Transcript:

Steven Jack Butala:
I’m Steven Jack Butala.

Jill K DeWit:
And Jill DeWit. And this is the Land Academy Show.

Steven Jack Butala:
This is episode 1,996. Today we are talking about why tech layoffs create the best land investors. And a little bit later in the show three ways to take advantage of the huge amount of property that’ll soon be for sale. How do we know this? This is our third time, our third cycle, Jill.

Jill K DeWit:
True. But I’m not as old as you. How is that possible? Are you sure? There’s parts of me that I’m like, look at me. I have wrinkles. I’ve experienced…

Steven Jack Butala:
Stop.

Jill K DeWit:
All right, well.

Steven Jack Butala:
Jill keeps getting skinnier and prettier, and that’s the truth.

Jill K DeWit:
Oh, thank you.

Steven Jack Butala:
I’m not trying to win anything here.

Jill K DeWit:
Do you know what you won’t see?

Steven Jack Butala:
I keep getting less intelligent and wider.

Jill K DeWit:
Stop it. If I have my way and I do it right, you’ll never see my gray hair. Now, you on the other hand, we’re not going to go there. Could you imagine if I Just For Men’d you and you just showed up like… I wonder if there’s a one-day washout? That would be kind of funny.

Steven Jack Butala:
What’s a one-day washout?

Jill K DeWit:
I don’t know. We could try it.

Steven Jack Butala:
What is that?

Jill K DeWit:
I wonder if they have a… I bet they do. I bet there’s a version of that. They have stuff for gals. I’m sure I could do it with you where I just put it in, and it only lasts a day until you wash it.

Steven Jack Butala:
And then I don’t leave the house because I’m a freak?

Jill K DeWit:
It would just scare everybody. Like, who is that guy? Like you just saw some late-night TV guy. He was on a commercial. I’m not going to name names. I don’t want to throw him under the bus, but I kind of did. But he did an insurance commercial, and we’re like, “Whoa, colored his hair.”

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s what I was just going to say. I mean, we’ve all seen old guys walking around that have 32-year-old looking hair, and it’s so obvious.

Jill K DeWit:
See, I’ve been coloring mine for decades.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, but women, you can’t tell.

Jill K DeWit:
Kind of like the recession we’re coming into. You won’t feel it. Stick with us. If you stick with us, my hair color won’t change, and I’ll make sure you keep making money. How’s that?

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s actually pretty true.

Jill K DeWit:
Thank you.

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 the two land-related topics by popular request. If you want a sneak peek of our Discord forum, go to landacademy.com. It’s free.

Jill K DeWit:
All right, so here’s our question. Julie wrote, “You can also try…” I guess this is a part of a thread talking about AI stuff. So Julie piped in, in this thread, and her comments were, “Hey, go ahead and try the reworked AI service. Just found out about it at a conference. They scrub on lists, and they give it a score based on the likelihood for a response rate and acceptance rate.”

Steven Jack Butala:
So hold on a second.

Jill K DeWit:
Huh? Is this what I think it is?

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, so somebody created an application where you upload a list. In our case it would be, I’ve done all my stuff in DataTree, and I got a mailing list ready to go. And I’m going to upload it into this unknown area on the internet.

Jill K DeWit:
Share it with them.

Steven Jack Butala:
For whatever application they wrote, they’re going to judge the likelihood… They’re going to give it a score, the likelihood of a response rate that your seller’s going to give.

Jill K DeWit:
That’s hilarious.

Steven Jack Butala:
So go ahead.

Jill K DeWit:
It’s $150 for 3,500 lines. Okay, that’s flipping expensive.

Steven Jack Butala:
Who cares?

Jill K DeWit:
I know.

Steven Jack Butala:
If it’s accurate, I’m all-

Jill K DeWit:
That’s your phone service.

Steven Jack Butala:
If it’s accurate, I’m all for it. It’s not accurate. Go ahead.

Jill K DeWit:
“I just did it, and we’re sending our first mailer out.”

Steven Jack Butala:
This, Julie, scares me like I can’t describe to you.

Jill K DeWit:
“Contact them and ask more about it if you’re interested. But yes, my husband used to do only out-of-state mailings, but we’ve had plenty over the years who live in the States in the same county.” Same here, Julie. I’ve had that too. And even around the corner from the lot. Same here. Anyway, “LOL. Now I’ve been filtering out instead just people who live within a 30 to 50 mile radius.”

