Transcript: 

Steven Jack Butala:
I’m Stephen Jack Butala.

Jill K DeWit:
I’m Jill DeWit, and this is the Land Academy Show.

Steven Jack Butala:
This is episode number 1,935. Today, we are taking an in-depth look at a couple of topics called What Top Land Investors Are Doing Differently for 2023 and How to Troll for New Land Acquisition Markets Like A Pro. It all starts with trolling.

Jill K DeWit:
Well, before that, I would like to point out a couple things. Number one, this is our new format. I want to let everybody know this is it. Glad you’re here. Get your coffee. Get your tea. Get your Coke. Settle in. This is going to go probably, I don’t know, anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour or so. We’ll see where this takes us.

Jill K DeWit:
So our new format is instead of the weekly short shows, where a lot of you have said, “Oh, wait, I really wanted to hear the whole deep dive about it,” which is a snippet, we’re going to give you those deep dives because you guys have really asked for that. So we’re excited to do that.

Jill K DeWit:
The other thing I want to point out is when we say show number 1,935, we really do mean 1,935 starting with episode zero, basically, because I’m sure there were negative zero because there’s probably a few that we started with years ago and since replaced, probably pulled down and replaced because I don’t know how great they were, but we’ve been doing this for a while. So I’m really looking forward to this. So what’s going on with you?

Steven Jack Butala:
I’m just ready to … I’m embracing this new format. It’s going to give us a chance to really take an in-depth look at some of these topics versus just skipping along the topic.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah. I want this to be like you get to imagine you’re in the room with us right now, and as we’re just discussing things, like we always do, just now with cameras on and mics on, we’re going to have these longer conversations. We’re going to have our partners meetings right here with you.

Steven Jack Butala:
Oh, gosh. Please spare them, spare the listener.

Jill K DeWit:
Oh, all of them. I’ll remove the arguing. I’ll remove the, “That’s stupid,” or you know what? Actually, we might leave that in. Maybe all the, “That’s a stupid idea,” we’ll leave those in because we don’t always agree.

Steven Jack Butala:
So like Jill says, new for 2023. This is our weekly show now. We’ll take a couple of member questions from our Land Academy Discord forum like we always have. We’ll review some of our favorite land acquisitions from our Thursday member webinar, and ultimately take a deep dive look into two land-related topics that are requested on the Discord channel. If you’re a member, go on Discord. There’s a place called Content Topic Suggestions. Please, if you want us to talk about anything or ask a question-

Jill K DeWit:
Put it in there.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yup, we’ll happily cover it.

Jill K DeWit:
That’s awesome.

Steven Jack Butala:
All right. Let’s take a question posted by one of our members on the Land Academy Discord online community. If you want a sneak peek at our Discord channel, please go to landinvestors.com. It’s embedded there, read-only, and it’s free.

Jill K DeWit:
That’s pretty cool. All right. So Sid wrote, “I need some advice on how to structure land purchases. To date, I’ve only purchased one piece of property at a time, and sold it in the name of my Texas LLC. Since joining Land Academy, I’ve ramped up, and I will have three in escrow or purchased in the next 30 days. I know there’s not a lot of liability in land, but I’m looking at putting each in a land trust that has my LLC as a beneficiary. To set up the trust, I would’ve named a trustee who resigns immediately, so no link to the beneficiary.” That’s interesting. “I’m just trying to protect my assets. Is this too complicated or is there an easy way to do this? Thanks for the help.”

Jill K DeWit:
Okay. It’s already sounding … By the time you get to set up, Sid, I would’ve had his soul. Number one, I see that problem right there. Seriously, right?

Steven Jack Butala:
A land trust, the benefit to a land trust. Land trusts are brilliant, by the way. They originated in the early 1900s, maybe the late 1800s in Illinois for the sole purpose of leaving, of creating a document, the trust itself, so you can’t easily trace back ownership. It was specifically done because people were getting sued. The first thing that lawyers would do was try to locate all the land that somebody owns, and then decide whether or not if they have-

Jill K DeWit:
The dough-

Steven Jack Butala:
… the dough.

Jill K DeWit:
… to be sued.

Steven Jack Butala:
So land trust make it very difficult to do this because when you look up property records, it could be XYZ trust, and there’s no real way, unlike corporate commission.

Jill K DeWit:
You’ve got to get your hands on the documents to see who are the people in the trust.

Steven Jack Butala:
If the documents are locked away in a safe somewhere, then you’re ultimately not going to find out. It’s not impossible, but it makes it very difficult. So that’s the real benefit of a land trust. Sid’s asking us if he’s making it too complicated here, and yes, you are making it too complicated. I think that a Texas LLC is, I mean, 99.999% of the time is going to be great. I’m very aware of land trust.

Jill K DeWit:
We don’t do it.

Steven Jack Butala:
They’re appropriate in some cases, but-

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah, for this kind of a thing.

Steven Jack Butala:
If you’re after anonymity, then go for it.

Jill K DeWit:
I was like, “Are there extra costs and accounting stuff involved in this?”

Steven Jack Butala:
No, because the trust … I don’t know if the trust files a tax return. I don’t think so.

Jill K DeWit:
Hold on a moment. That’s the whole thing. Since we have the time, I’d like to ask.

Steven Jack Butala:
Extra costs?

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah. Are there going to be extra costs due to work incurred by my accountant untangling this at the end of the year?

Steven Jack Butala:
No, because I don’t think an accountant’s going to care whether the property’s under land trust or not. All the accountant cares about is the financial statement that’s associated with the LLC.

Jill K DeWit:
How about the attorney? Do I need to have an attorney on staff, basically, or at my, well, to move properties in and out of the trust, how does that happen?

Steven Jack Butala:
It’s the equivalent of how we used to do deeds out of escrow. So you’re-

Jill K DeWit:
The trust is established

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, and you can do the trust, and literally come back to the-

Jill K DeWit:
So I just put it in the name of the trust like, “The grantee is the Jack and Jill Family Trust.”

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s right.

Jill K DeWit:
I don’t have to do anything with the trust documents. It’s just established.

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s correct. That’s the beauty too is that.

Jill K DeWit:
So you could do a land trust in lieu of the LLC. I don’t have to go buy the property to my LLC to my land trust.

Steven Jack Butala:
What you could do and what you should do is the trust … Now that you’ve got 40 acres in Illinois, let’s say, and it’s in Jack and Jill Trust, what you would do is convey the trust to the new buyer. You know what? You’re right. We do have time to talk about this in this new format.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah, I want to hear this.

Steven Jack Butala:
What’s really going to happen here, in reality, what will happen is that this is going to set … It’s a red flag for certain buyers. You’re going to have to put yourself in a situation where you’re constantly explaining why you’re not redeeding the property that you’re just-

Jill K DeWit:
Oh, selling them the trust. Oh, they don’t want that.

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s right.

Jill K DeWit:
That’s a nightmare to explain that one. You don’t want to put it into the trust, and then back it into the LLC, and then back it into that one. You can’t. No.

Steven Jack Butala:
What would probably end up happening is you would convey the trust to the … The title agent would do this. The title agent would convey the trust, rewrite the trust, put it into the new owner’s name, and then simultaneously grant from the trust to the new owner, and rerecord deed anyway. I wouldn’t do it on this path.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah. Sid, if your head is not hurting by now … Right now, Sid’s like, “I’m sorry I asked.”

Steven Jack Butala:
All of our listeners are sorry you asked too.

Jill K DeWit:
Like, “Nevermind.”

