Transcript:

Steven Jack Butala:
I’m Steven Jack Butala.

Jill K DeWit:
And I’m Jill DeWit and this is the Land Academy Show. Today’s episode number 2,002. Isn’t that crazy?

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s nuts.

Jill K DeWit:
I know.

Steven Jack Butala:
Today, we’re going to talk about the five pro tips that Jill and I have lived by for pricing your land-flipping mailer. This is a real hot topic on the Internet and in our-

Jill K DeWit:
In our group.

Steven Jack Butala:
… Land Academy Discord channel among our group, exactly. It’s real interesting because we have some new people right now that … pricing’s just always a hot topic and we’re getting a lot of orders at Offers 2 Owners, I’m hearing, from our guys, the mailing company that Jill and I own, and there’s a pretty wide variance between how offers are getting priced by people who are within Land Academy and people who are not. My guys are ending up having to have a pretty detailed conversation about how pricing should go, so I figured we’ll just lop it into the podcast.

Jill K DeWit:
I love it.

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. Let’s take a question, Jill.

Jill K DeWit:
Sid wrote, “Blind offers work! I just had a great conversation with a seller because, one,” this is interesting, “I was the fifth offer in six months, but all were neutral letters with no price.”

Steven Jack Butala:
That tells me … I’m going to take these as I go here. It tells me that he’s getting a lot of offers, or his seller now has gotten a lot of offers from people who are not in our Land Academy group. There’s other groups out there who are, I think, incorrectly instructing people on how to buy land.

Jill K DeWit:
Then, what they went on to say is any phone calls she made were not returned and, since I was the only blind offer of X price, she decided to call.” Isn’t that great? Then, number two, “She was amazed that I answered the phone and was the same guy that sent the letter. After I explained who we are, our procedures, et cetera, we agreed to a price. Still need boots on the ground to confirm, but should be another one in title by the end of the week.” The moral is keep mailing legitimate blind offers and answer the phone. That’s so true.

Steven Jack Butala:
Jill and I, we say this stuff … what, we’ve been doing this now 10 years, right? Almost 10 years.

Jill K DeWit:
Nine years of Land Academy, shoot, 15 years of deals together and then you have 10 or 15 before me.

Steven Jack Butala:
This experience is one that we experience in our land office every week but, when your father says something or when your spouse says something, you’re like, “Eh, whatever. He’s just talking again.”

Jill K DeWit:
What?

Steven Jack Butala:
But if somebody else says it, like Sid, one of our members, you start to listen.

Jill K DeWit:
Can we just explain it real quick for a minute?

Steven Jack Butala:
Sure.

Jill K DeWit:
For people … just to make sure everyone knows what we’re talking about. When we’re sending … what we’re doing, Land Academy … everything that we’re doing here, land flipping, in case you’re new and you’re just catching up here, we create deals. We are acquisition machines and we know how to create a deal. How do we do that? We are reaching out to the seller before it’s on the MLS, before anything, when it’s just a little thought in the back of their mind, they’re getting an offer in the mail from us to buy their property.
Are they getting a pretend yellow letter like, “Hey, call me.”? Nope, “I want to buy your house.” They’re not getting that. That’s a neutral letter. Are they getting a, “Oh, I love your property. I’d love to buy it between 4,000 and 14,000.” I’m not doing that. It doesn’t make any sense. They’re getting a real specific, and we’re going to talk more about that today, well thought out, planned … the area was planned, the APN scheme was planned, the pricing was planned, exactly who we’re hitting was planned. The right people are getting these offers for a dollar amount and they’re picking up the phone and they’re calling back saying, “Okay, I just got your offer. You want to buy my property for $8,995.61. I had no idea it was worth that much,” or, “How did you get that number?” or “Hey, how can we do this now? I forgot about it. I didn’t even know so-and-so had it,” kind of thing. That’s what it is. I just want to just remind everyone, too what … well, I have time. I can slow this down.

Steven Jack Butala:
Sure.

