Transcript:

Steven Jack Butala:
I am Steven Jack Butala.

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

Steven Jack Butala:
This is episode number 2005 and today we are talking about a week in the life of a successful land investor.

Jill K DeWit:
This is going to be good.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah.

Steven Jack Butala:
So important.

Jill K DeWit:
It really is. This is going to be touched upon today, but further explained in the future in some things that we’re preparing for.

Steven Jack Butala:
So I would argue that what we’re going to talk about today, which is really organization and self-discipline and being an entrepreneur and a bunch of stuff like that … And we’ll get into a pretty good amount of detail. I think this is equally as important, probably more important than knowing how to buy and sell land.

Jill K DeWit:
Having a plan.

Steven Jack Butala:
Well and just executing your … We’re going to talk about a week in the life. So you can sit down and be the greatest planner in the world Monday through Friday, and if you don’t execute it and have self-discipline about it’s just not going to be as effective as you want.

Jill K DeWit:
Well, today for me is really about what should I be doing every day? What do I focus on? And here’s the reality. The reason we’re talking about this is a successful full-time land investor, and we’re going to talk about it that way because so many people in Land Academy have come to us, started out with W2 jobs, left W2 jobs, and now they’re in it and this is how to organize your life basically and organize your week. But everything we’re talking about today can be applied even if you’re like Jill and Jack, I only have maybe two to three hours a day to throw out this and that’s okay. So you can shorten it. The process and the steps are the same and how you think about your day-to-day stuff is the same. You’re going to have to get a little more efficient at it.

Steven Jack Butala:
Well, it’s like everything. We can tell you how we do it very successfully. We can give you now, after 10 years of doing this, almost 10 years real core examples with people’s first names on how they did it. In some cases more successful than us. But in the end you’re going to apply it to your life.

Jill K DeWit:
Isn’t that interesting? You just said 10 years of Land Academy. But gosh, 25 something years-

Steven Jack Butala:
30 for me.

Jill K DeWit:
There you go.

Steven Jack Butala:
It’s 30 this year.

Jill K DeWit:
Oh my gosh. It’s 15 almost for me. That’s a lot.

Steven Jack Butala:
So we may or may not be qualified to talk about this stuff.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah. There we go.

Steven Jack Butala:
You decide.

Jill K DeWit:
That’s perfect.

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:
Okay. Cooper wrote, hi everyone. I am new to Land Academy and looking forward to getting to know this group. I started on my own several months ago learning from every free resource I could find.

Steven Jack Butala:
Excellent. This is a great way to start off your career. There’s so much free content out there, including this.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah. Yeah. Go back and listen to the years of this. I am a very motivated self-learner via books, podcasts and websites.

Steven Jack Butala:
So am I.

Jill K DeWit:
IE established my LLC, my website, my email accounts, my phone number, my company bank account. I don’t know what that is. Oh, that’s for CRM account. And have sent out a few thousand letters. Oh’s he’s already been working on this. However, I learned a hard lesson with neutral letters and all the many phone calls with those landowners wanting full price. I wish I would’ve heard the pros and cons of neutral range and blind offer letters before hitting send on my first letters, but I’m sure it’s one of my many lessons that I’ll learn in this business. Good attitude.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah.

Jill K DeWit:
I’m employed full-time with over 25 years as a civil and environmental engineer, so I’m fortunate to have some experience with parts of this business. I live in Colorado, married with two kids. After listening to many Land Academy podcasts and alumni success stories as well as the Jack and Jill philosophy, I decide to join Land Academy to hopefully shorten my learning curve and become one of the success stories. First life goal is to retire my wife, a special education teacher for 25 years. Next life goal would be to retire myself for my W2 job and have more time with my family and kids as well as travel more often. My near term goals include completing all of the Land Academy videos in the next two weeks. Great. And get another batch of offer letters out in week one. Next step to include establishing a set of schedule for mailers, focus on responsiveness closing deals to match my monthly goals and joining career path in fall of 2024. This is great. I’m half jack, half Jill and engineering background, but I moved into more client service and development. This is awesome.

Steven Jack Butala:
Well put.

Jill K DeWit:
Is like a good member background and goals.

Steven Jack Butala:
Cooper, you’re our new avatar Land Academy customer. If this person … If you’re listening or watching this and this person sounds like you, you will do extremely well here. And maybe I’ll have our team contact you. I would love to interview you and I would love to know what your thought process is or has been with choosing us in choosing this business model.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah.

Steven Jack Butala:
Because you’re just a perfect fit for it. If you’ve got a technical background, you’ve got a little bit of Jill in you, which for the record I do too. I did so really well during W2 years because I could sell.

Jill K DeWit:
And make people laugh. And get clients.

Steven Jack Butala:
So congratulations. You’re welcome, if you need anything, please reach out to us.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah.

