Transcript:

Steven Jack Butala:
I’m Steven Jack Butala.

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

Steven Jack Butala:
This is episode number 2,004, and today Jill and I are talking about the five most-asked questions by new Land-Academy members.

Jill K DeWit:
Is this your version, my version, or the team put them up? I’m just curious.

Steven Jack Butala:
What we’ll do is reread-

Jill K DeWit:
I’ve got different questions like, “Are you guys married?” That’s what I’ve just got to start with. This is why I’m asking.

Steven Jack Butala:
How do you answer that?

Jill K DeWit:
See, this is why I want to know. Let me tell you my top-five questions, and then you tell me yours.

Steven Jack Butala:
All right. Go ahead. We’ll get to that, we will. Jill and I asked our staff to answer these questions and we’ll be serious about it in a second, but I’d like to know your five.

Jill K DeWit:
Okay. “Are you guys married? Where the heck do you live? What do you mean you don’t go see your property?”

Steven Jack Butala:
This is pretty accurate.

Jill K DeWit:
You like this? Exactly. “You made how much last year?”

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah. Is this for real?

Jill K DeWit:
And, “Is this for real?” There we go, that’s my five. What are your five?

Steven Jack Butala:
Jeez, my five are, “Is this for real?” Is number one. “What is all this? Can you please just tell me, let’s cut to all the stuff. Stop horsing around on the show. What’s the deal? Can you really buy land and resell it for more?”

Jill K DeWit:
That’s your number one.

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s at a cocktail party or from people that have been in the real-estate industry forever. I don’t have five of them.

Jill K DeWit:
Oh, that was it.

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s the main one like, “What’s the deal? Is this for real?”

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah, it’s so funny. From that cocktail party, it quickly goes to two things. It splits into, “Well, can I just give you some money?” “Yeah, thanks. No, I don’t need that.” Or, “Well, it’s obviously easy if you idiots can do it.”

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah. I mean, here’s a great example. Jill and I, we’re doing our estate. We’re finishing our estate planning, we’re amending it, let’s say, and we met with the lawyer that does it. He’s like, “I looked you guys up before you got here, and I love land.” This is probably a 70-plus-year-old guy who’s probably got thousands and thousands of estates under his belt, and all he wants to do is talk about land. He doesn’t care about our estate.

Jill K DeWit:
Exactly. Yeah, it’s almost like it’s like, “Eyes up here.”

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s a regular-

Jill K DeWit:
“Eyes off the plat map. My eyes are up here.” That’s a new thing. That’s good. I’m more than just a plat map.

Steven Jack Butala:
I attribute that too and I was thinking about it. We are somewhat guilty of, Jill, making this sound easy.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah, it’s true. It happens all the time.

Steven Jack Butala:
You know what? It is easy for us and here’s why. This is a little off-topic, because Jill’s amazing on the phone. Doing a mailer and pricing a mailer is like drinking a glass of water for me. That didn’t happen the first time. I mean, I can’t describe to you the number of mistakes I made.
I don’t know about you, but the number of mistakes I made from the data perspective on my side of the sheet to get us to where we are now doing mailers, we don’t hold anything back. I tell you exactly how I do a mailer. That’s exactly what we instruct, but it doesn’t take long for me to do a 150,000-unit mailer. I think that, what did you say recently, if you have the right mindset and you kick some serious butt, you’re going to do great at this.
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:
Okay. Oh, an LA-Pro member wrote this. Cool. M. “Hi, Jack. This is a note.” I was wondering where this person was at, because I’m going to have this person on a podcast.

Steven Jack Butala:
I know.

Jill K DeWit:
Okay, “This is a note to say thank you at my one-year mark in Land Academy. Below are my numbers.” Did they email this to you?

Steven Jack Butala:
Mm-hmm. She sent it to me directly because…

Jill K DeWit:
Oh, will you share it with me too, please?

Steven Jack Butala:
Sure. Sure.

Jill K DeWit:
Okay, good.

Steven Jack Butala:
Grab the mouse, Jill.

Jill K DeWit:
Okay. “Below are my numbers. I’m so grateful that all I’ve learned from you. Jill, Carl and Sam are our ambassadors. I joined Land Academy in early April, 2023 and then did Career Path 6. I mailed 10,000 units right before Career Path 6 started. 2023, April 1 to December 31, I mailed 94,896 letters. In 2023 I averaged 10,500 mailers a month, that’s what that came to. 2024 so far I have mailed 49,371 letters, so there I’ve averaged 9,900 mailers a month.”

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s four. We’re at four months into ’24.

Jill K DeWit:
Mm-hmm. “Then from all total like May 2023 to end of April 2024, revenue is $567,623. That was first year at Land Academy made half a million dollars, period.”

Steven Jack Butala:
When she says, “Revenue.” She means purchase price.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah. Profit on the parcels is $268,046. This does not take into account all of the expenses.

Steven Jack Butala:
This is buy side, sell side?

Jill K DeWit:
“Since January 1st, 2024, my revenue has been 250,761.61.” She’s this good. “December through mid-March, I hit a really dry spell in getting properties into escrow. Since starting Land Academy, average profit per property average has been $24,337. When I first started, I bought five properties that were smaller, lower value that I would definitely walk from now. I also had four sales that had 49 to $50,000 profit each suite onward.” What a great thing.

Steven Jack Butala:
I’m going to bring up, I’m going to read between the lines and the numbers here and translate what I read out of this. Then, can you comment on the social piece, which is probably more important. She doubled her money and we’ve been saying this forever, buy For 60, sell for 120. Buy for 30, sell for 60.
That’s what Jill and I have attempted to do our entire career until about 18 to 24 months ago, where now we’re pretty much requiring that we make a 100 grand per deal, cash. It may or may not be twice the profit, but we want to make more per deal and do less deals, which we’ve been doing.
She has increased. She did almost a 100,000 mailers in calendar ’23, which costs about $60,000. There’s an upfront cost to this, that I don’t think people fully digest before getting into it. She’s not afraid of that. She has other businesses.
We know this person extremely well. She’s in a weekly meeting with us for LA-Pro members. Four months ended in ’24. She sent out 50,000 mailers so far. She’s way ahead. She’s increased the number of mailers that she’s sending out over last year. She’s doing everything right numbers-wise. She’s averaging 10,000 mailers a month. I think that’s a little light. I would take that to 15,000.

