I’m Steven Jack Butala.

I’m Jill DeWit, and this is the Land Academy Show. Land Academy is the place to go for education, tools, and support to start or grow your land investment business.

This is episode number 2256. Jill and I are talking about what we wish we knew before we got started in the land business. Where do I start on this, Jill?

I have a lot to say, as usual.

I have a tiny little story. Here’s what happened. I was going along just fine in my public accounting and, eventually, a private accounting career. This is in Ohio. I lived in Cincinnati at the time. I got onto eBay and bought an 80-acre property in Arizona. I lived in Arizona for a lot of years before that, but I got sent to Cincinnati and then eventually moved back. I missed it. I bought a big piece of dirt there. I paid about $8,000 for it. I dressed it all up on the internet.

I never went to see it. I learned the process from this first deal, and then I cleaned it all up on the internet, as it was presented, and then sold it 30 days later for about $16,000-ish. My numbers are vague. I had this thought the entire time this was happening. I didn’t know anything about eBay or vacant land. I said, “If this works, then all I have to do for the rest of my life is concentrate on one thing, which is buy, locate, and secure undervalued land so I can resell it elsewhere.” It was not even necessarily on the internet, but elsewhere. That’s what happened. Here we are, 16,000 deals later.

It worked.

That’s when the problem started. It worked. The concept worked.

You know what it was? You joke about it. You walked into Vegas and pulled a slot machine. You’re like, “Now, I’m broken. I got to do this. I got to figure this out.”

I’m stuck in it.

Thank God I wasn’t gambling. What if it were poker? Where would we be? You would be a professional poker player right now if that had gone differently. Where would we be living?

We wouldn’t be living on our new 50-foot sailboat in San Diego, named the Omission. Can I tell you how much Jill loves to buy swag like this?

I’m just getting started. Just wait. It’s going to be Omissioned-out. You’re going to say, “Decommissioned Omission.” It’s a lot.

Yes, we changed the boat name. Even though the world says not to do that, I’m not.

I’m going to argue it’s okay, but you have to do it the right way. You have to follow the rituals.

Somebody told me, “If you’re superstitious, you probably have no place out on the ocean.” I stuck with that. We have bananas all over the boat, and we changed the name. I’m not tempting fate. There’s a procedure, like Jill said. We respect that.

I know the speech. We haven’t done it yet because it will be out on the water when we do it the right way out there, but we will give the Poseidon speech. If you google it, it’s a crack-up. There’s a paragraph that you’re in the process of doing this the right way. Poseidon gets champagne, and then you get what’s left, which is funny. It’s going to splash us.

I don’t think we’re going to break the bottle over the bow.

No, I don’t think so. That doesn’t happen when you change the name. That’s for a brand new boat. That’s a different thing.

You did some research on this.

I’m way into this because everybody scared us. Yes, I did. If you’re into this, it’s interesting. You have to take everything off the boat, every last thing that has the old name on it, because it’s bad juju. It’s interesting. Land doesn’t have superstitions, and I appreciate that. What would a land superstition be like? I could think of one as don’t tear down a very old, ancient tree, which I wouldn’t do anyway. I wouldn’t want to do that.

Yes, for sure.

I know a lot of people in our world got all excited about other ways to make money with land. They’re like, “Let’s deforest it and make some money there.” A) It’s a process, B) The chances are a really small percentage of your particular property. This is a whole other tangent, but it is perfect for that. C) It breaks my heart. I have a thing about getting rid of trees.

I do, too. Maybe disclose where you buried all your people. That’s probably not required, but it’s ethical.

If you move trees, you think you might find stuff. Is that what you’re saying?

I moved on from the trees.

I’m sorry.

Wherever you buried people on your land, disclose that.

I would never sell it. That’s what you’re using it for. That’s good.

Unless you’re in the ground, then you don’t care. I don’t know. There are no real superstitions.

Is this the topic?

Yes. This is the topic.

