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 1,954, and today we are talking about how to surround yourself with successful people like Land Academy member, Kevin Farrell, and a little later on the episode, we’ll be talking about undoing term sales. I have to say, this episode is near to me because Kevin’s been with us, Kevin Farrell, has been with us as a Land Academy member since we started, pretty close to since we started. He’s been active in the live events. He’s a Discord manager, Discord moderator, has been since long before we even had Discord, and really active in there, and the icing on the cake is that he’s held a consistent weekly on demand consulting calls for people that are stuck at some point in their land investment career, and he’s retiring from his active role as a moderator and a consultant, but certainly not leaving the land business or Land Academy, but geez, what an amazing compliment. Jill and I have arranged for, and we’ll talk about it in a second, a sort of attempt at replacing him, but we’ll talk about it in a minute.

Jill K DeWit:
Is this near and dear to your heart because you’re thinking about doing all these things?

Steven Jack Butala:
No. No, I’m not.

Jill K DeWit:
I thought that’s where you’re going. I’m like-

Steven Jack Butala:
No, I just really like Kevin.

Jill K DeWit:
Oh, who doesn’t?

Steven Jack Butala:
And I like his contribution and I think he deserves a-

Jill K DeWit:
We’re going to talk all about that.

Steven Jack Butala:
He deserves an episode.

Jill K DeWit:
Exactly. I have a lot to say about this, too, and I’m going to, but I thought that maybe that’s why you brought all this up. You’re talking about, boy, that sounds attractive.

Steven Jack Butala:
No.

Jill K DeWit:
Okay, because I’ve had those jobs.

Steven Jack Butala:
No, no, no. The retirement part sounds attractive.

Jill K DeWit:
Oh, yeah.

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s what-

Jill K DeWit:
Yes, it does.

Steven Jack Butala:
There we go.

Jill K DeWit:
There we go. No, no, no. Not that you want to take over and be the moderator and you want to do all the consulting. I know how that goes.

Steven Jack Butala:
Each week on the show, we answer questions from our Land Academy member Discord forum, review land acquisitions from our weekly member webinars, and take a deep dive into two land related topics by popular request. If you want a sneak peek of our Discord forum, go to landacademy.com. It’s free.

Jill K DeWit:
If you would like us to answer your question or would like help getting involved with our community, simply text us at (480) 530-7383. We read all the texts, and your question just might be answered here on our next podcast. Greg wrote, “Okay, folks. I’ve been feeling like it’s pretty slow on the acquisitions, although inventory has been moving, but I’ve been mixing it up and thought, man, not much of a response from my recent mailers. I haven’t gotten a message from PATLive since April 4th, so it’s been about two weeks. I logged into PATLive, checked my detailed bill, and it turns out I’ve had 34 calls since April 4th, and I haven’t received any messages about them. I called PATLive, they can’t find anything wrong and none of their emails are reaching me. So then, I called my web host, which is Bluehost, and they’re claiming they did some maintenance on my DNS server, and maybe this is why they’re not going through. They’re going to try some things, but now I have some catching up to do.” Poor guy. What was your response?

Steven Jack Butala:
I think there’s a deeper rooted issue here, and look, these things happen all the time. Jill and I have owned businesses and owned several businesses now, but geez, I’ve owned some version of a business since the early 90s, and stuff happens all day every day, and the difference between why Jill and I are pretty consistently successful is because we roll with this stuff and laugh about it, which is what I think you’re doing, too. Congratulations. I think you’re doing the right thing. You’re not blowing your top. I’ve seen many, many, many people get incredibly frustrated with all the detail related stuff that goes on in a business, so good for you. I think you handled it great.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah, I just feel so bad, and I’m glad you figured it out. The good news is, your mailer was doing its job, the calls are coming in, the people are there. Now you got to circle back around and kind of play catch up a little bit. That’s kind of fun.

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s what everybody said in Discord. Congratulations. You have 34 potential deals.

Jill K DeWit:
Exactly. Call them back now and make it happen.

Steven Jack Butala:
And maybe question Bluehost.

Jill K DeWit:
And maybe change your server.

Steven Jack Butala:
Today’s first topic is why it’s important to surround yourself with successful people like Kevin Farrell. Kevin, like I said earlier, just a few seconds or minutes ago, Kevin’s been with Land Academy since pretty close to the beginning. He’s an active presenter at the live events. He’s a moderator on Discord. He holds paid consulting sessions for our members who may be stuck, and all we get is positive responses from the people who talk to Kevin, and he’s really helped a lot of entrepreneurs move forward in our group in a really successful way, and he came to us retired, as a retired person, and now he needs to just take a step back from a time standpoint about Land Academy. Certainly not, like I said, buying and selling real estate, but as a moderator.