Jill K DeWit:
If she can handle it.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, easily. And so, what she’s doing is looking at the numbers, part of this, increasing everything constantly, and then her dry spell did not knock her off the rails. If I had a nickel for every dry spell we’ve had.

Jill K DeWit:
I agree.

Steven Jack Butala:
Dry spells don’t-

Jill K DeWit:
It’s not real thing.

Steven Jack Butala:
…it doesn’t knock me off the rails, ever. I think it’s funny. I really do actually think it’s humorous when stuff happens.

Jill K DeWit:
What’s funny is too, when she says, “Dry spell.” That means I only did 6 deals instead of 10 this month or something like that, when I thought I was going to do 12. Everybody’s version of that is different. It’s not like everything’s shut down for three months, so yeah.

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s the numbers part of it, and she’s obviously got it licked and she’s micromanaging it. Now, what’s the magic sauce with her?

Jill K DeWit:
The magic sauce with her is what I’m going to talk about actually next week on my lady’s call. This ties right in. You have to go with this like a crazy person, put your head down. What’s interesting is about this individual, she came to us from another environment where she was wildly successful but they weren’t yielding the profits. It was really, really low numbers and stuff.
I’m so happy that she found us and she’s here and she’s a really good, successful member in LA Pro, so she uses our staff. My transaction coordinator is her transaction coordinator, and I know that she loves that, and that’s really helped taken a lot off her plate too.

Steven Jack Butala:
That wasn’t always the case. She did everything by herself. She’s a great addition to this whole operation and she’s really vocal. She’s constantly sharing positives and negatives with us within the group.

Jill K DeWit:
You know what else this is a thing about? This is a perfect example of my push, and to let you guys know, about this is one of the many successful Land-Academy ladies in our community and they are killing it. I can’t wait for something coming that will help inspire and push forward even more-

Steven Jack Butala:
What’s coming, Jill?

Jill K DeWit:
…females. I’m saving it. Just give it a minute. It’s coming.

Steven Jack Butala:
How many other female land-investing groups are there out there?

Jill K DeWit:
Let me think. Give me a minute, I’m going to think a little more. I can’t think of any.

Steven Jack Butala:
There’s zero.

Jill K DeWit:
There you go.

Steven Jack Butala:
Today’s topic, the five most asked questions by new Land-Academy members. All right, I took notes. These are the direct five and we’ll talk about it. This is what our intake people, when people call or send an email asking us about, “What, is this for real?” These are the five biggest questions and not in necessarily any order that we get. Number one, “How do I price a mailer?” If I had a nickel. Number two-

Jill K DeWit:
Well, come to Land Academy, that’s what we teach you. Next.

Steven Jack Butala:
Number two, “How many mailers does it take to get a purchase agreement?” Number three, “Is there an orientation group coming up?” Number four, “How long does it take to get a purchase agreement?” That’s twice now. Number five, “Can my partner share my membership?”
Number one, “How do I price a mailer?” Well, I’ll happily answer that in about 30 seconds. Pricing a mailer is what is about 30% of what you need to be learning before you do this successfully. The other 70% lies in what Jill does. There’s no such thing as a perfectly-priced mailer, it just doesn’t exist. Pricing a mailer that’s the most amazingly-priced mailer that could ever happen, will do you absolutely no good if you’re not taking the calls. You send a mailer out and receiving the calls from the potential sellers and converting them into real-estate deals, but nobody asks that.
I have to take some personal responsibility, but here’s a question that I think you should call our people and ask them. “How do I take a call from somebody, that wants to sell their real estate and convert it into a real-estate deal?”

Jill K DeWit:
That’s Land Academy.

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s not on the list.

Jill K DeWit:
I know.

Steven Jack Butala:
Jill has all the answers to this stuff.

Jill K DeWit:
Exactly. You tell me what you want me to share or not share here.

Steven Jack Butala:
Here’s what I’m going to extract from these five questions. “How do I price a mailer? How many mailers do I get? How many mailers does it take to get a purchase agreement? Is there an orientation group, and can I share it with my partner?”

Jill K DeWit:
See, some of these are for people coming into Land Academy, and some of these are questions that clearly looks like they may be in Land Academy. Do you want me to one by one, knock these out?

Steven Jack Butala:
Well, just one second. When I read between the lines, what I hear is the profile of a potential member that’s asking these questions is I want to do it fast, I want to do a great mailer, and I want to collect some money. That’s a day-trader mentality. I want to beat the system. I want to buy the cheapest stuff that I can, sell it as fast as I can, and enjoy the money, and enjoy the profit and that’s just not what this is.
It’s not fast and easy. It’s what M, in the question earlier, that’s how you do this. It’s methodical. There’s several parts to it, and you have to answer the phone and you have to have a dynamic personality that just doesn’t know when to quit. Yeah, go ahead.

Jill K DeWit:
Okay, I will go through them. This is my version. Well, how do I price them? We covered that. This is all stuff. Well, let me first pause and notate that these are very different questions than we used to get when we launched Land Academy in 2015. Isn’t that funny? When we launched Land Academy back in 2015, nine years ago, it was like, “Who the heck are you guys? What are you talking about? How can you possibly make money on land and you’re not doing anything to it, and you must be subdividing or doing something like that.” It was all kinds of those.

Steven Jack Butala:
It’s like, what’s the trick?

Jill K DeWit:
It was those questions. It was so funny and they’re like, “What’s direct mail?” All kinds of things like that. It was so funny. I just think this is really cool that the word’s gotten out. If you’re here and you’ve been listening to us for a while, I mean, you know. You understand. You get it. Now it’s more like some of the nuances that are coming up and all the things that we talk about, you need to know that.
Coming to Land Academy, you’re going to be so coached and so taught and so comfortable. Hey, we have nine years of helping people now, not 90 months, whatever it was. Because even before we launched Land Academy, we were helping people along the way. We talked about that before. Just helping our peers, helping our customers, helping other wholesalers because it was like, I’m happy to share. There’s enough property to go around. You’re obviously mailing whatever region in the country and I’m in this region of the country. Why would I not share with you? There’s no reason not to, kind of thing.
That’s the big-picture thing. I guess, for me that’s the takeaway here. But to blip through these, if these are on your mind, I’m happy to help. And so, pricing mailer, we got that. I mean, like Jack just said, “That’s one of the biggest components to Land Academy.” How many millers does it take to get a purchase agreement? Well, you know what? For me, not as many as someone brand new, I’ll be honest with you. For me, not as many as someone that cannot speak on the phone and they’re a Debbie Downer kind of thing.
That’s again, things that we help you with in Land Academy. I have solutions for all these, but is there a secret sauce to that? Yeah, kind of is. There’s depending where you’re mailing, depending how you’re pricing, depending even on the property type, there’s a lot of nuances to this. All things we discuss heavily, like to the point of nausea in Land Academy, I promise.
Even in our Discord forum, you could come in right now to Discord and really talk about, you could probably search for a certain region or property type and acreage even. I bet you’re going to find someone that’s already had a discussion on this and you’re going to go like, “Ding, ding, now I know what to prepare myself as I’m doing this mailer right now today.”

