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 company.

This is episode number 2261 and I like it. I like the improvements.

By the way, we do provide the tools and support in the education that you need. We’ll sprinkle them throughout the show.

Introduction: How To Finish 2025 Strong In Land Investing

Even more important than that, Jill and I are talking about how to finish 2025 strong in land investing business. We are not technically in quarter four yet. We’re at the end of three. I always plan for the next quarter and the next year and I’m sick that way.

Do you think that we still have time to adjust?

For the next quarter? Sure.

That’s the whole point.

At the time we’re recording this, it’s 9/11, so we’ve got more than a half of a month to adjust. That’s a lot. One of the great things about this business is that you can make decisions and implement them in one moment, literally. If you’ve ever worked for a big company or even a company with 10 or 12 people, you are the decision-maker. There’s just a lot of stuff that has to go on to make changes. I love just being able to say, “We’re going to record. We’re not going to record.” I’m not the one who usually does that. It’s the wonderful lady sitting next to me.

One of us has a strict schedule and you better be on time.

It’s true. Stuff gets done, but then do we know how to have fun?

We do.

We have good, flexible, positive fun.

We do. I’m telling you. I’ve had a little too much fun as I’m sitting here. You see, my eyes are small. I had too much fun.

We’re in the beginning of the pre-retirement stage of our life.

You’re talking about baseball season. Pre-post season baseball.

We’re sitting in San Diego Padre country.

I did a little nod to our team here.

Anyway, the topic is how to finish 2025 strong in land investing. For me, it’s always just planning and executing what I plan. It’s as simple as that.

Please share what you have. I have a whole well thought out three-point presentation.

Please come first.

The “Three D’s” Strategy For Q4 Success

I was thinking about this and as you just alluded to, it’s not too late. It’s like, “It’s September. It’s going to be October. I just need to write off 2025 and I’m going to go for it in 2026.” Hold on a moment. It’s not too late. There’s a lot that you can do to make 2025 very strong. There’s just some things you need to think about. I came up with three Ds for this. My three Ds to finish the fourth quarter and make your year are about decision, dedication and delivery.

That’s perfect.

Decisions are like goals. First, we have to figure out what we are capable of doing in the fourth quarter. I want you to sit down and think about your numbers. Think about your goals. Don’t just put in a dollar amount. We can all do that. “I’m going to make $100,000 between now and the end of the year,” that’s great.

That’s helpful.

It is, but I need you to be a lot more detailed than that. I want you to think about how many deals you’re willing to do. Two a month is good. That gives us six deals in the next 90 days or whatever to get done. You also have to back out your acquisition time. You need to think about that, too. It’s one thing to say because you can’t sit down in October and say, “I’m going to sit on a mailer October 1. I’m going to buy it. I’m going to sell two of them on October 31st.” That has happened and I want you to be realistic.

When you’re doing these numbers and you’re doing this decision, planting time. Be realistic. Think about the numbers. Think about how many deals are realistic and then you have to go for those deals. That’s going in your mailer, your trolling/fishing and putting it all together. Maybe you only have time to do a couple days. You need to do two deals on each. You need to net $50,000. Maybe that’s what you’re doing.

When you’re running the numbers and planning your decisions, be realistic. Think about how many deals are achievable—and then go after them. Share on X

Maybe your October is like, “I’m going to have the very best mailer going out and the phones are ringing. By the end of October, I better be buying a couple of these. I’m going to sell one in November and one in December. I’m going to make $100,000.” It’s something like that. That’s decision. Do you want to add to that?

I’ll go at the end. I’m going to summarize what you’re saying with a different analogy but it’s the same stuff.

Number two is dedication. We’ve got these numbers and these goals. I know how much mail I need to send. You know all this because you’re at Land Academy. You have a regular green. Not just that. You have an equity planner. It’s Jack’s equity planner but you can plug in, “I’m going to do X amount of deals and this amount of time.” You know what the deals need to look like. Buy for this and sell for this and how much mail you need to send. That’s what’s going on here and that’s where you’re going to figure out the dedication part of it. That’s the time and the energy. How much are you willing to put your head down?

I have to interject here because while I love that you’re bringing up dedication and that we’re talking about it. This should honestly just go without saying.

