How We Built a 4-Hour Land Investment Work Week from the Road (LA 1950)

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Join Steven Jack Butala and Jill DeWit on this episode of the Land Academy Show, where they discuss their four-hour investment work week from the road and how mailer yield is a direct result of who answers your phones. They also talk about their new RV and how they are able to conduct their land investment business while on the go. Tune in to learn how you too can be a successful land investor while enjoying the freedom of the open road. Plus, they answer questions from their Land Academy Discord forum and review land acquisitions. Check out landacademy.com for more information.

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 1,950, believe it or not. And today, we are talking about our four-hour investment work week from the road. We’re in our rig right now. And how mailer yield is a direct result of who answers your phones.

Jill K DeWit:
Two really important topics, I got to tell you. Let’s go back to topic number one for a second. I just want to cover these things. For those of you who are watching us, watch this. I can extend both arms and I’m not hitting a wall, and I’m not sitting at a kitchen table.

Steven Jack Butala:
We have a new RV and-

Jill K DeWit:
It’s over there.

Steven Jack Butala:
… Jill’s delighted.

Jill K DeWit:
Yes, we have upgraded everyone. So yeah, for those of you who are in our RV world, we went from 24 to 38 basically. And now that we’re in 38, okay, already 38, we feel like, wow. We’ve been two nights, by the way, in our 38. And what does Jack say today? “Do we need a 43 or 45?”

Steven Jack Butala:
No. You knew that was coming.

Jill K DeWit:
I’m like, “What?” We don’t need bunk beds. We don’t have kids. We don’t have pets.

Steven Jack Butala:
And we have these work stations.

Jill K DeWit:
Well, we have kids, but they’re not allowed to come with us. We don’t allow overnight guests. I’m just kidding. So kind of-

Steven Jack Butala:
This a happy wife moment for me.

Jill K DeWit:
Wow. And you too. Thank you very much. And it’s a whole different ballgame. So yes, as you can see, that’s that’s going to tie into our topic today because everybody’s like, “What do I need to know to do this from the road like you guys? You guys are in an RV.”

Steven Jack Butala:
Might be the back of a boat.

Jill K DeWit:
You’ve had two years in your little RV, and we did a good thing. I’m very proud of our two years in our little RV. I think we fared very well. We stayed together as a couple. Our companies held on.

Steven Jack Butala:
Sure. All valid points.

Jill K DeWit:
Exactly.

Steven Jack Butala:
There were moments where we didn’t, we weren’t sure about us.

Jill K DeWit:
It was touch and go, and the companies were fine. It was us that was touch and go, but now we’re in a much different situation, and we can really spread out. And that’s what we’re going to talk about today. I did a show, a live thing last week. It was live webinar, which we also streamed on YouTube and Facebook at the same time. It was great. It was so much fun. And here from the road and the whole topic was as a land investor, can you really do this from the road?So the four-hour work week is one part of it, and then doing it from the road is another part of it. Putting it together, it’s amazing. And that’s what we do now. The land company, the whole Land Academy part of it, that’s not a four-hour week.

Steven Jack Butala:
This is it. Are you going to go into the topic?

Jill K DeWit:
I guess I am. I will stop now.

Steven Jack Butala:
Each week we answer questions from our Land Academy Discord forum. We review land acquisitions from our weekly Thursday member webinar, and we take a deep dive look into two land related topics that are usually requested on the Discord channel or through some venue by our members. Let’s take a question posted by one of our actual members on the Land Academy Discord online community. If you want to sneak peek, go to landacademy.com. It’s free.

Jill K DeWit:
Andre wrote, “I got my first signed purchase agreement in an email. I believe I can sell the lot for three times the purchase agreement price.” Awesome. Because Andre did it right. “I would like to talk to a few agents in the area about what they think it could sell for. Any tips on how to approach the agent and what questions to ask?” Sure. Really easy. I love this and I like that too. That’s sometimes part of my due diligence also like, all right. I think I know what’s going on. Sometimes I know. And sometimes I’m like, I think I know what’s going on. I just want to confirm it, A. And B, I want to find an agent anyway. I want to kind of see who I connect with and see how smart these guys are. Why not bust out the calls now? Why wait?
I’d rather have them lined up. So what you want to do is you want to call them and be a little bit, you don’t want to say, I’m staring at a purchase agreement, and it’s for this amount. You don’t want to share any of that. You want to just skip along the top, “I just got this property.” Let them assume you own it, number one. “I just got this property and I want to see what you could sell it for.” “Great. Okay. Awesome. I assume you own it. You’re calling me to sell it.” You got their attention. And then I want you to say, this is what I do, because I don’t want to hang on to it forever. I’m not going to do a long thing with them. So I want you to say, “I want to get your opinion on it and there’s no fire. I’d like to know what you could sell it for. I don’t know, between 30 and 90 days kind of thing.”
That’s what they, “Great. Where is it?” “Okay, it’s off I-42 or whatever.” Wherever it is. “You want me to email you? Do you want me to text you the APN? What do you want me to do?” Okay. And then they take over. “All right, I’m going to be at my desk in about an hour, so why don’t you email me. Here’s my email. Great. And then I’m going to be in that area on Tuesday afternoon, and then I’ll get right back to you.” Awesome. That is what your initial phone call should be. That’s it. And let them go do, and by the way, do that with three people. Okay? Because it may take more than three, but I want you to have a conversation with three, because if four don’t answer the phone at all, you can’t get with them. They’re not your guy anyway. Because if you can’t call them about selling a property, people can’t call them and reach them about buying a property.
So you want to get those responsive agents and those agents that are excited about this property. And in a perfect world, they’re going to come back with, they’re going to follow through, like you just said. You’re going to text them or email them. They’re going to reply. “Okay, got it. I’ll let you know Tuesday afternoon or Wednesday morning. I’ll get, you know what I think.” And you’re like, “Great.” And then of those three that you connect with, probably two will get back to you and one of them, hopefully you’re really going to connect with, and they’re going to go, “I love this. I just sold one just like this about four months ago, but it wasn’t even as nice as this. So here’s what I think. I think if we list it for 72, we’ll probably get at least 60, 65.”
That’s how it should go. And you’re like, “Awesome.” And then at the end of that, you’re going to say, “Great, I appreciate that. Okay, give me a couple weeks to finalize everything on my end.” Which is code for I haven’t closed on it yet, but they don’t need to know that and say, “I’m going to call you back and inside a 30 days. Watch for me.” And they’re like, “Great. I will.” Done.

Steven Jack Butala:
Andre is brand new or relatively new. He’s plastered himself all over Discord.

Jill K DeWit:
Oh, good.

Steven Jack Butala:
And he’s asking all kinds of good questions.

Jill K DeWit:
This is great.

Steven Jack Butala:
In fact, the second question later in this episode is from him too. So you’re doing exactly what you’re supposed to do. You sent some mail out. Sounds like you got a great property here among a group of properties I think that you’re buying or potentially buying and you’re asking questions. Here’s a basic rule of thumb about when to start reaching out in a local community about a local property that you think you should buy. There’s always this risk of you don’t control the property.

Jill K DeWit:
What are you asking?

Steven Jack Butala:
You’re asking a lot of questions from local people about a local property, and you don’t control it. You just got a purchase agreement back. That doesn’t mean it’s signed, sealed, and it’s over.

Jill K DeWit:
True.

Steven Jack Butala:
So you always have to ask yourself, is this property good enough for me to open escrow on and then start doing, getting people’s valuation opinions? And that’s a sometimes yes, sometimes no. And you did the right thing. You’re asking this community. I would even go further and try to find somebody who knows the local area and start asking them questions within our group within reason.

