Transcript:

Steven Jack Butala:
I’m Steven Jack Butala.

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

Steven Jack Butala:
This is episode number 1,998, and today we are talking about how to flip land successfully.

Jill K DeWit:
You know what’s cool? I need to add up the numbers, but we’ve been doing this now going on 10 years. Not just our land business, that’s decades. We’ll get to that later.

Steven Jack Butala:
We’ve been teaching for 10 years.

Jill K DeWit:
But just teaching and sharing our business model now for going on 10 years. We have people who have been in Land Academy with us since the beginning. They’re going on 10 years. So my point is-

Steven Jack Butala:
Totally, I didn’t think about that.

Jill K DeWit:
If anyone is qualified to talk about how to make millionaires, and I don’t like to drop numbers like that, but it’s the fact, and really teach people how to start and grow and make a really successful land flipping business, it’s us.

Steven Jack Butala:
So I have a whole framework about how for this episode, about how to actually flip land successfully, but Jill brings up a good point. I wonder if it’s a good thing with all this experience or a bad thing.

Jill K DeWit:
It’s a great thing.

Steven Jack Butala:
I do too.

Jill K DeWit:
Are you kidding? I was talking to somebody the other day and they even said it to me or they’re like, “Duh, why would I want to learn from someone who’s done 100 deals versus someone who’s done 10,000 deals?” And we’re going on and we have like 17,000 deals and these are our deals. I want to make sure everybody knows it’s not the community deals. I can’t even imagine as a community how many deals we’ve done, because we’ve got some heavy hitters that are just male and flip like crazy. They’re always the quiet ones in the group. You don’t hear about them very often, but they’re there. I know they’re pulling a lot of data. I see the charges go through and it’s really, really cool.

Steven Jack Butala:
When I was young, I was always the smartest in the room professionally when it comes to computers. This is when Apple just started and Windows started to become names and products you could buy that could really enhance your business. And so as you can imagine from the older people that I was doing business with at the time or working for, there was a lot of pushback. They literally thought computers and technology was a fad.

Jill K DeWit:
Oh, gosh.

Steven Jack Butala:
It was going to go away, and there’s no real replacement for personal relationships. And I think half of that’s true. So I do think there is no replacement for personal relationships and there never will be. It’s the reason we still have real estate agents and we still go to buy a car to car dealership, God forbid.

Jill K DeWit:
Right.

Steven Jack Butala:
It’s because people just need to have a face and talk to somebody. So I understand that, and the technology part, that’ll apply too. It certainly applies to everybody. There are over the years since what, 25 years I’ve been doing this, the technology changes are staggering without going into the details.

Jill K DeWit:
Oh, my gosh.

Steven Jack Butala:
And I decided a long time ago to keep up with them, but the basic stuff’s never changed.

Jill K DeWit:
Well, even be ahead of them.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, be ahead of them.

Jill K DeWit:
I’m going to say, “You’re not a, ‘Oh, I’ll catch up with you guys.'” What do you think? No, you find something and tweak it and say this and pull us all with you in a really positive way.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, so my point is you keep up with or stay ahead of the technological changes, and I’ve made a commitment to that a long time ago. But I think that there’s young people, and I love this by the way, who think that people who are older and have a lot of experience in stuff might not be the best place to learn from, because they are not embracing these brand new concepts. The newest one now is AI, which that term is grossly misused. AI is now what I believe is a term that’s used for querying a database. And there is such a real thing of learning intelligence out there. It just doesn’t apply to the internet. And so I think that there’s so many buzzwords that go on with things on the internet now, like, “Oh, well. We’re applying AI to buying and selling land.” You’re never-

Jill K DeWit:
Please define. And if you ask them, explain and then it goes into a black event.

Steven Jack Butala:
Well, I’m just not, you know?

Jill K DeWit:
I don’t know.

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s not going to be a title for us.

Jill K DeWit:
Oh, yeah.

Steven Jack Butala:
It’s just not, because I understand the implication of AI and we can sit here and talk about it for two hours if you want. Probably looking at me or Jill and I, probably don’t look like the people that are capable of talking about that stuff.

Jill K DeWit:
You know what? There’s stuff behind the scenes. I have two points to make, first about the AI thing. There’s stuff behind the scenes though that our team is using that, so we really are using it. It’s not like, “Oh, we’re old school, we’re never going to do that. And I have an IBM electric on my desk.” No. So there’s stuff that we are behind the scenes utilizing this new intelligence and way of doing things. We’d be nuts not to. And the second thing I wanted to say was back to your point when you said in the very beginning of this paragraph, I don’t know what to call that.

Steven Jack Butala:
I call it a rabbit hole.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah. You were the smartest one in the room in these areas always. I may not have been the smartest one in the room in a lot of environments, but I was probably the most talkative.

Steven Jack Butala:
And most energetic.