Jill’s Learning Curve & The Evolution Of Tools

The topic is, what do we wish we knew before we started in the land business? Let me back up for a few minutes. As Jack said, 16,000 transactions are a lot. We used to publish it. It’s funny, but we took the list down because people would ask questions about a particular transaction in that long list. I’m like, “I don’t know.”

People think we remember those.

That’s the funny thing. “Please tell me about APN.” I’m like, “I don’t remember the deal I did last week because I move on so quickly.” It’s been over ten years since Land Academy. It has been over sixteen years since I’ve been at this full-time. I had some experience coming into this before hooking up with you and just focusing on land. You have had 30 years you just doing this back early eBay days before the tools and the things that we did. That’s one thing I didn’t write down.

One thing I wish I knew would be that it’s going to get easier. I didn’t know that because it was flipping hard. It’s nice now. Now, I know that. I didn’t know tools would be the way they are. I didn’t know mapping would be the way it is. Some people don’t even know this. You can open Google on your phone instead of putting in 123 Main Street, because remember, it’s vacant land. We don’t have that. You can just put in the GPS coordinates, and it will go right there. I remember before we had any of that. Finding things was so difficult.

We were getting paper maps. I had some things I could look at online. I would look at a version of whatever map that I could get from the early days of Google, line it up with my paper map, and try to figure out the location of this property, so I could tell people where it is. That’s one thing I wish I knew then. What’s great about it now is that it keeps getting easier and easier. I’m so excited about what’s coming.

One of the things I know in our community that people talk about that’s a very hard thing is posting property for sale, getting it sold, getting good pictures, and all that good stuff. With all the AI and tools that we’re creating right now, and we’ll talk about that more in a little bit, it’s going to get easier for you. It doesn’t mean that anybody can do it, too, which is good. I want that, but it is easier for those of us who get it.

The Importance Of Securing Assets

Every time somebody asks me, “What is your business model?” I say, “Buy a piece of real estate and sell it for more.” Most people understand that. Some people just shake their heads and say, “It’s silly.” What I wish had happened, or if somebody had explained to me before I started this, is its concept. It’s not so much, “Do a mailer. Price it this way. Send it out. This is what your mail needs to look like.” It’s not one of the YouTube how-to videos. It’s the more 35,000-foot philosophical things that I missed early in my life that I could have used.

For instance, if somebody sat me down and said, “You’re all about securing assets.” If you want to be wealthy, you have to secure assets. There are all kinds of ways to do that. You can buy drugstores, roll them up, and make twenty units out of one. There are a ton of ways you can buy land and resell it for more. Jill and I have chosen to buy tons of real estate over the years, securing assets that way, and then based on each of these assets, decide how it’s going to go. This one is better to sell on eBay, which we don’t do anymore at all for a bunch of reasons. I haven’t done it for a long time. eBay has come up a couple of times, so I don’t want to confuse you.

Get a real estate agent to list it. Keep it. In some cases, we’ve kept several of the assets if they’re tenable and we can rent them out. What we did was provide ourselves with choices about what we do once we have secured these assets. We did pretty well at it and realized that we’re constantly out of acquisition money, especially for houses with real estate with structures on them. We started Land Academy, not to make a bunch of money off of selling subscriptions at all, but to bring on financial business partners. Sometimes, we’re the funders. Sometimes, we’re the fundees when the assets are correct. No matter what, you have to secure those assets to get wealthy.

I have four. I’m going to go through all four. My number one was that it gets easier. Number two is, I had no idea how confused everyone in my world would be, my friends, my family, and people like me. If you are new to our world and new to our business, you know exactly what I’m talking about. You just did three deals. You’re staring at $40,000. You’re going, “I started with $5,000. What just happened? I’m going to make that $40,000, or $400,000.” You are jacked up.

