Transcript:

Steven Jack Butala:
I’m Steven Jack Butala.

Jill K DeWit:
And I’m Jill DeWit, and this is the Land Academy Show.

Steven Jack Butala:
This is episode number 1,973, and today we’re talking about The Land Academy. Well, here’s the first topic. It’s Jill’s topic and I love it, The Land Academy Casino. And a little bit later in the show, we’re going to talk about the number one question this week in Career Path.

Jill K DeWit:
Exactly. Every time you say 1,900 or whatever, I go, “Yeah, I feel it.”

Steven Jack Butala:
Almost 2,000 episodes we’ve had. It’s pretty amazing.

Jill K DeWit:
You know what’s funny? I’m going to ask someone that next time because sometimes I’m on the phone with you, and you know that, and I’ll have people say, “Oh, I’ve listened to them all.” I’m going to go, “1,970-whatever of them?”

Steven Jack Butala:
My favorite is, “We’ve listened to you at X2 for a month straight”-

Jill K DeWit:
Can you talk faster?

Steven Jack Butala:
… “and now we have to listen to your Southern Georgia slowness.”

Jill K DeWit:
Which neither of us are from-

Steven Jack Butala:
Which is on a Thursday call. Right, exactly.

Jill K DeWit:
That’s good.

Steven Jack Butala:
Each week on the show, we answer questions from our Land Academy member Discord forum.

Jill K DeWit:
Discard, I like that.

Steven Jack Butala:
We review land acquisitions from our weekly member webinars and we take a deep dive into two land-related topics by popular request. If you want a sneak peek of what goes on in real time in our Discord forum, go to landacademy.com. It’s free.

Jill K DeWit:
Oh, and by the way, if you want us to answer your question here or you just want some help getting involved with our community, you can easily text us at 480-530-7383 or send a note to my team via support@landacademy.com.

Steven Jack Butala:
Now, let’s take a question posted by one of our members on the Land Academy Discord online community I just mentioned. If you want to sneak peek, go to landacademy.com. It’s free.

Jill K DeWit:
So Greg wrote, “I’m purchasing a property through an estate. I got a signed purchase agreement back from the attorney of the estate of the deceased. It sounds like probate is open and there is a short certificate showing authority to conduct business of the deceased, as the deceased. The property owner died out of state.” Hold, please. There we go. “My attorney is telling me that the seller needs to open an ancillary estate where probate is located and wait until that ancillary estate is closed before buying it. There’s a risk if they don’t open and close the ancillary estate that there will be a cloud on the title. Does this sound right to anyone?” I’d love to know how many people piped in on this or if they kind of-

Steven Jack Butala:
A lot.

Jill K DeWit:
… oh, I was going to say mic drop, I’m out. What?

Steven Jack Butala:
A lot. This is not the most interesting question there ever was. I have a lot of choices. There’s probably 20, 30, 40 publishable questions that go on in Discord every time I sit down and do this each week. There’s way more actual questions than that. I chose this for a reason. There’s this concept out there of I’m doing business, I have an LLC in the state of let’s say it’s Arizona because that’s us, and I’m buying a property in Tennessee. And so this question, it’s not even so much a question anymore, it’s just an underlying theme of how do I treat this from a tax standpoint in Tennessee? How do I treat this probate situation where the estate’s actually in California, the property’s in Tennessee, I own a company in Arizona, I’m trying to buy the land? What do I do?
In general, and this is what most people said, this all gets treated in the state where your LLC is. There’s some quirks. The vast majority of weird, strange quirks from a state by state by state rule standpoint come out of California, and that’s just how it is. There’s just generally more rules there than there are in most other states. So probate rules are governed, all of them, by the state in which the person dies and files for probate to get all the property liquidated into the hands of their heirs and along the way, depending on how it’s structured, taxed. In this specific case, it completely and totally matters about where it’s being probated.
Probates themselves almost never get questioned, never get audited, and so there’s a lot of different ways to do it. So be very, very leery and ask a lot of questions and do a lot of research about what attorneys are telling you because my experience with attorneys, and I’m sure Jill will say the same thing, is they have to be managed just like everything else, just like a title agent and a real estate agent and on and on and on. I have not come across, and I would love your opinion on this, liquidating an estate from a probate standpoint where you’ve had to do it if the state is in Oregon and the properties were in any other state. You don’t deal with any of the states.

Jill K DeWit:
You know what’s interesting, is I’m not getting that involved in the situation. It’s kind of like I am putting it on the seller to make sure that they have it buttoned up so they can sell me the property. That’s kind of it. And especially in a situation like this, where it’s open and happening. They have an attorney-

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s right.

Jill K DeWit:
… my answer kind of is, “You know what? We have an agreement now, but you’re not ready to sell it to me yet. Call me when it’s done.” Do we really need to bring in my attorney now and get that involved in this? Heck no. Because once, maybe it’s going to take 90 days for this all to be done and get it in this person’s name kind of thing, that’s what really needs to happen. I don’t want to do where even though they have a, quote, unquote, “power of attorney,” or whatever the document is that they refer to that they can act as the person even though they’re dead and it’s not quite done yet, that too tells me this is scary and could be a cloud in the title until it’s done. Let’s get it out of your grandpa’s name, into your name, whatever it is, and then we’ll do the deal and I’ll make it really fast.

Steven Jack Butala:
She’s absolutely right. There’s just too many instances in my professional career where people say comments like this. “Well, my attorney’s saying he would open an ancillary estate where the property is located.” I’ve never heard that phrase in my life, and thank you for asking this because I think everybody needs to be aware of it. I’ve just never heard that phrase, ancillary estate. And I bet you they don’t know what this is either. They’re either-

Jill K DeWit:
It’s going to confuse everybody, even us.

