From proof of concept to building a legacy, every land investor’s journey is unique. In this episode, Steven Jack Butala and Jill K DeWit walk us through the stages of being a Land Academy member, filled with humorous banter and practical insights. Whether you’re just getting started or scaling to advanced deals, they break down the life cycle of land investing—from sending your first mailers to creating a system that sustains your real estate lifestyle. With questions from listeners about data pulling and mailing strategies, this episode is packed with tips to help you succeed at any phase of your land investment career. Tune in for an entertaining and informative ride!

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From Beginner To Legacy: The Life Cycle Of A Land Academy Member

This is Episode 2022, and we are going to talk about the lifecycle of a Land Academy member. Jill, where did this come from?

The last time I checked, we had a very lengthy, for lack of better terms, discussion about what we’re going to talk about, and this isn’t it at all, which is fine. I’m a professional at something. I’m not sure what. I’m a professional seller. I’m definitely a professional shopper.

This is good. What else are you?

I am an amateur at picking men. I’m a professional man picker, shopper, and salesperson. What are you very professional at?

I’m a data geek and a mediocre accountant.

You are professional at perfecting our water situation, no matter where we are. Whether it’s our home or on the road, you have watered down pat. I don’t think about that at all. Now the other things, you’re professional at picking mountain wear. We’ve been together all day. We went out to breakfast. I ran some errands, came back, and sat down to record.

We look like dingbats.

It’s the first time I’m looking at what he’s wearing and what I’m wearing. We’re a little too matchy. It’s comical. I’m clearly not professional at details on this kind of thing.

Jill has an outfit for everything. If I said we’re going horseback riding, She would come back, go in the bedroom, and come back out 35 or 45 seconds later with the whole outfit. I don’t know where it comes from because we’re in an RV right now.

We’re going skeet shooting with a chic and I’d say, “I got this.”

This is all true.

I have an outfit for that.

If you tuned in to this episode to learn about how to buy and sell land, I guess you’re not going to learn that.

Sorry, but we will get to that. This is good. Did you say what we’re talking about?

The life cycle of a Land Academy member. I thought when people join Land Academy, they learn how to, in six months, start to buy and sell some land, get a 1st deal done, get a 2nd deal done, get 10 deals done. They say, “Land Academy’s awesome, and I’m going to be here forever. Thank you.”

That’s what everybody says.

“I’ll stop doing this when I make $6 million a month.” That’s the lifecycle of a Land Academy member. They join, they’re happy, and they never leave.

They’re making $6 million a month, working 2 hours a week. We’re going to go into more details. How about that? I broke it out into speed gears. When you relate to things, I can understand 1st gear and 2nd gear. I was thinking of it in that sense. That’ll be good for us to talk about. My car happens to go up to sixth, so that’ll be fun.

Each week on the show, we answer a question from our Land Academy member Discord forum and take a deep dive into land-related topics through popular requests from our Land Academy community. Jill, let’s take a question.

Pulling Data Set

Dalton wrote, “I’ve been following this community for about seven years. I am in the position to finally jump in and take action.”

Good for you.

That’s cool. Isn’t that funny? We’re going on year ten. This is crazy, “I’m happy to take part in the community. I’m happy to be a part of the community. I sent out my first mailer to a specific ZIP code, but I have a question in the trolling, and the red, yellow, and green phase. In the training, it shows to pit ZIP codes against each other to find the best ZIP, but when I’m pulling the data from DataTree, you always say, ‘Pull and mail the entire county.’ Why is that? When I’m only picking those ZIP codes maybe only one of those passes has the best results from the red, yellow, and green tests. Why should we not just pull that one ZIP code from DataTree since it was the best on the regular green test?

Dalton, this is an incredibly intelligent question. I’m glad that you asked it. I’m going to answer it here in a second. I can tell if you’re into this far after seven years of putting up with whatever Jill talked about how she’s dressed and ski shooting with the shake, that you’re going to do well here. The level of this question is excellent. It’s a Master’s degree-level question. Here’s the deal. When you pull a dataset out of a DataTree, it is missing situs data. Situs data and mailer data in each line of DataTree, each line represents one piece of property is often very different there. The situs address is where the heck is the thing located. The situs address for your house is 123 Main Street, and whatever.

