Creating a land deal where there was none starts with a simple phone call. In episode 2046, Steven Jack Butala and Jill DeWit delve into the fascinating process of creating a land deal where there initially seemed to be none, sharing their expert strategies for reaching out to sellers. This involves sending out mailers, effectively answering phone calls from interested sellers, and negotiating deals quickly. Additionally, they introduce their upcoming Career Path 10 program, designed for ambitious investors looking to elevate their game. Join them for insights on transforming potential into profit in the land investment space!

Listen to the podcast here

Start To Finish 3: From No Deal To Real Deal A.K.A How To Answer The Phone

Start To Finish

This is episode number 2046. Jill and I are talking about creating a land deal where there was none. It’s also known as answering the phone based on the mailer you sent out.

This is what we’re covering. It’s our business model start to finish. Mondays are sending the criteria and getting the mail out. You talked about pricing the mail. I’m going to talk about what to do now that the offers hit the mailbox and the sellers are staring at them. Next, we’re going to talk about the actual pulling the trigger buying it and what’s involved there. Friday, it’s about selling it. By the way, I was thinking about this. I’m going to say it out loud for everyone here.

If you’re into it, I thought it could be fun to talk about real high level advances like, here’s our business model. I thought it would be fun to pivot and do all advanced topics to help those folks. I thought we’d have a day on mobiles, houses, and different buckets. I’m just throwing out ideas. Selling five deals a month at $50,000 dollars a deal. What does that look like? I thought about like a team day. What do you need? What staff do you need? Anything.

I’m thinking about our people who are already making one in $2 million a year and they’re like, “No, want to make $4 million a year. How do I pivot to that?” Even if you’re making $200,000 to $5000,000 a year and you want to make a million a year consistently. That’s easy to do. What does that look like? We can talk all about that.

Career Path 10

Each day on the show, we answer a question from our Land Academy member discord forum and take a deep dive in a land related topic by popular request.

I like this question. I just saw this. James wrote, “I’m thinking about joining Career Path 10. Where can I get more information? What can I expect?” Career Path is our eight-week Mastermind program. It is delivered online via Zoom live on Mondays in 2024. It starts on October 28th. You can expect to spend 3 to 4 hours or maybe more with us. We take deep dives into it. It’s our whole business model but it’s really high level.

It’s for those of you that you’ve owned a company and a business. You’re here to make this your retirement. Yours is my career now and/or I’ve been doing this for a long time. “I’m ready to bring it home.” “This is what I want to do.” “I’m done doing this little buy for $3,000 and sell it for $10,000.” “I’m done doing $1,999 a month times 100 people.” “That’s giving me a headache.” “I want to make some dough.” We know those people. You know you’re who you are and you’ve done well at it.

This whole thing gives you a headache.

It does. I’m chasing people for $1,999 a month and now they’re all in Florida. What do I do?

You’re in Florida.

I know there’s a lot of people that do it there because there’s been a well that they could keep going back to. I always wondered, “I might dry up at some point or something might happen.” Do you want to work that hard? That’s the reality. That’s what a crip is. Where do you find more information? Go to LandAcademy.com. There’s a tab at the top that talks about the programs. You have self-study in Land Academy. There’s more coming, by the way.

We have self-study, intermediate, one-on-one coaching, and a career path, which is the big master line. You could do it all the same time, by the way. It’s not just you pick one. You could do one or roll in the other one. I have people that are coaching that are probably going to do coaching in addition to career path. I don’t think they’re going to do it at the same time but they might, which would be beneficial too because they can go, “Alright.” We talked about all those on Monday. Now, it’s Wednesday. I want to ask some very specific detailed questions. Even outside of the office hours that you offer. I want to make sure I’m getting everything I can out of this. That’s not nuts so I’m excited.

The first Tuesday of every month, we have a Career Path alumni call. Everybody from 1:00 to 9:00 is on that call. There’s a ton of people on there and I have yet to hear anyone say, “This isn’t worth it.” “It’s not what I expected.” “I want my money back.” Not a single person has ever come to us and said, “This Career Path thing you guys do is a joke.” In fact, that’s quite the opposite. It’s, “Thank you very much. It started to launch my career.”

I’ve got a handful too that every session, I limit it to about twenty. That’s my cap. I don’t want more than that because we want to personalize it, tweak it and be able to answer all your questions. Whatever you need individually to get to where you want to go. We always have alumni come back. It’s great. I have a special deal too for you alumni or thinking about Career Path 10. Maybe you were in Career Path 2. It’s been a while. Things have changed. Every Career Path gets better. We get better.

There’s a new gender for this Career Path. It’s always better. At the time of doing this, it’s the beginning of October and I’m watching the seats fill up. I don’t know how many are left of the twenty but I know that a lot of people are signing up.

It’s going to be great.