Jill K DeWit:
Here’s how this is important, too. Again, like I mentioned before, Jack’s been doing this for going on 30 years now. It’s not by accident. We’ve tested, tried and done all kinds of things over the years. We’re here to save you and that’s what Land Academy’s about. All that happens if you send a neutral letter, “Hey, I want to buy your house, call me,” or, “Hey, I want to buy your land, call me,” especially those of us … you own your house, you get these letters. You’re going to get a million calls from the wrong people. They’re going to want to talk to you and everybody has a number in their head. I call it their make me move number. That’s the last thing you want is to spend weeks of your time talking to people that you have no interest in buying their land at whatever price they dreamt up because they just think it should be worth four times what they paid for it a year ago or something. That’s not real kind of thing.
The second thing is I see people or I still hear people talking about doing a range. Well, here’s what happens when you send a person a letter with a range on it. You see the lower number. “I want to buy your property. I want to buy your land somewhere between $4,000 and $10,000,” let’s just say, “an acre.” Well, first of all, they’re not going to do the math. They can’t do the math and, if they do do the math, all they’re going to do is take the higher number. “Well, I see 10,000 an acre and I got three acres, so we’re talking 30,000.” What you really see is the bottom number, “3,000 times nine or 4,000 times nine, that’s 12 grand. That’s what I’m going to spend.” Huge gap between 12,000 and 30,000. What you’re probably trying to do is buy for 12 and sell for 30. That makes sense.
We got that out of the way. The main thing is here, as Sid just pointed out, there’s a whole other layer of why this is good and important. These people are sending neutral letters, no price. This person’s like, “Yeah, whatever. You’re wasting my time. I’m not going to call you. You’re not even giving me me any information about it, what you’re thinking.” Then, she picks up the phone, calls and gosh, Sid answers the phone, he’s a real person, this is his own company and he’s ready to go. He has his checkbook out. That’s how we do deals and that’s what we’re going to help you do.

Steven Jack Butala:
We have a 10-step process to buy a piece of real estate and resell it as fast as possible without altering the asset in any way. I didn’t pull that out of a hat, it’s because of 30 years of experience of making mistakes.

Jill K DeWit:
True.

Steven Jack Butala:
Well, let’s just call it refining the process, but part of that’s making mistakes and failing. Whoever’s sending out these offers that are neutral have clearly … it’s 1998 for them. I tried sending out neutral letters without an acceptable response and that’s the truth of it. That’s great. It’s great when a successful member like Sid sends us in and really tells the truth, tells a personal experience. This happens to us all the time. People call us back and say, “I couldn’t get anybody to call me back.”

Jill K DeWit:
You’re right.

Steven Jack Butala:
Today, we’re going to talk about pricing and within that, we’re going to talk about answering your phone.

Jill K DeWit:
I love it.

Steven Jack Butala:
Today’s topic, Five Pro Tips for Pricing Your Land-Flipping Mailer. I’m not going to reel down the five, but I will tell you number one is this and Jill, I would love your comment on this: it will never be perfect. Pricing and your analysis of pricing is not going to … it’ll never … you won’t reach a point where you say, “That’s it. I’m wiping my hands. It’s where I wanted to be.”
Believe it or not, I took an art class in college, which was far from my favorite class, but one of the things that I took away from that forever obviously is a true artist is never done, they only just run out of time. Throughout the years, I’ve heard a lot of people say in a lot of different businesses, “I’m not done with this, but I hit my deadline and I’m turning it in.” Well, that’s never been more true in my current life than doing a mailer. Even to this day, I don’t sit and say, “I’m done with this mailer. Now, it works for me and I think we’re going to get the most yield. This is going to be the best-performing mailer we’ve ever had.” It just doesn’t happen that way.

Jill K DeWit:
Doesn’t every sporting event say, “Well, no, we didn’t win, we just ran out of time.”? That’s the same thing.

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s just like that. I saw an interview with Sting, the creator and the former lead singer of Police. He said he was working on one of his non-Police records after his Police career as an independent artist. He said, “It’s been a year and a half and I’m staring at the same 12 songs, so I had to give myself a deadline.” Then, he turned it in the record sucked, but that’s not the point.

Jill K DeWit:
Don’t share which one it was.

Steven Jack Butala:
I saw an interview with George Lucas, the creator of … this is a lot of years ago, the creator of Star Wars and Electric Light and Magic. He said, “We’re never done, we just have to turn this stuff into whoever ordered it. We’re never done with making this clip perfect in animation or anything.” I think he created that animation company, too, Pixar. It’s never going to be done. It’s truly … and when it is done, I usually crack a beer and it’s just like, “Oh, it’s going out in the mail. Let’s see what happens.”

Jill K DeWit:
This is good.

Steven Jack Butala:
Number two, huge mail volume. If you’re new at this-

Jill K DeWit:
This is good.

