Transcript:

Steven Jack Butala:
Steven Jack Butala here.

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

Steven Jack Butala:
This is episode number 2,012, and today we’re talking about three ways to deal with competition in your land business. Oh my gosh, is this a hot topic, Jack? I-

Jill K DeWit:
What? Wait, wait, there’s competition?

Steven Jack Butala:
For three years straight-

Jill K DeWit:
What?

Steven Jack Butala:
All I did was mailed Metro Dallas for infill lots. I did 20 deals a month. I just did it again last month and it … I only got 10 deals. I only got two deals. It didn’t work at all. Why? I want it to go back the way that it was.

Jill K DeWit:
What do I do?

Steven Jack Butala:
You know what Land Academy member, so do I. I want to go back to 1994.

Jill K DeWit:
Oh my goodness. Okay, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Total timeout. Hold on a moment, let’s think about this for a second, we’re getting a little sidebar here. If you could go back to any year in your life what year would it be and why?

Steven Jack Butala:
You know what? From my soul.

Jill K DeWit:
I’m writing mine down.

Steven Jack Butala:
I would not go back.

Jill K DeWit:
Oh, that’s too bad. Hold on a minute.

Steven Jack Butala:
What’s your year? She’s going to say 1985.

Jill K DeWit:
No, 1990.

Steven Jack Butala:
Really? 1990? What would you do different?

Jill K DeWit:
I didn’t have a care in the world.

Steven Jack Butala:
You know what? Neither did I. 1990-

Jill K DeWit:
1990.

Steven Jack Butala:
I was absolutely freaked out about … This is what ManPlan’s about. If you don’t know about ManPlan please go to manplan.com. I’m filming it and writing it right now. You’re a man you need a plan. Men make plans. I think women want to have not a care in the world.

Jill K DeWit:
Let me tell you where I was in 1990. Let me paint this picture. I moved in to a three-bedroom apartment on the beach with four flight attendants. We had the best parties. People would fly in to come to our parties. It was awesome. I loved it. I miss those days.

Steven Jack Butala:
And there’s no period in my life starting from when I was about 14 years old that I’ve suffered from a lack of a good time. I’m not talking about that.

Jill K DeWit:
Well true.

Steven Jack Butala:
Including yesterday.

Jill K DeWit:
But I didn’t have care in the world. I made great money, I had no problem paying my bills, everything, and I could go to any concert I wanted-

Steven Jack Butala:
So what happened?

Jill K DeWit:
And that was it.

Steven Jack Butala:
What happened? What changed?

Jill K DeWit:
I got transferred.

Steven Jack Butala:
This is way more fun than talking about land.

Jill K DeWit:
This is very good actually. Well, it was American Airlines and they closed the LA office and they moved me to Arizona. And so I-

Steven Jack Butala:
And that triggered-

Jill K DeWit:
And then I thought, well, why not do something different? Why not leave California? This could be a good thing. Changes is good, right? Go where the job is. And they’re like “Okay, let’s go to a new state.” And Arizona was always and still is very, very good to us. Now fast-forward. Then what happened? Then I got to Arizona and I got bored and that’s a whole nother story.

Steven Jack Butala:
Keep going.

Jill K DeWit:
And then I made some bad decisions.

Steven Jack Butala:
Okay. Now we get to the bottom of it. The stage was set for bad, boring, boring …

Jill K DeWit:
Bored.

Steven Jack Butala:
Boredom driven bad decisions.

Jill K DeWit:
That’s it.

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s a show.

Jill K DeWit:
That’s it. So anyway.

Steven Jack Butala:
Kind of bored maybe I should get married. I’m bored maybe I should have a baby.

Jill K DeWit:
Maybe we should buy a house.

Steven Jack Butala:
Nope, nope, nope. Let’s get some debt.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah, that’s a great idea.

Steven Jack Butala:
Sprinkle some debt.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah, let’s get-

Steven Jack Butala:
Sprinkle some debt on a bad relationship-

Jill K DeWit:
Let’s get a great car-

Steven Jack Butala:
And a couple-

Jill K DeWit:
That holds a couple car seats.

