Land Investment: Side Hustle vs. Career + Hiring & Training Transaction Coordinators (LA 1967)

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Land Investment: Side Hustle vs. Career + Hiring & Training Transaction Coordinators (LA 1967)

Never Miss an Episode!

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Join hosts Steven Jack Butala and Jill K DeWit in Land Academy episode 1967 as they explore the vital difference between turning land investment from a side hustle into a full-fledged career. Dive into expert insights on land investment tips and learn how to effectively hire and train transaction coordinators. Discover essential strategies for success and get a sneak peek into our Land Academy member community. For more details, visit our Discord forum and reach out to us with your questions at 480-530-7383. Don’t miss this insightful episode!

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Land Investment: Side Hustle Vs. Career + Hiring & Training Transaction Coordinators (LA 1967)

This is episode 1,968. We are talking about the difference between a side hustle and your career in land investment. A little later, we’re going to talk about how to hire and train a transition coordinator who can also effectively answer the phones. Both of these topics were requested in Discord.

Dealing With Transition In The Office

I was going to say, too, I think we’ve been doing so much transition in our office. I think you said transition coordinator instead of transaction coordinator. Let me just clarify that, because there’s a time for both right now in our companies. Jack is the transition coordinator. That’s true. Which are you over there? You over there, we may not have a home for, and you’re in. That’s the transition coordinator. I wonder if we are not going through a transition. That’s my question. I know. Even between us, it’s a constant transition. When you’re younger, you say, “This is going to happen, and this is going to happen. This is what men do.” This is going to happen by the time I’m 28, this is going to happen, and then by the time I’m 32, 34 years old, it’s over. All the transition is over. Everything’s locked in. It’s on autopilot, and we’re good, and that just never happens. It’s not what women do. This is actually probably not bad then. We’re never disappointed. Just hold on a second, though. Women are never disappointed. That’s the show for next week. That was bad stuff. I mean, you have your plan. You said it never goes like that. Here’s the beauty of it for us. We have simple goals, but we don’t have a timeline plan like that. It’s easier to not be disappointed. However, we do have a thing called a biological clock. That does kick in sometimes, and that’s one of the hard parts for women. It’s like bursting out in tears when you’re reading Hallmark cards. You don’t know when it’s coming. To me, those two things are disappointing. A biological clock and a Hallmark card leading to disappointment, not positive stuff. Depends on when you’re buying a Hallmark card. Maybe it’s for your best friend saying congratulations on your divorce. Just kidding. That is negative. I know. 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. I think it’s under the Tools tab. If you want us to answer your questions or you are just right here on this show, or you need some help getting involved, don’t forget, you can just text my team. It’s 480-530-7383. They are read. You will get a response. Thanks. Austin wrote, “Here is a blow-by-blow update.” One second, I just set this up. If you haven’t sent a mailer out, this is exactly what you can expect to happen. I actually love this entry in Discord. “Mailer number one, which was 4,000 units, sent on August 1st, and we’re on day three of having the mail hit the mailbox.” About two weeks later. Perfect. Eleven hate calls in. Of the eleven, seven or so have said, went from degrees of anger to, is your head screwed on straight, to valuing the service you’re providing and will hang on to your letter when it’s time to sell. We have different anger, like, are you nuts, to I don’t know, but I’ll hang on to it. Credits to Jill and Jack’s de-escalation techniques and friendly, respectful, sir, ma’am, Mr., and Mrs. in our responses. That makes a difference. Way to go adjusting to your inbound sellers. Calming them down. One caller today has three properties to sell and wants to talk to his wife and get back to us tomorrow. It’s probably a $60,000 to $90,000 acquisition. We’ll keep you all apprised. Comments and feedback are welcome on point-in-time progress. Then came back and was assessed on August 15th. Where would you all recommend I go for a strong near-complete template operating agreement for a land investing LLC? Articles of formation of Danmer, single member LLC. I’m just guessing for title work. They just need an operating agreement. What happened is he sent a 4,000-unit mailer out, and two weeks later, calls started coming in. He got a bunch of hate. This is a template. What you can expect, a bunch of hate, and then several people say, I’m not sure I’m ready to sell now, but possibly in the end. You can see how multiple mailers build over time. Then one person says, “I’ve got three properties and I’m interested in signing in.” What to say here? Fifteen days later from this entry, he’s asking for an LLC operating agreement because he’s getting funding to buy these properties. That’s what’s happening. I put this entry in here to give everybody a very straightforward, honest, and accurate expectation of what happens with a mailer. Some people who have a sales background and who have a numbers background like Jill and I have respectively are elated with these results. I sent out 4,000, by the time the mailers are over, he’s going to buy several properties maybe, let’s just say, 3 to 5. He’s going to get a lot more hate, and he’s going to get a lot of people that are going to hang it on the refrigerator and think about it. Amazing results for any marketing campaign. What matters is he buys one great property and makes $50,000 to $100,000. Then it pays for the dumb mailer, and then everything else is gravy.