A vacant piece of land has not yet been assigned a situs address because nobody gets mail there. That’s the post office assigned rural locations or property locations that are not in a master plan community upon request. The vast majority of the rural vacant land that we buy has no address. It’s in the data that way and it doesn’t have a ZIP code. What we do is we go through a conversion process where we take, for whatever reason, DataTree has assigned it, GPS codes, but not ZIP codes. We translate that GPS data and assign it a ZIP code. The reason that we pull the entire county is so that once you get in there and you then put in all of those ZIP codes, you can vary effectively, pit those ZIP codes against each other, and 3, 4, or 5 ZIP codes per county always rise to the top.

It’s how the data says, “These 8, 9, or 10 ZIP codes are fantastic,” or they pass the red green yellow test. What’s the red green yellow test? How many days on the market does ZIP code X have versus ZIP code Y? You could have a ZIP code that has a real load days on the market, let’s say below 30, and you can have the ZIP code bright adjacent to it that has days on market of 120. Why? We don’t know, but that’s what it is. You always want to lower days on the market because when you buy it, it’s a shorter time to sell it. Without getting into a credible amount of detail, which is probably too late for that, that’s why I pulled the whole county.

You sit and test it. Dalton, you’re in the club. Remember you can sit and play with DataTree all day long and you’re not going to get charged anything until you download any records, then don’t forget the first however many, I can’t remember what it is, or on the first 1,000 every month or me. Play around with it. You’ll notice when you pull the whole county, look how many records there are. Let’s say there are ten ZIP codes in this one county. You pull the whole county and it says 30,000 records, but if you go pull ZIP and add it all up, and it says 23,000 records. That’s because there are 7,000 that don’t have a ZIP or situs as he said. You have to go in. That’s part of what Jack does. He goes in and uses GPS coordinates to put the ZIP code in there because we know what it would be.

If you go into DataTree and type in a zip code this is the state, this is the county, but I only want the properties in this one ZIP code, you’ll be missing a substantial number of properties because it’s blank or null. That field is null in that data set. Data is cheap. We want you to spend a lot of money on data and a very small amount on mail. Mail’s very expensive. If you send out a very large mailer that has not been thought through correctly, then a lot of people are going to call you back.

Spend a lot of money on data and a very small amount on mail. Share on X

You’re going to spend a lot of money on Path Live when they answer the phone the mailer’s going to be expensive. You don’t need to spend a ton of money to learn how to do this that way, which is what you’re doing here, ask a lot of questions and follow what we do and it works. I love this question. It comes up in Career Path all the time, this exact question because we go through it in a nauseating amount of detail, but everybody in Career Path loves it. I wish I could do it for you on the screen right now.

Land Academy Member Life Cycle

This episode’s topic is The Lifecycle Of A Land Academy Member. Here’s how I look at this. There’s a beginner, intermediate, advanced, and you could look at it like that. I was thinking it would be fun to break it down into even 5 or 6 gears. I put them all together. It’s going to be easier today. I like to talk A, B, C, beginner, intermediate, and advanced. This is fun because this is how it typically goes. Typically, people don’t spend as much time as Dalton is doing their research, like seven years to make a decision, but I get it. I understand.

Let’s say they spend an average of 6 months to 1 year. I think that’s a good time. That’s time to get your life together, wrap your head around, “I want to do this,” and read our blogs for 6 months to 1 year. Not only am I getting it, I’m connecting with these people. I can learn from them because I understand what they’re saying. I’m sure the first couple shows of you have been reading to us for a while, probably the first couple shows didn’t make a whole lot of sense like, “What the heck are they talking about? You send out mail, they call you, you buy something, you sell it for double, hold on. This is crazy,” but after 3 or 6 months, it starts to sink in, then you realize after that point, you’re like, “Not only is it sinking in,” now you’re thinking of, “Now I’m getting these new things that they’re tapping into.”