Jill K DeWit:
Thank you.

Steven Jack Butala:
And none of that’s changed.

Jill K DeWit:
Oh, thank you. None of that’s good or bad. Boy, who’s that person in the corner and what are they talking about?

Steven Jack Butala:
I’m almost never the smartest person in the room any more about anything.

Jill K DeWit:
Oh, please.

Steven Jack Butala:
But I was really early on. So my point is there’s a real serious value to the amount of transactions that Jill and I have done. And that was my lead into our topic, How to Flip Land Successfully. We’re qualified to talk about this topic.

Jill K DeWit:
I’m going to argue the fact that if you are in any room of real estate professionals, you are the smartest one, period. I’m just going to say it.

Steven Jack Butala:
Oh, boy.

Jill K DeWit:
Come on. You’ve been doing it the longest.

Steven Jack Butala:
It’s too much responsibility.

Jill K DeWit:
You invented all this stuff. Look how many people are following in our footsteps and it’s beautiful. You started this thing.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yep.

Jill K DeWit:
Thank you.

Steven Jack Butala:
All right, so what’s the very first step about how to flip land successfully? Number one-

Jill K DeWit:
Are we jumping into the topic?

Steven Jack Butala:
Oh yeah, right. We have to do this. Three [inaudible 00:06:22].

Jill K DeWit:
Like we have no question and I’m like, I missed all this.

Steven Jack Butala:
Each week on the show… I’ll get back to that in a second.

Jill K DeWit:
Okay. [inaudible 00:06:29]. He got us all excited.

Steven Jack Butala:
Each week on the show we answer a question from our Land Academy Member Discord Forum and take a deep dive into a land-related topic by popular request from our Land Academy community. So let’s take that question, Jill.

Jill K DeWit:
Okay. So Sandy wrote, “Hello all. I’m new to Land Academy, but not new to land flipping. I came from another online land group where I realized about 10 land deals in” Excuse me, “Where I completed about 10 land deals and then I sold them on terms. I realize now that buying for cash and selling for cash is where the real money is. I’m a Jack, not a Jill. What advice do you have for me in making this transition and any advice in general to be successful in this space?”

Steven Jack Butala:
Well, welcome.

Jill K DeWit:
Yay.

Steven Jack Butala:
You are joining the ranks of probably more than half of the people who have ever passed through Land Academy here in an existing membership group. For whatever reason, I don’t think that we’re the best marketers out there, but people seem to land. They choose us last after going through other programs.

Jill K DeWit:
You may not start here, but you’re probably going to end here if you’re good. Yes.

Steven Jack Butala:
No. So what’s my advice for you for starting out? Or I don’t know, you’re probably in second gear right now, which is great.

Jill K DeWit:
That’s good.

Steven Jack Butala:
I would clear your mind, go through the programs and utilize all the tools that Jill and I have put in place to help you be successful from wherever you’re joining us. So you’re joining us in the middle, which is great. You have some experience. Join our Discord Forum, get through Land Academy 3.0, the education. Somebody told me recently, it’s like 26 hours.

Jill K DeWit:
Oh, it was like 14 hours.

Steven Jack Butala:
Okay, good.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah, I don’t think it was 26. I think it was like 14.

Steven Jack Butala:
It’s a lot. There’s a lot of detail.

Jill K DeWit:
But I think we thought it was like six or eight hours and they’re like, “No, no. It’s more than that.” I’m like, “Okay.”

Steven Jack Butala:
And then there’s a user dashboard where you can access everything. We have a Thursday member webinar. There’s 100+ people on there every Thursday where we look at our deals, ask any questions. There’s a lot. There’s that and a lot more. We will do your mailer for you with a product called Concierge Data. We own… This is not a sales pitch. She’s asking where she should start?

Jill K DeWit:
Utilize the tools, utilize the resources.

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s it.

Jill K DeWit:
That’s the main thing. We provide you with, not only the education, but all the tools and support that you need. You only have to ask.

Steven Jack Butala:
They’re all there. And so it’s your job to get yourself organized, stay on track with the program and execute each little piece. And then there’s all kinds of support for wherever you’re coming, we will meet you there.

Jill K DeWit:
Can I add one little note too, because she said she’s a Jack and not a Jill?

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah.

Jill K DeWit:
There are other Jills in this group that need Jacks. So if you’re not sure what we’re talking about, he’s always the data guy, picking the areas, pricing the mailers, doing all that stuff, right? Getting it out there and making my phone ring. And then the phone starts ringing now, and that’s where I jump in, getting these sellers to getting the deals, getting them to fall in love with me and my team and wanting to do the transaction with us, make it easy for them all the way to the sales point when it’s all done. So it’s interesting that there’s a lot of Jacks. Now more Jills are coming around.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, it’s true.

