Transcript:

Steven Jack Butala:
I’m Steven Jack Butala.

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

Steven Jack Butala:
This is episode number 1,947. Today, we are talking in depth about the ins and outs of land auctions, how to win the bidding war, and then a little later in the episode, Jill is going to talk about how to make a million dollars a year doing single land transactions each month.

Jill K. DeWit:
Now, I got to tell you something funny, because we just turned on our garage sale, I don’t know if you knew that or not.

Steven Jack Butala:
No.

Jill K. DeWit:
We just re-turned it on last week. I don’t know if it ends on Thursday or Friday this week. Anyway, what the heck am I talking about? We have collected property in our life. You know what I mean. Some we’ve had a while and some we haven’t, but we just have had. We just come across great buys, let’s just say that, and sometimes I look at them and I go, “Shucks, is this something I really want to sell? I don’t know. It’s not really worth an agent to get involved.” So I’m like, “You know what? I’m going to give it to the Land Academy community.”
So what is this? We have our own little garage sale auction. It’s bidding in $50 increments, and you could pick up a great property for a couple of hundred bucks, and people have done that and they gone off and sold it for a couple thousand bucks. It’s a great way to get started. It’s funny because it’s an auction format, that we have a beginning time and an end time, and the highest bidder wins, but it’s all within Land Academy that we do this, so it’s fun.

Steven Jack Butala:
Are there good properties coming up again?

Jill K. DeWit:
Oh, yeah.

Steven Jack Butala:
Awesome.

Jill K. DeWit:
Exactly.

Steven Jack Butala:
Geez, these are properties, some of them, that I bought before Jill and I joined forces.

Jill K. DeWit:
Some are really recent. They’re just too small. We picked them up. They’re great deals. I had to buy it, but I’m going to pass that off to the community.

Steven Jack Butala:
Hey, I hope you’re enjoying our longer format podcast. Each week, we answer questions from the Land Academy Discord Forum. We review land acquisitions from our weekly Thursday member webinar and take a deep dive into two land-related topics by popular requests. I just mentioned them a couple of minutes ago.
Let’s get started, so let’s take a question posted by one of our members on the Land Academy Discord online community. If you want to sneak peek at our Land Academy Discord channel, please go to just that, landacademy.com. It’s free in our read-only format.

Jill K. DeWit:
Stephen wrote, “I just walked out of my W2 exit interview and saw new money transferred in my bank account. Thanks, Land Academy. Off to a good start.” Oh, that’s so great.

Steven Jack Butala:
There’s a couple of good comments in here.

Jill K. DeWit:
Okay, so some of Stephen’s peers weighed in and wrote some notes here. Sid wrote, “Congrats, as it takes a lot of soul-searching and guts to take action. I left corporate America 12 years ago to become a realtor and got tired of the travel and politics. Not that there hasn’t been ups and downs in the market, but the joy of being your own boss and determining your own future is one of the best decisions I’ve made.” That’s so sweet.
Well, look at Samantha. Samantha says, “That’s so awesome. I remember having butterflies about leaving my W2 and, honestly, since then, I’ve been extremely happy. It’s a lot of work. Don’t overlook that, but it’s a hundred percent for your benefit, and you are in full control of your finances. I’m so excited for you.”
Me, too. Now, Jack do you remember?

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah.

Jill K. DeWit:
I remember doing that and it was, sounds like Stephen did this the right way too, which is, you have enough money saved up you, there’s no scare or fear. It’s like, “I wish I would’ve done that six months ago.”

Steven Jack Butala:
There’s a right way and a wrong way to leave your job like everything. And I’ve long said the right, if you leave your W2 job about a week later, you’re going to say things to yourself like, “I should have done this two years ago,” then you know you did it right. If that two weeks or two months later you said, “I’m out of money and I should have really thought about this before I did it.” That’s maybe not the right way. So you want to really think it through and make sure whoever’s in your life, like your spouse, they’re on board.

Jill K. DeWit:
Could you imagine? I hope Stephen didn’t tell anybody.

Steven Jack Butala:
I literally said I could-

Jill K. DeWit:
This could happen. Hold on a moment. Let’s just talk about this. This could happen. Someone could be working from home and quit that job and do another job. And I bet there are people in their house might not even know.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, there’s movies about that.

Jill K. DeWit:
There’s no what?

Steven Jack Butala:
There’s movies about that. Before I left corporate accounting, I said this to myself for weeks, “I would rather actually literally go to work at McDonald’s than work at this job for another week.” So that those are the times when you need to make changes in your life when it’s that acute, I think.