True. It should.

If you’re serious about this or anything. Serious about anything in life. While you may not like dedication, it should be automatic.

That’s part of this business and how you’re successful. It’s because you’re dedicating yourself to this. I’ve told people that. Thank you for pausing on that because that was a good note to just talk about more for a moment. Many times, I coach people and they don’t have it. They’re like, “I’m going to do it on my spare time.” This needs to be your life a little bit.

If you have trouble with this, I’m going to say and this is going to sound unorthodox. If you have trouble with not dedication or commitment but fall through. However, you’re described. “I know I’m supposed to send 10,000 mailer out. I still haven’t done it.Are you in a role here?

No, that just leads into my third point.

Go ahead. I’m going to tell my story in a second.

My third point then is delivery and that is follow through, period. That’s it. You have to know what you’re going to do and make the decision. Dedication, figure out the time and energy it’s going to take and delivery. You just have to do it.

If you want to make $100,000 in the fourth quarter of 2025, in a minute I’m going to tell you exactly how to do that. How many mailers to send out, how to change your attitude and the whole thing. In the meantime, I came across for whatever reason a video that somebody shared. It’s a guy. It’s a very famous person who read or shared a video of a guy who said, “Here’s the root of the problem with procrastination and here’s how I can stop it in less than two minutes.”

This is cool.

Overcoming Procrastination By Focusing On The Outcome (Delivery)

If you haven’t seen this video, just go out for a while. It’s a guy standing up in front of a whiteboard as basic as can be. He said, “I’ll save you the time. People who have issues with procrastination or any type of fall through in general, aren’t focusing on the outcome. They’re focusing on the crap they have to do.” He used Elon Musk as an example and all that. At the end he said, “Think about this. Somebody did a study, a very credible study of thousands and thousands of women who just had their second baby. Their question was, why did you do this?” They said, “I just wanted to have another baby but I’m never having another one again.” “Why?” “It’s because it’s awful. This birthing experience is awful.”

“You already went through it once. Why did you choose to do this again?” It’s because I just want to have another baby.” They’re not focusing on being pregnant and having the whole birthing experience with this. It’s not pleasant for anyone. They’re focusing on having that baby in their arms when they’re done. What you need to be focusing on with Land Academy or anything that you want to accomplish is the result and you want a hard brand in your pocket. This is what you do.

What you need to focus on—with Land Academy or anything you want to accomplish—is the result. Share on X

I can’t wait to comment on the kids.

I don’t know why people have two children or three children.

I speak from experience here. Number two was, we wanted to try for the opposite sex. Check. Got that done. That was the outcome. Number three was I wanted to make sure we had an even number for roller coaster rides. That was not the opposite sex because the men wanted a boy. We got the girl first, so he had to do it again for a boy. It worked out great. I wonder if it was two girls then we would have kept going because we all know people that have done that and it didn’t work. Made up with like four girls.

How we’re going to get over this is. It’s staggering.

It’s true.

I know. I know it’s true for you.

It’s true for other people, too. Thank you. Go ahead.

Concrete Mailer-Based Strategy For A $100K Q4 Goal

You understand my point. In Q4, you want to make $100,000. You want to have $100,000 more in your checking account. When you start this, this is what you do. You work. At the time of this recording, it’s 9/11. You have more than two weeks to plan for the next three months of the entire process of buying and selling land or houses if you want. Jill and I are not quite about it. We buy and sell houses also. You’re going to back into the number of mailers that you need to send out. The mailer yields that you’re comfortable with and you need to get cracking.

It’s never been easier. We have this new product called Deal Complete. Go to DealComplete.com. You can check it all out. It takes away my job. Aside from choosing where and analyzing where to send mail. The whole mailer processing is done in this application for you by our people. The same people that do our mailers but anyway. Let’s say you’re mailer yield for any given transaction you believe it’s 10,000 units. That’s a very liberal number. You can do a lot of deals with 10,000 units, but if you’re brand new and you’re concerned about talking on the phone or whatever. Overkill it and the mail was appropriate.