Steven Jack Butala:
I’m sure you’ll doing well. Today’s topic, a week in the life of a successful land investor. I have to tell you, I am a little bit excited about talking about this. This is something I have a bunch of anecdotes and some personal stories about points in my life and points in Jill’s life where we applied this and had great success with it and didn’t apply it and laughed about it and made some changes to make sure that it could work out for us. But first I’m going to tell a slight throw Jill under the bus story.
When we first joined forces professionally and we started making enough money or we were both comfortable enough so that she could quit her job, she did. She quit her job and we started working together and about the second week I realized that I thought correctly or incorrectly that we were not moving in a path that was the best for us financially and professionally. Like always we sat down and talked about it and I said, “This is what’s going on.” She listened and I said, “Every day we’re not doing the same thing. We’re not working on this, we’re not working on this, we’re not working on this.” And she says some version of this to me. “Yeah, but that’s what I did when I had a job. That’s not what I want to do now. I want to do whatever I want to do because I own part of the business.” And so I had a real good chuckle and we both had a chuckle about this on the air several times since then. Geez, this was 2009, probably. Maybe before that.
So as ironic as this sounds, if you’re going to be a very successful business owner, you are going to work harder. You’re going to work on the right stuff and you’re going to be a slave to your calendar way more than you ever were in your W2 job. And I mean this in a positive way because for me, that creates a sense of freedom. As you’re going to find out here, our Fridays … You know what’s in the calendar on a Friday? It’s called a goof off. And this is all Jill’s idea and she’s totally right. And so that’s just where we are in our career. I’m not saying you should do that yet, but schedule your fun.
And then when you do, when it goes from nine to 9:30 or whatever the time change is, turn all your stuff off and go have some fun and forget it. Because you know what’s going to have to happen next and when you’re going to have to do it. Might be Monday morning, might be Saturday night, I don’t know. Whatever works in your schedule. But when that clock ticks over for the next period of stuff that you have scheduled for yourself, then you take it seriously, but not until then.
The goal here is daily or weekly repetition and structure and execution. This is super, super important. This is my definition of self-discipline. Well think about this show. We have a structure to it. There’s an introduction. We laugh a little bit. We tell some stories. We answer a question and then we talk about … Right now we’re talking about the meat of this whole thing and then we’ll wrap it up with something hopefully funny about Jill and I. It usually ends up being Jill and I working together and that’s the structure of it and that’s what you consciously or subconsciously expect. If you’re old enough to know what a sitcom is, geez, that is the recipe for sitcoms all the way back to The Honeymooners. It’s five or eight things that happen to a set of characters on a set that you are very familiar with and the only Variable is the content or the jokes or whatever.

Jill K DeWit:
We were watching a movie a couple of weeks ago. Remember that one with a Shake Shack or something? I said going great, going great, okay, hang on a moment it. It’s movie outline time. There’s conflict coming. Don’t you remember that? And then sure enough-

Steven Jack Butala:
It’s Snack Shack.

Jill K DeWit:
There we go. I’m like, here it is. Here’s our conflict. Now they’re going to resolve it. It’s true.

Steven Jack Butala:
If you’re an entrepreneur in your soul, you should watch snatch Snack Shack. It’s two 14-year-old boys in 1991 who during the summertime, get a hold of a snack shack and make it something that … If adolescents doing illegal stuff offends you, it’s not your movie. I saw myself in those two characters the entire movie. I’ve actually seen it three times.

Jill K DeWit:
It’s still you. Some things never changed. That’s still who you are in your soul. I can get away with this.

Steven Jack Butala:
You need structure. You just need it. Unless you’re a very, very special person. And there are self-help business related books. There are probably thousands about what your week should look like. This is our entry into that universe. What you never want to do is wake up and do what you feel is appropriate for that day. Or worse … I’ve done all these things. Use your inbox as your to-do lists. So your phone inbox, your phone messages and your email list. And the vast majority of the professional people that I know to this day, that’s what they do. I know almost all of our employees do this. Oh, they asked me to do something, I better do it. They haven’t asked me to do anything today, so I’m not going to do anything. You will fail. And if you have a job, think about it. Think about your job. Depending on where you are up or down the food chain, the lower you on the food chain, the more you are being told what to do. So think about this. You’re in high school, you wake up, pretty much do the same thing. Go to school. You have, depending on what year it is, four, five, six or seven classes that day. How many classes did you have?

Jill K DeWit:
Six.

Steven Jack Butala:
We had six too.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah. Usually four and then lunch and then two.

Steven Jack Butala:
Same thing. And after school, you could choose an extra correct curricular activity or you could choose to go home and watch cartoons or whatever, and then you’re going to do some homework maybe. Maybe you’re going to do homework, maybe you’re not. Depending on how old you are would dictate that. I’ll tell you, I did very, very little homework ever. You probably did a lot.

Jill K DeWit:
What are we talking? Back in high school or college?

Steven Jack Butala:
Well, I’ll get to college in a minute.

Jill K DeWit:
Either way I didn’t. Well, let me get some truth time here. Truth timer. In high school I didn’t have to do a lot and I didn’t need to do a lot. It totally clicked with me. I breezed through high school. College, I kept that same philosophy and I failed miserably.

Steven Jack Butala:
Oh yeah, same thing. I’ll get to that in a second. Jill’s a way better student than I ever was by the way.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah. Now I’m a study nut. If I’m taking a test, I’m taking it once. And I did it with my real estate, which I never did that thing, but I passed the test. Flying a plane, bring it up.

