Transcript: 

Steven Jack Butala:
I’m Steven Jack Butala.

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

Steven Jack Butala:
This is episode number 1937. Today, we are talking in-depth about the data. How the data will tell you exactly what to do. Then later on in the show we’ll talk about how to avoid sending overpriced mailers. Two really popular topics that our staff tells us are popular in Discord, and popular in the whole customer service environment for Land Academy members.

Jill K DeWit:
Always. It’s funny, if you send overpriced offers, you know right away because everybody calls you back, and they love you. It’s hilarious. I have to pause and say something right now, I just realized. As I’m walking into your office here to record this, I realized for whatever reason, at this point in my life, I’m excited about the weirdest things. Let me tell you what I’m excited about this week. We just had two cars serviced, and our air conditioning check-up kind of thing at the house, and it all came back that nothing was needed. I’m like, “Really?” It always seems that your car goes in, it needs something, and we had two cars go in, nothing. I’m like … Now, granted it wasn’t cheap getting them serviced, but there is that. But at least they didn’t come back and go, “Oh, you’ve got to have …” Fill in the blank, and it’s $900.

Steven Jack Butala:
Now that you said that, something horrific’s going to happen before the week’s over.

Jill K DeWit:
Oh, wait. Hold on a moment. That’s okay. We just bought a new pool filter, or pool pump, excuse me. So don’t think that it’s all peachy over here.

Steven Jack Butala:
It’s endless.

Jill K DeWit:
It is endless.

Steven Jack Butala:
I don’t know we got on this so fast.

Jill K DeWit:
I don’t know. I don’t know. You know it’s funny, you go back and forth where you want to live and lifestyle and things like that. We do, anyway. I do, anyway. Right now, Jack is, “I can feel it. You are becoming an association, HOA, I don’t do anything outside the walls person really fast.” Like “That wouldn’t be bad,” right?

Steven Jack Butala:
It’s just people. There’s an underlying theme today, that about … We’re going to talk about data, which is a real easy discussion, and how data really tells you what to do. So the underlying theme is you don’t really have to be emotional, or pay attention to a lot, except for data. [inaudible 00:02:30].

Jill K DeWit:
You don’t have to be emotional. That’s a whole nother topic. I’m writing that one. No.

Steven Jack Butala:
Topic number one. And then the next we’re going to talk about pricing mailers. There’s no emotion in that.

Jill K DeWit:
No.

Steven Jack Butala:
And then, at the end of the show, Jill and I always put in our 2 cents with some opinions about stuff, and there’s some interesting things going on in the world right now, as it pertains to land, of course, that I’ve never seen before. And I think it’s a result of … Everything’s a result of sign of the times. But no, I don’t-

Jill K DeWit:
I agree.

Steven Jack Butala:
Me inside of an HOA is maybe not the best thing.

Jill K DeWit:
No, I know, but I know that’s not the what’s going to happen. But I can feel you kind of going, “What’s wrong with that?” Like maybe then I wouldn’t have to care about … I don’t have to do anything. Someone else would be responsible for my roof, and the pool, and fill in the blank.

Steven Jack Butala:
The pendulum swings too far sometimes. And our pendulum for home maintenance and life maintenance has swung a little too far in one direction. In case you can’t tell. Jill’s little speech here.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah. Next thing you know, I’m just going to give up all together. I’m just like, I’m going to walk around in sweats.

Steven Jack Butala:
Oh my god.

Jill K DeWit:
I’m going to wear sweats every day and just say, “Who cares?” No.

Steven Jack Butala:
And now we do the show.

Jill K DeWit:
Okay.

Steven Jack Butala:
I hope you’re enjoying our new 2023 weekly show. Each week we answer questions from our Land Academy Discord forum, review land acquisitions from our weekly Thursday member webinar, and take a deep dive into two land related topics by popular requests. As I mentioned a couple minutes ago. Let’s take a question posted by one of our members on the Land Academy Discord online community. If you want to sneak peak of our Discord channel, please go to land investors.com. It’s free, and it’s in read only format so you can kind of observe what we’re all silly about.

Jill K DeWit:
Most of the channel, not everything’s there, which is cool too. All right. Dan S rants. It says, “The crazy people are coming out of the woodwork right now. I keep having people that want to sell, but are requesting weird stuff. I have never included earnest money until now. People are asking for it.” Interesting. “I have never had anyone want to bring in a realtor when we already have an escrow until now. I’ve had people previously asked to use a standard realtor purchase agreement, until I explain what that actually meant. Now, I have people insisting on it, even though I mark through literally everything, and I just add an amendment with my single page wordage.” I love that.

Steven Jack Butala:
[inaudible 00:05:05].

Jill K DeWit:
Could you imagine.

Steven Jack Butala:
[inaudible 00:05:05].

Jill K DeWit:
I want to do that. Line every single darn page out, and put an amendment. I would do that. This is great. “They’re all good deals, but my goodness, they’re upping the stress and difficulty level for nothing.” This is good. This is a good point to make.

Steven Jack Butala:
For the three over four of you who are listening or watching to this who don’t know this, you don’t need a real estate agent to do a real estate deal in this country.

Jill K DeWit:
Even it’s your house.

Steven Jack Butala:
National Association of Realtors has spent decades of hundreds of millions of dollars to change this opinion, so that you think you need a real estate agent. And the result of that is that many, many, many people subconsciously, or consciously for whatever reason, think that you need a real estate agent. It’s interesting, because we all know that we don’t need a car dealer to buy a car.

Jill K DeWit:
Right, exactly.

Steven Jack Butala:
It’s the exact same thing. It’s just a convenience. And so, again, the three or four of you that who may see using a real estate agent as a convenience, you just don’t need it. We’re all land professionals here, real estate professionals. We can do our own deals. All you need is a title agent, and really, even then you don’t need that.

Jill K DeWit:
Correct.

Steven Jack Butala:
So no, you don’t need a real estate agent. For some reason, I can envision the stories behind all of these things. I love Dan, by the way. Dan’s up in the Pacific Northwest. He’s been with us for a while. Career Path alumni. Does a ton of deals. Pretty laid back guy. And he’s just always fun to talk to. We interviewed him a few months ago, so if you go back in our podcast archive, if you want to, he’s always got a lot of interesting stuff to say, including this. I’m going to talk about this at the end of the show, but this is the world we live in now. And it’s not just real estate, but there’s strange, strange things going on, where … And I’ll talk about it at the end, but …

Jill K DeWit:
I was going to add, some of the things he mentioned were like … You talked about the contract. Do we need that? No.

Steven Jack Butala:
No.

Jill K DeWit:
If they want it, you could do what he did. Like, “Fine, I’ll get my hands on one.” I’m sure you could find a PDF version by Googling it, and you could print it out, fill it out, cross everything off you want, just so they feel good about it, and use that to open escrow. That’s fine.

Steven Jack Butala:
Real estate agents are, in this case specifically, they’re just getting in the way, and then they’re getting paid for doing nothing. You already put the deal together.

Jill K DeWit:
Well, you know what’s funny about that, too? Say they want the paperwork, but not the agent, they think they need to sign that. That paperwork’s not designed for us. So you should be marking things out, because you’re not taking a commission. This doesn’t apply to you, this doesn’t apply to you. All these things don’t apply to us. It really does apply to agents, and what they’re required to do. Earnest money. You know what? I can’t remember the last time.

Steven Jack Butala:
I don’t think we’ve ever done earnest money.

Jill K DeWit:
I have, but very, very rarely do I do it. Just because we connect, and I’m just making the deal. “Here you go, we’re going for it,” kind of thing.

Steven Jack Butala:
Jill is acting as a real estate agent in our own transaction.

Jill K DeWit:
That’s the point.

