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 1,956, and today we are talking about changing to a million dollar a year mindset in just eight short weeks. And then a little later in the program, we’ll discuss the mistakes specifically that I’ve made that set me back at least 10 years in my land career, much earlier on because I don’t want you to do the same.

Jill K DeWit:
And this was all before Jill, not all of them, let’s just say, but there were several, and I am not one of them.

Steven Jack Butala:
Oh my God, no. Quite the opposite.

Jill K DeWit:
But there’s people that say that.

Steven Jack Butala:
What do they say?

Jill K DeWit:
Well, heck, I got divorced, so I’m sure there’s a version of, “I shouldn’t have done this in my relationship stuff. I shouldn’t have had done this family things,” that could affect your wellbeing and all of that.

Steven Jack Butala:
Those are normal, natural, healthy life things that I’m not going to talk about today.

Jill K DeWit:
I thank you.

Steven Jack Butala:
I’m going to talk about the stupid stuff I personally did to set myself back 10 years.

Jill K DeWit:
I’m sorry, but you know what? You’re catching up. You’re doing just fine now.

Steven Jack Butala:
It’s good now. Each week on the show we answer questions from the Land Academy member Discord Forum, review land acquisitions from our weekly member webinars, and take a deep dive into two land related topics like I just talked about just a second ago by popular requests. If you want to sneak peek of our discord forum, go to landacademy.com. It’s free.

Jill K DeWit:
Okay. Oh, and by the way, if you would like us to answer your question or you would help getting involved with our community, all I’ve got to do is text us at 4805307383. We read all the text, and your question just might be answered here on the next podcast. All right, here we go, Stevens. Well, here’s a question from there. Now, Steven wrote, howdy y’all, you price higher acreage parcels in areas that might not have like kind comps? For example, if a zip code listing… wait. If zip code listings… and you’re in zip code listings, got it. And you go back to last 12 months for the sold only parcels, and up to 12 acres. Okay, I can’t even read this. Let me try it again.
For example, if a zip code listings and the last 12 months sold only has parcels up to 12 acres, but there are properties in your mail that are a hundred acres, how do you test your reason in this case? I guess he’s saying, if I go back 12 months, I’m in the zip code and it stops at 12 acres, what do I do? Because I’m going to mail for a hundred acres. Excuse me, while I just have a little moment to work through that for myself.

Steven Jack Butala:
Look, the fact is if you’ve ever been involved in any type of data analysis, forget about land, but just data analysis in general, it’s imperative if you want to come out with a predictable outcome to have enough data. If you have a too small data set, your data set’s too small. It’s very, very difficult, if not impossible to predict the outcome. So that’s one of the, I’m going to call it a challenge, but I really think in bitter end, it’s an asset to being in this business because your intuition has to kick in. You have to transfer your mental state from predictable outcomes based on data, which is where my comfort spot is to artistic impression. And that’s a hard jump for most people that are on my side of the business, not so much the Jill side, but the Jack side. And so pricing a mailer without enough data, first of all, it’s not if you go through the entire program, land Academy 3.0, I’m not going to recommend that you do that early on in your career if you’re at the point where-

Jill K DeWit:
And play with an area like this. Is that what you mean?

Steven Jack Butala:
If you’re at the point in your career, let’s say Jill and I are, or a lot of the people that are in our career path curriculum where they’ve done a lot of deals, we actually have a short part of one module on what and how to deal with lack of data. But if you’re new, I want you to follow the steps in the Land Academy 3.0 program because it’s going to get you to a predictable outcome of buying and selling land for a lot of money. So it’s very hard, if not impossible, without a lot of experience to deal with the data set that only goes up to 12 acres. And when you want to buy a hundred acre properties. To directly answer your question, vice versa. You don’t want to look at a lot of ranch type properties, let’s say in Alaska or Texas that are real large acreage and then send a mailer out in the same areas for smaller properties because you’re not going to get the pricing.
So what I want you to do, Steven, is follow the program. And for the rest of you who have done 50, 150 deals, please ask another question and I’ll answer the question. It’s very tough. You have to go to alternative sources of data like houses and things like that to back into what the property…

Jill K DeWit:
Or other sources.

Steven Jack Butala:
How you should price it.

Jill K DeWit:
I have other sources for data too.

Steven Jack Butala:
Exactly.