Steven Jack Butala:
… this is the first time you’ve ever listened to a land-related or real estate-related podcast, these are golden tips here. Huge mail volume is required for your success. We call it internally reckless mailing, after a guy that joined Career Path, which is a class that Jill and I take, a mastermind class that Jill and I teach once or twice a year. This is several Career Paths ago. He said, “I just … ” because he had a very profitable operation, he was making actually more money-

Jill K DeWit:
A couple million.

Steven Jack Butala:
… than us. It was six, actually, a year. All of us in the whole group, including Jill and I, were like, “All right, hold on. Maybe my process is not perfected yet,” which is true. I’m always trying to improve it. “What’s your secret?” He said, “Reckless mailing. Sometimes, I’ll send out 19,000 letters and not get a deal, then I’ll send out a 1,200-unit mailer and I’ll get six deals out of it,” which is exactly what happens to Jill and what has happened to us in my entire career. Huge mail volume is required. Relentless mailing. I’m oversimplifying because this is the podcast. I’m not saying send out neutral letters, just skip over pricing or don’t go through the steps in Land Academy, I’m not saying that at all, I’m just saying do all that stuff and do it correctly but, if you send out a lot of mail, you’re going to get a bunch of deals.

Jill K DeWit:
Totally.

Steven Jack Butala:
It might not be in the order you want. I’m re-hearing now people saying rumblings of, “I’m going to test this. I sent out 200 mailers. I just want to see what’s going to happen.”

Jill K DeWit:
Let’s just explain, too, 1,000 units is not huge mail. Some people might be confused on that. That’s not enough. Make it count. Do five. I say, “What’s your minimum?”

Steven Jack Butala:
Five is my rock bottom minimum, 5,000.

Jill K DeWit:
That’s what I think, 5,000.

Steven Jack Butala:
I’d rather see-

Jill K DeWit:
How many areas-

Steven Jack Butala:
… 25,000.

Jill K DeWit:
… Let’s help people listening. In a perfect world, I’m starting out, I’m doing 5,000 units a month, that’s what I budgeted and that’s what I think I can handle volume-wise. I split it into two different … I do it the first of the month and the middle of the month, 2,500 and 2,500 [inaudible 00:13:14] … and that’s my schedule I’ve planned out for myself. Now, in those 5,000 units, how many areas should I be hitting?

Steven Jack Butala:
If you’re new, three.

Jill K DeWit:
[inaudible 00:13:24]

Steven Jack Butala:
Three to five, but three.

Jill K DeWit:
Three’s good.

Steven Jack Butala:
But still bear in mind, though, that now, you’re sending out a small mailer in three separate places. There’s no replacement for fire for effect. Tens of thousands of units in the mail will make you wealthy, if it’s done correctly, I’m telling you.

Jill K DeWit:
Thank you.

Steven Jack Butala:
If you skip a big … like I said earlier, there’s a ten-step process to … I like to think about it as you’ve got some cash, you do all this stuff, you get your offers in the mail, you spend that cash on a piece of real estate, or you use our money or somebody’s money in our group deal funding. 30 days later, you get cash back, only more. If you send out tens of thousands of offers, you are dramatically increasing your chance of having that happen. All kinds of things can happen in between, good and bad. If you’re just doing a lot of deals, sending out a lot of mail, the chances of some really good things happening are just … it’s not quite exponential but they really dramatically increase. From experience, I can tell you.

Jill K DeWit:
Totally.

Steven Jack Butala:
Which leads everybody to this question: “Well, okay, Jack, what’s the yield? If I send out 7,000, am I going to get a deal where I make $30,000, $50,000, $80,000?” I don’t know. Maybe.

Jill K DeWit:
I was serious.

Steven Jack Butala:
“Well then, is it 10,000?” Maybe. It might be-

Jill K DeWit:
Make it count.

Steven Jack Butala:
… 200.

Jill K DeWit:
You know what I always say? Make it count. You know what it is? Here’s what I think. I’ve been talking about this too, a lot. I’ve been doing a lot of calls recently helping new people coming in and answering questions about this. I’m like, “Look, let’s just assume you do it all wrong. Assume the worst is going to happen. Assume you’re going to send 10,000 out and you’re only going to get one deal.” I will get more than that the way we do, I know, but let’s just say it took you 10,000 to get one. “Wow, that’s a lot. It cost me $7,500 a mail. Hoo.” Okay, follow me on this one here. Let’s just say, though, the one thing you did right was you made sure that you were only going to buy property where it’s a buy for 30,000 to try to sell for like 80,000 or 90,000. Buy for 30, sell for 80, 90, right? I got one deal out of it. I screw it all up and I only sell it for $72,000 or whatever it is. Hold [inaudible 00:15:50] … I buy it for 30, I sold for 72.