Jill K. DeWit:
What a great place to be in those. So Steven has all the answers, obviously. He’s in Land Academy he knows what he’s doing. Now he can really focus, put his head down and like Samantha said, you’re doing it for you. That’s what got me. I’ll never forget when you called me in one time and said, “Hey, just so you know, do you know how much money you’re making these people? I listened to you. I hear what you’re doing. I know what you’re selling. I added up, this is what you made them this year and this is what your salary was.” You’re like, “Why don’t you just look at-“

Steven Jack Butala:
Oh.

Jill K. DeWit:
You don’t remember that?

Steven Jack Butala:
No.

Jill K. DeWit:
Oh, okay.

Steven Jack Butala:
It’s all these things that we’re both saying, these are all real things that happened to us. Obviously these are real stories on Discord that people have experienced. So just want to make sure you do it right. It’s possible, but you do have to have the right attitude and the right personality type to make it work.

Jill K. DeWit:
Welcome to the quitter’s club. I love the quitter’s club.

Steven Jack Butala:
Today’s first topic is called the ins and outs of land auctions and how to win at a bidding war.

Jill K. DeWit:
You want to start?

Steven Jack Butala:
I am. I founded this entire company on tax deed auctions starting in the mid ’90s in Arizona. And I would, this is way before the internet kicked in the way that it is now. There are things on the internet that were very established. eBay was one of them. And the marketplace, there was more, in, my opinion, of a marketplace push that happened early on in the internet in the ’90s than there was sharing of information.
I literally bought, this is right before Google started, literally went to a bookstore and bought a big thick four inch yellow book called the Yellow Pages of the internet. This was before search engines kicked in. And so there was this cresting wave or a wave building that hasn’t, in the ocean kind of a wave. So it was really exciting. So we had an online marketplace like eBay, but you still had all these places, these counties, every single county in the country has back tax property that they’ve foreclosed on that they auction off. So it’s auction season. And that’s the reason I chose this topic, because on a Thursday call last week, by the time this airs, Los Angeles County, well, it’s happening right now actually. The Los Angeles County taxed deed auction, which is forever, has been the largest taxed deed auction in the world.
It goes on for weeks, usually it’s one day. And I had a very serious amount of success buying back tax property and reselling it on the internet on places like, eBay and Bid4Assets, to the point where we were the largest real estate seller for years and years and years, largest by dollars, not by volume. And I got to me meet Meg Whitman, who was the CEO of eBay at the time. So am I patting myself on the back and bragging about anything? Absolutely not. Is it-

Jill K. DeWit:
I would.

Steven Jack Butala:
Is it still viable?

Jill K. DeWit:
Back then.

Steven Jack Butala:
Here’s a spoiler alert at the end of this silly dad like conversation or talk that I’m giving right here, I wouldn’t so much rather have a partner like Jill or have Jill as a partner and do 10 or 15 or 20 deals a year where you’re making 80 to $180,000, a couple hundred thousand dollars a deal, bringing home 2 or $3 million net and by sending out mail. And so I’m going to walk you through the process of what it’s like to get the information from, let’s say, a county that’s holding a tax deed auction, including Los Angeles. If you go on Bid4Assets, B-I-D and the number four assets.com. They have contracts, they’ve accumulated contracts over the years. It was never like this before. It was only ever in person. But Bid4Assets over the years has now specialized in aiding counties in their antiquated ways of getting their auctions online and getting more money for them and all of that.

Jill K. DeWit:
I’s kind of cool.

Steven Jack Butala:
It is. So used to be back in the day, you would get a list somehow from the county of the properties that they were auctioning off. And in almost all cases. It was either on paper or it was a CD that you would have to send money in to get, and then a data CD. And so you’d get in the end, the deliverable was a big long list of APNs, assessor parcel numbers, and what the starting minimum bid was. And then there’s usually in a separate document that says, “Here’s the rules.” If you’re the winning bid, you’d better pay where to come and get you. That’s that universal auction thing. Every year Jill and I go to the Barrett-Jackson Auction, for cars, and some of the little ancillary auctions that happen all over Arizona during this auction season for that now too. And there’s always people who don’t pay, and so they have to re-auction the car. They put it at the tail, which is terrible for the owner because they lost their slot. They lost all the-

Jill K. DeWit:
Hype, momentum, excitement, money.

Steven Jack Butala:
So in some cases, some extreme cases, I would order a printout, which is what they had back then of all the properties, the list of APNs, and it would be two reams of paper that they were trying to auction off. Sometimes they would bunch them up, group them up. But I would spend two to three weeks researching these APNs to see if there were anything that I wanted to buy anyway. And so I’d go down the list and tick the ones that I was interested in, maybe do a bunch of research, find out how much I’m willing to spend, write that in the margin. And so this is going on, and on, and on, for days and days and days. And then here’s that kicker-

Jill K. DeWit:
You may not get it.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, you get to the auction and there could be a hundred people there and there could be one or two people there. And I’ve experienced both multiple times. So it’s a lot of work. So nothing’s really changed mechanically, what’s changed is the internet. The internet makes the information to get a lot easier. So you can get an auction list a lot easier.