Jill K DeWit:
So there you go. You have to get creative. You know what? Let’s just pause for just a second. That’s one of the things that I want everyone to do before the mail goes out. These are some of the things that you think about. Do I have enough data to work with? Is it going to help? Can I figure out pricing? How responsive is the county? Can I quickly pull up our… Are my mapping tools and everything cooperating? All little things to check when you’re thinking about before mauling an area.

Steven Jack Butala:
Before you spend money.

Jill K DeWit:
Exactly.

Steven Jack Butala:
Mailing is expensive.

Jill K DeWit:
Because is every single county, are all 3, 144, however you want to look at it, counties and parishes in this country, a hundred percent digital, mapped out perfectly, online, taxes current, looking at everything exact same way? Heck no. So there’s times that you might go, “I am skipping this county and moving over to this area because I don’t have the data. The county won’t answer the phone. I know I won’t be able to get anything done, so move on,” and then maybe come back to it should you want to another time.

Steven Jack Butala:
Well, that’s what you should do to directly… Jill’s exactly right. I would beg where you think you thought you said we’re going to send mail, you don’t have enough data. If you’re brand new, you don’t have enough data or theoretically experienced to… if you’re asking this question, I’m assuming that if you do have at it and just take an educated guess, but pick a better… there’s a lot of counties in just a… there’s 150 million pieces of real estate out there.

Jill K DeWit:
I’m sure you could find another zip code. That’s not nuts.

Steven Jack Butala:
Today’s first topic, changing to a million dollar a year mindset in eight weeks. How do you do that? Geez. Joe and I just wrapped up our, let’s call it summer career path.

Jill K DeWit:
It was spring.

Steven Jack Butala:
So spring, our career path.

Jill K DeWit:
2023 spring career path.

Steven Jack Butala:
And I have to say it was the eighth week. So we spent two months together.

Jill K DeWit:
A lot of time together.

Steven Jack Butala:
At the very beginning of career path, we ask everybody, “How much money do you want to make? What are your financial goals? What’s your deal?” And this group, for whatever reason, wanted to try to make… or travel down the path of getting to a million bucks a year. And everybody was uncomfortable with that in week one with a couple of exceptions. And at the end, everybody was like, “Oh, it’s very, very clear to me how we’re going to make a million dollars a year both mentally and where I’m going to get the money.” Down to the last detail where I’m going to send mail, how much mail I have to send out, how much time I have to spend on pricing. Do I need Land Academy Pro? What do I need to actually… There were no real questions, in my opinion, unaddressed, and that’s what it took for this group or really any group or any person that wants to do this.
It takes eight weeks of being exposed to people that are like-minded and want to have the same goals and are hanging out with people who’ve already done it many, many times, year after year.

Jill K DeWit:
I like to think it’s pretty fast. So when I was thinking about this today, I was thinking like, “Wow, look how far we’ve come as a group.” This group is like, “Oh.” There were many in our group… Not many, there were a couple in our group doing very, very well. Selling property on terms for, I don’t know, two to $400 a month, and that was their sweet spot and they were doing great, but they’re like, “I’m getting worn out.” I’m like, “I hear ya,” kind of thing. And then even transitioning from that mindset to buying for this, selling for that. We had other people in there that were comfortable with buying for 10,000, selling for 25, sure. Or buy for 2000, sell for 8,000, sure. They’re really comfortable with that. And I’m like, “We need to change that. We really do.” And I know on week one everybody’s like, “What are you flipping kidding me? No. Oh, you want me to think about how many checks?” And then so here we are, fast-forward, like Jack said, it all unfolds.
We lay out the roadmap and spell it all out in great detail with the tools and mentally prepared and how you need to do things differently to troll to find those, how to accomplish those deals. I mean, that’s a career path. And so at the end, I just love it. It made me so happy, for me, foster this topic today was when dear Stephanie said, “All right, I’m thinking about writing an $800,000 check. Would you guys do this deal?” We’re like, “Wow, look how far we’ve come.”

Steven Jack Butala:
And it was a great deal.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah. We went from eight grand to $800,000 in eight weeks. It rolled right off her tongue. She’s like, “All right. If you guys say it’s good, then I’m going to do the deal.” I’m like, “Okay, hold on.” But I almost was saying, I don’t want to ever hold anybody back, but I’m like, “Let’s just do a little extra due diligence on the $800,000 one.” But it is perfect. It’s good. So it’s amazing. People all the time have said to me, “Add a zero?” I’m like, “Yeah, add a zero. That 8,000, I want you to think 80,000. Instead of selling for eight, I want you to sell for 80. Think about what that looks like.”