Steven Jack Butala:
Or 60.

Jill K DeWit:
Right? Do I care that I spent $7,500 on it? Not really. I did it all wrong, by the way. I screwed up. So what? Look how much money you made, look how much you learned and by the way, there’s probably going to be some more juice coming from that mailer once you get rolling, too. It’s not just the first wave. When you see how many people call you back after your expiration date or the day before your expiration date or, heck, like we’ve had, 10 years after your expiration date, you can’t go back and redo your yield, you just forget about it. If you did nothing but made sure that, “Well, I’m going to make sure if I get one deal, it’s going to pay for everything,” then you’re okay and you move on.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yield … I calculate our yield in the most basic sense at the end of the year and honestly, it’s not even then, because we still get offers. We’ve been sending mail forever, millions, millions and millions of offers. We get calls all over the place. Mailer yield is … apply that concept to any other business that you could buy or start.

Jill K DeWit:
That’s the best.

Steven Jack Butala:
Apply it from an ROI standpoint.

Jill K DeWit:
True.

Steven Jack Butala:
I like to use a convenience store. You open a convenience store or you buy a convenience store that’s breaking even. If you’re opening it, you’re not breaking even for quite some time. What’s your yield on that? What’s your ROI? It doesn’t compare to this. People ask about yield and volume requirements for one reason, one reason only in my 10 years of instructing with Jill: they don’t have enough money to get into this business.

Jill K DeWit:
You should save up and wait, then.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yep.

Jill K DeWit:
There’s nothing wrong with that.

Steven Jack Butala:
Or get a money partner.

Jill K DeWit:
Or that.

Steven Jack Butala:
Because done correctly … I’m 30 years into this and Jill and I are … Land Academy is 10 years old this year.

Jill K DeWit:
Nine. Close enough, sorry.

Steven Jack Butala:
Thanks for correcting me, Jill. Thank you.

Jill K DeWit:
Sorry.

Steven Jack Butala:
I appreciate getting corrected, especially when the camera’s on.

Jill K DeWit:
Sorry. [inaudible 00:17:55]

Steven Jack Butala:
Jill and I started Land Academy in 2014. It was launched in 2015.

Jill K DeWit:
That’s where I go by, sorry.

Steven Jack Butala:
You decide how old it is, listener.

Jill K DeWit:
Sorry about that.

Steven Jack Butala:
Number three … I forgot what I was going to say. Number three, all of this pricing and implementing a mailer in general won’t be effective if the person who’s answering the phone doesn’t follow through. That’s as nice as I can say that, which is why I chose Sid’s question earlier. Let me give you an example. If you’re a chef, a trained chef, and you, right out of a movie, go to real early morning, you get up and you go to a market, it’s all farmer ingredients and it’s the greatest stuff ever, you bring it back, it’s now 6:00 in the morning, you create a menu for that day and it’s a fantastic, fabulous world-class menu, but you don’t put those ingredients together and you use a ton of salt, oversalt everything so it just tastes like salt, that was all wasted. Going to the market, getting those perfect ingredients and spending time on the perfect lettuce or whatever it ends up being, I’m not a food person. Jill is. Actually, you probably have a lot to say about this.

Jill K DeWit:
No, I have nothing to say anymore.

Steven Jack Butala:
Feel correct … feel-

Jill K DeWit:
No, no, no. Actually, I was looking at the timing. Do I tell my team to edit that? I won’t do that, but no, I’m just going to sit on my hands over here.

Steven Jack Butala:
I think this should be called the Correct Jack episode.

Jill K DeWit:
No, I’m just sitting on my hands. I like food if you say I like food.

Steven Jack Butala:
Wow, I might utilize this. This never happens.

Jill K DeWit:
There we go.

Steven Jack Butala:
Look, if you got the greatest ingredients in anything … it goes for manufacturing, too. You can buy the greatest high-grade whatever you’re manufacturing, put it all together and, if you put it together wrong, the best ingredients in the world aren’t going to matter. It’s the same thing with a mailer and the same thing with this business. You do the perfect mailer, which doesn’t exist, but you do an amazing mailer, you do everything you’re supposed to do, you run the red/green/yellow test, you find a great place to send mail, you diversify it, three to five locations, zip codes and counties, and your price the mailer really well, get a second set of eyes on it, because that’s what your peer group here Land Academy is for, you get it out in the mail and you don’t return the calls, you’re not going to do a deal.
I know this is about pricing, but I can’t talk about this without saying you need somebody like Jill, hopefully, it’s you, or you need a business partner like Jill that’s going to take that raw data that you spent so much time putting together in pricing and turn that into a real estate deal. That’s the real magic here.