Jill K DeWit:
But in the beginning when we started Land Academy nine years ago, we had way more Jacks, way analytical and nobody could answer the phone. It was actually funny, and now it’s like we pivot a little bit, pivot a little, even more women, which is a whole nother conversation. But more Jills. So my point in bringing this up is there are so many partnerships I have seen made successfully running that met within Land Academy, and so that’s a huge thing. So don’t worry about that too, Sandy. If you’re like, “Great, I can do all this but I can’t do this.” Then again, all you need to do is reach out to your peers, because there’s probably somebody there that said, “You know what? I need you, Sandy.” No, I’m serious.

Steven Jack Butala:
Today’s topic, How to Flip Land Successfully. So I want you to just clear your mind for a second and think about what flipping a piece of land really is. You’re buying something and you’re selling it for more. And through that transition, you’re taking money, you’re buying an asset. You’re redressing it up on the internet, not physically, but redressing it up on the internet and selling it for more. And keeping the money, that’s in between. So if you buy a piece of property for 20,000 bucks, you sell it for 40,000… I’m oversimplifying here, you’ve made $20,000. You put it in your pocket. That’s what this is. That’s the goal. It’s never changed. I don’t care how much AI or whatever is called AI is involved, how many employees you have don’t have, that’s it.
So what I did, and I didn’t realize this and I was thinking about this early this morning for some reason, I don’t know why. Well, I knew the topic was going to be this today. I know you did it too, long before we ever crossed paths, is bought stuff and resold it. I don’t care what it is. So if you’ve done that, if you bought a house, let’s say, cleaned it all up, and I don’t mean renovated it, I mean bought a house. Your life circumstances changed and you need to sell the house, how’d you sell it? Did you sell it for more? Did you lose money on it? Did you put your heart and soul into reselling that house?
If you ever had a garage sale, you got 25, 30, 300 things out there, a couple of them you probably sold for more than you had into it. Maybe somebody actually gave whatever you sold and so you made money on it. That’s either in your soul or it’s not, buying something and reselling it for more. It certainly is in mine.

Jill K DeWit:
I was going to say too, the point I want to make sure it’s clear, because I think this is going to attract people who are new to us, and they don’t know who we are, and you’re probably maybe listening to this for the first time. We’re not saying, “I’m buying something off the MLS that’s a bad listing with bad photos and involving an agent,” or something like that. That’s not what we’re talking about. We create a deal where there was no deal and then so we’re taking something… It’s almost like I’m going back to your garage sale thing. It’s like I walked in my mom’s house and said, “You know that vase in the corner that’s collecting dust, that’s worth something. Can I buy it from you for 20 bucks?” And then all I’m going to do is give it a bath maybe. I wash it and put it on a table and sell it for 50 bucks. Kind of like that. That’s what we do with land. So I want to make sure that that was clear how we do that.

Steven Jack Butala:
There’s 10 basic steps to buying and selling land successfully. Number one, you have to identify a market where you think this is going to work. This works in all markets. I’ll say that again. Buying land and selling it for more works in every single market. The variable is time. So I can buy a piece of property in the most rural market in North Dakota that there ever was for a reasonable price, and clean it all up and resell it and it will sell. It might take 20 years. We don’t want that. We want to choose intelligently-used data to choose markets where we can do it a lot faster than that, hopefully inside of a month. So you need to really understand how to use data to find a target market to buy and sell land. We are experts at that. There’s no other way for me to say it. That’s how I spend most of day.

Jill K DeWit:
That’s one of the unique things about us.

Steven Jack Butala:
Number two, you need to test that market and then get the data of all the people that own real estate in that market. The universe of property owners, we are experts at that. We are licensed providers of the best source of data, and when you look at all the costs associated with it, there’s no place cheaper to get data than it is from us in the long term.

Jill K DeWit:
And training.

Steven Jack Butala:
Let’s keep this real simple.

Jill K DeWit:
Okay.

Steven Jack Butala:
Let’s just go right through the 10 steps.

Jill K DeWit:
I won’t talk.

Steven Jack Butala:
You can talk. Now you’ve got the data. What we do is we send every single one of those logical sellers an actual offer. “Sally Smith, I would like to buy a property for $3,122 and 13 cents.” That we have found gets the best response. Jill and I own property all over this country. Every week we get offers that we crack up, like, “This is never going to work. The seller’s never going to respond to it.” What was the most recent one we got?

Jill K DeWit:
Oh, in the mail?

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah.

Jill K DeWit:
Oh, my gosh. It was like a fake handwritten envelope with a fake yellow pad, and there wasn’t even a number in there. It was just, “I want to buy your property in this county.” They didn’t even tell me which property. They didn’t have my name inside there. It was really weird, and they only use their first names. They didn’t even really give their company name or their last name, and they gave me a Yahoo email account. I’m like, “This is not, this is,” I feel bad. I want to help this person.

Steven Jack Butala:
So these are examples often.

