Transcript:

Steven Jack Butala:
I am Steven Jack Butala.

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

Steven Jack Butala:
Today we are talking about Land Academy’s really unique position to get members’ deals funded. It separates us from everybody else out there, in my opinion. And our advice a little bit later in the episode on how to not get sucked into some of the financial tricks out there that we’re all subject to, car loans come to mind, and we’ll talk a little bit how that bleeds into or can bleed into-

Jill K DeWit:
Real estate.

Steven Jack Butala:
… our land businesses. Yeah.

Jill K DeWit:
That’s true. Isn’t that amazing? I mean seriously. Remember, I was just thinking about that. I remember buying a car back in the day, only brand new, because it was 0.9% financing and I’m like, “Well gee, duh.” I’m sure that was all baked in somewhere, probably in the sticker price, but I’m like, all I heard was 0.9% financing. How can I not buy this car? How can I not do that? So, yeah, did it. But the good news is I’m not going to tell you what kind of car it was.

Steven Jack Butala:
Thank you.

Jill K DeWit:
Exactly.

Steven Jack Butala:
Because I’m having a good day.

Jill K DeWit:
Exactly. Let’s just say there were little kids involved and so, anyway, and I did drive that car all the way through the whole thing and then for several years after it, so I did pay it off and then drive around a free vehicle for a while, which was nice. Not free, but paid for vehicle for a while. That was really good. That’s always in my thing now. You know what? I can’t do car payments. I would just like… I can’t take it.

Steven Jack Butala:
Neither can I.

Jill K DeWit:
And that’s a financial thing. “Oh, just come on. Look at the payments.” Nope, not doing it.

Steven Jack Butala:
Well, we’re going to cover all that. Okay, here’s a spoiler alert. There’s a few components to all of this, only one of which you have control over, and we’ll talk about that later.

Jill K DeWit:
I can’t wait to hear.

Steven Jack Butala:
Each week on the show, we answer questions from our Land Academy member Discord forum, we review land acquisitions from our weekly member webinars, and we take a deep dive into two land related topics by popular request.

Jill K DeWit:
And by the way, if you want some help, you want to learn more about us, you want to talk to somebody, easy, reach out to my team via support@landacademy.com.
All right. So here’s the question. Paul wrote, new member in the corrupt state of Illinois. I love this. My wife and I are retired engineers. I speak Excel fluently, so I’m definitely the data guy. I am also a member under another mentor, which I have learned a lot, but I realize he’s only done a few deals and Jack and Jill are crushing it real time, so I jumped in on this opportunity. Yay. One difference in training is the other program has us sending neutral letters saying, “If you want to sell your land, please call.” I got less than 10 responses from 1,500 letters. Jack and Jill have us send an offer in the initial letter, which seems much better to me, although I haven’t mailed it yet. So what response rates are you all seeing?

Steven Jack Butala:
Boy, I’ll tell you what, we’ve been doing this for a while, 10 years next year. I can tell you-

Jill K DeWit:
As Land Academy.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, we’ve done 35 years really, but 10 years next year. Well, it’s 30 years and 10 years. Geez. And I can tell you guys are all set up for this. If you’ve got technical backgrounds, you’re retired, so you’ve got time, you’ve got a bunch of experience behind you, and I think that you made the right choice, based on your background, to join Land Academy. So as far as getting 10 responses from 1,500 letters, we talk about this all the time, mailer yield’s not something that Jill and I put a lot of faith in. Instead, and you guys will appreciate this because you’re math driven or STEM driven, look at your return on investment. If you’re going to send out 20,000 letters, it should cost you about 10 grand-ish, maybe a little more, to buy property that, let’s say you’re targeting buy 30 and sell for 60, your return on investment on that is amazing.
If you then regurgitate or reuse that money throughout the year and have, let’s call it six cycles, I think you’ll end up having a lot more than that, but turning your cash every two months is very realistic if you’re buying and selling property at the right prices and the right dirt. The return on investment for that initial $10,000 is staggering. $5,000 or $10,000, trust me, once you turn it a few times, you will forget about it. You won’t calculate it. Neutral letters, I can’t say enough bad stuff.