Steven Jack Butala:
A couple of babies.

Jill K DeWit:
That’s a good idea.

Steven Jack Butala:
A minivan. Get a white minivan.

Jill K DeWit:
It was not white. I’ve never had a white-

Steven Jack Butala:
Sprinkle some debt on a bad marriage and a couple of babies in a white minivan and she said … She picks out, well, it wasn’t white.

Jill K DeWit:
There you go. Now you know. I have not nor will I ever have a white car. Go ahead.

Steven Jack Butala:
Two periods like that in my life and I got out of them really fast.

Jill K DeWit:
Got it.

Steven Jack Butala:
I’m glad I did.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah, all right.

Steven Jack Butala:
And you did too.

Jill K DeWit:
I got out of it.

Steven Jack Butala:
You got out of that.

Jill K DeWit:
I wouldn’t say fast.

Steven Jack Butala:
Your fate.

Jill K DeWit:
You know what’s funny? There’s times in my life like right now where I’m like “Oh.” Our staff is like “What happened?” Let’s rip the band-aid off we’re running around crazy people getting stuff done. It’s because I get to the end. I’m like okay, we’re trying to be calm and trying to do this right. And then I’m like nope, over. All right, back to the show. Sorry.

Steven Jack Butala:
Each week on the show we answer a question, in this case, two questions, from our Land Academy member Discord forum. And we take a deep dive into land-related topics by popular request from our Land Academy community. And today’s topic is three ways to deal with competition because it is the topic, not only within our group but all over the internet. What are we going to do?

Jill K DeWit:
Right.

Steven Jack Butala:
I’m not the only one sending a mailer to Dallas right now, there’s two other people doing it. What do I do?

Jill K DeWit:
I’m just looking ahead. Are they two separate questions?

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah.

Jill K DeWit:
Do you want me to pause in between?

Steven Jack Butala:
Very separate, yeah.

Jill K DeWit:
Okay. So Jen wrote, “When evaluating a property that has come back from a mailer as a possible acquisition, do you send a realtor out to look at the property to give a listing price opinion while still negotiation with the seller or wait until it’s under contract? I have a property that’s anomaly in its area and hard to comp. The seller counted my offer so I was hoping to get an opinion from a local realtor. I thought about contacting Whitetail because I found a Whitetail guy with other similar properties” … This is great.

Steven Jack Butala:
Good. This is great.

Jill K DeWit:
“In the area.”

Steven Jack Butala:
You’re on point. Good job, Jen.

Jill K DeWit:
“But I don’t know if I should contact him before I’ve assigned PA with the seller. Please advise, thank you.” Can I go first?

Steven Jack Butala:
Oh, yeah. First and final on this.

Jill K DeWit:
Oh, okay. I would not have any trouble with this. It’s when you send out an offer and the person says, “No, I’m not good enough,” and now you just have no number. You’re just nebulous trying to go well, I don’t even know what to come back with, I need to bring in-

Steven Jack Butala:
It’s not a deal yet.

Jill K DeWit:
I need to bring in some help. That I wouldn’t do yet. You need to get a number. But this said you have the seller that countered a number so now you have a number. So let’s just pretend, Jen, you sent it out for $15,000, right, and you were feeling good about that. You’re like anything can go anyway. I know at 15,000 this is just going to be great, and they counted at 25. And now you’re going okay, now I really got to think about it. I’m having trouble. I knew at 15 I could make it work no matter what, but at 25 now I’m not so sure my number’s going to work, maybe I need to bring in somebody else. I would have no trouble doing all of this. This kind of a verbal thing with a seller I personally feel … I feel good with.
I’m not going to say, “Will you sign it, send it to me, and then I’ll really get serious about it.” No, they gave you a serious number back and I would be fine. It sounds like you found somebody good, you found a … I’ve worked with several agents from Whitetail Properties and I think they’re great. I would have no trouble calling them. Don’t give him all those details. Don’t say, “I just got a verbal” or anything like that. But calling him and letting him go look at it and giving you an opinion, I would be totally fine with that at this point

Steven Jack Butala:
I would say, “I’ve got a property under contract,” don’t say for how much. “This is it, what do you think you can sell it for?”