Steven Jack Butala:
Do you need career path for this? No.

Jill K DeWit:
No.

Steven Jack Butala:
No, you don’t. Do you need Land Academy member for this? No, not necessarily. But all those things are a very solid insurance policy that there’s a much higher likelihood that it’s going to happen. That’s all. Jill and I are not here selling anything.

Jill K DeWit:
No, that’s the whole point is that it can happen. I love that. So wherever you are, whatever deals that you’re doing, if you’re involved in a group or not involved in a group, you can do, it can be a faster transition than you think it is. That’s it. People think that you have to go from, “All right, this year I’m going to focus on buying for 10,000, selling for 15 to 20,000. That’s going to be 2023. Then in 2024, I’m going to try to double that,” and I’m here to tell you, you don’t have to do that. You can cut to the chase. You can go from zero to these deals out of the gate.

Steven Jack Butala:
[inaudible 00:12:17] the right education and you have the right mindset. It’s right in the title here. It starts with a mindset and then a real core visceral desire to learn how to do this the correct way and execute on it.

Jill K DeWit:
The other thing I was thinking about today is staying focused. That is important here as well. I had a former member reach out to me saying, “Hi,” just recently, “Just want to connect with you guys. I love the podcast. I moved on to doing…” he’s in mobile modular homes and he has this ‘opportunity’ that he would love to shift a bunch to me, and I’m like, “You know…” Here’s my response. I very nicely said, “I’m so happy to hear from you and glad you’re doing well. You know us and we are really good at picking a solid acquisition criteria and sticking with it.” I said, “This is not, this is not one avenue I’m going to go down right now. I wish you all the best.” And there you go. So that’s important too. Remember my little thing I used to say, “There’s nothing stopping you right now from waking up tomorrow putting on a hat that says investor and saying, ‘I am a land investor effective today, right now.'”

Steven Jack Butala:
All a mindset.

Jill K DeWit:
I don’t have to have a deal under my belt, 10 deals, a hundred deals under my belt to prove myself or something hanging on the wall behind me. Uh-huh, you can wake up and say that. So you can wake up and say, “You know what? Effective today, effective right now, I am not getting out of… I’m not going to entertain anything that doesn’t yield me this much profit period.” Whether it’s $20,000 or a hundred thousand dollars, I don’t care what it is. There’s nothing stopping you from just flipping that switch.

Steven Jack Butala:
For most of us too. Jill and I included, a million dollars a year it’s just a stepping stone. It happened to be a milestone for this specific group. I guess this was career path number six, I think. So we’ve had different numbers throughout all the years of doing career path, and the next time we do one, which is later this year, I’m sure that it’ll be a different number, but for this year it was a million bucks a year, for this session it was a million dollars a year. Jill and I make a lot more than that, but there are a slew of years where we made less than a million bucks. A slew of them in my case, and then you just improve.

Jill K DeWit:
We’ll talk about that in a few minutes.

Steven Jack Butala:
You just have to improve over last month and improve over last year and bite it out in little chunks.

Jill K DeWit:
But the attitude and the mindset, that’s what leads the whole thing for me.

Steven Jack Butala:
Totally. Let’s take a look at one of our favorite land acquisitions from our weekly Thursday member webinar. Hey, Jill and I just completed our career path number six with great results. In fact, we haven’t even had time to process the video, the thank-yous that we received from that group. So if you want to get started in buying, selling land, go to landacademy.com, download the free ebook, see if it makes sense to you.

Jill K DeWit:
Love it. Thank you.

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, go to landacademy.com, it’s free.

Jill K DeWit:
Okay. This is Steven spelled a different way. Are you just picking all the Stevens because you’re drawn to that name?

Steven Jack Butala:
I knew you were going to bring us up and it’s like, “I don’t know why you bring it up.”

Jill K DeWit:
It’s just a coincidence. Or do we have 80 Stevens in our group?

Steven Jack Butala:
There’s 80 Stevens for every 13 people in this world.

Jill K DeWit:
Oh, I forgot you used to say that.

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s just how it is.

Jill K DeWit:
When we first started dating, your line was, “Any Steve will do.” Okay, got it.

Steven Jack Butala:
It’s your line.

Jill K DeWit:
Oh yeah. Thanks. True. All right. This Steven Row-

Steven Jack Butala:
This person’s name isn’t Steven anyway, but-

Jill K DeWit:
Is this Stephan?