Jill K DeWit:
That’s the bad, that’s the main point here-

Steven Jack Butala:
Jill and I own a commercial printing company called Offers to Owners. If I was in it just to make a ton of money in printing, I would tell you send out all kinds of neutral letters. That doesn’t work. What you’re going to do is get a tremendous amount of work for yourself.

Jill K DeWit:
You know what’s funny about that? I would think more people would’ve called than that.

Steven Jack Butala:
Me too.

Jill K DeWit:
That’s what’s really interesting. It seems like when you do a neutral letter for a house, everybody calls you. That’s what I’ve heard. They’re like, “Great. Everybody wants to sell to me at retail.” Sure. They all call it the make me move number.

Steven Jack Butala:
Whoever this new group is probably not instructing on where to send mail either.

Jill K DeWit:
They may not know. They haven’t done that many deals.

Steven Jack Butala:
They’re not running the red/green/yellow test. So, that has a lot to do, a massive amount to do with your response rate. If you’ve sent 1,500 letters to a small county in Alaska, 10 responses is about right.

Jill K DeWit:
You know what’s interesting about this? It’s not just that. I like what Paul said, that we’re crushing it in real time. It’s not just that we’re investors first and we’re still doing deals right here with you, but like Jack just said, 30 years of experience and the number of deals that we’ve done, oh boy. Try to stump me. I want to be stumped. You know what? I’m going to give away something great when somebody finally stumps me someday.

Steven Jack Butala:
Remember Stump the Chumps on Car Talk?

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah.

Steven Jack Butala:
We encourage you to stump the chumps.

Jill K DeWit:
Stump the chumps.

Steven Jack Butala:
We are stumpable, trust me.

Jill K DeWit:
That’s right.

Steven Jack Butala:
It’s possible.

Jill K DeWit:
Let’s try. We’re going to play that game on Thursday on our member call, new episode here.

Steven Jack Butala:
Oh my gosh.

Jill K DeWit:
New segment, Stump the Chumps. Oh no.

Steven Jack Butala:
I’m writing this down.

Jill K DeWit:
I can’t believe that we’re old enough that we know that. I don’t think that show, because the guy died. One guy died.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, one of them did, yeah.

Jill K DeWit:
So, that’s sad.

Steven Jack Butala:
Today’s first topic, Land Academy’s unique position to get members’ deals funded. I think this really sets us apart from what’s going on in internet land out there about buying and selling land successfully in a land business. We have what I would describe as almost limitless capital for real estate deals.

Jill K DeWit:
Dream it up.

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s coming from us, coming from all kinds of other people within our group. There are plenty-

Jill K DeWit:
In the group.

Steven Jack Butala:
… of retired people in our group that their job in life is to get up in the morning and try to place equity in your land deals. So, fire away from a mail standpoint, come up with as many deals as you can that are good and you’re going to get them funded.

Jill K DeWit:
Exactly. Trying to think what’s unique about this. I think that what’s unique about our group is how smart we are. We have, Paul, you’re a perfect example. We have attracted and retained the right amount of brainy, affluent people in our group. The funders that are in here that are loaded are here because this group is smart. They’re here because they know how you find deals. They’re here because they know there’s no secret county list or a dart board. They’re here because they know how to be strategic. They’re here because you know how to run the red/yellow/green test and look at days on market, look at areas, and make sure you’re picking really, really solid areas to send mail and you’re coming up with amazing deals at unbelievable prices. And they have no trouble, I watch it all the time in Discord, no trouble funding people’s deals.
You guys, there’s a lot of you in our group that I know, this guy’s been funding my deals for two years now. I’m good. We have a great arrangement. We came along, he found me. Great. And you’re one of a couple that they’re probably funding deals for, for the last two years. So it’s awesome. I think it’s a secure place. It’s a safe place. They know how educated you are.

Steven Jack Butala:
I mean here’s what makes us unique, like you said, we’ve been doing this for 10 years-

Jill K DeWit:
As Land Academy.

Steven Jack Butala:
Jill’s got a corporate, lifelong, decades-long corporate sales experience. I have public accounting experience. And we attract people just by default that have that type of experience just from years and years. Paul and his wife are a great example. They have years, decades, they’re retired in a STEM profession as engineers, and so they’re really set up from a time and a money standpoint I’m sure, and an experience standpoint. So Land Academy is packed full of people like that. We’re not new at this and neither are our members. Our members might be new, they’re not new at life, but they might be new at buying and selling land and that’s what we want.