Steven Jack Butala:
I could be totally wrong. This could be in Vermont or something and it’s very specific and I don’t know what I’m talking about, but I doubt it. And then how this clouds the title-

Jill K DeWit:
I can’t even imagine it.

Steven Jack Butala:
… that takes me down further down this-

Jill K DeWit:
Oh my gosh.

Steven Jack Butala:
… what the heck are you talking about, clouding the title? You’re an heir to an estate and the property in the estate, so this is complicating something. Jill just said it perfectly. Get the estate done, get it in your name so I look on the deed and it doesn’t say trust or it doesn’t say grandpa, it says John Smith.

Jill K DeWit:
And it’s all over with.

Steven Jack Butala:
And then you buy it from John Smith.

Jill K DeWit:
That’s it.

Steven Jack Butala:
I also bring this up and very quickly, I’ll close on this with this topic, is that if you’re going to buy and sell land with any regularity, estates are something you need to at least just familiarize yourself. I’m not saying take a class or go out on the internet or check it all out, but expect that people are going to call you back and say, “My father just died. I got 19 properties.” This happens to us all the time.

Jill K DeWit:
And I’m holding the will.

Steven Jack Butala:
“I got 19 properties and I would love to sell them to you for the price that you offered, but I’ve got to do,” fill in the blank, which is what this person’s going through. Don’t walk away from it. Some of the best deals that we’ve ever done have been from heirs.

Jill K DeWit:
If anything at this point, I would be staying in touch with the person, calling them probably every two weeks to say, “How’s it going? I put that money aside in my account so the minute you tell me ready to go, we will get this done. I have title ready to go and I can do it in 10 days.”

Steven Jack Butala:
It’s interesting, Jill, how much times have changed because there was a time where we would close people’s estates out.

Jill K DeWit:
We would really help.

Steven Jack Butala:
You know what Jill would say to this right now? Have a nice life. That’s what happens. Jill and I, I don’t know if it’s cynicism or age or any of that, but we’ve just refined this to the point where we probably do 15 to 20, maybe 25 deals a year, really good deals, and they’re not hard.

Jill K DeWit:
Well, it’s when you take a step back and you really think about it, and you put the pieces in place. You start the mail avalanche, if you will, and you never take your foot off the gas like we do, you never have to think about these things. You’re not scrambling for a deal. You got five more that you could close right now. Sure, maybe the profit on those five are equal to this one maybe, I doubt it, but you have several. I’d still take the five easy ones, move on and keep this guy in the loop. I’ll come back. I’ll keep checking on you, because no one else is going to understand it too or figure it out, and we’ll get it done eventually. It’s fine.

Steven Jack Butala:
Today’s first topic, the Land Academy Casino. Jill came up with this today while we were brainstorming on topics and I think it’s absolutely brilliant.

Jill K DeWit:
So this is a result of what I’ve been thinking about and talking about a lot this week. This week we had the advanced call, which we do once a month, and we also had the Land Academy ladies call, which we do once a month. I’m going to give a little plug. I’m the only one that has a Land Academy, a land investment ladies group period. So if you want to be involved in it, send a note to support@landacademy.com. Okay, now that I got that out of the way. But the whole thing is I wanted to talk to everybody about how long it takes. My topic today or this week in the ladies group was how long does it take to get successful? How long does it take to make money in this business? We had a good discussion about that and I have some notes here too that I’m going to share with you, so I guess let me start with that and then I’ll tell you where my casino comment comes in.

Steven Jack Butala:
I knew what you meant the second the phrase came out of your mouth. I said, “I know exactly what you mean and that’s the title.”

Jill K DeWit:
I’m mad. I’m mad about it. Everybody wants a casino, but we’re not realistic.

Steven Jack Butala:
No, everybody wants to win at the casino.

Jill K DeWit:
That’s the point.

Steven Jack Butala:
On the first pull.

Jill K DeWit:
That’s it. Okay, we’ll start there. Here’s the thing. People come in the Land Academy like, “Oh, I heard so-and-so. I’m here because my buddy talked about it or I read this or I saw that, and all I got to do is put in $10,000 and pull this and sign a deed and my $10,000 is $30,000.”

Steven Jack Butala:
20 or 30.

Jill K DeWit:
“And then I could just do it over and over and over again. That’s why I’m here. I’m going to walk in and win every time, and it’s not that hard and anybody can do it, and I need no money.”

Steven Jack Butala:
I love this.

Jill K DeWit:
Oh my gosh. And I’m so frustrated that what company can you think that? You can’t go buy a Dominoes franchise and go, “I’m going to be the only guy. I’m going to be the first guy that’s going to bring home $1 million. Everybody else makes like $60 to $100,000 a year running their own Dominoes, I’m going to bring in $1 million. I got this.”

Steven Jack Butala:
While Jill’s description turns into a rant, please keep this in mind, listener. That Jill and I started Land Academy in 2014 and we’ve been buying and selling land since the ’90s. and never in all that time, especially since we’ve owned Land Academy, has the Land Academy Casino ever been a topic. People have come to us and said for years and years and years, “I understand this is complicated. There’s a lot of moving parts. I also understand if we work through them or I work through them and take personal responsibility for this, then when I come out of the other side, I’m going to be making just a ton of money.” So something happened very recently. I think I know what it is, but Jill’s going to describe it. I don’t mean to interrupt you.