You’re out to dinner with your family. It’s your niece’s birthday. They’re like, “How’s it going?” You just unload because you’re so excited. They’re like, “What the hell are you talking about?” That’s what’s so funny. That still happens to this day. I’ve learned now how to minimize it, make it simple, or skip over that and not even talk about it. “Things are great. Thanks for asking.” Everybody is so confused about what I’m doing.

If they get any idea or they at least believe in it, they’re like, “I don’t know what you’re doing, Jill, but all I know is I watched you turn $5,000 into $40,000. Can I give you five?” That’s what happens. I’m like, “No, that’s not what we’re doing.” I know that was a funny number, too. Do you remember that? We had it a lot, too. It’s harder in our world because we eat, sleep, and breathe land and investing in our business.

I’m sure we’ve lost friends. They’re just tired of us because that’s all we talk about. We’ll be driving around. It’s true. We could be with friends, going to dinner. We’re all in a conversation about something funny. Jack is on Zillow. I’m saying, “How much is that house?” They’re like, “Here we go again.” We’ve gotten better. What do you think about pals, friends, and people not getting it?

I honestly don’t care at all. That’s not something that I wish somebody had told me, or what I knew before we got started.

You don’t think that matters?

Here’s the thing. Here’s why it works with Jill and me. Her soul is concerned about the people piece of everything, employees, the sellers, what they’re thinking, and the escrow agents. I started this a long time ago in the mid-’90s. She and I joined forces probably in 2008 or maybe 2009. She brought this huge component of, “Maybe you should talk to your customers. It means you should talk to the people that you’re buying this property from and selling the property to.” That changed dramatically for the better. It allowed us to move forward. I got away with it because there was no real competition, and it was new back then, not talking to people like that, but we needed to go down that path.

Thanks. Here’s my number three. What is the third thing I wish I knew before I started this land investing business? I’d have to say no for years to a lot of activities and a lot of fun stuff because that’s what it takes. That’s one of the things you need to know. You need to talk with your spouse, with your friends, with your kids, and with whoever is in your world. “I’m going to be putting my head down. Between now and the end of the year, I’m going to be working on my computer a lot.” I used to spend all Sunday watching football games. That’s going to have to stop for a little while. We did a lot of saying no to, but that’s what it takes to be successful.

If somebody told you that, you would have said, “Screw you.” I was born in Detroit, grew up there, and graduated from Michigan State. That part of suffering was our way of life. Sacrificing time to get something better later was not a struggle with me. I knew that had to happen. Jill was born a mile from Disneyland. That’s reflected in our personalities.

I did, and it was worth it.

What if somebody said you’re going to have to sacrifice a lot to get rich when you were twenty years old, would you have said, “I’ll do that?”

No, I wouldn’t.

That’s what I’m saying.

You’re right. It’s probably good because I didn’t start it in my 20s. In my 20s, I was goofing off, having fun. I was not thinking about money. That’s a different problem. Maybe between me and you, that’s very true. I figured out we had to work on vacation, and that was okay. One of the things I want to bring up is that I see it now in experienced investors in our world who have been on Land Academy for over five years. They’re like, “I’m on vacation. I’m not here.”

I’m like, “Dude, you’re missing up on a lot of deals.” “I’m not answering the phone.” I don’t understand that. Get somebody else to do it then. There’s a way. As I said, you’re missing opportunities there. I have number four, my last one. What I wish I knew before starting this land business, and it’s like what you said about a lot of this conveys to everything in life. That is what it takes. Fortunately, we have it.

What is it?

I wrote it down. We won’t stop or let anything get in our way.

Don't stop or let anything stand in your way. Whether it takes five hours, all day on YouTube, or your entire Sunday figuring it out, you need that attitude to truly succeed. Share on X

You’re wired that way. So am I.

I see so many people going, “My phone system doesn’t work. I guess I can’t do this. I don’t know how to get an address. I don’t know how to do this. I don’t do that.” No. It might take you five hours. You might be on YouTube. You might be spending all Sunday figuring it out. Whatever it is, you have to have that attitude to be successful. Maybe it’s even like, This property is amazing. I love it. There’s a title issue. I don’t know what to do with this.” It might take calling six attorneys to get the one that you can connect with who will understand and say, “I know how to do this. I can help you. We’ll get this done.” It is stuff like that.