Jill K DeWit:
I don’t even say that. I don’t even say under contract. I’m just like “Hey, I just got this in and I’m trying to figure out what to do with it, what would you sell it for?” Be real vague. Hello Blake. Okay. Then Blake wrote, “Has anyone who is on a consistent mail schedule noticed a dip in calls the past few weeks? I’m wondering if I messed up by mailer or if it’s a seasonal lull with people traveling for the summer.”

Steven Jack Butala:
This is my friend is why we wrote this topic. Not your question specifically, but many, many, many others with the same sentiment. What’s going on? I sent a mailer out and it doesn’t … It’s not performing the way that I want to. To which I answer, and my short answer is … And Jill and I are going to get into the topic here in one second. Welcome to the business. Welcome to any business. There’s ups, there’s downs, there’s great months, there’s bad months, there’s mediocre months, and when you average it all out, hopefully, there’s a little bit of money left over.

Jill K DeWit:
Right.

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s what this is.

Jill K DeWit:
I have to say, sometimes though I do have to agree, there are weird things … Think about you, Blake. I mean, just to be honest, Blake, you’re a Land Academy member because I know you got … This came out of Discord so I know that you’re in there. Just to back up a minute. Let me think for a second. There’s weeks that you are busy. I watch it with our … With Land Academy members. The week the kids are out of school or a holiday, sometimes there’s a lull on people that show up for the activities, and the group calls, and things like that. Sometimes there is a little bit of a dip like that. If it lasts for six weeks then we got to look at it. But if it’s a week here and there and you can go yeah, kids just got out of school, I … They’re going to call me. There’s an expiration date on it. But there are other things going on that you’re going to talk about today too I know.

Steven Jack Butala:
Let’s do this real quick.

Jill K DeWit:
Okay.

Steven Jack Butala:
Today’s topic, three ways to deal with competition in your land business. When I was a kid and a young professional … I grew up in an industrial environment. My friend’s parents were somehow … Well, it was in Detroit so it was almost always tied to, in some way, the automotive industry including my own parents. My dad had a small accounting practice and my mom had her own psychology clinic-type business. And then my friend’s parents had metal stamping plants and all … But anyway. Everybody was tied to the automotive industry. And I remember hanging out with these older people, at the time, and some of them would pour themselves a Scotch on the weekend and kick their feet up on the desk or wherever we were and they would just have a big smile on their face. Kind of had this aura of it’s just over, I make a bunch of money now. I’ve got this house and my family and I’m happy and I’ve got a big smile on my face and a Scotch in my hand.
And I took that very incorrectly to mean yeah, this guy’s arrived. He’s done it, it’s all good, nothing to worry about. That doesn’t exist. Your business is a messy but somewhat controllable disaster just like my business is and it will always be that way. That guy was kicking up his feet, I realize now, because he’s trying to get drunk to forget about what happened that week in his own business, and putting a smile on his face. There is no arrival. There’s no point where you say, “Nan, I’ve arrived.”

Jill K DeWit:
I don’t have to do anything now.

Steven Jack Butala:
I’ve got the right vice president, the right CEO, I don’t have to do anything now. I don’t know I just-

Jill K DeWit:
I’m just going to go off and watch the bank balance, watch the money roll in.

Steven Jack Butala:
Here’s a new address, this is where you send all their money.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah, exactly. Oh, and by the way, I expect that same year-over-year 5% growth. Thanks-

Steven Jack Butala:
No, a month over month-

Jill K DeWit:
See you later.

Steven Jack Butala:
5% growth.

Jill K DeWit:
There you go.

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s 50 or 60% a year.

Jill K DeWit:
There we go. I expect that to continue without me.

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s just not how this works.

Jill K DeWit:
You guys got this, right?

