Self Study Discipline Sets You Apart from Everyone Else (LA 1370)
Self Study Discipline Sets You Apart from Everyone Else (LA 1370)
Transcript:
Steven Butala:
Steve and Jill here.
Jill DeWit:
Howdy.
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 how self study discipline sets you apart from everybody else. We talked about this a little bit at the end of the show yesterday. Self study is not for everybody.
Jill DeWit:
No, I think it’s not for most.
Steven Butala:
That’s what I think.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah, and I think we’re all experiencing that right now. If you have children right now at home going to school-
Steven Butala:
Jill, I didn’t think of that.
Jill DeWit:
I think you really see it also. There are kids, I’m not kidding, I know I would have been that… You got to tape them to their chair.
Steven Butala:
I was that kid like that. Were you?
Jill DeWit:
Yeah. As a kid, I would’ve sucked at this. I did like going to school, though, I have to say. When I was growing up, going to school, sitting in the classroom, I enjoyed it. I did well at school. I was kind of geeky. I got good grades, kind of boring. I never ditched until my senior year, but this would have really been hard for me.
Steven Butala:
My whole take on school then and now was I really could be out making money right now, instead I’m sitting here listening to this old person. I say that now knowing full well that there’s people listening to this saying, “I could be making money sitting here and listening to this old person.”
Jill DeWit:
Yeah. Like us. Yep.
Steven Butala:
So my whole plan, we’ll talk about it in a second here about this whole topic, is there’s 10 massive barriers to success. Not even ironically, there’s 10 massive barriers to success buying and selling land. One of them is this self study part of this. We’ll get into what the barriers are and how to overcome them or how to determine whether or not this might not be the thing for you.
Before we get into it though, let’s take a question posted by one of our members on the landinvestors.com online community. It’s free.
Jill DeWit:
Carly wrote, “Where do I go for Facebook help with ads and marketing? I’ve been posting ads for months without great results. I’d like to hire someone to just look at my account and ads and make sure I’m maximizing my marketing. I have received emails about my Facebook Pixel not being active, and I just need some overall guidance on the variables. Thank you.”
Steven Butala:
All right. So before I answer the actual Facebook question, there’s a much, much bigger issue here and it actually is very pertinent to the topic that we’re going to discuss here in a second. The answers to every single question that you have, with the exception of what’s the purpose of life, or is God real, is in your pocket or in your purse right now. Every single one. And so I get these kinds of questions from our kids.
Remember when you’re a kid and it’s like, “Hey, why don’t you go look at…” You ask a question it’s like, “Why don’t you go look it up?”
Jill DeWit:
Yeah.
Steven Butala:
Didn’t you hate that?
Jill DeWit:
I did.
Steven Butala:
I don’t hate that.
Jill DeWit:
You know what I think that was? It was an answer for, “I don’t know and I’m embarrassed to tell you.” Seriously. “Jill, this is a learning experience. I think you should go look it up,” which is code for, “Hell, I do not know.”
Steven Butala:
And I hated that. I hated going to look stuff up. Well, I don’t hate pulling up my phone and looking up something now because it takes it’s immediate gratification on all of this.
Jill DeWit:
Right.
Steven Butala:
So as far as Facebook goes, yeah, there’s two types of Facebook. Ninety-eight percent of the planet knows about how they use Facebook, which is pop open your phone, oh it’s my friend’s birthday, there’s an ad, there’s an ad, there’s a Land Academy ad. Nope, nope, nope, nope. Yep, oh yeah, this guy went fishing yesterday. You can post stuff on there about what you did today and what you’re doing today and that’s what everybody thinks Facebook is, 98% of the people.
Facebook advertising and Facebook marketing, and I don’t mean marketplace and it’s Facebook’s fault for naming these things so close to each other. They do a terrible, terrible job describing… Facebook’s very complicated and in-depth and incredibly powerful and cost-effective to sell real estate. I mean, it’s an amazing tool. You can, within minutes, contact 80% of the people that are in a zip code where your property is for sale.
