I’m Steven Jack Butala.

I’m Jill DeWit and this the Land Academy Show. For ten years and counting, Land Academy has been the place to go for the education tools and support you need to start and grow your land investment business. There is no more experienced or seasoned land investment group out there.

Real Wins From The Land Investing Community

The topic is 5 Things Land Investors Should Bring to the Table for Success. Four of Them are Free. This is episode 2288. Before we get to the topic, though, I would love to hear some of the things that our land community is experiencing.

We have a couple of wins here, so I love this part, too. Megan T said, “I hit my first $100,000 month in revenue. It took ten months of learning and pushing through fear, but now, the system is working.” It makes you feel so good. What a different life. Omar R said, “I closed on a twenty-acre property. I picked it up for $12,000 and resold it 3 weeks later for $49,000.” There you go. That’s the Megan thing. Three of those in a month, and now you’ve got Megan numbers.

If you do that once a month, you’re making a clean $30,000. That’s $350,000 a year.

One deal a month. Isn’t that great? Tasha P said, “I crossed the ten-properties sold mark. I finally feel like I now know what I’m doing. I remember crying after my first call to a seller.” Did you ever cry over seller calls?

No. I’ve had some crying on the other end.

Please expand. What does that mean?

There’s one time I bought some property. A guy called me who’s from Oklahoma. He had a bunch of properties, and he was in a pretty tough financial situation. This was a lot of years ago, long before you and I joined forces. I didn’t have the luxury of having a business partner like Jill, who’s on the phone all day, talking to sellers and stuff. I was doing both things, acquisitions and what we call around the office as sales.

This guy was desperate. We put a deal together. Like most deals, it takes a couple of weeks to close when you go through escrow. It was a good deal, and we did get it done. He had to call me 2 or 3 times a day to see where we were, even though nothing was changing at all. The properties were in escrow. It was all in a single county. I remember making a bunch of money on the deal. I finally had to level with the guy. I said, “If you keep calling me, I’m going to reduce the price.” He did keep calling me, and I did reduce the price.

Why? He was nervous about it for some reason.

I don’t think he was nervous. I think it’s a personality type.

It could have been some kind of personality issue. I was thinking he wasn’t comfortable with the deal. I’ve had a few where they’re like, “Are we going to close on Monday?” I’m like, “Yes. We’re going to close on Monday. Why?” They’re like, “I’m making sure because I’m so excited.” It’s so cute.

I handle things differently on the phone. That’s the real story. In hindsight, I would never do that. I was a lot younger, a lot more aggressive, all of that. I wouldn’t do that to your seller. I wouldn’t talk to them.

That’s true.

Jill stopped me from talking to sellers a long time ago.

Jake and Lena said, “We closed our first seller finance deal with $4,000 down and $327 a month for 5 years.” I hope they bought it for $4,000. That’s always my favorite. We don’t do them anymore, but way back in the day, when we would do seller financing deals, that was part of my thing. It was to buy for $2,000, and then we’d sell it for $10,000. The down payment was $2,000, and they would make payments of $149 a month. I felt like I always got my money back right away. The rest was gravy.

It’s hard to make a few hundred thousand dollars a year, which is what my goal was in the beginning when you’re taking payments like this, but I’ve done a bunch. My entire business model, right from the beginning, was based on this. It took me about a year or two before I stopped doing it entirely. It’s a lot of work.

You will learn, unfortunately, Jake and Leah, that if you get several of these, not everybody pays. In fact, most people don’t pay on time every month. It becomes a chasing thing, and you feel bad for these people. We had one person. It happened a few years ago. I long forgot about it. We had set this gentleman up on a fresh pay automated system. It was FreshBooks. I didn’t even know. He’s reaching out, going, “I’m all done.” I’m like, “Who are you? What are you talking about?” He’s like, “I made my final payment.” I’m like, “I didn’t think that was going to happen. I didn’t think you were still out there.”

He kept track of it.

I had to figure it out. I was like, “What’s our login information in FreshBooks?” That was so funny. That was rare. Natalie said, “I finally made the switch from targeting a $10,000 acquisition cost to a $30,000 acquisition cost. I’m excited to see what this changes in my business.”