Steven Jack Butala:
It doesn’t work like that, not because of you and something wrong that you’re doing. What ends up happening is, invariably somebody younger, and faster, and smarter is going to come up behind you, take a look at what you’re doing, and figure out a better way to do it. That is a given, number one.

Jill K DeWit:
True.

Steven Jack Butala:
Number one and the three deals away with … Three ways to deal with competition is this. Except that everything is constantly changing. Change is constant. Your supplier is going to cut you off, there’s … Orders are going to go down for some specific part because it’s cheaper to get in China. In our case-

Jill K DeWit:
Good point.

Steven Jack Butala:
You passed the red-green-yellow test, you’ve been smashing urban Dallas for infill lots for two years straight. Somebody figured it out, not maybe because they were following you around like they follow us around, but just because there’s just … People found out. The red-green-yellow test got out there. Or there’s other people in this environment, which is really serious actually … Other people in this environment that are way less qualified than Jill that are instructing people to send mail like that overpriced. Without getting into-

Jill K DeWit:
Noise.

Steven Jack Butala:
A lot of the details, you have to accept and embrace that everything’s constantly going to change.

Jill K DeWit:
True.

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s it. Or you will not survive. You got to get new customers sell side, you have to find new sellers in a different way, you have to reach them in a more creative way.

Jill K DeWit:
[inaudible 00:13:16].

Steven Jack Butala:
Jill and I just recorded, I don’t know when it’ll air, an interview with a four-year long member, his name’s Josiah Rocco, and he has … He doesn’t know this but he has completely and totally accepted change. He has chosen to deal with that change by ruling his market which is one of the number threes here. And so he’s just the best person in the market to sell your land to for a bunch of reasons and it … Not just price.

Jill K DeWit:
This is good stuff.

Steven Jack Butala:
Number two is what I just said, get to know between one and four areas like the back of your hand so you can start to brand yourself there. Jill has done that in the markets that we’re in. We’re in about four consistent markets. We’re always trying to get new markets, but we always go back to those original four. Jill’s starting to brand herself as a person that buys land in the area and is great to deal with and work with with real estate agents, and escrow agents, and everything.

Jill K DeWit:
They’ll give you properties-

Steven Jack Butala:
It might be in-

Jill K DeWit:
They’ll send me properties. I’m like “Why don’t you do this?” So they’re like, “Nah, it’s not my thing.” I’m like “Okay.”

Steven Jack Butala:
What ends up happening there too is it makes your … It builds your confidence. At some point, and it’ll probably take at least two years of consistently mailing maybe 10,000 units a month, what’ll end up happening is you’ll get some property back, you’ll review it, and you will within seconds say, “I would love to buy this property but not at this price. I love this block but not this block.” It goes down to the block sometimes.

Jill K DeWit:
You’ll know it that well. And not only that you have your team, it just makes it so easy. Susie at ABC title is on speed dial with you and you just … Now maybe you just text her and say, “Here it comes, here’s the information. Open escrow let’s” … It’s just so fast she doesn’t need to ask you everything over again. It goes faster, and it might even be cheaper by the way.

Steven Jack Butala:
Build this critical mass too because you’re … Now you’ve got all tens and tens of thousands of mailers out in circulation all over the place. Let’s call it a state, one state. You could do it state-wise, you could do it county, or zip code. There’s one guy we had in our group for a long time and he was just in one subdivision in Texas and that’s it. And he was buying and selling properties, that was his whole career.

Jill K DeWit:
Isn’t that funny? Well, think about that. Let’s just back up. Everybody goes like “Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.” Well, what if you do one deal a month, and you make sure that one deal a month nets you 25 grand? I’m good with that. So you’re doing 12 a year. Now you can see like oh, okay, I can see, especially in some metro big city, how you could do one deal a month in a pretty consolidated area and do just great.

Steven Jack Butala:
It’s $300,000 of net. It doesn’t take a calculator. You just have to consistently send out mail and deal with it.

Jill K DeWit:
No, I have you, I don’t need a calculator.