Steven Jack Butala:
Okay. I’m not picking on you.

Jill K DeWit:
I’ve got people that live in the lot next door.

Steven Jack Butala:
I’m not picking on you. I’m really not. But this is very flawed logic, not on your part, but on the part of these developers. And that just goes to say, or it goes to show you… And this is just the beginning. It started with Priced a few years ago. The logic that goes into these applications all under the name of trying to make our lives easier is flawed.
It just says, “We had a great luck sending out out-of-state mailings, and then over the years we’ve got people that are close to the lot where we’ve done deals too.” So why, what’s behind this acceptance rate ideology? I think we’re all in this world that we live in right now, way too quick to say, “Oh, there’s an app for that.” There’s an app for telling me whether or not the person’s going to respond to my mailer. I’m telling you, if you send out 10,000 letters and you price it right, and you do your homework, just like we teach about where to send the mail, read the data, read. This is not a data-driven decision. This isn’t an easy button.

Jill K DeWit:
You know what? I feel like they’re preying on people. I could make this in a heartbeat. This is just a roll of the dice. I could make one. People would buy it all day long for us because I could say, “Look, I have the experience. I can tell you what chances they’re going to answer the phone.” But you don’t really know that.

Steven Jack Butala:
Here’s why people will respond.

Jill K DeWit:
You can pay $150 for these lines.

Steven Jack Butala:
Let me take all the mystery out of this for everyone.

Jill K DeWit:
I’m just saying, I’m sure there’s exception, exception, exception, exception, exception. “We don’t guarantee our results.” I’m sure that’s on there.

Steven Jack Butala:
Year over year, over decade, over decade. Not just Jill and I, but the members of Land Academy and people in Career Path and our alumni group and we have all agreed on this one point. The vast majority, if not all of the people who responded positively through our mailers the way that we do them are because they’re experiencing some version of a life event. Their spouse died.

Jill K DeWit:
Got laid off.

Steven Jack Butala:
They got laid off. There’s life event scenarios where they need money or they’re just done. It’s the same decision-making process literally as having a garage sale, “Yeah, I just don’t want it anymore.” How an application would know what’s inside, what’s going on in a seller’s head? Sign me up for that app.

Jill K DeWit:
It won’t.

Steven Jack Butala:
But whatever ideology this is using, and it sounds like the ideology is based on proximity to the actual target property, whether they’re close or far or out of state or in state or the property’s vacant or all that. I’ve worked through all of that stuff and it doesn’t work.

Jill K DeWit:
Nobody has more experience than you. Period. And you wouldn’t even do this.

Steven Jack Butala:
No, I wouldn’t.

Jill K DeWit:
Because you can’t guarantee that.

Steven Jack Butala:
Well, first of all, I’d say, “How are you deciding application developer?” And this is a 22-year-old kid out of Palo Alto that probably designed this thing. How do they know? All they did was someone told him out-of-state mailers are more successful than in-state. So he said, “I’m going to make an app for that.” And so you pay $150 to run your lines up and it takes out half of them or 20%, or scores it based on proximity. You can do that in Excel.
So again, Julie, I am not… And thank you for bringing this up and I’m not criticizing you in any way, but this is just the beginning of the applications that like this thing, you will see, and this isn’t AI, by the way. This is database mining.

Jill K DeWit:
I guess the main point today. I want to make it positive please. Don’t pick on anybody.

Steven Jack Butala:
Oh, too late for that.

Jill K DeWit:
Just a little bit. So I’m going to bring it back in. Remember what you have here in our community and with us and this is why we’re here, to save you. And if you think it through and it makes sense, run it by us, like you just did, Julie. So I’m curious, I bet within Land Academy in our Discord area, I’m sure a lot of people said what I’m thinking, which is, “Hold on a moment, think about who you’re missing here and what you could be missing,” which is what’s going to happen. So we talked about this just the other day in Career Path. We just went through pricing.

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s why I put it up here.

Jill K DeWit:
And the whole module was, well, everybody’s like, “What if I zero in on this and I zero in on that? What if I just go by zip code?” I’m like, “Hold on a moment. Keep in mind everybody, my mailer now, your mailer is now not going to reach 20%, 30%. Who knows? Even 20% is too high. If you scrub out some people that could be good sellers, gosh, you’re just missing out. And there’s some opportunity right there.”

