Teaching Your Trade (JJ 658)
Teaching Your Trade
Transcript:
Jack Butala: Jack and Jill here.
Jill DeWit: Hi.
Jack Butala: Welcome to the Jack Jill Show, entertaining real-estate investment talk. I’m Jack Butala.
Jill DeWit: And I’m Jill DeWit, broadcasting from sunny southern California.
Jack Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about teaching your trade. Trust me, it’s harder than it sounds.
Jill DeWit: It’s true.
Jack Butala: We have a couple choices every time we do a deal. It’s in the back of our heads, both of us. Should we do this deal and record it and show the whole world, or should we get it done in 30 seconds?
Jill DeWit: Just get it done in 30 seconds, I know.
Jack Butala: Put the money in the bank and move on.
Jill DeWit: I know.
Jack Butala: Maybe we’ll teach out another deal. You guess which one happens more often. Before we get into it, let’s take a question posted by one of our members on the Land … Oh, that takes me back. One of our members on the JackJill.com online community. It’s free.
Jill DeWit: That’s awesome. Chuck asked, “I used Jack’s suggestion of posting in Land Wanted on Craigslist. Got a call from a farmer who owns 715 acres in Arkansas near Little Rock. He’s old, tired, and wants to sell 600 acres.”
Jack Butala: That describes me. I’m old, tired, and I want to sell 600 acres.
Jill DeWit: Yep. “Keep the family homes, no one to leave it to. Some farms, some hunting, some vacant residential. He’s willing to deal. This is something I cannot do alone, but it would be a shame to let it go. I’m posting here to see if there is someone who could work with me on this. I can simply refer it, or if there’s someone who wants to have a go or may know someone, we can look into that too. I checked email notification below, so I assume that’s how I’ll be contacted if someone is interested.” Love it.
Jack Butala: The producer’s got a note here that about 25 people responded in our group, but go ahead.
Jill DeWit: Oh, cool. All right, then there’s one that they added in here that Luke wrote. “This should be posted on our deal board.” [crosstalk 00:01:45]
Jack Butala: Yes.
Jill DeWit: “Arkansas seems easy to split land. I would look into selling it as a bunch of smaller lots that each fit on a credit card. Not size-wise, but you can buy on a credit card.”
Jack Butala: Luke, you’re brilliant.
Jill DeWit: That’s really true. Isn’t that funny? That’s the truth, that we … When you’re doing this, you do it right. You want to have it available that people can literally check out, put their land in their shopping cart, and whip out their credit card and pay for it. People love that. It still sounds crazy, I think.
Jack Butala: Whip it out. Whip out their credit card?
Jill DeWit: Whip out their credit card.
Jack Butala: Hey, whip it out.
Jill DeWit: And pay for it. Listen, silly. People do that. People go, “What?” Yes, it happens all the time. I’m not kidding.
Jack Butala: People who buy real estate, they want it to be a convenient transaction too. It’s not just you. It’s not you sitting there, “Man, I wish this was easier.” They’re saying the same thing.
Jill DeWit: Right. It’s like a car. Think about it. “No, I’m really hoping to spend eight hours at the car dealer today.” No one says that. They all wish we could spend eight minutes at the car dealer and just pay for it and take the keys and walk away.
Jack Butala: I’m old enough to remember when, on Friday afternoon, you had to go to the bank before it closed to get a bunch of cash because there was no such thing as ATMs. It’s kind of like that. Can you imagine? If you couldn’t slap your debit card down at the grocery store and just …
Jill DeWit: Right. It would be …
Jack Butala: That’d be tough. How many times in your life have you gotten to the … Before ATMs, or maybe you’re not old enough, I don’t know. Or your parents, specifically.
Jill DeWit: Wait, wait, wait. Oh, who are you talking to?
Jack Butala: Your parents are at the grocery, that thing, at checkout line, and they get to the end and it’s $82 instead of 78 and they have $78. They have to take some stuff out. My whole childhood was packed full of memories like that. It’s not because they didn’t have the money, it’s just they didn’t have the cash.
Jill DeWit: Got it. I can personally remember a time in my life where I didn’t have a lot of money, and I was shopping for a family, and I was literally going through the grocery store with a calculator. Have you ever done that?
Jack Butala: No. Again, once in a while you say something on the show just makes me love you more.