Steven Jack Butala:
So in high school you’re told what to do and where to stand and where to sit and what to say and what not to say and then they give you a little bit of free time at the end, which you can choose what to do. I have no basis to say this, but I believe that it was this country’s way of prepping all of us either for the military or to go to join the workforce. And the people that really thought about whether or not they wanted to do one of those two things went to college. That’s how it used to be. And so it’s all structured. And if you have a job right now, very similar. Stack these boxes over there. When we get a purchase order, drive the forklift back over there, drive it back up here. If the box is green, put it over here. If it’s blue, do this, that, and that’s it. And you’re probably very successful at that. It’s so clear. Instruction’s so clear
In college you enter college and you have a few classes and you show up for those classes. Now I don’t think you even have to do that at all. You can just take it all online for the most part. And then the vast majority of your success depends on what you do outside of those classes academically. Studying, research projects, whatever they’re asking you to do and then you’re going to get judged on that. And so that’s a step toward owning your own stuff and being really totally responsible for your time and the actual outcomes, which is way closer to what happens here at Land Academy and owning any business. Are you laughing

Jill K DeWit:
Because you said judge and I’m like, that’s called graded.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah. Grades are judging.

Jill K DeWit:
Okay. I don’t see it like that.

Steven Jack Butala:
How do you see it?

Jill K DeWit:
Grading. You’re like judging.

Steven Jack Butala:
Well, because geez, if you do a research project or write a paper in college and the teacher or the professor doesn’t like you, you’re going to get a C. If they like you, you’re going to get an A. You are being judged. Not just for the quality of your work, but your good or bad personality. Tell me I’m wrong about any of this.

Jill K DeWit:
I don’t know.

Steven Jack Butala:
I don’t see the humor in it at all.

Jill K DeWit:
I’m just like, I don’t know. You’re probably right. I just don’t look at it like that.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah. Because they always loved you.

Jill K DeWit:
Oh, there is that.

Steven Jack Butala:
That didn’t necessarily happened to me. You’ve never experienced the bad part of it.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah. They gave me an F with a smile

Steven Jack Butala:
When I was in my core accounting classes I would show up for the last class, I had the best grade in the class. This is true. Most of the time, not all the time. And they were all upset about it. But you don’t write papers in accounting, you just take tests and they can’t, there’s nothing they can say. That doesn’t work in English at all. All right. So we’re going to talk about your week. What your week looks like. Really we’re going to talk about what our week looks like. You are going to take that structure or those concepts and build it around your life. You might have 18 kids or you might be retired, and so those are going to look like very different work weeks, but this basic stuff has to get done. There are five basic stages to buying and selling land. I don’t care how you slice it.

Jill K DeWit:
That’s good.

Steven Jack Butala:
Number one, you have to research places to send offers and then choose them. Choose the ones that you think are going to yield the best result for you. Customized financial you. Number two, you’re going to send correctly priced emails, excuse me, offers to those places that you’ve chosen.

Jill K DeWit:
In the mail.

Steven Jack Butala:
In the mail. Exactly. I don’t mean email at all. Number three, some of those sellers are going to respond. You need to manage the responses from those sellers and ultimately choose the best ones that work for you. All kinds of people are going to call you back or send you notes back somehow. Some of them are going to own property that they want to sell to you for the price that you want. This is number three is to figure that all out. Some people call that due diligence, but it’s a little bit more complicated than that. Number four, you’re going to buy that undervalued land. Number five, you’re going to resell it for more, Five things. Research places to send mail and then choose them. Number two is send mailers to those places that you’ve chosen. Number three is to manage the responses and do all the sales and stuff. That’s the magic here. That’s the magic that Jill brings. Number four, buy it. Number five, sell it.

Jill K DeWit:
It sounds so easy when you put it like that.

Steven Jack Butala:
Thank you for bringing that up because every person I’ve ever known, including me, gets hung up on one of these things and so-

Jill K DeWit:
Is a good point. You want to know what I think? Can I pick one where I think people get hung up on?

Steven Jack Butala:
I would love that. Please. Yeah.

Jill K DeWit:
Number three.

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s what I think. I think number three puts people out of business.

Jill K DeWit:
I can pick a place, I can send the mail, but oh boy, now when I’m actually putting money down and I’m really acting on it, then they freak out.

Steven Jack Butala:
I think it’s by far number three. I think there’s certain personality types that can’t get there.

Jill K DeWit:
Get stuck there.

Steven Jack Butala:
They get stuck sending mail also. That’s my number two choice. But by far. Number three is what I call … When Jill and I have a cocktail in our hand and people ask us what we do, I say we buy land and we sell it for more and everybody stops what they’re doing because that causes a jaw-dropping response. Well, how do you know what to buy? These are people who own office buildings. These aren’t people that were co-mingling with that are unfamiliar with making money in real estate. Well, how do you do the research to find out what you’re going to buy? Well, we just send everybody an offer and we see which ones want to sell. Isn’t that illegal? It takes us down this sometimes not so fun path. You can’t do this in the wrong crowd because just ends poorly.

Jill K DeWit:
True.

Steven Jack Butala:
So then I try to expand it like this to end all the questions. We create the real estate deal. Oh, you don’t have a broker? No. Oh, you don’t go out on the MLS and do all the analysis and see which one is priced right? No. Never. We create the deal. That usually stops a lot of it. So how do you implement all this? Because Jill just said you make it sound so easy. Well, it can be easy.