Steven Jack Butala:
The only reason you would ever need a real estate agent is to calm everybody down, both parties, in case that some stuff happens in the middle of the deal, which usually is way more likely to happen with an emotional real estate deal like a house. Like, it’s specifically a primary residence where, “Oh, you said you were going to change the curtains out, and you didn’t.” We don’t want to scream at a seller and lose a $200,000, $300,000, $400,000, $500,000 transaction because of that. You scream at the real estate agent, and they go and calm it all down.

Jill K DeWit:
You know what I think?

Steven Jack Butala:
That doesn’t happen in land.

Jill K DeWit:
I think people are just seeking a little bit of a level of security. They think that by having some unrelated third party in here overseeing the transaction, that it’s going to make it better, just safer, whatever. Well, that’s what escrow’s for. So in that situation, and these, what we’re talking about here, that’s really all you need. Especially if you’re doing higher dollar amount transactions. Like you’re buying for $30,000 and above. Let’s just say it used to be $10,000, was our threshold for us.

Jill K DeWit:
But even in those situations, so you know, and it’s clear, it’s not required. It’s just your comfort level. But for the transactions we are doing, I don’t have to. I could say I’m buying it directly from a seller, like we’re talking about here. Whatever my seller and I work out, we do it. And I choose to, on the higher dollar amounts, go through escrow. Because for us it’s just easier. And on the sell side, the people that I’m traditionally selling for, they’re going to want it.

Steven Jack Butala:
And it’s worth it.

Jill K DeWit:
Right, and I bake that cost into the transaction, because I’m buying for $30,000 and selling for $80,000. I can afford a $1400 escrow close. It’s totally fine.

Steven Jack Butala:
I hope we all see value in the numbers that Jill just said. $1400 to close a deal, get Title insurance, get it recorded properly. You don’t have to do a lot of paperwork yourselves.

Jill K DeWit:
Not even properly. It’s like we do it properly, I just don’t have to do it.

Steven Jack Butala:
But it’s [inaudible 00:10:07], and if something goes wrong that you can go back to somebody and say, “This person didn’t do this right. Not me. I didn’t record it.” Because I’ve recorded a lot of wrong stuff in my life. And that’s one of the reasons I use Title now too. So we all see some value in it. And that business model really works. And I think it’s value … For the most part, there’s value in getting Title insurance. Not all the time, but for the most part. There’s no value in paying a real estate agent 6%, when they’re not finding. All they’re doing is posting it on the internet, and waiting for somebody to call. So we’re long past any value for a real estate agent. If real estate agents, however charge $1400-

Jill K DeWit:
A flat rate.

Steven Jack Butala:
Flat rate for an $80,000 deal-

Jill K DeWit:
Do you remember that was a thing.

Steven Jack Butala:
… might do it. If they charge $1400 for a $3 million house, we might do it.

Jill K DeWit:
Where did that go?

Steven Jack Butala:
We might all see some value in it.

Jill K DeWit:
Where did that go? Remember, that was a thing for a while back.

Steven Jack Butala:
I think a lot of things. The internet.

Jill K DeWit:
That all went away.

Steven Jack Butala:
The internet made a lot of things cheap to free. And it kind of eroded away at … It didn’t in the long run. I can’t sustain that.

Jill K DeWit:
There were flat rate real estate brokers, and I haven’t seen anything like that in years. It breaks my heart, because that made sense.

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s right.

Jill K DeWit:
There used to be like $2,000-

Steven Jack Butala:
Remember, help you sell?

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah. Yes. Totally, stuff like that.

Steven Jack Butala:
So Dan’s completely right here.

Jill K DeWit:
This is funny.

Steven Jack Butala:
And this is not going away, and I’ll talk about it at the end. This world, the way, it’s really a result of years, and coming on three years now of this post COVID environment we live in. Where everybody’s online, and everybody’s got an opinion, and for whatever reason that’s valuable, and they feel like they can insert themselves into anything and everything that’s going on, just for the sake of insertion.

Steven Jack Butala:
Not because they’re going to make the transaction better. That’s what’s been happening in Dan’s deal here. This deal’s not becoming easier now, it’s becoming more difficult because more people are getting involved, and-

Jill K DeWit:
That’s what happens.

Steven Jack Butala:
[inaudible 00:12:06] the price isn’t changing. He didn’t sit here and say, “Oh, the prices are changing.

Jill K DeWit:
Isn’t that funny.

Steven Jack Butala:
And they changed the price, or they changed the terms, and it’s going to make it more … It’s not now a deal that I want to do under the Land Academy model [inaudible 00:12:17] or whatever. That would be one thing. That I understand. They want to come in and change the price, I understand that, because they talk to their Aunt Sally or something. That happens, and I get that.

Jill K DeWit:
I hear you.

Steven Jack Butala:
But not, let’s bring somebody in, and change a contract and make it harder. Today’s topic, the data will tell you what to do. This is half of the meat of the show.

Jill K DeWit:
Got it.

Steven Jack Butala:
I’m getting used to the new format too.

Jill K DeWit:
Okay.

Steven Jack Butala:
I’m going to start off with a little anecdote. My New Year’s resolution was to get more healthy. And so, Jill and I joined a group called Forward, goforward.com. I’m not plugging it. I can’t [inaudible 00:13:02].

Jill K DeWit:
No affiliation.

Steven Jack Butala:
No affiliation. We don’t get any money, and we don’t want any. I’m just sharing a personal experience.

Jill K DeWit:
I wouldn’t turn it down.

Steven Jack Butala:
And the first thing they do … Yeah.

Jill K DeWit:
Hold on a moment. So if you work for Forward, call us, we can help.

Steven Jack Butala:
It would be an easy endorsement for us because we’re sold. Both of us are sold-

Jill K DeWit:
Totally.

Steven Jack Butala:
… on this. It’s for I think $125, $150 a month, each.

Jill K DeWit:
I don’t know.

Steven Jack Butala:
It does not replace health insurance in any way. But what it allows you to do is to get into a schedule, and get into their technology to establish the results of a blood test, and respiratory tests, and EKGs, and ECGs, and all of the things that are very important, in my opinion, for people that are specifically our age where there’s nothing wrong with us. We just want to prevent things from going wrong. We need a baseline, a medical history. And that’s all data. So they start by taking blood, and running all kinds of tests, and putting it into their tech system. It’s essentially an app. Pretty amazing app. And once in a while we take our blood pressure, we monitor what we eat, we exercise, and then we get another blood test three to six months later.

Steven Jack Butala:
And Jill’s case, it’s a year later, because she doesn’t need anything at all. And it’s the data. The data tells us what to do. So now, truth be told, I have slightly high cholesterol. Completely changed my exercise scenario, and completely changed what I’ve eaten. And that’s coming back to where it should be. And so the data, I didn’t do this because I want to eat more vegetables to feel better. Although, that happened. What I did was unemotionally had blood drawn, got it into a computer system that said, “Yeah, you probably eat too much meat or too much … Your cholesterol’s too high for a bunch of reasons,” and got it back down to where it should be. There’s data in everything, and there’s always been data in Land Academy. We built Land Academy around data. I guess it’s sort of on accident, but [inaudible 00:15:06]-

Jill K DeWit:
That’s just how you roll. That’s how you make-

Steven Jack Butala:
There’s data in everything.

Jill K DeWit:
That’s a good point. From the moment I met you, you research everything. You’ve probably researched where we’re going to dinner tonight, and why it’s a good restaurant. Back then, and, “Here’s our trip we’re taking. Here’s where we’re going to …” Oh, you know what? Here’s a truth time. I just had a-

Steven Jack Butala:
She got that look.

Jill K DeWit:
I just had a, “Oh, I just remembered this.”

