Transcript:

Steven Jack Butala:
Jack and Jill here.

Jill K DeWit:
Hello.

Steven Jack Butala:
Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I’m Steven Jack Butala.

Jill K DeWit:
And I’m Jill DeWit, broadcasting from the Valley of the Sun.

Steven Jack Butala:
Today Jill and I talk about risk. Specifically the riskiest thing you can do is to take no risk at all. And it’s funny, Jill and I were just talking about the title. She’s like, well, wait a minute. I’m not really understanding what the hell this is because I don’t see any risk in what we’re doing at all.

Jill K DeWit:
Totally. I’m like-

Steven Jack Butala:
I don’t either.

Jill K DeWit:
… this wasn’t registering for me. I’m like, I had to read this title three times and process it and then I’m like, I hear what you’re saying, but I don’t think that’s, I don’t, I’m not feeling it and we’ll talk.

Steven Jack Butala:
You have to take some element of risk to get any reward.

Jill K DeWit:
Mm-hmm.

Steven Jack Butala:
It’s just a universal concept and we’ll talk about choosing things that appear to you to have no risk, like buying and selling land. I don’t see any risk in that, but some people do. So we’ll talk about it in a second. 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 K DeWit:
Hey, and don’t forget, go to Land Academy’s Facebook page or somewhere on social media and sign up to join me live Thursday. I didn’t even tell you what time it was. Thursday at five o’clock… I have to think about this, five o’clock Pacific time on the 15th. It’s going to be awesome. All right, so the Stevens Brothers wrote, “When getting leads from DataTree, do you think it would be a good idea to only get records from leads…” Wait, wait. “Do you think it would be an idea to only get records of leads that screen off the last sale date and the last recording date in the most recent three years?” Am I reading that right?

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, I’ll explain it.

Jill K DeWit:
Okay.

Steven Jack Butala:
I’ll paraphrase.

Jill K DeWit:
In other words, only get leads at the last sale date or the last recording date was before I got it. Before November, 2019. Have a nice day. Okay, I got it.

Steven Jack Butala:
We pull ownership records out of DataTree as a group before we, as part of doing a blind offer campaign and so if you think about a zip code. In the universe of that zip code, there’s a bunch of land that sits in that zip code and we pull the records for people who own that land and do a bunch of stuff to them, scrub the data and get it in the mail. We use those records to generate offers to send to the mail. And so very often, and we teach this in an incredible amount of detail, how to do it step by step and all of our education on the Thursday call, and it’s really kind of what Land Academy’s about.

Jill K DeWit:
Mm-hmm.

Steven Jack Butala:
What these guys are asking is, hey, would it be a better idea to mess with or alter in some way the 25 year proven concept that Jack and Jill have-

Jill K DeWit:
Tested.

Steven Jack Butala:
… purchased and sold more than 16,000 deals with. I’m brand new at this and I think I have a better idea.

Jill K DeWit:
I know and exclude the people that have transferred property in the last three years.

Steven Jack Butala:
Which means there those are people who are used to buying and selling and comfortable with buying and selling land.

Jill K DeWit:
Right. So here’s my point to this. Well, that’s great, that’s great slash however, what about the sweet little old lady that just got the property in her name because her husband passed on and it was a probate thing. You just took her out of your list.

Steven Jack Butala:
So guys, we’re not picking on you. We’re just, we’re seriously not, this is a very good question and I’m glad you asked it. It gives us an opportunity to, in a playful way, answer the question. No, it’s not a good idea. What you’re doing is making your mailer smaller.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah.

Steven Jack Butala:
And you’re specifically excluding people that, and this is not, I’m answering the question obviously the way I would answer it, but there are many other people in Land Academy Discord that are saying the same thing I’m saying here. You don’t want to make your mailer smaller. Specifically don’t want to exclude situations where people-

Jill K DeWit:
Transfer could have happened.

Steven Jack Butala:
… people are changing, the property’s changing hands recently so their mind is open to changing it again, changing hands again.

Jill K DeWit:
What about the person that just bought a property two years ago and lost his job? You just scrubbed him out of your list. There’s so many things that I can think of.

Steven Jack Butala:
We said this a lot of times-

Jill K DeWit:
To keep to… [inaudible 00:04:17]. Tell you why it’s valid to leave him in.

Steven Jack Butala:
People were looking for a situation, Jill’s right.

Jill K DeWit:
Mm-hmm.

Steven Jack Butala:
There’s all kinds of social scenarios that happen that make that lead people to choosing to sell their land.

Jill K DeWit:
Right.

Steven Jack Butala:
And so you don’t want to exclude those people.

Jill K DeWit:
Right.

Steven Jack Butala:
At all. The cost of sending mail and data as against the profit that we make on these transactions is tiny. It’s a tiny, tiny, small percentage. So every time I scrub out data, I think to myself, well what if this is the person that’s going to call Jill back and say, “I absolutely want to sell my land. Thanks for sending this mail, your timing, sending this offer. Your timing’s perfect.”

