I’m Steven Jack Butala.
I’m Jill DeWit, and this is the Land Academy Show. Land Academy is the place to start or grow your land investing business. We have the support, tools, and education you need.
Introducing “Deal Complete”
We had a super special show. I’m actually pretty excited. We have Michael Doyle with us. Michael is our lead developer. I don’t even know if that’s your title, but he joined us full-time probably 4 or 5 months ago, maybe I’m guessing. He hasn’t slept since. He’s the creator and implementer. I think I’m guessing now the customer service rep for our new product called Deal Complete. If you need details or want to learn more about it after the show, go to DealComplete.com.
Is it just tech support?
Everything. I’m responding to the emails, we’re doing the development, the product planning. We’re in the trenches.

Good. We, too, are here from the back of a boat. The only thing I’m missing right now is a martini. Boy, we appreciate what you’re going through. Thank you very much.
We sympathize, but don’t really empathize.
Yeah, we don’t.
Before we really dive into it, just give us an overview of what the products are like. We haven’t even talked about this at all, like when the camera’s off, what some of the biggest challenges are or were during the development process? What are the highlights?
I have a lot of questions to ask.
Just give us a frontline version of when this started, how you got here, and your favorite and least favorite parts of it.
High level. This is a full end-to-end solution, more than just a software program or an app. We’re trying to free investors to focus on their deals and getting mail out the door, and not just the admin work. That really was our mission when we started working on this. It has everything in it, from researching where you’re going to want to mail. There’s a really cool mapping system in there. We’re incorporating so many APIs, and giving you all of this data for you to understand where you’re going to mail.
It guides you through everything from pulling the data, which we’ve integrated with the data tree. You don’t have to go into all these different tools, and you can run that all the way through to getting the mail out the door, tracking the mail, responses, deals, closing it, tracking everything. All of your documents, all of it, can be done inside the system. That was our goal. When we jumped into this is what can we do to make something that runs end to end? My favorite feature is about this is the fact that you can do two clicks and get your mail out.
You go in and you choose the template that you want to have, which the system again guides you through setting up that template to the how you want it to look, the dates you want your data set, and then you click. The system is even designed to allow you to save a payment method. You don’t have to enter your information every time. We did a live and we had great attendance for that. It was amazing. We did a mailer out the door. You two were on there when we did it. It was less than 30 minutes. It’s a really robust, lightweight, and high-speed platform.
Have you calculated yet, Michael, what the average is? If not, I hope we do sometime like the savings to users? Now I don’t need this, and this. There are six tools that people might use, and subscriptions I have to go get. Now we’re like, “Don’t think about it. We got you.” I’m curious.
Value Proposition & Cost Savings
Yes, definitely. It’s on our website and in the pricing sections on DealComplete.com. The high level replaces everything from your phone system to your email system to any separate memberships you have for data. Again, we’re integrated with that. It’s going to allow you to text from inside it. Anything you have for extra due diligence it’s all in there. Really, to put it as simple as I can. It’s the tools you save with this platform far exceed the cost of having a membership. That’s the bottom line. It’s a no-brainer. It’s so cost-effective to have this membership if this is what you’re trying to do. There’s no reason not to.
It’s like when we did Land Academy, we rolled it out. It was like we were all spending a couple of grand every month to get everything. I’m sure it’s the same with Deal Complete now. Some of the tools that we’re able to offer, because Jack and I had been in the business, Jack, more than me, obviously, got professional-level access to stuff that back then only title agents could get, but Jack could get it. We could be licensed providers and share it with other people. I’m sure there’s a lot that’s going on, too, behind the scenes. It’s just, again, not just saving money for people, but giving you access to stuff you wouldn’t normally have. It’s amazing.
Impact On User Accessibility & Mailer Volume
The most impressive aspect of Deal Complete that I can see so far is how many people have signed up. That’s pretty staggering what you guys have accomplished. I know we kept in mind, I was involved in the very early stages of just the concepts. I know we wanted to make a product that there are a lot of people in our group and in this industry who have not gotten a mailer out because it’s complicated, or it was complicated. I know that that was the lead concept, at least in the front part of the product, not so much the closing deals part that we kept foremost. At the same time, people who are already getting mail out and doing deals, it just makes their life easier. Those are the things that are the real big picture stuff that I love about it.