Jill K. DeWit:
It means they have images and maps and things in there too.

Steven Jack Butala:
The LA County auction, they do have that. They have all the information that’s clickable. And all of that leads to way more competition, which is what the title of this is here, how to Win the Bidding War. It leads to more people that now are in the audience, the figurative and literal audience, including you. So they’re throwing more money at it, which ultimately when there’s more people, there’s more stupidity. And so people will just win an auction to win, just because it’s a rush, like pulling the slot machine handle and trying to win. The phrase, winning the bid, has always cracked me up, because I don’t think there’s anything winning about it. You’re the highest bidder.

Jill K. DeWit:
Right. “You’re the weirdo that Wanda paid that much for it-“

Steven Jack Butala:
For property.

Jill K. DeWit:
Just to get it.

Steven Jack Butala:
Three times what it’s worth. So how do you win a bidding war in an auction? How do you win at gambling? And my answer is the exact same. Now this day and age, don’t do it. Send a mailer out. Spend-

Jill K. DeWit:
Whoa, wait, hold on. One. I just got to ask real quick. Let me back up a second. I dozed off for a moment, but I’m back.

Steven Jack Butala:
Was it that bad?

Jill K. DeWit:
A little bit. It’s okay. No, it’s good. So you just gave us the ins and outs. We got all that now, but you’re talking about, and then how to win at it, and you’re, a whole answer is after I went through 10 minutes of that, how to win at is don’t do it?

Steven Jack Butala:
Yep.

Jill K. DeWit:
Oh.

Steven Jack Butala:
How do you win on a slot machine?

Jill K. DeWit:
[inaudible 00:12:38] don’t do it.

Steven Jack Butala:
How do you win at the craps table? You don’t win. You don’t win.

Jill K. DeWit:
How do you win in parenting?

Steven Jack Butala:
My personal policy? Here’s some neat-

Jill K. DeWit:
I did not see that coming.

Steven Jack Butala:
Here’s some neat tricks about auctions in general. I always, no matter what it was, this is in person only, not online. Always, no matter what the situation was, won the first auction. It was in the room, chest beating exercise that showed everybody who is boss. And maybe the second one too, because everybody’s still a little flustered. They don’t know how the auctioneers… These aren’t auctioneers at the county. They’re the secretary, the 92-year-old secretary of the board of supervisors, and she’s the one who volunteered to be an auctioneer. So she’s not qualified to do this at all. She doesn’t know what she’s doing either.

Jill K. DeWit:
“Give me one, who says [inaudible 00:13:34] just seven.” Could you imagine the little old lady doing?

Steven Jack Butala:
And so she’s not, I’m not saying anything negative about anybody. They’re just local government employees that got roped into doing this thing on Saturday.

Jill K. DeWit:
They lost the coin toss.

Steven Jack Butala:
And so they very frequently, and Jill’s very familiar with this, they’ll lose track of time. And so they have to auction everything off at the end of the auction really quickly.

Jill K. DeWit:
Like, “Oh shoot.”

Steven Jack Butala:
At the beginning of auctions. And at the end of auctions, assuming you want to buy a lot, we’re always there to buy a lot with and we were the ones who had the most money in the room all the time. You buy the stuff in the front because everybody’s disorganized and you buy the stuff in the back, because everybody’s out of money.

Jill K. DeWit:
Or they left.

Steven Jack Butala:
Or they’re gone. There’s two types of people that go to real estate auctions. These are back tax auctions that the county is holding because people stop paying their taxes for years and years and years. This is the end of the line. This is their last ditch effort to get these properties back on the tax rolls. And they don’t like it. The people who lost their property don’t like it. And worse, the local people that are in these auctions do not like people like you, or Jill and I and there’re buying their real estate. So there’s two types of peoples at these auctions. There’s people like us who want to buy it all for nothing.
And there’s people who are there, they’re local people, that are in general probably trying to buy the property that’s in their backyard. So they’re there for one or two pieces of property max. And as a courtesy, I have always stepped off when I, you read the room throughout the entire auction. And if there’s a guy that stands up in a rancher’s hat and he starts bidding on a property that maybe I threw out the first bid, I stop then I let them have it.

Jill K. DeWit:
That’s really nice. Don’t mess with the locals.