Jill K DeWit:
The big picture is easy, but then you have to back into it. We’re going to talk about here and really what’s involved in this and really talk about, all right, what does it look like in a week? And that’s what today’s show’s about.

Steven Jack Butala:
So this one through five business.

Jill K DeWit:
It took 20 minutes, but this is what today’s show’s about.

Steven Jack Butala:
This one through five business, I’m going to refer to it when we talk about your week.

Jill K DeWit:
Yep.

Steven Jack Butala:
Here’s your Monday. We’ll get to Saturday and Sunday at the end you have an answering service. We have an answering service called PATLive. They answer our phones 24/7. They’re constantly answering because you’ve sent a ton of mail out, they’re answering your phone. Not if you’re brand new. This is a successful land investor’s life. This is what you’re shooting for. So you have PATLive set up or we do where they’re answering the calls from sellers 24/7.

Jill K DeWit:
As we talk about this, I’m going to compare both sides too. The point is, even if you’re a professional full-time land investor like we are in this, you’re still not going to answer your own phone. And then if you’re brand new, you may not have time to answer your own phone. So I want to just point out this applies for both situations if you will.

Steven Jack Butala:
I will. Thank you.

Jill K DeWit:
So that’s where that comes in. All right. And so that’s just ongoing. Go for it.

Steven Jack Butala:
I call Monday mailer Monday. So these are where you research and implement phases one and two and we have for years and years now successfully been able to do this in one day every Monday. You troll. So this is you … This is what you do.

Jill K DeWit:
This is high level.

Steven Jack Butala:
We have week-long courses in this stuff. This is all just what you do, not how you do it. We have what’s called trolling where you go and find and do research on properties, places that where you believe, where you send mail are going to work for a bunch of reasons. Data-based reasons, not emotion. And implement what we call a red, green, yellow test to test those places that you’ve trolled and test them against each other and then ultimately choose two or three or three or eight or 10 or whatever you think that work. And then you get the mailer rolling and you price it. It’s everything that has to do with Monday. What’s important is that there’s a deliverable at the end of Monday.

Jill K DeWit:
Mail’s going out.

Steven Jack Butala:
You’re getting it to Offers 2 Owners, which is our mailing company one way or the other. We have a lot of different products based on where you are in your career with mailer comfort.

Jill K DeWit:
True.

Steven Jack Butala:
They were not created overnight. They were created over years of Jill and I doing this and watching people struggle and then saying, okay, we’ll do this part of this for you. Mailer Monday. That’s one and two. So now we’ve knocked out … Monday’s done. We’ve knocked out the first two things of the five.

Jill K DeWit:
And this should be every Monday by the way.

Steven Jack Butala:
Right. Tuesday and Thursday, in my opinion look identical. Tuesday is you’re now doing due diligence or in our case, Jill’s doing due diligence. She’s checking to see … This is all number three.

Jill K DeWit:
What do I want to buy?

Steven Jack Butala:
Do I want to buy this freaking property or not?

Jill K DeWit:
And what do I need to find out about it? What more do I need to know to pull the trigger?

Steven Jack Butala:
It might involve you talking to an investor that you have. It might be you going out on the Land Academy discord channel asking people their opinions about these deals. You might be calling a local broker. You might be doing all kinds of stuff that makes sense to you or mimicking what we do in all of our educational products to see if you want to buy it and might have to call the sellers back.

Jill K DeWit:
Can I back up here? One thing I want to point out is why this is so important. You need to block off time each week to devote to it. If you sit and like Jack just described, you’re a slave to your email and you plan your day based on your email. How you about that is like an investor. If you’re a slave to the deals and the calls that come in. If the minute they come in, you’re looking that one up and you’re looking that one up, you’re looking that one up, you’re going to be a scattered mess. It’s so much better to batch them all together and at one time sit down and go, all right, in the last three days … Because remember you only do this on Tuesdays and Thursdays. So I’ve got Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. So four days for this part. Tuesday I sit down and look at all the people that reach back out, all the ones that want to sell and I’m lining up all those … I don’t know. 10, 15 offers and looking at them at one time. You’re going to be so much more efficient and you’re going to make the best decisions.

Steven Jack Butala:
Exactly. Wednesday is number four and five. It’s buying and selling day. Everything to do with buying and selling. Finding a broker, talking to escrow agents, maybe potentially talking with sellers or buyers. But it’s in generally that batch for buying and selling. Now let’s be realistic. Stuff happens. Urgent things happen in real estate transactions. Oh, this is an escrow agent calling. This is on Monday afternoon. This deal’s going to go sideways. I know we’re supposed to close today, but we need these three more signatures and the stuffs got to happen and the sellers got a contingency in here that’s got to be closed by Tuesday. So you need to block out … This is not looking at all kinds of … Jill’s exactly right. Block out an hour at the end of your day. It might be 3:00 P.M. to deal with cuckoo stuff that needs immediate attention.

Jill K DeWit:
That’s good.