Side Hustle Vs Career In Land Investment

If you’re not numbers-oriented, I put this in here so maybe you can start thinking this way because if you’re just going to focus on those eleven hate calls and not the actual property that you’re going to buy and make a ton of money on, that’s maybe not the best approach. Congratulations. This is good. He’s been a new member. He’s been very vocal, and we appreciate your participation. The first topic is The Difference Between A Side Hustle and Your Career and Land Investment. Which one is it for you, Jill? Are you still a side hustle? 100% side hustle. This is a total side hustle to my life, which is goofing off with you. Does that count? Yes. Mission accomplished there, too. It wasn’t always that way. We’re in Livingston, Montana, right now. Just north of Yellowstone National Park. We have been loving this area and driving all around. Not appreciating the heat right now. Anyone in Montana here where in the middle of August that we’re recording this that it’s a little warm, but it’s awesome and beautiful. It’s just so great. May I start? Sure. I see this as a progression for a lot of people, and since you asked me that question, this inspired this response and this thought. This could very easily start out as something you do on the side while you have a W-2 job because you’re being smart about this and you want to get it up and rolling. You want to get some money in the bank. You want to work out the kinks. You don’t have a lot of free time. Big deal. You’re working on building this company on the side because then this could become your career. Then you get to someday, a lot of people, this is our goal, to ditch whatever they were doing, make this their career. Then they can just get their lives back. Your time is what you want it to be. You do deals when you want to do the deals. You do deals however big or how small or how many you want to do in a week or a month. Dream it up. You work as hard as you want to work and make as much money as you want to make. This is the kicker I hadn’t thought about until you just asked me that question. Then you could really scale it back down. What if you’re like, “I don’t want to work. I made so much money, you guys, this is happening. Now I wanted to spend time with X and do whatever. I’m going to kind of dial it back a little bit. It’s still my business and still my main income, but I’m not working as hard as I wanted to because I’m spending my time with my family, my grandkids, my RV trip, whatever it is.”

Turning Side Hustle Into A Career

I think it always should start as a side hustle. I’ll give you my personal anecdote or story here. I started buying and selling land and investing in real estate in some way around early ‘95 and continued to do that casually until about 2000 when I did a deal as a side hustle. Let’s call it. I don’t like the word side hustle, but everybody understands what it is. We’ll just call it a side hustle. It was a side business. It gives it a little bit more seriousness. It’s a side business now, but it’s going to be my primary business. That should be your intent. Kudos for having a side business. That’s how you get out of the doldrum of the W-2. I think you are either going to succeed at this or succeed at some other side business until it’s your main business and you live happily ever after. Anyway, from around 1995 to around 2000, I always had a pretty good W-2 job, and I would do this stuff on the weekends or at night. I did an amazing deal, which netted over $1 million, and that’s when I walked in and said, “That is it.” My side hustle became my career in the land. I encourage you to look at it that way and ask yourself, “I love that land investment or I don’t. Maybe I’ll try something else if it’s not working out.” If the land investment thing’s working out, just put the pedal down to the floor, the gas pedal. It’s not for everyone. I also have to tell you, this is a very personal note. I’ve picked up the guitar for probably the 19th time in my life. I’m so proud of you. I’m convinced this time I’m going to actually learn how to play. This time what’s different is the availability of what’s on the internet, and the learning is different from the last time I did it. I’m taking lessons online, just on YouTube. I’m not even paying for it and giving myself a practice schedule, putting it in the calendar, and on and on and on. I was thinking the other day because this is new for me. It’s important to you now. Is it new? I played in a band in high school. Jill, I played the piano casually my entire life. I can generally read music and count and all that stuff. Not very well, but I’m aware of it. Let’s just say that I’m aware of what music is and how it works. I’m going through this and I’m thinking to myself, “What if I was new at LAN trying to learn it? What do I bring to the table?” In this new guitar endeavor, I’m bringing to the table a general understanding of how music works. I’m not starting from a cold, just a cold start. If you have some type of experience, professional experience that lends itself so that you’re not starting from a cold start, it’s huge. It doesn’t feel that way when it’s happening. It doesn’t feel like the worst guitarist that there ever was, which I’m probably close to that person. Honestly, I’m not starting cold. I know what I’m getting myself into. My point is, I hope that you’ve got some type of experience you can bring to the table and not start cold. If you do, you’re at a good advantage. What if you don’t? Then you’re going to have to work harder. That’s okay. That’s totally okay. You may have to spend a little more time doing some more research and recon before you dive in. So what? Follow this podcast for a year, if it takes that long for you to really feel comfortable and understand it. Follow our community, ask questions, watch all our videos, and watch other people’s videos. There’s so much great stuff out there. Try to understand what a deed is, the technical terms, and all that good stuff. Like you said, you don’t have to work a little harder. I want to add one more thing on the guitar thing. This is really important. I’m glad that you’re doing this. I think it’s because it’s important to you now. I was going to offer that I will try to learn to sing. Talk about a cold start. I don’t think there’s any saving my singing voice, which has never existed. We’ll just leave it at that. Jill has many talents in singing and dancing, and especially singing and dancing at the same time, just doesn’t fall into that category. Now hold on a moment. I don’t think I suck at dancing as bad as I suck at singing, so give me a break there. Maybe I might take some Western dancing. That is what I would like to do. I would like to learn to two-step and do some other things. I think that would be really cool. Did we finish this topic sufficiently? I think so. Everybody understands the side hustle and your career in the land. Side hustle leads to your career. I’m going to say, too. I need to hit this home. When you’re starting out like this, this is not going to be a five-hour-a-week side hustle. I want you to know you need to really decide if you’re going to do this because if you’re going to do it and do it right and you want this to be your career, you’re pretty much going to give up other stuff in your life. It might be some trips that don’t happen because some weekends your heads are down learning this stuff. You can do that. We have many successful people that have come from a really intense PhD. They have PhDs, and they have careers that require PhDs, who said, “I don’t want to do this anymore.” They probably work 60 or so hours a week. Then they started this on the side. What does that mean? They’re up at 4:00 AM, and this is what their weekends are, but it’s not like that forever. I want you to know this is not just a skip-along-the-top side hustle. “I’m just going to learn it, and they’re going to hold my hand.” There’s stuff you got to do. You’re going to have to pick your own counties. You’re going to have to get the mail out. You’re going to have to answer the phone. You got us right here. We will show you what to do, and you can get there. Well said. Thank you. Let’s take a look at one of our favorite land acquisitions from our weekly Thursday member webinar.

