Steven Jack Butala and Jill DeWit dive into an inspiring case study featuring a former Global Pharmaceutical Brand Manager who made a bold career shift into land investment. Through hard work, dedication, and smart strategies, she has achieved remarkable success, even retiring her husband along the way. Jill and Steven explore how this determined investor navigated the transition from corporate life to building a thriving business in land buying and selling. Tune in to hear practical insights and a unique story of transforming one’s life and career.

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Case Study 3: Former Pharmaceutical Brand Manager Builds Land Investment Success

Introduction To The Hosts And Episode Topic

This is The Land Academy Show. This is episode number 2056. It is Wednesday. We’re talking about case study number 3 of 5. This woman is a former global pharmaceutical brand manager turned land investor extraordinaire. She, within the last couple of years, retired her husband, which is a big thing for Jill’s land ladies’ group. That’s part of our motto in Land Gals. Retire your husband. All the guys love it. All week, we’re doing case studies on individual people who have been with us for a while and are smashing it, buying and selling land. All of them with maybe one exception have been guests on this show. Dig back into the archives and you can figure out pretty easily who they are. We have not asked them if we can use their name, so we’re not. Each day on the show, we answer a question from our Land Academy Member Discord forum and take a deep dive into a land-related topic at your request. Mike wrote, “This is a pricing question I have. What if you only get 1 or 2 results for a ZIP code while pricing? When trolling, everything looked great. The Red Yellow Green test passed. I decided to price out a whole county, but certain ZIP codes have 1, 2, or sometimes 0 data points.? Would that give you an accurate price per acre or would you not mail that specific ZIP code because there’s not enough data to price a mailer? This is on twelve months of cost sold. Sometimes, I go to 24 months, but even still, there may not be very many results.” Here’s what he did. He went through and did exactly what he was supposed to do. He profiled the type of property that he wanted to buy and sell with his equity planner. He went into Zillow, put that profile in, moved around the country, and found out that wherever he was looking, it looked good. He has to test the area with the Red Green Yellow test to see if it is a good place to send mail and if people are buying and selling land there within his profile. What he found is that the county looks great, but there are 10, 20, or 30 ZIP codes in the county. He did everything right. He isolated out the ZIP codes that looked great. This is the Red Green Yellow test. Green ZIP codes and yellow ZIP codes look good, and then the red ones. He is asking, “I only have a couple of sold active properties and a few of these ZIP codes.” What’s that a real indication of? No real supply and demand. There’s not enough sold. That’s the part. He’s looking at, “I have 1 sold at $400 an acre and there’s another sold at $1,100 an acre. What do I do? Split it in the middle? Is it really right?”