You’re thinking ahead and putting yourself in that position. First gear is you dive in and you’re here for, let’s say 1 year to 2 because, for some people, it takes them that long to get rolling. Some people go bananas and they watch everything three times in one weekend. That’s all they do and they go in a dark room. Some people take a little bit of time, but part of even the prep before you get to first gear, I say first gear is when you join. The warmup period is, is what I was talking about first, making sure that you’re ready for this and it’s what you want to do. You have the finances, your family’s on board, all that good stuff. I’m happy to keep going unless you want to comment on the intro here because I want to go on the rest.

Proof Of Concept

I have some other names for it, Phase A or Step A for Jill. I would call this research and development or proof of concept to yourself. Proof of concept was our biggest challenge when we started Land Academy to get members so that we could do deals with other people, “This doesn’t work. What are you talking about?” They would do it and it worked great. We’ve passed proof of concept for buying land and reselling it. We were the leaders in that and introduced the entire internet to this concept since there are a lot of people that are involved in it.

I had to go through proof of concept when I started this to send out the first mailer and see if anybody responded or if it happened, if negative or positive. Sending out a mailer back then for me doesn’t look anything like what it looks like now. It was way different there’s a huge learning curve, but I got a huge response and I bought some property. That was proof of concept enough for me then I was feeling my way through it. I would call that step one, wouldn’t you? Step A, nobody’s doing any deals yet.

Beginner Phase

That’s the car in Idol. You’re warming up your engine and then you put it in first gear and you’re like a beginner. You’re moving and you’re rolling. That’s the beginning of it. I like how you said that. That’s true. For me, that’s 1 to 2 years. You have a couple of mailers under your belt. You have to do several mailers. When we have a weekly Thursday member call somebody and say, “I’m on my eighth first mailer.” I’m like, “I love that,” because no matter what, you’re going to make some changes. You’re going to goof some things up and sometimes you don’t goof them up. I was talking to somebody the other day, like, “You will send out an offer, priced for five acres when it’s 0.5. Guess what? It wasn’t you. Someone in the county did a typo.”

That’s going to happen. We help you know how to recover from that. You got some mailers going. You are making some money and you’re starting to see the need for systems. That’s what I think. You’re doing everything wrong. You’re running around like shuffling papers everywhere, like the phone rings and it’s a title company, that needs another document and you’re still learning this like, “I got this. I’ll get it to you. Give me an hour,” click and then the phone rings again and now it’s a seller you got to put that hat on. This is all part of the beginning phase where you feel like you know nothing, but you’re doing it.

You’re doing deals. If you do it right, you come up for air at 18 months, in 2 years. You did what we said. You are like, “I’m like drinking from the fire hose, but I kept the mailers going.” This is what a lot of people have done. You come up for air and you’re like, “Where does that $250,000 come from in my bank account?” You go, “This is working. Now I can start to make some different decisions.” For me, that’s when you start going into third gear roughly.

Intermediate Phase

Let’s take a step back for a second. I’m going to be frank with readers. Imagine a pyramid or better yet a funnel where you put oil in your car. The mouth of the funnel is very large. It aggregates everything down to a finer point. This career that Joe and I have chosen, or maybe it chose us. I still can’t tell, is a lifestyle. Now we’re out driving around in the RV. We have been for months now and wherever we go, the first thing I do is probably look up property values, see what’s for sale, get on a motorcycle, and go look at it. In fact, I would say I have reached this far, please correct, correct me if you think I’m incorrect here at all. We probably spend together either on something real estate-related more than half of our time. Probably closer to 70% or 75%.

It’s unhealthy. If Dr. Filler or someone’s falling around, he would say there’s something wrong with you two.

He would say, “Get a hobby.” We would say, “This is our hobby.” “You need another hobby.”

He would say, “You are going to crash and burn any day now.” We’d say, “That’s happened.” We’re at the bottom of that funnel. We’ve been doing this for many years. Land Academy has been accused of, “You make this sound so easy.” It’s easy for us. It’s our lifestyle. It’s our life. I don’t know how we found each other or if somebody was a bad influence on the other person. It doesn’t matter. Probably, some version of all that is correct. That’s phase two that you’re talking about that two years. There are people on the other side of the camera here is saying, “Two years, it’s going to take before I’m in out of second gear.” I don’t know if we’ve messed around with the gear analogy to which I say if you’re serious about it, yeah. You won’t realize whatever financial goal you have.