Steven Jack Butala:
I am all for new technology. Geez. I remember when I started sending out direct mail in the late ’90s, early 2000s, everybody told me I was nuts. It was a waste of time and money. And that was a new technology, believe it or not back then. So I’m all for new technology and making your lives easier, as long as it’s accurate.

Jill K DeWit:
Let’s all think it through.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, and we’re thinking it through.

Jill K DeWit:
That’s it. Just all think it through just to make sure what are they using, what are they doing, what’s behind there? Well, even the other day too, we were having a lot of discussions on, I think it was office hours talk. Oh, it was the Advance Group. We all got to go to the Advance Group and we were talking about a lot of these easy buttons and things to do, and new technology, and a lot of us ruled it all out. At the end of the day… I had another thought and I lost it, but I’ll come back to it.

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s okay.

Jill K DeWit:
Anyway.

Steven Jack Butala:
We’re pretty famous for saying here at Land Academy, “Make your mailer bigger, not smaller.” The numbers work. If you send out ten, twenty, thirty-thousand mailers and you make $10,000 or $15,000 on a deal, your ROI is significant. And so I’m not sure why you would pay to actually make your mailers smaller?

Jill K DeWit:
Thank you.

Steven Jack Butala:
Thanks for this topic. Why tech layoffs create some of the best land investors that Jill and I have seen?

Jill K DeWit:
Oh, I just thought of what I was going to say. We were discussing a program that all it is taking DataTree, which we all have access to the real direct DataTree, but it’s taking DataTree data and scrubbing out stuff and serving it up. I’m like, why would you do that? And just a different format? I’m like, why would you do that? Just go to the source. So anyway, that was my thing.
Okay, so today’s topic, I love this one. I hate it when I hear it. I feel so bad. YouTube music in one day, shut down. I mean they laid off everybody. Google, was it 40,000? How many people from… Amazon’s getting ready to do some layoffs. I mean every day you’re hearing about layoffs and it’s not like escrow agents. It’s like big tech stuff, mass laying off people. And I’m like, my first thing is I feel bad. My second thing is I can help you. I can teach you how to put food on the table. That’s what we do.

Steven Jack Butala:
Well, here’s the thing, there’s a lot of layoffs not just in the tech industry, and this is not going to go away. This is probably the rest of 2024, and all industries. If it hasn’t been hit yet, it will. We founded Land Academy during the tail end of the layoff in the early teens. It was a devastating bank crashing, real estate crashing, negative amortization loan scenario. Much, much worse I believe than anything that’s happening now. And we picked up some of the best members and long-term members that ultimately have come to us and said, “I’ve replaced my salary, my family’s happy, and everything’s going great.” So I’m not trying to sell anything here and I am certainly not trying to… Geez, we feel for you. I empathize. We have both been laid off. So I understand what that is.

Jill K DeWit:
Have you?

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, in the way, way distant past.

Jill K DeWit:
I haven’t been laid off. Except when you laid me off. You laid me off now and then, that’s the only time.

Steven Jack Butala:
I’m trying to not make light of this. This is the one time we’re not supposed to laugh right now.

Jill K DeWit:
I know. I’m like, speak for yourself buddy. Well, I almost did, but then they put me in a different position. So, sorry.

Steven Jack Butala:
It doesn’t matter. It’s not about us.

Jill K DeWit:
Okay. That’s what I’m saying.

Steven Jack Butala:
It’s about you. And this is very, very unfortunate, but I’m saying it can be a new beginning of something. And we have many, many long-term, very successful and extremely intelligent members that have joined us, written their own applications to make their lives easier based off of what we teach, and they buy and sell property. And it’s also, it’s kind of a double-edged, well, a triple-edged scenario because at the time that you’re experiencing this extremely unfortunate situation, there are a lot of sellers out there that are liquidating stuff that they don’t use, namely land or whatever. So you can get some amazing bargains and build up a pretty good strong land portfolio pretty quickly.

Jill K DeWit:
I have two things.

Steven Jack Butala:
Sure.