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah.

Jill K DeWit:
Okay. Excuse me. Sorry, Stephan. Stephan wrote, “I watch a lot of REI YouTube channels and haven’t found one that talks about the ROI and margins. We almost take for granted. The closest numbers I’ve heard are on Matt Cox’s True Crime channel, and those guys are morally bankrupt and doing 20 years in prison. I think one of the largest barriers to entering in this business is the fact that people just don’t believe it’s real when you describe it to them, speaking from experience.” That’s true.

Steven Jack Butala:
There’s a bunch of reasons which I’ll cover here about why I chose this-

Jill K DeWit:
That’s very true.

Steven Jack Butala:
… question. And every single thing you’re saying is correct, and I’ll tell you again, I’m going to come back to the last session of career path that we just completed. I used to say when I got into this business, there were only four or five people in the entire country, but I used to have a quote around the office that said, “Eventually this entire business is going to be a 20% margin business like everything else in the world.” It has to equalize that. There’s competition factors, there’s a supply of land there’s demand for it from a buyer’s standpoint, and then the more people that are in the pool, the whole thing just equalizes itself. Guess what? I was wrong. Here’s why, and this will lead into some of the things that I have to say at the end of this episode or at the end of this podcast. You have complete control, complete and entire control over how much money you make and how much money you don’t make in this career of yours. Nobody’s holding a gun to your head.
When you send that bunch of mail out and a bunch of opportunities come back, let’s just say 10 opportunities come back, you can choose to buy all of them, or you can choose to buy none of them. If you choose to buy all of them, there will be a much higher risk in doing all of those properties because you’re not being choosy. You’re not saying, “You know what? I’ve got 10 deals here. I’m going to take the absolute best one, the one that has the lowest risk and the highest probability of me making fill in the blank amount of money, and I’m going to do that one deal or these two deals. If I do 10 deals, I don’t have as much control, and so it might end up being a 20% margin business.” Jill and I choose, and really this is one of the things that I’ve learned from her working with her over the last several years, last 10 plus years, however long it’s been.
That we just now have this acquisition criteria, and if I have to send out a hundred thousand mailers to buy a property that generates, that will generate us a hundred to $150,000 net, well, geez, that’s 125% profit margin. And so it’s not that the business innately generates that much money. I’m really glad this person brought this up. It’s because we have driven it that way and we personally choose to do that. There are people that have been in our group and that are still our group, but they’ve been past career path people that choose to buy every single property. They have a ridiculous amount of money backing. They have to spend it, and it ends up being a 20% margin business for them. I’m glad that I got a chance to clear that up. These are not pie in the sky numbers, they just are for us.

Jill K DeWit:
You know what’s interesting? Where else do you have that much control?

Steven Jack Butala:
None.

Jill K DeWit:
So that’s the whole thing. For us, the industry doesn’t drive our profit margin. We drive our profit margin. I’m not going to do the deal unless it yields X. Solve for X, whatever that is for you.

Steven Jack Butala:
And that’s one of the reasons why that Jill and I get to two to three to four million dollars of profit margin. Every year, we’re not afraid to send out a ton of mail and we only pick out the deals that we really want. Am I saying you should do that in the beginning of your career or in the middle of your career? No. I think you should get more experience. Do a lot of deals, make some mistakes. It’s not going to be… So what, you made 25% and it took you six months? Who cares?

Jill K DeWit:
Exactly.

Steven Jack Butala:
Today’s second topic is called the mistakes I’ve made that set me 10 years back in my land career. There’s a few things that I’ve done that I really regret, but they all centered around one concept. Me just kind of banging my chest and thinking that I get some type of trophy for these silly rules that I created for myself at the end. I used to brag about this: “Without any leverage, without borrowing any money and without taking out any equity, giving away equity, I’ve funded the entire thing myself.” Well, great. Congratulations then, you made half as much or less than half as much money as you could have if you would’ve used private funding like Jill and I provide, and there’s many people in our group that provide equity funding for deals that are great. That set me back, geez, I can’t calculate it. If I sought out and received equity financing for deals and split the profit margin like we do two or three years into my career, there would be a…

Jill K DeWit:
We’d be on the yacht.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah. I mean, we could do that anyway, but I don’t want to give that impression. It’s not a materialistic gauge.

Jill K DeWit:
It would’ve would’ve sped things up.