How many hours do you need to perfect something?

It’s 10,000 hours.

It’s five years. That ties into what I’m saying, 18 months to 2 years to get your footing here is not nuts. This is what you do in the evenings and what you do on the weekends if you’re working a day job like most people are, which I would argue is the right way to do this, by the way. I want you to keep your job and do all this stuff. Now you came up for air. Two years has passed. You’re in Land Academy. You made friends.

You know who’s working in that area and who’s working in this area. You’ve leaned on some people. You needed a photographer or a Jerome pilot. You have money in your bank account that you’re not even sure how it got there because you weren’t paying attention. You were just head down like a machine answering the phone and closing deals on the buy side and the sell side now you’re like, “Now I can make some different decisions. For me, this is the best part. I love this part of all,” and maybe you use other people’s money. That probably helped you get there too. You did some deal funding because you ran out of dough because you’re doing everything right.

Now you can go, “Maybe I do some funding for other people now. Maybe I look into different properties. Maybe I even look into bigger property dollar amounts.” All kinds of things are your possibility. Some people can do this naturally and I applaud them. That’s no problem for them, but other people do need help. This is not a plug for Career Path, but this is how Career Path came to be. The reason we even developed Career Pathway before the coaching, which started the personal coaching because you guys have been begging for it I apologize it took us so long, but the way Career Path came to be because we had enough people that are like, “This is my life level. I have three years of my income in the bank right now. I’m going to quit my job.”

Bottom of the funnel.

“I need you guys to help me get these systems now in place. I’ve been running around doing it all by myself and I did it. Now I want to source some things out and take this bigger.” That to me is the intermediate. That’s the middle phase where you’re 2 to 4 years into this for a lot of people. You do Career Path. You’ve started a company, you’ve done your own company. How’s that? you know what to do at this point. You know how to make your own procedures. You already know who you are, what you’re good at and you know what you need to source out, where to do it, and all of that.

If you don’t, either way, we will help you because that’s where we shine. We’re good at clearly getting people from 0 to 100 because we’ve done it. Where we are the best is like, “Let’s make this an empire.” I think a lot of people come to us already knowing land and learning from it from other people, which I love and applaud and they were successful, but then they hit this point where they’re like, “No, I want to make it an empire. I’m not messing around now. This is what I love. I want to make $3 million-plus a year when they come to us, I’m like, this is where we shine. now that’s the intermediate level, which is, “Let’s do that.”

We're good at getting people from 0 to 100 because we've done it. Share on X

That’s fun. You got money in different areas and stuff you’re not even working on. My favorite is deal funding. When you fund somebody else’s deals, you might be a sounding board once in a while, but for the most part, they’re doing the work. They just needed your dough because they’re in our group, and we’re all helping them too. They have resources and they know what to do. They needed the dough. that’s the intermediate. Before I get to the advance, do you have some thoughts on that?

Are they four in total?

Idling, beginner, intermediate, then I’ll get to advanced. This is number three.

Advanced Phase

Number three is you’re two-plus years into this. You’re comfortable doing deals. You worked all the kinks out. You may have some employees, or you may not depending on who you are and you do a bunch of deals a year. What’s next?

You look around. Next is, “I’m making so much flipping money now. It’s getting stupid.” You start looking around. You’re thinking about your kids. The final phase for me, the way advanced is you can take a step back. You’re not doing very many deals at all, but boy do they count. There are 1 or 2 deals a month because you’re involved with the top people. The numbers are staggering. You don’t care how long it takes. It takes six months or a year, whatever it is because it does at that level. That’s okay. You’re involved in that stuff and you’re sitting there. For me, the advanced is, “If I keep making more money, I’m going to ruin my kids.” You don’t want your kids to be trust fund kids.

You’re creating a legacy. Yes. That’s too robust.

Creating a legacy is great/however, careful. How do you describe this?

At the full cycle of this, the life cycle of the Land Academy from, to get from 3 to 4, and 4 is the final stage was very, challenging for me here’s why. I never believed until I was doing it for several years in phase four that it was a consistent business model. I’m a curmudgeon in general. I’m a pessimist. Not an optimist. I don’t think the next deal’s going to come. We sent out a bunch of mail. The mailer went great. Jill created three real estate deals. We made a couple hundred thousand dollars. I guess that’s it. I have always had that issue. I’ve gotten past it now.