Steven Jack Butala:
They understand that. And you become a different person in a matter of seconds after that the one auction, whatever they’re auctioning off at that time. So there’s some serious etiquette as you can imagine. Not everybody who’s trying to buy it all it responds that way. And so the more times that than not, especially at the end of my live auction career, and Jill, fortunately, we went through several auctions at the end and did really well during the downturn. So Jill will tell that story in a minute. But all kidding aside, you’re going to spend a ton of upfront time to analyze an auction. Tons and tons of time. In fact, you probably won’t get to the end of the auction because you can’t take it anymore. And that’s what would happen to me. So then now you’re in the middle of the auction, “Gosh, it’s cheap. Should I buy it?” It’s hard.

Jill K. DeWit:
You don’t know. “I didn’t look at that one. I didn’t get through the list.”

Steven Jack Butala:
If you spend a few hours, maybe if you’re brand new, a day or two doing a 10,000 unit mailer, let’s say, and you’re doing it the way that we teach at Land Academy, you send out 10,000 units, you can almost bank on the fact that you’re going to buy one or two properties, or three properties if you’re answering the phone correctly, if the mailer’s priced correctly and you’re engaging the people on the other end. The mailer’s doing all that work for you, that weeks and weeks of work that you were doing to you don’t analyze every deal in a mailer. You just throw it out there, 20 or 30, come back, you choose the best three and you buy them. And then you get on, go on to the next mailer.
And you can control the property that you buy, where you buy it, the red green yellow test, how you price it. You control the prices, the environment. There’s no competition. Competition kills auctions. It kills it. Every time I went into an auction, I would calculate at the bottom of the spreadsheet, if I buy all of this, every single property at the minimum bid, I’m going to spend $87,000 and I’ll be able to resell it on the internet or however we do it for $442,000. So I can’t spend more than half of what I think I can sell it for. So it ends up being $200,000 or something.

Jill K. DeWit:
I look at it this way too. Here’s the bottom line, I can’t get it out right now. We don’t do it, there’s a reason we don’t do it anymore.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, because it doesn’t work.

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

Steven Jack Butala:
We do stuff that works.

Jill K. DeWit:
I hope you’re not painting a beautiful picture, like, “Oh, that sounds fun. Oh, I don’t mind wasting a week doing all the research and putting-“

Steven Jack Butala:
I don’t know, did I paint a pretty picture?

Jill K. DeWit:
Not a rosy picture. You painted a good picture. You painted a very fair picture.

Steven Jack Butala:
That was not my intention.

Jill K. DeWit:
Hold on. But the wrong person who’s listening to this and they’re thinking, “Oh, I can do this. Oh, this sounds great. I don’t mind. And how cool is that? And I’ll watch for the rancher. I’m taking notes here. I’ll be that cool guy like you and I’ll make sure I’m going to buy the ones in the beginning and I’m going to buy the ones in the end. You taught me all that now too.” But I’m like, I wanted to say, “Put on the brakes everyone, there’s a reason why we don’t go do this anymore.” The weeks, weeks, and time and energy and travel expense that you would spend to go to there, you might as well do an SFR flip and let’s learn how that goes too.
There’s a reason why you’re here. There’s a reason why you’re listening to us. There’s a reason why this one next to me has been doing this since the ’90s and we’ve evolved to what we are today in Land Academy and we want to save you from this. So we want to tell you about this, we want you to know what’s going on, but Jack is right. If you really want to win at a land auction, don’t go. Don’t do it. It’s true, you know what’s funny, because we’ve been talking about this. It’s easy to get sucked in. I see the emails too, like, “Oh look. Oh, look what they’re doing. Maybe they’re going to have some of this cabin property that we’ve always wanted. Maybe that’s on the list.” You know what? And at the end of the day, we look at each other and go, “That’s the stupidest thing on the planet. I can’t believe we even wasted 15 minutes talking about it when all we have to do is draw a circle around where we want to have our cabin and send out the mail.”

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s it.

Jill K. DeWit:
Next.

Steven Jack Butala:
The last auction that Jill and I went to is in 2011 and it was in Arizona and we bought thousands of properties, literally. Thousands of properties. It was the right time. It was the right crowd. The right-

Jill K. DeWit:
Do I have to say how much some of them were?

Steven Jack Butala:
The day of the week, I think. I don’t even think it was a weekend. They did everything wrong. There’s a massive difference between a Wednesday auction and a Sunday auction, because everybody’s at work. So yeah, we were, Jill and I were buying properties for 10 or $11, an APN, with access and the whole thing. And so that really put Joe and I on the map, thousands of multiply that. And we were wholesaling them out to other people that were going to actually sell them. Jill was so, I didn’t mean to make it sound like fun.

Jill K. DeWit:
No, that was good.