Jill K DeWit:
Which is what he’s kind of doing.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah. Well, he’s reaching out. He’s not saying where it is or anything.

Jill K DeWit:
Exactly.

Steven Jack Butala:
We have a would you do this deal section in Discord. If you’re comfortable, you could post it there. People are going to say, “Heck yes.”

Jill K DeWit:
I answered his question was just about approaching an agent and what to ask.

Steven Jack Butala:
I know. You don’t want to give away the AP on because the first thing they’re [inaudible 00:08:28].

Jill K DeWit:
You do.

Steven Jack Butala:
Where it is. Where is it? Not if it’s not under contract and [inaudible 00:08:31].

Jill K DeWit:
Well, I have a signed purchase agreement.

Steven Jack Butala:
I disagree.

Jill K DeWit:
All right. And you’re allowed to.

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s why there’s two people on this show and co-founders.

Jill K DeWit:
That’s hilarious. If you are in any way nervous about that, yes, open escrow, get an escrow number.

Steven Jack Butala:
My goodness, Jill.

Jill K DeWit:
And still make the phone call. No big deal.

Steven Jack Butala:
Today’s first topic is called mailer yield is a direct result of who answers your phones.

Jill K DeWit:
Actually, that’s the second topic.

Steven Jack Butala:
Oh, sorry.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah,

Steven Jack Butala:
Today’s first topic is called-

Jill K DeWit:
There we go.

Steven Jack Butala:
… four-hour work week, land investing from the road.

Jill K DeWit:
Thank you very much. Because this is the one I really want to deep dive about, and the reason is this was a hot topic last week. So much so there were between one and 200 of you that showed up to listen to me and watch me and ask me questions live last week about this topic. This is interesting. I’m curious. I should have asked, is it more about the four-hour work week or is it more about doing it from the road? I think it was more about the four-hour work week. What do you think?

Steven Jack Butala:
Yes.

Jill K DeWit:
Okay. Because you were there, you watched, you heard. Because the questions were, but there were several of you that said, “I’m on the road too. I get you guys. I love it. This is what I want to do.” We have people in our, it used to be with Jack, it was back of a boat. When we first got together, he is like, “I always wanted a business where we did very well. We didn’t have to work that hard and we could do it from the back of a boat.” And you did that. And now we transfer to wheels, doing it on wheels and doing it on the land. But still, we’re not stationary, if you will. We are for a few minutes, but that’s about it.
So I want to talk about what really goes on and how the heck I can do this and we can do this in a four-hour work week. And a lot of it is stuff you’ve put in place. I’m going to give Jack some credit here. We have a lot of systems. We have a great team, and we’ve had to work to get to this point. But I will … So to jump in any moment.

Steven Jack Butala:
This whole topic of four-hour work week, first, let me preface this. I hate little sayings like this. I hate it. That’s a four-hour work week. Oh, you can passive income and you don’t have to do anything. That’s just not the case. This is a result of years just right, years and years and years. Your first year of land investing, you’re not going to have a four-hour work week. It might be closer to 80 if you do everything right, but you can’t achieve at some point four-hour work week. So this entire buying and selling of land the way that we do it is a result of me trying not to work and me surrounding-

Jill K DeWit:
It’s true.

Steven Jack Butala:
… myself, Jill included, with somebody who is really efficient, wants the same stuff that I do, and all of our top managers are just like that with a couple of exceptions. There’s no fibbing or no embellishing, let’s call it on any of that. A four-hour work week in buying and selling real estate or land specifically is very, very accomplishable. Honest to God I think it’s four hours between the two of us if the truth fits.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah. Three and a half, 30 minutes. That’s really how it goes. Three and a half hours to me and 30 minutes to Jack, which is not, it’s not … It’s true. It’s not. It’s funny, but it’s true.

Steven Jack Butala:
Here’s how it plays itself out. If you’re starting out or you’re scaling, let’s say, you do, if you’re between one and 10 deals, you do the first deal. You buy it for four, $10,000. You sell it for 25, and you’re either going to say, “Are you kidding me? I can do this 200 times a year. What do I have to do?” Because, or you’re going to say, “It doesn’t make any sense to me and I don’t like it.” So there’s a why in the road there. And you’re going to kind of choose which way. Once you go down the path where the light bulb went off over your head and you want to start, I want to do 200 deals a year. Then you start to say, or if you’re me or like me, you start to say stuff like, Hey, I got that deal done and geez, I hated you in a mailer.
I’m going to get somebody, I’m going to figure out who can do a mailer out there for a lot less money and a lot faster. And I hated talking on the phone that whole time. I had to talk to the real estate agent. I had to talk to the seller. I don’t want to do that. I got to get somebody else to do that. In my case, I found a partner who likes doing that. And so step by step by step, you get yourself to where you’re doing nothing, and it’s very, very, very profitable. But you still have a conductor’s baton in your hand, which is thus the four-hour work week. Which is why, and this is my final point here, I can’t stand when people talk about passive income because I just don’t believe it. The only passive income that I know about is interest income where you put money into not even the stock market because you’ve got to check that, interest income and a CD or something like that. That’s passive.

Jill K DeWit:
That’s right, and that’s fair. That’s really good. So I’m going to back up and explain a little bit. I started to talk about this in the intro too, about the land investing part. You can and you should get to this point. The Land Academy stuff, everything else that we do, that’s not a four-hour work week, and that’s okay. And I want to talk about too, what equipment I need. What do I need to do this from the road? So first of all, you wanted the four-hour work week like we do. How does this all start?
First of all, what do you got to do day one, you got to set your acquisition criteria. Like Jack talked about. You got to think about, how hard do I want to work? How many deals I want to do? What do I want these deals to yield? Kind of thing. And that’s my acquisition criteria. Got it. That’s minutes, right? Next you got to do is where are these properties? I got to figure out where they are so I know where to send my mail. That’s called trolling. This is all Jack’s side of the sheet, by the way. So this is the front end stuff that he does. Feel free to interrupt me or add or change. I know you do.
So that’s Jack’s stuff, and really he does have it down. And I joke about the 30 minutes. You know what it is. In truth, he’s always trolling. That’s the thing about Jack. And that’s the thing about Land Academy, why people are with us, because we’re really focused. We’re investors with you. I’m an investor first. We both are. That’s our core bread and butter, our business. And we try to stay ahead of everything to make sure we have the latest and greatest data, make sure we’re spotting trends in areas, and learning to even identify trends so we can come back and teach you and show you how to do this. So you too, your business will thrive like ours.
Cool. Watching somebody bigger than us roll by on their way out of town. Okay. So anyway, that’s our thing. So Jack’s part is that, so he is always trolling. I say 30 minutes, but it’s 30 minutes here, 30 minutes there for him. I think he loves it. He’s always on his phone looking at areas. We know our acquisition criteria or we know what’s within our threshold, let’s say. And I’m going to say our current acquisition, our acquisition criteria is pretty much always what’s the hottest. Am I right?

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah.

Jill K DeWit:
So it’s going to change.

Steven Jack Butala:
It changes all the time.