You sent 10 for 1. That means if you want to make let’s say $33,000 a deal in profit. You need to do three deals so you need to send out approximately 30,000 mailers, which is massive gross overkill. If I sent out 30,000 mailers now, we would do probably 10 or 20 deals. I’m not bragging. It’s just because we have a ton of experience and we have Jill. Jill can create a real estate transaction where there wasn’t one half hour prior.

These are real numbers. You send out 30,000 units and you stagger it. I would highly recommend that you use the right green-yellow test and do a complete application to find three markets that are separate. Send out 10,000 units each. There’s a very strong chance that if you those markets are chosen as we talked about in the Land Academy program. You’re going to find a deal where you buy and sell it very quickly within two weeks to 30 days, where you make $33,000 knot, which is also a very low number.

We don’t do deals anymore unless we hit $100,000 or so. “Jack, I don’t have the money. Where am I going to get money to buy a property for $80,000 and sell for $30,000 or $40,000 more?” Easy. In Land Academy, we have deal funding. If this is your first time reading the show, you don’t have to. You don’t have to have any money. You need the time and the dedication to learn this. Most of you who are reading this already have all that. You’ve already tested this and you know that it works. You’ve tested for a reason. Execute. That’s it.

I’ve been thinking about over the years of Land Academy too and different people I’ve talked to about this in any year. It’s very interesting how many people just coast in the winter time. Sometimes, it’s because they’ve given up. I’ve heard different things that happen. One is like, “2025 shot. I’m going for 2026.” Sometimes, they’ve done well. They’re like, “I hit my goals.” No matter what, if you don’t stay the course, you are going to goof yourself up. Why? If you don’t keep your systems and your routine and everything. You’re not going to get 2026 off to a great start.

No matter what, if you don’t stay the course, you’re going to mess yourself up. Why? Because if you don’t keep your systems and routines in place, you won’t start 2026 off strong. Share on X

If you don’t have this mail out there in play, I’m not kidding, too. Watch what happens around the holidays. Get all of November and December. Keep this mail out there and your business is flowing. Take the holidays off. You don’t have to be hardcore about it. I have done that and sometimes I will. I’ve work around people. Whatever. I’m weird.

I’m the same kind of weird. We want to work through the holidays and make some money. We understand you.

I’m thinking outside the box of why people fail. We just told you to do it right. What happens is you’d be thinking. As I said, maybe you did great, but if you don’t keep going and keep this momentum. Congratulations. Your 2025 is going to end up perfect, Michelle B. She knows because she’s doing awesome. Using her as an example because I know she sets these good goals and she does very well.

She knows you can’t back off because it will slow down your momentum going into the next year. You have to do this. For me, the secret sauce is eating, breathing and living this. Figuring out how to make this your life and make this a part of your life, because then you can come up for air in a couple years and go, “Look at that bank balance. What just happened?”

Imagine you’re in a convenience store and it’s September. You did a budget in 2024 right before Thanksgiving about revenue expense, net income and the whole thing. It’s September and you have achieved your budget. Do you close the doors and say, “I made $100,000. This is what I was supposed to do. I want to close the doors. I’m going to reopen on January 1st.” That’s insane. You would never do that. You would lose all kinds of clientele.

The employees might get other jobs.

Let’s say in another situation. You haven’t yet hit your goal. You have a pretty serious chance of hitting it by the year end but you have to buy a new inventory. You got to spend a little bit of money so that you can resell the merchandise and maybe do a little bit of marketing and hand out some stuff in the front of the store like pamphlets or whatever. I don’t know what the situation has, but you don’t shake that eyelash. Spending money for new inventory, chips and stuff or whatever you’re selling to try to hit your goal. Mark them up and try to hit your goal.

Maybe you try some new marketing or some new products or move stuff around in the store. You’re doing stuff. You’re actively doing stuff. We have so many. As you’re going to hear in a second how many success stories we have. We have so many success stories in Land Academy and in this business in general. Large and vast amounts go unsung. We never hear about it. We have people in our group that are the first twenty people that signed up that are still in our group and still hitting our goals and still reach out to us very rarely once a while and say, “This is just amazing. Thank you again.”

That’s the best part. We know when you go dark like, “They’re doing great.” They don’t need us very much.