Steven Jack Butala:
The six listeners that are left listening to this are sorry about that also.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah. Let’s go back. So what is the right way to do it? I would like to explain. So here’s the right way to do it. If you’re brand new starting out, is there anything wrong with putting it in your name? Nope. For the first couple deals, no, there’s no problem with that. Then go ahead. Dude, you don’t have to spend the money, and do all that work ahead of time. Some states, it’s a couple of hours to get an LLC. In other states, it’s very expensive like California, and time-consuming, and it costs $800 a year just to have the dumb LLC, which I don’t get, whatever.

Steven Jack Butala:
In California.

Jill K DeWit:
So anyway, my point is the right way is either of those are perfect and what you need. Sid, if you’re a secret celebrity and we don’t know who you are, I apologize. That’s why you’re hiding. I don’t know. Sid’s name is probably not even really Sid. It’s funny. Okay.

Steven Jack Butala:
Today’s first topic is called What Top Land Investors Are Doing Differently for 2023. This is the meat of the show, by the way.

Jill K DeWit:
I forgot my little timer, so I’m making a little bit note here. So I would love to ask you questions.

Steven Jack Butala:
Sure, sure.

Jill K DeWit:
Because this is really important to me, and I’m sure it’s very important to you listening and watching because we’re all getting a little freaked out. Let me tell you why. I’m personally going like, “What’s happening?” Everybody keeps saying, “Don’t worry about it. There’s going to be a minor readjustment, and we’re watching interest rates, and it’s nothing drastic.” They’re talking about probably a little bit more increase. It’s going to be fine. Then we see XYZ company laying off, and then this company laying off, and that company laying off, like a lot of people. Then I’m seeing things like So and So is exiting office space, whatever, the office space environment. I get two different stories about what I should really be concerned about in 2023. I’m saying me, and I’m coming to you, Jack, from the general community here.

Steven Jack Butala:
I do a lot of news type real estate related research every week largely because I do a short talk about what’s happening in the US real estate market at the beginning of our Thursday call for our close call for our members on Zoom. Here’s what I think is really going to happen. One thing is for sure. 2023 is going to be a volatile real estate environment. I personally love volatility in markets. I don’t like when they’re consistent and predictable, and then they’re the same.

Steven Jack Butala:
Real estate, I’ve long said, is very, in my opinion, predictable. Unlike the stock market, you have really no idea what the stock market’s going to do tomorrow or this year. Real estate, you can follow trends, and look at data, and in the end, I think that interest rates are going to park themselves around 6% or 7%. I don’t think we’re going to see crazy hyperinflation like we did in the ’80s. I think that we’re going to see a nationwide market correction from the tip top of pricing for mostly houses, not necessarily commercial real estate from July of 2022. That was the top.

Steven Jack Butala:
We’re going to see about a single to very light double digit market correction, meaning 8%. It’ll be reduced. In some markets, I think it’s going to be way more acute ,markets that were … and you can really easily research which markets are those. It’s the southwest and the west, western part of the country really-

Jill K DeWit:
Maybe in the south. What about even some of the other markets in the south?

Steven Jack Butala:
In the south like Florida.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah, that’s what I was thinking.

Steven Jack Butala:
Florida, Las Vegas, and Arizona are the three markets that typically really increase and then really decrease.

Jill K DeWit:
I’m going to pause for just a second. Will you please share with the planet here? One of the things that … Not only are you so data-focused and hyper in tune with all of this stuff, but please explain to all of us how many times you’ve been through this because that’s so important. Let me just make a note here. What do you hear how long this guy’s been investing in land, and how many times he’s done this? You can make these statements. This is not your first rodeo.

Steven Jack Butala:
Jill, I hate to break it to you, but you and I have been through the same number of recessions.

Jill K DeWit:
Well, I know, but hold on a moment, not while being hit. I’m 20. That’s not what I meant. That’s true, but I had a W-2 job for the first several. For the last two, for this one and the one before it, I was with you, but you were doing this way before me. So you’ve lived this. You’ve lived through this as a full-time real estate investor. That’s important.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah. So as that’s true, and I’ve been through three market corrections, three recessions.

Jill K DeWit:
Thank you.

Steven Jack Butala:
Five in my entire life, but three while I was full-time buying and selling land.

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

Steven Jack Butala:
The one that you and I, last one that you and I went through together was brutal.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah, that was fun.

Steven Jack Butala:
It brought Jill and I to our knees financially.

Jill K DeWit:
Well, I luckily came into that. I jumped into the business with you in the middle of the bottom.

Steven Jack Butala:
She saved us, actually. Jill got on the phone like she does all the time and took the … We had thousands of properties, literally on thousands of properties. She got on the phone and wholesaled them all out to … We paid cash. That’s the only thing that saved us. We just don’t fund or finance anything ever when it comes to land acquisitions. She got on the phone and liquidated a lot of the properties. Some of it is a slight loss, but thank you. Thank you.

Jill K DeWit:
Not much really. I don’t even think really there was-

Steven Jack Butala:
There’s probably one or two deals and that’s about it.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah, not much, really. It was just we sold them for not what we wanted to sell them for, but big deal. So we only made 50% profit instead of 100% profit. I can handle that.

Steven Jack Butala:
Well, what ended up happening then too, since I guess we’re talking about this, is that it allowed us to raise our own capital, convert that real estate into cash to go do even better acquisitions because-

Jill K DeWit:
That’s the point.

Steven Jack Butala:
… that’s what this topic is really about.

Jill K DeWit:
There we go.

Steven Jack Butala:
This is going to be an absolutely extraordinary acquisition year for us and I hope for you. I hope for all of our members it’s going to be a topic. It’s not going to be. It is. It’s a topic.

Jill K DeWit:
It’s not often enough. Well, you know what? I see it now and then, but that’s the point. What are top land investors and other real estate investors doing right now in 2023? Gathering chaos.

Steven Jack Butala:
Preparing for war. That’s right.

Jill K DeWit:
Exactly. To buy up all the great stuff that’s coming. That’s the thing.

Steven Jack Butala:
A typical deal for us is maybe we buy a property for 25% to 35% of what the retail value of the land is, and it’ll be way less than that now, 15%.

Jill K DeWit:
Well, you can talk about houses at that prices. Back in the last recession, buying houses at, I don’t know, for $20,000 that are worth, now they’re 200, people are like, “What?”

Steven Jack Butala:
Two or three.

Jill K DeWit:
No. You can go back. You can literally go … Look in West Phoenix. If you really don’t believe this, I’ll tell you. Go on Zillow or Realtor or something like that. Look in West Phoenix and look at some of the, I don’t know, 1200 square foot homes around there and dig deep into bought and sold. Look at the numbers in there and you’ll find them back in ’07, ’08, ’09 selling for really inexpensively and then what they’re worth now.

Steven Jack Butala:
Jill and I were buying houses back then for 20, 30, $40,000 and selling them for 60, 80, 100.

Jill K DeWit:
Exactly, and now, they’re $200,000.

Steven Jack Butala:
Who thought?

Jill K DeWit:
I wish I would’ve held on them even longer.

Steven Jack Butala:
Without doing anything. In fact, we have a company called House Academy that we never talk about. We’re going to bring that back this year because I think there’s, especially in rural markets. What’s different now is the availability of the internet. If you follow the show at all, you know that we spent last summer testing Starlink from an RV all over rural America and it’s just a game changer. I think that there’s a lot of towns that have never gotten high speed internet. I think you can live literally anywhere now, certainly in this country with Starlink and work remotely.