Steven Jack Butala:
Wait, let’s start. How many mailers does it take to get to a PA?

Jill K DeWit:
Land, [inaudible 00:16:41], houses.

Steven Jack Butala:
I would not ask that question. I would say, “What do I have to do to make sure that my mailer yields purchase agreements?” Because you’re not going to do a mailer. You’re not going to sign up for Land Academy, learn how to do all this and learn how to price a mailer, send the mail out and then look at your watch. That’s not what you do.
All the calls, you’re going to take the calls and you’re going to convert. If you’re amazing like Jill is, your conversion rate from mailer to purchase agreement, and that’s the real juice of this. Converting that when the mailer goes out and converting it to deals, whatever that looks like for you. We know what it looks like for us. Your mailer does not yield a purchase agreement, you do.

Jill K DeWit:
I just had this conversation. We have a couple of new people on our staff, and I was talking to a new person, helping out with people wanting to join Land Academy and ask questions. I said, “Look everyone, when you’re talking to people and they’re asking some of these questions about how we do this,” and then also within Land Academy I share this, “I fully believe every darn, single person that is picking up the phone to call you wants to do business with you, hands down.”
You know what? How many mailers does it take to get a purchase agreement? I’m going to say one. You think I’m kidding? I’m going to say one because I won’t let them off the phone. If we’re not on the same page, we’re going to figure out if we can get on the same page. One of us doesn’t budge, if the only reason that’s what happened, so it takes me one mailer to get a purchase agreement.
You know what? I mean, that’s the thing. That’s the reality. Maybe it’s not their price or not my price, but I can get a purchase agreement. I can say, “Cross it off, write whatever number makes sense to you and send it to me, and I’ll see if I can make that work.”

Steven Jack Butala:
One.

Jill K DeWit:
One. That’s good. That’s going to be funny.

Steven Jack Butala:
We’re going to get 600 emails on this.

Jill K DeWit:
I know. They’re going to be like, “What?” That’s it. This is what I coached you and teach too, and I want to get you there or as close as I can to get you there.

Steven Jack Butala:
Drew brings up 2014 for a really good reason because back then… Or ’15, I guess, when we started instructing, when Land Academy, when we released it. There was very few people teaching this and there was nobody teaching this on the internet correctly. The nature of these questions have changed so much from what Jill described. Because there’s a lot of fly-by-night groups out there teaching about how to buy and sell land, largely because there’s other groups preaching this. “You’ve got to start an education company. You’ve got to start a membership company.”
And so, there are people that join our group, take our information and regurgitate it and then expect results. And so, the root of these questions is the reading between the lines. The core of it is, I’ve got to do these five things and I’m going to make a bunch of money. I’ve got to do a mailer, I’ve got to price it right. I’m going to get some purchase agreements and I’m going to buy it and then resell it and make money. That’s it. That’s just not this.

Jill K DeWit:
Well, I mean loosely those are the steps, but there’s 80 other steps of going in there.

Steven Jack Butala:
There’s an incredible amount of dynamic personality in between this that’s required.

Jill K DeWit:
If you don’t have it, we’ll help you with that. You can get it. All right, let’s move on. “Is there an orientation group coming up?” You know what’s interesting about this? I’m pivoting. I’ll tell you right now, I’m going to pivot.
We have a really good onboarding system and really good help and a really good support system, amazing within Land Academy. Showing you what to do and videos where you can step by step watch here, click here kind of stuff. I’m pivoting this to personal coaching because everyone’s asking for it.

Steven Jack Butala:
I agree. I’m glad to hear that.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah. I’m just waiting for our new team to tell me when I can launch it. They’re like, “Not yet. Not yet. I’m not ready.” we’re going to get even better and it’s optional. If you want personal coaching, it’s there for you. If you don’t, you don’t, but so many people have asked for it, so we’re going to make that happen.
“How long does it take to get a PA?” Well, you know what? It could be hours. It could be minutes. I’ve been on the phone with people. They’re like, “What are you talking about, purchase agreement? What is this whole question about?” We sent out the mail and the seller calls me, the owner. They don’t know they’re a seller yet. The property owner calls me. We have a wonderful conversation. We agree on a price and maybe before I hang up, they sign it and scan it while we’re on the phone and they send it to me.

Steven Jack Butala:
Or take a picture.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. It pops up on my cell phone and I say, “Great, I’m opening escrow right now. Susie at ABC Title will be calling you tomorrow morning.” “Great, thanks Jill.” It could be like that. Is it always like that? No, but it could be like that. You know what, and then honestly I think it should be like that.
This is part of my things that I’m talking about a lot this week with the land ladies and other things. We have the advanced call next week too, that I want to talk about. I’m seeing too many people take their time and get to it when they can. You know what? You’re not going to get a deal done if that’s your kind of term.

Steven Jack Butala:
You’re not going to get anything done in life if you do that.

Jill K DeWit:
You need to hang up the phone, have a next step with that person. How long is it to get a purchase agreement? Minutes and then it should be another maybe hour, if you don’t have a title company lined up, that you’ve got it over to them and the process has started.

Steven Jack Butala:
Here’s what we’re talking about, both of us. Here’s an actual example. The phone rings. “Ring. Ring.” You are on the other end, answer the phone. This-

Jill K DeWit:
I’m ready to role play. You do, “Ring. Ring.” I just-

Steven Jack Butala:
I’m going to do the wrong way, you do the right way.

Jill K DeWit:
I answer.

Steven Jack Butala:
Here’s how a data person would answer the phone. “Ring. Ring.” “Hello?” “I’m sorry, is somebody there?” “Yeah.” “I think you sent me a letter because you want to buy my property and you have a [inaudible 00:22:52].” “Yeah.” Silence. Silence. Silence.

Jill K DeWit:
Paper’s moving.