I was going to ask what some of the initial reactions from the users were.
It’s amazing, it’s so encouraging. It really feels good for the amount of time that we’ve spent staring at this code to hear the responses. I was talking to somebody who’s been with us. They’ve been a member for three or four years, but they’ve just been a little bit intimidated by the process of getting mail out the door and the backend and tracking it. They attended our live event, and they said, “Please give me access. I’m going to send a 16,000-unit mailer as soon as I get access to this thing.”
The fact that we’re getting people who wanted to do it, and they want to send mail. They were just a little bit intimidated by the tech piece or the process. We’ve taken out that entire step. We’ve got an easy end-to-end thing. You can jump in and go, and that person is going to get mail out the door, and they’re going to get deals. They’re going to pair that with our education and our training, and they’re going to get deals. This is going to have a huge impact. I’m hearing that across the board from people that they’re ready to go.
Not only that, like that individual, if it were me, like I get everything, but I’m just not that person, I’d be looking for a Jack. Now I’m paying somebody, or I’m giving up some of my profit. That’s what would happen. Now I don’t have to do that. I want time.
I really think the greatest value in this product is that people are getting mail out that they would not have gotten mail out. Let’s just be really honest about it. That’s just huge. We founded Land Academy years and years ago, before it was even called Land Academy, because I wanted to provide very inexpensive properties, like $500 on eBay that I went and bought and paid for, obviously, less than that. A huge amount of bulk and get people in the real estate industry for $500 or $1,000 or whatever it ends up being. The nucleus of this product is the same thing. The access is a lot easier. It’s easier to get the mail out, and it’s easier to flip some deals, houses, or land, or commercial property. It’s great. I love to come full circle like that. We’re coming full circle all the time.
Where were you, Michael, for me, sixteen and a half years ago? I could have used you. I have a question. I know it’s been an exciting initial release of Deal Complete. Now that everybody’s using it, what updates have you made so far? Have you had anything like, “We got to do just a few tweaks,” or give us some behind-the-scenes info?
Pretty much just little tweaks. Some formatting things here and there. Of course, the normal hiccups when you go from just a small dev team to having a lot more database connections going. We really tried to, from the beginning, put in a lightweight, scalable, robust framework that will naturally adapt, because we knew. We knew this was a huge deal. This is an end-to-end, all-in-one platform to free you up from the admin work and take away the pain points of real estate investing. We knew. As soon as people hear about this, it’s going to be used. That was the big thing is just making sure we can scale. We can handle the level of people involved, and there are so many things on the roadmap that are coming that are going to make this even more intense.
Tell us what’s going on.
Wait, I have a question first. We’ll get to that. When we launched Land Academy, one of the things that happened and continues to happen now, we are over ten years of Land Academy. What people said, “You’ve changed my life. This is awesome. This is great. Thank you so much for sharing with me and my family, your family’s trade secrets and your business model, basically. This has been awesome. Now will you please lock it up and don’t let anybody else do it.” Have you had that yet?
Yeah, some members have said to me, “Look, please don’t share this. Please let it be membership only.” It’s really funny. What I said to them is, “Look, the education that we provide, the content and the templates, and our weekly calls, our advanced training. All of that gives you that leg up on anybody else. The system is designed to be used in tandem with our education and our content.” Yes, all the members are listening, everyone’s going to get access to it, but if you’re a member, you still have that advantage. You have the education, and you have the content. You’ll be fine, I promise.
It’s like 50 million pieces of real estate in this country. If you, as a user, include a healthy dose of flipping houses as well as flipping land, you’re going to do great. I want to really emphasize that this product is very suitable. We designed it to help you flip houses, too. Every Thursday, we have a call. We look at people’s deals who are in the group, and there’s a handful of people, maybe let’s call it ten, at any given time over the last ten years. The groups changed. They cycled through all the time. They’re smashing it. They’re doing amazing deals. In no way is the ship sailed here. Yeah. A competition standpoint.
That’s a good point. There’s a reason why it’s called Deal Complete and not Land Complete. Hint.