Steven Jack Butala:
When you say that-

Jill K DeWit:
Thanks to doing the math.

Steven Jack Butala:
I think that’s a compliment but it’s okay.

Jill K DeWit:
Some days it is some days it isn’t, you decide.

Steven Jack Butala:
Number three.

Jill K DeWit:
Just kidding, haha.

Steven Jack Butala:
Number three, and this is imperative this is ManPlan stuff. Number three is imperative. You need to remove your emotion based on your bank balance or whether or not you had a good month or a bad month. You need to buy into this business and enjoy it. You need to enjoy land, and looking at land, and analyzing it. If you are joining Land Academy, or any group for that matter, or going into anything and you’re testing the concept … I hate this business of testing. I’m going to send out a test mailer of 200 and see what happens.

Jill K DeWit:
Wait, wait, are we on number three? I’m still trying to slow down. I’m trying to slow this down. Can we circle back around or should I slow it down?

Steven Jack Butala:
There’s not only three, that’s the kicker. There’s going to be a few more.

Jill K DeWit:
All right. I want to just make sure that we’re really talking about these so I’m going to ask you to come back around in a minute. So sorry to interrupt you, please continue on your number three.

Steven Jack Butala:
You need to remove your emotion. If you’ve got some type of figurative gun to your head about getting a deal done this month because you need to make payroll. In the long run, that type of stressed environment’s not going to work. That’s not what this is for. You need to make sure that you have no bills or that your bills are so … You have a W-2 job that … Where you can find time in your life to start a company which is what this is. This is not what everybody else on the internet calls it, geez, passive income, and a side gig, and there’s all these cute little names for it. The fact is you are starting an empire and it needs capital, it needs your attention and time, and it needs you to be … Believe in it. You are the leader, you’re the CEO of it. You need to really grab the thing by the horns and give it what it deserves. Feed it so that it becomes something that you can … That you want and you’re hitting your goals.
Being emotional about having a bad month, you got to barrel through that because you believe in the product, you believe in the concept and the business, and you believe in the group that you’re in, hopefully it’s Land Academy because other people are doing it, they’ve already proven it for you. And you believe in yourself. I think this is the biggest one. The biggest issue with competition is not the competition itself it’s your ability to roll with the changes and your belief in yourself that you can do that and come out of it okay. God, how many times have you and I said, “Wow, the market changed. Geez, what are we going to do?”

Jill K DeWit:
We don’t, isn’t that funny?

Steven Jack Butala:
How are we going to do that? I can’t count the number of times.

Jill K DeWit:
This is perfect because I want to circle back through since we have lots of time. I want to circle back through. I love your list of three here, and I want to talk about them a little bit more with my thoughts on it. So your first one is … Okay, again, we’re dealing with competition, three ways to deal with it. One is you just have to accept it. Totally get it. Like you said, “How many times did we go well, it’s changed, it’s over, it’s done.” We don’t give up, we don’t we just find a new place kind of thing. And that’s part of it for me. You have to stay on track, and stay committed, and pivot.
You brought up some really, really good points in the beginning here about, no matter what business you have someone’s going to get it cheaper. You could have been the widget king of fill-in-the-blank for two decades and now all of a sudden here comes the new guy. It’s going to happen. Think about Coca‑Cola, Pepsi, think about all the energy drinks, think about everything, there’s always a first guy and then there’s 10 after him, always. And then the question is who stays the course? Who lasts? Who rolls with the punches?
That’s the thing too about change, you have to change and adapt. If you say, “Well, it’s always worked this way why would I change it? If it ain’t broke don’t fix it” whatever your mindset is. If you don’t change and listen to your customers and what they want you’re going to … They’re going to move on without you. I really like that. Change and accepting that is huge. I was thinking too, how many times we’ve pivoted and changed? How many credit card companies that we’ve gone through back in the day? They didn’t understand our business and they would shut us down. I’m like “I got to be able to accept money.” That was one of the hardest things. People are trying give me money and I can’t take their money, I got to figure something out here. And we got creative.
There were many times that we just did weird stuff too. It hasn’t happened in probably a decade now, but people would send me checks. I’d have money orders and things like that we had to do just to … Because people really wanted the property and we got creative with them. Then I love your, gosh, dig into an area that you know that … Better than anybody else. And building your team. That’s so huge. Like you mentioned, a lot of it is how fast you can make decisions now because how well you know the area and what’s coming. You know where the Walmart’s going in and you know where this is … And you know the good side of the tracks and the not good side of the tracks. That’s still a thing.
And it does build confidence because you really know what you’re doing. And also for me it’s ease, it’s money. My life is easier. I’m getting cheaper things done with my same escrow agent. They cut me all these deals because I have three I’m throwing in escrow a month. And we don’t have to talk that much. I know how she rolls she knows how I roll. We get these things done kind of thing. And then your third one, this is good, just taking yourself I guess out of this. You call it remove your emotion or your bank balance.

