Run to the Bank Notary Close Title Insurance Afterward (LA 1063)

I would like to think it’s entertaining and informative and in the end profitable.

And finally, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts.

There are Con Artists All Around You (LA 1062)

September 5, 2019 / Joey Chavez / Podcasts

There are Con Artists All Around You (LA 1062)

Transcript:

Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here.

Jill DeWit: Hi.

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

Jill DeWit: And I’m Jill Dewitt, broadcasting from sunny Southern California.

Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about how there are con artists all around you. And here’s the show that Jill and I talked about right before we started.

Jill DeWit: Yep.

Steven Butala: This has that potential to be so negative and we won’t let that happen.

Jill DeWit: Because that’s not who we are.

Steven Butala: We’re going to just give you our take on our industry and the land industry and the education industry and we’re going to laugh about it. And it’s not negative.

Jill DeWit: Nope. But we want you to be aware.

Steven Butala: Yeah.

Jill DeWit: And we’re going to talk about that.

Steven Butala: A couple of days ago, we had an interview with Travis Jenkins.

Jill DeWit: Yesterday.

Steven Butala: Yeah. Yeah. Yesterday. And he flat out said, I don’t know if it was in the after show or in the actual show, he said, “I think that you guys have an obligation to do the show like this to really, because you’re the ones who have the experience at all of it.” So we’ll get into it in a second, but-

Jill DeWit: I forgot that part.

Steven Butala: It was a good compliment.

Jill DeWit: It was nice.

Steven Butala: And this is my way of relieving my obligation to Travis Jenkins.

Jill DeWit: Nice.

Steven Butala: Before we get into it, let’s take a question posted by one of our members on the landinvestors.com online community. It’s free.

Jill DeWit: Jim W. wrote, “Hi, all. I’ve been selling lower-cost properties on terms without title. I’m closing my first larger sale with title and they are preparing a payoff deed to be recorded. I have heard we do not want to use a deed of trust as then you need to go through foreclosure to recover property if there’s any default. Is anyone familiar with a payoff deed and what is necessary if the buyer defaults? Thanks, James.” This is all your thing.

Steven Butala: A payoff deed? So he’s exactly exactly right. What he’s going down the path of doing a deed of trust. There’s two ways to sell property on terms with with seller financing. A deed of trust, which is very similar to how you would buy a house. The property gets recorded in your name. There’s a mortgage on it, and they have a lien. So in the case of a deed of trust here with land, it’s the exact same thing. That property goes into the new buyer’s name and you, the seller, are essentially acting as the bank and in between you is a trustee. And the deed of trust outlines all of this. In fact, it’s just like a car title. They’re actually on the actual deed so that when the property gets all paid off years from now, that pay off deed, just like you get a new title to your car, the Toyota Financial or whatever’s on there gets removed and would get removed as a seller and you get a pay off deed.

Steven Butala: That’s the mechanics of it. The other way is a land contract where I’m a seller. I sell a property to Jill. We sign a contract, the deed, property stays in my name until she pays it off. Then I deed it to her. And that way if you’re out of compliance, if she’s out of compliance in any way during the course of the deal, there’s terms and conditions in there and procedures about what happens. And essentially it’s if she’s 30 days late-

Jill DeWit: Whatever you outline.

Steven Butala: … for any reason, it’s over. I own the property and it’s all done. So you have to be real careful. If you’re listening to this, please pay attention to this. Every state and some jurisdictions like counties have rules about this and they have very, very strong opinions and a lot of cases they have case law to back up these opinions. So what I just described may work in some states, but what I described may not be appropriate at all. These are just the basic concepts of the two types of ways to deed property to people and provide seller financing. So please check your-

Jill DeWit: Check your state.

Steven Butala: And the contracts. Some states even go so far as to say you need to use this contract.

Jill DeWit: We prefer the latter and and we would only do them in the states that accept the latter because on the first part, right, you like that, which is true. Well, because the first part, if there’s so much to undo, that’s the whole thing.

Steven Butala: It’s expensive.