Jill K DeWit:
That’s not going to send the right message.

Steven Jack Butala:
I’m only on step two, and we’re already identify… The name of the show here is, How to Flip Land Successfully?

Jill K DeWit:
True.

Steven Jack Butala:
And so if you’re not identifying a target market based on data and results, that’s number one. You’re not going to do it successfully. Number two, if you’re not sending out pricing, creating a mailer and sending it out, based on very intelligent data-driven pricing and sending out an offer, not just a letter of interest, what Jill just described as a letter of interest, you’re probably not going to do it successfully. In fact, I’ve done all these things.

Jill K DeWit:
That’s going to slow you down.

Steven Jack Butala:
And I’ve done all incorrectly.

Jill K DeWit:
It’s time and money wasted, unfortunately. You want them to call you back with a number.

Steven Jack Butala:
And so I’m skipping ahead in steps, not necessarily, but steps between creating a mailer and pricing it, and then approving the mailer. Whoever you get to do your mailer, we have a company called Offers 2 Owners that does mailers for you. All you have to do is check our pricing. That’ll get you to step number five, which is managing the flow of inbound responses. So let me be super clear. Step one is to identify and test for logical places to send mail. Number two is to get the ball rolling down the mailer road, and so you’re creating a mailer. Number three is managing the mailer, whether you manage yourself or you manage it through our mailing company or anywhere else.
And number four is you price it and you get it out in the mail. So number five now is managing the flow of inbound responses. This is where I stop working and Jill starts working.

Jill K DeWit:
Right.

Steven Jack Butala:
So she will utilize something, some phone-answering service. We use PATLive. There’s a ton of them out there. Or you can answer your phone yourself.

Jill K DeWit:
Back in the day, I did it myself.

Steven Jack Butala:
And manage all this inbound flow of people saying, “I do want to do this deal and thanks for letting me know, and what’s the next step?” All that to go pond sand, because you’re crazy. My properties were $13 million and you offered me 13 cents.

Jill K DeWit:
I personally love this part. This is my favorite part. Can I just want to pause for just a second? This is when the win happens for me. You know when you’re buying it, what you’re buying, how valuable it is and all that good stuff. So that’s for me, that’s so exciting. I love it. I love getting the calls and talking to the sellers and making these transactions happen. So that’s step five.

Steven Jack Butala:
Step five is what I call, because the name of the show is How to Flip Land Successfully, this is where I believe most people fail.

Jill K DeWit:
Really?

Steven Jack Butala:
Yep. I think that. There was a… I said this in Career Path. Jill and I teach a class called Career Path. It’s in a real advance for people who make this their career or it is their career and they want to get better at it. One of the things that I remembered from going to school to college is that in every business there’s a moment where the customer is receiving your product or your service. There’s this magical moment where they decide, “Wow, this is something I’m going to utilize and I believe in it,” or, “I don’t want any part of this.” It’s when you sit down in a new car in a dealership and you decide, “This is exactly what I’m looking for,” or, “Oh, my God. I never want to see this car again.” It’s the time. It’s what bedside manner is for healthcare workers.
Every business has that moment, and it’s at this moment when they talk to Jill for the first 15 to 30 seconds, the seller does. They’re going to decide whether or not they want to talk to her and sell a piece of property or deal with her at all. This is imperative, and I used to think a perfectly priced mailer, “Oh, we don’t need to do this other stuff over here. It’s just not the case.” I used to think that before Jill and I joined forces about what, 15 years ago?

Jill K DeWit:
Mm-hmm.

Steven Jack Butala:
So it’s imperative to get somebody who knows how to do this. If you’re somebody like me or just if you’re in corporate sales for your entire life, then you already know all of this. Number six is now you’ve got a list of people that have called you back or a list of potential deals. You’ve created, congratulations, real estate deal flow. This has eluded the vast majority of people in all real estate of all time. Creating deal flow, what Jill referred to earlier, is you’re creating a real estate transaction. You’re not out on the MLS looking for one to sell for a higher rate. You’re not in Walmart trying to buy something to resell it for more somewhere. It’s very unlikely that that’s going to happen. In fact, I would say it’s probably not going to happen.
So you’ve got these 10 real estate deals that you have created and just like 10 of anything, some of them are going to be great, some of them are going to suck and the rest of them are going to be in the middle. And so you take some time and decide which ones you want. Or if you’re Land Academy-

Jill K DeWit:
Well, the great ones.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah. Well, if you’re a Land Academy member and you’re new, then if you’ve been doing this for a long time, you’re going to jump up and down when you get off the phone.

Jill K DeWit:
You know.

Steven Jack Butala:
If you’re new, you’re going to utilize the resources that Jill and I put together in Land Academy to make you successful.

Jill K DeWit:
Or ask us. We’ll help you.