I intentionally chose a question that we’ll talk about a little bit later in the episode. My favorite is to buy for $30,000 and sell for $120,000 for land, not for houses, certainly. There are so many more people who can write a $120,000 check than a $3,000 or $400,000 check. However, we still do the bigger deals. They take a little longer to close. They don’t take longer to buy. They take a little longer to sell.

In addition to that, when you’re writing an $80,000, $90,000, or $100,000 check, these people are ready for it. They’re moving money around. They have money. It’s not going to break the bank. The difference, like what Natalie was doing with buying for $10,000 and selling for $30,000, is that for some people, $30,000 is like, “I’m scraping it together.” You bought something for $2,000 that you’re selling for $10,000. They are scraping it together. To those of you who are doing those deals, you know what I’m talking about. It’s more work.

No matter where you are in the sell-side pricing of a land deal, you need to be way cheaper. It needs to be so compelling that everybody is out on the internet looking for a piece of land to buy in that ZIP code. It needs to be way cheaper than it should be. They have this perception, and hopefully, it’s real that they’re getting an amazing deal.

It should be real. You’re selling it for $120,000, let’s say, because it’s worth $150,000. That’s the whole thing. The last one I have here is Carl. “I brought my sister into this business. She isn’t interested in opening her own land business yet, but she’s been killing it on the phone. I love bringing in family when it makes sense.”

That exact thing happened to Jill. Jill and I joined forces first socially, and then eventually, professionally. It was a life-changing situation for our business. We probably did 4 to 8 times the revenue the full year after she worked there.

Thank you.

#1 Success Trait: A Proven Track Record Of Success

The topic is 5 Things Land Investors Should Bring to the Table for Success. Four of Them are Free. These are my five things. I’m interested to hear what Jill has to say because she usually disagrees with this stuff. Of what I’ve learned in the fifteen years that we’ve had Land Academy, this is my number one. I don’t care who you are or where you come from. If you have experience in being successful at what you do and what you’ve done in your life, you are dramatically increasing the percentages of success by reselling land.

I don’t mean owning other companies, although that’s great. I love that. In fact, we have a whole separate group of people who have owned other companies and retired from them, and they’re doing this in retirement. What I mean is, did you do okay in school? Are you an okay husband? Do you generally succeed at stuff and do a little bit of research with AI, or do you generally walk down the path of life, succeeding at things? Joining Land Academy and buying and reselling land is not going to solve any problems that you already have. In fact, that’s going to enhance the success that you’re already experiencing. Please keep that in mind.

Joining Land Academy and buying and reselling land is not going to solve any problems you already have. It will enhance the success you’re already experiencing. Share on X

I want to expand on that. I agree with you. This is one of the things that I’m doing a lot of, talking to people. We have expanded our coaching program. I got personally involved. Once a month, I get with everybody for an hour. This is huge. I’m glad you led with this. Even if you’re an accomplished executive, you have a track record of putting your head down and not stopping until you accomplish said goal.

That could be, “I’m going to be a VP in ten years. I’m going to be a surgeon by the time this is done. I’m going to be at the top of my field here or my dry cleaner is going to have three outlets,” Something like that. It’s that kind of experience. It tells me and everyone that you’ve overcome obstacles, and you’re not afraid of them.

Some people get brought to their knees by one obstacle, and they don’t even know how to overcome it. You have to have that. It’s a business owner’s mindset. You could be in a business owner mindset when you’re in control of your own career. You’re in control of your life. You know that, “Now I have to go do this in a different way. No one’s going to help me. I could do it myself.” I know I’m tipping into some of the other ones. When obstacles come up, you not only hit them head-on, but you look at them like, “This is awesome. That would have taken out half the competition,” and I’m sure it did.

That’s it. I have a little anecdote. A lot of years ago, our third kid was young. I was sitting for some reason in a CVS or pharmacy waiting for a prescription to come. I don’t know why, because we don’t generally have prescriptions, but I was. There was a little twisty rack with tiny, miniature books that I usually can’t stand. They’re usually at the checkout line or something like that.

This one happened to be titled 44 Things to Make You a Better Father and a Husband or 44 Things to Help You Be a Better Father and Husband. I’m waiting and flipping through this. I’m like, “This is the greatest stuff ever.” It’s simple stuff, like scheduling time with your kid. I still have the book. This is what I’m talking about. You don’t have to be an accomplished financial winner. I bought the book. I wanted to be slightly better as a father and as a husband to Jill. It’s stuff like that. You want to keep moving forward.