Jill DeWit: Oh, thank you.
Jack Butala: No women do that.
Jill DeWit: I did. I knew what I had.
Jack Butala: You know how hard it is to find a woman with a calculator at all?
Jill DeWit: Thank you. I would sit there going through, keeping track, because I knew how much money I had to spend on the groceries for that week. It was a long time ago, but anyway, bringing a little tear to my eye too.
Jack Butala: Makes me happy, Jill.
Jill DeWit: Thank you.
Jack Butala: You did something right.
Jill DeWit: Thank you. Thanks, Jack.
Jack Butala: Today’s topic, teaching your trade. This is the meat of the show, and I’m here to tell you it’s hard. Teaching is a whole separate talent. Just because you’re good at whatever, X, doesn’t mean you can sit down and film it and talk about it on some silly talk show like this and make any sense out of it at all. It is hard. Acting is hard, and that’s what teaching is. We do it every Thursday when we record these shows, and it takes a lot out of you.
Jill DeWit: Does it now?
Jack Butala: Jill’s looking at me cross-eyed, like, “What the hell are you talking about?”
Jill DeWit: This is therapy, Jack. Call a spade a spade. Come on, you know it. You love it. Missed your word calories.
Jack Butala: When I’m done with this show, this is what I’m going to go do. I’m going to be sending an agreement to a new money investor that we have. This guy doesn’t have a ton of money, but he’s got enough money so that he would … He’s interested in buying and selling, as an investor, two houses a month with us. For that, he earns a 5% return on his money, approximately.
Every month, the equity puts in 5%, next month 5%. You add all that up at the end of the year, it’s a pretty darn good return. So I can film it and show everybody else how to do it. This is my question I ask myself. Or I can just go get the darn thing done with the guy and get to buying and selling the assets, and then we all win.
That’s the question about teaching your trade. You have to ask yourself, “Do I want to film this? Do I want to share the secrets with everyone?” For years, I’m like, “This is the best-kept secret ever.” I’m sitting there looking in the mirror going, “You figured it out. This is it. Why would I tell anyone about any of this?” What do you think?
Jill DeWit: I agree with your … It’s hard. That was in the notes that I wrote. Man, it takes a lot out of you to really sit down and put on paper, in words, and on film, what you do every day, because it just comes … So much of it for you and I comes naturally, so you have to really take a step …
Jack Butala: This is not natural for me at all, I’m here to tell you.
Jill DeWit: Your data …
Jack Butala: Teaching?
Jill DeWit: No, no, no. What you do, our flipping real estate. That’s what I’m trying to say.
Jack Butala: Oh, yeah. The real estate piece.
Jill DeWit: Flipping real estate is easy. Teaching is not easy.
Jack Butala: Yeah, and the [crosstalk 00:06:57]
Jill DeWit: That’s the thing.
Jack Butala: Yeah, teaching’s not natural.
Jill DeWit: That’s the thing. It’s sometimes hard to convey what comes easy to you to someone else. We talk about Eddie Van Halen’s guitar. Eddie Van Halen, it’s easy for him to play, but he can’t teach someone to play as well as he does. Some stuff’s kind of impossible in that respect, but this is also teaching … It’s a slow process. I remember really having to slow down our business. We pretty much …
Jack Butala: We stopped it.
Jill DeWit: We did. We didn’t stop it, but we …
Jack Butala: It’s tragic.
Jill DeWit: We weren’t … When we were doing Land Academy, it was still running in the background and we were using our real transactions as we’re filming, but of course we weren’t as effective in our business because we were busy filming and doing the whole thing. You really took a step back, because that’s the reality. It was kind of fun.
While we were doing Land Academy, you were doing most of the filming and most of the production and the writing and all that, while I’m in the back providing the content and my recordings, and I’m doing the deals and keeping everything, the business side, going. That was fun.
Jack Butala: You know when we got done with Land Academy, filming it and producing it, and then it was actually available. I had a lot of people reach out to me because we were promoting it … Not promoting it. We were talking about it on the show before we actually released it. A lot of people, they were like, “Man, I didn’t think you guys were going to get this done.”
Jill DeWit: Oh, yeah, it was really funny.
Jack Butala: Then they all followed it up with, “I tried to do something like this a long time ago and it just didn’t work, and congratulations.” Another person said to me recently, and it’s a huge compliment … It was on a consulting call. They said, “Everybody on this planet talks about stuff, but you guys do it.” It’s a huge compliment.