Jill K DeWit:
We see a lot of things selling in the $75,000 range. Now I’m going to tailor my stuff there. If I see a lot of things selling in the $110,000 range, I’m going to tailor it there. I usually don’t go too small because I don’t want to swim in that pool kind of thing. I don’t want to deal with that. It’s going to be in the healthy pool where I know I’m going to make a good profit. I’m not going to jump up and down for $9,000 profit. I will jump up and down for $90,000 profit. That’s the stuff I look for and above.
So that’s the first things you’re thinking about. And think about this, and as I go through this, I’m going to tell you what equipment you need. What do you need to do this? A phone. That’s it. A phone. You don’t even need wifi. You, your phone has internet. You have your hotspot. You have whatever. You can be sitting there at a restaurant or waiting to get on a plane or at lunch and bored and you could be trolling and going, “Huh, we just drove through that area. I look at this, I just noticed some things.”
And I look on the other side of the ridge. I noticed this, jotting down on my phone the ZIP codes. I’m going to look those up later. So that’s a little bit of what you need to do. Then you come back. Now you’re settled. Whether you’re in a hotel room, whether you’re on your boat, whether you’re in your rig parked, you’re going to spend a little time again on your phone looking deeper. But now you’re going to get your laptop out and start really looking at these areas and looking at how many properties for sale. This is all part of the trolling that we teach in Land Academy. And I’m going to go along faster because I have a lot to cover.

Steven Jack Butala:
There’s 10 steps to buying and selling a piece of land successfully, converting whatever it ends up being. Buy for 30, sell for 100. There’s 10 steps that have to happen. The vast majority with the exception of one or two, can be outsourced by, and you have two choices here. They can be outsourced to people who work for you, which is at this age and with our experience level, our first choice. Or they can be outsourced to unrelated third parties.

Jill K DeWit:
Right. Which is the next phase after you troll and you’ve got your ZIP codes and all that.

Steven Jack Butala:
Is that what you’re going toward here?

Jill K DeWit:
Exactly. So yeah, thank you. So we’ve got that part out, right?

Steven Jack Butala:
Trolling is something that I don’t think you can outsource. You have to decide where you’re going to [inaudible 00:18:27].

Jill K DeWit:
That’s what I’m saying. So I’m saying I’m going to identify in the four-hour work week, who does what and what you need.

Steven Jack Butala:
Okay, good.

Jill K DeWit:
So yeah. Are you asking me to speed it up a little bit?

Steven Jack Butala:
Uh-huh.

Jill K DeWit:
Okay. Because I can go for a long time on this. So all right, I will-

Steven Jack Butala:
I’ll keep you on track.

Jill K DeWit:
Okay. I’ll try to go at a healthy pace. So the next step, okay, that that’s something you should do, right, four-hour work week. Focus on that. Now you’ve got your stuff. You run what we have what we call a red, yellow, green test. You’ve done this at your computer. You’ve really zeroed in on the areas. You’ve zeroed in on what’s hot. You know exactly what size. You know exactly where to hit, where do you want to do it. The next step is outsource this piece. That’s what Jack was getting to. Whether you have someone on your team that you have trained or they’ve learned from us, or you use our people which is our concierge data, which you get through offers2owners.com. Offers and the number two owners dot com.
And you say, “I need these six ZIP codes. I want everything from two to 10 acres.” Fill in the blank, and then all the little criteria that you want in there. I need that data pulled. I need it scrubbed and I need it. I need comps in there. I need it ready to go so I can set the pricing. How great is that? And it’s that fast. So I mean, now you’re off doing whatever you want. Again, this is a four-hour work week. Let them do all that work. Queue it up for you. Now you get back, it’s 24, 48 hours later. You need to review that. You set your pricing, what percentage you want to come in at. I want to price these at 25% of that number. I want these at 22% of that number and these at 18% of that number, whatever.

Steven Jack Butala:
They’re examples of how to price.

Jill K DeWit:
Right.

Steven Jack Butala:
Please don’t price your mailer that way. It’s very, very customized.

Jill K DeWit:
It could be 33. Yeah. Whatever you want.

Steven Jack Butala:
Could be 75.

Jill K DeWit:
It could be whatever you need. Whatever you’re going going for.

Steven Jack Butala:
Pricing is not why we’re here today to talk about this.

Jill K DeWit:
No, but anyway, you’re going to give them percentage. You’re going to check them. I want you to eyeball them. Spot check them, and let them do the work, by the way. And then this is outsourced again. Are you handwriting any letters? Nope. Are you doing all that? Nope. You already have set up like we do a company, Offers 2 Owners is our company, our direct mail company because we got tired of people that not, I didn’t have to … I’d explain it all the time. They didn’t get what we’re doing, and it wasn’t as cheap. So we created that for you. So anyway, the mail goes out. So again, four-hour work week. I didn’t do that. I haven’t done really done anything yet. He did. I kind of haven’t.

Steven Jack Butala:
Which is the way it should be.

Jill K DeWit:
I like that. Exactly. Now, here come the offers. Oh, oh, wait a minute. I’m on the road, Jill. What do I do? My phone. The phone, the stuff’s coming back. So what? Don’t do it. If you’re new, I want you to learn how to do this. I want you to understand about these sellers and things like that. But in a perfect world, you’re not taking the calls, and we’ll talk about more about that in a minute, the value of a live person versus Google Voice. But you’ve got something like PATLive set up. So you’re on the road. The calls are coming in, the mail hit. Yay. The mail’s going somewhere else. You’re not even dealing with that. And that’s more on another show. You have that outsourced. But at the end of the day-

Steven Jack Butala:
She means a UPS store or a PO Box, not necessarily the USPS PO Box, but someplace where your mail is going and it’s either getting scanned in and getting to you, or it’s being physically packed up and put into a FedEx package, which is how we do it. And we get all the mail for all the companies in one place, and especially when we’re on the road here, we receive the package.

Jill K DeWit:
There we go. So that would be it. And then the phone calls, which is the majority of it, honestly, especially in the beginning. The majority of it’s phone calls, and that’s PATLive or some other unrelated third party that’s answering the phones for you. And at the end of the day, you’re getting a report of here’s the 12 calls that came in today, and you get to look them over and go like it, like it.

Steven Jack Butala:
You get to listen to them.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah, that too. Pick the ones you want. And then the next four-hour week, next day, that night, whatever you is best for you. Now you’re calling these sellers back and putting together the deal. I’m going to skip along the top. I’m not going to go through any great detail about-

Steven Jack Butala:
Or deciding you don’t want to do it.

Jill K DeWit:
Right.

Steven Jack Butala:
You’re going to see if there’s a deal there-

Jill K DeWit:
That’s what I’m saying.

Steven Jack Butala:
… through real seller.

Jill K DeWit:
You’re doing your due diligence, calling back and doing the deal.

Steven Jack Butala:
That is not something you can outsource.

Jill K DeWit:
Correct.

Steven Jack Butala:
That is the massive magic sauce that Jill brings to this entire situation is hurt calling, returning these calls and creating a deal very many times where there wasn’t one when the per person picked up the phone in the first place.

Jill K DeWit:
Sometimes that’s true. And what Jack’s saying is it would be a situation like the message to us is go jump in a lake. Your number’s nuts. I want to lease this. So that’s good. You want to sell. So the next day, well then I, first I do my due diligence and the next day I’m calling back and going, “We need to talk about the price.” This is me. Whatever you and I work out, and that’s a whole nother conversation.

Steven Jack Butala:
She’s a deal maker.