Jill K DeWit:
In a perfect world, they’re answering the phone right then. That’s my thing. You need a live body on the end of the minute the first [inaudible 00:20:48] … they ring, they call in.

Steven Jack Butala:
This is me kissing and making up now.

Jill K DeWit:
Oh, okay. Thank you.

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s how you have a marital argument on a podcast, by the way,

Jill K DeWit:
There you go.

Steven Jack Butala:
Should be about 60 seconds.

Jill K DeWit:
Thank you.

Steven Jack Butala:
We talk about all of this in Land Academy. You talk about it on our Thursday member webinar for our members. Please make sure that you’re not just doing a great mailer and it’s going out into the universe and never coming back.

Jill K DeWit:
And no one’s there to receive them.

Steven Jack Butala:
Sid just said it. Whoever those people are, I’ll tell you what happened with Sid’s mailer. Not with Sid’s mailer, the question before this, and all those five or eight people that called or sent mail out: what happened is they sent a mailer out according to some other group on the Internet’s instruction and it was a neutral mailer, so it said, “Hey, I’m interested in buying your land, give me a call back,” and they did. The first wave of mail hit and everybody’s interested in selling their land, trust me. All pieces of land are for sale, with very few exceptions.

Jill K DeWit:
Pretty much everything’s for sale. Come on. I always look at this. I don’t care if it’s your childhood home and you just inherited and remodeled it, you probably have a make me move number. It might be a big number, but we all have a number, like, “You know what? If somebody paid me this, I’d move and start over.”

Steven Jack Butala:
They got excited, the person who did the neutral mailer got real excited. He’s got 10 messages waiting from their answering service or however it is and then message by message and call by call, that person got discouraged. “Oh, really, Mr. Smith? You want to sell your land? Well, tell me a little bit about it,” an hour goes by, and, “What’s your price?” “Oh, I’d love to sell that for $13.2 million,” when you think it’s worth about 13 grand. That’s an hour and a half wasted. Next call. The same thing happens. “Oh, no, you know what? I’m going to actually do what my instructor said. I’m going to make the call smaller and get to the price earlier in the conversation.” What ends up … you just end up being disappointed earlier in the call. Correct me if I’m wrong on any of this.

Jill K DeWit:
No, you’re good. Oh, again, I’m not correcting you today. You know what? This is your get out of jail free card today. You should. Save it up, by the way. You should just drop little nuggets in throughout the show about, “You know what? I’m not liking your hair color lately,” and I’ll say, “Okay.”

Steven Jack Butala:
Literally. This is a strange self-manifestation here. I really just looked at this Far Side comic on Facebook because I was looking for some stuff and it was two married people staring into the camera just like you’re looking at right now. He turns to you and says, “I’ve spent 19 years with you listening to you correct me and have comments about everything that I say,” and she said, “20 years.”

Jill K DeWit:
That’s cute. That’s good. I like that. Good.

Steven Jack Butala:
Silence.

Jill K DeWit:
Number one … Can I recap?

Steven Jack Butala:
Sure.

Jill K DeWit:
Number one, it’s not going to be perfect. You have to cut yourself off. You have to just get it out there and know you’re going to adjust it. Two, volume. That’s one of the things we talk about often within our community is what solves all these problems? More mail. Then, three, perfect pricing is all wasted if you don’t have somebody answering your phone and the right person answering the phone.

Steven Jack Butala:
Number four is get professional help. It’s something that comes up in our personal lives that Jill says to me all the time, “You need professional help.”

Jill K DeWit:
Thanks.

Steven Jack Butala:
Sometimes, she’s right. Sometimes, she’s wrong.

Jill K DeWit:
It’s not about that. You’re saving that one up.

Steven Jack Butala:
All kidding aside … Well, it’s appropriate now.

Jill K DeWit:
Thanks.

