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:
And I’m Jill Dewitt, broadcasting from the Valley of the Sun.

Steven Jack Butala:
Today Jill and I talk about getting rich in 2023.

Jill K DeWit:
Yay.

Steven Jack Butala:
Who doesn’t want to talk about getting rich?

Jill K DeWit:
I’m just saying happy 2023. I’m excited. Aren’t you excited?

Steven Jack Butala:
I’m excited about rich.

Jill K DeWit:
I love starting a new year. It’s great. I’m really excited. Oh, I know you have a lot… This is all on your side of the sheet-

Steven Jack Butala:
Not really? Do you have a lack of enjoyment and fulfillment for getting rich?
Are you at a loss for words about making money?

Jill K DeWit:
You know what? I’m over it. It’s overrated. Just kidding. Who flipping cares?

Steven Jack Butala:
I actually had somebody to say that to me one time, really long time ago. I don’t know, this was like in high school when we were all sitting around talking with somebody’s parents and they said, “Yeah, making a lot of money has really been a letdown in my life. There’s a lot of other things-“

Jill K DeWit:
“It’s only money. We’ll make more.” Just kidding.

Steven Jack Butala:
It’s silly.

Jill K DeWit:
I know it’s true.

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:
Kim wrote, “I’m looking for advice on offer percentages for higher value properties. So I offered $85,000 for a 20 acre property. The seller wants $203,000 and comps are between $340,000 and $400,000 for this size / area in the last few months. I typically stick to 40% of comps as my absolute highest offer price to keep me in check when I call sellers back. For higher priced properties, am I right in remembering that a percent of comps may increase? For example, do I shift my highest percent up to 45 or 50% or more?”
I think they go down.

Steven Jack Butala:
Well yea-

Jill K DeWit:
For a bigger size.

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s a good question.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah.

Steven Jack Butala:
This is so… It’s personal.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah.

Steven Jack Butala:
In general, we’re all used to doubling our money on just about every deal. In most cases, the deals that we do. I’m not bragging, I’m just saying how it is. Largely because of Jill’s real specific acquisition criteria. It’s more than that. So for larger properties, some people go for a dollar amount, like on houses. When we buy houses, we have to make $100,000. We might spend 300 to sell it for 400. And again, that’s certainly not doubling our money at all, but it’s a different deal. For land, we like to double, sometimes triple the money.

Jill K DeWit:
Mm-hmm.

Steven Jack Butala:
It’s up to you.

Jill K DeWit:
I don’t know. You know what my whole thing is, Kim? I need wiggle room in case anything goes sideways.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah.

Jill K DeWit:
So the numbers that… Can I see the numbers again? We’re at 200 to sell for 340 to 400. Okay. That’s not nuts. That’s really-

Steven Jack Butala:
I love your 85 though.

Jill K DeWit:
No I know. 85 was awesome then you can’t go wrong.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah.

Jill K DeWit:
So can you meet them in the middle? That’s a very normal thing where you make an offer, they counter, we meet in the middle, whatever it is kind of thing. So that would be my first goal. But otherwise, I mean, how good do you feel About 340 to 400? If you screw it all up and you sold for 300 and you paid 203, are you okay with that? I’m okay with that.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah-

Jill K DeWit:
As long as it goes fast and I can’t lose and I really want it to go fast because I’m tying up $200,000. Because if I’m tying $200,000 for a year, that’s a no bueno for me.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, me too.

Jill K DeWit:
Because I could do a lot with that $200,000 in a year. But if I’m tying up $200,000 for 60 days, I’m okay with that.

Steven Jack Butala:
You’re also in the range where getting funding is really a viable option because you are going to split 100 grand. So now everybody’s making $50,000. So maybe-

Jill K DeWit:
Something like that.

Steven Jack Butala:
… use another member’s money to do this kind of deal just to see how it goes might make sense.

Jill K DeWit:
I like these. This is a really good question.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah. Today’s topic, getting rich in 2023. This is the meat of the show. What’s different about 2023 than 2022?

Jill K DeWit:
I’d like to know that too.

Steven Jack Butala:
Nothing.

Jill K DeWit:
Oh.

Steven Jack Butala:
It’s just January 2nd.

Jill K DeWit:
Okay.

Steven Jack Butala:
And every single year that goes by, technology gets better. The data quality and the deliverability and how it gets used is better.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah.

Steven Jack Butala:
We have more tools at our literal fingertips to make great decisions about real estate acquisitions. Land and houses.