Steven Jack Butala:
“Well, do you want to buy it?” “Maybe. What does it say? How much did I offer?” You’re never going to get a real-estate deal done ever in your life if you answer the phone that way. In fact, you’re probably not going to get anything you want in life if you have that personality and talk like that. Hold on a second.

Jill K DeWit:
I have a whole thing now.

Steven Jack Butala:
All right, go ahead. Yours is going to be more positive than mine.

Jill K DeWit:
Turn that into a marriage proposal. I want to hear how does this individual function in life?

Steven Jack Butala:
I pictured myself getting married, not to you. This is you sitting at Applebee’s with a ring in your pocket. I pictured marrying a girl.

Jill K DeWit:
You just bought her the Oreo-cookie thing.

Steven Jack Butala:
It’s not what I want as much as I thought, but I pictured a girl that looks a lot different than you. But what do you say, how about will you marry me?

Jill K DeWit:
Is that what this is? You know what? This is your version of that. Well, I’m 30. Number four on my list of things to do in life is get married, and then below that is start a family. I guess I’m on number four-

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s a girl’s dream.

Jill K DeWit:
…and you’re sitting there, so you’re up, baby.

Steven Jack Butala:
I asked three girls earlier this week and they all said, “No.” So you’re my fourth choice.

Jill K DeWit:
What do you say? Every woman’s dream. Oh, and by the way, it’s my mom’s ring or my grandma’s ring. Yeah, I didn’t do anything.

Steven Jack Butala:
How do you answer the phone?

Jill K DeWit:
My mom made me do this because I’m 30. Maybe I’m 40.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, 40. Boys don’t have a 30 thing.

Jill K DeWit:
Okay, now 30. You’re 40, mom’s really getting anxious now.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, she wants me to move out.

Jill K DeWit:
That’s the best.

Steven Jack Butala:
I tell you what-

Jill K DeWit:
That’s so good.

Steven Jack Butala:
…we joke about this. Both of our sons are in somewhat committed relationships, and I swear, they went from boys to men about two weeks after they met these girls. Will they end with these girls? Probably not, but it doesn’t matter, they’re just better. They’re men.

Jill K DeWit:
The girls are making them better men. They’re on their own, they’re self-sufficient. It’s great. One’s 25 and one’s 20. It’s awesome. Okay. Back to, do you want me to do a role play the right way or we got that covered?

Steven Jack Butala:
Sure. Ring. Ring.

Jill K DeWit:
Okay. This is Jill.

Steven Jack Butala:
Hi. I think you sent me a letter to purchase one of my properties in Apache County?

Jill K DeWit:
I did. Well, what can you tell me about it?

Steven Jack Butala:
I inherited it from my father and I think he inherited it. I’m not sure how he got it. Obviously, we’re not going to use it, but the offer that you sent, I do want to sell it but the offer that you sent, it’s not going to work for us.

Jill K DeWit:
All right, well let me look it up. Do you have some of the information on it? Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah, blah.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, it’s AB and X, Y, Z.

Jill K DeWit:
Exactly. All right, so here I’m looking at it right now. I have a question about access. I can’t tell if the road’s on it. Have you ever been there?

Steven Jack Butala:
No. No. I don’t think my dad was ever there.

Jill K DeWit:
Okay. Tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to put some time into this and I want to look this up and see what we can do here. Now given what you know about me, I’m a sweet… By the way, this is Jill, I’m the owner, so whatever deal you and I make, this is a deal. What’s going to be on your check?

Steven Jack Butala:
Well listen, I don’t have to sell this and I’m not interested in a low-ball offer, but we’re not going to use it.

Jill K DeWit:
I understand. All right. Well, let me just ask you this then. You got my offer and you just made it clear to me that that doesn’t work.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, $2,800 is not going to work.

Jill K DeWit:
All right. Well what is the number? Again, keeping in mind who I am and I’ve already explained how the transaction’s going to go. Blah. Blah. Blah. What is the number that is your rock bottom, hey, for this, I’m happy to walk away number and I’ll see if I can make it work. Keep in mind I’m cash, fast, blah, blah. I’m going to pay for all this stuff. Blah. Blah. Blah.

Steven Jack Butala:
How long would the whole thing take?

Jill K DeWit:
Oh my gosh, I’m doing so many deals. I shouldn’t say that. I have Suzie at ABC Title ready to go. I can get this done in 10 days.

Steven Jack Butala:
Well, what can you really pay us then?

Jill K DeWit:
I gave you a number. My number’s $2,800. What is a number that really makes sense to you and I’ll see if I can make it work.

Steven Jack Butala:
I have to check with my wife. $2,800 is not completely out of the question, if you can do it quickly, and Christmas is coming.

Jill K DeWit:
Exactly.

Steven Jack Butala:
My wife’s, by the way, has been bothering me about this for two years. I don’t think it’s the land that bothers her. I just think it’s a thing on a list of things that we should be doing at our age that we have to take off the list.

Jill K DeWit:
Oh boy, do I understand. You should see our garage. My poor husband has his own version of this going on, so I can totally relate to you, Mr. Jones. All right. I’m going to make this so easy and so painless. You know what? I’m going to go look at this $2,800. Now we’re on the same page about that number.
Give me 24 hours, I’m going to check a couple of things with the county and double-check this access and fill in the blank and I’m going to call you tomorrow. What’s the best time for you and what’s the best number for me to reach you at?

Steven Jack Butala:
I have to tell you that we get three or four of these letters every quarter, let’s say, maybe one or two a month. “You’re the only person that has ever answered the phone.”

Jill K DeWit:
That’s too bad. I understand. I’m going to do this for you and we’re going to make this easy. By the way, have you thought about what you want to do with the dough besides just get your wife off your back about it?

Steven Jack Butala:
How’s tomorrow at noon?

Jill K DeWit:
Okay. You got it. I will call you then. Thank you, Mr. Jones.

Steven Jack Butala:
Thanks very much.

Jill K DeWit:
Okay, bye.

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s how I convert a real estate deal.

Jill K DeWit:
By the way, you don’t have to talk for 20 minutes. There’s times to ask closed-ended questions because now we’re getting into sales. We need to go there. We could have a whole other podcast on this. There’s closed-ended questions that you should ask, and then there’s open-ended questions you should ask.
When you ask a few of those quick, open-ended questions about, “What do you know about the property?” Watch this flood of information. Sometimes they share information that you’re like, “I don’t think I want to share that.” I already got paid out because dad let a telephone, whatever company, put a cell tower on the back area and it’s not blocking anything, so dad already got 80 grand for it.” I’m like, “ka-ching, now I know that.” There’s lots of stuff.