Steven Jack Butala:
We’ll tell you if it sucks or not. We’ll tell you if it’s great. If it is, we’ll fund it. If it sucks, then we’ll tell you that too.

Jill K DeWit:
We’ll save you. No, no. The whole point of that is we save you. That’s one of the big values I see every week on our member calls and say, “Hey, would you guys do this deal? I’m on the fence.” And we’re like, “Okay. You need to look at this, this and this,” and guide them. Or like, “Uh-uh. Because of this and this, I wouldn’t even do it.” They’re like, “Whew. Thank you. You just saved me all that work and energy and time and money potentially.” So absolutely.

Steven Jack Butala:
Hey, now’s a good time to ask you to Like this episode if you do or follow our channel. We’re here every week, every Wednesday. I think that these programs air at 3:00.

Jill K DeWit:
Yep.

Steven Jack Butala:
And then we also have just redeveloped a product called Concierge Data where our guys that work for us, they’re the same people that do our mailers, will do your mailer for you. So if you go to Offers 2 Owners, offers2owners.com. Just check it out. Give them a call, actually. Talk to Aaron. Tell him Jack and Jill sent you from the podcast. So step seven, you actually acquire the property. You looked at, let’s say 10, and a healthy number is two of them really meet after talking to the sellers and checking it all out and using the due diligence program that we have provided, let’s say eight A’s, which that’s for a different conversation. We try to make due diligence as simple as possible, and you decide you want to buy two, so you buy them, and if you are brand new at this, that can be intimidating, that process.
But again, that’s why you have Land Academy and a bunch of people at your fingertips, literally. You can ask questions all day long and get the deal done correctly without any fear of missing steps. I’ve noticed that people, that was one of the things I was concerned about when I started was, “What steps am I missing in this actual transaction?” Or, “What should I be reading? There’s a big stack of papers in front of me on these two deals. I don’t know what a lot of this stuff means.” That’s why you have your peer group here, us.
Number nine is just quite simply, you’ve made a decision. You bought the property, and so now you’re going to travel down the path of listing it with a local real estate agent. And so that can be a tricky little path too. Again, we’re all going through the same thing. Hundreds and hundreds of us here at Land Academy are going through the same thing. So picking a real estate agent, Jill, we could spend hours.

Jill K DeWit:
That’d be a whole nother show. That’d be fun to talk about. So I love that.

Steven Jack Butala:
So you listed it with a real estate agent and then you manage the real estate agent, geez, like you manage your children. Unfortunately, it’s a very-

Jill K DeWit:
I hope you manage your children.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, yeah.

Jill K DeWit:
I’m sure some of you don’t.

Steven Jack Butala:
Bad example.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah.

Steven Jack Butala:
The property eventually gets sold. It may get sold for the price you want. It may not, most of the time for us, almost all the time.

Jill K DeWit:
It’s pretty close.

Steven Jack Butala:
We sell for what we want, otherwise we wouldn’t buy it.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah.

Steven Jack Butala:
I think that’s step eight or nine. And then step 10 is you collect the money. You approve the sale, close the deal and collect the money. It’s a 10 step process. The difference between doing it successfully, in my opinion, or not successfully, is all about who’s in your life. If you have people that are buying and selling land and doing real estate deals all the time who have had a ton of experience and they’re available to you, that’s the difference between all the people on the internet right now who believe that they can flip land and actually the people who do it successfully.

Jill K DeWit:
That’s a good point. Can I look at that for just a minute before you close it?

Steven Jack Butala:
Sure. Sure.

Jill K DeWit:
It’d be nice to just identify some of the trigger points here. What makes someone really wildly successful? I would like to add that. So of these steps, step number one, okay, taking the time to dig in and not have a dart board, not trust your friend, not trust somebody you’re watching, doing what you think you know. “Oh, San Antonio, I got to hit San Antonio. Let’s just mail that.” But really taking the time and testing these markets, that’s a huge thing right there, and that separates the successful from the unsuccessful right out of the gate. Number two, just taking action, going through the process, learning how to do a mailer or hiring someone to do it for you, but knowing. Don’t have an automated easy button and you know someone who really knows what they’re doing.
They understand this whole process. They know how to scrape comps. It’s again, not an easy button in a machine that doesn’t really look at these numbers and knows what is real and what is not real so you can take them out and not mess up your numbers and have an overpriced mailer kind of thing. But taking action and getting through that is huge. These are places… Like someone coming in, I’ve seen them go through the step one, but actually getting the mail out, huge obstacle. For some reason, people get hung up right there. We’ve had people in Land Academy for months who haven’t sent out a mailer, and I know in their hearts they’re here for the right reason. They’re like, “Okay, next month I’m going to do it. Next month I’m going to do it.” But there’s something that holds them back. So you’ve got to just, who cares? Push through it.
If it’s not the greatest work, that’s okay. Get it out there, but you have us, and we’ll show you and teach you and coach you and help you to make sure you did everything you possibly could. Do your best job here. Now hit it, get it out kind of thing. Looking through here where people get hung up and what’s successful. Okay, when we got to the part about the calls are coming back, that is huge. The successful folks answer the phone themselves, A., or have some other live body that they know, they’ve vetted, they’ve tested, even a service that we all use or other people have used and trusted, huge. You would have so many missed deals, if it goes to voicemail or you have some other… What if you only had an email? It’s just people aren’t going to use that. They’re going to pick up the phone and call you kind of thing.
And you have to have someone there and have the right person there, by the way, who knows how to talk to these sellers and work with them. Let them know who you are. It’s a real person and talk money with them right away. That’s another just a light bulb, successful moment. Making the decisions, what’s a really good, successful person there? They know how to make quick decisions, and they’re very good with their time, and they are not afraid to cut a deal that they’re not comfortable with. I see people getting hung up here trying to make a bad deal work. A real successful person knows what we’re talking about. They study their eight A’s. They go, “Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Got them all. Let’s go.” And they’re not afraid to just move forward and buy the property.
What’s another point? Well, when we’re buying the property, what’s a real successful person doing? They’re not afraid of money. They’re not as afraid of spending money, and if they don’t have the money, they’re not afraid to ask for money. I know people that don’t utilize the deal funding resources that we have right here, even from us. Ask. If it’s a great deal, I will happily write that check.