Jill K DeWit:
And the consulting calls. I love Kevin. The thing about it is, Kevin just has a real calm, cool way, and he’s done what we wanted him to do, which is take the Land Academy model and tweak it to what works for him, and then what he’s been doing on the coaching calls is help other people tweak it to what works for them kind of thing, help people figure out their niches and overcome hurdles and things like that. Do not worry. That doesn’t mean coaching is going away. We have a backup plan and we will announce that soon, but we’re just going to be changing. Kevin Farrell will be passing, not the moderator torch, he’ll still be there, too, but passing the consulting torch onto some other individuals, which is going to work out great. Sometimes, too, is somebody going to replace us sometime?

Steven Jack Butala:
Oh, sure.

Jill K DeWit:
Now that I think about it, I’m just thinking big picture, it’s not a bad thing.

Steven Jack Butala:
No, it’s great.

Jill K DeWit:
It really is.

Steven Jack Butala:
People retire.

Jill K DeWit:
People retire, people move on, people want to do different things, people want to take breaks. I totally get all that. Life happens. Totally get all that. It makes me think of, we have a lot of members, every year we have a healthy handful of members that life gets a hold of them and they have to shift their focus, and then they come back to Land Academy, which is really kind of cool, so I’m waiting to see how this goes with Kevin because he’ll still be like, he’s still in our community. He’s not going anywhere, but it’d be kind of funny if six months from now he’s like, I miss those calls. Can I do it again? To which we’ll say, heck yeah.

Steven Jack Butala:
Exactly.

Jill K DeWit:
Bring it. We know you’re still doing deals. It’s hard. This is one of the things about this business, too, is you can dial it up, you can dial it back. I could be retired, and do sort of retired basically, and do one deal a month, make-

Steven Jack Butala:
Oh geez.

Jill K DeWit:
… make a million dollar a year living, supplement my whatever I’ve got going on-

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s a nice supplement.

Jill K DeWit:
… with [inaudible 00:07:48] dollars. Right? Exactly, and do one deal a month so you don’t have to work that hard. I learned this a long time ago when I was just starting with you and learning this business. Back then, there were other, not many, but little investors in our pool, if you will. This was many years ago, 15 or so years ago, and it was interesting. There was times that I talked to these guys, they’re like like, “Yeah, I keep trying to really retire,” but they’re like, I can’t. Even if you think you’re going to turn off your phone in this business and you think you’re going to hang up your hat, the phone’s going to ring. You’re going to have a mailer that you sent 10 years ago and they’re going to call you and you’re going to go, “Well, shoot. I have to do that deal.”

Steven Jack Butala:
Oh yeah.

Jill K DeWit:
I know that’s going to happen to us and I welcome that. I’m ready for it. Yeah.

Steven Jack Butala:
Let’s take a look at one of our favorite land acquisitions from our weekly Thursday member webinar. Hey, if you don’t know by now, Jill and I own a commercial printing company specifically for sending blind offers to real estate owners. It’s called offers2owners.com. Just recently, we added a product to it called, Concierge Data. A lot of people are not interested any longer in doing their own mailers. They want to sub that out just like they’re subbing a lot of parts of their business out this day and age. Check us out, offers2owners.com. Ask for Aaron. He’ll hook you all up. Let’s take another question posted by one of our members on the Land Academy Discord online community. Again, if you want sneak peek, go to landacademy.com. It’s free.

Jill K DeWit:
Arturo wrote, what percentage of buyers are A) real estate professionals, B) getaway dreamers i.e. a family cabin, C) other buyer types, and what percentage of sellers are A) mom and pop single property owners, B) real estate professionals, C) other seller types? What was the response here? I’m kind of curious what people had to say. Does it matter? Was it, does it matter?

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s the Jill response.

Jill K DeWit:
That’s my response.

Steven Jack Butala:
And actually, I agree with that.

Jill K DeWit:
I don’t know. I’m not going to change anything. I’m a little, I don’t know. I’m not going to market anything differently or do anything differently, so I’m kind of curious why this question came up.

Steven Jack Butala:
I don’t know. Honestly, I didn’t look at the responses. I was just massively intrigued by this. Here’s my answer to the first one, what percentage of buyers are real estate pros or getaway dreamers, end users and C) other? It depends on the type of real estate, and we have a tremendous finite amount of control, an infinite amount of control over what type of real estate we buy. Right now in career path, there’s a person buying a specific use and fantastic deal piece of property for 20 plus thousand dollars that’s only zoned for a multifamily, right between two existing very successful apartment buildings. As a percentage, that’s a small percentage of the acquisitions that we would do, and to your second question, who’s going to buy that? Somebody who’s going to build an apartment building. We all know how that’s going to end.
You have a crystal ball on that real estate deal. 95% of the risk is gone. She’s buying it for I think, what, $27,000? It’s probably two, $300,000 piece of property. That’s wholesale, and she knows who’s going to buy it. It’s the people who have developed apartment buildings in that county. Super predictable, super simple stuff. While she didn’t seek out that type of zoning in that mailer, she did what we teach here at Land Academy, and she mailed to everybody, everybody that owns a piece of vacant land for less than 20% of what it’s worth or more, and that’s how it came out. To answer your first question, you have control over buyers. Yeah, that is the buyer. The buyer is, that’s a specific use property. If it was agricultural or geez, recreational, then that’s a much, much wider percentage, but Jill’s right. You throw it on the MLS or in commercial real estate, you know what’s going to happen. As far as sellers go, this is all you.