Jill K DeWit:
No, I just think it’s a mindset right now. People think, I think because they’re out there, you see people on social media and fill in the blank show or whatever, you’re like, “Oh, isn’t that how this goes?” No. Hold on a moment. So here are my notes that what I talked about, I took a deep dive on this personally and then within our group. This, what Land Academy is and everything that we’re doing is showing you how to make a company, your own company, like my company. Is it an overnight thing? Heck no, it is not, and you need to think about it like that and why.
Actually, here’s one of the reasons it’s coming up right now, is because we’ve had some staffing changes and I’m really helping out the team a lot right now, and I’m working with people that are coming into Land Academy and leaving in less than a year. Not a lot, but they’re not giving it a fair shake. Even under two years. I’m like, “What are you talking?” “Well, I gave it six months.” That’s nothing. Did you give college six months and said, “Nah, not for me?” Did you give that six months?

Steven Jack Butala:
I gave a marriage six months one time.

Jill K DeWit:
There you go. Now, that’s different, but did you give a child raising six months? “Oh, you know what? I can’t get their sleeping pattern down. I guess I’m not cut out for this.” No, six months is not enough. You need to really think about this. I’m going to argue when you start your own land investment company, you are doing a startup. You need to think about it like that, and guess what folks? How long do you think startups take? Well, according to FreshBooks, two to three years have become profitable. And then if you want my stuff and my links, send my team a note and I’ll give them to you. LinkedIn said in an article, I dug in here, three to four years is a standard estimation on how long it takes a business to be profitable. Startups.com, these are all quotes by the way, “Short answer is it takes at least four years.”

Steven Jack Butala:
I don’t think this takes four years, but okay. I think it takes two.

Jill K DeWit:
But just hold on. Inc.com, “It takes at least a year to turn random growth into profitable scalable growth.”

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s good. I like that.

Jill K DeWit:
Yahoo Finance, “The average business doesn’t become profitable for two to three years.” Then I got to-

Steven Jack Butala:
Jill, you did research.

Jill K DeWit:
I did.

Steven Jack Butala:
I’m proud of you.

Jill K DeWit:
Thank you. Then I went to Forbes. I found a good Forbes article. I’m like, “I want somebody even bigger than these guys.” And Forbes, it was very interesting. There was a great article, and you’re going to love where this goes here, where they asked, let me just read this quote, “Now for the million dollar question. From a base of 100,000 successful entrepreneurs with businesses running for a minimum of a year, this person Westwood successfully called 10,000 responses. His biggest ask, which will serve as a genesis of the book he’s now writing, was the top personality characteristics that helped them succeed.”

Steven Jack Butala:
I love this, Jill.

Jill K DeWit:
“And in order of priority, they are,” so here’s the whole thing. This is not a casino. One year is not enough to see if you can to really make this go, and then what kind of people really do succeed at it?

Steven Jack Butala:
This is brilliant.

Jill K DeWit:
And here’s the top order priority. Number one, vision. Number two, resilience and persistence. Number three, amazingly strong work ethic. Number four, passion and number five, positive attitude. He put in parentheses, “Attitude that is almost stupidly positive at times,” he relays, “as in believing in positive outcomes against all possible odds,” end of parentheses, end of quotes. So I wanted to talk about this with you. I wanted to talk about this with you listening and watching because this is not a casino. You’re not going to walk in and ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-ching. This takes work everyone. Let me finish for a second here.

Steven Jack Butala:
Sure, sure.

Jill K DeWit:
That’s why we’re here. One of the things that you have that’s not listed here and when you’re starting your own business is you have us. You have a blueprint and you have support. Think about that. I tell people all the time on the phones, “Look, if you ask, we’ll help you. I’m not going to guess. I’m not going to know, but if you come forward, we’ll help you.” “Are you really there to answer, Jill?” Heck yeah. Have you been in Discord lately? Have you been on the Thursday calls? It’s us. We’re right here. What do you need? What problems do you have? Because we can do it and we’ll help get you through them. We have one-on-one consulting available. We have our ladies groups, we have all kinds of stuff. We have Career Path and our Land Academy Pro product. It’s amazing. So my last thing I want to say about this whole topic too I thought was really interesting, things that are not listed that you need to be successful here-

Steven Jack Butala:
Oh, good. Is this Jill’s opinion?

Jill K DeWit:
My opinion.

Steven Jack Butala:
Excellent.

Jill K DeWit:
You know what’s interesting about that that no one talks about, that’s not listed? Excel skills. You can overcome that stuff. Negotiating talent, talking like me, you can work around that. You can hire people to do that stuff. Those are things that can be solved. My end quote or my end comment on my call the other day with the ladies was, “Congratulations. If you are been with Land Academy for over a year, maybe you’re in year two to year five and you’re now getting traction,” I said, “Congratulations, you’re normal.”

Steven Jack Butala:
You know what kind of money they’re making?

Jill K DeWit:
I don’t care what they’re making, just making money.

Steven Jack Butala:
They’re making a ridiculous amount of money.

Jill K DeWit:
Some are, but wait a minute-

Steven Jack Butala:
We’re not going to get into the next topic yet.

Jill K DeWit:
That’s what I want to say though. This is a casino chat. I don’t want people to get a big head here. Come on. I’m going to say if you’re making an extra $5,000 a month, that’s $60,000. Is that right? $60,000 a year. That’s nothing to sneeze at. That’s very, very attainable and realistic. So I don’t want people to feel bad or like, “Well, I’m not doing enough.” Come on, knock it off. You’re doing great. And if you know how to do $5,000 a month, then you know how to do $10,000 a month kind of thing. You know how to do a little tweak, and that’s a lot of what we are doing in Career Path right now, those little tweaks.