Less analogy. If you’re going to go out fishing, you need to catch three fish. You need two. Not one. How many lives do you put in the water? As many as you possibly can to get those three fish. You don’t put one in and hope to catch three fish on that line. You don’t put three in and hope to catch one fish on each line. If you have 30 lines, put in 30 lines. The faster you can get there, the better. This is just a common sense approach. For those of you who are following that category that I just mentioned, congratulations. You’re going to hear from a couple in a second here, but if you’re not there yet, it just takes Jill’s three Ds.

We’re at one more D which is discouraged.

That’s so negative.

I can remember how discouraged you think it is or whatever.

Discourage like you had two girls and not a girl and boy?

That’s it. No matter what tomorrow’s a new day. I find myself saying that to a lot of people like, “I blew it. I’m never going to get this.” I’m like, “What are you talking about? Shake it off. Get it tomorrow. You’re going to be fine. You got this.”

No matter what, tomorrow’s a new day. Share on X

It’s easier to do nothing than something.

True. Sometimes when you do nothing, you are doing something. You’re making a decision but not the right one.

We’ve covered that. We’re going to talk now about what you’re working on now.

We have a big win to share and then we have three questions we’re going to answer. Our win is from Matt B who’s been with us for years. Matt said, “The biggest deal yet. I got a call on the expiration date of my offer from a cellar wine to accept. However, they need to extend the offer 60 days as a property was tied up in probate. After weeks of getting all the parties on the same page, we’ve closed.” Here are the numbers. The purchase price was $54,000. No improvements AKA the Land Academy way. We are not doing anything to it. Listed with an agent, my favorite way, by the way. Sales price is $185,000. What’s HUD to HUD?

HUD to HUD is the HUD closing stand. On the buy side, there’s a pro-rated statement on the HUD. What this person is talking about is the buy side HUD. The buy side closing statement to the sale side closing statement. His profit of $123,869.

Closed on the buy side on June 30th, 2025. Sold and closed on August 29th, 2025. These are our numbers. There’s your $123,000 and we didn’t even know. That’s it. That one deal and he did it in time.

If you have done it for a while, 5,000 or 6000 units should get you a deal like this. You send off 5,000 or 6000 mailer units in it or some number like that.

This could be you. It’s interesting. At the end of the year, people worry about wanting to spend money. I like people who want to get money around holidays. Maybe it should be another show for the next episode. People around the holidays want to get money for obvious reasons. Christmas and the holidays are expensive. They also want to spend money. I got to get some stuff off my books in 2025. That comes into play too. Don’t think just because you’ve got a property, you’re putting it on the market December 1. It’s not going to sell. Watch.

We don’t see material slow down in the twelve months of the year.

A lot of that has to do with we’re sending a lot of mail to Northern Minnesota.

There’s that.

We have a few questions from you on our Land Academy Discord Community.

Community Q&A: Handling Deal Funding With A Seller

I have three. The first one is from Tracy. Tracy wrote, “I’d like to have a clear understanding of what it looks like to the seller if we get our deal funded. Do you think just sign a new contract once we find the funder or they even need to know if we have a funder? I like to understand so I can navigate the conversation and have the experience as smooth as possible.” May I?

As far as they’re concerned, Tracy. I’m your partner. Don’t even know anything. They don’t even know that this is the first deal we’ve ever done together or that 80th deal we’ve done together. That’s it. We’re both here doing this decision. If you have a purchase agreement, don’t change anything, by the way. If you haven’t purchased an agreement with some wording that is, “Purchaser is Tracy Smith or signees or something like that.” Most types of companies are like, “That’s fine. We don’t care.” Sometimes a company will say, “We need an updated purchase agreement with the name on it because it matches the deed name, which is like one of LLCs.” No big deal.

If and when that happens, you’re down the path and you open escrow. The seller doesn’t know where the money’s coming from. You and I are talking behind the scenes. You’re the deal manager. You’re getting everything done and then the escrow company calls you and says, “Tracy, you need to get Jill. We need to get the seller to sign this thing with this name on it.” All you are going to do is call the stuff and be like, “No problem. I’ll make sure they get this done.”