Jill K DeWit:
Meaning who I’m buying the property from, those sellers? What percentage are mom and pops? It’s all over the… You know what? Honestly, who I’m dealing with, are the mom and pop single property owners, really.

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s what everybody said.

Jill K DeWit:
That’s the whole thing. That’s why. I’m not reaching out to real estate professionals because that means somebody got there first. That means if my mailer landed in the hand of a real estate agent, I’d say, “Well, have a nice day.” Somebody else got there first. See ya, kind of thing. I don’t want to talk to them. I want to talk directly with the seller, and those people that just own those properties. They may not own single properties. They may have been collecting them over the years and they may have 10, they may have more, interested in maybe all of them, depending what they’ve got.
I guess the whole thing is, I only would care about… There’s two things on this whole question that I care about. One is, when I’m buying property, I care about whose selling it to me and I want to make sure I’m buying it from the owner. Nobody else in the middle of the way, not a wholesaler, not someone holding a contract, not a real estate agent. Nope. They got there first. They’re taking money out of the deal and I’m not interested now. I want to deal right with the sellers. On the sell side, who do I want to sell it to? Darn near anyone.

Steven Jack Butala:
Anybody who’s got the dough.

Jill K DeWit:
I don’t really care. The only thing that I might think about, like you said, is when there’s a really unique property with a specific use, I do want to make sure that myself or whoever’s selling the property for me properly conveys that, and they post it in the right place. The example you gave, it’s a real estate, it’s going to be a developer, it’s going to be somebody that does apartment buildings. Where’s it going to need to be? LoopNet and those kind of environments, and it’s going to need to be with that kind of a commercial broker. I’m not going to call the residential person that says, “I’m just learning land. I’ll sell that for you.”
That’s not the person that’s going to sell it for me. I want to make sure it gets to the right place. Also, if I had a real specific use, like it’s a recreational duck hunting property or something like that, and it’s 40 acres. I want to make sure that whoever’s selling it for me gets it in front of those people, in the right Facebook groups and all of that, where the hunters are because they’re going to want it. Who is doing that, by the way, is probably a mossy oak or whitetail property guy. That’s one of their specialties.

Steven Jack Butala:
When you send a mailer out, Jill’s exactly right, probably 90 plus percent, you’re going to get a man or a woman who say, “Yeah, we’ve owned this property for, it’s mom and pop.” There’s a smaller percentage, obviously, a much smaller percentage of corporate owned properties or it’s an entity other than Jim and Sally Smith. The truth is, after a lot of years of doing this, that sparks a red flag. Why is this company selling it? What happened here? Is there something wrong with it?
It causes us to dig deeper, to find out what’s going on maybe, and maybe it’s like, you know what? I owned this company since 1964 and I have these three properties left in this LLC, in this county, and by the way, here’s the other two. Take a look at them. I’d love to sell it to you because I’m just kind of done. What you don’t want when it’s in an LLC is, oh, I bought this and I found out there’s all these flaws and I can’t use it and I’m just going to dump it on you. That’s what you have to be worried about, and I think that’s what you’re asking here.

Jill K DeWit:
Cool.

Steven Jack Butala:
Today’s second topic is ongoing term, undoing, excuse me, term sales. That was a freudian slip. Ongoing term sales.

Jill K DeWit:
That’s what they are. Never ending. Oh my goodness.

Steven Jack Butala:
I don’t know where to start on this topic. I’m going to ask you to start. You know what? Our group is packed full of people who are recovering still from doing term sales.