The way that you’re going to do that is not through marketplace, it’s through marketing, and it’s a whole different backend world to Facebook that requires Pixels and all that stuff. So Carly, I can tell you confidently, step one to getting successful on Facebook marketing is getting that Pixel active and it’s a code. Literally you have to go in and change the code and embedding code in what you’re advertising, it’s complicated as hell for some people. Luckily that’s up my skilled alley and fortunately now I have a staff to do it for me, but I did it for us in the beginning for marketing real estate and then eventually Land Academy and the other companies.
My point is this, go get some help. If you go onto YouTube and type in, “How do I do Facebook marketing,” You’ll spend the next four days of your life researching and finding out all the answers for free. So that’s what goes on with the land business, too. You have to develop this skill. I’m not picking on her at all. You have to develop this skill and almost this lust for learning how to do this stuff on computers. And it’s hard for some people.
Jill DeWit:
Facebook has marketing people that can help you, too. I don’t know if it’s free everyone or if it’s paid for everyone. I think at our level they reach out to us and they offer free stuff because we paid so much honestly, but there’s all kinds of stuff you can get within the Facebook official community and they’ll help you with this stuff. So I would go there, too. Nothing’s crazy.
So there’s a point, I would like to make this point. Do you want to be a Facebook pro at marketing your own stuff? Or do you want to be a pro at selling your own land? So there’s going to be a point, Carly, you’re going to have to call it.
Steven Butala:
Which one do you want to be?
Jill DeWit:
I would rather be a pro to the land and pay someone to do the marketing part.
Steven Butala:
Good partners. I’d rather be a pro at marketing.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah, I don’t need to learn the backend-
Steven Butala:
I do.
Jill DeWit:
Of how to do this because I might be doing land or I might be doing shower curtains. That’s not me. It’s only land. But that’s okay. I’m just saying nobody’s right or wrong so Carly’s going to have to decide where to call it. I don’t want you to spend three weeks on this because you’re going to, you’re going to lose money if you spend three weeks on this. At some point you it’s worth it to pay someone.
Steven Butala:
Every single person in our advanced group and everyone who’s ever passed through our group who does incredibly well right now has this personality trait and I’ll describe it. They would never ask this question and I’m not picking on this person at all. They would have their question in their head. They would shoot up in the middle of the night, sit up in bed and say, “Oh my gosh, there is a backend of this Facebook marketing piece,” and they wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep and probably lose a whole week of their life figuring it out. But then when they went up for air, after that, I’m like this, they’re going to know everything there is about it and they’re probably going to have somebody who’s working with them in some capacity to execute what that person just learned.
So when you approach that mindset about buying and selling land, believe me, by the time you found Land Academy, one of the reasons that you chose Land Academy is because you have this personality type.
Jill DeWit:
I wouldn’t pick on Carly though.
Steven Butala:
I’m not, I’m not.
Jill DeWit:
I think it’s a perfect place to put this. I would absolutely post this here. I think you did the exact right thing, Carly. I think that there’s a lot of other advanced people in the group that started off posting things like this.
Steven Butala:
I had this question. I remember reading about this going, “What the hell is Facebook marketing?”
Jill DeWit:
And what’s a Pixel?
Steven Butala:
Yeah, what’s a Pixel?
Jill DeWit:
Isn’t that the company that does all the animated movies? Oh, that’s Pixar. Excuse me. Seriously. Pixel, Pixar. it’s confusing.
Steven Butala:
I’m 50, almost 54 years old. I am well beyond having a healthy relationship with computers. I should not. The vast majority of my friends have no idea what I’m talking about. Other than operating Windows or going on to Facebook to see what their high school friends are doing, they have no interest and are baffled by the vast majority of the things that go on in computers.
Jill DeWit:
I don’t mean to pick on you/however, it’s a little bit unhealthy sometimes. You go down there. I think it’s not necessarily unhealthy, but I think you just have-
Steven Butala:
It’s absolutely unhealthy.