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Would you do this deal? Rusk County, Texas. The expected offer price is $10,000. I think we can sell for $45,000. I think this is very low and conservative. I like that. We have access to Main Street, 10.37 acres. Adjacent, not really. It’s rural. The neighbor has an easement for a road through the whole property. How does this affect value? Whole property? On Google Earth, it looks like it’s in a slopey area. I think I got a decent amount of acres cheap, and it would be hard to lose. I see an easement through the whole Northern part of the property. That’s no big deal. This is 10 acres. I’m okay with that. On it since ‘89. We’re batting $500 right now. I know. If we can keep that going, $10,000 is nothing but 10 acres anywhere in Texas. It’s way, way, way east. Look, it’s right here. Dallas, Austin, Midland. They live in Longview too. That’s interesting. I love seeing this. Every single one of these properties, regardless of size or location, and zip code is almost half of your purchase price for 10 acres. I don’t like the DOM. One property is sold. This is very rural, with no data at all. I still don’t like the days on the market. House is $250, started $250 in the zip code. That’s good. We don’t know. In Texas, you’re going to have to dig down and find out what they sold for like this. If you go down to the home details, it’ll give you a good indication. $250 to $260. I’m glad you like the details. Click on the home details and it’ll show you how listed, sometimes pending. You can see sold, and it won’t give you a number. You got a good idea of how quickly it went pending and sold if they got that number. This is good dirt. The easement doesn’t scare me at all. This is what he means by easement. They’re just driving over your property to get to their house. There’s a ton of other property to work with. That sort of passes the adjacent tests. I’d like to see a lot more development here, but I love the dirt. I like it. I’m down. Right at $10,000 check, put a sign out here. Get a listing, maybe you’ll put a sign. That’s good. I wish I could see it. We get that sign on it and sell it for $20,000, maybe $30,000. I would do the deal.

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Jill, do you have exciting news about Career Path? I do and even Land Academy. I don’t know if it’s happening, but right about now, there’s going to be a big announcement for some special stuff happening for people who want to join Land Academy. Check it out. Go to our Facebook page, go to Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and Dream It Up. There’s probably some stuff on there just to point you in the right direction for a live announcement. Check out LandAcademy.com. Then of course, depending on who you are and where you are in your career at this point, Career Path still has seats open. Career Path is our highest-level mastermind coaching program. It’s eight weeks long. We take 15 to 20 people in a class. I have two classes going on this fall. They start at the end of September. Again, go to LandAcademy.com, and under resources, join one of the two, you’ll find it. Look for Career Path. It’s awesome. Instead of taking a question from our Discord channel like we always do on the show, I have something different that I think you might enjoy, listener. I’m going to ask Jill some questions because Jill and I are celebrating 14 years of working together.