Steven Jack Butala:
I really didn’t, because it’s a ton of work. If you are brand new at Land Academy, you’re about six months from getting, if you do everything, maybe four to six months from getting a great payout.
If you are start to run the auction circuit, and by the way, the state of Texas is required by statutes, by state statutes, to have every Tuesday have an auction for their back tax property. None of them do it. There’s 274 or 84 counties in Texas that are required to do this. Almost none of them do it. They hire law firms to handle it for them. So in every state’s different and every county’s different. So now you’ve got a, there’s 31,044 sets of rules about how to buy back tax property. Some are leans, some are deeds, it’s complicated. Sending mail is not… The same way we do it in Delaware is the same way we do it in California.

Jill K. DeWit:
Thank you.

Steven Jack Butala:
I wish you shutting me down.

Jill K. DeWit:
Yeah.

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

Jill K. DeWit:
I’m thinking for a second. Do I want to do O two or do a different one? This is going to air April like 5th. Okay go.
We are just about to start Career Path six. I am so excited. By the time this airs, I may have a spot. If you are interested, go check out Land Academy /CareerPath. Career Path is our highest level coaching program held and led by Jack and myself. It’s eight weeks every Wednesday plan on spending four to five hours with us, but we will get you there. It’s for someone who wants to make this a career. You’re a former business owner, you’ve been in Land Academy for a while. You understand how this works, but now you’re ready to make it an empire that’s Career Path. So again, go to landacademy.com/careerpath and check that out and then send a note to my team if you’re really interested via 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 this thing, go to landacademy.com and you’ll see it right there. Just dig through it and you’ll see a free version, or a free peek at of the whole entire live Discord situation.

Jill K. DeWit:
Fred wrote, “Good day everyone. I’m Frederick J. I’m 23 years old and I’m located in Switzerland. I’m working as a buyer of land in Switzerland already, so I’m very familiar with what we do here.” Just the rules of difference, of course. “I just joined Land Academy, but I’ve been doing my research for the last couple of months and already. So I’ll be sending out my first batch of 5,000 mailers in April. I’m extremely excited to kickstart this land flipping in the US and do deal funding. I hope to make some great friends and deal partners here. Cheers, Fred.” This is awesome. We’ve got another one. We have a person says Fernando. “Hello all. My name is Fernando from San Diego. I have 25 plus years of experience in commercial real estate working for large investment groups. I just joined Land Academy because I love the energy of Jack and Jill. And I think they have a great business concept.”

Steven Jack Butala:
I love your low standard, sir.

Jill K. DeWit:
Oh yeah. “I’m interested in meeting anyone that is successfully already doing deals. I’d love to put some money to work on them ASAP. Please message or email me if you want to discuss more. And I look forward to meeting you all, making some friends and money along the way.” That’s cool. Just some fun little new people that joined.

Steven Jack Butala:
Well, there’s a reason I put this in here like always. We have somebody from Switzerland in the land business and we have somebody with 25 years of commercial real estate business making choices to join Land Academy to enhance their already skyrocketing career in real estate. So let’s think about that.

Jill K. DeWit:
Is this a test?

Steven Jack Butala:
It’s not a dad type test.

Jill K. DeWit:
No, I get it.

Steven Jack Butala:
I do too.

Jill K. DeWit:
So wait, wait, wait.

Steven Jack Butala:
The success, the likelihood of success for these two people individually in Land Academy program is staggering. This is just another feather in their cap. They’re not restarting anything.

Jill K. DeWit:
True. Are you saying this using these two as an example, because it’s not about where they come from?

Steven Jack Butala:
Nope. The opposite.

Jill K. DeWit:
Okay. And it’s not about their age.

Steven Jack Butala:
I don’t care about their age. No, you’re doing that.

Jill K. DeWit:
No, I’m just saying.

Steven Jack Butala:
See how just Jill twisted it all around. [inaudible 00:25:44] point.

Jill K. DeWit:
Do you know what this is? You look at me like, “Ding ding, do you get it?” And like, “Nope, not seeing it. Where are you going here?”

Steven Jack Butala:
If you listener, have experience in real estate and you would like to double or triple your income, or do, I hesitate to call it a sidekick gig or side gig, but that’s what it would be, if that’s what it is for these two people, because they already are in the land business, they already know what they’re doing. They know the terminology and they know the anatomy of a deal. It’s very, very likely that they’re going to do incredibly well. If you’re listening to this and you’re intrigued and you’re already own a business, any business, or you’re in real estate somehow, Sid earlier is talking about being just a real estate agent for years. This is very logical place for you.

Jill K. DeWit:
Totally. Thank you.

Steven Jack Butala:
Today’s second topic is called How to Make a Million Dollars a Year Doing a Simple Land Transaction A Month by Jill.