Jill DeWit:
We have a personal thing that you need to do it, and that’s just a Steve-ism.
Steven Butala:
I agree. But I don’t think it just is a Steve thing.
Jill DeWit:
No, there’s other people. That’s true.
Steven Butala:
I can name, reel off 20 names, members’ names that are-
Jill DeWit:
Sweetie, it’s one of the things I love about you.
Steven Butala:
They can’t leave it alone. They have to figure out why. Why, let’s say, properties in rural Virginia that are in X, Y… I’m just picking on Virginia, X Y Z County that don’t have road frontage are, and fill in the blank.
Jill DeWit:
I’m sure I have the unhealthy thing too about a different topic. It’s totally okay.
Steven Butala:
What is it? What do you think?
Jill DeWit:
I don’t know. I don’t know. I’m asking, I don’t know what mine is.
Steven Butala:
You know what it is. You nailed it earlier. This is not your thing, but I tell you when… Your thing is the people part of this.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah.
Steven Butala:
And the horror story from yesterday.
Jill DeWit:
You know what I’ll do?
Steven Butala:
And you love that. That’s why we’re great partners, Jill.
Jill DeWit:
Right. So I think, in this example, you have a personal thing to figuring it out yourself. I’m just going to find the right guy. I’ll spend a week finding the right guy to do it so I don’t have to.
Steven Butala:
I understand that.
Jill DeWit:
And that’s okay.
Steven Butala:
Once I conquered it, I will find somebody to opera… I call it operations or execute the whole thing. I haven’t dealt with the Pixel, with Facebook or otherwise in years and years and years. But in the beginning, I figured it out because I wanted to find out what the deal is.
Jill DeWit:
I know.
Steven Butala:
Today’s topic, self study. Discipline sets you apart from everyone else. This is why you’re listening.
Jill DeWit:
You know, it’s like if my car is acting up, I’m not going to pop the hood. Don’t need to.
Steven Butala:
Oh, no, because I’m not interested in fixing cars.
Jill DeWit:
I don’t really need to.
Steven Butala:
I’m interested in computers though.
Jill DeWit:
It’s good to know sometimes. I want to know what that sound is should it happen again, kind of thing.
Steven Butala:
So what are you interested in?
Jill DeWit:
I’m not going to pop the hood and fix it and say, “I need to dissect this.”
Steven Butala:
This is truly helpful for, I think, a lot of listeners. What are you interested in, Jill? What are you going to actually pop the hood, spend three hours on? What topic? What can you easily spend three hours doing and look at your watch and say, “Oh my gosh, I thought that was 10 minutes. It’s three hours.”
Jill DeWit:
I do that about property.
Steven Butala:
I know you do.
Jill DeWit:
I go down the rabbit hole with property because I like it. I like it.
Steven Butala:
I’ve heard you on the phone two hours with people.
Jill DeWit:
And I’d like to get to know an area a little bit just enough so I know the area. I’ll spend some time researching an area so I know it like the back of my hand and it saves me time later. That’s kind of the point.
Steven Butala:
I’m going to throw a bunch of topics out because I really think this is helpful people.
Jill DeWit:
Okay.
Steven Butala:
Long before picking a county or a long before you’re ever deciding that you want to buy and sell real estate or renovate a house or whatever, I think you should have these types of conversations with yourself. Where do I lose myself for three hours? So how about cooking?
Jill DeWit:
Nope.
Steven Butala:
We covered auto repair. How about jewelry making?
Jill DeWit:
Nope.
Steven Butala:
How about drinking scotch?
Jill DeWit:
Yes. Oh, that’s a good one. Yeah, I do want to personally learn everything about that. That’s true.
Steven Butala:
Go ahead.
Jill DeWit:
Oh no, go ahead.