Jill K DeWit:
Okay. One is back to the topic. I want to bring some energy up here right now too. So tech people, one of the things I love about this is really as a topic, is you guys get it. You know, it’s interesting. There’s all kinds of people that come to Land Academy and it’s changed over the years. The women and the couples now are way more prevalent than they were in the beginning. But we’ve always had a brainy group and I think it’s because, I know it is because of the way you see this and teach this and run the numbers and data. This sings to people who are tech pros and minded. So I love it. I mean those of you in the tech world that have been analysts and all kinds of positions like that, or accounting, numbers focused, this is drinking water for you.
Now other people, you can still do it. It’s harder. There’s more of a struggle for people that come to this from other walks of life, but they could figure it out. But I just wanted to just hit it home that this is a perfect fit for you if you understand real estate a little bit. If you understand there’s money to be made in real estate and you’re coming from a tech position, this is going to be child’s play for you, like taking candy from babies. I’m not kidding.
The other thing I wanted to talk about today along these lines, I thought was really interesting. And I noticed this, in a recent group of new members, people have come to Land Academy and their goals and their needs are much lower than they used to be. People are like, “I want to make $2 million this year.” I have a lot of people who are like, “I just want to make $500,000. I just want to make $100,000.”

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, I noticed that too.

Jill K DeWit:
I’m like, well shucks. It’s really easy to screw it all up and make $100,000.
Samantha did a, one of our Land Academy ambassadors, did a sweet presentation about the economy and the way we do deals. Man, if you set out to do one deal a month and make $20 grand, if that’s your goal, you screw it all up and you only do five deals this year, but you make $20 grand, that’s $100,000. Those are for a lot of the group low numbers around our group. So I just want to… I don’t know, do you want to talk about that? I just thought that was so interesting.

Steven Jack Butala:
I mean just the pure math should be real easy. To replace a salary or a good salary is not that hard. Jill and I are… The people in Career Path are used to making a lot more money than that in general. So you’re absolutely right. But the other thing is that the lifestyle, if you’re a tech person, you wake up and…

Jill K DeWit:
Ding, ding.

Steven Jack Butala:
Make a cup of coffee and get dressed, maybe not, and go to work. You’ve got a place already set up. Well, that’s what buying and selling land is.

Jill K DeWit:
Yep.

Steven Jack Butala:
By the way, you don’t have to wait until you’re laid off. If you’re a tech person, you have 90% of the smarts already is in your soul or you wouldn’t have chosen this career and succeeded in it in any capacity. You already know all the tech piece. There’s some people who have historically struggled with the tech piece that’s involved in how we make data-driven decisions, you already do all that, probably better than us.

Jill K DeWit:
You know what I found too is interesting about tech people? It’s like they’re never satisfied. No one’s going to say, “Well, I’ve learned Excel. I’ve learned the 2020 version of Excel and I’ve Windows 9?

Steven Jack Butala:
Somebody’s got Windows 9?

Jill K DeWit:
I don’t know, you know what I mean.

Steven Jack Butala:
You have a pick 9.

Jill K DeWit:
I don’t know. I’m just thinking about… You know, like…

Steven Jack Butala:
I’m an expert at Windows 9.

Jill K DeWit:
You get an update on your phone. No, I don’t need it. I’m not going to do it. So what’s funny about tech people is, my point is they’re always… They are wired. I don’t know if it’s nature or nurture, but they’re wired to get to the next program, get to the newest version and create the newest version and all that. So I think when you said, “Hey, don’t wait till you get laid off to do this.” I’m thinking it probably sings to tech people anyway because they’re always bored and looking for something else. I know you are.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah. Technology never ends. Actually, that’s my end little talk at the end of this episode. Technology will never stop. There’s some stuff that stops. If you go to a convenience store, that’s about it. Or you can get another one.

Jill K DeWit:
Well, if you have a convenience store in Windows 9.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah,

Jill K DeWit:
And Lotus 1-2-3, you’re still using that.

Steven Jack Butala:
No. Let’s get back to Windows 9 because you’re never going to live this down.

Jill K DeWit:
I know.

Steven Jack Butala:
If you’re running Windows 9 in your convenience store, you’re done.

Jill K DeWit:
Maybe they don’t even have that. Maybe they have a journal. Oh my goodness.