This is true. I’m like, “Hold on. The phone just rang. Knock it off.”

You know when you’re in stage four, both feet are firmly planted in the fourth stage, the final part of the lifecycle that the deal keeps happening. You keep sending out mail. You may change where you send mail and the product type you might alter. Jill and I are heavily into buying houses and selling houses right now in addition to land. It’s not so much the dollars that you’re making, but it’s the system, the system’s in place, the people are in place. Jill and I know each other’s roles.

I mean to the point where we literally had a conversation about going to a specific part of the country when we’re done here based on the red, green, and yellow test that I’ve been performing in the entire area. The area spans more than one state, not the entire state, but certain portions of the state of multiple states in the same area. That’s the fourth stage where you realize it’s happening. It’s not a dollar amount anymore.

You hit financial goals too. That’s one of the first things we do in Career Path and I want to encourage you because especially members, you guys have that equity planner on your member dashboard, go down to the bottom of the resources, the equity planner, there’s all these little tabs in there. One’s a red, yellow, and green test. There are all kinds of great things. It’s not just for planning out this year and next year. It’s for planning out your life and working it backward. You’ve hit some financial goals. I was starting to think about that because we always start Career Path with, “What do you want to hit this year? What do you want to hit next year? When will you be done?”

I want to know what is your number. For some people, it’s $10 million, $20 million, or $1 million. There’s no wrong answer. When you’re at that level, you either hit that number or you can see it there in the distance. It’s not just an elusive thing. You’re like, “I see it. It’s right there. It’s coming up here in however many months. I’m going to hit that number.” What’s funny is you could stop. I know people in the Land Academy that literally, and I celebrated it. I’m like, “You hit your goal.” He’s like, “Yes, I’m done.” Some people stop. We again have this problem.

This thing right now is a bigger problem for Jill than for me.

I have a problem with stopping because I want to keep my mind sharp then. This is the whole thing. Now you’re at the top level. You have different concerns. It’s not money. Got it. The kids are going to be fine. Got it. I want to maybe give some away because they don’t need that much. Got it. I want to keep my mind sharp. Got it. I truly love it. It depends on how into it you were. Over the years, I have talked to investors, who’ve gotten our letters and said, “I know exactly what you’re doing. I did this two decades ago in a different way but when the phone rings and there’s a deal, I’m still going to do it.” I’m like, “That’s going to be me.” That is me.

Transitions

Here’s the thing. Jill Lay laid out four stages of the lifecycle of a Land Academy member. Let’s say a land investor in general. I’ve watched people now for almost a decade do this. It’s transitioning from 1 to 2, or A to B, B to C. It’s transitions that are tough. When you start this career, everybody’s euphoric. We’re all happy. Jack and Jill did it. We’ve got all these, “I’m going to go to all their calls. I’m going to do all this stuff. Now we got to do a mailer.” There’s hard work involved in you, “What if I do it wrong?” Now we’re beginning that difficult transition between 1 and 2. Once you get past it, you’ve done a mailer. Maybe you screwed up part of a mailer, which is going to happen. You’ve accepted all that and you’ve done your first deal and you’re on your way to doing a few deals a year, which I think is step two.

As an intermediate, yes. That’s three. I went 0, 1, 2, 3.

That transition is difficult for some people. It was difficult for me. Why? Because you’re comfortable. I’ve got this thing over here. I’m paying my mortgage. Everything is great. I’m doing 4 or 5 deals a year. I believe in the concept. My wife finally stopped bugging me about it. because she thought it was stupid in the beginning.

“I bought her a car.”

To ramp that up, you’re going to need more resources, more time to get more mail out, and you’re going to have to explore new markets because the ones that you’re using currently are, you’re probably hitting them pretty well. Changing those gears and getting into that higher gear, where you’re making more money and being rewarded more is hard. It takes a mindset change.