Jill K DeWit:
It’s the greatest thing. You know what’s so funny? I got a note from someone on my team earlier today like, “Hey, just a heads up,” because they’re remote and they’re like, “Hey, my internet’s down and I expect it to be up around 1:00.”

Jill K DeWit:
I’m like, “Big deal. That’s what hotspots are for.”

Jill K DeWit:
They’re like, “Yeah, you’re right.”

Jill K DeWit:
I’m like, “You didn’t even need to tell me anything. I would not have known.”

Jill K DeWit:
We’ve done that on the road. There’s times that we’re in a location where we didn’t want to deal with it, get it out or it takes a little bit to get it juiced up, basically. If you have Starlink, you probably know this. Jack learned this, but so what? Hop on your phone and hotspot on your computer. That’s all I need to do. It’s great.

Jill K DeWit:
So I’m trying to think of other things. I hope that, and know it’s true within Land Academy, you and I are really hardcore about buying the property, buying the property. Don’t take a equitable interest in it and try to double end it. All this stuff could go wrong. Please don’t finance it. If you need the money, get a money guy in who you together buy the property. So I know for us and our community of really solid good investors, that’s what we’re doing.

Steven Jack Butala:
One of the things that separates professional land investors from maybe novice investors is how they use capital. I would encourage you, no matter where you are or who you are or where you are in your career or how you go about this, I would encourage you to seek funding, whether you need it or not, to one of the higher funder, higher profile funders in our group if you’re in our group because I think it’s something that it will change how you send mail out. You’ll shoot a little higher.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah, you can go for anything. Just find a great deal.

Steven Jack Butala:
There’s now two million dollars properties. It’s completely and totally within reach.

Jill K DeWit:
Exactly.

Steven Jack Butala:
So if you’re buying a two million dollar property that’s worth 10 million, people are going to come, they’ll find you and fund your deal or maybe-

Jill K DeWit:
Wouldn’t you? That’s my comment when everybody are like, “Hold on, just think about this for a minute.” If someone came to you and said, fill in the blank, you’re not going to believe this classic car that I know is worth, whatever, 90 grand, this guy wants to get rid of it for 25. “I need 25 grand,” I’d be like, “Yeah, duh. We’re going to buy this.”

Steven Jack Butala:
So I would seek funding more to just open your mind. You don’t want to give yourself a glass ceiling. There’s enough things in the world that give you a glass ceiling automatically. You don’t want to do that to yourself unintentionally when you’re an investor. Am I saying if you’re brand new, go and seek funding? No, not necessarily. I’m just saying if you’ve done a few deals or a bunch of deals and … I have incorrectly been really hard hardcore on this topic, only spend your own money, don’t ever borrow any money, and that’s just not the case.

Steven Jack Butala:
Jill and I pretty quietly buy one, two, maybe three houses a year. Sometimes we get funding from other people, sometimes we don’t. We usually pay about, I don’t know, 20% on the money and almost always come out making at least $100,000 on the house. We don’t renovate anything. We just send a ton of mail out.

Jill K DeWit:
That’s house academy stuff.

Steven Jack Butala:
Then just relist the property for sale.

Jill K DeWit:
Yup. I was just thinking about too another thing that I … Oh, I’m going to say one thing. I do tell new people, by the way, just so you know. Again, like I told you, this is going to be a partner’s meeting. So I do tell people on the phone, if you only have 10 grand or 20 grand and you’re jumping into this and you’re trying to hold back money to buy property, don’t do that. Spend it all on mail. Spend it all on your education. Get all that stuff out there and then do that. Even if it’s your first deal and you need someone else to fund the deal, there’s nothing wrong with that. I encourage that. So I’ll fund it. I don’t care.

Jill K DeWit:
I always say this. Look, when I know who you are, if I can see you’re involved in our group, I can see you, you’re watching everything, you’re doing your work, and you come to me with a deal that I can look up and go, “Yeah, you’re right. This is great.” I don’t care if it’s your very first deal, I’ll fund it. I know you’re doing your homework. I know how you found it, so I trust you. It’s good, but I was going to say another thing that I’m trying to think other than financing. Oh, go ahead.

Steven Jack Butala:
Interest rates.

Jill K DeWit:
Okay. Got it.

Steven Jack Butala:
So this is a significant and, in my opinion, largely probably permanent, not permanent permanent, but long-term interest rates. We lived in a beautiful scenario for the last 10 years having really, really low interest rates. So interest rates-

Jill K DeWit:
Everybody’s used to it, unfortunately.

Steven Jack Butala:
Interest rates went from, mortgage rates, anyway, went from about 3%, two and a half to 3% to now 6%, and they seem to be hovering there. What does that really mean? It means that if you buy a hundred thousand dollars asset and you finance it, your cost of capital used to be $3,000 a year and now it’s six. So that’s double the price of owning a house. Monthly payments has doubled in the last six months, really five months.

Steven Jack Butala:
So what does that mean for us? What it means is this, and we try to target … Our beautiful sweet spot for land investment is around buy for 30, sell for 80, 90. At 80 or $90,000, people are usually writing checks. They’re not financing anything. We’re selling it to people who are writing a check. So this interest rate scenario doesn’t affect them. Interest rates don’t widely affect rich people.

Jill K DeWit:
Good point.

Steven Jack Butala:
So that’s who you need to be. Now, is it really, really likely to sell a $250,000 asset for cash? It’s a lot less likely than to sell a $90,000 asset for cash.

Jill K DeWit:
Does it happen? Yeah.

Steven Jack Butala:
Sure. So there are people, a substantial number of people, and those numbers get higher and higher every year. There’s more rich people every year worldwide sitting on the sidelines or-

Jill K DeWit:
You’re welcome. I know a lot of them very well.

Steven Jack Butala:
We get thank you notes to this pod all time.

Jill K DeWit:
That’s it.

Steven Jack Butala:
People sitting on the sidelines with just too much cash looking to invest it in things like land, and land is a fantastic place to park money.

Jill K DeWit:
You know what’s funny? I have to say this real quick. Words getting out a little bit. It used to be everybody poo-pooed land like, “Oh, you guys.” They don’t see the value in it because there’s nothing done to it. It’s not improved in any way. Every person, not in our world, I swear, when they think we’re all vacant land, if I say that, they think it’s 20 miles out there. Really, it’s stupid. So when I used to say we’re land investors, they’d be like, “Oh, not talking to those guys.” Now, it’s a little bit different. They’re like, “Oh.”

Steven Jack Butala:
Why is that?

Jill K DeWit:
I know.

Steven Jack Butala:
Because when we started this-

Jill K DeWit:
I know. We weren’t big.

Steven Jack Butala:
… everybody would just look at the wall.

Jill K DeWit:
They’re like, “This is stupid.” Exactly.

Steven Jack Butala:
I really wonder why that is.

Jill K DeWit:
I think words getting out that we’re making money. They’re somehow seeing the value in it or they … Come on. It all has to start with land.

Steven Jack Butala:
The reason that classic real estate investors look down their nose at land people is because it doesn’t generate income. If you take the simplest form of a real estate investment, which is buy house and rent it out, you’ve got two dynamic, two serious money-making boxes. You’ve got the cash that’s coming in every month from the rent and you have the balance sheet aspect of the value of the property is just naturally going up.

Steven Jack Butala:
So when you expand that thought to a class A office building in an urban center or a huge garden apartment complex somewhere in a city, in a mid-size city, those numbers get large. They get very, very big. So land, unless it’s a farmland or leased land, you don’t have that second component. You have the balance sheet component, but you don’t have the income statement component.