Steven Jack Butala:
If you’re on YouTube, rewind just a few seconds, and look at that. Look at Jill’s little lip right here. It goes up like that.

Jill K DeWit:
What does it say?

Steven Jack Butala:
Here it comes.

Jill K DeWit:
Oh.

Steven Jack Butala:
I’m going to get it.

Jill K DeWit:
I forgot. I was planning a weekend trip with the whole family, with the kids, and I had to put together a spreadsheet.

Steven Jack Butala:
I do remember that.

Jill K DeWit:
Yes.

Steven Jack Butala:
It was a long time ago.

Jill K DeWit:
Yes, this is a long time ago. So you want to talk about data, welcome to my world. We can’t do a vacation. Well, that was back then. Now it’s okay, but times were a little bit tighter, and we needed a budget. And I had to budget out every darn little thing. Gas, where we’re staying,-

Steven Jack Butala:
We’re skiing.

Jill K DeWit:
… the cost,-

Steven Jack Butala:
We went skiing.

Jill K DeWit:
… the tickets, the hotel, the meals, drinks. [inaudible 00:16:19]-

Steven Jack Butala:
What was it like? I have to ask you. Did that disgust you? Or was it kind of like, “I kind of respect this?”

Jill K DeWit:
No, it was more the first one.

Steven Jack Butala:
You hated it?

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah, I hated it. I hated every minute of it, but I did it because that was the only way it was going to happen. So yeah. No, I don’t go, “Oh, this makes sense. This is really smart.” I’m like, “Are you flipping kidding me? I got to do this now? I just want to go on vacation.”

Steven Jack Butala:
You know we came in under budget on that trip?

Jill K DeWit:
Yes.

Steven Jack Butala:
Way under budget.

Jill K DeWit:
Yes. I had to show it to you and prove it to. You’re like, “Okay, we can go. Thank you.” Back to the topic.

Steven Jack Butala:
That was early on in our time together, but that could’ve blown up in my face pretty easily.

Jill K DeWit:
I guess that’s a little story about how Jack is with data. Jack does it … You don’t know how to run around on this planet without using data.

Steven Jack Butala:
Look, here’s the thing, there’s a lot of things to be emotional about in this life, in your life. Being emotional about the person that you’re choosing to spend the rest of your life with, ding ding, I’m all for it.

Jill K DeWit:
What day did you use on me, by the way? Hold on a moment now that you-

Steven Jack Butala:
Just let me get through this.

Jill K DeWit:
Okay.

Steven Jack Butala:
Being emotional about your children growing up, and watching them growing up, and the first … I’ll never forget the first time our kids tasted a french fry. For some reason, that just became a thing because they just … The first time you eat a french fry, it’s like the world is just the greatest place there ever was. So there’s all … And emotion in movies, and all kinds of … There’s lots of places for emotion. Making money, there’s no place for emotion. There’s no place for emotion when it comes to staying healthy and maintaining your health. There’s all kinds of places for no emotion at all. Like Jill just said, the cars went in, they came back out, they maintain them, they regular maintenance. There’s no emotion in that. And even if they came back and said, you need a new alternator or whatever ends up happening in cars these days, no emotion.

Steven Jack Butala:
I think you have to get through times and realize which times there’s to be emotional, and what times are not. It’s really interesting to go through Discord … If you’re a member, go through Discord, and look at the questions, especially in the newbie section where people are brand new, and they’re asking questions, and how it’s typed out, or in the tone of the question.

Jill K DeWit:
This is good.

Steven Jack Butala:
And you can see, I can see very, very quickly who’s acclimating themselves to this, who’s overcoming the little questions that they have? Who’s going through the Land Academy program and re-watching, and watching, and re-watching the modules, or the chapters that they may be harder for them to understand, and how they’re responding. Go to the, Would you do this deal, section, and you’ll see in the notes, if this person’s struggling or if they have a huge sense of confidence.

Steven Jack Butala:
It’s like, “I need some funding on this, because I love this freaking deal. Let’s do it.” I think this is a place to just check your emotion at the door. The data will tell you exactly what to do. When I started out in this, I would try to make markets work. There was no such thing as a red, yellow and green tests. No such thing as getting … There was no such thing as DataTree, Redfin, Zillow. There was not such-

Jill K DeWit:
It didn’t even have RealQuest. We didn’t have CoreLogic.

Steven Jack Butala:
There was nothing. All there was, was AssessorData. That where you literally walked into the county, sometimes flew there, walked into the county, bought a CD if you’re lucky, and put it on your … There’s many times I would go back to a motel room and put it on, into my laptop, and then spend two or three days trying to get the data into the right … And so, there was no opportunity, or no real data from which to make a decision. And so, this is why this is such a luxurious time.

Jill K DeWit:
Oh gosh, yes.

Steven Jack Butala:
From a data perspective, and a real estate investment perspective. Because we have all this stuff at our disposal, and it’s damn near free. It’s not free, free. It’s not zero, and I’m leery of zero anyway. But it’ll tell you exactly what to do if you let it. Trolling is a great example.

Steven Jack Butala:
If you’re trolling through the markets like we talk about, all over the place, especially in Land Academy 3.0, and constantly-

Jill K DeWit:
That’s what I think, yeah.

Steven Jack Butala:
… [inaudible 00:20:34] environments. If you’re looking at a market and the numbers aren’t immediately coming up to fit your criteria, of let’s say, like Jill’s buy for 30 [inaudible 00:20:43], or 80, or 90, and then you send a mailer out and expect that, the data told you what to do, and you just didn’t listen. And so, that’s a easy thing to control. Well, the data’s telling me exactly what to do. I don’t have any emotion about it. I’m going to send mail there, or not send mail there.

Jill K DeWit:
That’s my first thought when I read this topic, it was … And I’m going to get back to the other thing here in a minute. My first thought was, “Data’s going to tell you what to do,” and that just starts with picking at county, picking an area. The data’s right there. And we didn’t, like you said, we didn’t have that before. I can’t remember the last time I heard someone say, “Oh, I missed the boat, didn’t I?” That doesn’t come up anymore. Isn’t that funny? Used to be years ago, people was like, “Oh shoot, I’m probably late to the game, aren’t I?”

Steven Jack Butala:
I hear it lots. I hear it.

Jill K DeWit:
Oh, you do?

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah.

Jill K DeWit:
Oh, I don’t hear it at all.

Steven Jack Butala:
Well, the kids are out of the house, so we don’t hear it. You don’t hear it.

Jill K DeWit:
Well, no. Not the kids. No, no, I mean in Land Academy. People like wanting to be investors like us. Like, “I’m sure all the good deals are gone,” or something like that. That used to come up. And I used to say, “Hold on to your hat because that’s definitely not true,” and this was like a year or two ago. It was the last time I heard it, and-

Steven Jack Butala:
A year or two ago they may have missed the boat, but I’ll tell you, 2023, you’re in it now. In a great way.

Jill K DeWit:
Well, my comment was always though, “But hold on a second, the data keeps getting better.” We’re getting our hands on more and more land data, land focus, and more accurate ZIP code data, things like that, that we didn’t have five, 10 years ago. That, you’re coming in now, it’s going to make it so much easier. Even just when I look at properties, and I’m doing my due diligence on do I want to buy it now? The data that I have, and how I can quickly put in a state and county, and APN, and look at it. What they paid, all the details, zoning, all that stuff. I didn’t have that back then. These were all phone calls to the county that we had to make to uncover this information. It’s so nice. So it just keeps getting better.

Steven Jack Butala:
If you picture … I did a blog about this a long time ago, maybe five or seven years ago. You picture three houses lined up next to each other. Five houses … this is a 2023 version of that. There’s five houses together. They’re all valued at $280,000, $250,000, $290,000, $110,000, $250,000, which one are you going to buy or which one you need to look at?