Steven Jack Butala:
If it’s even a reasonable deal, there’s somebody in our group-

Jill K DeWit:
They’ll write the check.

Steven Jack Butala:
… may or may not be us, they’re here to fund deals. They’re not here to do what you do.

Jill K DeWit:
That happens and what’s great too, it’s confidence and experience and knowing what you’re good at. I am not too proud to say, and I’ve done this like, “Hey, I think this is a great deal, but you know what? I don’t know this area quite as well as this person, and I know they are loving to do deal funding. If I were you, I would reach out to this person and tell them I sent you, see what they say. And if it’s a real good deal, they’ll tell you. And if they want to fund it, oh, they will,” kind of thing. And there you go. I’m trying to find the… I’m thinking of successful light bulb moments is what I’m doing here. Signing paperwork, there’s no light bulb moment there, other than do it. Let’s see what else here? And make it easy. Just make it easy. Don’t overthink stuff.

Steven Jack Butala:
Can I jump in here?

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah. Why? You’re going… I can’t go through with this?

Steven Jack Butala:
Oh, are you… Just go ahead and finish it.

Jill K DeWit:
Oh, yeah. I want to finish my little light bulb moments through the list. Listing with an agent. Real successful people know how to pick up the phone and vet an agent and to not take the first person you call until you find someone that you connect with. And then the last thing, you already know how it’s going to end. Real successful people already have, when they bought it, already have in their head a targeted sales price. So it’s no surprise. Now you can take that.

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s a recap. Let’s recap. The first step in this process is to locate, based on data, locate a place to send mail. The second step is to identify all the people that own property there and get an offer in their hands. The third step is to manage the inbound flow of deals and make some decisions about which ones you like, which ones you don’t, and why. The next step is buy the ones you like. This next step after that is sell the ones you like or sell the ones that you own, and that’s it. And it’s those five basic steps. There’s a lot of stuff in between that happens, a lot of details, but that’s what groups like Land Academy are for.

Jill K DeWit:
We’ll help you.

Steven Jack Butala:
It’s a five step process. Yep.

Jill K DeWit:
Well, the whole thing is too, people don’t understand I think though. We go into great, almost too much detail sometimes, but you brainy folks love it. So if you’re questioning, “Hey, does Land Academy talk about fill in the blank?” 99.9% of the time, it’s yes.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, we do.

Jill K DeWit:
The only thing I’m not going to do is to sit down with you and fill out your tax return kind of thing. But outside of that, every possible conversation you can imagine, because that’s who we are. I’m here to help. The whole thing is Land Academy is helping you start or grow or both your own successful company. That’s it. And then we’re all just doing deals together and it’s awesome.

Steven Jack Butala:
Here’s a profile after 10 years of teaching that we think really fits who’s successful at this and who’s not. First, who’s successful? If you’ve been successful at anything in your life in the past or let’s say most of the stuff that you’ve tried, you’ve been successful at it, you’re going to be successful at this. You probably don’t even know it. You don’t know that you have that go-getter type personality, and you’re not going to lose. You’re not going to even know when you’re defeated. You’re just going to keep barreling through. We have tons of people in our group who have sold their companies or own companies now, and they want an extra place, diversification, an extra revenue stream. And so those people do very, very well with us. The second type of really successful member for us is somebody who’s just really, really new and really, really energetic.

Jill K DeWit:
I was going to use the word hungry.