14 or 15 years. I’ve been thinking because we have a really good crew, both vendors right now in Land Academy, a fantastic transaction coordinator, and just generally a great group of people in Land Academy. It’s taken a lot of years. We started Land Academy in 2015. What I’ve really been thinking about is the synergy and the synergistic relationships and working relationships that we all have together and how many people that didn’t work with in the beginning to get to having these synergies. It’s like when you get to this synergistic relationship that Jill and I have, there’s been many business partners that I’ve had before this, and Jill’s been in a lot of different professional and social roles also. I guess my big question is to you, how do you achieve that? The root of my question is, I really believe most people don’t ever get here at all, socially and professionally, because they get comfortable in a situation that’s mediocre and don’t strive to get into a situation where there’s true synergistic energy. With you and me? What would your advice be for people who are younger and maybe new at this, who don’t even know that they need to have some type of synergistic relationship from a partnership standpoint or a vendor standpoint? When I say vendors, a great example for us is a great real estate agent who can liquidate property and understands you. What would your advice be to people who are trying to achieve that? What would you say? A couple of things. Figure out how they communicate. I love your third party like a real estate agent. Do we connect? Are we on the same page? Do we want the same goals? That sentence applies to you and me, and it applies to me and the real estate agent, fill in the blank county. Employees and everything. Employees. Do we all have the same goals? That’s huge. Then find out how they communicate and then try to, as best I can, communicate with them and how they need me to communicate. It doesn’t do any good for me to dig my heels in and say they need to read my mind. They need to understand what and just do it my way. It’s not going to really get to the same goal because if you’re both doing that, if you’re both trying to, I’m trying to understand them and they’re trying to understand me and we’re trying to each meet in the middle, then you’re going to win. It’s awesome. The other thing is to sit back, trust them to do their job, and stay out of their way. Give them some time to do their job. Set some fair goals and achievements. Again, back to a broker that I might be working with. When’s the listing going to be up? Did the photos come out good? Let them go off and do it. I don’t need to nitpick them and say, “I’m going to pick the lead photo. I’m going to pick the whatever.” That’s nonsense. it’s a waste of my time. What do I have them for if I’m doing that much work? I think you know that’s what I was hoping you would say is the same goals. There are employees who take a job or seek a job for all kinds of different reasons. You would think it’s not. It’s just they get a paycheck. That’s really just not the case. If you survey and read surveys on how to have employees and keep employees happy, money is like never even at the top of three things. I’ve had a lot of employees. Some of them come in and they just set up shop, and you can watch them literally do it. Like they bring in their coffee cup, they get their desk, they set it all up. That’s not the same goal that I have. The goal that I have is month over month doing better. Next month, they’re going to do better than this month, and this month is better than last month. Employee X, I need your help. Now we have the same goals. They’re like, “Are you kidding? How can I help? I know you hired me over here to do this thing, but I’ve had some experience doing this other thing, and it looks like how you guys are doing it. Maybe that’s not the best way. Let me get a crack at it.” Now we have the same goal. I think that happens in a marriage and in all kinds of stuff. Are we all going down the same path here together? Are we staying in each other’s way? Way more often than not, it’s the latter. Getting in each other’s way? Yep. It’s very important for you to be successful in life, which is probably why you’re listening to this. There’s a point in every relationship, professionally or socially, where you say, “I’m no longer going to work on this. Dumping the baby with the bath water, then I’m going to start again.” That’s very hard to decide where that line is. All the positive stuff you’re saying in the show, I just counteract. I know that. I’m trying to figure out how to save this right now. You went down this path and I’m like, I don’t know if I can recover from this one. This is awesome. I forgot. That’s my final one. Save them from themselves sometimes. They might be throwing out some things that are really important. That’s possible. Like me. No. I’ve done the throwing out. Trust me. That’s awesome. Thanks. Good chat.

Hiring A Transaction Coordinator

The second topic is How to Hire and Train a Transaction Coordinator Who Can Also Effectively Answer the Phones. I have done this. I know. That’s why I figure you’re generally qualified to answer these questions and talk about this stuff. I know how to do these. Here’s what’s funny. Let me back up. What’s a transaction coordinator? You’re cruising along, your side hustle is now your real full-time business. Guess what? Now you’re getting busy. The minutia of babysitting, title agents, making sure this got posted and wiring money. They need a copy of my organization’s articles because I have a new agent in this area. They need this stuff, fill in the blank. It just gets to be too much. You’re like, it’s slowing me down. It’s keeping me from making money, which I should just be sending out the mail, getting the deals, and moving through those deals. I don’t need to be doing the paperwork part. That’s where a transaction coordinator comes in, and they will organize it all. They take all of that off your plates. Where do you find them? The first place is, I’m going to go out and hire one. I’ll tell you right now, the minute you put, “Wanted. I’m looking to hire a land real estate transaction coordinator.” Here come 18,000 real estate agents. Failed real estate agents. That’s the other thing because if they were really busy, they had their own transaction coordinators. They’re not applying for your job. It’s really interesting. I think they just see real estate, and then they just glam onto that, or they think that they know how to book deals through the system, which I understand that they’ve done deals and they followed them through the system, which really does make sense. All of it does make sense. You’re like, what are you talking about, Jill? It sounds like they know how to do this stuff. Why would they make a good transaction? I haven’t figured that out. There’s some disconnect. Do you know what the disconnect is? It’s like, they’ve never done the transaction coordinator, but they’ve only been an agent. They will come to find you. I have just probably incorrectly assumed that within the last several years, there’s some ideology out there about applying for every single job that’s got keywords in it. Maybe it’s even software. I don’t think that there’s a person on the other end of your job posting who’s looking through 60 job postings and saying, “I might be good at this one.” There could be. It’s a numbers game. You’re going to look at it, probably 30, 40, or 80 people, and 1 or 2 are potentially getting to the second round. I don’t know. That could be, we’re here to discuss it. We’re all hoping that you’re going to solve this for us. I will solve it. What’s interesting is that I’ve got on the phone with those people. Honestly, here’s the general consensus. I’ve been a real estate agent and I’m tired of these investors making all this money. I need to get going down that path of being an investor myself. Then I saw you guys, this is what happened to me. Then I saw you guys and you’re a Land Academy so I’m going to come in and learn from you, but there’s still a disconnect. I haven’t figured that out yet. I guess I have. They just don’t have it in them sometimes. Fast forward, we’re going to push that point aside here. Who do you hire? Jill, I got that part. Do you know what you really want? You want a really organized, detailed person who in a perfect world has prior escrow experience and can speak the language of many different kinds of people, if you will. Very good communication skills. That’s what I have. What’s really interesting is my number one primary transaction coordinator is also a licensed agent. However, this is what she loves. She did this forever. She’s just so flipping good at it. She likes having 80 deals at a time on her plate. That’s her happy place. That’s what I’m saying. She had the same goals as Jill. She calls me when she’s bored. “I need more deals. I don’t know what to do.” She’s looking for stuff to do. She goes digging. This is the best part. When you find the right person, they’re going to go digging and say, “Do you still own that property? I just got a tax bill for it. It slipped through the cracks.” “Yes. Thank you.” “Let me get it posted for you and find an agent.” “Yeah.” That’s the right transaction coordinator. That’s who you’re looking for. You need to have these hard conversations with them. You need to ask a lot of questions and don’t be afraid to put them through some tests, like making sure they can handle Excel, and whatever your CRM is going to be. I use Airtable. Make sure they can handle that stuff. They don’t have to be a pro coming into it, but they need to be able to understand it. If they’re an older escrow agent, which is great, some of them might have a transition from paperwork to that. I, again, am very fortunate. Mine’s a rock star. Did just great. Love it. How do I train them? You spend some time with them. I have personal stuff to say about this and I can’t wait to hear your answer. How do you train them?