Steven Jack Butala:
So this is maybe the shortest episode ever. You have to have a schedule like this. You have to stick to it and you have to have a reasonable contingency plan when stuff just goes over. What you do not want to do is on … Mailer Monday is my responsibility, so I know more about it than … Jill does a lot of this other stuff. What you don’t want to do is spend way, way … You have a clock on your desk, you have a clock on the bottom right of your computer. You start at 9:00 it’s 2:00 PM and you’re not done trolling. That’s not good self-discipline. You know have to test what you’ve trolled. You got to run the red green yellow test and run all the data for that. You know you have to price mailer from last Monday because you didn’t get it done. And you have to test for reason on that mailer and you know how long that takes. So you have two choices. Manage those increments all throughout Monday to get that deliverable out by 5:00 or work until midnight.

Jill K DeWit:
And sometimes both happen.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yep.

Jill K DeWit:
Sometimes that happens. Big deal.

Steven Jack Butala:
What I don’t ever let happen is I’ll do it tomorrow.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah.

Steven Jack Butala:
So Tuesday at 9:00 when I’m supposed to be doing due diligence and calling people back, I’m pricing my mailer. And then Wednesday, I didn’t get to all that stuff. I was supposed to call that broker back. I didn’t do all that. The escrow agent’s calling me. Well, Jack said on Tuesday … And I didn’t price the mailer. Oh my God, I got to do all this stuff. You can’t let these things bleed into each other. If I don’t get the stuff done on Monday for mailer Monday, I’ll tell you what I do, it gets done on the next Monday. But I start earlier and work later. It does get out. Or … And this is like truth time. If I’m trying to do a 4,000 unit mailer on Monday or every Monday, let’s say I will do an 8,000 unit mailer the next Monday if it doesn’t get done right.

Jill K DeWit:
How about working ahead? You do that too sometimes. I like that.

Steven Jack Butala:
I’ve done a hundred thousand unit mailers in one Monday and I’m not saying you should do that. And I’m not bragging. I’m just saying I’ve been doing this for 30 years. So that’s-

Jill K DeWit:
You’re that good.

Steven Jack Butala:
The spoils of all that. And I’m not going to say that Jill hasn’t said this is a seller I’ve been wanting to talk to in the middle of dinner walks outside and a half hour later she comes back and I’ve had 92 drinks. So those things happen. You can’t beat yourself up about it.

Jill K DeWit:
That’s true. All right. So we got Monday, Tuesday, we talked about that. Did we cover everything we need to on Tuesday?

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah. You zoned out. I covered all of them except Friday. I saved it for you.

Jill K DeWit:
Okay. Well you did Tuesday, Thursday, Wednesday. I’m just recapping. I want to recap. Because I don’t know if we talked about … Did we include that?

Steven Jack Butala:
So how do you deal with Jill in this scheme of things, returning sellers calls because it’s imperative. It’s real imperative.

Jill K DeWit:
Depending on where you are … Well you know what? It doesn’t matter if you’re brand new or if you’re seasoned at this. You have set times that you do things. And what you would do ahead of time is let everyone know that’s when I do them. Whether it’s your staff, your family, yourself or PATLive. This is when that’s going to happen and when you can expect a callback. So returning sellers calls usually happens after due diligence. I have to make sure, get my questions answered, do my own little recon, double check the back taxes, whatever it is, fill in the blank and then I can act on it. So that usually happens after that. And I do that on Tuesday and Thursday. So those usually happen at Tuesday and Thursdays and everybody knows and has expectations. We take this even a step further. Right now I’m doing less deals because they’re bigger deals. But for a while when I was doing so many deals a week, it was a lot. It was just I couldn’t handle having deeds coming at me multiple times, even a day. So I said, “Stop it, everyone. Deed signing is Thursday.”
That was the day for a long time. I don’t care what it is, it has to happen on Thursday. I’ll do it ahead of time for closing the next week and whatever. But we have to do it on Thursday. And when you put that out there like that and you’re whole … You know it and your staff knows it and then it’s like they just plan for it. It’s perfect. So that’s when the seller calls happen. This is awesome.

Steven Jack Butala:
Well here’s the good news about our business model. There’s a lot of this stuff runs in the background. So PATLive’s running 24/7. You’ve sent all this mail out. The initial phone call when they get it to send it back, you’ve got people answering that live. We haven’t had that in our entire career. Not even close. That takes a huge load off once you’re … Again, this is a season. We also have brokers on the sell side. Every property that Jill and I buy now, we list it with a real estate agent after we qualify them to deal with the sales piece. Deal with the inbound calls there. Hey, I’d like to buy that. How do I submit an offer? We don’t deal with any of that. They put all that stuff together and send it to us.
We also outsource escrow agents. In our case we have a transaction coordinator or if you’re an LA Pro member, you use our transaction coordinator to just deal with the deal. Once we buy the property, that’s it. It gets purchased by our staff or the escrow agents in the past that we’ve assigned. Once we actually buy it, we give it to the real estate agent to list it and manage it. So there’s a lot of the heavy lifting gets outsourced once you know how to buy and sell these properties. The issues are mailer Monday and Jill’s number three, which is managing the PATLive pre-qualified sellers. We work very hard two days a week. Jill and I do.

Jill K DeWit:
Mm-hmm. That’s good. You’re right. Can we talk about Friday now?

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah.

Jill K DeWit:
Okay. Go ahead.

Steven Jack Butala:
Well Jill called Friday long ago, goof off Friday and that’s what it is.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah. Well-

Steven Jack Butala:
And it’s in the schedule.