Steven Jack Butala:
Both. It’s the same thing. We’re talking about the same type of person. So those are real, and that comes down to a personality type. It doesn’t come down to whether or not they’re smart enough to understand the processes or whether they’re a Jack or a Jill. That personality type is going to overcome all of that anyway. That’s just how they do it.

Jill K DeWit:
And age doesn’t matter.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah. As you can imagine, on the flip side, the people who don’t do this successfully are the ones who quite simply just don’t follow through. They don’t follow through on the steps and that’s it.

Jill K DeWit:
Well, I just call it sometimes it’s like I say, “They let life get in the way.” That’s what happens. So I understand. So that’s part of it too, when you’re going to come at this… Oh, I could use it for that. All right.

Steven Jack Butala:
No, no.

Jill K DeWit:
I’ll save it. Oh, no, I can save it for my inspiration.

Steven Jack Butala:
I’m just saving it next. Jill has something inspirational to share.

Jill K DeWit:
Something [inaudible 00:35:15]. Okay, I can save it for that. So all right, so I’ll just say that. What my inspiration is, don’t let life… Well, life will get in the way if you’ll let it.

Steven Jack Butala:
With anything.

Jill K DeWit:
It really will. And I know I don’t need to minimize. Sometimes there are major life events, so I’m not referring to that. But there are a whole lot of life events that people could overcome, but they let them get in the way. And it’s interesting to me. I’ve had people even four times, it’s the sweetest thing.

Steven Jack Butala:
Really?

Jill K DeWit:
You know who you are and I love you guys. People have left. There’s been a life event. They left and then sometimes weeks, sometimes months, sometimes even a year, they’re like, “You know what? I did not give that my full attention and energy. I know what’s going on in Land Academy. I’m still hearing about my buddy that I started with and how much money he’s making right now. I need to go back and get back to this.” And they come right back, and I’m happy to have you back and I love that.
So my inspiration is the first thing would be, get yourself mentally and physically ready to do this. I want you to have the budget so you can afford to get educated. Just like anything, I wouldn’t say go buy a 7-Eleven with no money and take out a loan. And I wouldn’t say… There’s no business I would say, “Oh, just take out a loan and see how it goes.” No way. No matter what business you’re going to do, save up, get some education, do everything you can before you jump in so you know what you’re getting into, and then prepare your whole family and your whole life, your vacation schedule, your kids, every little thing. This is the same thing. It shouldn’t be taken lightly. If you want to really be successful, get everything in a row.
Prepare everybody. “We’re not going to take a vacation this summer. This is what we’re doing, because wait two years and wait until you see the vacations we can take,” kind of thing. That’s the goal. So just get everything ready and go at it 112%. Remember that 12 degrees thing. I think that was 12 degrees, whatever that book was, that was so long ago. That’s my inspiration. And if it’s not the right time, and I tell this to people all the time, I talk to people that call in, I say, “You know what? Wait six months. I’m not going anywhere. You need to be in the right place. You need to be ready to do this, and I don’t want you to do this half blank. I want you to come at this full speed, and we’ll get you there.” What do you want to share today?

Steven Jack Butala:
So I was having a conversation with one of the people that worked for us a couple of weeks ago, maybe a week ago, and we were talking about how this generation, it is an absolute. It’s expected of you and it’s a norm to have some type of side gig, to be working on something on the side that eventually, if it goes right, is going to be your entrepreneurial shot and mark in life. And I could not have grown up in a more different environment. I grew up where you were very rewarded for, this is a lot of years ago in Detroit, rewarded for either being in a company person and working there forever and getting a gold watch and you retire. Or going off and starting your own company, which is nearly impossible back then unless you had all kinds of backing and people that were involved in the businesses and the contacts and the money, because starting a metal stamping plant costs back then even millions and millions of dollars.
So most or all of us chose number one. Fast-forward to now, it’s 180 degrees different. You are expected to have a side gig. But I don’t think that most people have any idea what that means from a personality standpoint and what Jill just referred to about sacrifice, personal sacrifice. The more stuff you pile on in your life like children and marriage and a mortgage and all of that, the further you’re going to get away from accomplishing whatever’s making that side gig that we’re all now expected to have a reality. And I think that makes me sad, because we’re in one of the greatest entrepreneurial times, if not the greatest entrepreneurial time, in the history of our country. It has never been cheaper and easier. You are literally a half hour away from starting your own company.

Jill K DeWit:
Isn’t it amazing? Can we unfold this onion a little bit here? I was raised differently, which really I saw both sides. I watched my dad hustle with different jobs back in… He had so many jobs it’s comical, from firefighter and selling insurance and radio DJ and mailman, Disneyland. Some of this was before I was born, but I know of these jobs, and to pilot to professional pilot to investor. He too, I always watched my dad have this job that paid very well and then a little side hustle, because he had time to do this stuff. I just think it’s really interesting. I’m trying to think with the kids now. I see when I say kids, I am referring to our kids. So this is the one. I’m not picking on anybody that doesn’t deserve it, but I watch our kids have-

Steven Jack Butala:
Jill’s caveats. That’s what I call it.