Steven Jack Butala:
The internet is packed full of lists, the top five traits that people have to become successful, packed. It’s to the point where I click on every single one of them, maybe it’s probably why I think it’s packed, because they send me more, and I chuckle to myself almost every time because it’s all sugarcoated constantly. Here’s the non-sugar coated traits that you need to really succeed at making a ton of money. Maybe this a could be a whole additional show. You need to be so obsessed with whatever it is that you’re trying to accomplish business-wise that it makes you stupid. You could be failing for a year doing some stuff that’s all wrong and you’re so obsessed with it, you just continue to do it. It’s a cross between having some version of light Asperger’s syndrome and lack of emotion.
Physiologically having no emotion where you are talking to people on the phone the way Jill does in a repetitive manner until you buy some property. You don’t know any different. And so if you ask people why they’re successful, all the people I’ve ever asked who have built something or bought something and made it amazing and you ask them, “Did you learn this? Did somebody teach you this when you were four years old? What’s the real secret? What’s the secret sauce?” And they will all squarely look at you and say, “I don’t know,” and that’s the answer. “I don’t know why I’m successful at this.: Career Path is packed every single time we do a Career Path. We’re in week number three now of Career Path of eight weeks, and it’s packed full of people who are unsatisfied with the fact that they’re making a lot of money doing this, and we’re going to talk about this in a minute. They’re unsatisfied by their own personal performance and by anyone else’s measure including us, the creators of Career Path would be happy with that, but they’re not going to stop.

Jill K DeWit:
We have all levels though. I’m going to add that too.

Steven Jack Butala:
We have very few people in Career Path that really get it that are just starting out.

Jill K DeWit:
There’s some that are not making crazy money-

Steven Jack Butala:
No, but they have the right attitude.

Jill K DeWit:
All right. Well, because they show up. They’re there. They’re trying.

Steven Jack Butala:
The reason that what I alluded to right in the beginning, and geez, I couldn’t agree more with what everything you said here, Jill, which is kind of unusual for us because we don’t agree on this a lot, the reason that this is happening now is because there’s an unrealistic expectation that is an over current. On the internet, it’s an unrealistic expectation of making ridiculous amount of money and it is a direct result, in my opinion, of all the garbage that’s on the internet about how successful you can be.
How fast it is, how easy it is, and it’s always wrapped up in fast cars and just easy. The whole notion of flipping the $100 bills on a stage off to the people in the audience, I don’t know when that caught on, but it seems like it’s bled in now to some aspects of Land Academy in the last probably 12 to 18 month like I’ve never seen it. And I think it’s a direct result also, there are some very young people, there are former Land Academy members that have gone out, taken the content that Jill and I have created, taken decades, all this hair as a result of that-

Jill K DeWit:
Since ’90s or mid-’90s.

Steven Jack Butala:
… so there’s some people that are and they’re making this easy, and so those people-

Jill K DeWit:
Or trying to.

Steven Jack Butala:
… who join those groups, geez, I can’t list, probably half of the people that are in Land Academy have joined those groups without satisfaction and come to us and said, “What the hell was that?” Because we’re not here to get a Ferrari, we’re here to make an $30,000 a month. So if this sounds like a rant, it is. More and more and more the people that are internally running customer service in our group are having to figure out why. They’re trying to figure out the question, “Why doesn’t this work for me?”

Jill K DeWit:
You mean the members or us, the staff?

Steven Jack Butala:
Our customer service staff is having to deal with, “This just isn’t working for me,” our members.

Jill K DeWit:
And that’s my point, is I just want everyone to know that you’re not going to be here for six months and go, “Well, that didn’t work.” That’s on you.

Steven Jack Butala:
So, here’s the good news.

Jill K DeWit:
If you’re here for six months, you don’t show up, you don’t try, you don’t reach out, you’re not doing this stuff, you’re not getting mail out, that’s on you.

Steven Jack Butala:
You know what? I was going to say that, now I am going to say it because I was going to save it for later, but I grew up in an environment and I know Jill did too where if I came home as a child and I said Johnny was picking on me or my math teacher’s an idiot or just fill in the blank, “I got run over in football practice today,” you know what my parents’ response was? “You should do something differently tomorrow so that doesn’t happen.” And so that now is who I am. If something’s going wrong, I’m going to change it. I know that Jill wakes up in the morning like that, and so there’s a sentiment out there that seems to have made its way into Land Academy, which is unusual, “This doesn’t work for me. And what you should be saying is what Jill just said, “What am I doing wrong?”

Jill K DeWit:
What am I not doing?

Steven Jack Butala:
You should be looking inside, not outside.

Jill K DeWit:
Exactly.

Steven Jack Butala:
Because I will tell you this for the record, and I’ve said this to you, once in a while members get to my desk and I say this sentence to them every time. “Congratulations. Of the 1,500 or so Land Academy members that we’ve ever had, we certainly don’t have that many now because a lot of people succeed and move on, the vast majority, you are in the 99th percentile of the people who couldn’t make this work.”

Jill K DeWit:
So the only thing I want to add at the end, it’s kind of funny, I just noticed you’re like, “This is a great topic, Jill.” We can end it, “I love that you brought this up.” You know why he likes this, everyone? Because I brought quotes and I did data. I can sit here and I have five articles and they’re referenced here and I have direct quotes with the website links, then he likes it. He’s happy.