Jill K DeWit:
The $110,000.

Steven Jack Butala:
$110,000. Why is it valued at $110,000? Well, for whatever reason, that algorithm that you’re looking at, whether it’s Zillow, Realtor, or a combination of them, which I prefer, is there’s something that’s creating less value in there on the acquisition side. So go in there, take a-

Jill K DeWit:
Figure it out.

Steven Jack Butala:
And you can do this with land. Go in there and find out why it’s valued for less, and you have two choices. Buy it cheap and resell it for more, which is what we do. Or buy it and change whatever the value deterrent is to get it up to the rest, and sell for that amount. That’s what we’re here to do. The data’s telling us what to do. I’m not going to try to buy the one on the left that that got valued at $260,000 and try to buy it for, I’m just not going to do that.

Jill K DeWit:
$110,000.

Steven Jack Butala:
It’s just silly to … It’s a round peg, square hole scenario, and I don’t get emotional about it at all. Yeah, I’m buying this asset for $28,000 that I know I can sell for $33,000 or $92,000, or whatever the number is, or I’m not going to buy it. I’m going to move on to the next one.

Jill K DeWit:
I would like to address something here that I still see happening, and I want to let everybody know-

Steven Jack Butala:
She’s pointing.

Jill K DeWit:
… what you should do. Yes, I am pointing. This could be you. I see people entering into areas where there is no data, so they really have no idea. And they’re brand new.

Steven Jack Butala:
Flying blind.

Jill K DeWit:
Totally.

Steven Jack Butala:
I see that too.

Jill K DeWit:
I don’t even do that. Yes, it’s great when there’s no data. Because hey, no one even knows what it’s worth. Well, that’s partially, but you don’t even really know what you’re doing. And if you’re new, please don’t do that. I want you to go to areas that there is data, that you can really make good, accurate decisions. So if you’re like, “Well, I really want to mail this area because I heard all this stuff,” come back to it. Don’t do it. Move on to one that you have. It’s okay. I know you heard the Amazon plant is going there. Fill in the blank. Move on. Go to a place that you really can assess, make good decisions. Not guess.

Steven Jack Butala:
If you’re trying to date a man, and all the signs are saying, “This is not the man to date …”

Jill K DeWit:
This is what I was going to ask you. Keep going.

Steven Jack Butala:
Oh yeah? I don’t want to steal your thunder here.

Jill K DeWit:
Oh no, I was going to … Well, go ahead and finish your sentence, and then I have a direct question.

Steven Jack Butala:
I’m almost sure he’s not a good man to date.

Jill K DeWit:
What data did you use on me?

Steven Jack Butala:
You know what, Jill, the truth of it is, my entire … I’m a former accountant.

Jill K DeWit:
I’m sure there’s data.

Steven Jack Butala:
My entire … I can truly say this. I’m not sure I chose you, by the way. I think it was the other way around. But you’re just a lot of fun. That’s truly … That’s all I … I never expected that this would be a lifelong thing. I figured we’d just have a bunch of fun. Jill and I are-

Jill K DeWit:
For a few months, and then it would-

Steven Jack Butala:
… from very different geographic locations, but very similar backgrounds, and we’re very similar aged. And just that, I guess that’s data. I didn’t even think of that.

Jill K DeWit:
There we go. And now it comes out.

Steven Jack Butala:
The more we talked about our upbringing, our parents, and how things got handled and just-

Jill K DeWit:
Where we graduated.

Steven Jack Butala:
… similar music,-

Jill K DeWit:
Music.

Steven Jack Butala:
… all of it. That is all data. There are more similarities. So every time you see a romantic comedy, and people have a first date, “Oh, I’m interested in this, I’m interested in this, we’re all … It’s very similar. That’s data. So no, I didn’t consciously do it, but that’s what happened.

Jill K DeWit:
I figured there’s a spreadsheet running around here somewhere that you have hidden.

Steven Jack Butala:
Why do you continually put up with this? Is it data, or just worn out?

Jill K DeWit:
I like that. Yeah, you wore me down.

Steven Jack Butala:
Permanently? That’s good. That’s a show. That’s a whole new program. How to wear her out so she just doesn’t care anymore.

Jill K DeWit:
Exactly. “Fine, what do I have to do now? I have to do this to go on vacation? Fine. I’m doing it. I don’t really care. Bring it. That’s it.” I am sure that happens.

Steven Jack Butala:
[inaudible 00:27:42] vacations are really different.

Jill K DeWit:
We know couples like that. They’re older than us. Like, “Yeah, I don’t really care at this point.”

Steven Jack Butala:
We do. A lot of them, the majority.

Jill K DeWit:
We do.

Steven Jack Butala:
Boy, they’re different. Our vacations are different now. We just got back from Vail, and there was no … No one looked at the price tag of anything on that vacation.

Jill K DeWit:
Thank you, I didn’t [inaudible 00:28:01] if anybody … You did the spreadsheet before you presented it to me.

Steven Jack Butala:
I’m the one who’s saying, “We should go in this jewelry store and see what they have, because it looks like they have some good stuff.” No one looks at the prices, and Jill walks out with a ring.

Jill K DeWit:
Thank you.

Steven Jack Butala:
That literally happened.

Jill K DeWit:
I know. That was really nice. Thank you.

Steven Jack Butala:
I was my idea, not your idea.

Jill K DeWit:
[inaudible 00:28:18]. I know. That was very sweet. That was like the Christmas day or the day after. It was very sweet. You’re awesome.

Steven Jack Butala:
So, that’s not data.

Jill K DeWit:
No, that wasn’t data.

Steven Jack Butala:
All I’m saying is, we can wrap it up with this. There’s data in everything, and I think that you’d be much better off, especially when it comes to money. So look at the data of everything. I get a, for whatever reason, in my feed, the Dear Abbey version of financial things going on. Financial, and people’s lives pops up in my newsfeed, probably because I click on it too much. And I have story, after story, after story of people that make [inaudible 00:28:58] their households make $200,000, $300,00, $400,000, $500,000. There’s two people, and they don’t have any money.

Jill K DeWit:
I know.

Steven Jack Butala:
And that’s all just … You can turn that around in a week.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah, I was thinking that, and it made me think of, if you don’t use data, whether or not to decide where you should live and buy a house, and what job you’re going to take, you’re nuts.

Steven Jack Butala:
All that. What car you drive, how much it costs, where you get your gas.

Jill K DeWit:
Food.

Steven Jack Butala:
When Jill and I are on the road with the RV, we are always looking for cheap gas that’s 10 cents cheaper a gallon.

Jill K DeWit:
There’s things we-

Steven Jack Butala:
And where to get it.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah, all kidding aside, most of our lives were very budget conscious for everything that we do. Even right now, I was just working on stuff for our staff at the office, and I’m really budget conscious about that. There’s a few things and a few times that we let our hair down.

Steven Jack Butala:
I probably spend a cumulative month of full-time work hours managing our taxes. It’s the single largest expense that we have in our company, and I’m bent on doing it. It goes without saying, ethically, and legally, and correctly, and within the limits of what the law allows, which is a [inaudible 00:30:12]. I haven’t talked about this in a while, but we live in a beautiful place. Where the tax law is in our favor as a small business owner. Let’s take a look at one of our favorite land acquisitions from our weekly Thursday member webinar.

Jill K DeWit:
When is this going to … Okay. I’m thinking of an ad, and I know this is going to get cut. One second here. What do you want to plug?

Steven Jack Butala:
The ebook.

Jill K DeWit:
The ebook for Land Academy?

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah.