You bought the $3.99 CVS little book on the rotating kiosk.

#2 Startup Capital: You Don’t Need Much, But You Need To Start

It wasn’t tiny, but that’s when I could read tiny. Number two, startup capital. Four of these things are free in my book. You do need some startup capital, but you do not need a lot. What I mean by saying you do need some startup capital is that you need to pay for outbound mail for your mail campaigns, and not be shy about sending them out.

One of the things that I see that stops people in their tracks, specifically new people in this business, and I spent fifteen years in Land Academy, is that they send out a 500-unit mailer. They don’t get the response that we want, largely not because the mailer didn’t work. It’s largely because they haven’t learned yet. They haven’t learned the skill sets to answer the phone the way that Jill does. Maybe they didn’t send the mailer out the way that I do after 30 years of doing this.

Maybe not enough.

It could also be that they plainly didn’t send enough out, so they stopped. We have a guy in our group who’s going to be a superstar. He has already been a superstar in other aspects of life. He sent out an 11,000-unit mail. He made a mistake on it. He was still learning how to use the phone. He talked to Joe and said, “I guess that didn’t work. I’m going to try this over here. I’m going to send out 30,000 units this time. I’m going to do it in three separate places, as you guys suggested I should have done the first time.” That’s the attitude that you have to bring from a money standpoint to this.

Here’s the good news. You do not need any money at all to buy the actual property. The reason we started Land Academy a long time ago is to collect people who would fund our deals and everybody else’s deals. Now, we’re funding other people’s deals and have been for more than a decade. What’s your take on capital? People ask us, “How much money do I need to start?”

You don’t need the same thing as you do to open a Lalaland. It’s what we were talking about. You don’t need to have $1 million to open a restaurant. That’s what’s crazy. You do need to have some dough. If you had $10,000 to $50,000 coming at this, which is a good, realistic number, then you’re going to do great. It’s going to be your marketing, your data, and your getting-it-started and getting-the-wheels-turning costs. That’s it.

You have to be a deal machine—go out and find them. Share on X

Don’t be afraid. A lot of people look at their bank account, and they mail based on their bank account. I don’t want you to do that. Mail for what people are buying. It doesn’t matter what it costs. That’s the whole thing that Jack is trying to say here. No good deal will go to waste. When you come up for air, and you did everything we said. You’ve got this amazing deal where this guy is letting you have for $25,000, and it’s worth $100,000. Do you think you’re going to have trouble finding somebody to help you to fund it for $25,000? Heck no. That is never an issue.

We built Land Academy for this reason.

We’re here to be the bank for you. Don’t even think about it. As Jack always says, you have to be a deal machine. Go out and find them. The thing, too, is you don’t want to have twenty of them. Let’s say five. Five came back, and you got to pick, like, “I can afford one and a half.” You don’t want to do that. You want to pick up all five. We’ll make sure you do that.

#3 Won’t-Quit Attitude: Fearless Persistence That Builds Success

That’s great. That’s excellent. Redundancy. Number three is the won’t-quit attitude. What I mean by this is that when I was younger, and I look back on how I did some stuff. It was downright crazy. I didn’t stop. I refused. I was a full commission commercial real estate broker. The first year, I made $20,000 or $30,000. This is back in the late ‘80s, early ‘90.

The second year, I made $250,000. I defaulted on every loan I had. It was a huge financial disaster. Jill knows this whole story. I didn’t care. I was completely by myself, living in a tiny apartment. It didn’t matter. I’m not recommending that at all, but in those business formative years, if I didn’t go through that, I wouldn’t be as responsible, chilled out, and organized as I am now.

I agree with that. That’s one of my top ones I wrote down, too.

It was one of the most attractive things about you when I met you. You’re fearless, not only in business, but with everything. If you and I want it together, it’s going to happen. That’s it.

Once we got together, I never lost sleep over this. I was never worried. What if the planet changed and we had to do something other than land? I don’t worry about it. We’ll figure it out. We started and grew this to an amazing level. Lord knows we didn’t come from an educational background or anything like that, and look what we turned this into.