I haven’t said this in a long time on the air, but I estimated, did some serious math, probably a few years ago. There are about maybe 500 to potentially now a thousand people buying and selling land and houses consistently. There are 1.6 million licensed real estate agents out there. If real estate agents can make money, just imagine how much money you can make from a competition standpoint. We’re just a tiny little drop in the bucket to what’s really happening out there.
I have a question along those lines. Michael, have you seen any other professional group catch wind of this yet? I’m excited and waiting for it. There are going to be other groups that are going to be like, “This works for me, and I do this thing in this world.”
We’ve had a few people reach out, and it does look like there are other groups and investing groups that want to pull this into their workflow because we designed it, of course, based on what we know, and there’s nobody that has the experience in closing deals that Land Academy does, period. We designed it with our expertise, but it works with any model. You can be in a different investing style or approach if you want to, but you can still leverage this tool. We have had people reach out and want to start leveraging that, which is really cool. I’m happy for anybody who wants to leverage this.
Have you gotten any job offers yet?
I have not. I just turned down Apple and Google.
Those are the only ones. I love it. It’s so good. Will you share a little bit with us now, how far in the process from deal picking an area, just thinking about dreaming up an area, and dreaming of this stuff? Deal Complete obviously helps with all that, or maybe you don’t know that, but it does help with all that. Taking me through the mail and the pricing, and everything. How far can I go right now? What’s coming in the next couple of rollouts?
The Product’s Scope & Future Features (Roadmap)
You can take it end-to-end. You can go in and pick your area. You can pull your data. You can price that data. You can get the mailer set up, track the mailer, and have seller responses, get those tracked in, and run them through the CRM all the way through acquisition and closing, and the disposition side and closing. That’s all there is, and currently in the system. Coming soon, we’re going to have things like skip tracing built into the platform. We’re going to have the full phone and text integration.
That’s calling people and the SMS, answering opportunities, answering service opportunities that you can tie in, automating your due diligence piece is coming, actually a very soon. It may even be out by the time this airs. Some of these additional features allow you to continue to leverage that workflow. We’re calling that easy button to keep you moving through and get rid of all those pain points that people have been dealing with for so long.
That’s funny. People have different mindsets. I’m here thinking of two different groups. There’s a Jack group and a Jill group. I’m just going to describe it as that.
I know where this is going. It involves, oftentimes, lessons.
I think the Jack group is like, “This is amazing. I have a full-time job. I do this in my evenings and weekends, like all my spare time I do. Now I can do instead of one deal a week, I can do four deals a week. That’s what I’m going to be able to do. When I watch my bank account go bananas here because of this.” The Jill group is like, “One deal a week, now it takes me a tenth of the time.” Now I’d be like, “Maybe I don’t have to work that hard.” You like this?
Yeah. You know what occurred to me recently? When Jill’s at work, and we’ve been doing deals together for fifteen years now, more than that. I looked all the way back in my head about when Jill’s at work, she’s talking. She’s talking on the phone. She’s talking to somebody internally. There’s just a deluge of total talking and laughing, and she’s a deal maker. She creates these real estate deals, and this is really important in this whole process.
None of that’s changed. What you’ve done has changed my part dramatically. Pretty much made it, I’m not going to say obsolete, but it made my life a lot easier. If you’re a listener or watcher, a career salesperson, the tech part of this business has kept you out, or it hasn’t kept you out. You’re just not interested in learning all this stuff. That’s really changing for people who are career or just people persons.
It’s been overwhelming. One by one, since we launched Land Academy, we’re removing problems. Originally, it was just getting our hands on the data, not even understanding it, getting our hands on the data, remove that problem. It became funding deals or cheap mail. For a while, that was cheap mail. That was a good thing. Remove that problem. We started our own mail company. We got you. That’s an offer to owners. It was a funding deal. No problem. We got that. Now we fund, we’ll fund up to 100%. Bring it. I don’t care what it is. If it’s a great deal, there’s money.
This is a great conversation. The original problem that got solved. I think I solved it was reaching sellers. There’s always a demand for cheap real estate and always will be. The internet made that clearingly obvious with eBay and a few other auction sites that some are still around, some aren’t, like good for assets. There’s a massive demand for undervalued real estate. We all know that. The issue was contacting, simultaneously contacting 10,000 plus people.