Steven Jack Butala:
Let’s take a look at one of our favorite land acquisitions from our weekly Thursday member webinar and stop this madness.
Hey, if you don’t know by now, Jill and I have our own full-blown commercial printing company to help you get mailers out in the mail successfully. We keep adding products. The latest product that we’ve added is concierge data, so you don’t have to do a mailer at all. You can just go in, place your order, and at the end of it we’ll provide all the data back to you so you can check it all. And make sure that it’s your own. Make sure it’s priced right, and it fits with your criteria. It’s not an easy button, but they do take all the heavy lifting out of it.

Jill K DeWit:
I was going to say too, don’t forget, March 26th. Tuesday, March 26th in the afternoon, check out our website, check out offers to owners and check out Land Academy or check your email if you’re in our group here, you’ll know the time. We’re going to do a behind-the-scenes sneak peek with concierge data.

Steven Jack Butala:
Oh good.

Jill K DeWit:
Yep, it’s awesome. So check it out.

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s great.

Jill K DeWit:
Go to landacademy.com and you’ll find out where you can sign up to attend that. It’s going to be a Zoom webinar.

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

Jill K DeWit:
Chris wrote, “On wholesaling/dual close, what drives me crazy is that they are all taught they can buy houses/land, whatever, even commercial properties by tying it up with a purchase agreement, without a clear exit strategy or money needed to close. Then they all run around on Facebook groups trying to sell the contract or double close, and these deals sometimes get daisy-chained with three or four investors on the same deal. And when double closing, they put the property under contract for up to six months.”
“They promise the seller the price they want and then if they don’t find a buyer, they have a way out of the agreement so the buyer is screwed.” Or the seller is screwed, I should say, the seller is screwed. “Buying in cash with a funder or a lender has an actual value proposition. If you need cash now, we can buy the property at a lower price and close quicker than if you listed it. If you don’t see any value proposition for double closing, let me tie your property up for six months so I can possibly make more money, is the only value I see one-sided.”

Steven Jack Butala:
This is a really important point, and this has been a debate that’s been going on for a lot of years between people like us who actually buy assets and resell them, control the deal and provide some value in my opinion. Versus people who wholesale/dual close, who just do it, exactly what Chris just said. They tie the property up, try to flip it before they… It’s a no-lose situation for them in most cases. Well, Jack, if it’s a no-lose situation, why wouldn’t everybody do it? For the exact reasons that Chris is saying here, it’s a one-sided value proposition. One person can potentially win. In the end this is doing way more damage in the industry than good.
If you see a good deal, buy it. Or call somebody in our group to fund it and just do the right thing, buy it and then resell it.

Jill K DeWit:
I’m going to go on record setting too, what’s to keep the seller from changing their mind? What if you’re doing everything right? You’re doing this, you have it under contract, you’re doing your best to be a good person. You just don’t have the dough. But guess what? The seller changes their mind. They go dark on you. You find a buyer, you’re all locked up. You’re ready to go and then good luck getting them on the phone. What are you going to do? Sue them? No, let’s be realistic. It’s going to be a waste of time and money. So that’s the part that bothers me too. I don’t control the deal. That’s your saying, and I love it.

Steven Jack Butala:
Just the whole notion of brokering, a successful broker if you’ve ever dealt with one on anything, let’s say for fun, it’s a commercial real estate broker and an art broker. Separate people in separate situations. So the broker has some knowledge or has some… They’re bringing some value to the table and so the broker calls me and says, “I know that you buy these types of paintings and I have one. I’m not going to tell you exactly who the seller is, that I don’t think you know about.” Now he’s immediately bringing some serious value to the table. I’m intrigued.
There’s no value in tying up a transaction and then splattering it all over the place to see what’s going to happen. Just to have somebody else, just to see who the next sucker is. That’s what this is. If somebody’s got a pocket office or let’s say an apartment building, they know I have six apartment buildings in the area and they call and say, “This isn’t on the market, but I’m bringing some value to you. I think the other six buildings that you own, this one’s just like it. So I’m happy to put this deal together for a fee.”
There’s huge value in that for both parties, the seller and the buyer. Or if we call or send a mailer to somebody, “Hey, we’d like to buy your property, and it seems like it might be the right time for you.” Oh my gosh, yes, there’s value. Everybody wins there. So I don’t see, this can’t go on. Legislation’s going to close in on this. That’s how I see it, see it kind of ending.