Jill K DeWit:
Thank you. So what tools do I need? Phone and a laptop. There we go. Now we’ve got some deals. Let’s just zip along here, four-hour work week. I’m opening escrow and letting them do their thing. I’m putting escrow with thew seller. I’m still going to manage it a little bit. A couple times a week, either myself or my staff. For you, it’s going to be you in the beginning kind of babysitting, at least two times a week touching all these people. But again, you could do this on the four-hour work week. You got three deals you’re working on right now. That’s two, six phone calls a week that you could do to make sure, “Is everything going okay? Do you need anything from me? Did you get in touch with this seller? Okay, we’re waiting on title. Got it, thanks. Talk to you on Thursday.”
That’s it. And then eventually, now we’re wiring the money in 10 days from now. Again, phone and a laptop. And now you own it. And by the way, on this time while you’re waiting to own it, remember we talked about the question that Andre had. You’ve already got an agent lined up because one of your rest stops was calling a couple agents in these areas and lining up who you like and getting an idea of the price. So when it closes, you’re picking up the phone and going, “All right, ready, go. Get those pictures done. Or get the drone shot if you don’t have them already, get that baby listed hopefully by tomorrow. Let’s go.” And you’re not doing it. Four-hour work week. They’re doing the work. They’re getting all the stuff. They’re writing the posting. You just sit back. And again, you’re rolling around while these properties are being sold.
And then you’re going to get, at the end of the day, you got to, oh look, we got a offer on this one. Awesome. I need to sign this. Excellent. If you don’t know how great DocuSign is, you’re not using it all the time. There you go. So we DocuSign the sales agreement from the broker. We’re cruising around. We’re three states over by now. We’re working on trolling and sending mail for another area while this one’s being sold. Are you following me here? And then the last piece that will need something from you will be a physical signature when you sell it on that deed. How great are these mobile notaries? So they will come to you. I showed a picture on my live thing. So there’s two options, by the way.
Mobile notaries are awesome. They will absolutely come to your RV. They think it’s the coolest thing too, and they’ve probably done it before. “Yeah, come on in. You want a cup of coffee?” “Sure.” And we’re going to do the signing right here and send them on their way. Takes five, 10 minutes. That’s it. And they’ll overnight them back to the title company. Don’t even think about it. The other option is now with the online notaries, there are, I’m not going to get into detail now, but you know it exists. If you’re really remote or it’s something hard or whatever it is, you can do an online notary where you’re holding up your ID. You’re on your phone, literally on your phone, holding up your ID documents have been scanned in for both of you. And you click a button, that you acknowledge it, and then that goes to the title company.

Steven Jack Butala:
This is all outlined in several different incredibly detailed ways in Land Academy 3.0, which is the most recent program. It’s flow charted and color coded.

Jill K DeWit:
True.

Steven Jack Butala:
And so what I say in the program, and I’ll say now, is that in the beginning you need to do all this stuff yourself so that you can make really, really good choices about who to outsource it to after your 10th deal. So you need to really learn and self-learn. That’s what this group is about, is to talk to as many people as you can within our group, utilize Discord. Please join our Thursday calls and ask all these questions and details about this reality to describe it. But what it all adds up to eventually, if you’re into it and you want to go through the learning curve, it ends up not working very hard and making a lot of money.
We are in our second or third now week in Career Path. Career Path is a program that Jill and I have we’re people have taken this very seriously. They want it to be their career or it already is, and they’re scaling way up, and they have a surprising amount of healthy, detailed oriented questions about how can I stop working so hard? Which is I started out with that notion. How can I stop working as hard and make more money? And the answer is outsourcing and being a good conductor.

Jill K DeWit:
And knowing what you should be working on.

Steven Jack Butala:
This is very possible. It’s very likely if you have the right personality and the right organization skills, and we have multiple hundreds of hundreds of current members that are doing it.

Jill K DeWit:
Exactly.

Steven Jack Butala:
Let’s take a question posted by one of our members on the Land Academy. I’m sorry.

Jill K DeWit:
That’s right.

Steven Jack Butala:
We need to take a look at a deal.

Jill K DeWit:
Oh.

Steven Jack Butala:
Let’s take another one. Let’s take a look at one of our favorite land acquisitions. So when you’re on the road, you don’t necessarily have all the same equipment.

Jill K DeWit:
Exactly. You might get a little confused.

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

Jill K DeWit:
We also have a team that can edit, which is nice too while we’re on the road. Okay, so where are we? We did that one. So it’s just the topics that we’re versing. We don’t just leave that, yeah, leave that whole page up right now. Okay, so I’ll start in there on the thing and then you do … So you did that.

Steven Jack Butala:
Let’s do a question, and then we’ll go back right up to here.

Jill K DeWit:
What about this 020 thing? You want to do anything or just skip it?

Steven Jack Butala:
No. Yeah.

Jill K DeWit:
Okay. All right. So where are we going to start up? I’m sorry.

Steven Jack Butala:
Right here. I’ll do it.

Jill K DeWit:
Okay.

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 of all this, go to landacademy.com. It’s free.

Jill K DeWit:
Cool. Okay. Andre wrote, “I have a few signed purchase agreements.” We went to the first one. Now he’s got several. I love this. “What’s the next step for getting deal funding? Do I need a memorandum? How do I protect myself? When do I open escrow? Things are moving, but I’m a little lost at this point in the process.”

Steven Jack Butala:
Which is totally natural and normal and I understand it. And especially if it’s working for you like this, you’re going to have questions because you don’t want to screw it up.

Jill K DeWit:
Exactly.

Steven Jack Butala:
What followed Andre’s question below this is multiple responses to who to talk to. Multiple people who are in our group to fund deals have responded.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah. How much money do you need?

Steven Jack Butala:
And I’ve seen the good funders that we have in our group, will probably take Andre under their wing and say, “This deal’s great. This deal sucks. Let’s do this together. I’ll fund your stuff until you have enough money or you don’t need a funder, and experience where you don’t need a funder anymore.” I put Andre in here for a reason. I’ve never talked to him. I don’t even know about him until I was writing the script, if you can call it that. He is a perfect example of self-teach. He’s self-taught. He watched Land Academy 3.0 probably 100 times like most people, got a mailer out, got a bunch of responses. What the hell do I do next? And that’s very natural and normal, and he’s doing the right thing. He’s reaching out on Discord and utilizing all the tools that Jill and I put together for a new person to succeed, including using other members to get deals done.

Jill K DeWit:
Are we going to answer the question or is that the answer to the question?

Steven Jack Butala:
That is the answer.

Jill K DeWit:
Okay.

Steven Jack Butala:
I mean, you want to answer it, go ahead.

Jill K DeWit:
Okay. What’s the next step to get deal funding? Reach out. If it’s me, you go to landfunding.com and you just fill it out. It’s tells you exactly what I need. State, county, APN, purchase price. If you have a PA, attach it. What do you know about the property? Things like that. All this stuff. So I can go and look at it and go, oh yeah, it is a good deal, Andre, happy to do that with you, kind of thing. So do I need a memorandum? Nothing yet.

Steven Jack Butala:
No. Your funder will put it together.

Jill K DeWit:
Exactly.

Steven Jack Butala:
Because everybody’s different. Our memorandums different than everybody’s.

Jill K DeWit:
They’ll have a sweet little, hopefully like we do. Ours is like a two page. One page? I think it’s one and a half page, something like that, agreement where just spelling out what you’re doing, what I’m doing, who’s going to be on the deed, how it’s going to go. That’s kind of it. So how do I protect myself? That will cover that.

Steven Jack Butala:
That’ll cover it.

Jill K DeWit:
When I open escrow? Anytime you want. Open. I’m a fan of opening escrow as soon as you’re doing the deal. I don’t know who’s going to-

Steven Jack Butala:
Well said.

Jill K DeWit:
… fund it yet. Let’s just get it open, because I can change that. You can call your title company, Andre and say, “Just put into my name for right now.” Who’s a buyer? And then in six days when you and I get the deal together and I say, “Okay, here’s what it’s going to be.” Then you just say, “Hey, we’re going to update the purchase agreement because we’re now going to put it in this name.” Okay. They don’t care.

Steven Jack Butala:
If you’re brand new, I don’t know, Andre, if you are or not. If you’re brand new and that process is intimidating to you, which I understand. Then do it with your funder, and I hope that you get the right funder in the beginning. You might not. You might go through a deal and the funder’s not your personality type.

Jill K DeWit:
Have a couple.