Steven Jack Butala:
So what do we do? Why does it make sense that we buy land and we’re so serious about, lifelong serious about it? We sell it. This is our income statement because, and the only reason we can sell it quickly and efficiently is because we buy it so cheap.

Jill K DeWit:
Right. Here’s going to be my new line. Next time I’m in an elevator with somebody like this and they’re like, “What’s the point? That’s not making any money?” I’m going to say this. I’m going to say, “Well, I doubled my money in 30 days. How long is it going to take you to double your money?” and that’ll shut them up.

Steven Jack Butala:
The other thing too about land is that there’s literally no moving parts. Every other type of real estate that I know has got all kinds of moving parts and stuff goes wrong.

Jill K DeWit:
Totally.

Steven Jack Butala:
It’s tenants. The things that really, unless you’re big enough to have a full-time management company doing all the nuts and bolts work for you, land is, there’s probably … Jill and I have done 16,000 deals. I bet I’ve seen less than a hundred properties in person.

Jill K DeWit:
By the way, let me make sure this too. This one here has owned office buildings. Dream it up. We’ve done them all.

Steven Jack Butala:
I’ve failed at a lot of stuff real estate related.

Jill K DeWit:
Pretty much owned it all, deliberately or unintentionally. So that happens. I want to add another thing about what I think that we’re doing that other top land investors are doing, and then I want you to know about, listener, is buckets. Will you please explain? We joke about this. Explain the buckets, and then we have bucket seven now going.

Steven Jack Butala:
So buckets are … I have three basic buckets that we drop real estate acquisitions into, and I’ll tell you, this isn’t something I set out to do during the mailer phase of the acquisition. So I only decide what bucket of property it’s going to go into after Jill and I have decided, well, really, Jill decides that we’re going to buy it.

Jill K DeWit:
That’s so funny. It’s like the mail goes out, I’m like, “Nope, nope, nope.” No, just kidding.

Steven Jack Butala:
The buckets are as follows. So you send out, you do a mailer, somebody signs an offer, they send it back, and you’re on your way to buying a $30,000 asset that we know both of us very strongly, feel strongly that we can sell it for 80 or 90. 80 or 90 is not retail. That’s bucket one property. 80 or 90 is wholesale property. Get it, buy it, sell it, get your money back out, go do the next deal.

Steven Jack Butala:
Bucket two property is, and I love bucket two property is, “Okay. We’re going to bite for 30, anyway, and we’re going to list it for 150. That’s about retail,” and I know it’s going to take a year to sell. We’re okay with that because it’s just like putting money into a bank account. For whatever reason, we’ve determined, usually this is me because Jill wants a bucket one at everything. I’m happy waiting a year, maybe sometimes longer, to get some right person to come along and write the check.

Jill K DeWit:
I have to tell you, I am changing my tune on that even right now. There’s a few properties that we own and I’m like, “You know what? I know if we sit on this even longer, it’s just going to keep going up.” So I’m okay. It’s not like I’m hurting for cash.

Steven Jack Butala:
Bucket three is something unusual is happening and you can dream it up on that. Maybe we subdivide the property or split it. Maybe we grade it a little or blade in, it doesn’t happen too often, blade in a little area so that if anybody actually goes to see it as a potential acquisition for themselves, they have a great experience. We blade in a little tiny driveway or road through their trees, all that.

Jill K DeWit:
They can get to it.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah. So bucket three is very profitable. It’s also now you got to do stuff, and I don’t like to do stuff that much.

Jill K DeWit:
Exactly. That’s good. Thank you. I’m trying to think if there’s any last things before we go on to our next topic and that’s tough.

Steven Jack Butala:
Listen, yeah, we’ll go onto our next topic, but listen, you got to send the mail out now more than ever because these people, there’s all these layoffs that Jill was talking about. People are going to need money, and the first thing that they do when they need money is liquidate assets they’re not using. If they happen to own property, they’re going to put your offer that you send them on the refrigerator and they might not call you immediately. We have multiple people calling us all the time now when they were laughing at us, laughing at our offers last year and now they’re interested in selling.

Jill K DeWit:
Yup. We were just talking about it on our Thursday show. A lot of people raised their hands. They’re like, “Yup, six months ago call, and nine month ago mailer call.” We had one, Carl and Sam. They said there was a mailer that they didn’t even remember mailing. They’re like, “I didn’t think we even. Did we mail this county?” kind of thing, and they did, and it was somebody now coming back saying, “Hey, would you still buy this?” What’s nice too is these sellers know like, “Hey, I know your offer’s expired. I know things have changed. What would you give me for it now?” So it really opens the door for you too to make some great deals.

Steven Jack Butala:
2023 is going to be great. Nothing is going to happen for you in 2023 if you don’t send any mail out.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah, I agree.

Steven Jack Butala:
Let’s take a look at one of our favorite land acquisitions from our weekly Thursday member webinar.

Jill K DeWit:
I’m going to restart this since we’re cutting right here, anyway. If this sings to you and you want to learn more about Land Academy and everything that we do, go get our free ebook. I don’t know how many pages, 13 pages I want to say, something like that. I’m going to say between 10 and 15 pages is what it was condensed to, believe it or not, but it’s our whole business model and it’s free. All you got to do is go to landacademy.com, find the link for get the free ebook, pop in your first name, last name, and email address. I think that’s all you need, and it’ll pop right in there and then read it. It will really talk about Jack’s background, some of my background, how we got here, and how we’ve grown this business, and everything about us and what we teach.

Jill K DeWit:
So in Land Academy, just so you know too, we teach our business model. We did not set out to be educators, if you will. We are investors first, and we just happen to share our business model all bundled up for you start to finish, and that’s Land Academy. So go get the ebook and check all that out.

Steven Jack Butala:
Hundreds of people do this every day. Hundreds of people download the ebook every day. It’s worth it. Let’s take another question posted by one of our members on the Land Academy Discord online community. If you want a sneak peak at that community, go to landinvestors.com and take a read-only look. It’s free.

Jill K DeWit:
All right. This time we have Chris. So Chris wrote, “I just rejoined Land Academy after originally joining back in 2020. My business never hit the ground running due to some unforeseen events that made me set it to the side. I’m looking forward to diving back in and getting my first mailer out within the next two weeks. That being said, back in 2020, I was told to give the desert land a try so that I could get some deals under my belt. Is that still a valid suggestion or is that too competitive? I live in South Carolina, so desert land is foreign to me. Any advice starting out would be much appreciated.” By the way, did you put my comment in there before I read this one?

Steven Jack Butala:
No, because I figured you’d just do it.

Jill K DeWit:
Oh, okay. You could have put it in there because I replied to this too. So I’ll read what Jamay wrote. Is it Jamay is the only comment you put in here?

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah.

Jill K DeWit:
Okay. So Jamay in our community wrote to Chris, “Hey, Chris, this is exactly how I got started. I wanted to make sure that I liked the land business first. So before I invested in education … I liked the land business before I even invested in education.” Got it. “So I bought a few desert squares prior to joining Land Academy, all self-closed and worked through each transaction. I did six deal.”

Steven Jack Butala:
Amazing.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah. “I discovered that I did like the land biz and then I joined Land Academy. If you want, send me a direct message and I’ll go into further details on just how I did it.” How nice is that? So my advice was skip it, you don’t have to, and go to some areas that you know, follow the new program, learn to troll, and just get the mail out. What were you going to say?