Jill DeWit: That’s nice. You know, I was thinking about teaching your trade. I said we accidentally did great, which I think is true. We are not teachers. We were not raised by teachers. We didn’t study anything to be teachers. Never thought about being teachers or anything along those lines. I think for us, too, that it was like we really didn’t know where to start. How do you write a curriculum? I don’t know. This sounds right.
Jack Butala: A couple months ago Jill and I were talking about, “What’s it going to be like when we retire?” Not necessarily retire, but slow down. The first thing I thought of and said was, “We’re just going to buy and sell real estate.”
Jill DeWit: Exactly.
Jack Butala: We’re not going to actually have a talk show and do a video production and …
Jill DeWit: All the other things.
Jack Butala: … Be loud about it, like I like to say.
Jill DeWit: Loud about it.
Jack Butala: We’re just going to buy a few houses a month and flip them or whatever.
Jill DeWit: You know the thing that I think about teaching your trade, the number-one thing that you have to think about to be successful is you have to care. I think the reason that you and I did Land Academy and then soon to be House Academy, and are able to correctly convey and share and help people, is we really care. We’re doing it.
Jack Butala: Why, do you think? Because you’re right.
Jill DeWit: Because I don’t think we know how not to.
Jack Butala: I just think it’s in our soul.
Jill DeWit: That’s what I mean. That’s a nature thing, not a nurture thing. You can’t teach someone to care.
Jack Butala: Most of the people in real estate.
Jill DeWit: Would that be hilarious? “Congratulations, you got your care certificate.” I’m sorry. You’re wearing a sticker that says, “I care.”
Jack Butala: Yeah, I gave blood.
Jill DeWit: I gave blood. Oh, my gosh. Oh, man. If I could teach someone how to care, that would be a talent.
Jack Butala: Yeah. I just have flashbacks of having teenage boys, not that long ago.
Jill DeWit: We still have one.
Jack Butala: “You don’t care about this, do you?” “No, I really don’t care about it.” “Is there anything I can say that’s going to make you understand that math is important?” “Nope, don’t care.”
Jill DeWit: That’s what I’m saying.
Jack Butala: “How about we take your phone away?” “Don’t care.”
Jill DeWit: Right? “Don’t care.” You know what the kids do nowadays? I hate to tell you this. I have learned their secret. Every parent listening right now, when you take their phone away, not effective at all.
Jack Butala: Why?
Jill DeWit: They go buy a burner phone. I’m not kidding.
Jack Butala: What?
Jill DeWit: They go to Walmart. I’m not kidding. They go to the local convenience store or they walk in Walmart or something like that and they pick up a burner phone. They plop down $30, which they have.
Jack Butala: Wow.
Jill DeWit: Yeah. I hate to tell you this. I just found that out.
Jack Butala: What other secrets do you have? Child-raising secrets.
Jill DeWit: I don’t know why. What’s that?
Jack Butala: What other child-raising secrets do you have?
Jill DeWit: Okay, here’s my other child-raising secret.
Jack Butala: I knew you had one.
Jill DeWit: Just because you’re out of town and you come home to a clean house doesn’t mean they spent all weekend cleaning. That’s what I used to do.
Jack Butala: That’s an old secret.
Jill DeWit: I know. Okay, yeah. But no, with the burner phone thing, they do that, so don’t worry about it.
Jack Butala: Wow.
Jill DeWit: Yeah, sorry.
Jack Butala: You know, there’s this old concept, you got to teach to the top, teach to the middle, or teach to the bottom. In every class or in every group, there’s people who just kill it and there’s people who are in the middle and they’re like, “Ah, let’s just get through this.” Then there are people at the bottom that probably don’t even show up. I choose to teach to the top.
Jill DeWit: That’s what I was just going to say too, yes.
Jack Butala: I think that brings the whole thing …
Jill DeWit: If you don’t want to be here, you don’t. This is not a requirement.
Jack Butala: Yeah, this is not college, or high school.
Jill DeWit: This is a … What’s it called when it’s an … You’re taking an elective. This is an elective.
Jack Butala: Yeah.