You just let the seller know, “I’m sending it over DocuSign. We’re going to put it in a different name just so you know. Watch for that. You’ll see the price. Everything’s the same. When you get it, please sign it. If you have any questions, let me know.” That’s it. It’s that easy and that fast. They don’t care. It could be your buying in your name and you think, “Someone put in my company name, or I’m going to put in this company name. Whatever it is.” It’s just like that and they could care less. All they care about is the check that they’re receiving on closing day. It’s what they expect.

Tracy, I’m glad you asked this question. I’m going to read between the lines here about some other things that are going on. Not with you, but just with the world and make some commentary on it. I hope that it helps you. When I started in public accounting, I worked my way up all the way to partner at KPMG. I do not have an accounting degree, but the entire career I was surrounded by CPAs. People there have taken their education as far as they can go from an accounting standpoint. They’re good enough at it atomically and in the real world to get into KPMG.

What I noticed after about eight months of hanging around these people is that they never talked about accounting ever. They were talking about customers, good customers, bad customers, people they like that work for them or people that they did or didn’t like above them. It was always about people. It was never about, “From an accounting treatment standpoint, you could look at this point a little bit better.” Never. Not a single conversation.

What I took away from that is what I want you to take away from this. You think you don’t know stuff, but I’m telling you. The funder, Jill included, isn’t going to rattle off some turns that you don’t know. She’s going to respond to you like every lender/funder will respond to you like a person. Are you funny? Are you an interesting person? Are you asking a lot of good questions? Are you listening to the answers? Are you following through with the agreements that you sound? Are you negotiating well and saying, “I’m just being a regular person?”

When you aren’t sure about something, ask a couple of simple questions. That’s how you get everything done in life. Not just deal funding. Please don’t be intimidated by terminology or buying and selling land or real estate or any of that stuff. Nobody cares. It’s all secondary against you as a person and dealing with you. If there’s a problem picking up the phone or all of that. I can tell you early on when we were deal funders, how many times people just went dark. I honestly think they’re intimidated and there was nothing wrong with the deal. I don’t think they’re intimidators or something. What do you think?

Don’t be intimidated by the terminology or by buying and selling land or real estate. Nobody really cares—that’s all secondary to who you are and how you deal with people. Share on X

I haven’t noticed that.

Way early on.

I don’t remember that. I don’t remember anybody going dark or anything like that. Sorry.

Thanks, Jill, for supporting my thing. I guess we have a different memory.

Community Q&A: Scrubbing Mailers For Illogical Receivers

Maybe we do and that’s okay. It’s just relationships. Let’s go do question two. Tara wrote, “I’m working my first mailer and I have exported leads in my target zip code. When I’m doing my test for a reason, I noticed two things. One, the data pulled a lot of the properties with structures on them, despite my efforts to explode them. Two, hundreds if not more properties on my corporations like municipalities, local companies and LLCs. I know the more mail we send, the better but should I be trying to remove these properties or is it just part of it when we cast a wide net?”

This is very valid and a great question. You never want to send a mailer to somebody as an owner who you know there’s just no chance of them responding. We covered this and have covered it for years in the Land Academy program. We’ve got all kinds of ways to pull this stuff out of, especially with the deal complete application that we just released. All kinds of ways to extract completely illogical owners of real estate. For example, Springfield Water Association.

Do you want to waste $0.77 or whatever it is to stamp it? They are going to shred that immediately. It’s not going to make a passenger mailroom. Another great one is in the USA. Fair of tremendous number of properties that are, for whatever reason, owned by the USA or the United States of America or all kinds of variations on that. Some with periods and some not. From a data standpoint, it can get messy again. Deal Complete addresses all of that.

To directly answer your question, you want to scrub out all of those real illogical receivers of offers. I’ll tell you from experience. There are some entities. I’ll list them. People want to take out their mailers and I don’t know why. Churches, leave them in. Any non-profits leave them in. They love selling property that’s donated to them and just turning it into cash. You make it easier for them. What else, Jill?

You mentioned local companies. Leave them in. LLCs leave them in.

All LLCs and companies we should leave in. We do deals with the companies all the time.

I’m going to try Minnesota, because you’ve mentioned Deal Complete. By the time this airs, it will be available to the public. What are we talking about? Check out DealComplete.com. It’s opening up to the public. You will have access to this.