Jill K DeWit:
Let me paint the picture. There is a thing, and we have done it in the past, too, so I know of what I speak, that is very attractive to buy a property and instead of selling it quickly for double, you could sell it for three, four times as much by doing seller financing. Let’s just say, I bought a property for $4,000. I could sell it right now for 10 cash, be done, move on, or I could sell it for $19,975 and take, I don’t know, $3,000 down and $250 a month for however many months that is. Very attractive. A lot of this is going with people, the thought process is, wait a minute, Jill. I’m going to quickly get my money back done. I like that, and then I’m going to get two 50 a month and I don’t have to do anything.
It’s just passive income. That’s the term. Well, Jill, if I have 10 of those, now I’ve got $2,500 a month, I have a hundred, I have, do the math. That much money a month, passive income. Again, we have done this. It’s never really passive income. If you think that every single person, or even if you think that 90 to a hundred percent of these people are going to have no issues, they’re going to pay on time, they’re going to set up a payment system with you, it’s autopay and you’re just going to walk away and spend your time on the golf course, you got another thing coming because it doesn’t go that way. It’s a different buyer.
There’s two things that happen. One is, A) you’re not going to get your money back fast. Sure, I got my initial investment back, but I can’t put that into something else right away, so that’s going to kind of slow me down, making a million bucks. Making a million bucks at 250 a month, takes a long time versus cash, and then doubling that and doubling that and doubling that. Okay, and we’ll get to that in a minute, so that’s the one problem. And then two, it’s these buyers that you’re working with, it’s a different person, it’s a different mindset, that can only afford 250 a month, and sometimes things happen. They lose their job, their paycheck changes, they get a new job.

Steven Jack Butala:
They lose interest.

Jill K DeWit:
They lose interest, they forget, they don’t want it anymore. Stuff happens. Here you are with this property that hopefully, you didn’t record any kind of major thing that you have to undo, and there’s a right way to do it and a wrong way to do it, and that’s not what this is about, but hopefully you can easily turn around and resell the property, but before you even do that, if you’re like me, you’re going to try to chase this person and try to help them out, get them back on track, because you don’t want to undo this. I feel bad. They’re $7,000 in and I don’t want to have to redo all this. Anyway, I always try to help them out. You can see where I’m going here. The people that have really taken this to the next level, like you before me, always have a staff of people to manage these payments, manage the customers, make sure it goes through smoothly. It’s never that easy.
What’s happened now is, people have, and like I said, we have done this and realized too, wait a minute, what am I doing? This doesn’t make any sense. The reason you would do term sales and take a step back is, let me paint this picture. You buy for four. Remember, I started with four grand, and let’s just be easy. I’ll buy for four, I sell for eight. I do it again. This time I buy for eight, I sell for 16. I buy for 16. I sell for 32. Maybe even then, I start splitting them up and do a couple 16s, 32, before I know it, in six months, I could be looking at $100,000.

Steven Jack Butala:
Hundreds.

Jill K DeWit:
Very easy.

Steven Jack Butala:
Hundreds.

Jill K DeWit:
Even more than that. I’m being so conservative, it’s not even funny. In six months, you could have $100,000 in your bank, which you would not have at 250 a month, by the way, starting with four grand. And then you go, oh, and then you can start making different decisions. You can easily, and then just keep going up from there. You could split off and go, hey, I like this size. I like buying for 20 and selling for 50. That’s a great market for me. It’s really easy to work with. I do one of those a week. Think about that. Now you’re making 120 a month with those numbers, selling one property a week. Am I really worried about these term sales? I’m way past what I can do, and I screw one month. I only sell two this month and I sell three next month. So what? I still made more than $50,000 a month not working that hard and not having to babysit anybody.
These deals are done. You buy it, you sell it, it’s done. What we’re talking about undoing these term sales is, I want you to think about them and let you know if you’re in this situation, you didn’t do anything wrong. I think it’s great that you learned that by the way. You have learned so much, and I appreciate how… You taught me how to do this a long time ago. I really appreciate that knowledge in getting to know that and understand those customers, and we don’t do that anymore. We’ve moved on and there’s a lot of people in Land Academy that have come and continue to come to us from those situations because they’re kind of stuck there. You kind of go, all right, I’m at $25,000 a month. It’s not passive by any means. I need to do more and I don’t want to take on another 25,000 this way. I don’t have the bandwidth. A lot of people come to us to help undo this and make some changes. Now, I’m happy to talk about how to undo this. Do you want me to continue or you want to jump in?

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, let me intervene and then you can end on that.

Jill K DeWit:
Okay.

Steven Jack Butala:
Undoing it is by joining Land Academy.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah.