Steven Jack Butala:
All kidding aside, that’s why you joined Land Academy, so you have a bunch of peers that are going to say, “Yeah, I’m not sure that this is the best way … I don’t think you priced this right,” or justify why you’re sending a mailer to central Vermont, let’s say. “Show me the numbers, show me the data and how you got to this point,” because there’s no guessing here. That 10-point plan that I was telling you about addresses all these issues. We don’t guess. The data tells us where to send land and the data tells us how much to send it out for, how to price it. We don’t guess. Almost all cases, you should be able to back up and justify if another set of eyes … Jill and I do this to each other all the time in a really healthy way. “Will you please take a look at this before I send it out?” Always another set of eyes in a big … and it might be that you chose the wrong place to send out mail, to which I would say, “All right, the next time you do this, ask for help earlier.”

Jill K DeWit:
Remember I was just saying about … We had a super cool couple. They finished Career Path and they joined Land Academy Pro. They were going off on a tangent and they were struggling, so they had a private consulting session, which we do. They were at the level of Pro where that’s included. They had a private consulting session where the outcome was, “Let’s look at how you’re picking the areas.” They pivoted and picked a different area and now all of a sudden, floodgates. That’s all it took. Sometimes, it’s that kind of professional help, too. It’s not just, “My pricing is off,” It might be, “I’m having trouble figuring out how to troll, how to pick these areas,” just that part. “I got the pricing down, but I’m not picking the really best areas yet.” All of that, we can help you with no matter what.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yep. Number five, none of this is going to happen unless you have a delivery schedule, unless you break out the components of doing this mailer. You can send your mailer out through Offers 2 Owners, which I highly recommend if you’re brand-new or if you’re at our level. It seems to be those two types of people where [inaudible 00:26:35] … that just don’t want to do it. I don’t want to do a mailer anymore. All the heavy lifting. I price every single one of our mailers personally, but I picked the area, I test it, test it, test it, triple, quadruple test it to make sure it works for us, then I send it to Offers 2 Owners through this product we have called Concierge Data, they do it, they do the mailer and they send it back to me for pricing. That’s exactly what I would recommend. None of that, and I mean none of that, would get done or does not get done, in my case, unless it’s in a calendar, each one of those steps.

Jill K DeWit:
Totally.

Steven Jack Butala:
You just have to stay on track with the delivery schedule. I’ve never known anybody who’s really accomplished [inaudible 00:27:16] … I’ve never talked to anybody who sat around and said, “I’ve accomplished just about everything I wanted to in my life, but I just got up and did whatever I wanted.”

Jill K DeWit:
Will you repeat that? You never [inaudible 00:27:28]-

Steven Jack Butala:
If you’re successful, it’s because you have a schedule.

Jill K DeWit:
… Thank you.

Steven Jack Butala:
You had a concept of what’s possible in your mind and you had … for us, it’s Microsoft 365, and a calendar system that everybody can see and they know [inaudible 00:27:44] … The people that work for you need to know what you expect in a calendar, not by talking. You can’t talk to that many people. You have to have a delivery schedule that’s implemented and everybody that knows what you’re doing. Can you imagine if I did a 40,000-unit mailer, Jill didn’t know when it was going out and had no idea where I was sending it? Could she get through it?

Jill K DeWit:
Not that that’s happened.

Steven Jack Butala:
Could she get through it? Yeah. But that’s not good.

Jill K DeWit:
It’s helpful to be prepared, that’s true, because I’ll be prepared for it. When I know the area, what’s coming, I’ll start working on all the next steps. I’ll have everything else lined up so I’m ready to go when those deals come in.

Steven Jack Butala:
Here’s my question to you, Jill: what do you think I missed? Are there more than five things about really pricing a mailer or doing a successful mailer?

Jill K DeWit:
No. These are the pro tips. This is the stuff that you need to know past the basics. This is like, “Okay, what do we talk about? More mail.” This is stuff that we talk about even with our Career Path alumni calls and things, too. How much are you guys sending? What are you finding? What nuances? Whatever. What’s your schedule? A lot of it’s schedule. That, honestly, I think number five, I’m glad you saved that for the last, is the hardest thing no matter what level anyone is at. I know that people leave … they leave Career Path and they’re fired up, ready to go, then they do it, do it, “Uh-Oh, running out of deals,” and then they get back on. You can’t do that. That’s where … if you send out a mailer, answer the calls, buy the property, sell the property and then start up all the way fresh, that’s not going to work. It’s going to go … You need to be constant momentum and always have things going through the system. That’s what we do and that’s how you sleep really well at night.