Jill K DeWit:
Exactly.

Steven Jack Butala:
“I’m ready to sell.” So no, I don’t, and I’m glad you asked this question, but make-

Jill K DeWit:
I’m going to go look at this one. I want to see how many other comments that people wrote that, like mine, to say, I bet there’s 10 situations in there based on what you just said. I wouldn’t have bought this property, I wouldn’t have bought that property. I have several right now that I could say if I had done that, I would’ve missed all these opportunities. That’s the main point.

Steven Jack Butala:
Today’s topic, the riskiest thing you can do is to take no risk at all. This is why you’re listening. So let’s take a 35,000 foot view at this sentence and put some examples to it. What if Steve Jobs never took a risk?

Jill K DeWit:
Talk about a risk working out of the garage.

Steven Jack Butala:
What if Steve Jobs-

Jill K DeWit:
[inaudible 00:05:47] money.

Steven Jack Butala:
… was just be, was a programmer like he was supposed to be. He and Wozniak just worked side by side in a cube till they were 65 and retired.

Jill K DeWit:
Or with IBM.

Steven Jack Butala:
What if Bill Gates said, “I’m going to stay in college and buy farmland. That’s all I’m going to do.” So these are obvious… And or Henry Ford for that matter. These are obvious examples and they’re extreme examples, but we make decisions like this as our land investors every single day, day in and day out. What if I buy this piece of land? What if I don’t. What if I join Land Academy? What if I don’t? What if I… I’m going to skip a bunch of steps. I’m not going to send out mail, I’m going to send out postcards. So there’s a lot of tiny little decisions that we make that you, we all either knowingly or subconsciously associate risk with. Yeah, this mailer’s going to cost 5,000 bucks. There’s some other stuff I could do with this $5,000.

Jill K DeWit:
That’s true.

Steven Jack Butala:
I see this as a huge risk and I need this $5,000, so I’m not going to do it. So I’m not selling anything one way or the other. And Jill alluded to this at the beginning of the episode. I do not associate any risk.

Jill K DeWit:
Well talk-

Steven Jack Butala:
With buying and selling land.

Jill K DeWit:
Well, before I get into that, will you please explain what you were telling me the before we took, started the show about people that, ’cause that struck a chord with me. The people that just stay in their jobs and I’m not picking on anybody, and I know this is not for everybody, but for those of you who, there’s a twinkle in your eye and there’s a little, I think there’s something more because I’m here to tell you, I didn’t know about this. I was with one company for 17 years. Yes, I… You are correct, I don’t look that old. But before you even ask I’m just going at an answer. You’re right, yeah-

Steven Jack Butala:
Jill started working when she was 12.

Jill K DeWit:
… yeah, how could that be? You don’t look that old. Nope. Let me tell you, I was with the same flipping company, American Airlines for 17 years and I thought that was it. I didn’t even… And I didn’t or I didn’t even think it was for me you know? And so I’m here giving some real world-

Steven Jack Butala:
You know, can I tell you something?

Jill K DeWit:
… experience on this. Go ahead.

Steven Jack Butala:
I’m always fascinated. I’ve known you for a while now, for what 15 years we’ve been together. I’m fascinated when you talk about this period of your life because it doesn’t seem like-

Jill K DeWit:
It’s me.

Steven Jack Butala:
… because the person I know now would never do that for one day.

Jill K DeWit:
Because I drank the Kool-Aid. I drank the, I’m third generation American Airlines. My grandfather was a mechanic in Tulsa. My dad was a pilot and so here I am, off the MD11, haven’t talked about that in a while when he retired and then here I came like, “Oh, American Airlines, it’s a family business.” Duh.

Steven Jack Butala:
Oh geez.

Jill K DeWit:
I know that was not right so I… And I wanted to travel, but then I drank the Kool-Aid so I was not, it’s not that I wasn’t… So here’s what happened to me. I was not risk averse. I just didn’t… I didn’t have anybody showing me the way. I didn’t know. And then what happened was, the more time I spent there, I just kind of settled in you know? And I believe what they said, you know about, and they have a thing called Max Pay. Can you imagine? Every level in that company has pay, there’s pay scales.

Steven Jack Butala:
This is America. There’s no such thing as Max Pay.

Jill K DeWit:
Oh no, no, no, no. There’s Max Pay. And you would work to be Max Pay at that level in the company and when you’re at Max Pay and you’re getting your first bid for all your vacations, why would you want to leave? That was kind of the thing. So fast forward to midlife crisis. So that was the catalyst here but lucky for me, I got out and it was so interesting. All my friends, it’s like my friends were there and behind bars. Let me know how it is and I’m like, I was one year and not even one year out of American Airlines and I’m like, “You guys got to do this. There’s life on the other side.” And boy have I… I’ve times a hundred.

Steven Jack Butala:
Oh yeah.

Jill K DeWit:
What I was doing there.

Steven Jack Butala:
Oh geez.