We figured it out.

You heard it at the beginning of this show. It’s so amazing how amazingly successful our members are. That happened.

With AI in its current state, with Gemini specifically, it is my dream employee. That is the research assistant that I would have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars of salary on a year if I could have found one, if I could have found a person who tells me what’s out there and what’s possible as Gemini does. Whatever Large Language Model AI you’re using, please use it, and use it a lot. What it does is reinforce these five things. Type into Gemini, “How do I get some startup capital to flip land?”

#4 Schedule Without Distraction: Structure That Eliminates Stress

It will tell you. It has good ideas, too. This whole won’t quit thing reinforces me and gives me an unhealthy level of confidence in moving through all this stuff. Number four, a schedule without distraction times. Aside from Jill joining the land effort a long time ago, this is the number one thing that changed my life. It’s an actual schedule, and it’s shareable. Our entire company uses Microsoft 365, Outlook, and all that’s involved with it. It took all the stress out of being an entrepreneur or out of working, in general, completely out of my life. In fact, we schedule our fun time on Friday afternoon. I know I’m supposed to be here and do this show.

Jack gets a little nuts at me, though, because I take it to a new level. I put in there the concerts I want to go to. They may not be actual, but I put them in there. It’s in the calendar.

Jill’s background is in sales. There are times when maybe she’s in bed or, in the morning, scrolling through her phone and finds out Depeche Mode is playing somewhere in California. She used to do this, but not so much anymore. She puts it in there as if we’re going to nudge me along. She makes sure that I say yes and all of that. It’s a sales tool for Jill to do stuff socially.

I’m looking at this wrong. I thought of this. Do you know what I should be putting in there? I should be putting, “Here’s my next Outlook entry today. I’m going to put ‘Jack, 2:00 to 3:00 PM at the Cartier store.’”

I would say yes to that. You know that.

I’m like, “Mother’s Day is around the corner. You should be in Cartier today.” I’m going to start doing that. That’s good.

You need a schedule. You need to sit down and have an honest conversation with yourself. If you have quintuplets and they’re all two, this might not be the best time for you to start your Land Academy path.

I know people who have done it with twins successfully.

I know. Quintuplets, though.

I know, but you’re going to get a nanny and have a couple of hours. I know people who have done it when they squeeze it in. Remember the 4:00 AM club? They squeeze it in before they get the kids up. They have to get ready for work and do all of that.

Let me rephrase. If I had two-year-old quintuplets, it wouldn’t be the best time for me to start, although we would have a full-time nanny.

There we go.

#5 Jack & Jill Skillsets: Pairing Data And People Skills For Success

Number five, it helps if you come to Land Academy or you come to a land investor career if you have a Jack skillset or a Jill skillset, or both. I got away with having both for a bunch of reasons for a lot of years. Jack skillset means the data part and the analytical part. I run budgets, everything, and all the companies we have. We have a bunch of companies. I run all of that. Right after this, I’m going to complete our tax return. That’s a second-nature situation to me. For some people, the thought of that makes them want a peer.

The flip side is that Jill is on the phone all day, no matter what. Whatever we’re doing socially, professionally, or some stuff goes sideways with insurance, she gets on. She’s friends with everybody in three minutes. She doesn’t hate it, I don’t think. Be honest with yourself about what skillsets you have or where your comfort level is. There’s only so long that you can wake up in the morning and do stuff you don’t want to do before it comes out in other ways in your personality and your life. You don’t want that.

What do you do if you don’t have that?

You grin and bear it, as I did for 1, 2, 3, or a few years.

You have one of them. You don’t have the other one. It’s pivotal.

This is my professional opinion on this after a lot of years. You deal with it the best that you can until you can find somebody in a partnership role or an employee role. There are 100 ways to do this or 100 ways to slice this, so that you can turn that part of the business over to them and shine at being on the phone or doing the STEM-type stuff that I do. What’s your solution?

The same thing.

Close the door? We have three doors that are near our offices.

That’s true. Sometimes, we need more. What’s my solution for that? Try to get a partner. That’s the beauty of Land Academy. I see that happening early on. When you get in and join, and you’re understanding how the dynamics work, and you’re getting to know people in the group. You could easily spot, “This is a technical person. This is all they’re asking. I’m a phone person.” I can be like, “Can you and I have an offline chat? I think we can maybe help each other here.” Even for a mailer, too. Try it out. I’ve watched people do that, and it worked out well.