Steven Jack Butala:
Let’s take a look at one of our favorite land acquisitions from our weekly Thursday member webinar. Hey, if you want information and you’re brand new at this and you’ve actually stuck around this far in this episode, go to landacademy.com and download the ebook. It’s free. It’s packed full of a couple of initial stories that got me started in this business and then it’s kind of a blueprint slash outline of how buying a piece of land and selling it for more-

Jill K DeWit:
Works.

Steven Jack Butala:
… manifests itself. Let’s take another question posted by one of our members on the Land Academy Discord online community. Again, if you want a sneak peek, go to land academy.com. It’s free.

Jill K DeWit:
Kathy wrote, “My husband and I just joined. He has a 20-year background in land development. We’ve been licensed realtors for over 13 years. He is licensed as a GC and we’ve done wholesaling with houses.” This is their background. “So while we are new to land flipping, this isn’t our first rodeo. We’re trying to decide what price point we want to target. What are the pros and cons of the different price points? Any advice would be appreciated.” Was this in the Career Path area or this is in the general area?

Steven Jack Butala:
I’m not sure. But before you answer this, I think it’d be a great one for you to answer, I have to say all the banter and the ranting that we did in that last question, do you think these two people are going to succeed?

Jill K DeWit:
Oh my god. Well, they already have and they know. This is one more thing for them.

Steven Jack Butala:
This is my point. If he’s been in land development for 20 years, they both have been real estate agents for 13, so he’s a GC and they’ve flipped a bunch of houses, they don’t know how to give up.

Jill K DeWit:
True.

Steven Jack Butala:
They don’t know how to throw in the towel. They’re just going to add this to their already successful lives.

Jill K DeWit:
You know what’s funny about this?

Steven Jack Butala:
If this is you, I really want to be clear about this because Jill and I, if you can’t tell, are starting to lose patience a little bit. We’re losing patients with about 5% of our Land Academy members. If this describes you-

Jill K DeWit:
Because they’ve given up.

Steven Jack Butala:
… Kathy S and her husband, if this is some version of you, that you’ve succeeded at some stuff and you have some life experience and some failures and successes, and you can look at the mirror and laugh about it and say, “You know what? We’re doing okay,” join Land Academy. If you’re brand new and you’re the opposite of this and believe that the world is your enemy and that people are out to get you and you can’t figure out 16 minus 4, this is not for you.

Jill K DeWit:
Are you done now?

Steven Jack Butala:
Yep.

Jill K DeWit:
Okay. Are we done with the rants for today?

Steven Jack Butala:
Yep.

Jill K DeWit:
Oh, good.

Steven Jack Butala:
No, no, not at all. It’s rant day.

Jill K DeWit:
Oh, it’s a good day for Jack. Great. Okay, so back to the question. You know what’s great, I was going to say, about Kathy and her husband? And I know because I’ve talked to her, talked to both of them, is this product type, they’ve done so many things that are way more difficult and time-consuming. I’m like, “Oh, Kathy, just wait. When you get in and see what we’re doing here and what’s going on, you might start dropping some of those other things because renovating a house, you can’t do that from an RV or the back of a boat. Doing a subdivision, I’m going to argue that one’s even harder too.” And there’s so many things that just takes so much time versus buy a property, sell the property. It’s pretty nice. So anyway, about the different price points, I haven’t used this in a while, but it’s kind of like flying a plane.
The smaller the plane, the more work you have to do. When you’re in a big jet and all that, the equipment, there’s a lot. Little Cessna, no autopilot. 757, autopilot. And so there’s a lot of things that are different in that respect, first of all, but the main thing to me is the customers that you’re dealing with. When you’re talking to someone buying a property for $10,000, that’s a lot. For most of those people, it’s a big deal and they have a lot of questions. You bought it for $3,000, you’re selling it for $10,000. That’s a tougher one. You can’t get a broker involved usually because they’re not excited about it, because what’s their commission? Maybe $1,000 if they’re lucky.
So they’re not going to really want to do it, so you’re doing it. You’re taking the calls and having to answer all the questions, and it’s a very different customer versus the property that you bought for $32,000 that you’re selling for $100,000. Now it’s a different customer. That guy, he’s way into this and you’re not taking those calls also, by the way. At that level, a lot of those, A, you can get a broker involved like I do. I don’t want to take those calls, and some of them, they just expect it. There’s a price point where, we talked about this the other day on a call, if you’re selling a $300,000 commercial property, it would be weird to be for sale by owner. Those buyers, I don’t think they would take you even seriously.

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s correct.

Jill K DeWit:
They want to talk to your broker, they want to see the broker’s opinion, they want to see the traffic count-

Steven Jack Butala:
Well, the broker may have even-

Jill K DeWit:
… all of that stuff.

Steven Jack Butala:
… may have even brought the buyer in-

Jill K DeWit:
That too.

Steven Jack Butala:
… and so it works for you all the way around.

Jill K DeWit:
Totally. So it’s kind of like that. And at the end of the day, keep in mind, who am I to say? I only have a couple 1,000 transactions that I can relate to, but in the multiple thousands of deals that I’ve done and we’ve done together, I’m almost spending the same amount of time. So gee, if it’s going to take me let’s just say four hours of my time total, start to finish to close a deal to make $7,000 versus the same four hours to make $70,000, all right.

Steven Jack Butala:
Or maybe it takes five hours. I don’t know why it would. I think it would be easier.

Jill K DeWit:
It’s probably two. Okay, let’s back up. Oh, wait a minute. In the six to 10 hours total I spent to make $7,000, because don’t forget, I took all the phone calls. This is a good topic because it’s a whole separate topic, this would be funny. Versus the hour and a half total out of my life to make $70,000, that’s your answer.