Steven Jack Butala:
Here’s a world that we live in right now, according to me. Everybody has got their guard up as soon as they leave the front door. And so, whether you run into somebody when you’re running into the gas station to pay, everybody’s first reaction including that the store clerk or me even and probably you is, “Is this the person that just cut me off on the road? How am I going to be disappointed today? What’s going to go wrong?”
And so, when these people call back, they need to be disarmed. Jill completely disarmed me in that call, and within just a few minutes was starting down the path of establishing trust. Two more phone calls like that, so now I’m ready to take her phone call back because she’s not one of those people that I have to be worried about.
She’s not the person that cut me off on the way to the grocery store. She’s not the real angry store clerk. If I was a store clerk, I’d be angry too, by the way. She’s just not a bad person. Step by step by step, that 2,800 bucks that we offered, she’s going to get it for that, or maybe it’s 3,000 just to get the deal done.

Jill K DeWit:
Maybe. I’m happy with that.

Steven Jack Butala:
She disarmed the whole scenario and started down the path of trust. In two more phone calls, they’re going to be talking about grandchildren and what the weather is and the mechanics of the deal, if that. That’s how you do it, not my way.

Jill K DeWit:
The last one, ‘Can my partner share my membership?” Yeah, we have partnership opportunities. You just need to call and talk to my staff. There’s a way that we can work that out. We have husband, wife. We have siblings. We have partners in the same state, partners in different states. Whatever your situation is, we have a solution for all that. No problem.

Steven Jack Butala:
Excellent. I started down this rabbit hole then, about these five things that people ask. I asked the guy who runs our mailing company, same thing. Offers2Owners is the name of our mailing company, about what potential members ask. What are the top five questions?
Number one, “How many mailers does it take to yield a deal?” Same question. One of the same questions for Land Academy. Number two, “Is a land-investing community over-saturated?” I’ll answer that in a second. Number three, “How much money do I need to start?” Number four, “How do I pick a county to send mail?” Number five, “Do I need a membership to actually send land mailers through Offers2Owners?”

Jill K DeWit:
These are great. This is Q&A jumble today of all kinds of different things, so I love it.

Steven Jack Butala:
We’re going to be redundant here. How many mailers does it take to yield a deal? That depends on you. I’m going to give you some real numbers. When I started this, it was about 500 to 1. When we started Land Academy it was about 800 to 1, but these are deals that were with a property that was entirely and completely unusable. We didn’t have data the way that we have now. We had no mapping systems. This was before Google Earth, so we had no idea where it was and neither did the seller, by the way.
People that were getting my mailers, this is back in real early 2000s, they didn’t know where the property was. All they knew back then is that they were sick and tired of paying the real-estate taxes twice a year. Our yield was great, but the quality of properties that we were getting because we couldn’t research them, we would just buy anything. We would buy anything at all. They came back and would sign, and we would do the deal.
Then, we’d resell it and they would buy anything because they couldn’t resell it. These are not the good, old days. The good old days are right now. Everybody’s got an incredible amount of information. Everything is transparent.
There’s no more dart boards. I wonder what’s going to happen with this real estate deal? Now you know What’s going to happen. And so, those are the bottom-yield numbers right when we started. The yield for us now under our criteria, just you and I, is probably to make a 100,000 is maybe 10, 15,000 mailers. For M it was what? What did she say?

Jill K DeWit:
10 a month.

Steven Jack Butala:
10,000 a month to do a deal.

Jill K DeWit:
I think ours are lower than that, but I’ll let you go with that number.

Steven Jack Butala:
Do you know how many deals we turned down?

Jill K DeWit:
That’s the thing.

Steven Jack Butala:
How many transactions that are viable transactions?

Jill K DeWit:
I can’t accurately ask this question because I don’t buy them all that come at me. I don’t.

Steven Jack Butala:
I just talked to somebody who’s pretty active in the group and they said, “All we want to do is make $5,000 a transaction.” If that’s you and you have a personality like you just heard Jill on that theoretical phone call, you are going to kill it in this environment. You are going to knock it out of the park. If you want to make an extra $60,000 doing 10 or 12 deals a year, you’re going to smash it. Yield is all relative. It depends on your personality. It depends on your threshold.

Jill K DeWit:
If you pick a good area, by the way.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, you pick a good area, which we go through all the stuff-

Jill K DeWit:
We teach you.

Steven Jack Butala:
…and your threshold. If you want to make 5 or $10,000 more a month, you’re going to do extremely well. Notice I didn’t say how well you price your mailer because that’s going to happen anyway. For whatever reason, it has been since we started this, the number one question. It’s, I think, one of the things you should worry about the least. Is the land investing community oversaturated, Jill?

Jill K DeWit:
You know what I think? I feel bad. I think it’s thinning out a little bit. Sadly, I don’t. I know there’s a lot of people that want to be and they think they are, but they’re not sending mail.

Steven Jack Butala:
Or they’re not answering the phone.

Jill K DeWit:
That’s the bigger one.

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s what I think’s really happening.

Jill K DeWit:
Answering the phone, that’s a lot of it. We have so much property out there, I forget about it, it’s the funniest thing on the planet. I have a thing right now where this guy sent me a letter. I’m like, “You know what? He can have it.” It was one of the first people that actually followed through. By the way, ask me how many phone conversations we had.

Steven Jack Butala:
Two. How many? Zero? You haven’t even talked to this person?

Jill K DeWit:
No.

Steven Jack Butala:
Oh my God, Jill, you get a trophy for that.

Jill K DeWit:
Nope, it’s been emailed. I signed it and sent it right back and then they emailed me. They emailed me and we talked about a couple of questions. We talked about this in another podcast, so you’ve got to hear where we are right now. They emailed me stupid questions.
I lightly answered a couple and said, “Knock it off. Do your homework.” They emailed me back with some more stupid questions. I said, “You really need to knock it off and call me when you’re done because I’m not answering these stupid questions. This is your job to do this. If you want it for this price, you’re doing the homework, which that’s what I do, I’m expected. Knock it off.”
And so then they said, “We’re sending you an overnight envelope with a check in it.” Indeed. I said, “All right.” Right now I’m just waiting for the check to clear. Actually, I didn’t even tell my transaction coordinator, “Hey, their check showed up. I’m ready to send it back as soon as the check clears.” Isn’t that funny?

Steven Jack Butala:
I researched which property this is.

Jill K DeWit:
Oh, gee, I didn’t know.