Jill K DeWit:
Well, here’s the reality too. Everybody does it. Whether you have a W2 job or you’re doing this for yourself, we all know good luck reaching people Friday afternoon. They are mentally checked out so why not take advantage of that? That’s what I do. I’m like, I’m not going to reach them anyway. So Thursdays are great days. If you’re a salesperson like I am for over 30 years, you know the flow, you know when people are most agreeable. Thursdays. When to meet, hit them, all that good stuff. That’s just normal sales stuff. And you all know that Friday afternoon is not happening. And even for posting and things like that, don’t expect to get a lot of views with that. Anyway, so that’s why we take advantage of that. And the other thing is you need some catch your breath time. That’s the big picture too. You need to take some breaks.
If you go at this a hundred miles an hour for a hundred days straight, you run the risk of burning out and I don’t want that to happen. So if you bake in a little bit of break in downtime … Not to mention your family will disown you. So if you don’t have a little bit of time with them … Everybody knows that you’re working hard on this and they know that you’re doing this for a reason for your family, mortgage college bills, just get ahead, have a different life. Whatever your reasoning is, you should have your family on board and on the same page as why you’re really focused on this and going to be saying no to a lot of stuff, but you need to have some time with them too. So plan for that.

Steven Jack Butala:
If you’re in a part of your career land investing or just any type of real estate career, this is a season. So what you need to do … This is what I would heavily recommend if you’re new or thinking about joining or any of that is block out two weeks to learn. And so like Cooper here said earlier, I’ve looked at all this stuff, we did all the research and I finally decided to join. And so he said his goal right in there. In the next … Fill in the blank. I don’t remember exactly what he said. I’m going to watch all these videos, I’m going to learn all this stuff to the point where I feel like I understand what to do.
And so continuing education for anyone has to be part of your life. I don’t have it in my calendar and here’s why. Continuing education is just really a natural thing for me. If I’m on the internet, I’m learning something. If I’m on the internet looking at markets I’m subconsciously analyzing a real estate market for us, whether it’s us personally or as an investment market and testing it and retesting it. And so depending on where you are in your career, you may or may not want to put in continuing education and do it for an hour. If there’s anything that I will run over on, which is probably why it’s not on my calendar … I’m guilty of doing four hours straight of research over researching markets.

Jill K DeWit:
It’s so funny you bring that up because that’s something that we have in common. It’s very hard for me.

Steven Jack Butala:
Is that all we have in common?

Jill K DeWit:
That’s the only thing. Today. No. So it’s very hard for me to pick up something non-educational meaning like a book.

Steven Jack Butala:
Me too.

Jill K DeWit:
I have a hard time. I truly enjoy in my free time learning about something new or learning about something that’s going to enhance everything that I do and make it better and easier and more efficient. Right now I’m reading this whole thing about investing and just understanding money outside of what we do. And looking at stuff a different way.

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s great.

Jill K DeWit:
I know. And I love it.

Steven Jack Butala:
What do they say?

Jill K DeWit:
And it’s tailored for women.

Steven Jack Butala:
This is all I obsess on.

Jill K DeWit:
I know. It’s just beginning to scratch the surface right now. So far in the book that I’m reading, it’s talking about all the reasons why and I’m like, well, it’s funny because I picked up this book laughing going this is a joke. It’s a book aimed at teaching money for women high level and it’s written by a man. I’m like, what does he know? Right out of the gate I’m like, yeah, whatever. I’m like, this is a joke. So I got this book and now I’m like, oh man, the guy’s right. But right now he’s still explaining all the reasons why that we need to do this. And I’m just starting to get into some of the how and the understanding and everything so I will have more to share in a couple of weeks.

Steven Jack Butala:
I’m going to steal that off your shelf when you’re-

Jill K DeWit:
So yeah, it’s really good. I’m trying to think where … But you and I … What did I say? You and I agree on the continuing education part. That’s the whole thing too. If you think that you’re going to come in and watch Land Academy and one time in 2019 and you’re like, I got this. I’m never going to change anything. I’m never going to change how I look at stuff. I’m never going to change my product type. I’m never going to change any of my mindset. I’m not going to show up for a single call. I’m not going to be involved in anything. You will fail.

Steven Jack Butala:
Or I’m never going to change my calendar. Maybe the type of real estate that you buy is changing. So everybody’s available on Thursday in Wisconsin. I don’t know. Stuff changes.

Jill K DeWit:
Oh, I’m never going to change my market. No. I sat down in 2019. I picked some areas and it worked in 2019. I’m not going to change it. That’s not going to-

Steven Jack Butala:
There’s a lot of moving parts to this and it really keeps a lot of people out of this business. Many, many, many people right now enter this business because of the prevalence of Land Academy type education which out there on the internet, which I believe is substandard and many, many, many people leave. Yesterday I saw somebody said, you will be sending out … This is a former Land Academy member. On Saturday. Join us in this group. You’ll be sending out mail in four hours.

Jill K DeWit:
Oh yeah, I saw that.

Steven Jack Butala:
Did you see that?

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah. He’s an Land Academy member. You’re right. Former Land Academy member. That is really funny.

Steven Jack Butala:
Let me tell you.