Consistency & Follow-Through

That’s just not this. It’s everything. I wish somebody had said this to me a lot of years ago. There’s an intense amount of research that goes into being successful at anything. You have a device in your pocket that has probably 98% of all the answers to all the questions anywhere ever, with the exception being, is there a God? You’re not going to find that on your phone. How do I do a mailer? It’s going to be in there. The technology to find those things is even better.

You have to be wired to study, research, stick your head up after eight or ten hours of being in a dark room and figuring stuff out if you have my personality type, and then execute. We’re in 2200-plus episodes. Jill and I have had the opportunity to talk to tons of people in this business and interview people, tons of Land Academy members. When you ask anybody, “What’s the secret? Why are you successful?” They say some version of this. “I’m consistent. I follow through.” It is not “I’m a genius,” “I exercise every morning,” or “I have competence,” although that stuff helps. The fact is, they lay down a plan and they execute it no matter what.

Ask any successful person their secret, and you’ll hear a version of this: I’m consistent and I follow through. Not 'I’m a genius,' not 'I work out every morning'—though that helps. They create a plan and execute it, no matter what. Success comes… Share on X

It’s consistency. It’s simple stuff like that. It’s simple to say and hard to execute. The older I get, the harder it is to execute. The older people who are in our group, who are some of my favorite customers, are here because they want to be here. There’s a lot of stuff that they did in their life and they could do now. For some reason, this business model clicks with them. If anybody is telling you this is easy or there’s a total, full-blown, easy button to do something, it’s not the case. There are tools, and the tools get better and better.

You still have to know what you’re doing. You’ve got to know the system, work your way through it, and realize when there are little things you have to adjust and fix. That’s good. I like that.

Let’s see what you, the land community, are working on.

This is something we pulled from our online community with what’s going on in our community’s world, our people’s world, out of Discord. We have a win from Peter T. He shared this quote. “I first took the Land Academy course back in 2017. I routinely now buy six-figure properties.”

So do we.

“One of the latest properties is 100 acres that I bought and divided into ten-acre parcels. I’ve got 80% sold. We will have a profit margin of 100%.” Doubling is money. I don’t know exactly what the dollar amount is. I would love to know. I have some ideas. It’s six figures. It’s what he’s doing.

I hope it is six figures per parcel.

It’s somewhere where buying for 100 and selling for 200. I love that. That’s so great. Good job, Peter. Thank you for sharing that.

Can you imagine back when you were starting to keep the theme of this whole episode?

Yes.

Somebody told you this simple story, and then they said, “Come on over here. I’m going to show you how I did it. I’m going to walk you through the whole thing.” No one ever did anything like that.

Not for us. We do it.

I’m not complaining. I’m just saying, I think it was a sign of the times back then. There’s a lot of stuff on the internet that you can consume. There is a lot of content that you can consume. You’ve made it this far. You’re tuning in to us.

That’s why we’re here.

That’s what Land Academy is, not because we want your money, but because we would like to do deals with you. Here’s what’s going on at Land Academy now. I could not be more excited about this application, which we’re about 80% done designing. It’s unnamed so far. It is a start-to-finish, easy button for buying and reselling real estate. It starts with locating assets or areas that you believe fit your criteria. It takes you from that little glitch in your head. “I think Trenton, New Jersey, might be a good place to buy and sell real estate.” It takes you from that point to the end, where you have purchased it, resold it, converted cash into real estate, and real estate back into more cash, and created some equity.

I love it. It’s helping with all the little steps along the way that people get hung up on. “This regular green test,” solved it. “Getting my mailer already,” solved it. “Where do I go to get my post office and my phone number?” In there.

It keeps everything in one place.

It keeps you through the system.