Jill K DeWit:
Okay. All right. Is this all making sense to you? Is this something that you think you want to do? Learn to be a land investor, and get involved in Land Academy? Well, to find out more, go to landacademy.com, download our ebook, and read it. It’s, I don’t know, 10 plus pages long, and it really does tell our whole story.

Steven Jack Butala:
It’s like 37 pages, but that’s okay. Have you ever read the ebook?

Jill K DeWit:
I have, but I thought it was condensed. Well, I used the click notes version.

Steven Jack Butala:
Everything’s a little shorter [inaudible 00:31:29].

Jill K DeWit:
Read like I do. It’s maybe 37, but there’s only 10 really good ones. Just kidding. Whatever it is, check it out. And then, if you have any questions, send us a note, support@landacademy.com.

Steven Jack Butala:
Let’s take another question posted by one of our members on the Land Academy Discord online community. Again, if you want to sneak peek at our Discord channel, it’s something Jill and I are super proud of, please go to landinvestors.com. It’s free.

Jill K DeWit:
Hi, Jemay. Jemay and I communicate in Discord in other areas and stuff too.

Steven Jack Butala:
It’s a prelude to Land Academy ladies is coming.

Jill K DeWit:
Oh, good. Okay. So Jemay wrote, “Hey everybody. I’m looking at a market narrowed down by ZIP code, where the sold numbers range from $50,000 to $115,000 for five acres. Now I know that I have to narrow it down more by neighborhood. I got that. Question, when using offers to owners for your mailers, has anyone narrowed down their mailers by neighborhood/subdivision or is that too detailed? And am I overthinking this? Thanks.”

Steven Jack Butala:
Boy, you are not overthinking this. Because, to answer your direct question, you’re not overthinking this. There’s a response here that, by Dan again-

Jill K DeWit:
[inaudible 00:32:54] he wrote-

Steven Jack Butala:
[inaudible 00:32:54] Northwest Dan that it’s worth … Somebody responded. Dan responded, and-

Jill K DeWit:
Cool.

Steven Jack Butala:
… with some great advice, and then I’ll follow up.

Jill K DeWit:
Okay. So he wrote, “Assuming the lower numbers are not lower, because they have no access, or are not some other easily discernible anomaly, or just a freak outlier, I have taken both approaches. On some mailers, I’ve just adjusted the offers towards the lower end of the range and send it out. Unless your data set is very homogenous, you could see this kind of range in a lot of places. Where I send mail, there’s a lot of landlocked hillsides, and waterfront buildable lots, all the same size. You check for reason, and do your best off the data that you have. I might spend more time checking my pricing to make sure that the parcels I would actually want to buy, if they came back, and are not [inaudible 00:33:49] price. You could go neighborhood based or APN based pricing, but you really don’t want to delay getting the mail out indefinitely while you go line by line.”

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah, that’s not a good idea. “I tend to go more into specific neighborhoods, APNs, on a re-mail, or an area that I know better. There’s definitely a balance between caring enough, and spending enough time to work your data to get pricing reasonably done well, but also not overthinking, and spending a month on the same mailer trying to get it just perfect.” So true.

Steven Jack Butala:
So true. That’s why I included Dan’s response here, because there’s a balance in everything. You want to … I don’t think … This is really what the topic is here. Here’s a prelude to this topic. There’s a balance between spending too much time on a mailer, and too micro pricing it. And essentially making a very, very, very, at the end, educated guest and saying, “Let’s get it in the mail.” You have to decide who you are as a person, and where you are in that spectrum. I’d lean toward, let’s get it in the freaking mail, and let’s see what happens, and let sales work it out.

Steven Jack Butala:
Or let Jill’s environment … And honestly, within reason, she wants to do that too. She wants an opportunity to buy-

Jill K DeWit:
I’ll fix it.

Steven Jack Butala:
… some really cheap property by using her social skills. And so, let’s get into the topic because this is really … Jemay, this is a very good question. It’s something that I’m going to include in the next program, maybe in its own whole module, avoiding to over overprice mailers because-

Jill K DeWit:
That’s good.

Steven Jack Butala:
… the way we are now into a new data era, which we didn’t have when I did 2.0, when I recorded Land Academy 2.0. The good news is we have better data, and more data. And so it’s causing the way that we price mailers to be slightly, in some cases, overpriced, and we don’t want that.

Jill K DeWit:
There we go.

Steven Jack Butala:
Today’s second topic is how to avoid sending overpriced mailers. So what Jemay said is this, “I did everything right. I trolled, I found a great area that I liked. I applied the red, green, yellow test. It seems to work for multiple ZIP codes, let’s say even for a county. And I downloaded all the data, did everything that I’m supposed to do, and my range is too big. My sold and for sale price per acre,” or however she’s looking at it, “Is too wide. It’s between $50,000 an acre and $115,000.”

Steven Jack Butala:
And like Dan said, you have a couple choices. You can go on the low end, and get it out there, and let Jill work it out. Or you can get a little bit more micro about it, and a little bit more … Let’s call it educated about which breaking those areas of geography down, and repricing them to make it easier on the sales piece, which I’m a huge fan of.

Steven Jack Butala:
So what you need to do is implement some version of … I don’t want to call it neighborhood, because neighborhoods, there’s not neighborhoods in rural areas at all. It’s just land. You want to implement some version of APN pricing, and it’s very simple to do at the tail end of the mail area. You take a ZIP code that’s got all these variances and prices, and you resort it by APN. Let’s say an APN scheme that starts with the number one, and then it goes from one, and then obviously changes at two. You look at APN scheme number one as its own pricing set. And so, 20 or 30%, or maybe 15%, or some number might be appropriate to price that number one set of property. Number two might be higher. You might come in at … It might be coming in at a very, very, very low number.

Steven Jack Butala:
Let’s say on Jemay scenario, it’s coming in at $50,000, and you might want to price that a little bit higher, and on, and on, and on. And you’re going to knock out a lot of hate, and make that a lot more accuracy. What you’re giving up for that, sadly, and there’s no way to avoid this, is the opportunity for home runs. Once or twice a year, all of us who’ve send a ton of mail out, once or twice or three times a year, we buy a property for $20,000, $30,000, $40,000, whatever number that we offered, because they just want to sell it. And we sell it for a hell of a lot more.

Jill K DeWit:
Like $120,000.

Steven Jack Butala:
$120,000, $150,000.

Jill K DeWit:
You’re like, “What?”

Steven Jack Butala:
And it sells immediately, because the person who’s buying it realizes it’s worth a lot more. And so, you could live on that. You could live that one deal, and send a ton of offers and just wait for that. I wouldn’t recommend it at all, but you could. So the point is avoiding … If you implement this last step of what I call approaching APN pricing, you’re going to avoid a lot. A lot of problems.

Jill K DeWit:
I was going to say a lot about this. What’s the whole reason we’re even talking about this? Why do we even care? Because it’s so much easier to add money. If you come in hotter, send out lower offers, if you’re going to screw up, that’s the way I want you to screw up. Like Jack said, I want you to send them too low. Because it’s easier to add money A, and B, you might find a home run in there. Someone’s going to go, “I don’t care what they would’ve offered. I’m signing it anywhere. I need to get rid of this,” for whatever reason. “Today’s the day. I don’t care. I’m settling my estate. We’re all done. I’m not needing any money.” There’s so many people out there like that too, like, “I don’t need the money. You just do the work, you can have these dumb things.”

Jill K DeWit:
So you remove that if you overprice, and I can add money. And there’s reasons why when people go call up and say, “This is funny. Tell me, you just sent me an offer for $14,000. The thing’s worth $40,000.” That, or, “The thing’s worth $400,000.” Let’s just even say that. I’ve had crazy things happen. And sometimes let’s all be honest too. People think their asset is priceless, and I have to reel them back in.