This is almost twenty years now, simultaneously reaching and contacting people who own land that have never talked to anybody about buying their piece of property, way out in the sticks, in their entire lives. They couldn’t sell it fast enough because they’re tired of paying the tax bills. That was the real original problem. This product is a 21st-century version, the first one I’ve seen anyway, that makes contacting those people easy and affordable. Again, what it does is it takes all the angst and the brain crunch to contact sellers.
That was the original problem. Here we are solving more problems. There are more little things that I know we haven’t shared here that Michael’s working on. It’s going to be phenomenal. I just thought of something amazing. Jack, when you started, you fell into this because it was growing. It was a thing to do. You were the eBay real estate leader, period. Do you know what Amazon’s doing now?
I do know. Are you asking? Is that rhetorical?
It was a rhetorical question.
Yeah, it’s sharing.
It’s Amazon cars. Did you hear about that?
No, I know that Jeff Bezos has another startup that’s not unrelated. It’s not related to Amazon, where you put $500 in and you own part of an office building.
I wasn’t even going to say that. Amazon, there’s a thing coming out now with buying and selling cars on Amazon. I’m waiting for you, Jack. Feel the need? Just so I know, and can brace myself for my life. How many days do we need to be in a port?
I do feel the need to sell cars right now and not buy them.
Do you feel the need to be the Amazon real estate leader? Just check it.
I do not want that.
That’s good. I love that.
I’m happy when the sales are up right now in my life. Thank you for asking.
Are there awesome nuggets you have for us, Michael, that we may have forgotten to ask?
I think the main thing that really caps what you two were talking about is, Deal Complete is a force multiplier. It takes what you were already doing or were uncomfortable with from a tech standpoint, and it allows you to amplify that. It removes the pain points and amplifies your productivity. We were talking about the two camps. You could go from one to four deals in the same amount of time. Let’s say you really don’t have a lot of time to allocate right now, now, you really don’t have any excuse not to make something happen.
You want to quit your job, you want to put your head down for two years and come up for air at the end, and see your bank account a lot different. Now, this is going to make that even crazier for you. As long as you’re putting that effort in, which is what we tell everybody. You’re going to have to understand and drive it, but this allows you to do more in the same amount of time. I think that’s what I’m most excited about, to help people start to go down that journey and take away any of these excuses for people. Use it, it’s here.
Overcoming The “Lack of Money” Barrier With Deal Funding
What we haven’t talked about yet is how easy it is to get your deal funded here. The other big problem with real estate, or perception, perceived problem, is that “I don’t have any money. I cannot do this.” That’s just not the case. If you can find a good real estate or good real estate deals at the end of this product, you’ll complete. You click a button that you want to find that you need the deal fund and click a button.
I’m paraphrasing, but it gets it into our network of people who have a ton of money and not a lot of interest in sending out mail, or just too much money. You just don’t need any money other than the software, the learning curve money, however that works for you to get started in this. I used to hate that. I used to hate when people said, “You don’t need any money to get into it.” That’s not the case. You do need some money, but you need an amazing attitude. What you don’t need is two or $300,000 in the bank to start buying houses or land with your own money. You can use all the money.
You don’t need a construction company. This is not a sheet.
You’re still going to be good at real estate deals. That’s it.
It’s awesome.
Amazing, Michael. How do you like working at Land Academy?
It’s a lot of fun. We have such an incredible member base. On the Thursday calls, hearing people bring these deals in, and I’m on all of those calls. I’ll see everybody there if you join those. It’s huge. Just knowing that we’re introducing something that’s going to make it even easier for our members to leverage our network and their content and education. It really does. It frees them up to focus on their deals and drive more through and get even more out of their membership with us. I’m having a great time.
Where would you like people to contact if they have questions about Deal Complete, they are interested in it? How do you want them to reach out?
On DealComplete.com, there is a contact form where you can submit anything. You can also email us at Support@DealComplete.com, and we will get in touch with you right away, probably me to be honest, to make sure that we answer any of your questions. Also on DealComplete.com, you can go to DealComplete.com/Demo. There is a video there that walks through a condensed version of what we shared online. You can see what the system looks like, what it can do, and really understand what you’re looking at. Follow up with us, and we’ll get you going.
Does it matter if you’re a Land Academy or what space you’re in? If you are a professional or soon-to-be professional, however you want to call it, label yourself, real estate investor, this can help you.