Training The Transaction Coordinator

For me personally, we sat together for a couple of weeks in the office and just did stuff together. She got to know me and how my brain is wired, and I got to know her and how she does stuff. We came up with some solutions together like, “Here’s how I put these in.” She’s like, “Can you do it like this because it’s faster for me?” “No problem.” We worked at the kinks together for just a couple of weeks. That was it. The other thing is, she was really good at going out and finding, not even at the beginning, but I showed her the way with YouTube videos and she’ll very nicely say that. It’s very cute. I’m like, “Instead of asking me, it’s probably on YouTube.” It was just a little switch, a little light bulb switch. She’s just like, “Yeah.” That was a good training tool for me to just keep reminding her that there are other resources out there that are free to get you what you need. Then you come to me when it’s like, this is big or this is something or whatever it is. I Don’t believe in training. I said this to our managers and I continue to say it. If you hire somebody under you that needs to be trained, they’re not the right person. Whoever you’re hiring for as a manager and what you need that person to do, they should be exceedingly better at it than you ever hoped to be. They should be coming to you with years and years, as many years as possible, of experience in whatever you’re training them to do. IT is always a great thing. If you’re going to get somebody that is a good web designer/programmer, the person that they’re going to report to, and certainly in our case, the person that they report to is just a very good manager. They’re good at managing and keeping people on track and keeping employees happy and on and on and on. They shouldn’t be good at exactly what that person was hired for. The training really should be called acclimation. Acclimating. That’s what it is. It’s acclimating. You’re great at being a transaction coordinator already. I can see that. You’ve done 30-plus deals a month for the last 22 years. In Jen’s case, I think that’s pretty close to it, but you probably haven’t used the software that we’re using. Here’s the deal with our software. Here’s what I expect. I know Jill’s style is ridiculously hands-off. In a perfect world, Jill talks to the TC once a week. That might be new for them. By the way, here’s this thing called Land Academy that we have running over here. You and I are just going to go do real estate deals, but we got this thing over here. Every Thursday we talk to everybody. Please show up for that. Then that’s about it. He’s right. I didn’t train her anything on how to do a deal. Close a deal, open escrow, close escrow. If anything, here’s the best part, when you get a good one, they train other escrow agents how to do their jobs. That has happened. There are times that we’ve had things where we’re dealing with an escrow in four states over and my TC goes, “Here’s how you solve the problem with this, fill in the blank.” She gets the deals done because she’s that good. Here’s how you get hired in one of our companies. You come in, and after a half hour of answering questions and listening, you say some version of this. “That’s really interesting that you guys do it this way, but I think I might have a better solution, because I did this thing over here a year ago for this company that I worked with, and it worked really well. I think that you’re trying to accomplish the same thing that they are and there’s this newer software product that I think can help us get it there. I’ll happen to do it your way but I think there might be a better, more efficient, newer solution.” Hired on the spot. No ego here. We don’t put up with it in any of our companies. There are no egos. We’re just trying to get to the finish line. When you’re putting your posting together, you’re going to say transaction coordinator, but the very first line needs to say, “I’d like you to have ten plus years of escrow experience and let me know what CRMs you’re comfortable with or how you did your ten plus years and maybe doing 50 deals a month plus.” Then you know you got a person that’s solved some problems and been through some things. I am so fortunate. Your other thing, who’s going to answer the phones? I think mine is just so good. She’s good on the phone with everybody. She can talk to sellers, she can talk to buyers, she can talk to every escrow person. I’ve even learned from her. She takes a step back and asks the escrow agent, “Do you like text, email, phone calls, or instant messages? How do you want me to communicate with you when I need to get you for something?” That’s perfect. You should learn from the people you hire. This gets confusing, especially for people who are really young or people who have been trained in a huge company. I’ll throw some names out there like Starbucks has an amazing customer service type program and a training program that everybody goes through. I know some of the really big companies like Microsoft and manufacturing car assembly companies like Toyota and General Motors have acclimation programs and training and what to expect and certainly healthcare. If you ever had a healthcare job? Months and months of training to acclimate into the system and software and all that. When you start to bring people in, they’re expecting, this is a huge red flag for me. When does my training start? It doesn’t start. You should be improving all of this in about the second hour after you sign out of HR so that’s very hard for people to swallow. They want to get on the escalator or like that conveyor thing not necessarily going up. I don’t mean going up, I mean flatly just get on that thing at the airport so you don’t have to walk. That’s really what I meant, the escalator. It’s a people-mover conveyor belt thing. Most employees want to get on that conveyor belt so they don’t have to walk, don’t have to carry any luggage, and just get off at 5:05. Here I am again saving the day. I love it. Let’s take a look at one of our favorite land acquisitions from one of our weekly Thursday closed-member webinar calls.