Steven Jack Butala:
Let’s deconstruct both of these business models. There’s a cash model and the terms model. There’s some very key similarities to both of these models. You got to buy a piece of real estate cheap. You learn how to, in both models, from any source on the internet or anybody who’s done it several times, how to buy inexpensive property, inexpensive land. That’s your job, on the cash side and on the term side. You send out a bunch of mailers, you understand that process. You utilize the power of the mail and you buy a piece of real estate. In both cases, what you end up doing with that real estate and your involvement in general on the cash business model, which is the Land Academy model is over. You’re onto buying the next deal.
Why? Because you spend a couple hours finding a really qualified real estate agent and you shove that deal off to that person, especially if you’re in Land Academy Pro where our people literally handle the deal for you, get it done, and kind of take it from there within a reason. I’m oversimplifying, but what you become within the cash model is an acquisition expert. Now, think about what happens in the terms sale model. Congratulations, you bought a great piece of real estate. It’s closed and you own it. Now, if you own a collections company or a note servicing company, you are crazy qualified for what’s about to happen in that deal because you know how to service notes already, you know how collections goes, you got to get on the phone, you have to do all kinds of stuff.
You become inadvertently, doing four or five things that you have to be great at on term sales or get the people around you after you make $25,000 a month or whatever it all adds up to, to take that crap off of your back, so that you can actually go do what really matters, which is buy cheap real estate, undervalued real estate. You have to ask yourself, what do you want? Do you want all this responsibility or do you just want to be really good at buying undervalued land, and then outsourcing it off to real estate agents or whomever to get the deal closed and make a ton of money? It’s going to take you years, years and years and years to make a hundred thousand dollars a month in term sales, if it ever happens at all.
In fact, it wouldn’t. I would’ve quit because it’s grueling to deal with these people, and you have the recension rate and the default rate on term sales is insane. I’ve heard 50%, but when we were doing it, it was closer to 90%, and then you got to resell a property. Some people’s, that’s their business model because they want to own every piece of land that they’ve ever purchased perpetually and forever, and if that’s your business model, then you should learn how to do term sales. What Jill and I prefer to do is buy one or two or three properties a month, maybe sometimes as many as 10, make 50 to $80,000 a property, in many cases, much more than that, and it’s not hard to do the math. You buy five pieces of property, and make $55,000 net. That’s a quarter of a million dollars a month times 10 months. That’s two and a half to $3 million a year. You choose which one you want. How do you undo it, Jill?

Jill K DeWit:
Well, you choose. You know what I choose? I choose getting wealthy faster.

Steven Jack Butala:
I choose [inaudible 00:26:24]. Yeah.

Jill K DeWit:
And not working that hard.

Steven Jack Butala:
You know what I forget?

Jill K DeWit:
It’s just two things.

Steven Jack Butala:
You know what I forgot, too, is that it costs the same amount to buy these pieces of property, so from a cash requirement standpoint, you’re still buying a property for 10 grand and then you want it back $250 a month at a time, or you want to go and sell it for 25,000 immediately.

Jill K DeWit:
Well, hold on. What if I have limited funds. I can only afford to buy one at a time.

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s it.

Jill K DeWit:
I got to wait to save up to buy a second one, versus if I turn around and sell it, now I can buy two, and I sell that. Now I can buy four.

Steven Jack Butala:
Listen, there’s nothing that makes sense about term sales.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah.

Steven Jack Butala:
Unless you own a collection agency. I’m not selling you anything here. It doesn’t make sense.

Jill K DeWit:
Here’s what you do to undo it. You know what, the first thing I do? Again, been there, done that. I’ve called every single person that I had and said, how much money do you have? Not kidding. Total truth time here. I called every single person on payments and said, we’re going to make a deal.

Steven Jack Butala:
Stop the madness.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah, let’s get this done. How much do you have?

Steven Jack Butala:
Jill, that’s brilliant. I forgot you did that.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah, I did. I called him, and I’m like, “This is your lucky day. I know you think you owe me 9,000 on this, but you don’t.”

Steven Jack Butala:
How’s a thousand sound?

Jill K DeWit:
Do you have four? It was something like that.

Steven Jack Butala:
I do remember you doing that.

Jill K DeWit:
Yep.

Steven Jack Butala:
And we were both really on the same page about that-

Jill K DeWit:
Oh yeah.

Steven Jack Butala:
Like, just stop it.

Jill K DeWit:
I know. It was-

Steven Jack Butala:
We were buying all these deals-

Jill K DeWit:
Who cares?

Steven Jack Butala:
It’s like, we could sell this property for 14 grand.

Jill K DeWit:
Well, we long got our initial investment back kind of thing. So I’m like, I don’t really care, and they were thrilled and I was thrilled. I just wanted to give it forward and just say, move on. You know what? It was a great way too, to quickly have a lot of cash, so think about this one. If you do this, you’ve got all these properties out there, you call every single person, you got 10 even. Let’s just say you got 10 of them, and you call all these people and you cut them a deal and that averages $2,500 and they’re out. You just got 25,000 bucks and what could I do with 25,000? Watch me.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yep. I’ll buy it into a quarter mill.

Jill K DeWit:
I’ll buy one for $25,000 to sell it for 75 in 30 days. Now, I got 75. You’re like, oh, I hear you. Now, I don’t really care about these terms. That’s what you do. And then, do two of them. Now, I got 150. Next. You see where I’m going.

