Are You a Failure? (LA 1015)
Are You a Failure? (LA 1015)
Transcript:
Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here.
Jill DeWit: Hi.
Steven Butala: Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I’m Steven Jack Butala
Jill DeWit: And I’m Jill DeWitt, broadcasting from sunny southern California.
Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about are you a failure?
Jill DeWit: I would love to know who thought out this topic and like, I’ve got to hear what this is, besides us? I’m like when I saw this title, I said, “Well, I’ve got to see what this is. This was good.”
Steven Butala: You know what sentence Jill just said right before he started the show?
Jill DeWit: Oh.
Steven Butala: “I had a lot of hair and a lot of boobs.” And my immediate thought was, that immediately makes you not a failure.
Jill DeWit: I can’t believe you shared that. That’s exactly what I said. Thanks so much.
Steven Butala: Everything’s fair game in this studio.
Jill DeWit: Oh my gosh. Yes. Don’t hold back. Don’t hold back Steve.
Steven Butala: She’s at Jill’s end. You can turn the show off because you’re not a failure. Plus, you can talk on the phone and you have a huge awesome balance sheet.
Jill DeWit: I didn’t know where you were going with it. He was awesome. But you know, you have some huge, awesome things about you, also.
Steven Butala: Awesome. Like my personality?
Jill DeWit: It is. It’s your smile?
Steven Butala: There’s anyone.
Jill DeWit: Your willingness to help. You’re open at your door. Always open attitude.
Steven Butala: I wonder what our staff really says, like, “I’m not going to talk to him.”
Jill DeWit: Don’t make dad mad.
Steven Butala: Don’t go talk to him.
Jill DeWit: I’m not doing it.
Steven Butala: I’ll flip you for it. How about we just do it our way and see what happens? That’s really what I think happens.
Jill DeWit: You know what they do? It’s like throw it in and run.
Steven Butala: Yep.
Jill DeWit: It’s like I bet they that. I’m sending him the email at 4:55. Bump. Gone.
Steven Butala: First I got kicked out of the office, then I got kicked out of the office building, and I’m actually next week on my way to having to work at home now full-time.
Jill DeWit: It’s not a bad thing.
Steven Butala: Because they just don’t want us, they don’t want me there any longer.
Jill DeWit: That’s not true.
Steven Butala: Yeah, it’s absolutely true. It’s totally okay.
Jill DeWit: It’s just different.
Steven Butala: It’s totally fine. It’s still, every guy my age that’s listened to this completely understands what I’m talking about.
Jill DeWit: Okay.
Steven Butala: And every woman who’s listening to this is disgusted by it.
Jill DeWit: It’s like when I first went in the office, it was you, years ago, you, Skylar, and another person, who’s first initial starts with an M, and there was no laughing, no talking. Then I’m like, what’s going on here?
Steven Butala: Yeah. That was really out of your-
Jill DeWit: Yeah, really kind of serious. And I’m like, this is like, do you guys do anything for fun? It’s not supposed to be fun.
Steven Butala: That was about 10 years ago.
Jill DeWit: I guess it was.
Steven Butala: And then it got less fun since then.
Jill DeWit: What? You are, oh, you know that’s not true.
Steven Butala: Before we get into it, let’s take a question posted by one of our members on the landinvestors.com online community. It’s free.
Jill DeWit: I missed that office on the lake. I was good.
Steven Butala: Yeah, me too.
Jill DeWit: Okay. Dustin asks, “I have a serious buyer on a five acre property in Texas asking me if it comes with mineral rights. They would like the mineral rights. They said if the property doesn’t come with mineral rights, they would like to know how to get the mineral rights even if they buy the property without them. The deed that I received at the closing through the title company doesn’t mention anything specific about mineral rights. It just has a clause in it stating, ‘This conveyance is subject to all reservations, restrictions, and assessments affecting the subject property.’ Do I just call the county recorder and asked them if the property is retained the mineral rights? If the mineral rights are not currently attached to the property and my buyer would like to get them after buying the property from me, then what would be the process they would have to go through to get the mineral rights?”
Steven Butala: Mineral rights are this elusive concepts, and they’re all associated with individual properties. So, there’s no place you can go. There’s no database, there’s no website, and there’s nobody that … This is very, very, very difficult to attain. Why? Because the railroads went through in the 1800s and the 1900s and bought a ton of property, the mining companies did. And, the only way you can see who owns mineral rights is to go to the county and sit down, physically sit down, go through all the deeds, every single deed until the time of homestead.
Jill DeWit: Homestead. Yeah.
Steven Butala: Is that realistic? No, because there’s fires and all kinds of stuff happen, so chances are, even title companies only go back, what, 30 years?
Jill DeWit: Usually 30 to 40.
Steven Butala: So, what you’re looking for is you’re basically auditing the chain of this property to see where someone may have physically deeded in the deed that says we convey this property to the new guy, but we get to retain the mineral rights.
Jill DeWit: Right.