Our topic is creating a land deal where there was none. Also known as Jill answers the phone magically somehow. Please share this magic.

Thank you. It’s funny when you said creating a land deal because it’s true. There wasn’t anything. People are shocked when they realize our whole business model. We’re not trolling the MLS. I’m not calling agents saying, “Tell me what you have that people didn’t buy and I can reach out to those people. I know they wanted to sell.” We’re getting offers out there to people that have never expressed an interest in selling. Maybe they didn’t even know that, but they’re staring at our offer going, “I can get out from under this. It’s been bugging my wife. We never did this. We never did that. We were going to. Now we’re retired. I don’t have that time or the energy to do it or we’re done with it. We camped on it forever. I hunted on it forever.”

Creating a land deal when there was none is all about reaching out to those who never expressed interest in selling. Share on X

The good old basic, “I need the dough. This would be a great way to solve another problem that I have in my life. I need this money thing.” We’re getting these offers out to these people and it’s funny, too. I say it jokingly but I’m serious. When there’s an agent involved, I’m pretty much out like, “Somebody got their first time out. I’m not going to get into any situation like that.” It’s me and the seller. How do I create these deals? I get these offers and they call or they write or they email back.

It’s a couple of different responses. One is, what are you talking about? I didn’t know I could do this, so can we please discuss the price because I am interested? There’s a few that are like, I’m going to retire here. You landed on my family farm. I can’t ever sell this. I believe that the people that reach out to me do have an interest in selling, first of all.

If you have no interest like whatever coupon you get in the mail, you’re like, “I’m not going to do my floors ever again.” They all go in the trash. You don’t call the flooring company and say, “Please don’t send me these. It’s a waste of your money.” We just trash them. I do believe that that happens with our offers that get to these people. When they call up, your job is to create a deal period. How do I create a deal? By getting on the same page, having that connection with that person that you are the buyer and they are the seller. We agree we’re interested. Now, we just have to figure out the terms on the price. That’s the gist of it.

If you take a couple of steps back and philosophically think about a real estate deal. Let’s deconstruct it for a second. There is a big bang moment. If you believe in that thing, the Big Bang Theory of the universe. There’s a moment where the idea popped in the head of the seller. “I’m going to sell this thing.” In my experience, it is based on some other event, life event.

Triggering it.

Job change, kids school system change, or some type of money loss experience. There’s life change that’s about to happen. Part of that life change, one of the components is selling real estate. Moving or whatever it ends up being. When you go on Zillow or Realtor.com and there’s properties that are posted on the MLS and all of that. That is the result of one of those moments and what that person did in response to that thought, “I got to sell my house or sell this piece of land.”

They called their sister-in-law because she is a licensed real estate agent. That’s what we’ve all been conditioned to do through the National Association Realtors forever. If it’s a commercial piece of real estate, there’s no such thing as the MLS, the multiple listing service. There’s things like Crexi and several different places that commercial real estate brokers put property out there to be sold. There’s all the result of that little moment. Jill, capitalizes on that moment and mixes it very simple and enjoyable for them to get rid of their property.

That’s it. You’re right. They get me on the phone and I go, “What’s going on?” I ask that and I sincerely mean it. I give them the opportunity to tell me what’s going on and I do say, “Let’s make this easy. What do you need?”

We, as real estate investors, don’t have to follow a lot of rules. Thank God. Licensed real estate agents have nothing but rules to follow. Every year, more rules and lawyers get involved and there’s more rules.

More paperwork.

We signed an agreement, Jill. Asks them to sign an agreement. That’s what we send out of the mail for an actual purchase agreement. They sign it. We open escrow and we buy the property.

That’s it. It’s just one page of green on the price. I’m agreeing to buy. You’re agreeing to sell. This is the amount of money. That’s what you need to open the escrow. Sign it. Date it. Take it to escrow. It doesn’t need to notarize. It’s like buying a car and if you need to have a bill of sale. Here’s what we agreed upon. The money exchange chance. Here’s where we go.

I had Jill’s job before she had it and I was mediocre at it. Enough to make some money. I’ve had the pleasure of many years of being in the ear shot most of the time of listening to her do this. I’ll tell you, there’s a serious talent to it. You’re not going to learn how to do what Jill does any better from anyone out there better than Jill.

Thank you

She was put on this planet to create real estate deals where there was none. Remove Jill from it. When you think about this creation of a real estate deal on your own, flying rogue. It’s beautiful. I have a lot of respect for people who can create real estate deals versus people who are real estate agents who are getting in the way of an actual real estate deal and sucking some money out of it just to post it on the MLS. Shovel some paper around. The paper that they’re shuffling around was created by the National Association of Realtors to make them feel like they’re doing something useful, which they’re not.