Jill K. DeWit:
By me. Oh, thank you. I didn’t know that. So this comes up often. You know why I’ve been talking to a lot of people about Career Path. For the last three weeks I have been personally interviewing and screening people. Yes, you were screened, by the way, if you got an invite to come to Career Path. Why? Because I want to make sure that you’re at that right level. I don’t want you to not be ready for it, because it’s so high level. And we talk big numbers. We’re going to get you there. If you’re afraid to add a zero at the beginning of Career Path, you’re going to be adding two or three zeros by the end of Career Path. You will feel great about that and you’ll understand it. And so I’m talking to people about who want a life like mine. Here’s what I’ve got and here’s what I love.
And I mean this, I’ve got for our land business, I have it down to a four-hour work week. Really? It’s the greatest thing on the planet. And I am doing less deals, not more deals, but I’m making them count. That’s the point. And when you really take a step back, this is what we do at very beginning of Career Path too. We sit down with everyone and talk about where are you now? Give us your trajectory. Where have you been last year or this year? How much money you think you’re going to make in land in its current place right now. How much you do you really want to make this year? All right. And next year, let’s talk about that. No number’s crazy too. Then let’s talk about too, even when’s, enough, enough, we even go there too. Let’s talk about how much do you really want to be done?
And then we work up backwards. Then we start, the whole topic today is making a million dollars a year doing one land transit, one deal a month. That’s really it. And people go, “What are you talking about? You are nuts.” But when you really-

Steven Jack Butala:
It sounds pie in the sky.

Jill K. DeWit:
It does.

Steven Jack Butala:
And it’s not.

Jill K. DeWit:
No, but when you really sit and think about it, work it backwards. One deal a month. Got it. How many months in a year? 12. Got it. So what do I have to make each month? I even want to do a cushion. I would say aim for to make a hundred thousand dollars a deal. Do 12 of those and you’re at 1.2. But what if I screw some up or some take a little long? If I aim for a hundred thousand dollars a deal and doing only one deal a month, I’m going to hit my million.
Or what if I even took the summer off? I made $900,000 this year, because I took the summer off. I’m okay with that. All right. I hope you’re okay with that. So this is the stuff we talk about and then, “Well, that’s great, Jill. Well, how do I find these deals?” Well, that’s why you have us. That’s Land Academy. This is the stuff we teach you. When we teach you how to troll, you’re filling in those numbers. You’re filling in, let’s look at sold comps. Let’s look at what’s sold for, I don’t know, 250 and let’s back it up like, “All right, things are selling for 250 and they’re at least five acres,” something like that. Put that in Zillow right now and look around and just go all over the country and look at these properties knowing that, all right, these things are selling for 250. All right, I want to buy them for, I don’t know, 75 a 100 in case I don’t sell them for 200. And start thinking like that. And you can see how it’s possible. [inaudible 00:30:05].

Steven Jack Butala:
Possible and plausible.

Jill K. DeWit:
It is possible. And it happens.

Steven Jack Butala:
Every time we do these topics in these episodes I set out in the back of my mind, sometimes it’s conscious or subconscious to not sell anything. We’re not here to sell Land Academy programs. We’re not. Believe me, we have enough interest in this program. We’re here, Jill and I, because this is our way to give back. And I actually feel good about making a bunch of money, buying, selling land and sharing the word and spreading the word to the right audience. You will never see either of us stand in front of a jet plane that may or may not be ours to sell something. That’s not what we’re here for. It’s very, very plausible and realistic to make a million bucks a year, one month at a time, buying a property for let’s say $30,000 and selling it for 100-

Jill K. DeWit:
130.

Steven Jack Butala:
Or a hundred. That’s a $70,000 net margin times 12. It’s a million dollars to buy one property that checks all your boxes. You’re probably going to have to send out between 5 and 10,000 units a mail a month.
And you’re going to have to do it with all the research that we teach. Research the heck out of where you’re going to send the mail for how much you’re going to send it out, what you expect it to sell it for. This all goes into doing a really intelligent mailer, an intelligent fixed price offer type mailer. And so if you do all that and you answer the phone and create transactions out of the phone calls, you’re going to get out of that mailer, this is very realistic. And if you have the right personality type, or like the guys that just joined, you just heard from them, have a bunch of experience, whether it’s in real estate or not, but just some professional experience. You’re really increasing your likelihood of this being a reality. So I don’t like when the word million, how to make a million dollars. I do know how to make a million dollars this year, that’s the truth of it.

Jill K. DeWit:
Exactly. And I can show you.

Steven Jack Butala:
And there’s no strings attached.

Jill K. DeWit:
Exactly. We just shared it.

Steven Jack Butala:
It’s not why we’re here, yeah.