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s great, take yourself out of it.

Jill K DeWit:
This is bigger than you.

Steven Jack Butala:
Well said.

Jill K DeWit:
This is bigger than you and it is not personal.

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s right.

Jill K DeWit:
Being co-founder of a sweet little land company for going on … We’re nine years now and we’re going to be 10 next summer. Boy, if I thought everybody was out to get me I wouldn’t be here right now. I know that we’ve helped a lot of careers in a lot of different ways get off the ground. And I can’t take it personal, and I have to just trust that we’re doing the right thing. And I know we are, I know we are because we’re all doing great. I have one last little thing I’d like to add to this is … We talked about it a little bit on the career path alumni call with the noise out there. And you know what we all agreed on? No one’s listening to the noise, we’re ignoring it. Well, especially Jack has weathered three real estate storms-

Steven Jack Butala:
Three.

Jill K DeWit:
We’ll just say-

Steven Jack Butala:
One was a depression, yeah.

Jill K DeWit:
In his career.

Steven Jack Butala:
But a lot of little ones that I somewhat caused.

Jill K DeWit:
Guess what? It works out. If you can stick with it like we’re talking about, don’t take it personal, find your niche, accept the change, and roll with it … Don’t have a big ego and expect to do the same numbers you did last month, so what? Add up the year, divide it by 12 you know you did fine. And you stay the course, it’s going to work itself out. I hate seeing people not make it-

Steven Jack Butala:
Me too.

Jill K DeWit:
But there’s a lot of people that won’t make it. There’s a lot of people right now that are … That’s part of what’s going on I think too, there’s a lot of noise out there. People are like “Oh, this is a” … “This land thing.” We’ve talked about this too. I can’t remember the last time I had to explain that you could make money selling land. But when we started Land Academy I was constantly … No one believed me. Not one person would believe that you could make money on land.

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s right.

Jill K DeWit:
They’re like “You’re stupid.”

Steven Jack Butala:
For five years.

Jill K DeWit:
“Jill, you’re wrong.”

Steven Jack Butala:
For the five years it was like that.

Jill K DeWit:
“Oh, you must do something to it, you’re not telling me the truth.” I’m like “No, really, I’m not doing anything to it.” They didn’t believe me. Now that’s over, everybody understands that. But there’s people that are still … What’s the word I’m looking for?

Steven Jack Butala:
Let me paraphrase.

Jill K DeWit:
Education, and knowledge, and experience or tenacity to hang with it.

Steven Jack Butala:
Jill and I have never said this is easy. If you go out on the internet and look at-

Jill K DeWit:
Oh, that’s great.

Steven Jack Butala:
Anybody who thinks they can teach this are … And is teaching it and offering some type of product, the underlying message that they’re sending is that this is an easy, fast way to make money.

Jill K DeWit:
There’s a lot of moving parts.