Steven Butala:
I know that you can lose yourself for hours and hours looking at real estate.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah. Okay, I got to share something funny about the self, this look at the discipline thing and how different we are, right? So, I got this book recently because I’m trying to become a better investor. Not in the thing that I do every day, but in the stock market because I’m admittedly, I don’t know. I don’t know what I should know kind of thing for me, I believe, and I want to learn it like really well. So I saw this book online and it looks like the book is, I don’t know, 100 pages. It looks like it’s this thick. Well, I got the book and it’s this thick. And it’s small print, too.
Steven Butala:
For the people who are listening, can you-
Jill DeWit:
Yes. It’s The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham. And I got it because Warren Buffet signed off on it and he wrote the forward, this was someone he learned from. I was watching videos about Benjamin Graham. Warren Buffett went to classes from this guy and I’m like, “All right, I got to…” And again, I didn’t know it was going to be this thick of a book.
Steven Butala:
How far are you?
Jill DeWit:
I just started. I just got it in the mail yesterday.
Steven Butala:
Will you get through it?
Jill DeWit:
Well, I’ll let you know. I hope so because you know what? This interests me. What’s funny is how different you and I are. You saw this book, you’re like, “Hey, let me know what you think,” kind of thing. And I’m like, “I really want to read this book.” It’s very technical.
You know what? It goes back to even our show the other day about education. You better believe I’m going to learn something in here that’s going to tie my land business and everything that we do.
Steven Butala:
Yeah, absolutely.
Jill DeWit:
So when you go get other education out there from other people, do it in other areas. It’s going to help everything about your business and your life.
Steven Butala:
There’s nothing flashy about that book.
Jill DeWit:
No.
Steven Butala:
The answers are in there.
Jill DeWit:
There’s no pictures. There are no pictures.
Steven Butala:
There’s no question that all the answers are in there, it’s all about how much time you want to put in and how interested you are in the topic to really actually study it. And I think that most of the people that I know that are interested in the stock market and loud about it are just interested in making money quickly.
Jill DeWit:
I just opened it this page real quick. I have to show you this real quick because it tie… The risk is not in our stocks, but in ourselves. It’s that interesting?
Steven Butala:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Jill DeWit:
It’s all about you. So back to the topic. So what kind of stuff do you love? We covered mine. Okay, so let’s talk about you and things that you enjoy. Do you want to pop open the hood?
Steven Butala:
No. Not any more than 10 minutes just with one of our kids just to make sure they know where the oil goes.
Jill DeWit:
Do you want to learn about what fish are where off our coast?
Steven Butala:
Yeah, I do.
Jill DeWit:
Oh, see? Okay. Do you want to learn about different hunting techniques?
Steven Butala:
Not really at all. No, no.
Jill DeWit:
All right. How about trees and hiking and things like that?
Steven Butala:
Sure. Not really though. But on a scale of one to 10, maybe that’s four or five. Are you interested in working on your marriage for three hours straight?
Jill DeWit:
Nope. I [inaudible 00:16:02] three hours. Why? What’s to talk about for three hours?
Steven Butala:
That just makes my stomach turn thinking about sitting and talking for three hours and learning about your… No, I don’t want to do that either.
Jill DeWit:
Okay, so here’s the topic for me today. For me, this whole thing is about, look, are you interested or not? One of the things that this book does, we’ve done, there’s a lot of places you can go to learn something, whether it’s a college education, being a doctor, being land investor, whatever it is. You’ve got to be self inspired, by the way, or it’s not going to work. If you are, self study is totally fine with you because you’re interested in what you’re learning.
So if you’re getting into this right now and you’re cringing over all of the stuff you’ve got to read and going onto this land investor site is going to make your head hurt and watching one more video about how to scrub data-
Steven Butala:
That’s my whole point to this episode.
Jill DeWit:
Is making you turnover. This is probably not for you.
