquisition experience was when… This is way back in the day when I was a commercial real estate broker, acting as an acquisition specialist for long-term care owners, so nursing home operators and owners that… Some of them are publicly traded on Wall Street. They all had an acquisition criteria. I called them and said, “Hey, what’s your acquisition criteria?” They said, “Well, we buy long-term care facilities.” I said, “Well, how many beds do you want? What’s the patient mix?” All the stuff that’s involved in that industry. They said, “Well, when you find one, let us know.”
That’s my answer here. When you find one, when you find a transaction that you believe in and that you think is a pretty good deal and you present it to the group in the would you do this deal section of Discord, then you get to pick and choose who’s going to fund it, and who you get along with the most and who’s capitalized the best and all of that. I understand and appreciate your question here, but the fact is, go out and find a great deal, bring it back, and then now you’re in the driver’s seat.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah. Don’t worry about that.

Steven Jack Butala:
You can control the deal, and that’s so beautiful about this business model. Send a bunch of mail out. Pick two or three that you really love. Maybe ask us on a Thursday call if we think it’s a good idea and then say, “Hey, I’m ready to get funding.” You will be shocked and amazed at the number of people that reach out to you. It’s a shark tank situation. They’ll fight to do your deal.

Jill K DeWit:
Do you know what I would totally do too, if I were you? I would say, “Jack and Jill reviewed it on the Thursday call, with the date on it, got thumbs up kind of thing.” I would totally put that in the Discord area when you’re presenting these deals.

Steven Jack Butala:
Me too.

Jill K DeWit:
It’s interesting too, one of the things I keep talking about the power of this community is we have a lot of people that have just developed into regional professionals. You might find, depending where you’re working, different people are going to go, “Oh, I know that area like the back of my hand. I’ll do that deal. I know.” They’ll know more than you, which is really awesome.

Steven Jack Butala:
Here’s the message I’m trying to send. Don’t pre-think this too much, just go out and find a good deal.

Jill K DeWit:
That’s good.

Steven Jack Butala:
There’s great deals in southern Florida that are in wetlands that are amazingly large and cheap and only usable for whatever you would use wetlands for. There’s somebody in our group that loves that kind of property. I don’t know who they are, but I know that there’s… Or they know somebody who is. It’s way bigger than everybody thinks. Today’s topic, assessing your personal life or your professional life at the end.

Jill K DeWit:
That’s what I thought. Oh, that’s exactly where I thought this was going to go.

Steven Jack Butala:
Assessing your professional life at the end of 2022. This is the meat of the show.

Jill K DeWit:
Your inside voice became your outside voice. You want to know that today? We can talk about both if you want.

Steven Jack Butala:
Sure.

Jill K DeWit:
Okay.

Steven Jack Butala:
Sure.

Jill K DeWit:
Let me ask you some questions.

Steven Jack Butala:
Sure.

Jill K DeWit:
Are you satisfied with your professional life in 2022?

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah. Extremely.

Jill K DeWit:
Okay. How about your personal life?

Steven Jack Butala:
Yes.

Jill K DeWit:
Okay.

Steven Jack Butala:
Honestly, Jill, I can’t find anything wrong at any… There’s always places to improve in everything. It’s a constant improvement. The day that you roll over and say, “Yep, I’m done improving.” That’s not good.

Jill K DeWit:
Could you imagine? Mic drop. I’m out. No. Do you want any more education? No, I’m good.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah. How about money? No, I’m done.

Jill K DeWit:
No, I’m good.

Steven Jack Butala:
How about being a better person or being a better person for the person you’re in a relationship with?

Jill K DeWit:
No, I don’t feel the need to do that too.

Steven Jack Butala:
I’m good enough for Jill.

Jill K DeWit:
How about getting new underwear today? No, no. I think these are going to be fine. I think I’m going to ride out the rest of my life with exactly what’s in my closet, socks and all.

Steven Jack Butala:
No way. There’s a lot of people like that. I may or may not have been one of those people before I met you.

Jill K DeWit:
Well, I may or may not still buy things and just put them in your closet and cycle through them myself. That’s the good news. You realized that a long time ago and you said, “You know what? If you don’t like it, just go in and change out my closet,” and I do.

Steven Jack Butala:
Don’t think I don’t know you do.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah.

Steven Jack Butala:
I should probably thank you more often, actually.

Jill K DeWit:
That would be nice. Yeah, you don’t even know. There’s shirts that just disappear. They never make it their way back out of the laundry. Cool.

Steven Jack Butala:
No, I’ve been hitting my professional financial goals for many, many, many years now, probably 10 years.

Jill K DeWit:
I think since you and I hooked up. Actually, for me, a little bit before that. Do you know, it was kind of funny? I was working in… We still use the word corporate America, I’ll use the term loosely, but I had a day job and it was so funny, because right when you said… The time we tell the story, I don’t know how many shows ago, we told the story about us really hitting it at one of the auctions years ago, and you turned to me and said, “You got to quit your job.” Right when you did that, I was just at the peak of my earning. I’m like, “Doggone it.” I had just gotten a raise and then they pulled me back in a couple days after and said that wasn’t enough, and they gave me more money.

Steven Jack Butala:
I never knew about this.

Jill K DeWit:
They bumped it up again because they realized, “You know what, Jill? Your retention is off the charts. You’re actually at this scale.” I’m like, “Yeah.” Then, right after that, you said, “You got to quit your job.” I’m like, “Doggone it.”

Steven Jack Butala:
Well, you didn’t have to listen to me.