Steven Jack Butala:
Exactly that.

Jill K DeWit:
Oh, my goodness!

Steven Jack Butala:
Exactly, but do you know what? Jill and I are pretty aggressive people.

Jill K DeWit:
That’s true.

Steven Jack Butala:
We’re pretty intense when it comes to if we’re going to set aside some effort, if we’re going to go do something, we’re going to do it.

Jill K DeWit:
Oh, yeah. We scare people.

Steven Jack Butala:
So I don’t want to swing the fence. Yeah, our children and everything.

Jill K DeWit:
Exactly.

Steven Jack Butala:
I swing for the fences. If you swing for the fences, you’re going to hit some singles. If you try to hit singles, you’re going to hit singles.

Jill K DeWit:
You know what it is? You just have to get up and do it. We’ve talked about this. This is a whole another show that we’ll do another time, but how do you get that confidence? You just do it. When I talk to people about adding a zero, stop buying for 1,000, buy for 10,000, they’re like, “Oh, that’s scary.”

Jill K DeWit:
I’m like, “Well, how much you have in the bank?”

Jill K DeWit:
“50,000.”

Jill K DeWit:
I’m like, “So buy one. What’s holding you back?”

Jill K DeWit:
“I’m just afraid. It took me a while, but I got it.”

Steven Jack Butala:
Just use other people’s money here.

Jill K DeWit:
No, but I’m just like, they’re even afraid to send those mailers out, afraid to talk to those people, I’m like, “You just have to do it. Then once you do it, you’re like, ‘Oh,’ and then you realize, ‘Now, I’m never going back. I can’t believe I hung out for another extra six months because I was afraid of it, buying all these things for one, two, and 3,000. Now I can buy for 10, 20, 30,000.'”

Steven Jack Butala:
The real answer to this question is it’s up to you. If you feel like you need some practice, I don’t think self-closing property without a title agent is that necessary.

Jill K DeWit:
For little, you have to for little properties because you’ll eat up your whole profit.

Steven Jack Butala:
I mean, no, I understand. There’s many, many properties that we’ve purchased that the closing costs were larger than the actual acquisition price.

Jill K DeWit:
Oh, but that’s because they’re worth way more.

Steven Jack Butala:
My point is I don’t think you necessarily have to start small here.

Jill K DeWit:
No, that was my point.

Steven Jack Butala:
I wouldn’t buy a commercial piece of real estate for $2 million for my first deal, but I would-

Jill K DeWit:
I’d go for $10,000.

Steven Jack Butala:
… 10, 20, 30,000 and list it with a real estate agent and hopefully sell it quickly for 50 70, 80, 90. I think that’s an okay first transaction. It just needs to make sense. It’s up to you and how much confidence you have.

Jill K DeWit:
Yup. It’s so good.

Steven Jack Butala:
Today’s second topic is how to troll for new land acquisition markets like a pro. It all starts with trolling. When I decide to go into a new market, it’s usually around 8:00 PM at night, and Jill and I are probably sitting in front of the television watching something meaningless, and I pick up my phone and start trolling.

Jill K DeWit:
You told me you liked all that Megan and Harry stuff.

Steven Jack Butala:
I would not.

Jill K DeWit:
Could you imagine?

Steven Jack Butala:
If somebody paid me, if somebody said-

Jill K DeWit:
“Here’s what we’re watching tonight.”

Steven Jack Butala:
… “Here’s $10,000. Why don’t you spend some time researching the royal family?” I would say, “Keep your 10,000.”

Jill K DeWit:
Come on. You mean, oh, that’s the guy version of faking it.

Steven Jack Butala:
What is it with this royal family?

Jill K DeWit:
I don’t know.

Steven Jack Butala:
Look, I understand that it’s a massive money maker for England. I understand that how much land they own. I’ve actually really looked into, what the hell, because I originally thought it’s 2023.

Jill K DeWit:
Are we still doing this?

Steven Jack Butala:
We’re not sure we need a royal family, really. It turns out that England really does need it. It’s a huge tourist attraction and it’s a massive money maker. The way that they have it set up with land leases and the deal that they have with the British government, it’s pretty cool. You should look into it. They have just thousands and thousands and tens of thousands of acres-

Jill K DeWit:
The media.

Steven Jack Butala:
… that they lease for various all over the country, probably all over the world, I don’t know, and the media. So no, but I don’t need to watch a documentary on, especially a fictitious one. Take your pick now. There’s about nine of them.

Jill K DeWit:
You know what’s funny? It’s true. I mean, I guess it probably always was like a British soap opera. I like British soap operas and this is just another British soap opera.

Steven Jack Butala:
I just-

Jill K DeWit:
I don’t like the American one.

Steven Jack Butala:
It’s a sign of the times. I don’t know what these really wealthy, rich people who now live in California have to complain about.

Jill K DeWit:
Oh, my goodness. Right now, it’s rain. So I’m writing myself a note. For those of you who know what this is, I haven’t caught up on EastEnders in a while. So I’m going to catch up on EastEnders. It made me think of this.

Steven Jack Butala:
Jill has some type of, and she’s not the first person that I’ve met like this through the years, some type of unhealthy interest in England.

Jill K DeWit:
I don’t know. You know what? It started with Depeche Mode? It has to. No. I don’t know what it was, but anyway, it doesn’t really matter. No, it’s just funny. I guess, you know what it probably started with? My dad.

Steven Jack Butala:
Food’s terrible.

Jill K DeWit:
Do we need to go here? Is this going in a bad way? Tell me if I should shut up.

Steven Jack Butala:
No, go ahead. The food’s terrible.

Jill K DeWit:
Well, my dad got me watching Faulty Towers.

Steven Jack Butala:
The weather’s terrible.

Jill K DeWit:
My dad watched Benny Hill.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, I don’t think that’s funny, that stuff.

Jill K DeWit:
No, Faulty Towers I like. Faulty Towers is cute and funny. It’s not like Benny Hill. So that one, and there was another one. I can’t remember what it was, but didn’t you watch the Canadian guys? They’re like that too.

Steven Jack Butala:
Canada and England are real different.

Jill K DeWit:
Well, but there’s some off Canadian humor that’s similar too, not just Bob and Doug McKenzie, other stuff.

Steven Jack Butala:
No, I just didn’t … England is, I don’t know, they had the shortest industrial revolution in the history of ever. I think it lasted about 20 minutes in the early 20th century.

Jill K DeWit:
All right. I’m going to bring it back-

Steven Jack Butala:
I wasn’t even done with the list. Oh, I’m sorry. Their cars are terrible.

Jill K DeWit:
Oh, yes.

Steven Jack Butala:
They’re steel rusts.

Jill K DeWit:
The tea is good.

Steven Jack Butala:
They, for whatever reason, decided that all throughout the 19th and the 20th century that they need to colonize the planet. I don’t think that’s okay.

Jill K DeWit:
Things I like about England, wait, tea, cookies.

Steven Jack Butala:
I don’t know. Asia’s got some great tea too.

Jill K DeWit:
The chocolate, I’m sorry, whatever that chocolate, I can’t remember the name of it, that’s not that good. What else do we have? I’m sure they make great umbrellas.

Steven Jack Butala:
I’m sure they make great umbrellas.

Jill K DeWit:
I’m so sorry. I’m running out of things. By the way, I am like, maybe this is part of my problem because I am more than 50% Irish.

Steven Jack Butala:
They produce some amazing rock bands in the middle of the-

Jill K DeWit:
That they have is music.