Steven Butala:
That’s my whole point to this. There are barriers. There’s a lot of moving parts to this business. There’s a lot of barriers to entry. I say that in a good way. It’s interesting that you brought the stock market up, Jill, because if you want to buy something and sell it for more very, very quickly, go get yourself an E-Trade account. You can do this in the next eight minutes. You’re going to get approved very quickly if you fill out the stuff correctly and you will a stock investor in a half hour. And you can go buy some stock and watch it go up, and it will go up eventually, and resell it for more and make sure that the fees and the math all work. So if that’s what you’re interested in, you should go do that.
That’s not what this is. This is a life long real estate… I don’t know how… It’s like you have to develop and then manifest this thing into… And it will pay you and your kids forever. Especially if you work in land leases and a bunch of reoccurring things that just never go away in a good.
But computers are a huge part. So I say barriers to entry. Here’s some of the barriers to entry. You need you to understand, embrace and love your computer. There are tools and data. There are tools that constantly are coming up, they’re plastered all over the internet, that make this easier and easier and easier if you embrace them.
Jill DeWit:
Some of them that you have to be careful.
Steven Butala:
That’s right, and that’s our job. Our job is to sift through the crap, like everything choose which ones are real and which ones aren’t and which ones worked for us. Facebook marketing is an incredibly powerful tool. I can’t describe to you how powerful Facebook marketing. I don’t mean marketplace and I don’t mean posting what you did last night with your friends. I mean, Facebook marketing, the backend business part of this is incredibly powerful and not just for buying and selling real estate. It’s powerful and the whole thing that surrounds it, cost per click, cost per view, impressions, all of that, that will translate into anything that you do for the rest of your life. So you have to embrace all these moving parts, put them all together and flip some dirt.
Jill DeWit:
I agree.
Steven Butala:
So self-study, that’s how we’ve chosen, for whatever reason, Jill and I have chosen to set up a self study program that only probably sings to a fraction of the people that could be really good real estate investors. You know how college weeds people out? That’s what this inadvertently does. You get as far as you can get… I’m talking about myself now. You get as far as you can get and it’s like, “You know what? I’m not going to get a master’s degree. I barely got out of this bachelor’s degree thing. I lost interest, I don’t see the point.” And then there’s some people who go to medical school and sail through it and love it and are kind of disappointed when it ends.
That’s how I am with this though. You do about five or six or 10 deals, you look at the money and it’s like, “I just want to do more.” it’s just endless for me on this. I know it’s that way for you.
Jill DeWit:
Me too. I’ll never stop. This is my true passion.
Steven Butala:
The self study part of this, that was never an issue for me because I’m really interested in it.
Jill DeWit:
Same here. Happy you could join us today. Monday through Friday you can find us right here on the Land Academy Show.
Steven Butala:
Tomorrow the episode on the Land Academy Show is called this amazing American real estate market in 2020. You are not alone in your real estate ambition.
Jill DeWit:
It is. Who knew going into 2020 what would happen?
Steven Butala:
I can safely say I was 180 degrees wrong.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah. That’s okay. I know. Beginning of the year, yeah, I wasn’t thinking this. And then as the year unfolded, thinking, uh-oh, this could be bad. Now in the summertime, I’m like, “Holy cow, this is great.” And now towards the end of the year, I’m like, “It’s getting better.”
Steven Butala:
And it’s not going to end.
Jill DeWit:
Nope. It’s really great.
Steven Butala:
Who have thought this COVID thing would have just catalyzed this real estate market that we’re in. Hottest real estate market that there ever has been since I’ve been alive in some of the worst conditions. Those things shouldn’t mix.
Jill DeWit:
Exactly. Thank you for tuning in. We hope you find our content valuable and we really do appreciate your support. If you haven’t already, please get on over to our YouTube channel where you can see us there, by the way, and hit the subscribe button.
Steven Butala:
And your comments and suggestions help us to create the type of content you’re here for. Hitting the like button helps to support our channels algorithm, engage your interest for future shows.
We are Steve and Jill.
Jill DeWit:
We are Steve and Jill.
Steven Butala:
Information-
Jill DeWit:
And inspiration-
Steven Butala:
to buy undervalued property.
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