If you’re doing substandard mailers, you’re going to get away with it. Your efficiency and your mailer yield will not be as good as they could be. If you are not answering the phone correctly and you’re Mr. Freaking Dull, you can’t get away with that. They have to, almost immediately, feel good about talking to you. Its basic sales stuff. Jill, from minute one, starts earning people’s trust by saying, “Tomorrow, this is how we’re going to get it done. I got to look at this thing, and I’ll call you back around 1:00.” It’s methodical and makes them feel good.

Your efficiency and mailer yield will not be as good as they could be if you are not answering the phone correctly. Share on X

Thank you.

In part of the skill set, you have to take that seriously about phone skills. If you come from an environment where you’re a Jill, you can find a Jack a lot easier than you can find a Jill. That’s what I think.

Thank you.

What do you think?

I have heard that a lot from the data people. There’s a lot out there. With AI, that helps you, too, sometimes. We even developed some tools that help you. That’s a new thing for us in the last couple of months. We’ve developed some tools that help you if you’re like, “I can’t do these. Jack downloads a million lines of data like he’s drinking a glass of water, manipulates it, and gets the answers he wants. There’s no way I can do that. I don’t want to go back to Excel 101 and learn that.” We’ve developed some tools that will help you there, too. The phone part and the people part of it are a skill. You need to hire that if you can. I can help you with that later.

Community Q&A: Real Land Investing Questions Answered

Let’s wrap it up with a few questions from our Land Academy community.

Steve asked, “Are you utilizing blind offers exclusively, or have you integrated range offers or letters of interest to capture more leads in high-value areas?”

This is a very frequent question, and it’s a good one. The answer is I have tried all of these things. There’s a reason that after 35-plus years, we still send out offers the way that we do. If you go to Offers2Owners.com and go to Downloads, Research, or something, our actual mailer is there. You can see it. We send out blind offers, and I’ll tell you why. I’ll list them. In a range situation, they only see the highest number. In letters of interest, you will get 17 million calls back, and they all want $1 million for their property.

This notion that if you give them more options, then you will get more deals done is the reverse. If you say, “I’m interested in buying your property for $32,321.18.” They are going to pick up the phone and say, “How did you get to that number?” Hopefully, they’re going to say this. “We’re packing up right now to move back to Massachusetts. My husband got a job change. We don’t need this land out here anymore in the Western part of the country. That never sounds good or tack on $5,000 and we can probably get a deal done.” That’s the person that you’re looking for. With a range offer or a letter of interest, it’s wishy-washy.

I want to jump in on a few things. I’ll get some of the next ones. It’s a waste of time. That’s it. The other things waste your time. As Jack said, on the range number, you see the low number, and they see the high number. Why not put a number on it? That’s a stupid thing. The other one is that everyone gives you their Make Me Move number. That’s stupid. You don’t want the whole planet. It’s taking you away from having the time to talk to the people who are serious about your number.

When you send a methodical, well-thought-out number down to the penny with a professional two-page letter as we do, then it sparks an interest. The serious ones are warmed up by the time they get to you. It’s amazing how many times when your offer is $32,000 and whatever it is, and they say, “Can you make it $40,000?” You’re like, “I know how I priced it. I have that room to do that.” They love that. That works out great.

Question two, Amy asks, “What’s your kill criteria for physical access? Meaning, I kill it. I’m not going to do anything with it. If a property has a recorded easement, but the physical road is nonexistent. Are you still closing or signing the contract?” First of all, this is a good question, Amy. We never sign a contract. That’s not who we are. That’s not what we do. Many states have outlawed that. I’m not representing anybody. If I don’t feel good enough to buy the property, I don’t buy it. I don’t take it into contract and try to shop it for somebody else. We buy it, and our name goes on the deed.

What’s over my line as far as physical access? First of all, when you are buying a property, ideally, you have both. You said that. You’re like, “It has an easement. I can see the map. There’s a road there, but there’s no physical access. What do you think?” How bad is it? Can you see? Can anyone get up there? That’s the thing.