Steven Jack Butala:
This is a business and you can build an empire. We just talked to Josiah, again, I don’t know when that’s going to air. This is his fourth year in the business. Last year top lined three million and this year expects to do seven or eight million, and he’s very humble about it. And he said, “Yep, we did everything wrong. I made a mistake over here, this happened over here.” And then he revealed really what motivates him and why he’s got to that level. So it’s really worth listening to. He’s in this. He’s in it full-time, he’s got full-time people, and he’s managing cash flow and has the same concerns that all of us do and he addresses them one by one and overcomes them. And how he overcomes them and addresses them this month will be different next month.

Jill K DeWit:
Oh, there’s going to be a whole new set of issues.

Steven Jack Butala:
And it’ll be different the month after that.

Jill K DeWit:
What we’re dealing with this year in 2024 is going to be so different in 2025.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, for sure.

Jill K DeWit:
And think about what we got through since 2020. There’s many of you in Land Academy, you’ve been with us way before COVID, we all got through it. If anything, it was a woo. We all thought it was going to sink the ship and then it turned out the opposite effect. That’s a thing too, you don’t know what you think is going to happen the outcome might be the opposite. So stay the course and learn to roll with it.

Steven Jack Butala:
Here’s what you have that we never had, and most people don’t have, camaraderie.

Jill K DeWit:
I was going to say us.

Steven Jack Butala:
You have a group. You have a group of people. When you have one of those days or one of those months, you can reach out on Discord or reach out to the people that maybe you went through Career Path with and say, “Are you having this situation?”

Jill K DeWit:
That’s good.

Steven Jack Butala:
And there’s a very good chance that they’re going to say, “Oh, yeah, I had that last year. Last year in July the same thing happened to me, this is what I did.”

Jill K DeWit:
Or how about last week?

Steven Jack Butala:
Oh, no. I’ll give you a great example. Early on in this business around two … Around January 15th … I mean, December 15th, everything just stopped. Every single time for years I said, “Well, I guess my career’s over. My career in buying and selling land’s over, I wonder what I’m going to do next year over because it’s over. The phone’s not ringing, I can’t send any mail out.” Until I met Jill and she said, “What the hell is wrong with you? It’s Christmas, the kids are out of school.” I didn’t ever think to think in terms of school and children going to school. Kids are out of school, everybody’s off the internet, nobody cares about their land. And January-

Jill K DeWit:
Give it a minute.

Steven Jack Butala:
January 15th all this pent-up oh my God stuff’s going to happen-

Jill K DeWit:
And the bills come in.

Steven Jack Butala:
Where everybody’s life returns. And that’s exactly what happened. When I look back on it that’s what happened every single year. That’s my camaraderie. My first person to really vent and throw … Bounce stuff off of was Jill. Now we have Land Academy. Jill and I are doing a product right now, personally, where we’re sending out a bunch of mail and we are seeking funding. We’re not the funders, we’re usually the funders. Seeking funding so we can do more deals and have what I call … I call it the Limitless capital plan where we could do 50 deals instead of 10 because we’re using some other … A partner.

Jill K DeWit:
It sounds like a commercial. It feels like Capital One, limitless capital. We could have a Land Academy credit card. Oh.

Steven Jack Butala:
I thought about that. Stuff’s going to happen. I thought about that a while ago.

Jill K DeWit:
That would be really cool. I love that. Good stuff, thank you.

Steven Jack Butala:
Jill, you have something to share.