What’s interesting to me is when you go from you as a one-man show to that next phase, people are of afraid hiring. Hiring and taking on staff and giving up some of the control is hard for people also. I like what you said. In each of these transitions, there’s a little bit of a, “Ooh.” When you change gears and then it kicks in, they’re like, “Now I got it.”

This is my opinion. At the very beginning of anything, it’s exciting. I don’t care. Whatever you’re doing, it’s always new and fun. In the end, it’s incredibly rewarding and fun. You look back and say, “I got 500 stories about why I didn’t think this was going to work.” It’s the middle that sucks. There’s a tremendous amount of work. There’s a huge learning curve. There are all kinds of obstacles. There are failures, successes, and self-doubt. There are all kinds of stuff in the middle. That’s why the funnel’s small at the end because it weeds out the funnel’s big at the beginning and small at the bottom. In the middle, that’s where it weeds everybody out. There are several things in my life that I’ve started and I will never finish them.

The reason I won’t finish them is because it wasn’t that important to me. Making a ton of money and having a blast with Jill in our silver years has always been my first priority even over raising children that was part of it back then. It was the part of the middle. We’ve gotten through that and successfully gotten through that. It’s becoming more rewarding as the kids get older, but that was always my goal. My number one goal in life was to hit the silver years and have a blast.

If I have it my way, you’ll never see me silver. These are the silver, the little beginning. These are the salt and pepper years.

Salt and pepper decades. At the bottom of this lifecycle, and this is the whole point of this episode, is that it doesn’t stop. That’s what this career is about. You can do this till you’re in your 80s. You can stop when you hit your financial goal. We make it to the fourth year. You have a lot. You’ve given yourself choices. You do not have a lot of choices in our first gear at all. In the middle gears, you have a choice. You can go from 2nd to 3rd and 3rd to 4th if you want to the tool. We have all the resources and the tools to do that.

Land investing doesn't stop. That's what this career is. You can do this until you're in your 80s. Share on X

When you hit that top advance, you hit your goals, you’re like, “I could be done,” but then a lot of people, it’s very cool in Land Academy especially, they’re like, “Why would I? I don’t even have to send out any mail. I have to hang out in Discord. I can answer people’s questions and then pick up a deal now and then I’ll be the bank for somebody. I can sit back and easily make $100,000 or so a month doing nothing. Just being the bank and sitting there anyway.”

You are a lender.

“Why wouldn’t I do that?” You could deal with funds, which is funny. There are several people that are in Land Academy just for that. People came to Land Academy just for that. This group is so smart.

There’s a real specific conversation with a young employee that we have about how tough it is to be in one of the younger generations right now because you’re expected to have whatever it’s called, whatever the cool new phrase is called, side gig or passive income or whatever. You’re expected to have a couple of W2 jobs and work from home which you can’t do all this stuff all at once. You got to choose and then if you don’t do it, you feel like crap about yourself and it all stops. It’s not fair. You yourself are going to have to figure out if you’re younger, what’s important. Here’s the truth. It’s a lot of hard work. A lot of people out on the internet have taken our, business model or a concept and they made it their own and then talked about it on the internet pretty loudly, as an instructor, as a credible instructor.

the message that I see when I watch some of this stuff from these people is that they are painting a picture of how easy this is and how fast it’s going to happen and how great it is to buy a piece of land. You never have to go there. You buy plop down $5,000. You get $10,000 back a couple of weeks later. Why doesn’t everybody do it? That’s not how this is. It’s the truth of it. They come and go quickly. Instructors come and go unfortunately, and this is what upsets me the most, would be future Jack and Jill are turned off by the whole process because you got caught up and it’s not your fault. You got caught up, by the first person on the top of Google when you type in land investing.

You’re like, “This didn’t work.” You didn’t have the support and everything that you needed the tools to do it right. That breaks my heart.

Jill laid out a whole lifecycle. This is a lifestyle and a lifecycle. She laid it out pretty clearly. That’s very possible and feasible, especially for Dalton, who’s after seven years, going to get the mail out, which is awesome. That makes me think he’s going to do great.