Jill K DeWit:
Oh no, but it was better. This is better.

Steven Jack Butala:
You should only listen to me about half the time.

Jill K DeWit:
Trust me, this is better. What we were doing was much better, but I was feeling very proud that in that world I had reached… In that world, I had already reached my financial peak, if you will, doing better than I had ever done. Then, to step into our world as a full-time investor, it just keeps getting better.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, it does.

Jill K DeWit:
You know what keeps happening? It’s great because I look around Land Academy and you know who you are, that you’re doing the same thing as me. You’re fine. You’re doing less deals and making more money. Adding the zeros is getting even easier. Some of these unique properties and different zoning and things that we are opening up to and learning more about just making more money and I’m working less. We used to pooh-pooh. One of my funny things too is that you’ve been listening to us for a while. It’s been going on eight years now. We used to really pooh-pooh real estate agents and brokers hard. You know what? It was deserved, especially back then. We didn’t have anybody. They weren’t working for us. Now, it’s really become a really good healthy community of land focused brokers who I love and who do a really phenomenal job of making it so I do no work on the sell side. None at all. It’s awesome.

Steven Jack Butala:
I don’t know what else to say about goal setting. You now what really stuck with me on the last call that we did on Thursday? We have members, the Lathis couple, Carl and Sam. We went around the room and said, “How often does everybody plan?” Jill and I said, “Well, we have a real…” I plan all the time, plan money and review it and see how much money we’re making or not making and make adjustments as needed pretty often, but together I bet Jill and I sit down maybe four times a year, maybe three. We try to do it every quarter. It’s always in the calendar, but whether or not we do it… What ends up happening is we don’t need to review anything. Everything’s great. She says, “Great, one last meeting for me today.”

Jill K DeWit:
Totally.

Steven Jack Butala:
Which is what really happens.

Jill K DeWit:
That’s totally true.

Steven Jack Butala:
We got to Carl and Sam who are successful with other companies that they have, but they’re now in Land Academy buying and selling land successfully, and they said, “But that’s all we do is plan.”

Jill K DeWit:
Every day. I thought that was really cool and interesting.

Steven Jack Butala:
That really struck me because I really think that’s part of… There’s some people. They’re so ultra successful in Land Academy and there are some people are as successful as they want to be, but Carl and Sam, they want to take this to the moon. That’s what this takes. It takes planning and teamwork and a constant adjustment until you get there.

Jill K DeWit:
Awesome.

Steven Jack Butala:
I look back, that’s what we used to do.

Jill K DeWit:
We did. That’s so true, especially until you don’t need to, but that’s the way to make it work, if you really sit down and micromanage. That came up on our call last week. I can’t remember who asked it, but asked about how often do you guys sit down with your equity planner? That’s what launched this whole thing. If you have that equity planner open and running on your desk, you know exactly what goals you need to hit. You take your year goals and you have monthly goals and you have weekly goals, and then you have daily goals. I’m sure that’s what Carl and Sam do. If you micromanage it like that, you can’t fail. You know it.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah.

Jill K DeWit:
It’s amazing. What’s a great thing is, too, if you see it going sideways, that’s what I think people do sometimes. They think they’re on the right track and then they look at the month and go, “Oh, I didn’t hit my numbers.” If you micromanage it, you won’t have any surprises like that.

Steven Jack Butala:
This is, as a business model, a very addressable situation. Every company, I don’t care who you are, has ups and downs, and so when we have downs with this business model, the answer is to send out more mail or to go back through your records on the property and the owners that you’ve talked to in the past and say, “Hey, I’m just calling back. I know that you guys wanted 50,000 and I was at 22,000. My offer’s still good at 22,000 if you’d like.” It takes that.

Jill K DeWit:
Sometimes, yeah.

Steven Jack Butala:
It’s that type of involvement and it’s very solvable versus, let’s say, a convenience store owner who’s got a convenience store, maybe two.

Jill K DeWit:
That’s true.

Steven Jack Butala:
They have a really bad month, and it’s like, “What do I do to get more people into my store?” Reduce prices? That’s not usually the only-

Jill K DeWit:
Put one of those blowy guys on the corner.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, maybe that’s the answer.

Jill K DeWit:
A sign.

Steven Jack Butala:
My point is, for many, many, many business models, you don’t have the control that you have with this business model to change it.

Jill K DeWit:
It’s true. Isn’t that great? Boy, that’s a good thing to end on. 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 Jack Thursday and I’m going to talk about how money is a terrible manager. You are not alone in your real estate ambition. If you let money manage you, it will eat you alive.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah.

Steven Jack Butala:
You need to manage it.

Jill K DeWit:
Exactly. That’s good.

Steven Jack Butala:
You need to whip it into shape constantly or it will control you.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah. That’s good. Hey, thanks for tuning in by the way. Just so you know, reminder that we would love to connect with you on Clubhouse. Go online, check out the Clubhouse app. It’s a live radio thing right in your phone. Yu can get Jack and I on the first and third Thursday of every month at 12 o’clock Pacific time in the Land Investing Club. Go on Clubhouse, find us, follow us, follow the Land Investing Club, and you’ll get notified when we go live. We could chat with you couple times a month outside of all this. It’s really, really cool, too.

Steven Jack Butala:
We’re Jack and Jill.

Jill K DeWit:
We’re Jack and Jill.

Steven Jack Butala:
Information…

Jill K DeWit:
And inspiration…

Steven Jack Butala:
To buy undervalued property.