Steven Jack Butala:
So in the spirit of the ranting that we’ve done so far in this episode, it occurred to me that maybe we make this sound too easy and it’s not attracting the right people. So when Jill says it takes four or five hours to make $70,000, that’s because you have an amazing, dynamic personality on the phone and the vast majority of people that answered the phone when the seller called, they didn’t turn it into a deal. But you, because you have a lot of experience like Kathy and her husband, turned it into a real estate deal because you have some experience and know how to talk to a seller.

Jill K DeWit:
You know what really was going on? The reason I can say, “What do you mean this time and this time? Here’s the reason why a $70,000 deal took me an hour and a half of my time, because Pat Live answered the phone and I have a transaction coordinator.

Steven Jack Butala:
And Jill’s been in the business for more than two years.

Jill K DeWit:
And I know how to pick an amazing agent to sell it.

Steven Jack Butala:
And she doesn’t have to worry about sending out the mail because her partner does it.

Jill K DeWit:
Well, and even now, [inaudible 00:34:45]

Steven Jack Butala:
I’m trying be real honest here, instead of saying, “$70,000, two hours.”

Jill K DeWit:
But if you understand it and you follow our steps, you could do that too.

Steven Jack Butala:
Of course.

Jill K DeWit:
That’s the bottom line.

Steven Jack Butala:
Every last answer to every question that you have-

Jill K DeWit:
If we can do it, you could do it.

Steven Jack Butala:
… how to get to making $70,000 and it takes you two to four hours. Every answer we have them all, but depending on where you’re coming to this in life, it might take you a couple years to get there, it might take you a couple months, you might never get there. That’s for you to decide.

Jill K DeWit:
Thank you.

Steven Jack Butala:
Usually she gets all over me about, “God, you’re really being negative.” Not today. Today’s second topic is called the number one question this week in Career Path. Jill and I have, we don’t know what the number. I know what I think of the number one question is, and Jill has an idea, and so we’re going to not secretly we’re going to, I’m describe mine, she’s going to describe hers and we’ll talk about it. Maybe they’re the same thing, I don’t know.

Jill K DeWit:
Let me back up. We are in week two of eight of Career Path. Career Path is our highest level personal coaching, if you will, with us. It’s a group. I didn’t write down all the questions, but we both sat and thought about it and said out of week one and now we’re in week two, so this is really week two, what came out of that? Thank you.

Steven Jack Butala:
So it’s a very common theme in week two to find out why everybody’s really there, and they’re all there for different reasons. Most of them are there because they’re very successful and they want to be more successful. Some people are there because they have the very conducive personality to succeed at this, but they’re just starting out. That happens. Totally happens, just like Kathy and her husband. Done a lot of amazing stuff in life, but are going to take a crack at flipping land now, which I love involving people like that. But there’s a theme that’s happened, and not just with this Career Path but with just about every Career Path we’ve ever instructed, that goes something like this. I’ve been doing this for a few years.
The first year I did this, this, and this, and it generated about $1.2 million. The second year I did the same thing, this and this, it generated about $2.3, and then this most recent year I did this, this, and this, the same things, and I’m back to $1.2. I keep doing the same thing, but I get different results, to which I say, like the Marines say, “Whatever happened to adapt and overcome?” If you’re doing the same thing over and over and over again, you’ve all heard the cliche, you know what that definition is. And so you have to adapt and overcome. And the number one question is, “What am I doing wrong?” And the fact is, you’re not doing anything wrong. You’re experiencing a startup. You’re experiencing owning a business.
And if you don’t think that people who own convenience stores, manufacturing companies and any type of service business or any business have to change their stuff all the time, release new products, whatever, depends on the type, put stuff on shelves a different way. Maybe when it’s really slow, reach out to your best customers, give them a great, amazing discount or create a new product for them where it becomes a subscription base where you can buy all the potato chips you want for $150 every month or some version. So changes in your business, whatever you own, have to happen. You have to freshen stuff up all the time. You cannot do the same thing, mail the same county over and over and over again, mail the same 14 fill in the blanks over and over and over again and expect to make the exact same amount of money or expect it to go up. You got to try new stuff.

Jill K DeWit:
So I took it as I was thinking about the question, so my answer is kind of similar to yours. My answer is most people in the group are saying, “What exactly do I need to do to hit X goal?” And for everyone it’s different. That’s it right there. And I think honestly, it’s kind of interesting with this group, I’ve already picked up on several things in week one with you all. As you’re giving us your introductions and you’re sharing a little bit about your experience, which is nice because now we have a couple years of Career Path too, and not just a couple years of what I’ve been doing, but helping people at this level and now I can go, “Got it.” I could pick up on it pretty fast for many of you and throughout these next seven weeks, we still are in week two here, so six and a half weeks, we’re going to help you see the light and give you those answers-

Steven Jack Butala:
For sure.

Jill K DeWit:
… and for some people, what came out of that this week , simply my part two was the biggest question, just trolling for those bigger deals like, “Hey, I’ve got this, I got this, I got that, I got that. I just need those deals. Awesome.” So that’s what we’re tackling. So that’s kind of how Career Path is. One by one, we’re just going through all of it to help everybody understand.

Steven Jack Butala:
My business, when I started this buying and selling land, it was in the very early stages of the internet as it relates to e-commerce, and so I didn’t have any choice but to travel around the country, going to tax deed sales. So you’d sit in a small, packed in county when a guy had a gavel in the front and they would auction off back tax property. I would buy it, put them out on eBay and sell them. My rule was never pay more than $100 an acre, and I did it all over the southwest for years and years and years. I was unattached from a relationship standpoint, certainly didn’t have any kids or any real responsibility, so I could do that. What we do now is about, I don’t know, 20 deals a year, maybe 25. We don’t-

Jill K DeWit:
Not counting deal funding.