Doesn’t that matter? Even if you’re not a member, I think you should explore that, talk with our team, and understand what it means to be a member. I think it will benefit you quite a bit, but anybody can use this. If you’re serious about real estate investing and you want to get rid of those pain points and really start to drive real results, just check out DealComplete.com/Demo.
Thanks very much, Michael. You’re a super welcome addition to our team, and I look forward to working with you on the next product or wherever this takes us.
Thank you so much.
Thanks, pal. Talk to you soon.
Bye.
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Let’s see what you, our land community, are working on.
We have a win to share. Leslie shared that she fell an asterisk-asterisk backward into a subdivide deal. “I made every possible mistake along the way, but I just got the newly assigned APNs. The agent predicts $135,000 total sales price for the lots. I bought them for $50,000, and I’m about $10,000 in on expenses. A clean double.” She’s going to be all in for $60,000 and selling for $135,000. That’s exciting.
I have to tell you that this story here, I’ve made every possible mistake, and it worked out great at the end, is the story of my life. It’s just what it takes. You never go into something saying, “It’s going to be easy and really profitable member.”
I’m going to say this is true because there were women before me. You did make some mistakes.
There are a lot of things that I just say, I hope I say this jokingly, but this is how things go. If you have the right attitude, she obviously does, then you’re willing to go through that big, long middle part, make all kinds of mistakes, embarrass yourself, the whole thing. You’re going to do great.
Here’s the other bonus, too. Leslie now knows what it takes in that area. She may go seek them out. She’s, A, she’s done a subdivide. Now she knows again how to do this area. I might get ten more or B, I’m now I’m going to search in other areas and see where it’s even faster and easier, and I’ll get them done.
First time’s always the hardest. We have a few questions that we pulled out of our Land Academy Discord online community.
Community Q&A: Access Easements & Survey Requirements
I’m glad, this is going to be fun. I think we have three questions to answer from you, our community, so let’s tackle them. One is from Alex, and Alex wrote, “If you’re buying a piece of property contingent on the seller providing an access easement, does a survey then need to be done that shows the easement and includes a new legal description to be recorded by the county? Who typically pays for that?”
The answer is yes. That’s exactly what has to happen. What I think I’ll paraphrase here. What Alex is saying is he’s talking to a seller, the seller has got a piece of property, probably two pieces of property. The second one, the one that he’s buying, probably doesn’t have access. It’s probably behind the seller’s house or some version of that. They need to legally rewrite the description, put it place an easement on a piece of property that he’s not buying, so that you can get a road into that property. You do need a survey for that.
There are maybe still some places around the country where you don’t, but you should just plan for it. Build it into it, and I would get the property in escrow. I would build the cost, whatever you negotiate for getting that. Now you’ve got it in escrow, and you are somehow going to pay the surveyor, which should run a couple thousand bucks, and maybe take, if things are not really busy right now, maybe you can get it done in two months, hopefully. Whoever pays for that is up to you and the seller.
I agree with that. What Jack’s saying is that will happen is when escrow closes on the buy side, you walk away with a property and the easement ready to go. The seller gets his money, and the survey person/company gets their payment all at the same time. That’s in a perfect world. Everybody’s going to be on the same team, too. The surveyor is going to be pushing to get it done because they get paid when that’s complete and the deal can be recorded.
This is a great question, and it’s phrased really well. Alex could have asked a question this way. “What happens when you have to get access to a property?” That’s not what he said or she said. It was very well-versed. You already knew the answer. You’re just joking.
That’s a lot of our community. It seems like that on Thursday. It’s like a lot of our Thursday member calls are like this, correct me if I’m wrong. When they come to us and do the “Would you do this deal?” It’s like, “I already thought that. I just want to hear what you guys thought. Now I feel better because we’re on the same team.” Here’s our second one. Martha wrote, “What’s the difference between appraised value and assessed value, and how do I land on an offer price by reconciling the two? Is it strictly based on land comps?”
It’s strictly based on comps. I love the way you asked this question. You could have said, “How do you price a mailer?” Instead, you said, “I’ve got all these values. Smacking me in the face on this piece of property. How do I value it?” We’re batting 2 for 2 so far.