Jill K DeWit:
True. Well, there’s so many that we could go on and on and on about this. I don’t think we need to, but thanks.

Steven Jack Butala:
Today’s second topic is three ways to take advantage of the huge amount of property that’ll soon be available for sale.

Jill K DeWit:
Well, I’m going to have to say this again. How do you know that, Jack?

Steven Jack Butala:
This is our third time going through a recession. All kidding aside, I didn’t believe it the second one we went through, just it was a mirror image only much higher in severity than the first time. And I believe this will be less severe. But I will tell you that we’re already tracking the data. The data doesn’t lie about how many properties are getting listed. There’s way more properties getting listed than there were even just last year and certainly way more over the last several years like before COVID.
More properties are being listed and staying on the market longer, and so all the statistics and the data add up to more properties for sale. What does that mean to you? Well, it means an amazing number of opportunity. Well, let’s talk about the three ways to take advantage of that. Let’s just all buy into for a second that it’s happening. It is happening and there will be more and more and more inventory throughout the year, probably into 2025. When there’s more property on the market, it becomes what everybody now refers to as a buyer’s market. There’s more property, prices are less.

Jill K DeWit:
That’s number one of your three?

Steven Jack Butala:
Well, yes. So in a buyer’s market, what do you do? Number two, it yields to cheaper prices and access to capital and things like that.

Jill K DeWit:
I’ll be the visual. You’re the audio, I’m the visual.

Steven Jack Butala:
And then number three, which I believe is the most important is, this is a symptom and the underlying cause of all this is the need for additional capital for some reason. That’s what’s driving a seller’s decision even in the greatest market ever. It drives the seller’s decision. So we’re watching a tertiary debt or credit card debt go up. That’s an indication that what’s the first thing to go when people start having financial life events? Stuff they’re not using. It could be land. It could be a second house. It could be a car that they…

Jill K DeWit:
People start looking around. I know people that do this, they literally start looking around their house to see what they could sell. I’m not kidding. Wow. I was just thinking, there’s going to be some good deals. I mean, I’m not being funny. I’m being serious here like on OfferUp and those things too. Someone’s going to be dumping those excess, fill in the blank just to get some money just to get some food and stuff. That’s a real thing. It’s so interesting.
But on the bigger scale, like you said, there’s going to be people that, “Hey, this property, we’ve never built on it. We’ve owned it for 20 years. We inherited it.” Whatever it is, it’s time to get that and to turn it into cash.

Steven Jack Butala:
If you’re a successful land flipper like us, or if you’re a successful house flipper, let’s say, not a house renovator, but a house flipper, you need to start just… I want to plant the seed in your head. Start to look into expanding your existing business because it’s only going to get better, into other things. Jill and I have had this exact conversation in the last week, so we’re great at buying and selling land. We bought sold a lot of houses, but we really need to step that up because the amount of, the number of deals for houses are going to become more abundant.
And then finally, and I can’t believe that we’re actually having this serious conversation is maybe we should start buying some long-term rentals. If the prices get to be anywhere close to the way that they were 10 or 15 years ago, there’s massive advantages. If we were buying and flipping houses for buy for 20, sell for 60, those houses are worth $300,000 now. And so that’s a great… And I’m not a big fan of renting, but I’ll tell you, for those margins I can put up with it.

Jill K DeWit:
Exactly.

Steven Jack Butala:
So, expand your product type is my point.

Jill K DeWit:
But wait a minute, Jack, it sounds like you’re eating your words again. Well, listen folks, things change. I had someone call me out.

Steven Jack Butala:
I am absolutely eating my words.

Jill K DeWit:
Someone called me out the other day about, “What the heck, I actually been… Like, I’m one of the two people that started listening to you guys back in 2015.” I’m like, oh, oh. They’re like, “You hated agents and now that’s all you use.” I’m like, “Yep. And I’m sure there’s more things coming that I’m like…” You know what? If you can’t roll with the punches and change, you’re not going to survive. And I’ve gotten very comfortable eating my own words. That’s okay, stuff happens.
So you know what? Now let’s take a moment and take a look at another land acquisition from our weekly Thursday member closed webinar.