Jill K. DeWit:
There you go.

Steven Jack Butala:
There’s a bunch of details and there’s a bunch of stuff you have to do right-

Jill K. DeWit:
That’s why you have us, we’ll show you.

Steven Jack Butala:
It’s procedures. It’s procedures. And there you have a massive community that’s already doing it. So again, I hesitate to write these titles like this, but people want, and I don’t make these titles up, they come to us because they’re suggested topics from our staff and from-

Jill K. DeWit:
Because this is what people want to know. This is what people want to hear.

Steven Jack Butala:
Let’s say you do it all wrong. Jill’s famous for saying this. Let’s say you do everything wrong. And you make 2 or $300,000.

Jill K. DeWit:
I was going to say half a million dollars. I screwed it all up. That’s how I look at things too. If I’m going for a million and I screw it all up and I only make $500,000, am I hurting? Not really. I think I can live off that. If you can’t live on that, now we have another problem. And that’s a whole different thing.

Steven Jack Butala:
Geez, let’s say you make 120 grand.

Jill K. DeWit:
Yeah. You do two deals, three deals.

Steven Jack Butala:
It puts you in the top five percentile of our country as a household. I think it’s higher than that, but I’ll say 5%.

Jill K. DeWit:
Completely agree.

Steven Jack Butala:
Let’s take a look at another one of our favorite land acquisitions from our weekly Thursday member webinar. Jill, you have something inspirational to share.

Jill K. DeWit:
Okay. I would like to take a moment and talk to everyone sitting on the fence. I don’t care what fence it is, whether it’s, “Do I buy this house? Do I take this job? Do I leave this job?”

Steven Jack Butala:
“Should I ask this girl out?”

Jill K. DeWit:
“Should I ask them out? Should I ask them to marry me? Should I get pregnant?”

Steven Jack Butala:
Oh geez.

Jill K. DeWit:
“Should I go to school? Should I pick this degree? Should I do that degree?” You know what, there’s so many choices. It’s coming up with me now because I’m talking to people, a lot of people that thank goodness are moving forward and they made the decision to join Land Academy. And then, because again, I’m talking to a lot of people the last couple of weeks about Career Path, but for some reason they’re afraid to take that step to do deals we’re talking about. I’m like, “What’s wrong with, why…” I almost wanted to shake people and go, “You got this far, what’s going on?”
So my quote that I came up yesterday was like, “Man, if you don’t do this now, you probably never will.” And I felt so bad for people. If you’re sitting on the fence and you find yourself six months from now still sitting on the fence, there’s something else going on and I feel bad that we’re going to leave you behind. I don’t mean to, I don’t want to, but I can’t drive over there and put you in the car. And this is going on. I have a lot of people that are perfect, perfect for Career Path and their answer is, “I’ll do Career Path seven.” And you know what? If you tell me Career Path seven, that really means you mean Career Path 70.

Steven Jack Butala:
Which there won’t be, I can tell you

Jill K. DeWit:
Exactly. We will not be here for Career Path 70.

Steven Jack Butala:
I do not have 70 Career Paths in me.

Jill K. DeWit:
No, no, it won’t happen. So you need to look at you and really think about this and taking a step, like I said, you’re already in Land Academy. Maybe you’re not in Land Academy. Maybe you’re thinking about this and this is the fence that you’re on. Maybe I have talked here, I’ll give you another example. I have over the years, spoken to a lot of people who have said, “I’ve listened to you and followed you for two years.” I’m like, “How much more due diligence do you need?”

Steven Jack Butala:
Well, then it’s not… And I respect that. I respect one way or the other.

Jill K. DeWit:
Two years?

Steven Jack Butala:
Yes. If you’re listening to it for two years, because you think it’s funny that the relationship Jill and I have, that’s fine.

Jill K. DeWit:
I know. But that you want to do this. You’ve wasted, not wasted, but you waited.

Steven Jack Butala:
I’m a big fan of both ends of the bell curve. So if you are a casual listener and you think it’s funny, and I get that-

Jill K. DeWit:
Well, that’s a whole different thing.

Steven Jack Butala:
I casually listen to a lot of other people that are in a space and have no intention of ever buying their products, or getting involved in their community, or any of them. But I just think it’s funny and it’s really interesting to hear about that. I’m a big mobile home guru, let’s call it fan. And I love the stories and all that, but will I ever own a mobile home park? Probably not that, that investment class and what’s required from a management standpoint, it doesn’t fit my personality. And then on the flip side, on the other end of the bell curve, I have to be bonked over the head hard with some life circumstance or somebody I care about Jill to make any real change in my life. And when that happens now I’m going to go a hundred miles an hour and make sure it happens. So I understand that. I’ve been listening for two years.