Steven Jack Butala:
But please understand this and Jill’s great about this. Me, not so much. But please understand that, these first few deals are going to be painful like anything. That’s the first time you ever do it. It’s like, yeah, I can improve on this, I can improve on this and I can improve on this. Believe me, the first deals that I did, I’ll do a show on this sometime. The first four or five deals I did were an absolute train wreck, but I made money, and you will too here.

Jill K DeWit:
So different for me.

Steven Jack Butala:
It’s just going to be a car crash of a disaster.

Jill K DeWit:
So different for me. Oh my God. My first field deals were fun. I learned a lots. I’m like, I get better.

Steven Jack Butala:
Jill’s great about this stuff.

Jill K DeWit:
I never call them a train wreck. It’s a like let’s tell me your first few relationships.

Steven Jack Butala:
Profitable train wreck. That’s going to be the name of my next e-book.

Jill K DeWit:
Great. I love it. Okay, awesome.

Steven Jack Butala:
Today’s second topic is called mailer yield and how it’s a direct result of who answers your phones.

Jill K DeWit:
Let me lead off with this. As Jack has mentioned, before it was me and before there was a team, let’s go back, but let’s go way back. Let’s go back to the ’90s. The ’90s. This person to my left was a one man show and so-

Steven Jack Butala:
Sad but true.

Jill K DeWit:
As you were figuring this out.

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s the profitable train wreck.

Jill K DeWit:
Exactly. Yeah, I understand the point now, yes. You had no one to bitch with or about or two or whatever you want to call it. So anyway, one man show figuring out there’s money in this. Like what just happened? I bought this property off eBay. I dress, I own it. I did what the guy told me. I own it. I sent it in recording now and then I go out and got better pictures, and then I wrote a beautiful description, learned about the area, put it back on eBay and sold it for three times or whatever it was.

Steven Jack Butala:
Twice.

Jill K DeWit:
Twice. Sold it for double what I paid for it. Okay, there’s something here. So that’s the backstory. So the point I’m trying to make is he was answering the phone back then. So he was the one when … Then he figured out this whole thing. Fast-forward past that, that him going out and finding a property just to test this. Fast-forward to years later figuring out I’m just going to canvas areas and send out these offers to all these people. Didn’t even know I’m coming. Let’s see what happens. And by golly, it worked and still works and you get calls back now. So the point of today’s second topic is these calls are coming back from these sellers that you sent out offers to you like what we do. And you who answers the phone makes a difference. Think-

Steven Jack Butala:
No, no, no, it’s not. Makes a difference. Who answers the phone-

Jill K DeWit:
It’s critical

Steven Jack Butala:
… is an absolute non-optional critical piece to this entire business model. Hold on a second. I’m going to drive this point home. You know the band Journey, and you know Steve Perry. Every single [inaudible 00:35:50]. If you don’t, then you have bigger … Land Academy is not your first problem. For a very long time, most people don’t know this. I only know this because I’m very, I grew up in the ’70s. Journey didn’t have Steve Perry, and they cut a lot of records and they were pretty good. The composition was great. These guys can sing. Same thing with Van Halen. Well, one day they cut a record and Steve Perry’s on it and it’s an international smash hit. Five or six of the songs, the ones that we share all the time. It’s 2023. We can’t walk in a bar without hearing those same songs.

Jill K DeWit:
Or a hockey game.

Steven Jack Butala:
Or hockey game. So they got to lead singer. They got somebody to answer their phones. That is the completion. Jill completed this business model.

Jill K DeWit:
Thank you.

Steven Jack Butala:
So we’ve had many people in a Career Path and we may or may not have people in Career Path right now who are very technically oriented like I am and believe that this is not a component that’s necessary. They believe something like this. “Okay, Jack, you say he is got to send out 5,000 letters to get a deal or 7,500 to get a deal. Well that’s great. I’m not going to do that. I’m going to send out 25,000 letters. No one’s going to answer the phone, and I’m going to get a couple of purchase agreements signed back and I’m going to go on my merry way because the numbers still work.”
I’m telling you it doesn’t work that way. You have to answer the phone. There’s so many things involved. When Jill answers the phone or she returns the calls that when PATLive … Am I taking over your topic here?

Jill K DeWit:
No, it’s fine.

Steven Jack Butala:
When PATLive actually answers actually answers the phone and then Jill gets those messages and returns those calls, she creates deals. And at the same time, she’s learning about a new area. She’s talking to all these people and putting the deal together and she’s deciding and maybe it’s subconscious whether or not we’re going to send another mailer there. Does she like the people that are the other end of the phone? Do they act like New Yorkers? Do they act like they’re from Arkansas? You choose which one where you’d rather do a deal. And so there’s so much-

Jill K DeWit:
Or how to work with them.

Steven Jack Butala:
… much stuff involved. I was just talking about this in the Career Path. If you’ve ever been to business school or taken any online classes, from zero to 100, there’s a critical point in every business where you deliver something to a customer in exchange for value. In most cases, it’s money. In healthcare, it’s that bedside delivery of sitting down with a patient or somebody who’s … whatever they need and delivering that with the care that they need. Most doctors really dismally fail at that. They’re just technical people. They made it through medical school. They didn’t make it through psychology school.
This is the critical point of customer delivery. Your customer is that seller. The person who buys a property, the real estate agent’s going to deal with that. And the property, you buy it so cheap anyway that there’s no real value added to talking to a buyer, in my opinion. There’s a huge amount of value for somebody like Jill where she’s sitting and talking to a seller and meeting that person from where they’re coming, whether it’s their price or the fact that their spouse may have died and they’re making this sometimes difficult decision to sell property, and they don’t understand value or the process. She’s delivering all that. So this person who in your case, if you’re new, you’re going to answer the phone or who the deal maker is absolutely critical to this. I know because I had Jill’s job, and I didn’t do it right for a very, very, very long time.

Jill K DeWit:
That was the point I was going to make.

Steven Jack Butala:
Oh, sorry. So I did take your topic over.

Jill K DeWit:
It’s okay. Who would you rather talk to? Him or me?

Steven Jack Butala:
Or who would you rather listen to right now? You see that stupid speech I just made?

Jill K DeWit:
Or me. Yeah, exactly.

Steven Jack Butala:
Jill, you get it.

Jill K DeWit:
No. That was beautiful and I love it. And thank you very much for saying that. And some people incorrectly even think that Google Voice will do the job. Think they have a great voicemail. Please don’t do that. That’s it. I just want to just hit this home. You need to have a live body, preferably nice, sweet, people can relate to them, and someone who can control the conversation because the goal here is in three minutes or less to calm everybody down if they’re hot or just figure out where they’re coming from. That’s it. Do they really want to sell and does your price work for them? And if not, what price does? Not retail. Let’s be honest here. You know who I am. I know who you are.
I’m just a sweet little investment company. This is all I do. So whatever deal you and I cut, it’s our deal. I’m not an agent. I’m not a broker. And I’ve got cash ready to go. I love your property. What number would really make you okay with all this and make you happy, and that would work for me too? So your goal is, all right, Jill, I know you offered 18. I got to pay off this stupid thing I’m staring at. Make it 25, and you can have it. All right, let me call you back tomorrow. I’m going to see if I can make 25 work. That’s it. That’s how these things should go.

