I’m Steven Jack Butala.

I’m Jill DeWit, and this is the Land Academy Show.

This is episode number 2070. We are talking about the five talents needed to create wealth in your land investment business, and I would argue may be any business. All week this week, we’re talking about the secret recipe for success in land investing and all businesses. I don’t think so much of a secret for us, but people seem to get a big kick out of this one when we talk about it and it seems to help them.

Kick out of creating wealth or what we do.

A lot of times, we spend the entire week talking about the mechanics of buying and selling land, how to price, mailers, how to answer the phone, and all that stuff. This week, we’re talking about what’s behind that.

Before you even get to that point, you have to decide this is for you.

Discord Question

You can only answer the phone for a certain amount of time. If you’re not into it and don’t believe in yourself and believe in buying and selling land, you’re only going to do that for so long and you’re going to say, “I don’t want to do this for the rest of my life.” It would be better if you could figure that stuff out early on, go through a few steps, and spend a couple of research about who you are. It saves you a lot of time. You might be better off owning an oil change shop, which is great, or a chain of them. I don’t know. Secret, that’s exactly what we’re talking about. Each day on the show, we answer our questions from our Land Academy member Discord forum and take a deep dive into land-related, topics by popular requests.

Chase wrote, “I just listened to a podcast. What is everyone’s opinion on cold calling to find and land deals, or do you think direct mail is more effective?” Before we answer, I’m going to read one of our members’ responses. His name is Greg and he wrote, “I have a realtor friend who uses a dialer that dials a list of numbers for him. He says that dials 3 to 4 numbers at a time and then connects when one of them picks up. If more than one picks up, the dialler automatically plays a prerecorded message of my friends saying, ‘Hello, hello, hello,’ and then disconnects and auto-dials them back once he’s off the other line.” That’s hilarious. I found this quite amusing.

Amusing is a word for it. I would use a different word.

That’s hilarious. He says he pays $200 to $300 a month for such a service and he enjoys it. It’s a good way to sharpen your phone skills I guess. I bet you can send more mail in an hour and calls a year with such a system. He only does local areas. Maybe it’s a good time for him to spread out his efforts over the year. May I go first?

Please, while I cool off, yes.

My whole point here is when you’re cold-calling people, it seems like such a waste of time. It’s like driving for dollars. I haven’t heard that phrase in a while, but you’re driving around knocking on doors, seeing if anybody wants to sell. That used to be a big thing. I think it was pre-COVID and I think post-COVID people live a little further away or whatever. They’re not answering their doors freely as they used to, and then you’re hoping somebody wants to sell. You’re talking them into it.

This could be a 3 or 6-month process. I look at it this way too with land. You’d be lucky if you had five conversations a day, very lucky this way. That’s probably sitting and spending eight hours at it a day. That’s a whole lot of time to hopefully maybe find someone, and then you don’t even know what you’re getting into. Is it on your terms? That’s a whole other thing versus the way we do it. Do you want to explain that a little bit? I’m sure you’re thinking the same thing.

I think that this person has some version of mental illness. Can you imagine yourself setting this up? You wake up in the morning and you are the annoyance of 200 people that day, let’s say. Let’s say it all goes right. You annoy that many people verbally. I can’t imagine the backlash on this to maybe getting one listening a month. Who’s going to respond to that anyway? What personality type is going to respond to that and verbally say, “I would love to have you list my house,” or “I’m looking for a new house,” or whatever it ends up being? This is terrible.

There are so many different scams and things. I think people are so much more leery of stuff like this. I don’t answer phone numbers I don’t know. They leave you a message. That’s the only way you’re going to get me. If I don’t know your phone number, I’m not answering. Leave a message, send me an email, or do something else, then I’ll reply.

There are so many different scams today that people do not answer anonymous phone numbers anymore. Share on X

That mirrors what we’ve done very recently. There have been new price mailers that say, “We are very interested in purchasing a house or a piece of land,” whoever we’re sending it to in a very small local area, less than 1,000 units. We send out, “We’re not sure what your circumstance is, but if you’ve been thinking about selling cost, we like to talk about it.” They do call back unangry, almost all of them, then Jill talks to them and they have a real conversation about value when, will it close, and how the property is going to be used, We have a lot of success with that.

That’s a better way to do the same thing. Let them call you. Sit back and wait for your phone to ring.

They can choose. They get a letter and receiving that letter with a price in it annoys a very small percentage of people. If you send out 1,000 letters, you might get 3 to 5 angry phone calls back. They’re also going to get 3 to 5 phone calls back from people who are like, “I do. I’m happy to sell it. Let’s talk about the price, but I do want to sell it.” You have to have something wrong with you.

I know. People think though that there needs to be a new better way and I agree with that, but I don’t think this is it. We’re testing some things of our own.

I don’t know what’s wrong with a person who wants to annoy people, sitting down and doing something to annoy people. It’s like tailgating.

I think it’s such a huge effort. I don’t think it’s a good use of anyone’s time. If you pay a VA to do this, great. You have a VA that gets a live body on the phone but they’re not going to convert them. That was a waste too.

Five Talents You Need

Today’s topic is five talents you need to create wealth in your land investment business or any business. I’ll preface it by saying we’re going to go over my five. Jill probably got some too. I will tell you, there are five very different talents. Before I run down the list, you are good at one of these things, as am I, as Jill is. I think different people have different talents for different reasons, which is great. If we were all the same, it would never work. For example, I always have been a startup person. If I have a vision or an idea, I will go through some version of torture to get it so it’s cashflowing and working okay. I will turn it over to an operations person.