I like to go on record saying this. Congratulations to Martha and Alex. You clearly speak, Jack. It took me years to get on board and speak to Jack. The only times I asked those opposite open-ended questions, like, “What do you want for dinner?
This, “You’re not making me feel very good right now.”
“I’m having a good day. What can I do to change that? I don’t know, but this is an edge.”
Just keep trying.
That has been our Tuesday forever.
Keep trying to make me feel better.
You’ve got to learn your partner’s language or fill in the blank. A partner could be a life partner, could be business partner. You’ve got to learn how to communicate the way they need it.
Power Jill. This is how I would go down that path. I have three places picked out for dinner. I am really leaning toward one of the places. I just want to run it by you in case you have some different thoughts. I say, “Let’s go to the place that you would like to go to.” That’s the end of it. Instead, this is what happens. I don’t know exactly what I want for dinner tonight, or if we should even go out. Can you please decide? I say, it ends up being, “We should go to this third place.” You may say, “No, that’s not what I want to do.” It’s a circle.
I think we hit it home. We have our third question now, and this is from Brian. Brian wrote, “How do I determine if I should self-close or use a title company?” Can I answer this?
Yeah.
Number one, the rule of thumb. Title insurance is important. A, someone is going to build upon the property. That’s going to probably come up. We need title insurance to confirm that the chain of title was done correctly because there could be someone down the way who asks. Who might ask? A lender. If we’re going to build upon the property, unless we have all this cash sitting aside to put our cab in there, there could very well be a lender involved.
They’re going to need to see that the property was purchased with title insurance, and we can all confirm that the chain of command was all done correctly in the past X amount of years. The other thing is, sometimes I just feel better when it’s a certain dollar amount. Now that’s me. I know Land Academy members who would self-close $50,000 land transactions. That’s not how I like to roll. I have a five or $10,000 comfort zone.
Me too. That’s how I would answer it.
Maybe up to twenty. Those transactions, I’ll do it. The only time nowadays, I’m going to go one more step further. The only time now, Brian, when I do sell clothes, because most of the deals I’m doing are bigger deals, where it’s just so much money involved, the type of property will be used in that way. It’s a big anchorage ranch, something like that.
Everybody just feels better going through an unrelated third company, even just to handle the money exchange as a title company, or for a company. Sometimes there are a few situations towards the end of the year where someone will say, “I’ll sell you this property for this price, but we have to close by the 31st, and I don’t have time. I cannot get it done with the title company.”
Again, it’s very rare. I become my own title agent at that point, and I have to do my own, and I know how to do this and check everything like a title company would close the deal myself. I’ll tell you, though, in January, after they got paid and I got my deed and all that, I am going to go back and get title insurance because when I sell it, I’m going to want that. That’s a tip. People don’t know that you can buy it and then get title insurance later on.
If the property that you’re purchasing is less than $8,000 to $10,000, it’s less than, if you can consider not getting title insurance, if it’s more than that, you probably should get title insurance in general.
The other thing, too, if it’s just going to be rack, like it’s only used for hunting and it’s never going to be built upon, I’m good with that. That’s okay. That would be a situation.
If you’re old, but you have gray hair like me, and you’re shaking your head, saying, “These two don’t know what they’re talking about.” I’m telling you, times have changed on this topic. Even in the last 10 or 15 years. It used to be that no one would ever consider buying a piece of property without title insurance. This is a product of some of the brainwashing that happened in the real estate industry because of the National Association of Realtors and all kinds of other stuff that happened in the 1950s.
It’s just not the case now. It used to be, just for fun, Jill is saying, “You can always go back and get title insurance later.” That used to not be an option. That used to be a break in the chain of title. There is no circumstance that you can fix that break. It’s uninsurable from that point forward. It’s just not the case anymore. Some companies specialize in solving that problem. You have a lot of options. That’s my point.
By the way, just a little recap. If you are ready to see how a Deal Complete that we talked about, and transform your investing business, go to DealComplete.com/demo for a free demo. It just might be Michael, by the way, on the other end of the call, if you reach out and schedule something.
As always, if you liked this episode, let us know, put it in the comments, give us a thumbs up. It gets you into that algorithm so you can capture more content that we are constantly creating.
By the way, if you share a win or a question, we just might share it on an upcoming episode.
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