Jill DeWit: I’m with you. I’m not here to solve … I’m not here to treat the whole … Well, let me back up. Deep down, I would love to educate the whole planet and let everyone know that the way that they’re buying and selling their home is wrong.
Jack Butala: Is wasteful.
Jill DeWit: And stupid.
Jack Butala: You said it, not me.
Jill DeWit: Thank you. I would really love to help the planet on that one, but I can’t. In the meantime, I’ll help those who want to be helped and teach them.
Jack Butala: Yep, and the generation after us, hopefully, will burn down the institution of realtors.
Jill DeWit: Yes.
Jack Butala: It won’t be us.
Jill DeWit: Oh, my gosh.
Jack Butala: It’s never the guy that starts the movement. It’s always two or three generations later that really just pick up the steam.
Jill DeWit: You know, someone’s got to … Why is not someone really taken a step back and said, “If you really think that person’s here for your best interest and a commission is just a little side thing …” Maybe that if you really think that they’re here for their best interest and they only get a commission because, “Oh, we got to keep food on their table” …
Jack Butala: For the same reason that you’re going to put gas in your car this week.
Jill DeWit: It’s ridiculous.
Jack Butala: It’s like, “Yeah, I know it’s not the right thing to do for a million reasons, but the thing’s just too big for me to conquer, so I’m just going to put the gas in the car.”
Jill DeWit: Meaning making your own fuel or changing your vehicle to …
Jack Butala: Oil is so huge.
Jill DeWit: Right.
Jack Butala: I don’t want to make this politics, but there’s some huge institutions out there that you just can’t tackle them.
Jill DeWit: Oh, yeah.
Jack Butala: You have to take tiny little bites out of it, and that’s it.
Jill DeWit: You know, the real estate community seems easier to me than taking on Chevron.
Jack Butala: Than changing oil? That’s why we’re in the right place.
Jill DeWit: Thank you.
Jack Butala: That’s why we’re teaching this.
Jill DeWit: Exactly.
Jack Butala: Take a little bite out of it.
Jill DeWit: Yeah.
Jack Butala: Just to do one or … As a group, we probably do between 100 and 1,000 deals a month, as a group, and we don’t do them with realtors. I consider that a pretty major success for what we have to go up against.
Jill DeWit: Right. One of my points is, too … This is totally off-topic, but there’s still a lot of people out there that don’t even know you can sell your house by yourself. They don’t know. They think you have to call a realtor. I think they think that their has to be somebody that’s licensed to oversee the transaction. They don’t know those signs in Lowe’s that say “For Sale By Owner,” you could really put in your yard and then go to an escrow company and do it yourself.
Jack Butala: Yeah.
Jill DeWit: I really think that there’s a lot of people out there that don’t know that. Boy, if I could just help those people …
Jack Butala: Right.
Jill DeWit: You know? There’s a better way. Keep the commission. Do your own deal. That’s subliminal.
Jack Butala: You know how Toyota came out with the hybrid called the Prius?
Jill DeWit: No, I haven’t heard of that. Sorry.
Jack Butala: If you read about it, really dig in about why they released that car and not just went straight to electric, it’s because … It’s not because it’s better. It’s not better. It’s because the market couldn’t handle it.
Jill DeWit: Baby steps.
Jack Butala: Yeah, so the market couldn’t …
Jill DeWit: Brilliant.
Jack Butala: For whatever reason, probably for some rogue marketing on the part of General Motors a long time ago. The market had this perception, and I include myself in that …
Jill DeWit: This is brilliant.
Jack Butala: … That electric cars are substandard. We all know now because of Tesla and the whole thing that’s just not the case. Battery technology’s catching up, or it has caught up. Now you can even get hydrogen cars. You just don’t need a combustion vehicle. My point is, it’s the same thing with real estate. As silly and cliché-ish as it sounds, raise awareness in the whole thing.
Jill DeWit: I love the baby steps. Okay, so maybe this is …
Jack Butala: You nailed it, because they don’t even know they can sell their house.
Jill DeWit: Right.
Jack Butala: That’s the first step, is “Do you know you can sell your house without a realtor and you’re not going to be unrepresented?”
Jill DeWit: You know what?
Jack Butala: They think it’s like going to court without a lawyer.
Jill DeWit: Yeah, and you could do that too. People don’t know that.
Jack Butala: Yeah, you don’t want to do that.