Steven Jack Butala:
We have a couple personality, basic personality types in our group. Hundreds and hundreds of successful people. They have one of two basic personality types. Number one, they have some type of lifelong corporate sales or they don’t know it yet if they’re young and new. They don’t know it yet, but they have Jill’s personality. They’re very successful and they’re a pleasure to deal with and pretty quiet about their success in general, which just one of the things I love about Career Path, because we get to know those types of people. And they’ll say stuff, “Yeah, that’s great, that’s how you guys do it.” But this is how I answer the phone and why this works so well, and why we’re trying to scale from $100,000 a month to $500,000 a month. And then there’s the second type, which is more my personality, where they are obsessed with mailer yield, how to get a mailer out, how to price it.
And I have to tell you along the comments that I said earlier, all of that and all the money that’s associated with let’s say setting out a 10,000 unit mailer, which is going to cost you six grand will be wasted unless you have somebody on your team or you can muster up the spirit, which is honestly what I did before Jill and I joined forces. That you can just act your way through it. It will all be wasted and you’ll eventually quit because you’re not getting, we can talk about mailer yield and all of that stuff till we’re blue, until the person on my right makes a deal out of my mailer, makes steels out of my mailer.

Jill K DeWit:
So that’s the downside. That’s what can happen. We’ve had people where they’re like, “I had a mailer. I had a mailer flop.” I’m like, “What do you mean you had a mailer flop?” Because I don’t care if you overpriced it or under-priced it. Who’d you talk to? What’s in those things? “Oh, I didn’t talk to anybody. Nobody left a message. It was a flop.” I’m like, “Are you flipping kidding me? You didn’t call them back?” “Well, no. They hung up.” What the heck? I can’t. Let’s go back through your list, shall we? I’ll bet I can get something in there and I can have, I’ve done that. So you know what? This is my thing here too. You need to be available or somebody does and take these calls and work with these people and talk through this stuff. I seriously do not believe. Because the best thing that could be … here’s the two. You think you have a mailer flop. It’s usually you think, “I price it too low. Everybody hated me.” So what?

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s right. My [inaudible 00:43:25] thinks that.

Jill K DeWit:
So flipping what? You had 35 phone calls this week. Then you need to call some of them back. You have 30. Even if you had 35 sucky phone calls, you got their stuff out of them. Because some of them said, “Take me off your list.” It’s reference number 12345. Great. Go look at 12345. He was hopping man on Tuesday. So what? Let’s look at it. Let’s call him on Friday. You know what? I looked at your property again and I realized it might be worth more than I offered you. And I want to talk about that. Great.

Steven Jack Butala:
Beautiful example, Jill.

Jill K DeWit:
That’s it.

Steven Jack Butala:
This is how you create a deal out of anger. Great example.

Jill K DeWit:
I would absolutely take that call, wouldn’t you? Sure. You’d be like, “Yeah. damn right, that’s too low. Let’s talk.” Okay, great. Well what did I miss? And next thing you know, you’re having a great conversation about this person and you’re putting … about this property and you guys are putting a deal together. That’s it. So that’s the thing. And people say, “I did it too low.” All right, now we can recover from that one. Okay, here’s the other scenario. Oh boy did I overprice. I offered everybody retail plus 10%.

Steven Jack Butala:
Which has happened.

Jill K DeWit:
This has happened.

Steven Jack Butala:
I’ve done that.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah. Well, fantastic. Now everybody loves you. So instead of the 13 or every many, the 30 calls you had this week, you had 200. You had 200 people that love you more.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah. More chances to do sales now.

Jill K DeWit:
Exactly. So what?

Steven Jack Butala:
Might take more than four hours a week [inaudible 00:44:54].

Jill K DeWit:
This is true on that. But you know what? That could be your business model. I don’t know. I think that that would be a time waster, so I don’t want that to be your business model. But anyway, you goofed. So what? Go back through those 200, get a VA to help you. Go through and say, I don’t need to know which ones have access. I need to know this about this one. I need to know this about this one. And then you can look at them and go, you know what? Of these 200, I really like these 20. I’m going to call these people back and I’m going to have that tough conversation.

Steven Jack Butala:
That could be your business model.

Jill K DeWit:
It could.

Steven Jack Butala:
I’m not recommending this is your business model.

Jill K DeWit:
No. Because it’s a lot of work.

Steven Jack Butala:
It’s too much work.

Jill K DeWit:
It’s too much work. But that could be someone’s business model. Do a VA to screen them and then you call back that these have all the six and a half, seven As that we’re come up with another one now. Anyway. And you call them back and go, “Hi, my name is Jill. And yes, I got your voicemail or I got your message. You talked to someone on my team the other day about your property. We need to talk. I looked over your property and it is fantastic. And I know you were all excited about the $225,000 I offered.”

Steven Jack Butala:
I laugh because I’ve done this.

Jill K DeWit:
And I realized when I was going, when I originally sent out the offer to you, I thought it has this, this, and this. And I realized it doesn’t have those. But again, I do like it. So that 225, I can’t do, but I can do 25 and if that works, I am ready to go. And then them give them a minute, and we’ll talk more about that. And we have talked more about that. And I do talk about that all the time with Land Academy. How to go from $225,000 to $25,000? You can do it. And I’m going to tell you, they probably expect it. They know. If you offered retail plus 10%, they probably know something’s wrong. Or they think you know something that they don’t know. Is Amazon moving in next door? And you’re going to tell them, “No, Amazon’s not moving in next door. That’s not what happened.” I really goofed, but here’s what I can do.

Steven Jack Butala:
You should teach a class.

Jill K DeWit:
I do teach a class. Thank you very much. So anyway, that’s how you recover from that one. Now we’re going to go into dead horse territory if we talk about this before. I think you guys got it.

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:
Yes. After all that, this is all from this week. I had some really valuable, awesome, interesting conversations between Career Path and the live webinar that I did. It was so much fun. And one of the little takeaways that I was thinking about the webinar that I did, was the one or two people that jumped up and joined Land Academy while I was doing the webinar. And because I had a special going on at that moment. And it was sweet because one of the persons said a version of, “I just found you guys. I’ve actually been on the road. I’ve listened to 10 hours of your podcast in the last two days, and I get it and I am in.” And I love that. And I do a version of that. And so my inspiration, my note to myself was digging in on what sings to you.
When you find something like that and it really makes sense to you and you’re passionate about it, I do that too. And I encourage you to dig in. When something is too hard … you know wat? I’ll give you a story. I’ll give you a backstory here. Kind of like where we are with this RV, this whole process. We’ve been trying to get a bigger RV for at least six months I’m going to say, maybe longer.

Steven Jack Butala:
Oh, geez. Yeah, about a year.

Jill K DeWit:
That we’ve been thinking about upgrading our RV. But nothing made sense. He liked it. I didn’t. I liked it. He didn’t. The deal worked for him, not for me or vice versa. It was too far. Everywhere, there was something that wasn’t … We knew we needed a bigger RV, and we knew we both were on the same page about that. We kind of knew the manufacturer. We were still kind of open.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, we agreed on that.

Jill K DeWit:
We kind of did about the quality. We kind of agreed on the research. But the actual rig and the dollar amount and the floor plan and the size, none of that we were sure about. This rig, we owned it. We traveled three states over and owned it in seven days.

Steven Jack Butala:
We both just admits [inaudible 00:49:40].

Jill K DeWit:
From finding it.

Steven Jack Butala:
It checked every box.

Jill K DeWit:
I think this is the one.

Steven Jack Butala:
Every single one.

Jill K DeWit:
Exactly. So that’s a version, that’s what happened to us where it just clicked. So maybe you listening now, maybe it’s Land Academy, maybe it’s something else. But I just want to talk a minute about trusting your gut and your head knowing that this is right, this clicks and just going for it. And when something clicks and it connects with you, and then as you move forward in the process, as everything starts to fall into place, then you’re on the right path. And I want you to keep on going with it.
So found the rig. He liked it. I called. I knew who to call. It was a sweet girl who made this sweet video showing the rig. It was her phone number. She answered the phone. Okay, I like this girl.

Steven Jack Butala:
It’s a great dealer.