Jill K DeWit:
Easy.

Steven Jack Butala:
No comparison.

Jill K DeWit:
And then so I took that leap, but it was me. There was nothing, nothing happened. I didn’t get laid off, I didn’t get fired, nothing. I just said, “I got to go. I know there’s more to me and I’m sick of this” and I need to do something. And it was my, that time of my life, I’m like, I need to make some changes. I’m not getting any younger. And then fortunately, within two years of that time, I found you and you and I joined forces and here we are today doing awesome. So my point of saying that story was, I want you to know, I understand. I understand that side of it and being afraid. The beautiful thing is, there’s lots of things that you could do in the evenings and the weekends until you really feel comfortable to really take the leap and I encourage you to do that, make sure it’s right for you, you know? But what you’re going to have to do is you’re going to have to give up something. You’re giving up your nights and weekends. That’s the big thing, but I promise you it’ll pay off.

Steven Jack Butala:
Well, and it’s not necessarily buying and selling land.

Jill K DeWit:
True. That’s what I’m saying. I’m speaking to you whatever it is.

Steven Jack Butala:
You got to do something.

Jill K DeWit:
Whatever it is.

Steven Jack Butala:
This is not about buying and selling land today.

Jill K DeWit:
Mm-mm.

Steven Jack Butala:
This is about taking a look at what you really think is risky and what’s not risky. So obviously Jill, for a while in that job, saw no risk in it.

Jill K DeWit:
In the job or in-

Steven Jack Butala:
In her job in that 18 year job, saw no risk in it.

Jill K DeWit:
That could have been risky.

Steven Jack Butala:
I’ll tell you, this is-

Jill K DeWit:
It could have been a-

Steven Jack Butala:
… so my version of Jill’s story is this. I jumped around from acquisition position to acquisition position for a few, several years, always buying and selling land in some way, or real estate, I should say, in some way on the side, knowing full well that the riskiest thing that I was doing at the time was walking into that W2 job in the morning. For some reason, it’s not like my parents sat me down and never did that and I didn’t really have real working examples of people going off on their own and taking a huge risk and being successful.

Jill K DeWit:
Right.

Steven Jack Butala:
I just knew for some reason that I’m not special and Jill’s not special about this. It’s just, that’s just how it happened but in the end, you have to actually look in the mirror and say, what’s the riskiest thing? For me, it was that W2 job. For Jill, it was moving out of that. It’s easy to say, I have all these bills to pay. There’s no way I can do this. I get that.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah.

Steven Jack Butala:
But you have to, it starts with forget about the money, forget about whatever responsibilities you have. If you have that’s in your soul, I need to take some type of risk that’s not, doesn’t seem that risky or what makes sense to me, then you got to do it.

Jill K DeWit:
Mm-hmm.

Steven Jack Butala:
Is that making sense?

Jill K DeWit:
Mm-hmm. No, I-

Steven Jack Butala:
Maybe you see absolutely no risk in coaching hockey on the weekend for extra money. And maybe that becomes a…

Jill K DeWit:
A full-blown-

Steven Jack Butala:
This is a true story actually-

Jill K DeWit:
… business.

Steven Jack Butala:
… for our third child. Our third and final child played lacrosse and the guy that was the lacrosse coach started a equipment store.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah.

Steven Jack Butala:
An online equipment because he was tired of watching his players pay so much money for even used equipment so this guy figured that out and supplied all kinds of lacrosse equipment and he didn’t see any risk in that. He’s like, “These guys are paying too much. I know over here where to get it a lot cheaper and I’ll just put these people together.” So there’s something that you see risk free but the title says-

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah.

Steven Jack Butala:
If you take no risk at all, there will be no reward.

Jill K DeWit:
It’s true.

Steven Jack Butala:
Your job is to decide for you what the lowest risk scenario is when you do take a risk.

Jill K DeWit:
Perfect. Happy to join us today. Five days a week. You can find us here on the Land Academy Show.

Steven Jack Butala:
So now the episode in the Land Academy Show is called How to Complete Your First Land Deal. You are not alone in your real estate ambition.

Jill K DeWit:
This will be good.

Steven Jack Butala:
Enough of two days of you guys talking about what can happen theoretically. Can you just tell us how to buy a piece of property and resell it for 10 grand?

Jill K DeWit:
It’s the end of the year and a lot of people are thinking about 2023. I know we are and so we want to cover some big topics, get you really thinking what’s possible. So there’s just so much out there. It’s amazing. Thank you for tuning in. By the way, Jack and I are very aware that not everyone has a hundred grand or whatever it is lying around to buy and sell land so we, just so you know, we, along with many of our members, fund land deals every week, sometimes every day. So check it out. Go to landfunding.com and if you have any questions, feel free to send a note to my team via support@landacademy.com. We’re Jack and Jill.

Steven Jack Butala:
We’re Jack and Jill. Information.

Jill K DeWit:
And inspiration.

Steven Jack Butala:
To buy undervalued property.