Jill K DeWit:
There we go. So I watch our kids have an opportunity, squander the opportunity, have to get a real job or just some other job to pay the bills, which you should, not sleeping on my couch, kind of thing. And then realize, “Oh, that’s an opportunity,” and I’m seeing a shift. I feel like there’s a generation where… There’s a generation in the middle of us and our kids where they’re afraid to take on their own company. Have you noticed this?

Steven Jack Butala:
Go ahead. Yes.

Jill K DeWit:
Okay.

Steven Jack Butala:
It’s the same fear that I had and that my parents had and their parents had. Nothing’s changed. I’m going to finish your point.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah, go ahead.

Steven Jack Butala:
Nothing has changed from me staring into the abyss when I was 18 or 17 years old with this insurmountable task of trying to open a metal stamping plant or whatever.

Jill K DeWit:
That was your thing?

Steven Jack Butala:
Just hold on.

Jill K DeWit:
Oh, sorry.

Steven Jack Butala:
It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what I wanted. You are staring if you’re a young person right now into this seemingly black abyss, because everything’s relative of where do I start? What you have that we never had was education and the internet.

Jill K DeWit:
YouTube.

Steven Jack Butala:
And you have answers to every question that you’ve ever, ever… So this is not some old guy saying, “I had it harder than you.” That’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying it’s the exact same thing. It’s just relative. The tools that we had were finite back then, and the tools that you have are finite now. You just have to work your way through it, and at some point you’re going to look at yourself in the mirror and say, “I’m set up for this or I’m not.” Or you’re going to motivate yourself. If you have a personality type like Jill, you’re going to motivate yourself and talk to yourself to the point where you’re going to make this successful and that’s it.
And that is coming full circle to what this topic is about today is How to Flip Land Successfully, because you’re staring in the mirror saying, “This is it now, this is it, and I’m taking this down to the end. I might not know how to do a mailer. I’m going to find out somebody who does. I might not know how to build a website and that’s easy. It costs 300 bucks on Fiverr. I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know how to do this, but what I do know is I’m going to succeed at it and I’m going to be the quarterback.” That’s all I am. In all of these businesses that Joe and I own is a quarterback.

Jill K DeWit:
What am I?

Steven Jack Butala:
You’re like a-

Jill K DeWit:
I like this.

Steven Jack Butala:
You’re the wide receiver.

Jill K DeWit:
I was going to say-

Steven Jack Butala:
You’re Tron.

Jill K DeWit:
I know. I was waiting for that one. I’m not the kicker.

Steven Jack Butala:
No one wants to be the kicker.

Jill K DeWit:
No one wants to be the kicker. Yeah, I’ll be the wide receiver. I was expecting that.

Steven Jack Butala:
Calling myself a quarterback is actually not that accurate. I think I do a lot less than what a quarterback does. What I probably-

Jill K DeWit:
Well, you call the plays.

Steven Jack Butala:
I’m a general manager more than anything.

Jill K DeWit:
That makes sense.

Steven Jack Butala:
Quarterbacks have talent. I’m the general manager that makes sure the lights are on in the stadium and then whoever didn’t turn the lights on in the stadium is going to hear from me. I am not the quarterback at all now that I’m thinking about it.

Jill K DeWit:
That’s hilarious. Are you the guy that makes sure the Gatorade’s out there and all filled up too?

Steven Jack Butala:
I am the guy who put the person in place of the Gatorade.

Jill K DeWit:
There we go. Okay. Well, in that case, now what? Am I still the wide receiver or what am I?

Steven Jack Butala:
No, no, I think I’m not sure. I don’t know.

Jill K DeWit:
I’m definitely not the person with the clipboard yelling at people.

Steven Jack Butala:
You’re the mascot.

Jill K DeWit:
Oh, I’m the mascot. That is actually accurate.

Steven Jack Butala:
Although if Jill was a mascot, she would be the mascot with the head on, the head of the mascot on for about eight minutes, and she’d take it off and, “No one can see me with his head on.”

Jill K DeWit:
No one knows it’s me. This is going to come back to bite us. I can already hear you folks who know us are going to bring this up again. I’m talking about the… What was your job? You’re the manager, the manager of the mascot.

Steven Jack Butala:
Not even the owner. I’m just the manager.

Jill K DeWit:
General manager of the mascot. That’s great. That’s like every years ago we had team red, team blue. That’s good. I love this. Hey, don’t forget, if you want to find out more, you have some questions, you can talk to our team, reach out. Send a note to support@landacademy.com.

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

Jill K DeWit:
We are Jack and Jill.

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

Jill K DeWit:
And inspiration.

Steven Jack Butala:
To buy undervalued property.