Jill K DeWit:
Yup.

Steven Jack Butala:
What I really want to talk about here is, getting rich is why we’re here. We talk about a lot of stuff in the Land Academy environment on our Thursday call and career paths, certainly on the podcast and advanced call and on and on. There’s a lot of talking, but what probably doesn’t get talked about enough is, “Hey, why are we here? Are we here to do real estate deals?” Yeah, but to what end? To get rich. So what is rich? What is rich to you, Jill?

Jill K DeWit:
You what’s funny? Our numbers keep changing. So what’s funny is my numbers are not as high as your numbers. Isn’t that interesting? You have a higher goal as I think. So every time you sit me down and you go, “Here’s what we’re doing for… This is what we’re aiming for this year.” I’m like, “If we do half that, I’m happy.” And then I’m always walking around happy because I’m like hitting half that and it is easy kind of thing. So you know what, rich to me now is more about not working that hard.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, me too.

Jill K DeWit:
That’s really where I’m at. So-

Steven Jack Butala:
Here we are working.

Jill K DeWit:
I know, but when I take a step back and I look at all the time that I put in all of our companies, the one company that demands the least of me is the land company. So I love it. It’s the best thing ever. So getting rich to me is having the time to devote to the other things that I want to do. Travel and fun and people and adventures. That’s what I really want to do. And then doing deals on the side and just fit them in whenever I want to. That’s great. That’s rich to me and I’m happy and I know there’s a number and I know you’ll cover that. I know you make sure that we are there. So it’s no big deal.

Steven Jack Butala:
Getting rich for me is all numbers. So to the end of, I don’t have to work.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah-

Steven Jack Butala:
And I’ve had that, “I don’t want to work for a living” goal my entire life and I don’t mean to sit around and do nothing at all. That’s not what I mean. I mean not have to go to work if I don’t want to.

Jill K DeWit:
Right.

Steven Jack Butala:
Unless it’s for what we do.

Jill K DeWit:
Right.

Steven Jack Butala:
There’s three or four basic stages of wealth that I think really made sense to me. Number one, you at some point have to make or generate the amount and enough money to pay your bills, to pay your rent, food, whatever else ends up… Whatever you have. So that’s stage one. And I remember exactly when I got a job and that allowed me to do that. So… That’s amazing. That’s a euphoric… I was walking on the clouds for that week. I remember when I got the job-

Jill K DeWit:
You could breathe and you could afford everything you needed. You could afford to pay all your whatever and breathe-

Steven Jack Butala:
Nothing special. Okay, I’m just making more than I’m spending or at least just covering it.

Jill K DeWit:
Right.

Steven Jack Butala:
Stage two on that is making enough so that you’re actually, I call it “getting ahead”. You’re ahead of the bills. You’re probably saving, even if it’s $200 or $300 a month, I don’t care. But if you’re making and you’re putting money away like that it’s just, that’s stage two. And you’re obviously traveling down this path hopefully to wealth. Stage three is you don’t have any debt and you don’t have any rent. So-

Jill K DeWit:
Right.

Steven Jack Butala:
You buy a house or wherever you choose to live. It doesn’t have to be anything special, but you now have removed the largest expense of your life.

Jill K DeWit:
We just had a member in Land Academy in Discord posts that they’ve just paid off their mortgage.

Steven Jack Butala:
Mm-hmm.

Jill K DeWit:
In the last 30, 60 days.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah-

Jill K DeWit:
How great is that?

Steven Jack Butala:
It took three and a half years to do it, which I thought was just amazing.

Jill K DeWit:
That was really good.

Steven Jack Butala:
And so now you don’t have any rent, you don’t have any mortgage that accounts for 25 to 30% of your after tax income usually, which is a ton. And now you can seriously work on step four, which is where all of us in Land Academy strive to be, which is creating some serious wealth.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah.

Steven Jack Butala:
In the process, Jill’s absolutely right. Especially when you get older. In the process, you’re not working as hard. In fact, you’re working less. So we didn’t create Land Academy or we didn’t start to buy and sell land and continue to do it for decades now because the numbers don’t work on it.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah.

Steven Jack Butala:
We did. We it because that business model achieves all those things.

Jill K DeWit:
Totally.