Jill K DeWit:
But sometimes there are extenuating circumstances like waterfront, or it backs up to these BLM land, and there’s a path, something. There’s the location, the nature of the access, all kinds of things that might really mean I would pay more. I just missed that. So I can, and I do add money where it’s appropriate to make, but I still am not going to buy anything retail. That’s not what I’m here, unless it’s for me and my personal use, which that’s never what I’m doing. And what’s funny about that, even our personal properties, I wouldn’t buy it. You know what I mean? I don’t get emotional. Maybe that’s part of it too. You taught me a long time ago that you need to-

Steven Jack Butala:
I taught you something?

Jill K DeWit:
You did.

Steven Jack Butala:
[inaudible 00:41:07].

Jill K DeWit:
One or two things. Just kidding.

Steven Jack Butala:
Shocking.

Jill K DeWit:
You teach me a lot. Stop it. You teach me a lot. That you told me that you have to see all these properties as a line item. You can’t get emotional. Even when you’re sending out offers, by the way, you’re … Maybe you’re spot checking before the mail goes out Jemay, and you’re like, “This is waterfront. This is worth more. Don’t change it.” Don’t get yourself emotional on it. Let it go. See what comes back. See who wants to sell, and then start making decisions, and checking and see if you want to buy it. But you always, no matter what, have to just see it for what it is. You can’t get emotional. I even had this happen recently to me, by the way too. Montana property submitted to me from a Land Academy member, and I’m trying to make it work.

Steven Jack Butala:
[inaudible 00:41:56].

Jill K DeWit:
Because I really like the property. Yes, to fund the deal.

Steven Jack Butala:
Isn’t that terrible?

Jill K DeWit:
I know. And I even wrote-

Steven Jack Butala:
I hate trying to make it work.

Jill K DeWit:
It’s so funny. I wrote a note about something. We had the cutest conversation, and here’s how our conversations go. Comes in to my transaction coordinator, it’s input into Airtable, I’m tagged. I reply to the person in Airtable, and then my transaction coordinator sends them the notes. So it’s all through Airtable, right? We’re not even talking at all. But we’re cracking jokes in there. And I’m like, “Look …” At the end of the day, I said, “Look, I think I’m trying to make this work, and I just can’t at this price.” I’m actually catching myself on this one. And it’s very, very rare that this happens. I’m clearly getting emotional about this Montana property, and we can’t spend that much money.

Jill K DeWit:
This is it. And I said, “By the way …” It was so cute. You know who you are. I sent a note and I said, “Did I just pick up on an HOA? Am I”-

Steven Jack Butala:
Oh no.

Jill K DeWit:
Hold on a moment. I pick up on a $100 a month HOA. Something popped up on the listing that I found in that sub, and they’re like … And then they wrote me a nice note back. And it was like, “Jill, it’s not right, it’s a $100 a year. All it does is for roads. You taught me better than that.” And I went, “Touché, that was really good.”

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s outstanding.

Jill K DeWit:
That was great. I thought that was really funny. The whole point here is, like Jack covered, spend some time, not too much time. Do your best not to overprice. If you’re going to overprice or underprice, I want you to underprice.

Jill K DeWit:
If you think you’re underpricing it, then you did it right. Let her rip kind of thing. And you can still … Say it all goes wrong, “Oh gosh, we did overprice on this,” you can still save those. Have those conversations. So many people, the people call back and they want, like, “This is great. Here’s a purchase agreement. How fast can we close?”

Jill K DeWit:
And you look at it going, “Uh-oh.” Like, “Shoot, I can’t pay $40,000. Now I want to pay $4000. It’s really, I’d pay … What do I do? I’m just going to go dark. I’m not going to call him back. I’m just going to go dark, and let them walk away.” Don’t do that. Call him back and have that conversation. “Okay, now I know why you called me so fast. Are you aware of how far this is from …” Fill in the blank.

Jill K DeWit:
“And are you aware that because you timbered it a year ago, it’s not pretty like I thought it was.” Or whatever it is. [inaudible 00:44:28]. Usually, the conversation goes, “Yeah, I was kind of wondering why you offered $40,000 for this.” Then you go, “Okay, we’re all on the same page here. Here’s the deal. I do still like the property, but the best I can do is $4,000 or $14,000.” Whatever it is. It’s the number that now makes sense to you. You can still fix these, and that we’ll talk more on another show.

Steven Jack Butala:
What you don’t want to do is extremities. On the far underpriced extreme. I’ve done both of these things multiple times. You don’t want to say, “I’m going to send a $500 out, per parcel offer out on every property in this county, because I just don’t feel like going through what the Land Academy talking heads tell me that I should do, and I’m going to see what comes back.”

Steven Jack Butala:
I can tell you with confidence, nothing’s going to come back. And what’s what will come back is extreme anger, and that’s it. And you’ll never send another mailer out again, and we don’t want.

Jill K DeWit:
[inaudible 00:45:26].

Steven Jack Butala:
We want you to succeed. On the flip side, we had a person in career path about three or four career paths ago where he spent … Has a big staff, and prices every single piece of property individually.

Jill K DeWit:
Line by line.

Steven Jack Butala:
And he came into this, he found he’s from-

Jill K DeWit:
France.

Steven Jack Butala:
From Central Europe.

Steven Jack Butala:
Oh yeah.

Jill K DeWit:
And he came into this business here in this country because his father was extremely successful, so he says, in Central Europe doing this over the last two generations, which I’m sure is the case. Farmland in Europe is incredibly expensive and valuable. The whole royal family is built on farmland all over the place in England. So what you don’t want is to individually price every single offer. It’s going to take way too long. And you’re going to buy some property, but you’re not going to buy it cheap enough. You’re not going to buy it at embarrassingly cheap prices, which is what we’re here to do. And so, when you picture it as a bell curve, you don’t want to be on these two sides of the bell curve. You want to be somewhere over here where it’s going up, and retail’s right here.

Jill K DeWit:
Right. I hate that. I can’t stand that.

Steven Jack Butala:
I hate it too.

Jill K DeWit:
I hope no one’s doing that anymore. “I’m just going to send the whole state an offer for …” Fill in the blank.

Steven Jack Butala:
It’s pretty reckless.

Jill K DeWit:
It sends wrong message.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, it’s expensive as hell, first of all.

Jill K DeWit:
That’s true.

Steven Jack Butala:
And pretty reckless.

Jill K DeWit:
You know what? Because I really think that there’s a lot of people that just don’t take that seriously. I would not. And based on numbers, it doesn’t come back that well. So let us save you.

Steven Jack Butala:
Let’s take a look at another one of our favorite land acquisitions from our weekly Thursday member webinar. Jill, if you have something at the end here, inspirational, I think that you might want to share.

Jill K DeWit:
Exactly, my little nugget for today. I was thinking about confidence. You know what it is? I’m thinking about Land Academy Ladies. And that’s going to start up here in the next couple months. So if you are a Land Academy member, and you are a female, check it out. And if you want information now, you can just send a quick note to support@landacademy.com, and they’ll fill you in. But we have our own … And by the way, I’d like to point out, Land Academy Ladies is the only land focused female investment group, period. There isn’t one. This is it. I love that. So anyway, so I was thinking about Land Academy Ladies for 2023, and we’re going to kick that back up here. Took a little hiatus, and everybody’s asked. I’m bringing it back. And one of the things that I think we all even need, I was going to lead off with this for part of our Land Academy Ladies first session, is confidence.