Jill K DeWit:
And we can communicate.

Steven Jack Butala:
Here we go.

Jill K DeWit:
So that’s another like, huh, it’s all going in the right direction. Things are falling into place. Now we’re talking money. I’m like, “All right, here’s the deal. I’ve got this trade-in.” They’ll take our trade-in. Okay, there’s another positive thing in the right direction. And the last thing is how much is the difference? What was the gap?

Steven Jack Butala:
And it was acceptable to me.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah. I said, “How close can you get to this?”

Steven Jack Butala:
Let’s be honest. Jill wouldn’t have cared what number that was.

Jill K DeWit:
I do care. I do care. But there was a number that we need to get to. I’m like, “How close?” And then we had a number that we together agreed upon. If it’s in this range, we’re moving forward. And then it was. Like I said, so that’s my thing. So whatever it is that you’re moving forward or you’re doing, whether it’s Land Academy or something else with your life, trust your gut, trust your head and those extra steps there’s green light, green light, green light. Keep on going.

Steven Jack Butala:
I have an anecdote too, and it’s not as positive.

Jill K DeWit:
Are you just going to undo what I just did?

Steven Jack Butala:
No, I’m going to be very realistic about this.

Jill K DeWit:
Okay, go ahead.

Steven Jack Butala:
Because there’s something that you said within all those words that you just said that’s really, really important to, that’s really important to understand. It has to sing to your head and to your heart. So when I was very young, starting out, long before I even knew that I was going to be involved in land or real estate or anything, I knew I wanted to be wealthy. And so that thought, it was in my soul and in my head. That thought can lead you to not the best decisions. That same thing with a girl. You meet a great girl. It’s all, everybody’s on their best behavior. Yep. This sings to me. I’m going to dig in on this. And then day date number two or three or four, it’s just again, it’s a train wreck without the profit. So you got to make sure that there’s a balance between your head and your heart and define-

Jill K DeWit:
And your gut.

Steven Jack Butala:
And yeah, and your gut. And define what sings to you because you can’t just say, I really like how that girl looks and she’s singing to me.

Jill K DeWit:
Two out of three.

Steven Jack Butala:
I really want to be rich, so hold on a second.

Jill K DeWit:
I like this girl. She’s pretty, but boy is she expensive. Hold on.

Steven Jack Butala:
I really, really, really want to be wealthy and selling cocaine sings to me. See what I’m saying?

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah, that’s true.

Steven Jack Butala:
You don’t want to just follow either your head or your heart.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah.

Steven Jack Butala:
It needs to be both or have a … Women are better at having feelings. If it’s the right feeling, then there’s a chance it might sing to you eventually, but still your head has to say okay too.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah, I agree. Jack, so hopefully didn’t bring mine down. You didn’t bring it down. That was actually good. Thank you. But so what do you have information to share with us today?

Steven Jack Butala:
I’m heavily into the research/writing portion of pre-launching a company that I’m going to launch later this year called Man Plan. M-A-N P-L-A-N.

Jill K DeWit:
You are launching?

Steven Jack Butala:
Pretty much. Well, we’re both going to do it, I guess. I guess we’re going to do it together. We don’t know yet, but I hope it’s both of us.

Jill K DeWit:
I may be invited, I may not. It depends on if it sings to his head and his heart and his gut.

Steven Jack Butala:
There’s a lot of derogatory things I could see right now.

Jill K DeWit:
Right now it might be zero out of the three.

Steven Jack Butala:
Substantial portion of Man Plan is about helping people, helping each gender understand each other and helping people convert those feelings of, let’s say I want to be rich to, how am I going to be rich? We all covered that we want to be that way, or wealthy I should say. Now how am I going to do it? There’s a lot of concepts that I’m reading about, a lot of great material out there that’s non-schlocky, that’s not self-help stuff. It’s actual real concepts like, hey, consider this. Another great example of, and I’ll define self-liquidating debt because it’s new to me. I just learned about it this week. Another great example is I just read the sentence. Middle class people who can’t break the veil of getting out of the middle class into an upper class and I only mean wealth by that, pay their taxes first and then they pay their bills. Wealthy people pay their bills first and then after all that expense, pay taxes.
That sung to me. So there’s all kinds of things that I’m researching and I’m inadvertently plugin Man Plan here. If you want to go to Man Plan now and type your email address in and get notified as this thing gets released. It’s available to do that. Self-liquidating debt is a really cute name for something that we’ve all known about. I’ve always known about this as a recovering accountant, but I never heard this phrase. So we’re all familiar with debt, and all of us are mostly familiar with how bad it is. I go buy an expensive car, brand new. We’ve all made that mistake. And then I got to pay all these fees and all the stuff that’s associated with it, and it’s always worth less than what I owe, and you never get out of that.
That’s just tertiary debt. It’s terrible. Same thing with the mortgage. Sometimes you get out of that okay. More often than not, this day and age, I really think if you do all the math, not so much. If you go and buy an apartment building and you utilize a rational amount of debt at a great rate and the deal works and the debt service coverage is okay and all of that, this is the stuff we’ll talk about in Man Plan. It’s okay to take some debt out on that because it’s self-liquidating.
The actual first month’s rent that you collect out of that new apartment building if you do the deal right, covers the debt. And then is it really debt? It’s tied to the building, not you, if you do it right, if it’s non-recourse debt. So there’s no damage in doing self-liquidated debt. So I guess my big picture point is here, and maybe this isn’t … Oh, it’s informational, not inspirational. Jill’s inspirational. I’m informational. Think about this stuff when you start … before you sign your name about what’s really, really happening. Tertiary debt’s bad debt. Self-liquidating debt can be great. It can be a great tool to move you through the cycles of wealth.

Jill K DeWit:
Thank you.

Steven Jack Butala:
She just fell asleep.

Jill K DeWit:
Oh, I totally zoned out. It’s all right.

Steven Jack Butala:
Join us next Wednesday for another interesting episode. 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.

 

Thanks for listening, and finally, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts.

LA 1998 WP

How To Be Successful At Flipping Land (LA 1998)

In this podcast episode, learn how Jack and Jill successfully flip land. They emphasize the importance of experience and knowledge in the land flipping business, and highlight the value of learning from those who have been in the industry for a long time. They outline

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LA1997WP

Respond To Change in Real Estate 2024 (LA 1997)

Jack Butala and Jill DeWit explore the real estate market, discussing the anticipated stagnation in 2024 and offering valuable insights for investors. Jack shares three crucial strategies to thrive in this shifting market: increasing offer volume, recognizing the rise in rental demand, and predicting demographic

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No need to hire staff - we did it for you.

Land Academy PRO is the brainchild of founders Steven Jack Butala and Jill DeWit. Designed at the request of Land Academy members who are ready for a higher level, we’re excited to continue to provide the tools and support needed by professional investors.

Each level comes with a preset amount of included data, Concierge Mail service, and postage. For example, the Green level includes 6,000 units of completed-for-you mail completely out the door at no extra cost to you.

All levels include a PatLive introduction and preset script (we will set up your phone answering for you), use of Land Academy’s personal Transaction Team to manage your deal flow, an AirTable (CRM) base setup managed by our (and your!) Transaction Coordinator, personal consulting, regular office hours, and includes your Land Academy subscription cost.

If you’re making this a business, Land Academy PRO takes the work off of your plate so you can focus on the things that matter – like running your business.