Steven Jack Butala:
They’re getting a pretty good deal.

Jill K DeWit:
I know, I forgot about it. You know what? It’s too small for me anymore.

Steven Jack Butala:
I understand.

Jill K DeWit:
I feel bad.

Steven Jack Butala:
No, I’m not criticizing you at all you. You’re getting the deal done.

Jill K DeWit:
Well, just like M said before, earlier on the question, she’s like, ‘There’s some deals that now I wouldn’t even do anymore.”

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s what this is.

Jill K DeWit:
I know. That’s the thing, it’s like it’s too little money for me. Thank you, but no. Yeah, and you know what? This person is actually, I’ll be truthful too, they’re not even a member of Land Academy. I just like, “Oh, I just feel like doing a good thing. Here you go.”

Steven Jack Butala:
Is the land-investing community oversaturated? Well, let me put it to you this way. I’m going to estimate, and this directly preludes to the next question, the next five, number three. There are probably about a 1,000 people that are actively sending mail in this entire investment-land community.

Jill K DeWit:
I bet you that it’s a good number.

Steven Jack Butala:
I don’t mean Land Academy, I mean everyone that ever all-

Jill K DeWit:
Consistently.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, I don’t even think consistently. I just think there’s active people that come in and out and all of that. Maybe a 1,000. There’s probably 2 or 300 that do it real consistently like Jill and I do. There are 1.6 million licensed real-estate agents in this country waking up in the morning and running around trying to get listings on houses.
Let that sink in. Is that over-saturated? It doesn’t seem to be because every real-estate agent I talk to is either making money hand over fist or almost out of business. The land-invested community is the same way, only the pot is a lot smaller. If you have the type of personality where you would do great as a real-estate agent or if you are a real estate agent and you’re doing great, you’re going to kill it here. It’s the same thought process and it’s the same, I’ve got to get up in the morning and schedule myself and have small, little goals, so it’s all the same thing. Number three.

Jill K DeWit:
Well, I just was going to add a little something to that too. It’s sweet. I have a sweet, little, mousy girl that does my nails and she’s a real estate agent and she does this on this side. I said, “How many listings do you have right now?” She said, “Four.”

Steven Jack Butala:
Good for her.

Jill K DeWit:
Isn’t that sweet? I’m like, “Good for you.” I thought that’s-

Steven Jack Butala:
Did you asked her why they’re not sold?

Jill K DeWit:
We did. We had a long talk about it, and actually they’re doing great.

Steven Jack Butala:
This fascinates me.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah, it’s really fast.

Steven Jack Butala:
We have enough time though, huh?

Jill K DeWit:
Well, I don’t remember all the exact details on all of them. One of them, they’re just getting ready to stage it. She’s talking to the person to stage it. Yeah. She’s actually moving them through the system. She’s actually doing a good job. I don’t remember all the details, but yeah, it’s good. I’m proud of her.

Steven Jack Butala:
Number three is how much money do I need to start? This is directly, again, associated with number two. For whatever reason, and I think this happens with everything on every type of business, people think that it should cost nothing and you should reap huge rewards, and so that’s just not the case. There’s risk reward.
To me, this business is really, really low risk. If you don’t want to put any money in, you like real estate and you just want to make 2 to 3 to $5,000 a month, that’s what being a real estate agent is. Go get your license. Don’t put any money in except for your association dues or whatever that costs. Hump, hump, hump as hard as you can. Work as hard as you can get a bunch of listings like Jill’s nail tech and make some money. Make 3 to 5 to $10,000 per deal and have a great life.
That’s not what this is. It costs money to do the mail. It costs money for education, if that’s the route that you choose, but it doesn’t cost money to do a real-estate deal. That’s what partners are for, and that’s one of the huge benefits of Land Academy.
Your job at Land Academy is to find an amazing real-estate deal by doing what Jill does on the phone. If you can get a signed purchase agreement and you’ve got $13 in your checking account, you’re going to go into the Land-Academy community and find somebody who funds deals. Hopefully it’s us. We’re going to buy the deal, pay a hundred percent of it and we’re going to split it with you, some percentage, split it with you so you can get on your way. You could do 10 or 15 deals under your belt and then you just don’t need us anymore. How much money do I need to start?

Jill K DeWit:
Need our money anymore.

Steven Jack Butala:
How much money do I need to start is you need money for mail. You need money to pay your rent or your mortgage just like you do anyway, and you need money if you choose for education and data and stuff. It’s not a hard-dollar amount. I don’t know, do you ever answer this question directly?

Jill K DeWit:
Absolutely.

Steven Jack Butala:
Go ahead.

Jill K DeWit:
If you have 5 to 10 grand, you could get started, preferably 10, but where else can you do anything for 10 grand, seriously. That’s my number, the tens, because then you could afford the education. You’ve got a couple of months of membership, which is basically to get you access to data, and you can afford to send out some mail.

Steven Jack Butala:
By the way, if it costs 5 to $10,000 to start this, number two question was, “Is it saturated?” That’s the reason this isn’t saturated because it costs some money to get into it.

Jill K DeWit:
True. Oh, that’s true.

Steven Jack Butala:
The reason that the real-estate-agent environment is grossly oversaturated is because it doesn’t cost any money to really get into it. You just have to take a $300 class, pass the test and spend 2 or $3,000 in association dues, so you can get access to the MLS.

Jill K DeWit:
That’s a light-bulb moment, actually. Good. I’m glad that it costs some money to get into this because you need to be serious about it.

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s what I think.

Jill K DeWit:
It’s going to weed out a lot of people because they can’t afford to send mail. That’s fine.

Steven Jack Butala:
If you were doing 10 or 12 deals a year and you want to do 3 or 400, this is great news for you. The fact that this costs some money is keeping a lot of people out of it.

Jill K DeWit:
True. Very true.

Steven Jack Butala:
Number four, “How do I pick a county to send mail? Where should I send mail?” We spend two chapters on this and to the point, I have what’s called a red-green-yellow test. There’s a process of trolling around on the internet using Zillow and realtor.com. And then going through the red-green-yellow test I explain it in great detail.
Then in Career Path, which is our mastermind group, we do it all together. We do it to the point where everybody in the group is satisfied that they can do it on their own. Number five, “Do I need a membership to send land mailers, Jill?”

Jill K DeWit:
No, but it’s cheaper if you do.

Steven Jack Butala:
I haven’t done the math recently.