Steven Jack Butala:
I would’ve learned a lot faster and I would’ve done a lot more deals.

Jill K DeWit:
Was it only pride or you didn’t know the people or you didn’t know how to do it?

Steven Jack Butala:
It was all of it. That’s a great question. There was nothing really like the internet. I knew five or eight people in the business and I could have split deals with them and done all kinds of stuff, but a lot of it was pride. Now we’ve got, geez, every corner of the internet, there’s some type of money available, specifically Land Academy. It’s silly because we all learn the same stuff in Land Academy. There’s about 500 people, active members, and lots of people are with a ton of money that are willing to finance your deal if it’s a good deal. Like-minded people, that’s the key. You can’t go to… You couldn’t back then go like a hard moneylender who loved… It was in the house flipping industry and explained why you’re going to buy 40 acres for $12,000 and sell for 36.

Jill K DeWit:
I can’t even imagine what that one conversation would’ve been like. They would’ve been like, “Okay, tell me again.” And then my favorite is, “What are you going to do with the property?” Nothing.

Steven Jack Butala:
“And you’re not going to go see it? Oh, okay.”

Jill K DeWit:
“Here’s my money.”

Steven Jack Butala:
“You’re not going to get my money then.”

Jill K DeWit:
And we’re like, “You’d be nuts if you did go out there,” it’s so changed. This is good. That’s funny. Can you give us another example?

Steven Jack Butala:
Sure. So anytime there’s a single point of failure in anything that you’re doing, which is actually the definition of marriage when you really think about it. But anytime there’s a single point of failure in anything that you’re doing, you have to really ask yourself a lot of questions before you make that commitment or before you, and specifically, all kidding aside, engage in whatever business practice you’re doing so that you’re not mitigating any risk engaging in something that’s now really risky. Do you want to have all your eggs in one basket or three baskets? You want three baskets and you want different shipping times and you want to mitigate all of that risk.
So there’s been several times specifically with sales chains, because I don’t like the sales part of this business, I love the acquisitions part, where I’ve painted myself into a corner and then I couldn’t get out because I only could sell the property. I prepped my whole career that way through one venue, and it was for years of my life, it was through eBay. There were broker networks that I utilized that didn’t work. They worked sometimes, but not all the time. And so you want to avoid a single point of failure.

Jill K DeWit:
I would like to circle back around to the marriage and what would’ve been the exit strategy that you would suggest.

Steven Jack Butala:
There’s no exit strategy to marriage.

Jill K DeWit:
Okay, thank you. I’m like, “Huh.” No, but I want to talk about that for just a second. The funding part that’s very humble of you to share these, by the way. And then the eBay, that was the main one that was huge. And what’s great about that is, boy did you recover. We have a sweet couple of friends of ours, John and Jillian. And John years ago, would walk up and I remember him walking up and telling you, best comeback ever. He watched the comeback, didn’t know you before that knew, didn’t know you up here, knew you down here, and then watched you get past the old high. And it was really, really nice and sweet for him to say that. And how many people can’t do that. Some people, this stuff happens. They make mistakes and they see them as career ending and they don’t recover. They don’t have the energy nor the ideas to solve it and turn it all around and make it better. And then here’s the best thing that you did.
Now you built in six different exit strategies, if you will, or something contingency plans, should it start to falter and you’re watching for it and monitoring. I think that’s for me, for a lot of people, that’s why they’re here and listening and watching because, well, believe me, we have way more mistakes that we’re still going to make and we’re going to help you. There’s probably mistakes we’re making right now and two years from now we’re going to talk about it.

Steven Jack Butala:
Sure. That’s a perfect segue way into my final, and I think most important point, you have to roll with the changes. And so rolling with the changes early on in my career, a lot of this is just young man stuff. Young men are not the brightest people in the world, regardless of where you went to school or how it all played out, you have to roll with the changes. So when I was younger, I was raised in a manufacturing environment and had the mindset that you put one thing together, you do it, you do it the same way, and you do it over and over and over again until you sell it or until it’s over. And that’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard. If I could go back and talk to myself, I would say that’s just insane. It’s what Jill just said, two weeks from now, we’re going to do something different. We’re going to find a different data source.
We’re going to find a… maybe get a better employee or a different employee that sees things differently and says, “Hey, I used to do it this way over here.” And if you don’t listen to that and you don’t roll with that, then you’re not going to grow.

Jill K DeWit:
Maybe even how we look for markets and find trends and things like that, there’s going to be something new.