Jill K. DeWit:
I get that. But you have started other businesses inside of two years. That’s my point. I don’t think that’s a normal, I think that’s a long time. I think you, like I said, you just need to take some action and you need to look at yourself and decide, this is my final point. Look at yourself and decide and rip off the band. You’re either going to do it or you’re not going to do it and accept it. “I’m never going to do that. This is all I’m going to do. I will have this job. I will have this, and I’m just going to own that and not beat myself up about it.” That’s just not for me. Some people don’t have it in them, and that’s okay.
One of my dear, dear, dear best friends is a fourth grade school teacher, and she has never wanted to do anything but that. She’s very happy in that, that’s her thing she never wants. But there’s people that have a drive in them and want to do more. That’s where I get confused. If you’ve got this drive and this fire building in your stomach, but you can’t take action, you need to, you’ve got to push yourself and do it. Or you probably never will.

Steven Jack Butala:
You should teach a class. I’m serious.

Jill K. DeWit:
Really. Thank you.

Steven Jack Butala:
I don’t meet a lot of people who have a lot of drive and don’t do anything about it. You talk to way more people than I do. I met lots of people on each end of the bell curve.

Jill K. DeWit:
I have one guy right now, it’s so funny that. We’ve been talking about Career Path and going back and forth. I’m like, “You have to do this. You’re perfect.” He’s like, “I’m selling this thing.” I’m like, “Well hurry it up,” kind of thing. And then he emailed me with the Career Path seven thing. And my response right back with his says, “I am not going to let you off this easy.” I said that. I said, “Nope, nope. Not happening. You’re going to do this.” And then he emailed me back like, “Okay, one of them sold. I’m working on the next one right now.” I said, “You still have time? We’re going to do this.” He’s like, “We are going to do this.” So you know what? If you need me to give you that push, call me. If you need me to give you that push, I will happily give you that push. Jack, what do you have, something informational to share with us today?

Steven Jack Butala:
I sure do, Jill. The name of my piece of advice here, weekly advice, is getting the inside track of the land business or really any business. I’ve been doing a tremendous amount of research, because of market conditions about buying tax-free municipal bonds, versus annuities, versus let’s say CDs because their interest rates are real high. And it’s real attractive for us to lock in some situation like that where we are taking advantage of the interest rate situation, which is not going to go on forever. Hopefully it’s not. And locking in some good positive revenue for ourselves. And even for me, I have an accounting background. I’ve owned a bunch of companies, still own several very successful land acquisition and salesperson. It’s very hard for me to navigate this. And it occurred to me after about a week of looking at this and talking to my friends who really do know about it and on, and on, and on, I don’t have the inside track in the business.
I have the inside track on the land business, and we talk about the inside track, and getting to know everything. It doesn’t happen overnight. It’s going to take probably good 12 months if you work at it real hard. But you will get it and just like I would and will get it for municipal bonds and everything else, but there’s a lot to learn. And so at the tail end of my initial self-education on all of that, I started to think about how daunting it might be for some people who are learning to buy and sell land from us. And so I’m personally going to try to make it a little bit easier.

Jill K. DeWit:
For us for, okay, well let me ask you this. Have you found the pro and if you found the pro.

Steven Jack Butala:
No I haven’t.

Jill K. DeWit:
Oh.

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s right, Jill.

Jill K. DeWit:
Aw. So, that’s the missing piece.

Steven Jack Butala:
And you know I looked. I looked for the Land Academy version of tax-free municipal bond investing.

Jill K. DeWit:
That’s the problem.

Steven Jack Butala:
So now I can’t-

Jill K. DeWit:
And have no trouble jumping in, you know me.

Steven Jack Butala:
I know. Jill and I are independent. We are. I’m not like, if I call Fidelity, let’s say, and talk to somebody who’s a tax bond municipal bond expert, the next thing I know, 15 seconds later they’re shoving me into some annuity that I don’t really want, and they’re not listening, and you just don’t know who you’re going to get. We’re not here to sell you one thing. We’re here to just teach you how to make decisions for yourself and maybe what the difference is between Texas and Montana or whatever other questions you have, especially in Career Path. So I understand that this can be daunting, but the goal has to be for you, or it is for me anyway, to get the inside track where you no longer feel like an outsider. And you can take that Fidelity, I’m just choosing Fidelity because that’s the first one that comes to mind. You can manhandle that, figuratively manhandle that Fidelity salesman and say, “Listen pal, this annuity’s not going to happen. I’m here to talk about bonds and use the terminology and all of it.”

Jill K. DeWit:
That’s good.

Steven Jack Butala:
It’s real education.

Jill K. DeWit:
That’s really good. Thank you.

Steven Jack Butala:
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.