As far as structures go, it depends on the municipality that you’re sending it to. Some municipalities love data and their databases are accurate. When you look up at any given property, sometimes it’ll say, “There’s structure here. This is how we evaluate and all that.” Some of the municipalities that are rural like Arkansas and South Dakota. Specifically in some parts of Oklahoma and New Mexico. They don’t have up-to-date tax rules. That database is made up of tax rolls.

There’s some places in Arkansas, and I’m not picking on Arkansas. We love going there. They just don’t care if there’s a structure on it. They’re taxed in a certain way. Some places in Arkansas don’t have any building permit requirements, so they just don’t know and don’t care. Depending on where you send it, sometimes there’s structures in there.

That’s one thing that I thought was so interesting when I got into this the first time riding this full-time with you. For me, it was West Texas. Every time I have a county, there are a few out there that would just be nice to say, “Lady, you just knock yourself out. You start building a casino, we don’t care what you do with it.” I’m like, “This is the greatest thing ever.”

I have to tell you. Many times, we sent mailers out because the data was incomplete to people with structures on their property. They signed it and sent it back and we bought it. We bought a shack or a house or whatever. We bought a trailer and a lot of mobile homes.

Community Q&A: Pushing Through Fear & Finding Confidence In Land Investing

Our third question comes from Carla. Carla wrote, “I just joined Land Academy. I’m so scared and so excited. All normal, real, healthy, and welcome. Has there ever been a time when you wanted to quit the business?”

Excluding 30 minutes ago.

Not because of the business. That’s a good question.

Has there been a time where I sat down and said, “That’s it?” One time. It was in 2009. The economy was so bad that we couldn’t give land away. Nothing like that has happened since. I hope it never happens again like that. I was largely a victim of how I set up the company to sell land, which was just through eBay. I look back now and there was a single failure. It was feared as great for a decade.

I had a ton of property that I just couldn’t sell, and so entered Jill. She got on the phone and simply said, “Who bought all these other properties? There’s thousands of lots that you sold. What are their names and numbers?” She just picked up the phone and started calling him and sold a ton of inventory that I had chalked off as unsellable and it’s just going to go back to the taxing authority. There’s that one time. Ever since then, I got a huge sense of confidence from that and having a business partner like Jill. Have you ever had a time where you’re like, “I’ve had it?” Not a bad day.

Not land. That’s a funny thing. We’ve had other companies over the years and land always kept everything else afloat. I was able to put it on my table because of the land. Once you know it and learn it, you are down. You know you always have a fallback plan.

What I read in this question is daunting. You got to take little bites out of everything. I have to tie it on a personal note. Jill and I just bought a 50-foot sailboat and we’re in San Diego. I’ve been on. Jill goes back and forth to Phoenix once in a while. It’s been daunting for me, the projects. It’s been great shape. It’s in fantastic shape. I’m sitting in it now, but to get it ready to go where we want to go, there’s been project after project and this is new for me. This is a lot of handyman stuff. Way beyond handyman maintenance.

There’s a lot of sailing and rigging issues and diesel mechanic stuff. I’m way out of hand. I have not done so much now but when we started this, way out of my comfort zone. It was daunting. I made a checklist. That gave the people part of it. I asked Jill to do it. She took that out of my life and the rest of it, it got done. It gets done. There’s a little crying. There’s some crying about it but it gets done.

Men can cry. It’s okay.

Why do you say that? Men can cry. Try crying in front of your women. Fracturing your finger because you’re in the middle of the diesel mechanics. Cry about it with your woman and see how that goes.

I understand. I mentioned Deal Complete, so I want to tell you, too. We now have a Deal Complete eBook. It is so flippin’ cool. You got to check it out. In that eBook, you will learn how to get mailer out of the door like out of your life, everything done in under 30 minutes. It’s so cool. To download your free copy, all you do is simply go to DealComplete.com/Ebook. It’s there for you.

If you like this episode, please drop us a comment. It affects the algorithm so you can get more of the content that you’re providing. If you share a win or a question, we might feature it on the next episode. Join us in the next episode where we discuss how to build a land business that gives you freedom.

We are truly walking, living and breathing examples of that and have been for quite some time. We’ll share all about that, too. 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.