Jill K DeWit:
We all need confidence. Everything’s just so much smoother with confidence. Ma’am, when these calls come in, if you’re confident, you’re going to handle it so much differently than like, “Hello.” Just like, “Hey, this is Jill.” It’s very different than, “This is Jill,” because you don’t know what’s coming at you. You need to have confidence. And one of the quickest, fastest, easiest ways that you can build your own confidence, and I mean in life and everything, is just start with a little mantra. I always have mantras in my head. I’m all the time talking to myself. I don’t know if you know that. You probably do know that.

Steven Jack Butala:
Sometimes it’s out loud.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah, that’s true. Well, if it’s a mantra, if it’s about you, it’s not a mantra. Just kidding, but-

Steven Jack Butala:
We don’t have any more kids in the house, but they used to say, “Is she’s talking to you?” “No, she’s talking to me.” “I don’t think she’s talking. I think she’s talking to herself.”

Jill K DeWit:
I do constantly have little mantras in my head, all the time. And one of my favorites, and I want you to start using this all the time. It’s just, I like myself. You need to start saying that. If you’re not saying that, you’re not walking around with your head high and your shoulders back, just feeling good about you. In your day, walking around situation, how messy your desk is, or what meeting you’re walking into, whatever it is, you … I want you to start saying that all the time. Just, “I like myself,” and you’re going to feel your shoulders … You think, “What?”

Steven Jack Butala:
No. I mean, go ahead.

Jill K DeWit:
You don’t believe this to be true?

Steven Jack Butala:
I’m sure it’s true. I’m not going to do it. I’m sure it’s true. I’ll save my stuff for the end.

Jill K DeWit:
Fine. Well, I’m telling you it works, and I really encourage you to try that.

Steven Jack Butala:
I think you should walk around and say stuff like, “Where’s my next deal?”

Jill K DeWit:
Yes. Okay.

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s, that’s it. That’s your whole talk?

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah.

Steven Jack Butala:
Oh, okay.

Jill K DeWit:
What are you talking about?

Steven Jack Butala:
I thought I would be more-

Jill K DeWit:
Well, you kind of interrupted it. So you poo-pooed it.

Steven Jack Butala:
No, I didn’t. I just didn’t say … It’s not for me.

Jill K DeWit:
Now you know why I have other mantras in my head.

Steven Jack Butala:
[inaudible 00:50:32].

Jill K DeWit:
I like myself, and-

Steven Jack Butala:
Try to stay in this relationship?

Jill K DeWit:
… and don’t let him get to you. Don’t let him get to you. Don’t let him get to you. Ignore, ignore, ignore, delete.

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s a mantra.

Jill K DeWit:
Exactly.

Steven Jack Butala:
You know what? Ignore, ignore, ignore is a, I think a great mantra. Walk around and say that. And not because of Jill, just because of stuff. Stuff that … Actually this leads-

Jill K DeWit:
Well, actually I do that.

Steven Jack Butala:
… into my talk, [inaudible 00:50:57].

Jill K DeWit:
That is true. When I’m driving, if someone’s pissed off, I’m like, “Whatever.” I do that all the time, out loud and in my head. That’s your problem. That’s another [inaudible 00:51:08]. There’s all kinds of mantras, but I want you to be confident, and if you start with that little one that this one’s poo-pooing, you know what, please ignore that. Like I said, and try mine. It works. Jack, do you have something informational to share?

Steven Jack Butala:
Hold a second, I’m-

Jill K DeWit:
I’m not going to shoot holes in it, like you did mine.

Steven Jack Butala:
I’m not done with this yet.

Jill K DeWit:
Okay.

Steven Jack Butala:
If you have to say, “I like myself,” I think what it really implies is you don’t like yourself, and that you’re trying to get yourself to like yourself.

Jill K DeWit:
I disagree.

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s all. I think you need a psychiatrist, if that’s going on.

Jill K DeWit:
Nope, you are not correct, sir.

Steven Jack Butala:
All right. So I’m missing the point, go ahead.

Jill K DeWit:
You are missing the point.

Steven Jack Butala:
Please explain, because I represent half of the people who listen and watch this.

Jill K DeWit:
Okay.

Steven Jack Butala:
The other half are like-

Jill K DeWit:
All right.

Steven Jack Butala:
“Jack’s an ass, and Jill’s awesome.”

Jill K DeWit:
Let me give you the guy version.

Steven Jack Butala:
Okay, good. Thank you.

Jill K DeWit:
First of all, do you use mantras?

Steven Jack Butala:
No.

Jill K DeWit:
Ever?

Steven Jack Butala:
Never. Except for ignore, ignore, ignore. I only use a mantra to talk myself out of bashing someone over the head in public.

Jill K DeWit:
Control, control, control.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yes.

Jill K DeWit:
Walk away, walk away.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yes.

Jill K DeWit:
All right. All right, here’s a man version.

Steven Jack Butala:
It’s not worth it. I use that one a lot.

Jill K DeWit:
I’m trying to think of a good one that the other half of the population-

Steven Jack Butala:
The unhappy half.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah, can relate to. How about this mantra? Whatever you do, you’re walking around, “I’m badass. I deserve this. I’m really good at what I do.” Can you use one of those?

Steven Jack Butala:
I don’t need to. I’m already [inaudible 00:52:53].

Jill K DeWit:
Well, maybe you’re subconsciously doing it.

Steven Jack Butala:
[inaudible 00:52:53] truthfully-

Jill K DeWit:
Well, if you think like that, you’re subconsciously already doing it.

Steven Jack Butala:
Here’s the truth, and I’m glad we’re talking about this, because I … And I’m not poo-pooing anything. I’m really, I honestly think this is super valid. I’ve never had an issue with confidence. [inaudible 00:53:08]. I’m not patting myself on the back. There’s many times in my life, maybe one of them right now where, “Yeah, some changes need to happen for sure.”

Jill K DeWit:
Do you know what-

Steven Jack Butala:
I’m not so overly confident that it’s narcissism or anything like that at all. I’m just, and I’m completely, I think very open-minded to new things, especially when it comes to data and all of it.

Jill K DeWit:
Do you know what percentage of the population you probably are?

Steven Jack Butala:
Confident?

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah.

Steven Jack Butala:
I don’t know.

Jill K DeWit:
Probably less than 10%. Maybe less than 5%. You think you relate, that half of the people listen to you here relate to that here? If you do, congratulations, you’re also in the top 10%. But I don’t think it’s that many. So I’m talking to the 90% people here, or the 95%.

Steven Jack Butala:
I get confidence from-

Jill K DeWit:
Sometimes we fall down.

Steven Jack Butala:
I get confidence from completing stuff successfully. I don’t get confidence from saying stuff in my head.

Jill K DeWit:
That’s okay. Then this isn’t for you, because you’re the 2%.

Steven Jack Butala:
I say, get a deal done, and feel great about yourself.

Jill K DeWit:
But don’t you … See, how do I say this?

Steven Jack Butala:
I’m not burning this down at all, Jill. I think there’s huge value in this. I’m just not sure that, I like myself-

Jill K DeWit:
And that’s okay, and I know you don’t like yourself at times. There’s times I don’t like you.

Steven Jack Butala:
Just so you know that-

Jill K DeWit:
I’m just kidding.

Steven Jack Butala:
Like right now.

Jill K DeWit:
Exactly.

Steven Jack Butala:
This is one of those times where I wonder if this is ever going to air. A few times over the years [inaudible 00:54:44]-

Jill K DeWit:
If you’ve never said this …

Steven Jack Butala:
… [inaudible 00:54:45] have to rerecord this.

Jill K DeWit:
If you’ve never said this to a family member, kudos to you, but I got to … “You know what, I love you. I’m just not sure I like you right now.” If you’ve never said that to a family member, or yourself, then you’re lying, because that happens. I’ve said that to every one of our children. [inaudible 00:55:11] and you. I know.