Steven Jack Butala:
… middle of the other century, but all of them admittedly said, “Yeah, we modeled all of our music after Texas blues.”

Jill K DeWit:
I don’t watch Cricket, so none of that. So anyway-

Steven Jack Butala:
It was fun.

Jill K DeWit:
Thank you. Okay, back-

Steven Jack Butala:
I love bashing England. I don’t know why.

Jill K DeWit:
Hey, maybe every every week we’ll pick a new country to give a hard time with the bash. So stick around, your country might be coming up next week.

Steven Jack Butala:
Now, there’s all these documentaries about whining kids in the royal family and how that they’ve just been wronged somehow. We get 50 million dollars for being quiet.

Jill K DeWit:
I know.

Steven Jack Butala:
We didn’t get it.

Jill K DeWit:
Okay. Well, here’s how I think this topic too ties into topic one, by the way, loosely, but we talked about 2023 and thinking about being investor, and it all starts with finding great property, period. You have to find the deals, not how you buy it, not how you sell it. It’s sourcing it first. Doing that is we call it trolling. Jack came up with this whole thing, trolling for new markets. So please explain more.

Steven Jack Butala:
So we’re trying to profile it in general with this new format. We’re trying to profile what makes some people so successful at this. I’m patting ourselves on our back a little bit. One of the things is choosing new markets. Every Thursday, we have the Land Academy closed webinar, and most of the content that happens during that webinar is, “Would you do this deal?” where people, they find assets that they’re potentially going to buy, they present them on the show, and Jill and I and we usually have guests talk about whether or not we would do the deal.

Steven Jack Butala:
For some reason, we get a disproportionate amount of acquisition targets to talk about in three states, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Florida. I don’t know why this is. What ends up happening, I think, is there’s tons and tons of people that attend this webinar, the closed Land Academy webinar. They decide for some reason that that’s the place to send mail. So it just becomes worse.

Jill K DeWit:
Everybody else is like, “Well, I’m going to do that. You found that deal over here, then I’m going to mail that county too,” which is great, but if you’re on Land Academy, you know how to find areas that no one else is hitting. That’s the best part.

Steven Jack Butala:
Jill and I instruct a mastermind course called Career Path twice, sometimes three times a year. We’ll do it again this year at least one time, maybe twice. One of the thing, and that class is packed full of people that are making six million dollars a year, and you know where they don’t send mail? Those three states.

Steven Jack Butala:
One of the thing, again, along the lines of what we’re trying to do with this longer format is to profile these incredibly successful people. They troll. They troll. They send out 10, 20, 30,000 units of mail at a time in five different markets, and one or two, it’s risk diversification. No one can argue with that. The only downside is that, yeah, it’s expensive, but look, all you have to do is one deal.

Jill K DeWit:
Expensive compared to what?

Steven Jack Butala:
One single deal.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah, then it pays for it.

Steven Jack Butala:
You’re going to cover your entire mailing effort for the whole year.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah. I don’t see how that’s expensive.

Steven Jack Butala:
I shouldn’t say expensive. What I mean is it costs something and-

Jill K DeWit:
It’s not free. It costs something. That’s hilarious.

Steven Jack Butala:
I like to say-

Jill K DeWit:
From zero to not zero is expensive for some people. Wait, wait, I got to tell you, I have to tell you one thing that I’m going to throw our staff under the bus a little bit here. They said, they made this comment about our Land Academy community and you know who you are. This is met with love, but it’s like, “We have the cheapest rich people in our community, it’s hilarious.” Sometimes-

Steven Jack Butala:
I heard that recently too. Keep rich people.

Jill K DeWit:
I have to admit I do that too. There’s times that I’m like, “Oh, oh, well, that’s the way how it goes,” and then there’s times, “No, I’m going to stand in line and make sure I get my $2 for my coupon,” because they forgot my coupon. So I get it.

Steven Jack Butala:
So how do you troll? This is what you do. Sit down at a computer, not on your phone for the first time, and log into either realtor.com or zillow.com. Zillow’s probably easier to use the first time, and set yourself a parameter. First, we’ll do the price parameter. Let’s say a land only, and we’ll set a price parameter of, I don’t know, whatever your target price is, 80 to $90,000-

Jill K DeWit:
To sell?

Steven Jack Butala:
To sell.

Jill K DeWit:
Okay. What you want to sell it for?

Steven Jack Butala:
So your price parameter is between 70 and 90, let’s say. Your acreage criteria is maybe one to five acres, one to three acres, maybe five to 10 acres. Jill would probably … Larger is better, in general, for sales. Then start on the West Coast or the East Coast and start moving around and move through your mouse, move all throughout the country and you’re going to see where properties get populated. You’re going to see clusters of all kinds of land that’s listed for whatever parameter you put in, 70 to $90,000. Then do it for sold.

Steven Jack Butala:
You’re going to find these little pockets of places all over the country where there’s a lot of property. As you’re doing that, either write it down or make a mental note that Tulsa, Oklahoma, let’s say, I’m just throwing one out, seems to fit the criteria. So hypothetically, it might work. We don’t know yet. We don’t guess at anything here at Land Academy. We’re going to find out for sure in a minute whether Tulsa works or not.

Jill K DeWit:
Say you’re moving your mouse around, tell me if I’m right or wrong here. I know the answer, but I’m doing this for everybody. I’m rolling my mouse around Tulsa and I see, “Oh, look at this. There are 95 properties listed between 70 and 90,000, between one and five acres that I put in. Oh, this is good.” Then I toggle over to the sole properties and go, “345 sold in the last 12 months. Ding, ding.”

Steven Jack Butala:
So now you’re not guessing anymore.

Jill K DeWit:
I’d be like, “Whoop, there’s something there.”

Steven Jack Butala:
Because we don’t like risk. Risk and investment don’t go together. So Jill’s exactly right. So you can take a look. You compare sold and active listings and you want that to be two to one, maybe even three to one in certain cases. So what do you do now? You deconstruct that market into zip codes. Then you run the red, green, yellow test, which is I explain in the program in great detail. You test each of those zip codes. Probably, most likely they’re going to be adjacent to each other. You pit them against each other to find out who has the best statistics, days on market, and this is all in our program.

Steven Jack Butala:
This is what rich people who buy and sell land obsess on. They obsess on new markets and trolling. I do. I obsess on it. If I have free minutes to do anything, I don’t know, standing in line at a bank or something like that, I just immediately start trolling.

Jill K DeWit:
Yup. Well, here’s the thing, and what it does for you, like Jack’s explaining, when you pit the zip codes together, you think you know, “Oh, it’s going to be this area’s the hot area, not this one, not this one, this one.” This either confirms or lets you know like, “Oh, shoot, I was looking on the west side of town. I should be looking on the east side of town.” That goes even hotter.

Steven Jack Butala:
Some of the people who run the red, green, yellow test in career path, now, these are very successful land investors, have their own red, green, yellow test or they’ve taken mine, which is good enough for me. The three or four statistics that mine generate to make one zip code better than the other, they expand that into nine or 10 or 15. So now, you’re not guessing at all. Now, you know what’s going to happen when you send mail out at 20% or 30% of retail value in that market, and you know how fast it’s going to sell and you know what the values are.

Jill K DeWit:
I want to add that this is new. So people who think, “Oh, I missed the boat. I’m jumping at the wrong time.” No, you’re not. It keeps getting better. So this data that we’re now collect on Zillow and Realtor wasn’t there five years ago for land deals, maybe a few, maybe a handful, but now, there’s so much on there that we can see and it’s great. So we used to say that land is a little bit harder to price, houses are easy because of the data, but now we’re getting more and more land stuff. It is awesome.