Steven Jack Butala:
… almost ever make a decision to buy a piece of property where we’re not going to net a $100,000. That’s kind of our rule. And so now I went from doing 8,000 deals a year, auctioning them off on eBay, this was way back in the ’90s, and then I went through, I don’t know, 20 business changes between then and now. And two years from now, I can tell you right now, our land buying and selling operation won’t look anything like it is does now because we adapt and overcome, and things change. For whatever reason, every Thursday call, we do, “Would you do this deal?” And a ridiculous amount of entries go on in North Carolina. I don’t know why, I just think that it’s just built itself into this send mail to North Carolina. And so I hope for the sake of the people that are constantly mailing North Carolina expecting the same thing, I hope for them that they learn quickly that they need to change their business model or not their business model, but adapt and overcome com. Is that it, Jill?

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah.

Steven Jack Butala:
Let’s take a look at another one of our favorite land acquisitions from our weekly Thursday member webinar. Jill, you have something inspirational to share with us today, as if this wasn’t enough.

Jill K DeWit:
I kind of thought I did.

Steven Jack Butala:
I’m not sure-

Jill K DeWit:
I know.

Steven Jack Butala:
What qualifies as inspirational today.

Jill K DeWit:
You or me?

Steven Jack Butala:
All of us.

Jill K DeWit:
Oh, you? Well, no offense, I’m trying to be inspirational here.

Steven Jack Butala:
I’m not. I’m intentionally saying-

Jill K DeWit:
I know.

Steven Jack Butala:
… the message I’m trying to deliver today if you’re still listening, which you’re probably not, is if you have succeeded at something in life really well and you want to try something new and enhance that, call us. You’re welcome in the group. If you think this is your answer because you’re brand new and you want a side hustle, this is not your answer.

Jill K DeWit:
Well, I just hate that term. Yes, we can still help you if you’re brand new and learning stuff, so that’s not true. It’s just kind of like we just want to make sure that you know this is not Rolex and Ferrari land. That’s not the kind of people we are. That’s the bottom line. Can you afford those things? Yeah. I would prefer to put it into some property, but if that makes you happy, do it. That’s just not who we are. Okay, so the thing though is can you roll back up there? Yeah, that’s it. My note was giving up too soon. I wish I had a canned reply. I wish there was some way I could pull people back because there’s so many people that don’t give this a good enough go and it just breaks my heart, and you know who you are. There’s people in Land Academy who’ve been here for years.

Steven Jack Butala:
Well, it’s coming up on decade.

Jill K DeWit:
They’re the right people and they know us and they appreciate us, and they’re here and they’re growing as we’re growing, providing tools and resources. It’s helping their business. So Land Academy, it’s not a learn to do this and then go off and just do it. It’s always evolving, and I want to make sure I get that point across here. We’ve talked about this. I’ll share something we talked about in the kitchen the other day. I said, “What if instead of the Land Academy 500, we were the Land Academy 100?” Because I think that would be cool. What if we scaled this all down to just 100 of our favorite people and we just do these really amazing deals? Which is kind of what’s happening, we just don’t call it that. So you know who you are, but I keep Land Academy around 500 so I can work with the Land Academy 100 and give everybody a shot at it. So my inspiration thing today is look, if you don’t give yourself two years of this, you didn’t give it enough time. You really didn’t.

Steven Jack Butala:
I think message sent.

Jill K DeWit:
Thanks. What about you? What do you want to talk about today, informational?

Steven Jack Butala:
I’m going about the same topic in a different way. I learned recently about myself and I didn’t fully understand what I was doing to be successful, but it’s becoming more clear now. My topic is how to get to the top 1% of anything in life, the 99th percentile. And so if you really think about who’s in the 99th percentile of let’s say professional golf, not going to happen. It’s just not going to happen to you and it’s not going to happen to me, or the NBA. Those people are, they have some special thing and coupled with I don’t know what the recipe is to be at the top 1% of the NBA, but the vast majority of the people I’ve ever met, if not everybody, it’s just not going to happen. But you can get to the top 1% of wealth easily with the right attitude and the right execution of a plan and all of that stuff. It’s not that much money. The top 1% of the entire world is like $5 million of net worth. That’s crazy.

Jill K DeWit:
That’s top 1%?

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah.

Jill K DeWit:
Really? In the world?

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah. Very, very, very, very attainable. Here’s how and here’s the breakpoint for people, and it’s along the lines of what we’ve been saying. When you start something out and you start down a funnel, let’s say, and the funnel’s real big at the top and you start putting energy and capital and all kinds of stuff and the funnel’s getting smaller and smaller and smaller, and you’re making more informed decisions and you’re getting a little bit smarter and you have more experience and you’re testing stuff. Let’s say you’re sending a mailer out and it works or it doesn’t work. When you go, there is some point in that funnel toward getting to the 1% or success of anything where it’s going to stop working.
It’s not going to happen overnight and maybe it won’t stop, but it’s going to require change, adaptation let’s call it. When you stop and go back to the step where you think the adaptation or the things went a little bit sideways or let’s just call it changed, it required change, you probably missed it. You go back and try something else or add something to what you’ve already been doing successfully. In the mail situation, it’s like North Carolinas doesn’t seem to be working for me anymore. I’m going to go back to the basics of Land Academy and go back to Land Academy 3.0 or join Career Path or bring it up on a Thursday call and say, “I’m experiencing X. What you guys suggest?” Because I’m paying to be part of a group that is arguably the top-

Jill K DeWit:
Brilliant.