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s our whole business model.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah. Call them up and undo it. My other thing would be, that’s the best thing. You could like, oh, I’m going to sell them to somebody else and give them the notes and everything. I don’t even want to go there. That’s just, I don’t know. I don’t know if you’re really helping that person. I think the nice thing is to cut a deal with all these sellers or all these buyers, actually. These are your buyers, and get all the cash you can and do it the Land Academy way.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yep. 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:
I’m sitting here thinking about just people that can’t seem to get off, they can’t seem to S-H-I blank or get off the pot, and I see it in Facebook so much. I see very vocal people that talk about big things and big goals, but they’re not doing it, and I’m sitting here going, what’s going on here? They’re all into the action, not even the action. They’re into the preparation part of it and they’re not taking any action. Sorry, I’m a little distracted here.

Steven Jack Butala:
I’m getting ready for my talk.

Jill K DeWit:
Okay, thank you. Let me know when you’re ready and I’ll have mine. Thank you. Let me back up, but totally threw me off.

Steven Jack Butala:
It’s my fault, sorry.

Jill K DeWit:
I just couldn’t do… With all the flashing, I get a little-

Steven Jack Butala:
Sorry.

Jill K DeWit:
Okay, my inspiration is, my line is a thousand books does not replace taking action. I see a lot of people really vocal in Facebook, Instagram, whatever, all over social media that have a lot of stuff to say, and they’re talking about, you should do this, you should do that, you should do this, and they have a thousand books, a hundred maybe a thousand books, so much hours and time under their belts of reading and preparing and talking and giving speeches, but they’re not actually doing anything. It’s frustrating to me and I’m trying to figure out, and I want to have this conversation with you for a few minutes.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, yeah.

Jill K DeWit:
Because I’m struggling. I’m not that way.

Steven Jack Butala:
Well, let’s start with how you are.

Jill K DeWit:
Okay. Well, one of the things I love, and I put that quote in here, which is, we have a person right now in a career path who, his saying is, “Watch, I’ll do it Jill and Jack. I’ll do it. I’m really good at fixing things while I’m pedaling the bike.” I’m like, that’s really good. That’s kind of how I do it. I’m like, you know what? I’m just going to figure it out. I’m going to do it and I’m going to figure it out. I might make a mistake, so what? I’ll fix it, but if I don’t take any action, I don’t get started anywhere, then nothing’s getting done, and that’s what I see these people doing and I’m frustrated. To answer your question, I’m not that person. I read books later on. You know what’s funny? I find myself reading books confirming like, oh, I did well on that one. Oh, I sucked on that, but it’s way after the fact. Like, oh, note for next time. I’ll handle that situation differently, but I’m just going to just run with it.
Someone says, here are a thousand raffle tickets, “Jill, go sell them.” All right. I don’t even know what they’re for. I’m going to figure that out in the car, wherever I’m going to think where I can find a thousand people who can afford whatever these raffle tickets are. You know what? I’m probably in the car on the way to the mall. I’ll tell you right now, and on the way to the mall, I’m going, what are these anyway? And how much are they? What have I got to sell? Like, ooh, I got to, okay. They’re expensive. I’m going to stand in front of Nordstrom, or something like that. As silly as it sounds, I’m going to be on my way doing it, seeing myself doing it, and just standing up there and winging it. But I’m taking action. I’m frustrated because I see people book calls to do what we do and people will show up on member calls. I see people asking great questions, but they’re not diving in.

Steven Jack Butala:
I have long said that you are underutilized. Your talent is… We have a great life. We make a ton of money, way more money than I ever thought I would ever make, ever, and a lot faster, and it continues to get greater, but that’s in mind. I have long said that you are underutilized here.

Jill K DeWit:
Thank you.