Jill DeWit: It really is. And I’ll tell you, truth be told, this is why we do not do this really at all anymore. I’d rather buy for cash, sell for cash, than have to babysit payments. Because it’s true. There’s a lot that goes into it. It sounds great. A lot of people like it because they feel they can sell property faster and higher. And probably, yes, at some point, you get in the end more money, but I’d rather have it double my cash right now and move on. I don’t need to wait three years to triple my investment at a hundred dollars a month and babysit the deal because there’s always something. “Oh, it’s Christmas. Can I move my date? Oh, I lost my job.” It’s a lot of work.

Steven Butala: It’s not passive by any stretch.

Jill DeWit: This is true. Yeah, there isn’t anything passive about it.

Steven Butala: I mean, here’s some Steve and Joel reality. Here’s some reality checks on this, on term sales. The default rate for rural vacant land is between 50 and 75%, sometimes 95%, in certain cases. The difference between rural vacant land and infill lots is that there’s an intended use and like we said it earlier in the week, the use of this property has already been mapped out. So people usually, when they buy property on terms, they go use it and so that they want to pay it off.

Jill DeWit: Right.

Steven Butala: People who buy rural vacant land for all different types of reasons on terms might lose interest in the whole thing in six months and you don’t want to get stuck holding… To have to spend… To foreclose on a property through a trust deed is on a low end, 1200. On the high end, 35 to $5,500. So in a lot of cases that’s more than the whole property’s worth.

Jill DeWit: And a lot of steps and a lot of work.

Steven Butala: Yeah.

Jill DeWit: Thank you.

Steven Butala: Yeah, that’s the whole deal. Stick to cash in the beginning. We could have just said that in the beginning.

Jill DeWit: This is true.

Steven Butala: Today’s topic. There are con artists all around you. This is the meat of the show. In this space that Jill and I have put ourselves into, for better or for worse, educating people about how to buy and sell real estate, there’s just a lot of crooks. And you have a choice. I’m making this as positive as possible and I would encourage you heavily to do this. What separates us and just about everybody else that I’m aware of it in this space is our experience and our education and our commitment to doing a daily show and our advice. And the fact that we do every single Thursday, multiple webinars for our members and on and on and on.

Jill DeWit: Transactions.

Steven Butala: And the services that we provide and the 16,000 deals that we’ve done should tell you, and I’m not selling anything here, that we’re serious about this. And we’re here to stay. I mean, we’re on episode 1100 almost now. And we have just as many weekly webinars. We started doing it in 2015. I think we missed one week, one or two weeks because of holidays. So there are other people who take this concept unfortunately and make it not legit. And in every case that I’ve seen this happen and it never ends up being a real threat to us, by any stretch, or our members. Because the type of members that we have see right through this stuff, anyway.

Jill DeWit: Good point.

Steven Butala: But what it ends up doing is for newer people, who really need the most help in a lot of different ways, confuses them.

Jill DeWit: It’s true.

Steven Butala: And in the worst case thing that can happen is they start down the… New people might start down this path, get some bad information or some information that from people that are just doing it halfheartedly and it ends their career because they don’t have a good experience with their first few deals. Or they get sold some stuff that’s too expensive, not land but education and all of it. So there are con artists all around you. And it’s not just this industry. It’s every single industry.

Jill DeWit: Everywhere. Exactly.

Steven Butala: I bet you a dollar wherever you work, you could sit there. If you really sit there, sit around and think about who’s basically a crook that I work with. Who’s a great person and who’s a crook?

Jill DeWit: This is true. Exactly. Exactly. And we’re only bringing it up because we’ve had a recent, a reminder to be on our toes about this and we just wanted to bring it to your attention. So I was going to say, be aware, like you just said, Steven. We all know where… You all kind of know. You have a sense. And like I said, it came to us recently and I thought I saw it, but I missed it, man. So I’m going back to my own instincts and trusting my gut a little bit more. I want you to trust your gut. And not just, just even in transactions, I’m even talking dealing with buyers, dealing with sellers. Everything. No matter what you’re doing, please trust your gut. You’ve got to do this. Do your homework. Take action before it’s too late. Don’t squash it down. I really want you to-

Steven Butala: Don’t see something that’s not there.

Jill DeWit: Yes, exactly.

Steven Butala: Women are famous for having this sixth sense about, no, something’s off, man.

Jill DeWit: Exactly.

Steven Butala: Men are famous for the exact opposite. Let’s just barrel through it and see what happens at the other end.

Jill DeWit: Right.