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Counted with $195,000. Collier County, Florida, thinks we could sell it for $260,000. It’s 2.73 acres. It’s residential next to some really nice houses. I’m hoping for $260,000. All up land lot flood zone AH. That’s good in this area. Close to new development. I think that Carl and Samantha have done some stuff down that way. Everybody’s alive. The couple bought it for $130,000 in 2020 with the intent to build a home but looking to sell to gain equity in their business. I like that. We’ve been talking to your realtor who’s very familiar with the area. He thinks it will sell within 60 days at a proposed price of $259,000 to $269,000. These properties are really easy to value, super easy to value this. It’s not in the flood zone in Florida, which is quite amazing. Look at the built-up, Jill. They built them all around. That’s wild. Prepare yourself for grading. The good news is that the adjacent property to the North is worth $650,000 right now. You’re going to buy this property for $200,000. If you followed the info lot rules of 10%, then you should be paying $64,000, $65,000 for this property. The person who’s going to build a house on it should buy it from you for $100,000. I think the property is too high. I would pay $50,000 for this lot. They counted at $195,000. Peter, you were probably right on your original offer.

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Jill, do you have something inspirational to share this week? I was talking with Christopher, who works with us, who’s new with us and has been helping me answer questions when people call in and they’re like, “I want to talk about LAND Academy. I think this might be for me.” One of the common things that come up is people are all excited. They call in like, “This is great. I’m in. I love it. I know this is what I want to do. I’ve been following you guys for a year. I saved up this much money. I’ve done all the things you said.” “Let’s go. We’re right here. You did this, this, and this. You understand it. Yep. Do you know about this? Yep. I know about that. Let’s go.” They’re like, “Let’s go.” Then they don’t. They’re procrastinating. Can you read the title? I will get to the title. You’re going to work it in because I was intrigued by the title that you wrote. Go ahead. I quietly listen. Just please, preferably on your hands. Anyway, this title came from Christopher because he’s experiencing it too. He has done similar work, helped answer phone calls for people in other worlds, other companies, and other things kind of some coaching related, and this comes up and as you say, “I’m over here at the Land Academy, it still comes up.” It’s getting over fear disguised as procrastination. What I want to talk about for a few minutes is procrastination. There’s usually a fear. There’s something you haven’t uncovered that’s holding you back. Often, I have found there’s one fear. There’s one common fear that everybody has to keep them from finally jumping in and doing this. Do you know what it is? What was the biggest fear to stop somebody from jumping in? Commitment. Failing. Just like, what if I screwed up? I was talking about me. Fear of commitment. There you go. It’s usually failure. What’s the worst thing that can happen? Think about this for a moment. So flipping what? What if you get in, you do something wrong, you make a mistake, so what? You’re not going to do that again. You pick yourself up, you dive right back in, and you move forward. You learn from those mistakes, number one. Number two, I’m going to tell you, one of the great things about the world that we float around in is we’re here to help. I’m here to help you. There are so many people in Land Academy. I love these conversations. Don't let the fear of failure hold you back. The worst that can happen is you learn a valuable lesson. The best? You achieve your dreams. Take the leap. Share on X I pop in and pop out of Discord, which is our online community where everybody, the members chat and talk because I’m like, “You all don’t need me.” I love it. There’s so much helping going on there. “I got the money, I’ll fund that deal. I’ve got a photographer over here. I’ve got a title agent over here or here’s how you solve this problem.” I’m like, you guys, it’s like this beautiful little bubble where everybody’s helping each other. That’s another nice thing. You have this resource group to even keep you from making mistakes but don’t worry. You’re still going to do it. You’re still going to make a mistake. Do I make mistakes still? Yes. Not the stupid ones, like I forgot to ask about HOA. I learned that one and how much is the HOA, the transfer fees? I’ve even learned that since Land Academy. I forgot to ask that question. I got hit with a couple thousand dollar transfer fees. I’m like, “Great, I’ll never do that again.” So what if you’re going to make mistakes? You have to move past that. Do you have any other things other than commitment that you think people might have, what’s failure is my biggest one why people, they’re afraid of failing is procrastinating. I have another one. I’m going to think before I let you answer that. People are afraid of the time involved. You’re just going to have to get over that one and swallow it, I