Different people have different talents for different reasons. If we are all the same, a business would never work. Share on X

Five talents are this. You need to have an amazing idea. We’ve all known people, especially when we were younger and we all didn’t know what we were going to do for a living, before getting a career, or going into whatever we’re into professionally. That is some dingbat who says he’s an inventor, “I’m an inventor.” It’s not so much dingbat-ish as I get older, having noted that vision and those ideas are the way things start.

That personality type is dingbat-ish because that personality type almost never has any follow-through. They have an idea. My cousin was all excited for two years about this thing that he created out of stuff in the kitchen and in the garage that was a spring release time release scenario, where it would release peanut butter for a dog to lick slowly. He went and got patents on the whole thing. I don’t think I’ve ever told this to you.

No. That’s funny.

Nothing ever happened because he doesn’t know anything about marketing and doesn’t care and would never put up a website or anything like that. In his head, he believed that the device was so amazing that someone was going to knock on his front door and say, “We should put this in Pet Smart.” That vision is an imperative part of this, but without any follow-up or startup, it’s not that available. Here are my five: Startup vision or ideas. Number two is a startup, which is where I fall in.

Operations, which is after it’s all done started up, we have a bunch of revenue coming in, maybe some expenses are out of whack, but a bunch of stuff needs to happen like staffing, all the technology that is associated with it, and maybe increasing sales. All that operation stuff, I can’t stand it. Both Jill and I, we’re not operations people. We go into certain things, standing up and saying, “We are not operations people.” I think the vast majority of business people think all this is one thing, “He’s a business person. He must know all this stuff.” No. Ask any carpenter, “You’re a carpenter, please help me with the wiring of my house.” They’re going to say, “I’m a carpenter. I’m not an electrician.” It’s like that.

After operations, you need a financial institutionalization-type personality. I’m okay with that. It’s the operations piece that I can’t do. We’ve all heard of CFOs or people. There’s always a guy or a person who is sitting there saying, “That’s fantastic and we should start this new product line, but be aware that here’s the financial result of what you’re about to do.” You’re like the party pooper, “This going to cost too much and you guys are nuts.”

The visionary, who is probably still involved says, “I don’t care. I’m an artist. I don’t care about the money. I never did.” Finally, exit. If you have an exit-type personality, and I also do, you want to know how you’re going to get out of something long before you get into it, which is what buying and selling land is.

Do you want me to do my list now?

I would love to. It looks good.

I said that while you were talking, I had some time, so I created my little list. This is my quick little brainstorming. I have a few things that are the same. I want to throw them in there. These are the five talents needed to create wealth in your land investment business. I agree with number one. You have to have a vision or a plan or something like, “I’ve tested it. I know this is going to work, this is what we’re doing.”

Number two is you have to be fearless. You have to have that “nothing is going to stop me” attitude. Out of my way. I don’t care how many credit card companies I have to go through till I find one that’ll process payments for whatever I’m doing. I won’t stop. I believe in it that much. I am out of my way fearless. Number three is communication. You need to be able to get your point across. Nowhere in here that I’m talking about having money, by the way. You’re creating all that. I’m assuming you don’t have a dollar. You need to communicate this to the planet to get money to follow through with your vision and your plan.

Number four is you need to have sales acquisition skills. You need to always be bringing in people and excitement and employees and deals. Whatever it is that you’re doing, that’s got to be strong. Number five is the same as yours, which is operations to create this business. Maybe it’s not you. It’s probably not you. You need somebody because you’re usually the startup guy. You’re the front-end guy. You need somebody else with you on your team to smooth it all out and keep all of it running smoothly while you’re working on the next thing.

If you are usually a startup person, you need somebody else on your team to smooth things out. They will keep the business running smoothly while you work on the next big thing. Share on X

The likelihood of this happening or the speed and how fast this can all happen is directly associated with your personality. We’ve all been to high school and there are always a couple of people who have this dynamic personality. I don’t mean the bullies. I don’t mean jocks or mean girls. Those are all implementations for people who are seeking out negative attention. That’s not what I’m talking about.

I’m talking about some good-looking people who everybody wanted to be around. They don’t necessarily have good grades. They weren’t that well-dressed or any of that stuff. They weren’t trying hard. The world is packed full of people like that and I hope you are at some version of one of those. That doesn’t have to be.

Look at Bill Gates. He was one of the most wealthy people in the world by the time he was nineteen. That guy has no personality whatsoever. It doesn’t have to be. I’m just saying for what we’re trying to do, which is create $10, $20, $30 million a month or more, or maybe a year in some cases. It’s easier. Jill has one of the most dynamic personalities on the phone I’ve ever heard in my life. Believe me, I’m qualified to say that, especially now because we live in an RV.

Thanks.

Episode Wrap-up

Those are the steps. Don’t beat yourself up if you’re only good at one, but if you’re an operations person, please call us. We can never find operations people. We have nineteen start-up ideas. Some of them are already moving forward and we can’t find any operations person that can pick it up where we leave it off. Join us on Wednesday. We’re going to discuss real-life examples of creating this wealth that we’re talking about in your land investment business. You are not alone in your real estate ambition. We are Jack and Jill. Information and inspiration to buy undervalued property.