Jill K DeWit:
Well, can I go back and just cover this? This comes up a lot. Seriously, here’s the bottom line. You’re nuts if you’re going to invest a whole lot of money in mailers and you don’t know what you’re doing. I wouldn’t do that. It’s like I’m going to start fill in the blank. I can figure it out. I’m going to watch some YouTube videos. I’m going to wing it.
I don’t care what it is, I’m not even talking about what we do, don’t start anything unless you’re going to really give it a good go. Then if you’re going to give it a good go, do it right. Get some education because here what happens. You could spend, I don’t know, 5 to 10 years doing the school of hard knocks to get where we are. Or you could spend, I don’t know, 5 to 10 days and catch up by joining and watching education and going, “Wow, now I know what I’m doing.” That’s the difference, 5 to 10 days or 5 to 10 years. That’s my new slogan.

Steven Jack Butala:
Then I asked, this is an added bonus, the guy that runs Offers2Owners, our company, the mailing company. “If you’re an active member, are the questions any different?” If you’re a member of Land Academy, you’ve been around for who knows, a few months or maybe even a year, you’re about to do a mailer and here’s your five questions.
“How much does it cost?” Great question. You’ve got to be real conscious about mail costs. Number two, “What do successful investors do?” This is a question I would ask, so I’m going to translate this to this concept. I’m asking you, Jill, what are the five questions you would ask when you’re joining a new group? The first one that I would ask any new group is this exact question. “Give me the profile and give me as much detail, Jack and Jill, of the type of person who’s in the top 10% of the performers in your group.”

Jill K DeWit:
Agreed. What separates the men from the boys?

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, and do I have it? That’s really what I’m asking. What do successful investors do? Number one, they are people.

Jill K DeWit:
Well, wait a minute, are we answering the questions or you want to go through all five? Go through all five-

Steven Jack Butala:
I’ll come back to it, yeah.

Jill K DeWit:
…and then we’ll come back.

Steven Jack Butala:
Okay, good. Number three, “How often should I be sending mail?” Great question. Very good season question. Number four, “How long does it take to obtain and close my first deal?” Pretty good question. “How long does it take to get the ball rolling and started now that I’m a member?” Four and five are the same question.

Jill K DeWit:
Cool. All right. Is it the question, “How much does this cost?” That’s number one about mail.

Steven Jack Butala:
How much does a mailer cost?

Jill K DeWit:
Oh, that’s easy. Go to offers2owners.com and it’s right on the page.

Steven Jack Butala:
There’s two products. Number one, you’re doing stuff yourself, and number two, we do it for you and they’re priced differently. They’re between 65 cents and 98 cents per unit.

Jill K DeWit:
Something like that. Yeah.

Steven Jack Butala:
Now, if you’re listening to this in 2026, which is going to happen, the numbers are real different.

Jill K DeWit:
Or 2,036. Where are we going to be? Oh, 2036, this is going to rock. What if we’re still in these seats in 2036?

Steven Jack Butala:
You have a good sense of humor and you want to feel great about yourself, go back and look at what Jill and I looked like nine ago.

Jill K DeWit:
2016. 2015.. Exactly. Oh my gosh. My team, we were having a whole joke about that. I said, “You know what? You’ll not hurt my feelings if you want to do a whole collage of Jill’s hairstyles over the years. Go for it.” Bangs. No bangs. Light. Dark.

Steven Jack Butala:
“What do successful investors do? What’s the profile of somebody who really succeeds at this?” Number one, whatever they’ve done in life, they’ve already succeeded at it.

Jill K DeWit:
Mine’s two words, but go ahead.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, go ahead.

Jill K DeWit:
You know what’s the thing about successful investors? No fear.

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s true.

Jill K DeWit:
That’s it. That’s all I got.

Steven Jack Butala:
If you had a chain of restaurants and you just sold them and you did well, you’re like, “Oh, thank God. Thank God I got out of that and I got a bunch of money.” You’re going to smash this out the park. If you just retired as a mechanical engineer and endured that, or an accountant or something technical, or a corporate sales. Or you’re halfway through that environment and you do well at it, and you’ve got an extra bunch of money. And your bills are taken care of and you need to do something on the side to make a bunch of money and have some fun, you’re going to smash this. If you are a successful parent you’re going to do well at this.
On the flip side of this, here’s a profile of somebody if you’re brand-spanking new at this and you answer the phone the way that I did earlier in the program, you’re not going to do well. You need education about sales and personality. Successful investors also, and here’s another component, it’s essential. I don’t care if you have been successful or not, you need to create a calendar for yourself, which we talk all about in the program, and stick to it.
We have what’s called Mailer Monday, and so you should spend a whole week working on a mailer or learning or whatever else. You give yourself a deadline by the end of the day on Monday to have it done and reviewed and submitted to Offers2Owners.

Jill K DeWit:
Look, our most successful Land-Academy people come at this like crazy people.

Steven Jack Butala:
Reckless mailing, that’s what I call it.

Jill K DeWit:
That’s it. By the time they join on Friday, they consume it all Saturday and Sunday, and on Monday they’re sending something to Offers2Owners to get in the mail. That’s it. I just got it. That’s a flat-out fact. If you came at this like that, then there’s no stopping you.

Steven Jack Butala:
Do you have that personality?

Jill K DeWit:
Oh my gosh, yes.

Steven Jack Butala:
So do I.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah. “How often should I be sending mail?” I like this. This is a good question too.

Steven Jack Butala:
You should be doing a mailer a month, and in the very beginning, you should ask Offers2Owners to cut it up somehow. So that you’ve got 10 or 15,000 units of data that is submitted, priced, and done. And you can ask them to cut it up into week by week or biweekly, bimonthly, twice a month. You won’t have to do that in the future. If you want to hone your phone skills, once a month is the answer.

Jill K DeWit:
Excellent. “How long does it take to obtain and close my first deal?” Well, shucks, as fast as you want it. I mean, I’ve had deals come in that first day. Not kidding. Every person in Land Academy that’s been here more than a year will say the same thing. They’re like, “Yeah, the call came in. I knew the area. I loved it. We made the deal. I’m up in escrow the next day.”

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah. What you’re shooting for is cash. 30 days, cash in, cash out. 30 days, buy for 50, sell for 90. That’s the budget.

Jill K DeWit:
For 50?

Steven Jack Butala:
For 40 or 50, sell for 90 with some number.

Jill K DeWit:
Okay, but yeah, I’m still going to try to double my money. I like to buy for 30 and sell for 90.