Steven Jack Butala:
It’s great that you brought this up. During Career Path, which is … it’s eight weeks. It’s every Wednesday, usually. Sometimes, it’s on a different day, depending on how Jill feels when she schedules it. The Wednesday morning is office hours, so it’s two hours of talking about deals with the whole group, just whatever you want to talk about, pricing, whatever. Then, there’s a guided module that we take a little break and, for approximately two hours after that, every week for eight weeks. The eighth module is you’re supposed to fly out of the nest kind of thing.
I don’t mean that … most of the people that take … it’s called Career Path for a reason: you want to make this your career. Most of the people have already done mailers, they’ve proven the concept to themselves pretty dramatically and they’re making some money, but they want to times X it, times 10 it or add zeroes, as Jill puts it. These aren’t new people, but something happens at the end of the eighth week where people just don’t want it to end. It’s for what you’re saying.

Jill K DeWit:
Oh, I know.

Steven Jack Butala:
They want … it’s like, “Well, wait a minute, wait a minute. In module two, we talked about this, this and this.” I’m like, “Yeah, maybe we should have talked about it in that module, too.”

Jill K DeWit:
You need to do it. Now, you need to take action.

Steven Jack Butala:
Right.

Jill K DeWit:
That’s the whole thing.

Steven Jack Butala:
I don’t bring this up to criticize anyone, I bring it up because it’s the hardest part.

Jill K DeWit:
It’s going off on your own.

Steven Jack Butala:
You’ve got to stick to the schedule.

Jill K DeWit:
True.

Steven Jack Butala:
You have to create the schedule. As an entrepreneur, you’re stick to the schedule, create it and implement it, then deal with the outcomes. I would say the vast majority of people never create the schedule in the first place. You’re already ahead. Create it, stick to it and then deal with what’s going to happen. Those are all built into these five points.

Jill K DeWit:
Exactly. I think you covered it great. I’m trying to think if I … I don’t really have any questions without getting the nitty-gritty, which I’m sure we’ve done it a lot and we can do it again. We’ll do more about that. This is a good point to bring this up, too: if you have some comments and you want to know more, like, “Can we do a deep dive again into something?” Hey, go on our where you’re [inaudible 00:31:43] … if you’re watching this on YouTube, put it in the comments or send us a note. We are happy to talk even more about individual pieces of this, maybe how we do it, how we stay on track, what does your calendar look like? Whatever it is, we can do that.

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

Jill K DeWit:
I-

Steven Jack Butala:
What’s going on with Land Gals, let’s say?

Jill K DeWit:
… Oh. Well, last week’s episode, 2,001, was Samantha Lathus and I talking about some stuff about the Land Gals and we’re working on … well, I can’t divulge a whole lot, but here’s what I can say. We’ve got some good stuff coming that we’re going to release here in the next couple months, weeks/months. They’re going to be not only Land Academy … let’s just say a level between the self-study and our Career Path is coming in the middle there because you’ve been asking for it and I think we have a solution for you. That’s coming up. Maybe some additional coaching opportunities, some one-on-one stuff. It’s going to be pretty darn cool. That’s what we’re working on. Then, for the Land Gals, some whole different things that we’ve got and I’m really excited about that. Then, we’ll have Career Path coming in the fall.
You know what? I guess my inspirational thing is right now … I just want to talk about staying on track through the summer. Here’s what’s going on in our world. It’s the end of April. You know us. Well, if you don’t know us, you do now. We’re getting antsy. We are in Arizona now. It’s our main place for the year, but anybody who knows Arizona knows you don’t want to be here in June, July, August, you just want … We take our sweet RV and we hit the road, like we’ve done for the last two or so years. You will see us doing the next couple shows … in a couple weeks, we’ll be showing up on the road. We’re planning that. It’s really easy to, “Hey, kids are out of school, we’re on summer break, all these vacations,” it’s very easy to do that with your land business. Sure. You’re just like, “Eh, take a break.” Well, guess what happens? Your bank balance will take a break, too. Seriously.

Steven Jack Butala:
Oh, jeez. You’re right.

Jill K DeWit:
What’s really interesting is what we’ve been doing is what I hope you’re doing or you should be doing: stocking up, man. It’s still April. It’s not late. Buy, buy, buy. That’s one of the things Samantha and I talked about last week was she’s like, “We’re low on inventory. I’m selling out.” I’m like, “Every year, it’s a repeat thing.” We’ve been watching and following trends, seasonality and things like that. Those of us who are in this, in Land Academy, know stock up when you can because come with the nice weather, people want to be out and buy their own property to camp on, fish on and build or whatever, and they can get to it, by the way, in the pretty times of year. You want to have a lot of property available to sell for those people.
It’s not late. You should be stocking up and you need to make sure whatever it is … this really ties back to your schedule. It’s not just motivated, it’s just stick to your schedule and make it easy on yourself. If you need to bring in some help, bring in some help to do your schedule. What if you do your own mailers throughout the year but summertime, your way of taking a break is, “I’m going to use Concierge Data. I’m not going to do my own [inaudible 00:35:21] … ” That’s a huge break. If you do stuff like that-

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s what I do.