Steven Jack Butala:
Your talent, your liquid raw talent to what you just described. I know you would go to a mall and sell a thousand tickets to something. I just know that’s who you are, which leads me to this point. We all went to school at one point. Some of us went to college, and what you get back, I don’t know why this is, I’ll never understand, but the feedback that you get in high school and college from instructors and administrators is, “Well, it looks like you’re pretty good at math, but you suck at this thing over here, so you need to try harder,” and to which I respond now in my 50s, I didn’t respond this way then.
“That doesn’t make sense to me. Shakespeare doesn’t make sense.” “Yeah, well, you’re not trying hard enough and you need to get back in there and you need to get an A.” “Why? Why do I need to get an A? It doesn’t make sense to me. Physics is, yeah, I get it, but I don’t care. I’m applying a reason here and I’m applying logic and I’m applying what makes sense to me and this thing in math and computers really makes sense to me.” “Yeah, yeah, but you got a C in gym, and by the way, you’re the first person who got a C in gym in the history of all academia. There’s something wrong with you.” We’re hardwired to deal with that. To which I say, malarkey.
I don’t believe. I think that’s awful, and I think that you need to, people. This is why Jill and I start every career path with a personality test, and we all know what we’re good at and what we suck at and what we want to do and what we don’t want to do. What Jill wants to do, for whatever reason, is what she describes. Who knows? I don’t know why, and her personality tests all reflect that. What I want to do is analyze data, get really wealthy, and I want it to all make sense and have a good life. Is that so bad, third grade teacher? Yep, I don’t want to ever talk about Shakespeare again or any of that. I don’t know where this came from, this common British type education where in air quotes, oh, now you’re educated because you can quote Shakespeare even though you don’t care about it.
I think it’s some version of that’s still left over. When common sense doesn’t apply, there’s no amount of books that are going to help you take action. That said, you need a source of inspiration. Maybe it’s Land Academy. Everybody needs a source of inspiration for us to get off of our butts and to actually do something, or maybe in the back of your head, you just know you’re never going to do anything anyway, you just like being involved in a group like Land Academy and listening to other people do really well at it and it gives you hope. That’s fine. As long as you’re standing in the mirror saying, yep, this is it. This is what I want.

Jill K DeWit:
You’re accepting of it.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yes.

Jill K DeWit:
You’re accepting of it.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yourself, not your wife.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah. I don’t take that.

Steven Jack Butala:
Not your kids. I know you don’t.

Jill K DeWit:
I don’t like, no, I wouldn’t. I won’t accept that.

Steven Jack Butala:
You don’t-

Jill K DeWit:
I’m going to make you do it.

Steven Jack Butala:
You only accept peak performance out of me, and you only accept it out of yourself, and largely, not so much-

Jill K DeWit:
It’s true.

Steven Jack Butala:
… to a much lesser degree, out of our kids. What I hear you saying is, you’re applying that now to mostly Land Academy members, which I love. It’s one of things I love about you.

Jill K DeWit:
I have trouble with this.

Steven Jack Butala:
I know. I love that about you.

Jill K DeWit:
You came to me and said, “Do you want to get rich? Well, I’m going to push you to do it, doggonit.” If you’re listening and this is you, you need to do it, doggonit.

Steven Jack Butala:
Books don’t help.

Jill K DeWit:
They don’t.

Steven Jack Butala:
No, and if you’re not a linear thinker, by the time you’re 40, you’re not going to learn to be a linear thinker. If you’re not a ultra organized peep. Jill and I walk around the house right now, and we’re getting ready for a four-month RV trip, and we laugh and joke with each other and high five each other about how organized we are. She’s got stuff to do, I’ve got stuff to do, and we’re in our element pairing down the crap that we’re going to bring and buying GPS units or whatever she does to make herself happy to have a fun trip, and we’re ultra organized. It’s a contest almost. We haven’t said it that way, but that’s what it is. I don’t care what you do or where you get your inspiration, just be honest with yourself about it.

Jill K DeWit:
Whoever brings the least amount of crap wins.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yes.

Jill K DeWit:
Right now, it’s me.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yes, it’s true. Well, I have all this freaking audio video equipment on my side.

Jill K DeWit:
Wait a minute. His is all like, he’s got, but mine’s like, mine fits in my purse. That’s what’s so funny.

Steven Jack Butala:
And when the stuff she pulls out of her purse doesn’t work, guess who is responsible for making sure we do the Thursday call?

Jill K DeWit:
I don’t know. Last time I did a live thing on my cell phone, it didn’t go too bad, but yeah, you’re good. This is awesome. Thank you. That was really good.

Steven Jack Butala:
I’m going to finish on this.

Jill K DeWit:
Good stuff to say about that.

Steven Jack Butala:
I’m going to finish on this.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah.

Steven Jack Butala:
You will never, ever reach your potential if you can’t get over failing at stuff.

Jill K DeWit:
True.

Steven Jack Butala:
I think it’s the funniest thing in the world when I spill a glass of milk. Jill, not so much, but it’s not to an unhealthy level. I think when a checkout clerk screams at you for some reason that you didn’t do anything wrong, my first and only real reaction is to laugh and say, “Okay, well I hope you have a better day.”

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah, exactly.

Steven Jack Butala:
Or if I did something wrong to upset you, how about I undo it right now?

Jill K DeWit:
There you go.

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s all. And you have to run your business like that.

Jill K DeWit:
Exactly. Jack, do you have something manplan.com ish you’d like to share?

Steven Jack Butala:
Yes. ManPlan. manplan.com is a company I’ve been writing for my whole life and preparing for. It’s really just like this at the end of these episodes where we talk about life and how to accomplish your goals. In a lot of cases, I think a lot of men, a lot of people, but in particular a lot of young men want to get rich, and ManPlan is to tell you how to do that and keep a happy woman and all the other stuff that your dad probably never really sat you down and talked about.