Steven Jack Butala:
… most expert group in buying and selling mid-range priced land in the country.

Jill K DeWit:
In the world.

Steven Jack Butala:
In fact, I know we are.

Jill K DeWit:
In the world.

Steven Jack Butala:
And so you’re utilizing the group that you join. You’re going to say, “It’s not working. I’m going to go back here and let’s look at it.” And every time this has happened, every single time I bet in the whole almost decade that you and I have been instructing this, I bet 25 times this has happened where people ask and we solve it together. There’s only four or five components to this. To get to the top 1% of whatever you’re trying to do in life requires a selfless, egoless look in the mirror about, “This isn’t working like I thought anymore. It wasn’t luck that it worked in the first place. I’m going to go back and circle back and apply the basics, try some new stuff.”
And if that doesn’t work, am I going to get upset with myself and kick the dog? No. It doesn’t mean that I suck, it just means that maybe not wasn’t the best decision. I’m going to go back again and again and again. And somebody told me this recently and I looked cross-eyed at him and then I started thinking, that’s exactly what we do. I don’t go to tax auctions anymore. They still have them, it’s just not the best way. I don’t buy $5,000 property and sell it for $8,000 anymore. It’s just not worth it. Next month and three months from now, if we aren’t buying and selling the property that we want to or the numbers aren’t where we want, Jill and I’ll get together probably over a couple of drinks, laugh about it and say, “Let’s try Alaska.”

Jill K DeWit:
You know what’s funny about that? You just brought up that stop and go back point, that made me think of what I was talking about the other day with someone in our office. We were talking about remember the days before we had our phones and before we had even the little Garmin on your dashboard, remember how we used to get around? We had a good old fashioned book. In California, it was the Thomas Guide.

Steven Jack Butala:
I’ve never heard this.

Jill K DeWit:
Okay. I’m going from Garden Grove to Laguna Beach, right? What do I do? I get out the Thomas Guide and I start looking, and you write down on a note piece of paper all the steps that you need to go. I do this and then I get on the 133 and then I go here, I take that turn and you have to flip the page, so you’d have to sit and look at the book, flip the pages-

Steven Jack Butala:
While you’re driving, of course.

Jill K DeWit:
No, no, no. This is before you leave the house.

Steven Jack Butala:
Oh, okay.

Jill K DeWit:
So this is how it used to go. I’m planning a trip with my friends to go to the beach today, so I get out the Thomas Guide and I sit down with a piece of paper and I look where we are. I’m like, “Go down [inaudible 00:51:10], get on this.” Some of you know what I’m talking about, and I write down all the directions. I’d go until I see this street and then I turn right, and then I hop on this-

Steven Jack Butala:
Is it a map or is it a text?

Jill K DeWit:
It’s a book. Oh, the Thomas Guide’s a book this thick and it covered all of Orange County-

Steven Jack Butala:
No, but I mean does it have a map in there or is it like, ‘Turn right at the stop sign”?

Jill K DeWit:
No, it’s a map. It’s a big map. It’s a big map. You’ve never seen a Thomas Guide. You should get one.

Steven Jack Butala:
No, I’ve never heard of this, and I’m in the land business.

Jill K DeWit:
The Thomas Guide, this is how we’d get around. You get out the Thomas Guide and figure out where you’re going. And anyway, you’d see the map and then you’d run off the page of the map and it says, “Go to page whatever,” and you have to flip over to page 103 where it continues the map, and that’s how you learn where you turn and all that good stuff. So the point is though, I’d have my not fancy notes with all the steps. Well, what would always happen sometimes, I’m talking to my friends, we’re driving and I’m like, “Uh oh, I’m not seeing the street I’m watching for. I think we passed it.” So what do you have to do? You can’t regroup right there, especially if you’re a teenage girl. This is the best I can do right here.
I’m really good north, south, east, west. I don’t know if I was good back then, so we’d have to go back. We’d turn around, go back and find the street where we missed the turn, then make the turn and get back on track. So that reminded me of what you were saying here in Land Academy. It really is kind of like that. We’re going to help you with all the steps and we’re right here. The difference is you can call us and ask us in person on the Thursday calls like A, “This step didn’t make sense,” or B, “I missed the turn. I’m not doing something right here. Can you help me?” So I like your turnaround and go back, figure it out and come out again, and then you will reach your destination. We did reach sweet little Laguna Beach back then.

Steven Jack Butala:
Can’t give out.

Jill K DeWit:
It was funny. Now I got to go. I’ve bet on Amazon, I can get a Thomas Guy. That would be kind of fun to just to have around.

Steven Jack Butala:
Get the one you used, too. I want to see the one you actually used.

Jill K DeWit:
I’m going to go get one. Or maybe on eBay. You know what? There is someone right now with one on eBay that’s been sitting under the seat in their mom’s station wagon for 30 years. I want that one.

Steven Jack Butala:
It’s got McDonald’s french fry grease all over, all that.

Jill K DeWit:
Oh yeah. It’s warped. All kinds of things have spilled under there. I’m going to go get one of those and I’ll present that, so that’s really good. Hey, anyway, don’t forget, you can reach us for questions or help just simply by sending a note to support@landacademy.com.

Steven Jack Butala:
Join us next week Wednesday for another interesting episode. You know what we do here? We buy land cheap and we sell it for more on the internet, usually a lot more. We are Jack and Jill. Information-

Jill K DeWit:
And inspiration-

Steven Jack Butala:
… to buy undervalued property.