Jill K DeWit:
… you could be brand-new to Land Academy, have a 10-hour work week, I’m not kidding, and do everything you need to do by using Concierge Data, have PATLive or somebody like that answering your phones and all you’re doing is the front-end stuff. Two hours a day, five days a week, you could get this done. Then, you probably have someone helping you close the deals like a transaction coordinator, like I do. So what? You bring in some help, like I said, and that’s how you take a break in the summer and then not lose any momentum. That’s my inspiration. I want you to think about doing that and what will probably happen if this goes like I think. Come fall, you’re going to go, “Why would I change this then? I don’t have to go back to my 40-hour week. I could stay at my 10-hour week.” You’re doing math.

Steven Jack Butala:
Well, my inspirational talk is very similar to yours.

Jill K DeWit:
Well, let’s pivot to you. What do you want to share with us right now?

Steven Jack Butala:
What I want to share is that we are coming into one of the … this has happened three times in my life, this will be the fourth, my professional life. We’re coming into the fourth real estate recession of my professional life and I can tell you they’re all very similar. What’s going to happen in this recession is the same thing that happened in the last three. The only variable is how long will it last and how deep will it go? Your response to both of those things should be almost the same.
If you’re concerned about your schedule, it’s hard to do and … take a yellow piece of paper, a yellow pad of paper. There’s 12 months in a year. There’s I don’t know how many months left in this … I think eight months left in this year. Take a look at what you want to accomplish in eight months, divide it all up by eight, or 12, or however you look at it. If you believe it takes 10,000 units to buy a piece of property that you want, make sure you send out 8,000 to 10,000 or whatever those numbers are a month. Make sure you’re sending it in places where you know can make whatever number amount of money that you want at the end of the year. If it’s 100,000, 200,000, divide that by the number of months and that tells you how much mail you need to send. Do your data on every Monday, your deadlines on the next Monday to get it to Offers 2 Owners, to get it in the mail or whatever those little steps are. It’s not hard. All it is just sitting [inaudible 00:37:53] … you are 15 minutes away from planning out the rest of the year when it comes to what we’re talking about here. You know what’s hard in life? Not this. What’s hard in life is-

Jill K DeWit:
I’m like, “Uh-oh.”

Steven Jack Butala:
… raising children and paying a mortgage.

Jill K DeWit:
Working with your spouse.

Steven Jack Butala:
Working with your spouse, living with your spouse, at times, having a podcast with your spouse and making up for an-

Jill K DeWit:
[inaudible 00:38:19] with your spouse.

Steven Jack Butala:
… argument right on camera with your spouse.

Jill K DeWit:
Exactly. Sharing a bathroom with your spouse … let’s see, where should we go?

Steven Jack Butala:
Keep going.

Jill K DeWit:
[inaudible 00:38:30]

Steven Jack Butala:
Doing this mailer, organizing your professional life and being an entrepreneur for me has always been the easiest part of my life.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah.

Steven Jack Butala:
Join us next [inaudible 00:38:41]

Jill K DeWit:
Wait, wait, wait, time out. What’s the moral of this? Is there a silver lining at all?

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, doing a mailer … this is not hard. You just have to be organized. I know new things can be [inaudible 00:38:53] … I just dusted off an old drum set that I’ve been meaning to get back to more for exercise reasons than actually learning to be a great drummer, because that ship sailed. I know that’s not going to happen.

Jill K DeWit:
Oh, come on.

Steven Jack Butala:
But it’s still … I have to relearn everything because it’s been so long and I literally just before the show did all that. If it’s new or if you’re bringing it back into your life, it is a little intimidating. I’m a little intimidated by the whole thing. It’ll going to take some saddle time, the right attitude and a schedule and, within a week, I’ll be back into it, probably better than I was before.

Jill K DeWit:
You got this and you got this.

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

Both:
We are Jack and Jill.

Steven Jack Butala:
Information.

Jill K DeWit:
And inspiration.

Steven Jack Butala:
To buy undervalued property.