Have you ever ordered a pizza from Domino’s? It’s got that tracker on there. That’s what this is. It has a tracker. The inspiration was that of Domino’s tracker.

That was all jacked. We’re so excited. We’re in beta testing. We should have a release to the public in another couple of weeks. Surprise! We talk to different people on our staff at different times. I know parts of other things. He’s in the dev area. That’s why. He’s a dev guy. He’s helping with that. As far as releasing, getting the customers in, and all that good stuff, and getting our members in and everything, that’s why I know about that.

If you want to be involved in this, as a beta tester, or you quite simply want to know more about Land Academy, go to Support@LandAcademy.com or LandAcademy.com and start snooping around. There’s a bunch of free content like this all over the place. We have a question from our Facebook group.

Thomas wrote, “Is it harder to flip or dispo, disposition, land, including areas that are in an HOA or gated communities? Do these factors decrease or increase the land value in any way?” Can I go first?

Yes. First and last, if you’d like.

It depends. I got to say it.

I have a different answer.

Here’s the thing. Most of the time, HOAs do restrict you in some way. I’m not a fan of that. The HOAs or Homeowners Association, POA, Property Owners Association, or LOA, Landowners Association, any one of those three, I’m okay with the ones that don’t have a lot of rules. All they do is collect an average of $25 a month from everybody because it’s going to keep the roads plowed in the wintertime and some little things like that. I’m okay with that. The whole time that I own the property, it’s not going to break the bank while my HOA fees add up.

Where it gets not good and expensive, and I don’t like them, is where it’s like, “We’ve got a boat dock at the end. We’ve got the community. We have all these lovely parks. We’ve got this playground and community theater.” Fill in the blank. They can get extreme. “By the way, your trash bin cannot be out past 5:00 on trash day.” It’s like, “Nope, I’m out.” That’s one part of it. We’re like, “It’s $375 a month because we’ve got to pay Susie to walk around in her golf cart with her cutoffs, her tennis visor, and her clipboard.”

Nobody likes Susie. Stay away from Susie.

She’s out there with a ruler measuring your grass. Nobody wants that. That’s when it gets bad. You’ve got to watch out for that. It’s usually easy to spot. First of all, when you’re doing your scrolling around the country, picking areas, thinking of where you want to send offers, have you stumbled upon a community like, “There’s a lot for sale here,” and dig in a little bit, going, “Look at this. These are all for sale because there’s this HOA. They’ve all been for sale for 322 days.” This is a bad thing.

Jill does have an opinion.

I do have an opinion. I didn’t think I did?

You said it depends. The answer to this is rooted in this concept. When you’re buying a piece of property, one of the serious things that should be at the forefront of your mind is who’s going to buy it. What’s the profile of the person that you’re going to sell it to? If you get real excited about the property during the acquisition process, then chances are the person you sell it to is going to go through the same thing, just at a different price. I do not get excited about the HOA community.

I think it doesn’t make sense. There’s no common sense to having a land HOA or an LOA. The reason people buy 40 acres somewhere is to get away from the city, have no rules, squeeze off a few rounds, buy an ATV, have a bonfire, and have your life. Why would you do that? In Arizona, the western part of the country is packed with HOA communities where you can buy 40 acres in an HOA. They say, “We’re going to maintain the roads.” If you can’t maintain your own road and you’re buying 40 acres, then that’s probably not for you.

However, if you are a neurosurgeon who wants to live in a small town or even a city, and you want to build a nice house, because that’s what you’re going to do in your free time, and you work eighteen hours a day, six days a week, an HOA is perfect for you. You never have to cut the grass. You never have to do any of that stuff. Having 40 acres out somewhere doesn’t make sense to be in an HOA. That’s the bad news.

The good news is this. They’re crazy easy to value. Buying or selling real estate is all about accurate valuation. If you believe that a piece of property is worth $100,000, and it’s easy because you can see that all the other properties are being purchased and sold for about $100,000, and you’re about to buy it for $25,000, there’s a darn good chance you’re going to make some dough. There are some positives to an HOA.