Jill K DeWit:
It’s funny, I watch a shift sometimes, it’s very easy to come into land account and be all excited and start getting all these deals and doing all this great stuff. And then you go, “All right, now I’ve built up this bank balance, I’m going to do my own deals and I’m going to fund somebody else’s deals so I can do that many more. I’m got my stuff going on. I’m just the bank for this person over here.” And then I watch people go, “Huh, I don’t even have to work that hard. I’ll just be the bank. I’ll sit back and be the bank for people and really take it in.” And I know people that spend, I mean I know people in other groups that spend like a thousand dollars, I’m not kidding, a month. You’ve heard about these, you guys know who these are. There are groups out there, you can spend a thousand dollars a month just to get exposed to people that have deals like ours and as a funder percentage.

Steven Jack Butala:
Listen, we’re not hard money lenders either. No one in our… We are equity partners and so hard money lending is a nice way of saying, “We’re going to abuse you.” It’s abusive, the rates that they charge and how it’s structured and upfront points and all kinds of stuff.

Jill K DeWit:
Well, you’re the-

Steven Jack Butala:
We’re not in the business of putting-

Jill K DeWit:
… guarantor.

Steven Jack Butala:
We are not in the business of putting Land Academy members out of business. We’re in the business of keeping them in business so they can continue to do deals.

Jill K DeWit:
True.

Steven Jack Butala:
Our answer to that is not debt financing in any way. It’s equity financing. So we’re partners. We’re not a lender. And what other people do in the Land Academy group, that’s their business.

Jill K DeWit:
Exactly.

Steven Jack Butala:
But you, as a member, have a choice and hopefully you’re going to get five or six offers on every deal that you look at and you’re going to choose the best person that has your personality and you get along with, and the equity percentages seem favorable.

Jill K DeWit:
Yep.

Steven Jack Butala:
This is a place to do this for life.

Jill K DeWit:
Totally.

Steven Jack Butala:
The landscape of what goes on on the internet, from a buying and selling land perspective, will dramatically be different at the end of 2024. I can guarantee that. And guess who will still be here doing this week after week? Us.

Jill K DeWit:
Totally. And I’m not against, by the way too, you don’t have to be a member to get a deal funded. We really do mean it when I say, no good deal should go to waste. I think that’s what you were saying that I stole from you.

Steven Jack Butala:
It’s really going to help, I’ll tell you, because now we know how you’re educated.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah, I do look at it differently though. That’s the first thing I do when people come to me and like, “I have a great deal, will you fund it?” I’m like, “Okay, are you a member?” No-

Steven Jack Butala:
Let me give you an example.

Jill K DeWit:
Well then how did you find it?

Steven Jack Butala:
Let me give you an example.

Jill K DeWit:
If it’s on the MLS, it’s not going to probably work.

Steven Jack Butala:
Paul, we’re not picking on you, but it’s a good question. That’s the only reason. You sent these neutral letters out, 1,500 of them, you got 10 responses and let’s say you picked one out. You didn’t pick it out, you really negotiated the price with the person. So it’s not that you set the price in the mailer, like we do. You guys came up with a price somehow. Well, that’s going to be Jill’s first question, how’d you guys come up with the price? And let me see. That scares me, that has a brother-in-law tinge to it. We’ve all been at a cocktail party and somebody, “What do you do for a living?” “Oh, we buy and sell land.” “Oh, my brother-in-law’s got a piece of land up in fill in the blank.” And we just stop right there.
Because we didn’t offer the first price, and so it really helps to go through the Land Academy education process. It’s proven over and over and over again. Geez, I can’t imagine how many millions of dollars have been and get made every month because of how we do this.

Jill K DeWit:
Oh, I know. It’s amazing.

Steven Jack Butala:
And neutral letters are not involved.

Jill K DeWit:
Right. You’re right.

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

Jill K DeWit:
Since we’re in a little bit of a pause right now, I have a little note to tell you. I’m looking at the clock on the thing and it’s way off. We haven’t been talking for 55 minutes, so it’s throwing me. I just want to let you know.