Steven Jack Butala:
The greatest example of that is surrounding yourself with people who have already done really well. I didn’t do that. I thought I was too good for that back then. It’s the silliest thing ever. Fastest way to become successful is to hang out with successful people.

Jill K DeWit:
That’s very true.

Steven Jack Butala:
And realize what the effect of it. I’ll tell you, I’ll spoil it for you. The effect of that is you’re going to hang out with some incredibly successful people and you’re going to say, “Wow, there’s nothing special about that guy.”

Jill K DeWit:
He can do it. I can do it.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, that’s it. In fact, he’s worse at math than I am.

Jill K DeWit:
And who dresses that guy?

Steven Jack Butala:
And all of that. And so that just speeds everything up. And you just need to have a healthy self concept, which took me a long time. Healthy self concept to really learn and move forward, you hit your goals.

Jill K DeWit:
You’ve come a long way, baby.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah. Have you ever had a moment like that, Jill?

Jill K DeWit:
No.

Steven Jack Butala:
You’ve just been perfect since birth?

Jill K DeWit:
Oh gosh. I’ve had many moments, but this is not my show. I don’t want to steal from your thunder.

Steven Jack Butala:
Go ahead. Do you have any examples?

Jill K DeWit:
My gosh. Yeah. Oh, I have a great one. I’ll give you my one big example. Something that I did that set me back more than 10 years in my land. I’ll tell you, it set me back 17 years in my land career, which is staying in a stupid W2 job. Drinking the Kool-Aid thinking. I worked up to this seniority and Max Pay and I got the vacations and the holidays that I wanted. What a crock. I should have left. I can’t believe I stayed there for 17 years.

Steven Jack Butala:
We’re good now.

Jill K DeWit:
Yes, we are. So that’s mine. There you go.

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

Jill K DeWit:
I do. I wanted to talk about… I want to give an example. I want to talk about how I learn in this environment. [inaudible 00:30:03] so I can look at it. Thank you.

Steven Jack Butala:
Just doing that for one second.

Jill K DeWit:
Oh, okay. Sorry. How I learn and… Let me back up. Let me start with the story. As we wrapped up career path, I realized there are many people, most of the group, by the way, most of the group is like me. And I don’t know if it’s because of their… where they are in their life or they’re in their career, how committed they are, how much they want to do. I don’t know what it is or that’s just who they are, but there’s a few that really stand out and I was thinking about what makes them different. They are mentor sponges and that was me. They don’t question it. They don’t push back. They don’t offer other examples. They take it in, they write it down, they process it and they act on it. And I was thinking, I’m like, “That’s how I was.” I think why you told me a long time ago, you’re like, “I didn’t have to explain this to you. You just did it.” I’m like, “No.” You know what? And I was just thinking what it was for me. And now I realize this is probably,
I’m having my own moment here. It’s probably the same for them. I knew you were the pro. When you were teaching me land, there was nothing I could say or nothing I could do, or no one that I even knew that came close to you that had the deals or the experience, the mileage, the bank account, everything to show for it and prove it, that you have already done it successfully. So for me, it was really easy to go, “Well, duh, why would I question this person? I’m just going to sit back and take it all in.” And that’s what I did. And you’re really good at explaining it and sharing it and helping me understand it and not over teaching it. You’re really good too about go off and figure that out, which in my gut, I’m like, “Can you just give me the stupid shortcut?” And you’re like, “Nope. You’re going to have to learn it yourself.”

Steven Jack Butala:
What?

Jill K DeWit:
No, no, no. But in a good way. There’s some things like–

Steven Jack Butala:
I don’t think I ever said that.

Jill K DeWit:
Well, there’s some things that you’re like, “I’m not helping you. You’re going to have to figure it out.” And I’m like, “This sucks.” But no, there were things that I needed to figure out for myself kind of thing. For example, Excel, I am or never will be in a pro like him.

Steven Jack Butala:
And you know what? That’s a really good example.

Jill K DeWit:
He’s like, “Go take your own stupid Excel class. I’m not going to sit here and help you with that kind of stuff.” And you’re right, we’re not doing Excel 101. I’m going to help you with this other stuff and you need to take responsibility for it. Even for me, this is way before Land Academy, you had examples of what a posting should look like. Go make one of those. Well, duh. That’s Land Academy our education. Go do this. There are pictures and examples. It’s up to you to watch it and follow it. Anyway, that was me. And I spotted some really amazing mentor sponges. I just came up with that phrase now. And it’s fun to watch them soak it all up because I know how successful they’re going to be.