Here’s what I heard. Jack also says, “It depends.” You just finished, “There’s a positive.”

I just ran across this Facebook post. Here’s the post. “The Top Ten Reasons that People over 45 Argue,” couples.

Podcasts.

What do you think number one is?

Restaurants. Dinner.

Here are some options.

It’s money. Money is number one, always.

I’m going to give you options. You can tell me which one’s first. Money, children, or their kids. These are people over 45, so their kids are probably older, but they still argue about it. Communication styles. There are eight more in there.

Money is number one.

Number one, 48% of the people who took the survey said the reason they get into an argument with their significant other is because of their communication style.

I do believe that, but it used to be that money was number one.

No, money is number two. If you look at the younger group, they don’t care about communication style. They care about money and kids.

It depends on the age. I thought that was a remark. I understand. Let’s think about this. Just pause for a moment here. Let’s see. Arguments, money, communication, yes, I see that. Children, we don’t have any of that.

Here’s an example.

We’re on the same page with that, which is that the children can fend for themselves.

Jill, I know that you disagree with me about fill in the blank, but do you have to call me an a-hole?

I don’t do that.

No, you don’t. You never do. I never have. I’m just saying communication style matters.

I don’t do that.

I know you don’t. It’s just an example.

You make it sound like I do that.

No. You’re the sweetest girl ever.

Come on. I don’t do that. That’s for sure. No. I’ll be like, “I’m over here. Do you need to be that hard? I’ll be over here.” That’s true. We don’t need to go there.

Here’s another example.

Go for it. This is the therapy segment of our show. I didn’t know we were going to have this.

“You know what, Jill? I was thinking. Thursday is a day when we work hard. We record the show. We do the Thursday call with all our members and a couple of other things. Thursday is our real Land Academy work day. What do you say, after all that, you and I go out, get a pizza and a pitcher of beer, and slap and have some fun?” Here’s Jill’s response.

I love it.

“Let me think now. Wait a second.”

I already said I love it.

Thinking, thinking, thinking. No. This is an example of something that could happen.

I already said I’m in. I was already planning where you want to go to dinner tonight. I know you. It probably starts with an M.

“Sushi, possibly. I don’t know. They have roasted chicken at the Fries.” My point is that that’s a communication style, and she’s not communicating with me. She’s working it through in her head, but out loud. Take that as you may.

If you, too, want to throw your partner under the bus and make up stuff that may or may not be true, join us on a Thursday afternoon call because you get even more of that, or we have a closed call with our members.

Do me.

No. Do you want me to do you?

Yes.

This is true time. This is Jack. “It’s Thursday. Of course, I’m going to be upset. These three things don’t work. I need fewer words, and I need you to stay out of my way.”

Yes, communication style. Fewer words. We’re both right.

I’m like, “I’m just handing you a lemonade.” “Don’t talk to me right now.”

“The camera half works. Mics never work. Lighting? Forget it. We’re doing it on a boat. Where’s the fun in that?”

“It is flipping hot.” Seriously, if you want to join us, I’m going to give you an invite to our Thursday member call. We would love to have you. It is a one-time invite. It’s closed. It’s a Zoom thing. It’s a big deal. If you want a ticket, send a note to my team. They’ll ask for information, ask for your email, and all that good stuff. Make sure you’re a good fit for a second, and you can sneak into our room. Send it to Support@LandAcademy.com. We would love to have you there.

If you liked this episode, drop a comment. If you didn’t like it, please be silent. Your comment will put you in the right algorithm, so you get more stuff from us. If you don’t want more stuff from us, don’t comment.

I love it.

Join us in the next episode, where Jill and I discuss how much it costs to succeed in a land business. We’re going to do a detailed breakdown.

Thank you for joining us.

You are not alone in your real estate ambition. We are Jack and Jill, information and inspiration to buy undervalued property.