Green

$10,060

per Month

Silver

$14,590

per Month

Gold

$19,120

per Month

Platinum

$23,650

per Month

Black

$28,180

per Month

Concierge Data+ (with data) Included mailers each month (data + concierge + mailer + postage). Our team will do your data for it and get it out the door.
6,000 mailers 9,000 mailers 12,000 mailers 15,000 mailers 18,000 mailers
PatLive introduction at no cost We will help you establish your first script and get PatLive set up on your behalf to answer your phones.
$500 value $500 value $500 value $500 value $500 value
Transaction Coordinator Use of our personal Transaction Coordinator team to manage your deals. Trained and ready to go!
$7,500 value $7,500 value $7,500 value $7,500 value $7,500 value
AirTable Ready-for-you CRM managed by your personal Land Academy Pro Transaction Coordinator
$100 value $100 value $100 value $100 value $100 value
Personal Consulting 1 on 1 personal consulting with our Transaction Coordinator each week.
- - $1,000 value $1,000 value $1,000 value
Regular Office Hours Regular office hours with Jack and Jill + our staff. Private for LA Pro Members Only. (Think Career Path Office Hours)
$2,500 value $2,500 value $2,500 value $2,500 value $2,500 value
ParcelFact ParcelFact is included in your LA Pro membership with unlimited pulls.
$150 value $150 value $150 value $150 value $150 value
FREE Career Path Access
$23,000 value $23,000 value $23,000 value $23,000 value $23,000 value
Land Academy No more separate charges - Land Academy is included with LA Pro Membership. This includes all education, tools, support, and future releases.
$300 value $300 value $300 value $300 value $300 value
Subtotal: $8,550 value $8,550 value $9,550 value $12,050 value $12,050 value
Mail Value: $7,500 value $11,250 value $15,000 value $18,750 value $22,500 value
Total Value: $39,050 $42,800 $47,550 $53,800 $57,550
Apply Now Apply Now Apply Now Apply Now Apply Now

Green

$10,060

per Month

Concierge Data+ (with data) Included mailers each month (data + concierge + mailer + postage). Our team will do your data for it and get it out the door.
6,000 mailers
PatLive introduction at no cost We will help you establish your first script and get PatLive set up on your behalf to answer your phones.
$500 value
Transaction Coordinator Use of our personal Transaction Coordinator team to manage your deals. Trained and ready to go!
$7,500 value
AirTable Ready-for-you CRM managed by your personal Land Academy Pro Transaction Coordinator
$100 value
Personal Consulting 1 on 1 personal consulting with our Transaction Coordinator each week.
-
Regular Office Hours Regular office hours with Jack and Jill + our staff. Private for LA Pro Members Only. (Think Career Path Office Hours)
$2,500 value
ParcelFact ParcelFact is included in your LA Pro membership with unlimited pulls.
$150 value
FREE Career Path Access
$23,000 value
Land Academy No more separate charges - Land Academy is included with LA Pro Membership. This includes all education, tools, support, and future releases.
$300 value
Subtotal: $8,550 value
Mail Value: $7,500 value
Total Value: $39,050
Apply Now

Silver

$14,590

per Month

Concierge Data+ (with data) Included mailers each month (data + concierge + mailer + postage). Our team will do your data for it and get it out the door.
9,000 mailers
PatLive introduction at no cost We will help you establish your first script and get PatLive set up on your behalf to answer your phones.
$500 value
Transaction Coordinator Use of our personal Transaction Coordinator team to manage your deals. Trained and ready to go!
$7,500 value
AirTable Ready-for-you CRM managed by your personal Land Academy Pro Transaction Coordinator
$100 value
Personal Consulting 1 on 1 personal consulting with our Transaction Coordinator each week.
-
Regular Office Hours Regular office hours with Jack and Jill + our staff. Private for LA Pro Members Only. (Think Career Path Office Hours)
$2,500 value
ParcelFact ParcelFact is included in your LA Pro membership with unlimited pulls.
$150 value
FREE Career Path Access
$23,000 value
Land Academy No more separate charges - Land Academy is included with LA Pro Membership. This includes all education, tools, support, and future releases.
$300 value
Subtotal: $8,550 value
Mail Value: $11,250 value
Total Value: $42,800
Apply Now

Gold

$19,120

per Month

Concierge Data+ (with data) Included mailers each month (data + concierge + mailer + postage). Our team will do your data for it and get it out the door.
12,000 mailers
PatLive introduction at no cost We will help you establish your first script and get PatLive set up on your behalf to answer your phones.
$500 value
Transaction Coordinator Use of our personal Transaction Coordinator team to manage your deals. Trained and ready to go!
$7,500 value
AirTable Ready-for-you CRM managed by your personal Land Academy Pro Transaction Coordinator
$100 value
Personal Consulting 1 on 1 personal consulting with our Transaction Coordinator each week.
$1,000 value
Regular Office Hours Regular office hours with Jack and Jill + our staff. Private for LA Pro Members Only. (Think Career Path Office Hours)
$2,500 value
ParcelFact ParcelFact is included in your LA Pro membership with unlimited pulls.
$150 value
FREE Career Path Access
$23,000 value
Land Academy No more separate charges - Land Academy is included with LA Pro Membership. This includes all education, tools, support, and future releases.
$300 value
Subtotal: $9,550 value
Mail Value: $15,000 value
Total Value: $47,550
Apply Now

Platinum

$23,650

per Month

Concierge Data+ (with data) Included mailers each month (data + concierge + mailer + postage). Our team will do your data for it and get it out the door.
15,000 mailers
PatLive introduction at no cost We will help you establish your first script and get PatLive set up on your behalf to answer your phones.
$500 value
Transaction Coordinator Use of our personal Transaction Coordinator team to manage your deals. Trained and ready to go!
$7,500 value
AirTable Ready-for-you CRM managed by your personal Land Academy Pro Transaction Coordinator
$100 value
Personal Consulting 1 on 1 personal consulting with our Transaction Coordinator each week.
$1,000 value
Regular Office Hours Regular office hours with Jack and Jill + our staff. Private for LA Pro Members Only. (Think Career Path Office Hours)
$2,500 value
ParcelFact ParcelFact is included in your LA Pro membership with unlimited pulls.
$150 value
FREE Career Path Access
$23,000 value
Land Academy No more separate charges - Land Academy is included with LA Pro Membership. This includes all education, tools, support, and future releases.
$300 value
Subtotal: $12,050 value
Mail Value: $18,750 value
Total Value: $53,800
Apply Now

Black

$28,180

per Month

Concierge Data+ (with data) Included mailers each month (data + concierge + mailer + postage). Our team will do your data for it and get it out the door.
18,000 mailers
PatLive introduction at no cost We will help you establish your first script and get PatLive set up on your behalf to answer your phones.
$500 value
Transaction Coordinator Use of our personal Transaction Coordinator team to manage your deals. Trained and ready to go!
$7,500 value
AirTable Ready-for-you CRM managed by your personal Land Academy Pro Transaction Coordinator
$100 value
Personal Consulting 1 on 1 personal consulting with our Transaction Coordinator each week.
$1,000 value
Regular Office Hours Regular office hours with Jack and Jill + our staff. Private for LA Pro Members Only. (Think Career Path Office Hours)
$2,500 value
ParcelFact ParcelFact is included in your LA Pro membership with unlimited pulls.
$150 value
FREE Career Path Access
$23,000 value
Land Academy No more separate charges - Land Academy is included with LA Pro Membership. This includes all education, tools, support, and future releases.
$300 value
Subtotal: $12,050 value
Mail Value: $22,500 value
Total Value: $57,550
Apply Now

Disclaimer: *We have a monthly “use it or lose it” policy with mail and data – Land Academy PRO is designed to keep you on-track and consistent.

To cancel, all packages require a 30 day notice to move you back down to regular Land Academy membership.

Office Hours Schedule

Scheduling a Career Path interview call is currently on hold and will resume closer to Fall 2024 as we approach Career Path 10.

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