Steven Jack Butala:
I think there’s a huge amount of truth to this. You just want to make sure that the person that you’re going to listen to has some credibility and some… well, some credibility and gives you the right feeling. You don’t want to glom onto somebody and really listen to what they’re saying and end up being a cocaine dealer.

Jill K DeWit:
No, this is assuming you did all your due diligence. This is assuming you’re six months down the road and you’re like, “Wow, I get it. I understand it now. I want to know all the details.” So this is when you’re a mentor sponge.

Steven Jack Butala:
I had a mentor very, very early on when I was a teenager and in my early twenties, it was a friend of the family and I didn’t really learn how to do anything. I just learned what was possible. It was what I said earlier, this guy’s doing this. Well, if this guy’s doing this, I can do this myself. I just got to take the right steps. And then I went off entirely autonomously and did that. So everybody’s got a different level of, “I really need someone to sit down and tell me everything.” Jill’s not like that. Jill’s very autonomous and she just knew… Hopefully, I think what happened is Jill went off [inaudible 00:34:29] some property on her own, filled up her bank account pretty quickly. I know this happened with not that much direction, if any at all, quite honestly. And the credibility was like, “All right, you know what?
Now I want to see what can really happen if I listen to this guy and I handle the sales and he handles this other stuff like he has been before, which is me,” and it worked out great because there was credibility, my is my point between both of us. You had sales credibility, built in sales credibility.

Jill K DeWit:
That’s true. I didn’t come to the table as a blank slate. I had some other stuff to work with, but thank you. Jack, how about you? Do you have something man plan-ish or informational you want to share?

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah. One of the topics that we talked about in this last most recent career path is mitigating risk and avoiding mistakes and surprise. And I touched on it earlier, but I really want to bring this home. You have control when you buy and sell all real estate, really. But for the most part, buying and selling land, because the entrance and the exits so quick, you have control over mitigating your risk. And many people have a really high risk threshold. Mine happens to be extremely low, and I’m lucky to have a business partner here whose risk threshold is as low as mine. In fact, quite honestly, mine’s probably a little bit higher than hers, but she always pulls me down to, in a great way, to her risk level, even when I’m ready to do some deals, she’s just, “Nah, I don’t want to do this.” And so it keeps us completely out of trouble.
And whatever business you choose or whatever career you choose, or relationships you choose to be in, think about what am I risking here? What’s the risk level in any of this? What’s the probability or possibility of mistakes? These three things: mitigating risk, the possibility of mistakes and are the person that likes surprises? I’m not.

Jill K DeWit:
I do, but not financial ones.

Steven Jack Butala:
And so all those things, if there is close to zero as possible, I’m in. I also don’t need to be an accountant for the rest of my life where there’s virtually no risk in that. So it has to be higher than zero, but within reason.

Jill K DeWit:
I mean, someone could argue every time you buy a property, there’s some risk. Sure. And we have years and decades of experience now to spot things. And what’s interesting is we build in, we actually automatically build in a cushion to account for all that. So that’s the thing too. For me, what we do and the deals that we do, I don’t see any risk because I know that I bought it so cheap that if this is not true and this is not true, and there’s this problem, I’m still going to get out okay.

Steven Jack Butala:
And we’re doing 35 deals this year. So if this one really goes sideways, and I can honestly say I’m knocking on wood here, we’ve never had a deal. What really happens if we make a huge mistake or something blindsides us in a land deal is it stays on the market for a year and a half. We thought we were going to sell it in 35 days or some number like that. Well, all right, instead of losing money on this thing, let’s just keep it for sale and then somebody will buy it. And that always happens. Always.

Jill K DeWit:
That’s very, very true.

Steven Jack Butala:
So these things are both professionally and socially, for Jill and I, the risk mitigation, the possibility of a mistake or surprise is within our range. In our case, it’s really low. All I’m saying is the next big decision you make, ask yourself, is this risky or not?

Jill K DeWit:
How if it all goes sideways, how bad can it go and what would I do? So that’s good. Hey, don’t forget, you can reach us for any questions and help just by texting 4805307383.

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

Jill K DeWit:
We are Jack-

Steven Jack Butala:
And Jill. Information-

Jill K DeWit:
And inspiration.

Steven Jack Butala:
To buy undervalued property.