Steven Butala: And so, if you go back all the way back, and for some reason you got all the deed documents right in front of you and none of it says that, chances are you can get the mineral rights.
Jill DeWit: Right.
Steven Butala: Chances are you own the mineral rights automatically just by conveying the deed. So, it’s very convoluted, and it’s kind of like a private investigator thing.
Jill DeWit: It is.
Steven Butala: So, I would do a huge Google search and figure it out. But for your purposes, I would go back to your seller and explain to them what I just said. Some version of it.
Jill DeWit: Exactly. It’s very rare because this country is as old as it is, let’s just call it that, that the mineral rights still are sitting with the property. What were you usually do, like for us, for our businesses, we just say we’re selling, it’s the surface really, not the mineral rights. They could dig. The seller could dig too. By the way, you could still do it, and the seller could go dig. That’s what just probably what I would do. I would make it really clear to the buyer that, look, as far as I know, you do not have the mineral rights. If there’s something-
Steven Butala: That’s what I would say.
Jill DeWit: … in there, yippie ki-yah, that’s great. What you need to do if you really want the land, regardless, I’m happy to sell it to you. I’m pricing it as such, so it’s still a great deal. And if you want to go back and dig, here’s how you need to do it, and maybe point them in the right direction, and let them go do that work.
Steven Butala: In reality, that’s the academic answer, the real answer is when somebody finds out there’s something under that’s worth it, then usually what’s down there is worth way more than paying everybody off, to get everyone to sign a release who’s alive. It’s kind of an adverse possession thing. So, that’s what starts the process, the fact that you found oil under there or something, some type of mineral that makes it all worth it.
Jill DeWit: That’s funny.
Steven Butala: It’s interesting too, my first question is why did these people want the mineral rights so bad?
Jill DeWit: Right. It doesn’t usually come up very often. I swear there’s a certain mindset, maybe age, maybe whatever that they think of these things. Most of us don’t think about it. We just want a pretty property or can put a cabin on it and enjoy it with my family.
Steven Butala: We’re in a surface rights business.
Jill DeWit: Exactly.
Steven Butala: But, not the mineral rights business.
Jill DeWit: Not the mineral right. I’m not buying this 40 acres in Texas because I’m going to go put, I’m going to get out my metal detector.
Steven Butala: Jill and I had a cabin up in Crown King, Arizona for years, and Crown King is a mining town, silver mining town, and they have 68 full-time residents there, two of which were not included in that count because we weren’t full-time. We would walk into the bar there and hear all these stories of people mining, that people that live, these old-timers mining all over the place and none of them owned any mineral rights to anything. But they found gold and silver mines, and they were living off of that. So, are those stories true? Based on how they were addressed and what they are drinking? No, they’re not true at all, but the fact that they haven’t shaved in probably two or three decades.
Jill DeWit: That’s right. And, they haven’t showered in a week.
Steven Butala: But, I think these are the kinds of things that go on in reality.
Jill DeWit: It’s funny.
Steven Butala: More than like, “Hey, I own the mineral rights to that property.”
Jill DeWit: I think this comes up because someone, somewhere heard something like, “Oh, make sure you get the mineral rights.”
Steven Butala: Yeah.
Jill DeWit: They don’t even know what they’re talking about half the time, but they just know they need to ask for it.
Steven Butala: Exactly.
Jill DeWit: Like, “Okay.”
Steven Butala: Today’s topic, are you a failure? This is the meat of the show.
Jill DeWit: Do you know what this sounds like? It sounds like the children’s book, Are You My Mother? Right?
Steven Butala: It does sound like that.
Jill DeWit: Are you a failure?
Steven Butala: Jill and I did something right before this show, that this is nothing, this is not negative.
Jill DeWit: No.
Steven Butala: It’s not negative at all. In fact, you should never even be asking your question. This is what I think, if you think this at all, it’s because you have not tried hard enough or somebody’s been telling you this, and you got to undo that because buying and selling some real estate, especially land, like how we do it, is ridiculously easy, if you just put your mind to it.
Jill DeWit: Is it my turn?
Steven Butala: Yeah. That’s my whole show.
Jill DeWit: Well, there we go. That’s funny. So, my thought when I read this topic was, you’re only a failure for two things, and I mean this in life, not just what we do. Number one, if you don’t even try, you don’t even put yourself out there and go for whatever it is, and I hate to use the word failure, you know me, I’m not a negative person, I like to be a positive person, but that’s number one. And number two, not so much failure, more kind of a ding-dong. If you don’t learn from your mistakes, so those are the two things for me that I have trouble with. And like if you worked for us, let’s just say, and if you didn’t try and do some things, and I’m helping you, and you’re coaching you-
Steven Butala: Try new stuff.
Jill DeWit: Yeah, and learn some things, I’d have a problem with that because we’re not growing as a company, and you as a person, and everything. And then also, if you don’t learn from your mistakes, if you keep repeating the same thing over and over again, you can’t take a step back and do whatever it takes to not repeat a mistake, I have problem with that.