Steven Jack Butala:
Okay, thank you. I know exactly what it is.

Jill K DeWit:
Okay. Cool. I didn’t know if we needed to start over or anything or no?

Steven Jack Butala:
No.

Jill K DeWit:
Okay, good.

Steven Jack Butala:
I appreciate it.

Jill K DeWit:
All right. You are very welcome. Okay, so let me get back to, since this is a part Alex is going to cut for us anyway. I know I’m thinking about what I want to share. Okay, I’ll do it whenever you’re ready.

Steven Jack Butala:
Go ahead.

Jill K DeWit:
Oh, I don’t want to start when you’re drinking tea.

Steven Jack Butala:
Go ahead, love.

Jill K DeWit:
All right. It is the end of the year. Do you need a stocking stuffer?

Steven Jack Butala:
No. I’m afraid of what’s next.

Jill K DeWit:
You could either A, put a couple thousand units of mail.

Steven Jack Butala:
In your stocking?

Jill K DeWit:
In a stocking, I don’t know, ready to go on this like, “Hey baby-“

Steven Jack Butala:
Please don’t do that.

Jill K DeWit:
No, I’m just joking. I don’t know. I’m just thinking, what’s a good Land Academy member stocking stuffer? I guess it’s going to be… You know what’s funny about that actually? Land Academy is not a bad gift. We had many members.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, we’ve had that.

Jill K DeWit:
Seriously I could think of one right now who bought it for his wife and used it for him and he just went nuts. He bought it for his wife so she could stay home with the kids and then he ended up needing to do this for a business and then it went to another level.

Steven Jack Butala:
I bought Jill a motorcycle she’s never been on either.

Jill K DeWit:
That’s true. Yeah. As a matter of fact, I forgot about that. That was supposed to be mine. That’s funny. Well, maybe this year you can buy me a snowmobile and I will get to use that.

Steven Jack Butala:
Oh, okay.

Jill K DeWit:
Although you already got me another good gift. We’re really good. So, anyway, check out Land Academy, get our free ebook, just so you know it’s there. You can reach out to my team. You can schedule a call. Ask any questions you want. You could show up on our Thursday member call, one-time invite. Just send my team a note via support@landacademy.com.

Steven Jack Butala:
Let’s take another question posted by one of our members on the Land Academy Discord online community.

Jill K DeWit:
Joe wrote, as I read through our land mailer template, can someone explain this first contingency? It reads, “This offer’s contingent upon the following terms. One, buyer’s confirmation of the legal and physical aspects of the property ownership.” Is this simply just getting a copy of the deed?

Steven Jack Butala:
This was intended. There’s probably three or four contingencies in there, it used to be a lot more, but I scaled it down. This is intended to allow you, the potential buyer, to kill the deal. Buyer’s confirmation of legal and physical aspects. Well, you know what? I got into it, great, you signed the offer and you sent it back at my price. I got into it, it doesn’t have access, and it’s not the property that I expected. So, based on contingency one-

Jill K DeWit:
I can get out of it.

Steven Jack Butala:
I am not going to do the deal. So it’s not really meant to be a contingency to give you something to do during your due diligence period. It’s a way to say, “The aspects of this property ownership do not meet with my approval.” Why? It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter why. I’m not going to explain it, that they don’t meet with my approval.

Jill K DeWit:
Exactly.

Steven Jack Butala:
Now you’re out of the deal.

Jill K DeWit:
And that’s it. Have I really had to play that card? No.

Steven Jack Butala:
Never. Not in the how many times?

Jill K DeWit:
No.

Steven Jack Butala:
Geez. Because getting in and out of these transactions, if you have a willing buyer and a seller, it’s usually very, very easy.

Jill K DeWit:
It’s very easy.

Steven Jack Butala:
And that didn’t happen by accident either. Buying and selling a piece of land is about the easiest real estate deal you could ever do.

Jill K DeWit:
Exactly.