I have had and successively sold many properties that were four-wheel drive, only to people who love them. That could be an attribute. You have to look at all the elements that go into it, not just access. What if it’s an amazing part of Tennessee that’s prime hunting land? It’s priced so well that you cannot believe it. It’s got legal access, but the road is not quite there. This park got washed out, but people can still get there with four-wheel drive. I would move forward. You have to look at the whole picture.

Would you buy 640 acres in the middle of Arizona with no access for $5,000?

Yes.

I would, too. It’s not the kill criteria. It’s the kill price.

It could also be the other things. I love it. Number three, Jeme asks, “What’s your current average days on market for properties over $100,000 versus those under $20,000? Are you seeing a slowdown in the mid-range buyer pool?”

Here’s how it works in real life. You have ten deals going on, or let’s say, at any given time, we have 10 or maybe 15 pieces of land for sale. The ones we executed perfectly, bought it for what we should have, listed it for what we should have, and the posting, listing, and real estate agent is correct. All of that sells within a couple of weeks and usually closes within 30 days. The ideal goal is 30 days from cash out to cash back in. That’s the perfect situation.

The ideal goal is 30 days from cash out to cash back in—that’s the perfect situation. Share on X

More than half the properties, we go like that. There’s probably another 20% or 30% that take a little bit longer, largely because in my older age here, I’m getting a little more stubborn about getting prices that are closer to retail. Not necessarily retail, but closer to retail. We don’t need the money. It takes a little longer to sell those. There’s always a handful that you own for a year for some reason.

They have a lot of volume.

That’s how it is. Maybe you missed something in the acquisition, which doesn’t happen too much with us. I don’t know what our average days on market are, but I hang my hat on that 30-day rule. We hit that pretty well.

It depends on the area. I was doing a coaching call where we found an area in the North Western state. I’ll leave it at that. We were trying to find properties that we could buy for $30,000 and sell for a $90,000 range. Nothing was coming up. I said, “Let’s take a step back. Let’s look at what they are buying.” We were blown away because the problem was that we were too cheap. These are all selling for $500,000, and they’re fast.

That’s the thing. You’ve got to play with that, too. What’s the area? What are people buying? When you figure out an area that’s making sense, and you figure out what people are buying. You will see what the days on market are. Head for that. It’s not hard to do, and it’s free. Question four. Val asked, “What platforms are converting for you now? Is Facebook Marketplace still a viable lead source for you, or have you moved entirely to the Land.com network and specialized SEO sites?” We’ve done the opposite.

I put this question here intentionally because we don’t play in these markets at all.

Back in the day, it was our own site. It was Landwatch. Was it Land and Farm? All the land-specific sites. I’m trying to think of some of the other ones that we used to use back in the day. We had our own one, LandPin.com. We created that a while back, too. That was the main thing. There wasn’t as much rural vacant land even when I started several years ago, so it wasn’t readily available on the MLS. You couldn’t find much there. You had to go to these land-focused sites.

It has only been the last couple of years that I can think of that. I’ve seen Facebook start to take hold of it. You had it on eBay. You had cornered that market back then. That was amazing. It’s always ebbing and flowing, which is cool. You have to roll with it and try to get it out there in all the places. I was seeing a lot. I haven’t seen as much Instagram as I used to, but I’d still see Facebook Marketplace. I’m seeing more of an uptick in land on TikTok, too. It’s very interesting.

Facebook Marketplace, TikTok, and, to a much lesser extent, Craigslist come and go. The fact is, the real money is buying a piece of real estate for $100,000 to $200,000 more, marking it up, and reselling it with a good licensed real estate agent. If anyone is looking for a piece of land and they’re sorting for lowest to highest price, yours smacks them in the face.

That’s the MLS. I was going to say that’s number one. Get it there. Don’t forget. I talked about it earlier. We talked about making some tools to help the not-as-strong data person in you that can’t do a million-plus lines of data in an hour and come up with the answers like this one. We solved it. Don’t worry. Check out DealComplete.com. It is our start-to-finish whole business solution. Pretty much everything but answering the phone is in there. It is powered by Land Academy. Check out DealComplete.com/training and watch our free training video.

If you like this episode, please drop a comment. If you share a win or a question, we might feature it on our next episode. Join us in the next episode where we discuss another interesting topic.

Thank you very much.

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