How To Exclude Or Include Zip Codes In Land Deals

You have a choice. It depends on the geography. If the 3 or 4 ZIP codes surrounding it or the 1 or 2 ZIP codes look fantastic but that one doesn’t, I would go back to the real world and find out why. It might be an Air Force base. It might be a Native American reservation. It might be a hospital. They get their own ZIP codes sometimes. It might be a terrible ZIP code to send mail. Once you have the answer to that, you can include it or exclude it. It comes down to how many properties there are. You’ve said this before many times on our Thursday calls. You were like, “If it’s that one ZIP code and the rest of the mail looks great, leave it in unless you know it’s something that you don’t want to mail, like an Air Force base. For the other stuff, let it rip and see what happens. They’re probably not getting offers because no one else can figure it out.” You can Google a ZIP code very quickly and find out, “There’s a nuclear waste site there. It has been an ongoing issue.” One ZIP code over, everybody’s having a party every Saturday. It’s pretty easy. Which one gets to decide there? Here is a good working example of that, and then we’ll move on to the case study. There are adjacent counties in Southern California. They are O’Neill County, Riverside County, San Bernardino, and Los Angeles. We all know Los Angeles is the global entertainment capital of the planet. Everybody is, I can tell you from personal experience, having a party on Saturday night in Los Angeles. In land investment, knowing where NOT to buy is just as important. One zip code over could be a party; the next, a no-go. Data is king! Share on X If you go to Riverside, it’s a little bit more community-based. They have a really healthy real estate environment and always have been. It is a good alternative to the high prices in Los Angeles. You move a little further northeast, you get to San Bernardino, which has mountains. Everyone’s having a party there too, in general, except way down in the desert. You get to O’Neill County, which is a World War II nuclear bombing range. We don’t send mail there. No one does. I hope not. That could have been on someone’s secret county list. I know why. A lot of counties in Nevada are like that too. I’m not saying it’s a bad place to invest. I’m saying there’s no real raw supply and demand. It has nothing to do with my opinion. It is that the data doesn’t support it. That’s what Mike is talking about. The numbers are too small. It is Wednesday. This is case study number three. We’re going to talk about a former global pharmaceutical brand manager. The stuff that she’s done since she joined our group is amazing. One of the things she’s done is completely retire her husband who runs the company for her. I’m sure she’s still involved. They both show up on the calls. We were a couple of years in Land Academy. We met her in a resort in town in the Scottsdale area. We had a little pop-up live thing. She was in town for some other land-related event. It was a friend of hers who said, “Come on. I’m going over to meet Jack and Jill.” She was like, “Who are Jack and Jill?” That started our years together. That was so great. She is a smart cookie. Pharmaceuticals is her background. Talk about brainy, STEM, and professional.  She is not afraid of anything. Talk about a career change. She was looking for something else. She was looking for something more, clearly. They have kids. She has been with us and has professionally evolved. Her business has evolved at a very healthy, not crazy, and not slow pace. I don’t think she ever really struggled. She dove in and paid close attention because that’s who she is. She put everything into practice, kept moving forward, making changes, going with us, and doing things. She has done House Academy and is still doing houses. She is always involved. It worked out great. A couple of years ago, she and her husband together decided it was okay for him to leave his job to join the family business and work with her. That’s when they did Career Path. That was her way of throwing them in, getting them immersed in it, and learning a lot really fast. I don’t know exactly how they divide up the roles. I know she told me and I forgot. You’re right. We’ve done an episode together in the past. She has been to all of our live events. We launched House Academy and she faithfully got into the program. She bought and sold a bunch of houses. I remember her saying at Career Path, “That’s not for me. We made a lot of money on these houses. It’s intensive. There is a lot more stuff involved with the actual piece of real estate versus land.” We’ve toned that down. She slipped right into this land business and is doing amazing. Her website presence is great. It is fantastic. She has taken her YouTube to a new level. It’s great. It’s consistent, professional, and wonderful. Another thing that we haven’t talked about yet is dedication and hard work. Every single person has done what we have. You put your head down and you go to work. You do that for a couple of years, and guess what? You come up for air after a couple of years and watch what you’ve done and what you’ve built. You could then slowly start to back off if you want to and make changes. Investing success is dedication + hard work. Put your head down, work for a few years, and watch what you’ve built. Slow and steady wins in real estate. Share on X Her LinkedIn profile is amazing. She came to us as someone very successful in another industry doing other stuff and was tired of it. I bet 80% of the people who are reading this fit that profile. They can relate. They’re like, “I’m great at it. I do make a lot of money. I can’t stand doing this anymore. My boss is a dingbat, “or, “This industry is broken.” It could be, “All my ideas get nowhere. I’m frustrated.” There are all those stories. We are bringing all this positive energy into a negative environment. Bringing positive energy into a negative environment can only go so far. Eventually, it’s time to change the scene and find fulfillment. Share on X

Balancing Success And Burnout

You’re doing well. You’re successful. You’re not struggling. Everything’s great. You’re burnt out and don’t want to continue doing that. We understand. This is a good place for you. This has been a good place for them. They have a kid. I bet that there’s going to be some time when the kid rolls into the family legacy business with them. I can’t wait to hear about it. I wonder what it’s like to be the child of overachievers like us because I’m not the child of overachievers. Neither am I. Do you know what I remember about her? I’ll leave it at this. For whatever reason, we look up properties, do deals, and research whether or not we should buy a property. We are going through the due diligence process. I’ll come up and find out that she owns property in the area or is buying and selling. I look at it and she has 180 listings on the internet. It’s crazy how many properties they have for sale and buying and selling all the time. It’s amazing. She’s done phenomenal. I’m so happy.

Wrap-Up And Teaser For Next Episode

Join us in the next episode where we talk about case study number four. This is a first-generation European couple. They’re business owners who are generating legacy wealth by flipping land. You are not alone in your real estate ambition. We are Jack and Jill, information and inspiration to buy undervalued property.