Steven Jack Butala:
Today’s second topic is our advice on how not to get sucked into financial tricks. Let’s deconstruct any type of financial transaction. You got a price, you’ve got an interest rate, you’ve got a term. How many years is it? How many months is it? You’re borrowing money because hopefully, you should only ever really borrow money because you believe that utilizing or using that capital is going to make you more. So, you got a 20-unit apartment building, you buy it for a couple million bucks, you figure out what your interest rate is, and hopefully your debt service coverage or how much money you’re going to make at the end of every month pretty seriously exceeds the amount of money that you’re going to spend.
Well, that’s great, Jack. How does that… Then what’s a car loan? A car loan is not good because now you’re borrowing money for something that’s not going to actually make you any money. So debt is supposed to be used to make you rich, not poor, and that is not what happens in 2023/24. A car loan, and like I said right at the beginning of the episode, you only have certain control over a few of these things. The components are interest rate, term, you don’t have any real control over those two things, and price. You have complete control over that $2 million apartment building and complete control over the deals that you buy in Land Academy, land deals. If the price doesn’t work, geez, if you’ve ever been on a Thursday call with us, how often do we say the deal gets posted? It’s buy for 40, sell for 60, and all of us say, “At $20,000, I would buy this all day long. At 40, I would not do the deal.”
So think about that versus a car loan. Now you’re buying a property for half, half of probably what it’s worth, maybe less, sometimes closer to 20%. Complete control over the price. What’s your interest rate? Nothing. Well wait, Jack, I don’t have any money. Then call us and we’ll partnership the deal with you instead. And so now there’s no interest rate, you’re just using our capital and we’re going to sign off on the deal for free.
Number three, the term, there isn’t one. There’s no term. We’re not borrowing any money anymore. We’re paying cash. This allows you all kinds of longevity and freedom to price the property on the sell side how you want, and the gun is no longer at your head for interest expense to turn the property faster, which ultimately leads to bad decision making because you’re under the interest, “Oh geez, the interest payment’s due again.” None of this happened by example. So, I don’t want to sound like your father-

Jill K DeWit:
You do. Just kidding.

Steven Jack Butala:
… but you do all of these financial tricks, everything, mortgages are packed full of financial tricks, front loaded points. And do you ever wonder how all these mortgage brokers get paid? The bank pays.

Jill K DeWit:
Oh, yeah.

Steven Jack Butala:
How does the bank pay them? By charging you more. The last mortgage document Jill and I signed was a lot of years ago, was an inch thick, I measured it. It was an inch. Did we read it? Not really.

Jill K DeWit:
Nobody does.

Steven Jack Butala:
But I’ll tell you what, it wasn’t in our favor.

Jill K DeWit:
It’s true. You know what this makes you think of? It makes you think of that article I was reading the other day I was telling you about in BiggerPockets about this guy, he has three assets. They’re not selling. He’s like, I think he said, “I was late on payments. I caught them up in October and then by November,” this is all this year, “they reported this all on my personal,” what’s it called?

Steven Jack Butala:
Credit report?

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah. They report him on the credit report.

Steven Jack Butala:
Oh geez, who left that up?

Jill K DeWit:
Not kidding.

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s crazy.

Jill K DeWit:
Poor guy. He’s like, “Dog, I’m trying to get him to take this stuff off. It’s bringing down my credit score even though I caught up the payments because I’m the personal guarantor.” Is that the right?

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, that’s right.

Jill K DeWit:
So he’s like, “What can I do?”

Steven Jack Butala:
It’s personal guarantee.

Jill K DeWit:
And I’m like, poor guy. It’s bigger than just flipping these deals. It’s messing with his credit score and it’s going to do long-term damage because of how these deals were structured.

Steven Jack Butala:
You want to put yourself in any of these situations. You want to put yourself in the seat where you have choices. And a car dealership’s not one of those places. You have no real choice on the price. Great, they might get some money off. You have no choice on interest rate and no choice on the process and all the fees that are involved in all of that. If you’re buying a car out of the classified ads or Facebook marketplace, you have all kinds of choices.

Jill K DeWit:
True.

Steven Jack Butala:
Tons and tons of choices. When you’re buying a piece of land, you have nothing but choices. This was all intended to be this way. When you’re getting a mortgage on a house, you usually don’t have very many choices. You might have some when you’re buying a used house, like most of us do, you have choices about the price within reason, whatever the market will dictate, but not like we do with land. Are you going to go buy a house for 20% of its actual retail value? Probably not. If you do that, please call us because we will bankroll you.