think, because it’s not the money. I think they might sometimes get over the time. Like I’m going to have to give up some stuff. You will, but it’s not forever. It’s like starting anything. When you go to college, what if you want to be a doctor? You can’t be a doctor part-time. You’re going to put your head down in it. Then you’re going to come up for air and probably not have to work as hard as you did in college, but you got there. I think there’s a really huge difference between liking the idea of something and actually doing it or succeeding at it or having what it takes to get through having what it takes to get to the other side where it’s like, “This is how I thought this was going to be.” I watched a documentary a few years ago about a guy building a tiny house when tiny houses were really a thing. He started filming it and he was all excited about it. He’s got the plans, got a lot of experience as a carpenter and the whole thing, totally qualified to do it. Do the show and do the construction project. He started it, got all the materials, and began the whole project. Then there’s a lot of time-lapse in the middle, and he stops right in the middle and he looks at the camera and says, “It’s way over budget, and it’s taking like two years instead of three months.” He looks at the camera and says, “In every project, there’s a beginning, a middle, and the end, and the middle is terrible. The beginning is fun, and the end, the outcome is a blast, but the middle is awful, and it costs more, and it takes longer than you think.” That’s always stuck with me. I think that’s a big issue. At some point, you get hung up saying, this is too hard, or whatever’s going to be on the other end of this, the end of it, this isn’t worth it. That’s why so many people drop out of medical school. It’s like, “I can go make some money now and do this.” In every project, there's a beginning, middle, and end. The middle is often the hardest part. Push through it – that's where real success is made. Share on X We’re in the middle of this, and it is hard. Well said. That’s a perfect example. I also think, personally, I can tell you why I start something and don’t finish it. It’s almost always because there’s a component that I can’t stand. I loathe it and so I finished this land thing with Jill because she does the part that I loathe. You got to sub that stuff out. That’s why I’ve started several things business-wise professionally and stopped because it’s like I got to talk on the phone all day to sell this thing. No way. The greatest thing that ever happened to me was the Internet because it stopped me from talking to people. I can get all kinds of things done really effectively, efficiently, and communication-wise. I can communicate with 6,000 people all at once, which I do often. I can post something on Facebook or whatever and send some message out about this deal that we did and never have to talk to a soul. Talking to people is very inefficient. I’ve always been really jealous of people like Jill who just wake up in the morning and they’re like ready to go. “Let’s try this new thing. I’m going to tell this person, this person, and this person, let’s see what they’ve got. Maybe this person over here has got a new thing and we’ll see how it goes.” I’m just not that. It all has to be in a spreadsheet. I have to know how it’s going to end before I start. Let me put it that way. Which actually leads me to my topic. I’m going to finish on this. Getting over fear disguised as procrastination, what do you do? You accept it. The fear is usually something. You have to identify what it is and then you have to accept it. You could be afraid of making a mistake. You could be afraid of commitment. You could be afraid of, I don’t know, doing too well. Maybe like, I don’t know what’s going to happen. Some people, I think that’s a real thing. You could be afraid of what I’m going to have to hire. I don’t know. There are lots of different things. You have to figure out what it is and just understand it and accept it and know what’s so funny. Don't let fear disguise itself as procrastination. Identify what's holding you back, accept it, and move forward. You'll make mistakes, but that's how you learn and grow. Share on X You could be afraid of your new career as a Canadian stripper. That could be. It’s a valid fear. I’m procrastinating about showing up for work. This makes complete sense to me because there’s part of that job. There are a lot of parts of that job that I would enjoy. Let’s at least do this. Let’s say, I’m trying to think of one thing, you procrastinated learning the guitar, even though you forever wanted to do it. What was the fear? Why were you procrastinating? Honestly, because I didn’t think I could do it. There you go. That’s a perfect one and I love that. We could end on that because that was the third thing I wanted to bring up and I didn’t, which is, you’re afraid you don’t have what it takes. You’re afraid you’re not cut out. You’re afraid you’re not smart enough. Afraid you can’t figure it out. You just might have to work that harder. I know I can figure it out. It’s just how much effort is it going to take? There you go. If you really want it, you’ll do it. That’s it. Jack, do you have something to share with us today?