Jill K DeWit:
Oh, I’m listening now.

Steven Jack Butala:
My topic today is money habits that keep you poor. I’m going to start off with a run through this list. Number one, you have no spending discipline. I don’t even need to follow that up.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah.

Steven Jack Butala:
Number two, you have lack of earning power. In this eight unit list, this is my favorite. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of Suze Orman. She kind of gets up on stage. I think she’s retired now. She’s older than me, gets on stage and says, after listening to many people’s woes about passive investing and Wall Street products and I can’t afford this and we want to buy a new house and we can’t do it, her answer often is, “Sounds like you don’t make enough money. That’s a huge problem.” My dad never told me that. My dad never said, yeah, you suck at this. You should go make more money. He said, “That’s life. Figure it out.” Lack of work discipline. We were just talking about that. You have to have a calendar. I don’t care what you do. I don’t care if you’re a surgeon, a plumber, or a mother of two. You have to have a calendar. Moms have badass calendars most of the time.

Jill K DeWit:
Oh yeah.

Steven Jack Butala:
I’ve noticed.

Jill K DeWit:
Very badass calendars. Exactly. It’s the only way we can keep our heads above water.

Steven Jack Butala:
Lack of financial literacy. That’s a whole chapter in my ManPlan program. Financial literacy is not something we get anywhere. We don’t get it in high school. Home economics, which I’m sure they don’t have anymore. I took home economics.

Jill K DeWit:
I loved home-

Steven Jack Butala:
Did you?

Jill K DeWit:
Yep.

Steven Jack Butala:
They teach you hot to bake.

Jill K DeWit:
Learn you how to write a check.

Steven Jack Butala:
Write a check and keep a budget.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah.

Steven Jack Butala:
And the budget module is maybe half of one sit-down day, half of an hour, but at least it’s something. I went through all kinds of formal education, accounting, accounting education, and no one ever said, this is how your personal budget should go.

Jill K DeWit:
True.

Steven Jack Butala:
And this is how much you can afford… If your paycheck is X, this is how much house you can afford. What you do here, splattered all over the internet is, there’s no affordable housing, which what they’re really saying is, there’s no affordable housing for you. Why? Because you don’t make enough money. You’re not cool enough. Number five, you’re not paying yourself first. You know who gets paid before you? The federal and state government, right out of that paycheck. Is that what you want? It’s not what I want. Impulsive buying. I’ve never suffered from this. Have you?

Jill K DeWit:
Having that be a problem?

Steven Jack Butala:
Going and buying a Corvette on a Sunday because you’re bored.

Jill K DeWit:
No. Well, not when I couldn’t afford it. No, but big picture wise, no.

Steven Jack Butala:
Number seven is my second favorite. Second to lack of earning power. You don’t make enough money. Number seven is, broke people are influencing you, so you’re hanging around with people who are broke and crying poor and have all kinds of issues. That’s not what happens here at Land Academy.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah.

Steven Jack Butala:
I don’t know how long we’ve been doing this. Geez, it’s almost 10 years with Land Academy. I’ve never once heard somebody stand up and be real loud about, I just don’t have enough money. I don’t know how to do this, but in my personal life, when all growing up, it’s all you ever hear is, yeah, I don’t have any money, so I can’t go with you guys. It’s Friday night, I know. Crying poor is not good. You’re hanging around with the wrong people. Number eight, and we’re all victims of this, and it’s unfortunate because you can’t really get ahead without it.
You’re selling your time for money and it’s your only income. That’s a fancy way of saying you have a W2 job, you make 82 and a half thousand dollars a year. You pay rent. You live with a couple of stinky people and you’re selling your time for money and you’re looking around constantly saying, I got to get out of this and I just don’t know how. We’ve all been there. That’s what Land Academy is. The first step to changing anything is to realize what’s going on around you and then want to change it, and habits are bad. Habits work both ways, and you want good habits, not bad ones.

Jill K DeWit:
I love it. That was awesome. Thank you.

Steven Jack Butala:
She says that, but she wasn’t listening to a darn thing.

Jill K DeWit:
I listened to the whole-

Steven Jack Butala:
If you’re watching this-

Jill K DeWit:
… thing.

Steven Jack Butala:
She’s completely doing something else.

Jill K DeWit:
No, I’m not. I was listening to the whole thing. Hey, don’t forget, you can reach us for questions and for help by texting (480) 530-7383.

Steven Jack Butala:
Join us next Wednesday for another interesting episode. You are not alone in your real estate ambition.

Jill K DeWit:
We are Jack and Jill.

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

Jill K DeWit:
And Inspiration.

Steven Jack Butala:
It’s by undervalued property.