Do you know what’s funny about that? We talk all the time because I use agents to sell property. Every now and then, I run across agents in other ways. I’m like, “I might be inquiring about something getting the area.” I can’t remember an agent ever asking me, what are you trying to accomplish here? Could you imagine if an agent said, are you looking for retirement? Are you looking? Do you want to have chickens? Seriously? Could you imagine an agent said that to you, like, let me help you. What are your goals here? Wouldn’t that be great? It doesn’t happen.

They wouldn’t be real estate agents for long.

Why?

It’s because they’re smart. They would go on to create their own real estate deals.

Creating A Land Deal Where There Was None

We covered what this is, creating the deal where there was none. Now, let’s talk for just a few minutes on how to answer the phone. As I said, the main points are listening, getting on the same page with them and getting a price. I do this in minutes and not hours or days. I don’t want you to have conversations. You can’t do it. If you spend the first day just getting to know each other. It’s a social call. You wait three days and you call back. We talked about, do they want to sell? Let’s try to warm them up here. You can’t.

We got them on that thing and then we waited another couple days. We finally got to the price. Do you know how much time you would waste? There’s and yours. One of the things that I do is befriend them and get to know them right away. Make sure you’re on the same page and get a price. Even if it’s a crazy price and it changes. That’s okay, too.

It’s funny when you talk to people. I brought this up on a weekly member call a couple of months ago. I had some recordings. The beginning of the phone call, I want to say it was a fifteen minute phone call. The price that we started with was not the price at the end of the phone call that she did when she got to know me for a few minutes and understood who he was. It’s my sweet little company. How easy and convenient I’m going to make this for her. How real I am. I’m looking at you. Is that you on your website? Yes, that’s me. You’re looking at me. She’s like, “I know I said this but If you’re going to do all the stuff you say you’re going to do, Jill. I like you then I would let it go for this.” There you go.

There’s a couple things you need to do. If you can’t do this, this comes up often in Land Academy and some of our side things. If you’re not the best person on the phone, you’re going to know right away. First of all, you like it or you don’t. Number two, you’re going to either get deals or you’re not. If you’re not getting deals, get yourself off that dumb phone. Get somebody else on the phone. If you don’t have someone in your world, your partner, or somebody on your team. You need to find them. You need to go get a partner or get somebody to do that.

I was talking about this too with my coaching folks. I’m noticing now more than ever that it’s taking a little extra work probably because we talked about it. All the weird things happening and there’s competition out there. I’m not sure I’m going to rely on PATLive to be the first line of defense or an answering service on every call. To make sure you get a live voice because you can’t, then yes. If you want to make deals and make it happen, it is so powerful to be on the phone with you and the seller and they know you have the power to agree on a number and get the deal done.

You are the owner. You are the decision-maker. You’re a partner. If you’re not, you need to empower that person who is on the phone to have that much control and authority. You might behind the scenes say, “Here’s a deal. When you call them back, this is a range.” This is what we used to do a long time ago in the very beginning when Jack was teaching me all the ins and outs of our business. He would say, “I love it at this. I can do this and this is it, price-wise. I love it at $5,000. Even $7,500 we can do but $8,000 the top. We can’t go above $8,000. This deal will just not work.” I would go into it and I could speak with authority and pretend I’m the owner. I know I can’t go about that number. My goal would be as good as close as I can to $5,000.

When I was younger and an up-and-coming business person, I always had a bad taste in my mouth for sales. It was because the sales that I was exposed to was where somebody slimy would talk somebody into something they didn’t want or need. That’s still that way. A lot of sales are like that. What Jill’s doing here is filling a need. I sent all this mail out. We reach out to all these people. The mail does its job. It chooses which people are getting a notice from us or a note from us saying, “We’re interested in buying a property.” They need to fill that need by calling her back.

They need to sell.

It just becomes logistics. I’m oversimplifying but then Jill makes that smooth and enjoyable because of her personality and the years of experience that she’s been doing so. Everybody wins. In exchange for a cheaper price for the real estate, they’re getting a tremendous amount of convenience. It’s very difficult for most people, us included, to put a piece of property on the market.

When the seller get a tremendous amount of convenience in exchange for a cheaper price for the real estate, everybody wins. Share on X

We know this because this is what we do on the sell side constantly. There’s so much stuff that goes on. It’s time-consuming. We navigate it very effectively because this is our business. We’ve done 16,000 deals but for the regular person who needs to move across the country dealing with Jill and selling the property for a reasonable discount is a much better solution for any seller that we’ve ever dealt with.

In the essence of time or in the interest of time, I have to cut this off. I could go on and on about it, but I hope that gives you an idea of what goes on.

Join on the next episode where we talk about buying the property. You are not alone in your real estate ambition. We are Jack and Jill. Information.

Inspiration.

To buy undervalued property.

Important Links

• LandAcademy.com
• Zillow
• Realtor.com
• National Association Realtors
• Crexi
• PATLive