Steven Jack Butala:
Houses we price different, since Jill brought it up. Trolling for houses is a lot easier because there’s consistency in pricing. Two houses that are next to each other in a relatively newer area are going to be, and I say newer from the 1950s on, because they’re similar. That’s just how developers scaled their companies by building the same houses. It’s close to each other or at least the price per square foot. So it’s really easy to price house mailers, and it’s a little bit more challenging for land, but boy, we’ve taken just about all the mystery out of will this mailer work or not.

Jill K DeWit:
I’m going to explain too some real world stuff. So Jack’s saying get on your computer, but real world is he’s sitting on his phone. So he is on his phone, he’s standing behind me in line for fill in the blank, whatever we’re doing, and he’s like … Let’s just say we’re at BevMo.

Steven Jack Butala:
Jill’s watching Prince Harry whine about how much money he has too, by the way.

Jill K DeWit:
No. Say we’re on line at the grocery store or BevMo or something because we’re not usually at the grocery store, but we might be there. Anyway, so Jack’s on his phone looking at whatever. So he’s not doing his hardcore research there. He’s just making mental notes for, “I’m going to go back and look at this area. I’m going to go back and look at this area and go back and look at that area.”

Jill K DeWit:
So then next day, next week, whatever his time is to sit down and be looking at new places to send mail for our next mailer going out, that’s when he is going to sit and run these red, yellow, green tests and pit him against each other and do all that. So I want to ask, how much time? Can you please tell me? I’m brand new. How much time should I spend on just the high level trolling to come up with, say, three areas?

Steven Jack Butala:
A bare, bare minimum of eight to 10 hours beginning, in the beginning. I can do it now.

Jill K DeWit:
Without doing the red, yellow, green test.

Steven Jack Butala:
Honestly, I have the country memorized. I know where-

Jill K DeWit:
Wait, before you even do the red, yellow, green test?

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah.

Jill K DeWit:
Okay. You only spend at least equivalent of a full day digging into this.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, and I wouldn’t do it consecutive either because your eyes will fall out of your hut.

Jill K DeWit:
So a couple hours here, a couple hours there, and then by Friday, little bit on Monday, a little bit on Wednesday and a little bit on … By Friday, I got a good idea.

Steven Jack Butala:
I got to tell you too on a personal note, you’re going to find out if you enjoy it. You’re going to find out if the land business is for you. I hate the stock market. I hate it. I’ve taken classes. I just don’t like it.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah, me too. It doesn’t make sense to me.

Steven Jack Butala:
I don’t like that there’s … I don’t like gambling either for the exact same reason.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah, but I love this.

Steven Jack Butala:
Me too.

Jill K DeWit:
I lay in bed and like, “I only need …”

Steven Jack Butala:
Me too. I know you do.

Jill K DeWit:
I lay in bed and look at cobs for fill in the blank. Sometimes it really is a hobby like, “Gee, what would it be like …” We just got back from Vail for Christmas, “Wonder what the Vail markets is going with today.” I’m just sitting there looking at it. Why not?

Steven Jack Butala:
Jill and I met each other this way. We were screwed up when we met. I didn’t even mess her up.

Jill K DeWit:
Thanks a lot.

Steven Jack Butala:
I didn’t make her join the Jack cult.

Jill K DeWit:
That’s hilarious. That’s good. That is true, and I’m good. I like it because you’re right. So I think maybe my Native American heritage has made me a land person too. Maybe that’s part of why. That’s probably it.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, maybe it’s in your soul.

Steven Jack Butala:
It’s in my blood.

Steven Jack Butala:
I haven’t even thought about that.

Jill K DeWit:
I was thinking. As I’m digging into that, I’m like, “Oh, maybe this is why I love land so much,” and I’m begging you to keep our real grass in the backyard. Don’t take my grass.

Steven Jack Butala:
We’re the last people in Phoenix to have a lawn.

Jill K DeWit:
I know, and I’m okay with that.

Steven Jack Butala:
I’m not.

Jill K DeWit:
Stop it. It’s my one thing.

Steven Jack Butala:
You brought it up.

Jill K DeWit:
You get the garage, I get the backyard. So eight to 10 hours just doing the trolling. Okay. Now, I’ve got Tulsa, I’ve got a city.

Steven Jack Butala:
Please don’t send mail at Tulsa.

Jill K DeWit:
No, I’m not going to say. I’ve got that city. I’ve got a city. How about this? I’ve got a county in the Northwest, I’ve got a county in the Midwest, and I’ve got a county on the East Coast. Let’s just say that.

Steven Jack Butala:
I think that’s brilliant.

Jill K DeWit:
Okay. Now, I’m going to do my red, yellow, green test, and I have three counties. Tell me how much time I need to spend on each one.

Steven Jack Butala:
Well, the red, yellow, green test is either something that’s going to come really easily to you or it’s going to be very, very difficult.

Jill K DeWit:
Painful.

Steven Jack Butala:
It’s obviously easy for me. I’ve long said this since Jill and I started Land Academy, we’re way better together, and if you need to find a Jack or a Jill, there’s a lot of people in Discord that are waiting to hear from you. We have a ton of career corporate salespeople that do extremely well buying and selling land because they have Jill’s personality. They like talking on the phone, they enjoy people, and the people end of all this. I don’t. I’m a tech person and an accountant, former, recovering accountant, and that’s just not … You need to find somebody that may work with you. Maybe it’s your spouse. Maybe it’s not necessarily another Land Academy member, but it’s maybe your, I don’t … Didn’t we have somebody who their kids are working for them in the last career path?

Jill K DeWit:
I believe we’ve always had that. We’ve always had people with kids and stuff too that do it. They might be in college, they may be out of college. Maybe it’s your brother, maybe it’s your cousin. Who knows?

Steven Jack Butala:
You can do a red, green, yellow test for three or four environments in less than an hour. If you’re brand new, maybe two hours. What it’s going to do is lead you to, “Well, what about this zip code?” If these all zip codes are coming out, I almost always run a red, green, yellow test for let’s say seven zip codes, and then I just decide to mail everything regardless of how it comes out, unless it’s really red, which is a very unusual.

Jill K DeWit:
Okay. I have another followup question. So with those parameters that you have spelled out for us, cream’s going to rise to the crop, right? So I have this county here, county, county. Now, do I look at them all together? What if this county looks great, these zip codes look great in this county, but they’re still not as good as that county? Do I pick something in all of them or what would you suggest?

Steven Jack Butala:
So you can’t, in my opinion, pit counties together or zip codes together that are in different parts of the country.

Jill K DeWit:
Thank you.

Steven Jack Butala:
Is that what you’re trying to get here?

Jill K DeWit:
Yup, I want to clarify this, yes.

Steven Jack Butala:
What happens in Western, let’s say Western Washington State is going to be very different than what happens in Arizona or Massachusetts. That’s just how it is. It’s the nature because they’re completely different real estate environments, but what happens in the seven major zip codes that are in and around Tulsa, for example, they should be relatively the same, especially the land market. So no, don’t even, you’re wasting your time to compare-

Jill K DeWit:
DOM of all of them in one spreadsheet. You can’t do that.

Steven Jack Butala:
You can’t say, “Well, all this stuff in Tulsa came out great so I’m just going to mail there.” What you want to do in Washington State or anywhere else for that matter is look at seven or eight zip codes in a market that you’ve trolled and it makes sense from a trolling standpoint that you want to-

Jill K DeWit:
Pick the best ones.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, make sure they’re local, apples to apples.