Jill K DeWit:
You know what? I think that’s the whole point today. The whole point is you should not be borrowing money. I think the whole theme for 2024, if I have my way, is don’t borrow money, get an equity partner, then no one ever gets in trouble. And you know what? Our group is packed. I’m telling you right now, our group has more money than they know what to do with. I watch deals get snatched up. And I don’t even know, I haven’t even matched our websites in a while. We have HouseTank and we have LandTank.com where people, you have to be members of course.

Steven Jack Butala:
Land funding.

Jill K DeWit:
So members can use HouseTank and LandTank to fund deals and other people can fund them, but LandFunding.com is for anybody. You can just put a deal up there. And you know what? I’m here to tell you too, if you’re like, “Nobody funds my deals,” that’s because you’re not bringing up good deals.

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s it.

Jill K DeWit:
You present a great deal. You will have people scrambling-

Steven Jack Butala:
Within minutes, it will be funded.

Jill K DeWit:
Scrambling to fund your deals. Heck, it happens on our Thursday calls. I know it’s going on like, “We need money for that?” But definitely within our closed private member Discord group, there’s so many deals there. No one is hurting to get their deals funded. You should never be thinking about this. You should not be worried about a bank. You should not be worried about making payments. That’s-

Steven Jack Butala:
Money should not enter this.

Jill K DeWit:
… what I want to say, make 2024 the deal that you never borrow money. And you know what? You’re going to go, “But Jill, I’m giving away some of the profit when I sell it.” Big flipping deal.

Steven Jack Butala:
You’re also taking all the risk out of it.

Jill K DeWit:
Exactly.

Steven Jack Butala:
All of it.

Jill K DeWit:
You’re not going to have any long-term damage. If anything, however long it takes to sell, that’s you and your partner. You went in agreement with your eyes wide open kind of thing, and it just you two working out your own arrangement. It’s the best thing on the planet.
And if anything, you’re like, “Okay, so what? I used somebody else’s money. I gave up more of the profit for a year until I could save up enough that I don’t have to do that anymore. Now I can buy and sell. I can fund all of my own deals, unless I have some crazy big one where I purposely want to bring in somebody else and split it with them,” like me. Do I even occasionally split deals with somebody? Heck yeah. You know why? Because sometimes it’s just massive, I don’t want to put that much money down, and B, maybe they’re even more of a pro in that area. At some states I’m like, “I’m not that hip on it, but if you want to do it with me, I’m all in because I know you.” And I’ll do that and we’ll split it and it’s going to be great, and then soon you’re going to be the funder.

Steven Jack Butala:
If you are a house rehabber and you’re listening to this, please retain this. To successfully rehab a house, you need six talents. You need to be great at the financial piece of this. You need to be good with the hammer. You need to be an interior decorator. I’m none of these things, by the way, I’m not good with the hammer, I’m not an interior decorator, and I do actually know the finance part. To be successful at buying and selling land, you need one talent; finding great property for the rest of your life that’ll keep food on their table. That’s what this group is for. I’m not selling anything. That’s just the truth. That’s why we created it, to take all this other stuff out of your life so that you just find great deals.

Jill K DeWit:
Exactly.

Steven Jack Butala:
You don’t have to worry about the money. And maybe it takes you a year. Maybe it’s all of 2024 is all you just saying-

Jill K DeWit:
That’s nothing.

Steven Jack Butala:
… “You know what? I’m going to learn this year. This is a learning year for me.”

Jill K DeWit:
That’s nothing.

Steven Jack Butala:
It’s nothing.

Jill K DeWit:
You could in one year have enough money that you could have with your, heck, go to surgeon school. Make that much. I mean-

Steven Jack Butala:
Surgeon school.

Jill K DeWit:
You know what I’m trying to say.

Steven Jack Butala:
The stuff you say.

Jill K DeWit:
I’m trying to think, there’s plenty of other high paying careers out there, but a lot of them require years and degrees-

Steven Jack Butala:
Years, decades.