Steven Jack Butala:
And you can work as hard as you want or as little as you want. And you’re probably going to end up doing, in Jill’s case, 10 or 15 deals a year. And so 30, 40, 50, 80,000, $100,000 net margin on each deal. That’s millions a year

Jill K DeWit:
I do more than that, but because I have a good team, it doesn’t feel like it. You probably only hear about them-

Steven Jack Butala:
I’ve been asked to be realistic.

Jill K DeWit:
I do more than that.

Steven Jack Butala:
I know you do. I know you do. For sure. So we were talking in career path about the deals that we’ve all done this year and those kinds of numbers were being thrown out.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah.

Steven Jack Butala:
I did 10 deals this year. We made netted 80,000 on each deal. So it’s a comfortable 800,000. Not a lot of work. Those kinds of numbers are being thrown out and I think that is really, that’s wealthy.

Jill K DeWit:
You know what’s so nice about it? That’s what we were talking about the other day is, within our group we have all levels. How hard do you want to work? How much do you want to work? What’s your comfort level on the dollar amount and fill in the blank. We have some people that are just coasting that are not working that hard. Like you said, averaging a deal a month, making close to $100,000 a month and that’s it. And they’re really happy. They know they could do double that and make double the money. They’re like, “Meh, I don’t know if I want to.” And then we have other people that are like, “No, I’m going for it man. Out of my way.” And maybe they do 10 deals a month and they make 30,000 a deal.

Steven Jack Butala:
Sure.

Jill K DeWit:
Because that’s their comfort level. Nothing wrong with that. That’s great too because we only think about, it’s a couple a week. Okay. Really, really good. We have all of that. So you coming into Land Academy, I know this is January 2023. We had a lot of people that just joined us and we’re really happy you’re here. So whatever level you’re comfortable at or whatever level you want to get to, that’s why you’re here. And that’s Land Academy and that’s a career path and that’s all the other things we got coming up for you to help you push this up and get rich in 2023.

Steven Jack Butala:
January’s a great time to really sit down and plan.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah.

Steven Jack Butala:
And see what your average month looks like from a time where you’re spending your time. How much money are you spending on resources? But I can tell you for sure what will not happen in the Land Academy environment. Nothing will happen if you don’t do two things. Number one, have a plan and be ultra organized. And number two, make sure that sending out a lot of mail correctly is involved in that plan and answering the phone correctly and all of that. And so whenever we start something like this, or Jill and I are still after all these years, improving our land acquisition and sales operation-

Jill K DeWit:
Mm-hmm. Always was tweaking it.

Steven Jack Butala:
…making sure that the people that are involved directly, like Jill’s transaction coordinator, Jan, making sure she’s happy she has all the research that she needs from us and that it’s all continually moving forward and then the machine’s in place.

Jill K DeWit:
Yep. I like what you just said about planning. Have your equity planner open and on your desk and filled out and check it often. That way you won’t go sideways. You know what my team just told me, all in on this, my team was just telling me the other day about someone, they’re like, “Gosh, this poor person, he’s been with us for how long? And he hasn’t sent any mail out.” I’m like, “What’s up with that? You got to send the mail out. You got to do that.” And you know what, who cares if you’ve been with us for one year or three years and you haven’t done it yet? Make this the time. This is it.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, that’s right.

Jill K DeWit:
And we’re right here. Like he says, “You’re not alone in this.”

Steven Jack Butala:
Keith says.

Jill K DeWit:
And you’re not alone in this. And we’ll make sure you don’t fall that far. We’ll help you. Happy you could join us today. Five days a week, you can find us here on the Land Academy Show.

Steven Jack Butala:
So around the episode in the Land Academy show is called, “How Small Is Too Small With Land Deals?” You’re not alone in your real estate ambition. Talking about getting rich is easy.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah, it’s fun. What’s not to love?

Steven Jack Butala:
Exactly.

Jill K DeWit:
Exactly. Hey, by the way, if you think that this land investing gig might be for you, check it out. Go to landacademy.com. Unfortunately this is January and I had to close up a membership because we hit our cap and I really want to give this community, we want to give them a lot of attention to get them where they need to be. So sit tight. Sometime in February, I will probably reopen. You’ll be posted. I think there’s a wait list on there. So go to landacademy.com, check out all you can. Check out the wait list, you can get on that. And if you have any other questions just send a note to my team via support@landacademy.com.
We are Jack and Jill.

Steven Jack Butala:
We are Jack and Jill.
Information-

Jill K DeWit:
And inspiration.

Steven Jack Butala:
To buy undervalued property.