Steven Jack Butala:
I know you do, Jill.

Jill K DeWit:
I’m a nut about that. Isn’t that hilarious? He says, “This is fine. We can do it like that.” I’m like, “Mm-mmm, I want more wiggle room.” And I get it. “How long does it take to get the ball rolling and started now that I’m a member?” Well, what are you doing today?

Steven Jack Butala:
It’s the same question.

Jill K DeWit:
It’s like, yeah, what are you doing today?

Steven Jack Butala:
It takes as long as you allow it.

Jill K DeWit:
What was our sweet gal the other day? It was a woman, it was very sweet. I want to say it was Jennifer. I can’t remember now. Please don’t shoot me if I say it wrong, but on our last week’s member call she said, “Well, here goes another lost Sunday.” To which we said, “Cheers to many lost Sundays because you have a few lost Sundays and you’re going to be rich.”

Steven Jack Butala:
There’s a long, long list of multimillionaires that have lost a lot of Sundays, let’s put it that way. If it’s not apparent enough, we have a full-blown mailing company called Offers2Owners.com, where we will do your mailer for you. Or we will process the documents that you create as instructed at Land Academy, and get your mailer out and get it done right. Millions and millions and millions of mailers we send out every year. We have a lot of experience at this. We’re the most experienced in the country at doing this. This is the only thing that-

Jill K DeWit:
Because this one started it. We’re all of them.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, because we got frustrated with regular, commercial printers. We don’t do catalogs. We don’t do four-color bleed. We don’t do any of that stuff. We send Offers2Owners, that’s all we do, so check us out on the internet.

Jill K DeWit:
Don’t forget too, go to LandAcademy.com if you want to find out more. Learn more about us, learn more about the program, or schedule a call and talk to my team.

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

Jill K DeWit:
Oh, sorry. I’m all confused because I was expecting another thing and I had my notes out. Sorry.

Steven Jack Butala:
Oh, go ahead. I’m sorry, Jill.

Jill K DeWit:
No. I thought we were going to do this last little part.

Steven Jack Butala:
Oh, yeah, go ahead. You have some inspiration to share.

Jill K DeWit:
Hey, we’re going to back up a minute here because I actually brought notes today.

Steven Jack Butala:
It’s the first time in 2,000 episodes.

Jill K DeWit:
Oh, hilarious. That’s so funny. Oh, gosh. No. I was preparing for the show today, and I’m just going to talk for just a minute about this. My last, little nugget because it’s really high on my list, and I’m really noticing a trend of people not doing this.

Steven Jack Butala:
Oh, it’s probably me.

Jill K DeWit:
Not kidding. This is the one thing that’s separating the men from the boys.

Steven Jack Butala:
I’m afraid.

Jill K DeWit:
No, they’re not crazy people. You need to go at this like a crazy person. I have three little things to say about that. Number one, you’ve got to prepare yourself. How do I be a crazy person? What are you talking about, Jill? How do I make this work and come at it like that?
Well, you know what you do, you prepare yourself and preparing yourself is getting everything, all your ducks in a row. Clearing your calendar. Clearing your plate. Clearing your mind. Surrounding yourself with the right people and having a checklist of steps that you need to do to go from zero to deal close, and that we have all that in Land Academy for you. Number two, you need to prepare your family and friends. I’m not kidding.

Steven Jack Butala:
This is good, Jill.

Jill K DeWit:
Thank you.

Steven Jack Butala:
This is good stuff.

Jill K DeWit:
Your wife, your spouse, your partner, whoever’s in world, they need to be on the same page. They need to be prepared to know that we’re not going to take a trip this month or maybe this year. This is all stuff that we’ve done.

Steven Jack Butala:
I love this stuff.

Jill K DeWit:
This is how I know this.

Steven Jack Butala:
This is our life.

Jill K DeWit:
This is our life. We’re not doing this this year. We’re not doing this this month. We’re not doing this this summer. Whatever it is, this weekend, daddy’s going to be… The family too. It’s your whole circle and your friends. Look, we’re not going dark on you because we don’t like you. We’re going dark on you because we’re working on something really important for our family.

Steven Jack Butala:
Well, some of you are. We are.

Jill K DeWit:
Well, that’s true. You could use this for an excuse for that too. Anyone you don’t like, tell them this is why. No, but the truth is you need to prepare people and we’ve done that. I had a conversation with somebody about this on the phone just the last couple of days. I said, “Look, do you know what happened while we were doing Land Academy?” I was on a different level in our home at the time. You were downstairs doing the bulk of the writing and the recording and the editing for the original Land Academy. What was I doing? I was upstairs buying and selling land, putting food on the table, keeping food on the table.
You know what else my other job was? Because what he was doing was so important, mine I had down. His was new and important. There’s a big learning curve. I’m bringing him a sandwich now and then and making sure he had everything you need. I’d come down and check the thermostat. “Are you sweating? Can I get you water, tea? What do you want?”

Steven Jack Butala:
This is not gender-specific. I just cut up an apple for you because we’re recording during lunchtime.

Jill K DeWit:
Very true. Well, this is where this came up because there’s a member in Land Academy whose wife is really the rock star in their environment. I’m like, “She needs to hit because she’s the person that’s the best on the phones.” That’s the whole thing. Their whole company is dependent on her getting these deals done.
I just had to rip the Band-aid off and say, “She needs to do this.” How can we do this for her because she’s also the primary breadwinner right now. I said, “You need to meet her at the door and rub her feet and hand her a drink. And get her ready tomorrow morning to get up and call back some people and make these deals happen before she goes to her other job.”

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s great advice.

Jill K DeWit:
That’s the thing, so that’s preparing everybody. Then my number three is flip the switch and don’t look back. Now we can end the show.

Steven Jack Butala:
I have something inspirational to share. I would like you, if you’re a movie buff, to go watch the movie, Snack Shack. It is on Amazon. I don’t know, it might be in the theater too, but it’s new. It’s about two 14-year-old boys from the Midwest. I think they’re from Nebraska.
I’ve watched it twice now, and all I see is myself in both of those boys. It’s all in the spirit of these kids are born entrepreneurs and they have a snack shack during the summer. There’s a 1,000 things that happen to them, most of them they cause themselves because they’re 14, that almost ensure they’re not going to be successful and they smash it.

Jill K DeWit:
I love it. That’s a great movie. You made number three watch that. I saw that, it’s so good.

Steven Jack Butala:
Join us next Wednesday for another interesting episode, You’re 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.