Steven Jack Butala:
I just don’t see … I mean, I think the mantra thing’s great. I really do. I’m not knocking any of this.

Jill K DeWit:
All right.

Steven Jack Butala:
I just think the phrase, “I like myself,” there’s something wrong there.

Jill K DeWit:
I don’t think so. It’s simple, and it’s an easy place to start.

Steven Jack Butala:
Get a mailer out. That’s a good one.

Jill K DeWit:
Just, ignore, ignore, ignore.

Steven Jack Butala:
This is perfect for what I’m about to talk about.

Jill K DeWit:
Jack, what do you want to share? Because I can’t wait to hear what this is.

Steven Jack Butala:
Let’s talk about the world we live in right now.

Jill K DeWit:
All right.

Steven Jack Butala:
As it pertains to land, and I wrote this little sentence that I’m going to talk about here, because of what Dan said. Dan’s going along in his life, smashing it, doing a bunch of deals. He’s been with us for … The first question in this episode, and he’s like, “All of a sudden, people want earnest money. The real estate agent wants to get in the middle of my deal after it’s already been negotiated, and escrow’s open. What’s going on?”

Steven Jack Butala:
He’s looking around going, “Everything’s been going great.” This is, in my opinion, an acute sign of the times. Jill and I are old enough, and Jill comes from the airline industry. We were old enough to remember, and none of us will ever forget the first flight we took after 9/11. And because we walked into the airport, this may not have been a surprise for you, because you were in the industry at the time.

Jill K DeWit:
I worked at American Airlines at the time.

Steven Jack Butala:
I walked into an airport, and I traveled for a living with KPMG. I walked into an airport and there was a line of people with all their shoes off, and their clothes off, and their bags open. And I said, “What the hell is this? Is the airport on fire?” It was so foreign. Well, it turns out it’s something now that we do anyway. It’s the TSA. We walked through, you have take your … It was really bad then. You had to take belts off,-

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah, it’s much relaxed now. It’s changed.

Steven Jack Butala:
… shoes, and the whole thing. But it didn’t go away. It’s here to stay. The TSA is it here to stay-

Jill K DeWit:
We still walk through with machines.

Steven Jack Butala:
… worldwide. It has changed how we travel. Has changed how we travel, and it will forever change how we travel. Before then, multiple times would pull into the high paid parking area, screech in, because I’m late, run down the jet way, and there was an ATM like machine where you’d pop your card in. You’re usually a business card, a credit card, and they would spit out a ticket. You would hand it to the ticket … The flight attendant.

Jill K DeWit:
Agent.

Steven Jack Butala:
Not even at the beginning of the jet way, in the plane. You just had a bin, and you would throw it in there, and you could fly under Jack Black. It didn’t matter. They didn’t care who was on the airplane. They just wanted … They wanted to get the thing off the ground. And so, we had no idea then how much of a luxury that was. My point is that it’s changed forever.

Steven Jack Butala:
We’ve all accepted it, and it is what it is. It’s added a massive amount of financial expense, which the airlines have, and the whole industry has passed through to us. So now it’s way more expensive to fly. On the flip side, it’s created some jobs. My point is, Covid has changed everything, and will forever change what goes on in the world.

Steven Jack Butala:
And this is the world that we live in right now. And it’s hard for people who are older, especially … We’re not super old, but older like me. It’s getting harder and harder to swallow the mandatory changes that are happening. And some of them are mandatory and some of them aren’t, in everything, including doing a real estate deal. And that’s what Dan said earlier. I don’t understand why people are … One of the unintended consequences of Covid is that people sat home for two years, and provided their opinions on everything, all across the spectrum, their opinions loudly on the internet, and got attention.

Steven Jack Butala:
And so when people have unfounded, uneducated opinions, in a loud manner, and get attention for saying those opinions, that’s not good. And it’s permeated into everything, including a seller doing a deal, or a buyer buying a piece of property, or dealing with a escrow agent. Everybody now has an incredible amount of opinion that’s unfounded. It’s just rooted in emotion, or getting some type of response. And we have a couple choices. We can get real mad about it, or we can laugh about it on the show, and you have to laugh about it. Maybe a mantra is appropriate in managing it.

Jill K DeWit:
Thank you.

Steven Jack Butala:
Maybe-

Jill K DeWit:
This is stupid. This is stupid.

Steven Jack Butala:
But dealing with it stupid is not … You have to deal with it if you want to be successful. It’s no longer an option. Real estate deals are more complicated, just like the TSA has made flying more complicated. And this is the world we live in right now. You know what? I say that to myself all the time to calm myself down. So I guess I do have mantras.

Jill K DeWit:
Thank you.

Steven Jack Butala:
This is the world we live in. Driving has never been worse. Driving on the road. And again, it’s because people think that they have … The common courtesy is just no longer part of everyday life.

Jill K DeWit:
No, I’m always-

Steven Jack Butala:
It’s certainly gone.

Jill K DeWit:
Isn’t that funny?

Steven Jack Butala:
From the real estate deals we do.

Jill K DeWit:
I’m surprised when it does happen. When someone’s out of their way nice. I’m like, “Oh boy, that catches me off guard.” You remember the other day at the bank, that woman, she’s like, “Okay, and how many …” She waited for me while I got all these checks out that I’ve been collecting to deposit. [inaudible 01:00:58] that was easy. I’m like, “I know.” What did I just hit her at the right time or what?” It’s funny.

Steven Jack Butala:
There’s beautiful rays of light everywhere. You just have to focus on that, and concentrate on … What I do is concentrate on light kind … There were, about six months ago, somebody put something that was really inappropriate in Discord that none of our staff caught. Was not really inappropriate, it was a political view, which we have … I have no patience for. There’s no politics on Discord. And somebody started down that path, and somebody else was commenting on it, and none of us caught it, and then it became a thing.

Jill K DeWit:
I didn’t know that.

Steven Jack Butala:
And somebody went in. I’m not going to name names, but you know who you are. It’s one of your Land Academy Ladies-

Jill K DeWit:
Good.

Steven Jack Butala:
… went in and said, “This needs to end right now.”

Jill K DeWit:
Good.

Steven Jack Butala:
Like your mother would say it when you’re young. I don’t know what she said. “Jack and Jill have put this all together, and this is created an environment. This is what social media is supposed to be like, and we all respect each other.” Big, long speech, had stopped at all. We didn’t have to intervene.

Jill K DeWit:
I probably know who the person is.

Steven Jack Butala:
We didn’t have to intervene at all. So you know who you are, and thank you very much, but that’s just … Land Academy, there’s a common courtesy. We have courtesy for each other and respect, and once in a while it dances along the line, but except for that one time, it just never crossed, so I’m proud of that. I’m proud that we’re like a little oasis area where we can concentrate unemotionally on buying and selling real estate, and land, and not get all nuts about … The worse it gets, or as far as it goes, it’s like Dan’s [inaudible 01:02:43] here. Is he going to get all those deals done? Of course. Is it harder? Yep. Maybe a little bit more expensive? Slightly. More of a pain in the butt? Sure. Just like the TSA. This is a world that we live in now. And if you buck it, you’re not going to win, and we want you to win.

Jill K DeWit:
He gets it. He gets it. He gets it.

Steven Jack Butala:
Who, Dan?

Jill K DeWit:
No, you. It’s my mantra.

Steven Jack Butala:
Oh, the mantra. Join us next Wednesday for another interesting episode, because you are not alone in your real estate ambition. We are Jack and Jill.

Jill K DeWit:
We are Jack and Jill.

Steven Jack Butala:
Information.

Jill K DeWit:
And inspiration.

Steven Jack Butala:
To buy undervalued property.