Jill K DeWit:
And it costs $7. I’m like, what?

Steven Jack Butala:
$7.

Jill K DeWit:
He’s charging $7 for this. I’m like, well what’s the point of the $7?

Steven Jack Butala:
Let me tell something. You will not be sending a good mailer out in four hours on Saturday.

Jill K DeWit:
It is funny.

Steven Jack Butala:
Here’s another one I just saw. This is not ripping other people day, but it’s just funny. Another one I saw was about entitlements. Entitlements are when you take a big piece of real estate and you cut it all up … You take one AP on one assessor’s parcel number. Let’s say it’s 40 acres. Cut it all up into let’s say just for numbers, 41 acre properties. First of all, there’s not a municipality in the land. There is not a single municipality in this entire country that’s not going to allow you to do that. It’s going to take two years, even if they do, and they will not allow you to do it unless you put in infrastructure and have a plan. In Arizona it’s called public report compliance and it’s very unrealistic to do that. So this guy has been advertising for a while and I go immediately to the comments and everybody … I don’t comment on this stuff at all, but everybody like me is in there is just saying, whatever you are smoking, please send somebody some my way because this is not possible.

Jill K DeWit:
Not this easy.

Steven Jack Butala:
And then there’s 90 people in there that says, “I want to know more. I want to do it.” Because it’s not hard to do the math.

Jill K DeWit:
That’s true. That’s very, very good. All right. We got to through our goof-off day back to … Yeah. We covered continuing education.

Steven Jack Butala:
What do we do with Saturday And Sunday?

Jill K DeWit:
You know what, Saturday and Sunday. Yes. I’m always doing continuing education and there’s half goof-off and half catch-up.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yep.

Jill K DeWit:
Sometimes I can’t reach people. I’ve had sellers that they are busy during the week and they said, “Call me Saturday morning and we’ll get this all done.” And I’m doing that. I will block it off and I schedule it by the way. It’s not like, “Yeah, I just reached out to you.” It’s like, “All right. What time Saturday and what phone number?” And it’s on everybody’s calendar. That’s how you get deals done, by the way.

Steven Jack Butala:
So let’s go back full circle now because everybody can identify with high school and college.

Jill K DeWit:
Okay.

Steven Jack Butala:
You come back full circle and you look at this schedule that we put together that just the framework of it anyway. And it’s very similar to high school. I got to get up, I got to be in homeroom by X amount of time. I got 45 minutes to an hour there and on and on and on. But they’re telling you what to do. And there’s a five-minute bell and a real bell and there’s severe consequences or that used to be when I went to school for not complying with that. The military is set up that way. And W2 jobs are set up like that with clock. I don’t know. We used to have a punch clock. I don’t think it’s that way anymore.

Jill K DeWit:
That used to be that way.

Steven Jack Butala:
I think it might be electronic when you walked to the door.

Jill K DeWit:
Your card key.

Steven Jack Butala:
Your card key. Yeah. Probably card key. So that’s it. But to implement … Think about this. Okay, you don’t have to comply with high school anymore, but I expect you to pass the exams at the end. But you don’t have to come to class. You don’t have to do anything. Make your own schedule. Here’s a textbook. Pick them up on Tuesday and then we’ll see you in a month.

Jill K DeWit:
See at the finals.

Steven Jack Butala:
We’ll see you in three months. Who the hell would pass high school? No one. Five people in my entire high school, not including me, would’ve passed. That’s how you need to look at this. If you can do this or if you’ve done it in the past, you are going to do great. The vast majority of the people in the country can’t do this.

Jill K DeWit:
Right.

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s why the attrition rate in college is ridiculously high. It is huge. It’s like 70 or 80% of the people that start college don’t finish because they can’t manage a schedule. It’s not smart enough. It’s because they can’t say, this is what I’m going to do on Monday at 8:00 in the morning, then I’m going to stop partying in college at 2:00 P.M. and I’m going to be there at 7:00 PM with my desk lamp on studying. I’m not saying I did this. I’m just saying that’s what it takes.

Jill K DeWit:
I agree. This was good. Glad we covered all this. All right.

Steven Jack Butala:
Do you have anything inspirational, Jill this week? What’s been going on in your week with the ladies? The Land Academy ladies?

Jill K DeWit:
Oh, we had a great week. It was really cool. We have new people, which I love. I got to tell you, I’m seeing more and more female investors come into our group, dragging their men behind them. Honest. It’s true. It’s great. And the guys are like, bring it kind of thing. This is awesome. So this week we talked about … What was my topic? I’m trying to think how I worded it here. My topic was the number one thing to be successful. Because we talked about it on this before too. To be successful as an investor right now. And it was really about going at this like a crazy person. I watch people. If you don’t come in with the right mindset that you’re just not going to let this fail and you’re going to do everything it takes and you’re just nutty and you give up Sundays and you don’t care and you see the writing, you have real goals that you want to attain, financial goals and you’re going to hit those one way or another, then you’ll be successful and that was what we talked about this week. It was really good.
It did inspire some great conversations. It’s funny, in our ladies group, most other calls that we have from our Thursday member call to our LA Pro calls to our career path alumni calls they always divert. At the very end it goes back to reviewing deals. There’s always someone that says, “Can we go back and just look at some deals?” Every week on our ladies … We don’t talk about that.