Jill K DeWit:
Can I have a follow up to that too?

Steven Jack Butala:
Sure.

Jill K DeWit:
I’m brand new. Do you want me to mail all three?

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah.

Jill K DeWit:
Okay, and how much? Last I’m going to ask you and then I’ll leave you alone. How much volume?

Steven Jack Butala:
I think you should, I mean, for me-

Jill K DeWit:
Per area.

Steven Jack Butala:
Man, I wouldn’t. I’m not sure I would do a mailer.

Jill K DeWit:
I’m brand new and money’s not a problem.

Steven Jack Butala:
I wouldn’t do a mailer for less than 5,000 units.

Jill K DeWit:
Okay. Per area or of those three? I have three identified. So 1500, 1600, 1800.

Steven Jack Butala:
Sure. I still think that’s a little thin. I think three to four in each area would be ideal.

Jill K DeWit:
3,000 to 4,000?

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah.

Jill K DeWit:
Okay. Thank you. So for those of you who are brand new and money’s not a problem right now, that’s what you should do.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, because if you find any level of a good transaction or a good land deal, people will throw money at you in our group, including us.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah, that’s the end result. So the end result is after it all goes out and comes back, you’re going to go, “Oh, well, I’m going to focus on this area. I know what I found. I’m going to move everything over here, all my efforts, send more mail. I bought all the one to five acres. Now I’m going to buy the five to 10 and I’m going to buy the 10 to 20 and be here for a while.” Then maybe still while that you’re doing that, always be looking for new things to roll in with that.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, exactly.

Jill K DeWit:
That’s awesome. Thank you.

Steven Jack Butala:
Let’s take a look at another one of our favorite land acquisitions from our weekly Thursday member webinar.

Steven Jack Butala:
Welcome back. So Jill, you have something inspirational to share with us at the end here?

Jill K DeWit:
Yes, I do. So here’s my thought. I’m thinking about hangups people have. What? I didn’t mean to look at you when I said that.

Steven Jack Butala:
I’m so sorry.

Jill K DeWit:
Hangups that people have.

Steven Jack Butala:
I’m sorry.

Jill K DeWit:
If you are in a long-term relationship and someone says, “I was thinking about hangups that people have,” you know-

Jill K DeWit:
I was just hypothetically speaking.

Steven Jack Butala:
… what she means is, “Here it comes. Let’s hear what’s wrong with me today.”

Jill K DeWit:
Did you know … I’m sure many people have trouble picking out X or whatever it is. That’s awesome. That’s not what I meant. No, but my last little thought today is as we’re going into 2023 and with this new year, I want you to help with your confidence. I want you to decide what your new title’s going to be. Is it-

Steven Jack Butala:
I like this.

Jill K DeWit:
You like this? Is it president? Is it CEO? Is it, fill in the blank, owner, principal, whatever you want to do? I want you to, because this is it, and if you’re like us and you want to be an investor, pick your title.

Steven Jack Butala:
Not Failing Husband. That’s not a title.

Jill K DeWit:
No, that’s not a good title. Oh, that is a title. That’s definitely a title. It’s not a good title. So yeah.

Steven Jack Butala:
Not college Dropout.

Jill K DeWit:
No, that’s not a good title. That’s a title, but don’t do that. Endlessly living on my parents’ couch, that’s not a title. I mean, that’s a title, but that’s not a good one. I want you to decide what your title is. I want you to put that on your hat, basically, and I want you to own it. I’m dead serious. As crazy as it sounds, I see other Land Academy people, not that often, but I see them have their own little company logo on their shirts.

Steven Jack Butala:
Like this.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah, like this, owning it and loving it because you can wake up tomorrow and say, “You know what? This is it.” Whatever’s going on in your head, and if you have a bad day, so what? Wake up tomorrow, put that hat back on and say, “I’m going to do better today. I’m going to solve whatever problems I had yesterday, and we’re going to move forward.”

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s interesting. I never thought about the real impact of embroidering something on your clothing like the name of your company. I think that there’s a huge subconscious like, “It’s real now,” kind of thing. Used to be business cards, but no one does that anymore.

Jill K DeWit:
So big deal. You spend a couple hundred dollars on Fiverr or Upwork and have somebody make you a logo that you think is cool. Spend another $50 or so getting a shirt embroidered or something or a hat and there you go. It makes a big difference.

Steven Jack Butala:
In a deeper way, there’s all kinds of stuff that makes you think something’s real. For me, I have to spreadsheet it out and see how it’s going to end, and then I start down the path of getting to that end and then it’s real.

Jill K DeWit:
You know what? By the way, next week, before I move on to the ask you a question, after I make myself a note, but next week I’ll share with you something that I had embroidered.

Steven Jack Butala:
Oh, I know what you’re talking about.

Jill K DeWit:
I should have brought it today, but I didn’t. So I will share it next week. So you know what I’m talking about. So Jack, how about you? Do you have something informational to share as we wrap up today?

Steven Jack Butala:
I do. So like everybody, I just sat myself down and said, “Well, how’s your year going to go in 2023, and what do you need to work on? Do you want to make more money? You want to kick more kids out of the house? What do you really want to have happen?”

Jill K DeWit:
I like that.

Steven Jack Butala:
You know what? I really did a mental inventory on what I think I need to work on in ’23, and what kept coming up is not money, for the first time ever, not money. It’s not working harder, more or any of that. It’s healthcare, personal health and wellness. So I really started to … I did this in Vail, by the way, started to philosophically think about how we go about buying and selling land and why we’re so successful in how we run Land Academy and continue to launch products as our members are requesting them. There’s a data piece for everything, and I really realized that there’s no data piece for health and wellness. Well, there is now.

Steven Jack Butala:
So I joined a group called Forward. Jill and I both joined together, where they take blood as frequently as you want them to and to look at all the numbers, look at all the data just like we do in real estate and decide whether your cholesterol is an acceptable range and on and on and on, all your vital signs, blood pressure and all of that. So I deconstructed, backwards deconstructed what I want December of 2023 to look like from a healthcare standpoint, and I started down that path. Completely changed my diet, changed exercise routine, meaning I got one and-

Jill K DeWit:
Thank you for saying it before I. I was waiting for this. I’m like, “Let it go, let it go, let it go.”

Steven Jack Butala:
So I track what I eat, what I eat, what I drink, how many calories I’m burning from an exercise standpoint, and it’s a daily tracker. I’m sitting here-

Jill K DeWit:
That’s what works for you. That’s the point.

Steven Jack Butala:
… looking at myself in a mirror going, “Why didn’t I do this 10 years ago?” I’m so data-driven about everything.

Jill K DeWit:
Again too, thank you for saying so I didn’t have to. Why didn’t you do this 10 years ago? Just kidding. That’s good.

Steven Jack Butala:
It takes maybe a half hour a day. I don’t think so. Maybe 10 minutes a day.

Jill K DeWit:
Really? To do all that?

Steven Jack Butala:
To do the whole thing, and I know where I am now.

Jill K DeWit:
I totally don’t know what I’m doing. I stopped your thing. I screwed you up. I’m sure you can fix this up. Oh, see, you’re so good at this.

Steven Jack Butala:
Hey, join us next Wednesday for another interesting episode.

Jill K DeWit:
We hope.

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

Jill K DeWit:
That was awesome. So glad you’re here. Three, two, one. 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.