Jill K DeWit:
Maybe it’s going to be eight or 10 years to get that training and that experience and everything to make half a million dollars a year. You could do it here in one year.

Steven Jack Butala:
Let’s take a look at another one of our land acquisitions from our weekly Thursday member webinar.

Jill K DeWit:
That gets you thinking, huh?

Steven Jack Butala:
Jill, you have something inspirational to share.

Jill K DeWit:
Maybe that’s it. I think that my inspiration is really about smart life decisions. How’s that? You like that? Really think about it.

Steven Jack Butala:
I hope that goes without saying.

Jill K DeWit:
No, no. People don’t do that. I got a couple of kids right now that don’t do that.

Steven Jack Butala:
Just a couple?

Jill K DeWit:
Three. How many do you have? Three.

Steven Jack Butala:
Are your kids making good smart life decisions?

Jill K DeWit:
No.

Steven Jack Butala:
“Oh my God. He’s talking again.” That’s what they would say.

Jill K DeWit:
No, our kids.

Steven Jack Butala:
I know.

Jill K DeWit:
I know.

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s how our kids would talk about us.

Jill K DeWit:
So I was just going to say, think about, I love what you put there, I could have used that one too, but that’s okay.

Steven Jack Butala:
Let’s do it together.

Jill K DeWit:
All right, well let’s just-

Steven Jack Butala:
Let’s do our inspirations together.

Jill K DeWit:
All right, then we’ll roll mine into yours, because this is something we talked about.

Steven Jack Butala:
There is more art to this than science. And the way that I look at science and technology, or really any STEM effort, is you kind of get the basics down. You understand the mechanics, like accounting, you understand the mechanics of accounting or whatever type of engineering you’re in or any of that stuff. And you practice it and practice it. And you got put two years in, two or three years in. So now you understand the mechanics and maybe the politics of whatever’s involved.
Then you start to finesse it. You start to make it your own. Yeah, I like to do these waterfront deals, but not so much the desert deals. I like to do this level of deal, buy for 60, sell for 100, maybe buy for 80, sell for 150 and on and on and on. And it just becomes, there’s an art part to it. And then after a lot of years, after decades, you can really actually say, “I’m extremely confident this deal’s going to work. Land Academy really dramatically decreases the amount of time that it takes to go through these phases of being a good land investor because you’re surrounded by so many people that have already been there, Jill and I included.
So you want to get to the art part first. The art part as fast as you can, but without risk.

Jill K DeWit:
I look at it like, there’s the fact part and then there’s the finesse part is the art part. I kind of think about it. You need to know the basics. You need to know where to send mail. You have to put your head down. There’s going to be times somebody needs to go in a dark room and spend a lot of time on a spreadsheet staring at data, pricing, and doing that part. So I look at it like that. That’s kind of like the science part for me. Then the mail goes out, the science part’s done. Now, here comes the art part, which is answering the phone and creating a deal with that person on the other end of the phone, or who sent in the mailing.

Steven Jack Butala:
And chances are you’re not good at both. That’s what Land Academy is for. So you can find somebody, find a business partner, like we have, who’s better at the other thing.

Jill K DeWit:
Exactly.

Steven Jack Butala:
I like late December. I guess this airs probably-

Jill K DeWit:
On the 13.

Steven Jack Butala:
… mid December, so I think you get to start over on January 1st. I think that’s fantastic.

Jill K DeWit:
This is exciting. I do like the end of the year and I like the beginning of the year, especially when I’m not on a diet.

Steven Jack Butala:
Are you not on a diet right now?

Jill K DeWit:
Not right now.

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s great. That’s why you’re happy.

Jill K DeWit:
2023 was the year of the diet. You know what I’m talking about.

Steven Jack Butala:
Oh, the kids are out of the house, Jill’s happy. Jill can work on herself now.

Jill K DeWit:
Exactly. Thanks. Yep. Hey, join us next Wednesday for another interesting episode where you learn more about how to buy land cheap and sell it for more on the internet, a lot more.

Steven Jack Butala:
We’re Jack and Jill.

Jill K DeWit:
We’re Jack and Jill.

Steven Jack Butala:
Information…

Jill K DeWit:
… and inspiration…

Steven Jack Butala:
… to buy undervalued property.