Steven Jack Butala:
I figured that.

Jill K DeWit:
Isn’t that funny?

Steven Jack Butala:
That makes sense to me.

Jill K DeWit:
We’re more mindset … Not that it’s not on our mind. And it’s not that we’re not doing deals and not that we don’t … It’s just that when we get together, it’s kind of like if we’re talking about bigger stuff, bigger than just this one deal. It’s really about how am I going to get all these 10 done this week? How am I going to structure this? How am I going to relook at my goals because I want to make a million dollars this year? And that’s not happening fast enough. Or it is happening just fine as planned and I’ve got extra money now. How do I allocate that? How do I start deal funding for other people? I have all of that too. So we go into all kinds of different things.

Steven Jack Butala:
That tells me that’s the right group because you’re past the mechanics of it all and you’ve gotten past that. You’ve gotten past the learning curve. People that want to hang out with like kind people that have questions about … Because in a group like that, some people are crazy at the top of it like you and some people have done a few deals and they’ve proven it to themselves and now they’re intentionally putting themselves … Women I suspect are better at this than men. In a group of people where they’re all going to rise up.

Jill K DeWit:
Do you know what I just thought about? You’ve just brought up a perfect example. I think a lot of it is because the women in Land Academy are a lot like me, which is this. You were asking me something the other day about a car that we were in. We were in a certain vehicle and you asked me does it have this? And I said no. And you asked me how I know. Because I read the whole manual. So when I buy a car … I am not kidding. If it’s my car, not just every car, but if it’s my special sought out, this is my vehicle, I get to know everything about it. I read the whole flipping manual on the vehicle.

Steven Jack Butala:
I do with motorcycles but not cars. I don’t know why.

Jill K DeWit:
But what’s funny is I was thinking about-

Steven Jack Butala:
Tire pressure. Everything.

Jill K DeWit:
I think that relates to Land Academy. Which I would too. If I was not me joining Land Academy, I would’ve read everything four times to make sure I got it. And if I didn’t, then the parts I didn’t understand, I would’ve asked on the Thursday call or in Discord and got to the bottom of it. I’m not sure that men do that. I have to say just today, I may or may not have been snooping around in just some of the customer service stuff coming into our staff. So I wrote a little note to my staff. I’m like, “Well shucks, the guy just needs to go back to chapter three.” Hello. He was asking some questions and he put, “Can someone call me about this?” I’m like, “No. Well, you have it in your hand. You just skipped over it or you didn’t even open it.” That’s probably more likely. But anyway, it’s just funny. Is that a man? Is that a normal guy thing?

Steven Jack Butala:
No. That’s not gender.

Jill K DeWit:
Okay.

Steven Jack Butala:
In any way. That’s a personality type. I do not learn anything sitting and talking to somebody on the phone. I will tune out. I don’t learn anything from a guy standing in front of a class with a chalkboard.

Jill K DeWit:
You need to watch it and figure it out yourself.

Steven Jack Butala:
I need to watch it, stop it. I need to study. I am a self-study … Don’t talk to me for four hours and then when I come out of this thing, let’s go at it. Let’s get it. And that’s what those discussions that you’re having, which bleeds into my inspirational scenario is that … All right, here’s a story and you tell me because this is a personality type.

Jill K DeWit:
Okay.

Steven Jack Butala:
Jill and I have some distant friends, some good friends that we’ve known for a few years. We have a lot in common with them. We just don’t see them very often. But every once in a while we run into them. They live in the same place in California that we did. They still have a house there. And it turns out they live like two blocks from us here and they own a printing company and so do we. So I ran into them recently. The woman’s driving the whole thing, the entire thing.

Jill K DeWit:
It’s true.

Steven Jack Butala:
I started asking her questions finally. We’ve never talked about work ever with them. We both had a beer in hand so I’m like, why not? She started as a very successful salesperson for the commercial printing industry and decided one day, “Why am I selling all this? There’s all this profit margin. I’m making everybody else rich. I’m going to start my own printing company with a warehouse and printing presses and all of that.” And she said, “What’s your story?” So these are high level discussions now.

Jill K DeWit:
This is good.

Steven Jack Butala:
Now one of us talked about which machine we would buy, what the mechanics are. The costs of any of that. We just talked about what happened and why are you so successful enough to live in these neighborhoods? So she said, “What happened to you?” And I said, “We got a lot of customers. We only do this one thing. We help our constituencies economically and intensity wise, mental intensity wise, help people send offers to owners, which is a core of our real estate business.” And she said, “All right. So you get these orders in and this happens and this happens.” I said, “No, no. For this section, this is how we process it. I know you guys process it differently.” And she’s looking at me. And then we started talking about how you’re increasing revenue. We never sat and talked about … And this is true with many, many, many successful people. The actual process. This is like live event stuff.

Jill K DeWit:
It’s true.

Steven Jack Butala:
The actual process of stuff is in our programs. The mechanics of all of this, all the answers to all the mechanical stuff are either in career path or in our educational programs. The real motivation doesn’t happen in there. It happens on this podcast and in environments like that.

Jill K DeWit:
Yep. That’s good. Thank you.

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

Jill K DeWit:
And inspiration …

Steven Jack Butala:
To buy undervalued property.