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

Jill K DeWit:
Yes, I wrote it down. It kind of goes with a little blog in an email that I had to go out a couple of weeks ago, just kind of reminding everyone. 2024, one of my themes for 2024 is, “You got this.” And in the blog and in the email I took it to, “We got this.” So what does it mean? We’re in this together. Our community is so, two parts of this. Our community is so smart. If you don’t lean on them, you’re nuts. And if you don’t see them as a resource, you’re crazy.
Lean on our community. Lean on us. There’s just so much knowledge there. Even now and then I have to remind people, “Why aren’t you going to Discord and using the search function? There’s probably someone that’s dealt with this situation.” You don’t have to even wait until Thursday. You have us every Thursday, but you don’t have to wait for that. Go in there and if you don’t see it, pop in the question, wait 10 minutes, someone’s going to probably have some experience and knowledge or ideas to help you solve whatever the question is, or get out of any jam that you might be facing.
I’m like, I just want to remind everybody we’re in this together. The possibilities are really endless. And then my other little part was, every deal has potential. I want to make sure that everyone knows that every single phone call that you have coming to you, there’s a potential deal there. And I want you to really take them seriously. Especially now with what’s coming up. We’re going to have some more people from years ago calling you back. And what if they’re calling you on a mailer that you don’t even do? It’s too small. You don’t buy for 3,000, sell for 9,000 anymore. You’ve way moved on. But you know what? Maybe they have something else. So, take those calls. Ask them those questions and just give it a moment and see what’s possible.

Steven Jack Butala:
This leads directly into my information piece.

Jill K DeWit:
Well good. All right, Jack, what’s your part please?

Steven Jack Butala:
I was in a pretty long staff meeting. There’s no such thing as a short staff meeting, but I was in a staff meeting, let’s call it.

Jill K DeWit:
For you, wait, wait, wait. Aren’t all staff meetings too long for you? Five minutes, too long.

Steven Jack Butala:
We’re all going around the room telling everybody, and it’s good. It’s very healthy to know, it was all company scenarios. So we have, Jill and I have three major lines of business. First and foremost, we have our real estate company where we buy and sell land. We have our commercial printing company where we do people’s mailers, and they actually do our mailers, our real estate company’s mailers. And then finally we have Land Academy. And as everybody was going around the room and saying what’s going on in their lives, I noticed that they were either talking about people or they were talking about processes.
Like the printing people were saying, our printing people don’t bring up processes anymore. They never have because they’re not… We’ve got it licked. Because it’s our process that Jill and I have perfected for a really long time to do a mailer. And so they spend a lot of time talking about people. “Wow, this person submitted this mailer. They really have their act together. We should contact them and offer them this promotional thing because they’re easy to work with and they’re real consistently with the mail,” and on and on and on. “This person on the other hand, nope, big huge problem. Had to talk with them for two hours. Not sure that they’re going to actually ever send out a successful mailer. The real estate people, no process issues there at all.”

Jill K DeWit:
True. The deals are going through the system?

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah. The deals that we do, the process was long-established before I met Jill. She’s only just improved on it since she got involved. Land Academy, all people. It’s none of the processes. And I’m a process person. I’m constantly looking around to try to find out how I can do a better mailer, how I can make a product that we deliver in the mailing company easier for everyone to follow. And so you have to decide if you’re a people or a process person and embrace it. Jill just talked all about people in her inspiration, and actually glomming on that moment when they contact you and say they want to sell their property. Just positive.

Jill K DeWit:
But wait, I turned it into a process like the answers in Discord. Does that count? Do I get points for that? But there’s a process and a way to get your question answered. But I hear you.

Steven Jack Butala:
Embrace either one.

Jill K DeWit:
Yin and yang. That’s why we’re good together.

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s what I mean.

Jill K DeWit:
That’s it.

Steven Jack Butala:
Every successful anything.

Jill K DeWit:
I’m going to answer the phone and get deals. And if you had it your way, it would be all automated. And that’s nothing wrong with that.

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s right.

Jill K DeWit:
And that’s just different.

Steven Jack Butala:
And I would fail.

Jill K DeWit:
You’re doing just fine.
Hey, don’t forget, you can reach us for questions and help simply by sending a note to my team via support@landacademy.com.

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

Jill K DeWit:
We are Jack and Jill.

Steven Jack Butala:
Information…

Jill K DeWit:
And inspiration…

Steven Jack Butala:
To buy undervalued property.