It took him that long to make sure he got his life in order. Who knows what else is going on? Maybe finish college, maybe get this out of the way, and save up enough dough to do it or whatever it is. I love it when people do their homework. I used to way back at the beginning of all of the calls. We were a small little operation and we’re still not that big, but by design. I took all the sales calls where people wanted to learn about Land Academy, and what we’re doing, and the more people listened and watched you, you know their questions versus, “I just clicked on this thing and I heard I can make this money. I want to do this.” “What do you know about it?” “Nothing.” This is not going to work.”

“What country are you in, New Zealand?”

The first thing I would do is say, “Let’s do this. Here’s our podcast, here’s our eBook. Please go spend some time on this stuff. See if it makes sense. Then call me back and we’ll talk.”

Inspirational

Do you have something inspirational to share?

I was thinking about what you said and I liked that, about in between sections where you’re pivoting from a crazy person in the beginning, especially that one going from the beginner to the intermediate. I think I see most people struggle right there because they’re like, “You have sticky notes everywhere, but it works. You have a CRM, but it works. Money comes in, money comes out. It’s not managed, not budgeted and things like that, but it works.” Now you’re going, “Now I can afford to make some different decisions. I need to reel this back in now and be more strategic.” How do you do that?

When you start to see this is working for you and you like it, I always like having people, “Create your own systems. Create your own SOP, your own operational procedures, how you do things, how you like them done so you could be ready to replace yourself because you will.” One of the first things that I love and people do is get a transaction coordinator. That’s one of the things that changes your life, especially if you’re the deal maker. I’m best on the phone then when I hang up the phone, “We’re buying this for this. We’re selling this for this. I need to find out about this property and I need this.” That’s my best place.

Everybody goes and does what they’re going to do. She picks the phone back up and does another deal. She’s not really working.

Open escrow and get that done. That’s the best, but I can’t just expect people to know that. In the beginning, I had to do it by myself and make a procedure until I could then find the right person. That’s a whole other thing. That’s a whole other week of shows hiring, but when you find the right person or as you’re training too, they need to be learning your steps, your procedure, your ways of things like that. What I’m trying to talk about is an example of and a way to overcome and transition into that next phase. It is scary.

One of the things I know people get hung up on is hiring. I’ve had people, I’m like, “What’s the deal? What’s the problem?” They’re like, “It’s one thing.” I’ve had one person, in particular, sit me down and say, “It was one thing for me to take a handle on being responsible, solely responsible, not W-2 responsible for my family and keeping food on the table, paying for all the bills, making sure school and college.” That’s one thing, but then to take on an employee and to have the stress of being a little worried about their livelihood for their family, that’s scary. I get it. That’s why we’re here. We will help you. I don’t know if that was inspirational but I wanted to share a little bit about that. Your struggles are real.

Don’t worry because mine is less inspirational.

I think mine was a freakout moment, “Thanks, Jill. Now I’m scared.” How about this? I’ve been there. I’ve done that. I will help you.

Look to move through the four stages. You’re going to have to go through that stuff. That’s my point and there are a lot of things that should be speed bumps, but end up being brick walls. One of them is perfect. You described it. Somebody talking to themselves, “I can’t make the transition from, having this amazing W-2 job, even though I’ve made four times as much money as my W2 salary last year. Inland, I just can’t make that transition.” I understand. You don’t have to kick yourself around for that. That’s how it is. That’s your fourth lifecycle. Here’s my inspiration. It’s probably not inspirational at all.

My recommendation to you is whoever you are and wherever you are in your life or life cycle or in your career, at the beginning or the end, or in the middle, sit down with yourself, not with your therapist or your spouse or your drinking buddy. Not just in one sitting, but maybe every time in the morning when you’re brushing your teeth, look at yourself in the mirror and ask yourself what you want, what’s important to you, if you’re on track, getting it. If you’re not, make some changes.

Whoever you are and wherever you are in your life or career, sit down with yourself and ask yourself what's really important to you. Share on X

For me, it was having a life with Jill, raising our kids right, and making a lot of money. We’ve passed that goal. I’ve always had a financial goal that I’ve had. We’re still doing it. None of that would’ve happened at all unless I was in tune with what I wanted, from a career goal standpoint. Join us next time for another interesting episode. You are not alone in your real estate ambition. Information and inspiration to buy undervalued property.