Deconstructing Your Way To Success

My little talk here is called Deconstructing Your Way to Success. I alluded to just a minute ago, if I want to start down the path to doing something, anything, I don’t care if it’s fixing the sink, taking a four-month trip with Jill in the RV all over the country, buying and selling a piece of land or raising a child. This is true. I have to sit down and I’m conscious, I’m not letting stuff happen to us or happening to me or happening to Jill and me together, or our family, our kids. I hate that. I’m not going to let stuff happen. I’m going to put it all together, and we’re going to go down the path with a reasonable expectation of variance and adjustment. I am going to deconstruct the whole thing, the RV trip or the raising of a child, all the way to the point where they’re 19 or 20 years old. Spreadsheet it out. Put some timeframes together, usually associate money with it, and then go to work on the small parts that it takes to get to that long-term point of success. That’s deconstruction, your way to success. I’m actually writing a whole thing about it right now because I think that’s something I have no idea why becomes very natural to Jill. When I met Jill, she was already all like this. There wasn’t something. Deconstruct your path to success. Break down big goals into small, manageable tasks. It reduces stress and makes achieving your dreams feel attainable. Share on X That sounds like, “She’s already like this.” Like a scatterbrained crazy person. I didn’t sell her anything and say, “Come over to my side. It’s better.” Nothing like that happened. She just already was so, minus a spreadsheet, but she had her way. Like she said earlier, we had the same goal way the heck out there as far as you can see. She did it with little notebooks from CVS, but I did it in Excel, and the outcome is the same and it’s still the same. She was probably calling it that, deconstructing her way into succeeding at whatever it is. I’ve got to make 62 sales phone calls to get to this point to make this amount of money so I can buy a new watch, in Jill’s case. That was usually your goal and still is, actually. The mortgage, forget it. Jack will pay. Stuff like that, seriously. That’s awesome. I really do think that being conscious of what your goals are, and writing it down, whatever makes sense to you, and setting tiny little goals up is essential. I don’t know any other way. In Land Academy, that’s called the equity planner. If you’re in Land Academy, you know what I’m talking about. A couple of years ago, he had this for us, and was it the 24-month millionaire? Yeah, we called it that originally. Then it became the equity planner. All it is is a spreadsheet showing where you want to be. You can fill in at the end of the spreadsheet. In 24 months or 12 months, I want X amount of money in the bank. Put that in there. A lot of it, he calculated it in there too. He puts in how many deals you want to do, how hard you want to work, and then it lets you send out this much mail. You got to plan for this, you got to do this many deals, and you can adjust based on how many deals you want to do. Then you’re like, “Then I’ll do fewer deals, but they need to yield more profit, no-brainer.” Everything that Jack’s saying right now. When you look at it, then you’re like, “Huh.” When you look at it like that, now I only have to do two deals a month, and they have to each make at least $50,000. I can do two deals a month. I could do that standing on my head. I’m going to try for three deals a month. then I know if I screw up, I know I’m going to get my two deals a month. There you go. The personal selfish truth about why I do this is because it takes the stress out of it for me. Now it’s like, I’m not a millionaire yet. You can sit around after three years of trying to do something and say, “This doesn’t work.” It didn’t work because from day one, deconstruct the whole thing, take it all apart, and then give yourself one tiny little goal to do this week, or the next three days. Now you’re working two hours a day on something, and you will have more money than you ever would’ve thought you would have had within that timeframe, and you only had to do two hours a day, or whatever that ends up being for you, however you deconstruct it. It’s so good, it’s so much easier to swallow. All this stuff is born out of laziness. I’m going to argue it makes you a happier person too, because you often come up and go, “I’m done, I have everything else to do today.” You could work ahead, burn yourself out even too, but he’s like, “No, I know I’m on exactly the right trajectory. I got everything accomplished. It’s going exactly as planned, and I’m happy.” When I was younger, I would work way ahead, but not anymore. You’re right. I don’t want the stress. I agree. Don’t forget, you can reach us for questions and help simply by texting 480-530-7383. Join us next Wednesday for another interesting episode. You are not alone in your real estate ambition. We are Jack and Jill. Information and inspiration. It’s about undervalued property.

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Interview with Land Academy Members Mike and Joe Brusca (LA 1419)

January 27, 2026

Interview with Land Academy Members Mike and Joe Brusca (LA 1419) Transcript: —————————————- If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to email me directly at steven@BuWit.com. The BuWit Family of Companies include: https://BuWit.com https://offers2owners.com https://landinvestors.com https://landacademy.com https://landpin.com https://parcelfact.com https://countywise.com https://deedperfect.com https://ownersdata.com https://houseacademy.com

Interview With Land Academy Million Dollar Member Christine McManus (LA 1359)

January 20, 2026

Interview with Land Academy Million Dollar Member Christine McManus (LA 1359) Transcript: Steven Jack Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Hello. Steven Jack Butala: Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I’m Steven Jack Butala. Jill DeWit: I’m Jill DeWit, broadcasting

The Land Academy Show | Land Investor Regrets

The Biggest Regrets From Land Investors Who Quit Too Soon

January 13, 2026

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZQtcQ84u8k&list=PLExWT63zCvfuY0wFZtlIXbTQuQ_bdHVgQ Ever wonder what separates successful land investors from the ones who quietly walk away? In today’s episode of The Land Academy Show, Steven Jack Butala and Jill DeWit dig into the most common — and often painful — regrets shared by people who gave

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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
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Land Investment: Side Hustle vs. Career + Hiring & Training Transaction Coordinators (LA 1967)

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Land Investment: Side Hustle vs. Career + Hiring & Training Transaction Coordinators (LA 1967)

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Listen to the episode here

Land Investment: Side Hustle Vs. Career + Hiring & Training Transaction Coordinators (LA 1967)

Dealing With Transition In The Office

Side Hustle Vs Career In Land Investment

Turning Side Hustle Into A Career

Hiring A Transaction Coordinator

Training The Transaction Coordinator

Deconstructing Your Way To Success

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