Jill DeWit: You don’t want to. Okay. You can represent yourself. I wouldn’t recommend it. Let me back up, though. Still, this is what I think what we’re doing. With House Academy, as we’re reaching out to these people, we are reaching out to people who don’t have a sign in the yard but they want to sell.
Jack Butala: Maybe that’s the tag line for House Academy.
Jill DeWit: Here we come, and there’s no realtor, okay?
Jack Butala: You don’t need a realtor to sell your house. Maybe that’s the whole tag line.
Jill DeWit: We’re baby-stepping into this by teaching them first how to sell their house and then when they watch us, everybody … I hope it’s going to catch on.
Jack Butala: You’re passionate about this.
Jill DeWit: I am passionate about it. Because you know what? I’m just sick of the … It’s unnecessary. You know what?
Jack Butala: What if you had a person in your marriage like a realtor in your real-estate deal? And everything you did, they were in the middle of it, and they got paid. Everything you did, they got paid.
Jill DeWit: Right. Oh, my god. And they had to butt their nose into everything, and they had to look …
Jack Butala: Yeah, everything. “What are you going to have for dinner tonight? Oh, here’s my suggestion.”
Jill DeWit: And they had to look over everything and make changes to it.
Jack Butala: Yeah, right, and they approve it and stuff, and you had to sign stuff.
Jill DeWit: Yeah, exactly.
Jack Butala: And they represented you both. They represent both of you.
Jill DeWit: That’s a great, great thing.
Jack Butala: “Whose side are you on?” “Oh, I’m not on her side.”
Jill DeWit: And they’re real slow to return your calls and they’re real slow to help you get to the ingredients you need, whatever.
Jack Butala: They’re basically walking around between you, getting in the way.
Jill DeWit: In the way.
Jack Butala: That’s a real-estate agent.
Jill DeWit: And slowing you down.
Jack Butala: Yep.
Jill DeWit: Yep.
Jack Butala: And charging you for it.
Jill DeWit: Tell us how you really feel. Charging you for it. “I’m going to sit on this for a week and you’re going to pay, because I’m traveling because of the last deal.”
Jack Butala: Right.
Jill DeWit: Okay, that was awesome.
Jack Butala: “I’ve been out of the country for a month. What do you mean you’ve been spending a whole month with the realtor?” Can you imagine how that would go?
Jill DeWit: Oh, it’s awful.
Jack Butala: It’s a disaster. That’s exactly what happens in a real-estate deal.
Jill DeWit: It’s true. It’s true.
Jack Butala: We’ll, you’ve done it again. You’ve wasted another 20 minutes listening to the Jack and Jill Show. Join us tomorrow, where we discuss how we establish trust with our sellers.
Jill DeWit: Oh, and we answer your question, should you have one, posted on JackJill.com. Go there and find our free online community.
Jack Butala: You are not alone in your real estate ambition.
Jill DeWit: I hope that we’re making a difference.
Jack Butala: Wow. We are. We have to be. Even if it’s for just our members.
Jill DeWit: Yeah, exactly.
Jack Butala: Of course we are. People tell us every week.
Jill DeWit: I want to reach more people.
Jack Butala: I know you do. You always say that.
Jill DeWit: Look, come on. Every single one of us has at least one unpleasant real-estate agent experience, period. I would love to someday have none, talk to people that don’t have those. Keep the good ones, if there are good ones.
Jack Butala: Yeah. Oh, yeah. There’s good ones.
Jill DeWit: The ones that are really out there are making a difference and helping people. They say things like, “This house is not for you. Come on. We talked about this. I know you’re in love with the pool or the view, but we all know it’s too small for your family, you’re going to be unhappy.” No, I don’t think they do that.
Jack Butala: No, there’s no way.
Jill DeWit: I think they stand there and go, “This is the one you want? All right, we’re going to make it happen.” Then the people are unhappy and they don’t realize what just happened.
Jack Butala: Yeah, I agree with you.
Jill DeWit: Thank you, Jack.
Jack Butala: Times 80.
Jill DeWit: Thank you. Hey, if you agree, share the fun by subscribing on iTunes or wherever you are listening. While you’re at it, read us there. We are Jack and Jill.
Jack Butala: We are Jack and Jill. Information …
Jill DeWit: … And inspiration …
Jack Butala: … To buy undervalued property.
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