Jill K DeWit:
I do. Jack’s toggling for me. Here’s what’s really cool within our group, we’re just talking about the community. This is a perfect little segue to what goes on in Land Academy. Talk about a niche within a niche within a niche. We have a Land Academy Ladies group. And then to take it even smaller of a niche. Some of the sweet gals in the Land Academy Ladies group decided to start their own book club. They held their first book club in June. I, unfortunately, was tied up with you trying to take down a real estate deal on a Sunday, of course, Sunday afternoon. This is all true, I wasn’t playing hooky. And I wasn’t there at the book club meeting. They held it.
And I went back later and looked at their notes from the presentation and I … It was all about a book that I grew up with. Well, I don’t know if I should say a book. It was all around my life growing up. If you’ve been listening to us for a while you know that my dad was a coach at Dale Carnegie. Boy Jack just has … When he met me he just embraced that with open arms, not. And he gets a little tired of it but that’s just how I roll around. But you know what? I actually have veered away, right? I have veered away a little bit from some of the original Dale Carnegie things.
My point in bringing all this up is, this not about the group, and the ladies, and how awesome they are and that they did this, but it was just thinking about … I went back and looked at the notes from the call and it made me go back and reintroduce myself to some of the thinkings there. And gosh, it’s so powerful. And at the end of the day, this is really a lot of the way I get deals done. The way that you talk to people, the way you approach things, the way you don’t complain about things. The way you try to give honest and sincere appreciation. And the way you try to inspire people by being genuinely interested in what they have to say. I do this all the time with sellers, that’s how I get them, smiling.
I haven’t talked about this in a while, but a couple years ago we did these intensive workshops. It was right after COVID and I did a whole thing about winning over these sellers. That was one of my thing. Gosh, before you pick up that phone you better have a smile on your face. If you don’t think that matters I’m telling you it does. They know if you’re smiling or not on the other end of the phone. Gosh. Using their name. Really listening and taking in what they have to say, making them feel important. Does all this make sense? Well, yeah duh. Boy, if I was talking to a seller and I had this attitude, yeah, Jill, it probably would work. That’s why I’m bringing it up. This is a lot of where it comes from. Be friendly. Try to get them saying yes. Those are little things that I’m trying to pick out. Be sympathetic. Whatever’s going on in their life … I’ll end it on that. These sellers are calling you because of a situation.

Steven Jack Butala:
This is my takeaway is-

Jill K DeWit:
And you need to be sympathetic about whatever it is they’re dealing with. Whoever passed on, who … Whatever financial situation’s going on, being sympathetic is great.

Steven Jack Butala:
What Jill’s saying is, get yourself prepped and in the mood quickly when the phone rings to provide the best type of meet them from where they’re coming as a seller so you can do a deal.

Jill K DeWit:
That works. What do you have to share with us today? I know you have something good that you wanted to talk about.

Steven Jack Butala:
Like most of the topics here, I’ve made this mistake in the past and really learned from it, learned that I was wrong. You can’t cynical your way into wealth. You can’t sit around … And especially this day and age where there’s just so many … So much negative stuff out there, politics and bifurcation. I don’t know if it’s me or … But I’ve met more people recently in the last couple of years that … Especially young people that just say, “My way’s better and I’m not going to learn anything. I don’t have any questions for you, I don’t know.” And these are people that truly have done nothing with their lives. That’s not coming from, look at this over here what I created. You should be asking me questions. It’s not that. So you can’t cynical your way into wealth. You’re alienating people, you’re making yourself angry. It’s the exact opposite of what Jill was saying. Get yourself in a happy place before you talk to a seller and they’re going … It’ll come off that way.
What you can do is you can camaraderie your way into wealth. That’s what Land Academy is, that’s why we created it. To create an environment for people that … Where we can do partnership deals with, whether it’s fund them money or have other people fund us money. If we had a couple of deals come in Northern New York, let’s say, there’s several people in our group that I would call and … I’m not a specialist, specialist in Northern New York at all. And if they came back, “The deals look pretty good, what did I miss?” I would utilize the people in our group. I would camaraderie my way into doing a deal and not sitting there saying-

Jill K DeWit:
Helping each other.

Steven Jack Butala:
“Oh, New York, who wants to live in New York?” Remember that? People used to say that all the time. Who wants to live way out there? Why would you ever buy land out there? Cynicism is just not appropriate in this environment-

Jill K DeWit:
No, it’s funny.

Steven Jack Butala:
It’s not going to get you wealthy.

Jill K DeWit:
That’s a good one. You know what’s another phrase … Saying that I haven’t heard in a long time? What was it? A junk lot.

Steven Jack Butala:
Junk land.

Jill K DeWit:
Junk land. Oh, junk land way out there. I haven’t heard that in a long time. That’s kind of funny. That used to be a thing, yeah.

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. See you next week.