Steven Butala: There’s a huge difference between being a failure and failing at some tasks. When I started in this business a real long time ago, in the ’90s, I had a very difficult time conveying property from a deed’s standpoint. The paperwork part of this thing tripped me up really good. And for most people that’s an easy part.
Jill DeWit: Right.
Steven Butala: But, for some reason these conveyance documents were tough for me, and I was doing a lot of business in Mojave County, Arizona back then, and they would just kick them back to me. Kick them back, every single loan would come back like to the point where I’m sure there are laughing about it.
Jill DeWit: Like, did they just see your return address come in and go, “I can’t wait to see what he sent us this time.”
Steven Butala: Probably. And who knows how bad it was, but in Mojave they were really cool about it. They were like, all you’ve got to do is a corrective deed. And she called me and told me, this is way before YouTube and all that business, but she’s like, “This is all you do. It’s what’s called a corrective deed.” And they show me how and eventually, we got it straight.
Jill DeWit: Yeah.
Steven Butala: But I didn’t sit around and like say, “You know what? I’m a failure at this, and there’s just a bunch of errors in these deeds all the time.”
Jill DeWit: And, I can’t do it.
Steven Butala: Yeah.
Jill DeWit: Right. And, you just kept going.
Steven Butala: No. What I did was I … You know what I did, my first reaction was to that and just about everything else? Okay, this is not my thing, so what I needed to do is locate as much property as I can and resell it to make us so much money that I can hire somebody to do all this stuff. And that’s what I did.
Jill DeWit: Perfect.
Steven Butala: And then I hired another person and another person, so eventually, all I’m doing is what I do now, is just the mailers and creating new products-
Jill DeWit: That’s perfect.
Steven Butala: … for members. So, that’s my whole point here, you’re not a failure, you may have failed some stuff, you might not be the best student in the world, so what.
Jill DeWit: That’s okay.
Steven Butala: Yeah.
Jill DeWit: As long as you just keep trying, just keep going at it, that’s my thing, don’t stop. Failure to me, too, it’s just standing still and giving up, and hate this word failure. I’m sorry. This is like, this is really hard for me to have this talk because I feel like I’m being so hard, but sometimes people need to hear it though too. If you stand still and do nothing, you’re missing out and you have nothing to lose going for whatever it is.
Steven Butala: A lot of years ago there was this business person called, his name is Ross Perot, if you’re my age, you know exactly who I’m talking about. He’s kind of like the Warren Buffet back then.
Jill DeWit: From Texas.
Steven Butala: Hm?
Jill DeWit: Texas guy.
Steven Butala: Yeah. He did an interview one time, and somebody asked him, “What’s the difference between somebody who’s successful and not?” And he said, “When somebody doesn’t know that they’ve been beat, that’s the guy I want to work with, where they just keep going.” They didn’t know they were beat two weeks ago on this thing and they’re just keep moving forward. Why is it so funny?
Jill DeWit: Because it sounds like me. Like, I am. I’m barreling through.
Steven Butala: We’re both like that.
Jill DeWit: Exactly. Yeah.
Steven Butala: And everybody’s rolling their eyes behind us going, Yeah, these guys don’t know that this is over for them,”
Jill DeWit: Oh, you know what’s funny, is we prove them wrong half the time, or more than half the time. I don’t know how to stop. I will get that deal done, you know, kind of thing. Watch me. Like this woman I talked about yesterday, “Oh, you just wait, the door’s open with this guy. Just wait.”
Steven Butala: Yeah. Hey, we know your time’s valuable. Thanks for spending some of it with us today, anyway. Join us next time for the episode called, remember J.T. Olmsted shares Land Academy success stories.
Jill DeWit: And we answer your questions posted on our online community @landinvestors.com. It’s free.
Steven Butala: You are not alone in your real estate ambition.
Jill DeWit: That’s good.
Steven Butala: Do you have some announcements?
Jill DeWit: I’m sorry I’m free. I’m sorry it’s like, I have a hard time with these.
Steven Butala: I know you do.
Jill DeWit: I don’t like saying failure, bad, you know, just negative things.
Steven Butala: When I met Jill, she was like this spiritual, positive person, and I was constantly saying positive things, and it’s all gone downhill from there.
Jill DeWit: What? Thanks a lot.
Steven Butala: I know this is out of your realm of comfort, Jill, and that’s one of the reasons that I like you so much.
Jill DeWit: Thank you.
Steven Butala: That you are such a positive person no matter what.
Jill DeWit: Thank you. I appreciate it.
Steven Butala: But, someone has to offset that, and I’m the perfect person for that.
Jill DeWit: Yes, you are. I’m so lucky. Yin and Yang. Wherever you’re watching or wherever you are listening, please subscribe and rate us there. We are Steve and Jill.
Steven Butala: We are Steve and Jill. Information.
Jill DeWit: And inspiration.
Steven Butala: To buy undervalued property.
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