Steven Butala: And then it’s all ends in a fiery ball of tragedy. And the woman that’s standing next to him is going…

Jill DeWit: I tried to tell you.

Steven Butala: This didn’t feel right for me from the beginning. How many times you ever heard that sentence?

Jill DeWit: Right.

Steven Butala: This didn’t feel right for me from the beginning. And even men have it and they just try to see something that’s not there, both in real estate deals and then in dealing with various business partners and things like that. So just tread cautiously. Ask yourself a lot of questions. In a perfect world, if I were, I’ll tell you, here’s an example. Way earlier in my career, way before Land Academy was even a thought, I took almost a week long seminar on tax lien foreclosures in Las Vegas. It was very expensive, extremely expensive.

Steven Butala: It’s the only time I’ve ever kind of taken any online education that way. And the reason that I chose to do it and chose this guy, he’s a former owner of taxellis.com, was because I did, I don’t know, two or three months of research. I listened to, he had a show. He wrote a very, very intelligent blog as a writer. It was incredibly intelligent. And had crazy, crazy amount of experience. He had an airplane collection, which didn’t hurt anything, because he’s a serious pilot. So that’s lends itself some credibility. And he did tons and tons and tons of deals. His first name was John. I don’t remember. So I’d go to the seminar by myself.

Steven Butala: There’s probably 10 or 15 people in there. It’s not.. Just like our live events. I think there’s what, 20 or 30 people at our live events? It’s not a stadium full of people and I learned so much. I would’ve paid twice or what I… So that’s how Jill and I have set Land Academy up. We want you to feel like you are-

Jill DeWit: It is. Part of a tight community.

Steven Butala: It’s like I got so much value for my money, it’s silly. It’s silly. I would’ve paid twice as much for that. If that’s what you think at the end of all this, then I did my job.

Jill DeWit: Yep.

Steven Butala: And that’s how seriously I take this.

Jill DeWit: I agree. Thank you. My other thing I was going to say, my last point is, don’t be that person. And you might find yourself staring at a deal that you kind of scratch your head going, huh, I could probably get away with this. Or someone might bring you something that’s a little bit borderline, in your gut, let’s just say it, unethical. Don’t. Please don’t do that. Don’t be that person. I look at every deal, every transaction that way and there’s things that we flat out, we will not do. We will not. I’ll make half the money and do the right thing. We mean it when we say it, too, with our team. We’re like, “All right, everybody. We’re always going to do the right thing. Even if it cost more, whatever it is.”

Steven Butala: Here’s some red flags for me. This is just me. Other people do fantastic. They build a career on this. When someone asks me for money, “Hey, you want to put 50,000 bucks into this?” It sends out a massive red flag for me.

Jill DeWit: Right.

Steven Butala: Here’s the way around it. And here’s what Jill and I do all the time. “Hey, I’ve got this great property. Here’s the APN. I’ve got it under contract for this. I know we can sell it for Y, but I’d love your opinion, Steve. Do you want to invest in it with me? It’s just a one time deal. If it works, maybe we’ll do some other deals together.” So now I have control over the deal and they’re not blindly asking me for money, which for some reason it just sends me to the moon and everybody’s role’s defined. Maybe I’m the money person. Maybe they’re the manager on the deal. Maybe it’s the opposite. And so I’ve done a lot of deals on both sides that way and it seems to work out great. Do you have any immediate red flags when people come to you?

Jill DeWit: Well, yeah, I do. A lot of it is just kind of that. I need to see a deal. I need to really see a deal. Yeah, like you just said, don’t come to me like, “Hey, I need X amount. Don’t worry about it.” Well, I am going to worry about it.

Steven Butala: Here’s another really good example where there’s a guy in our group who is an accomplished Los Angeles County employee. And he has a tremendous amount of experience in the zoning and all kinds of stuff in there. So he came to us and said, “I’ve got several clients who are trying to find this property type.” So now I’m really sitting up straight and listening because he’s got a ton of experience. He’s actually got some real clients and he needs our expertise to locate properties that are very strategic. And he’s got it all spelled out in a spreadsheet and he wants to split it 50/50 and together we’re better.

Jill DeWit: Bingo.

Steven Butala: And so we’re immediately better and we both are set up to succeed based on what we bring to the table. He brings something that’s so unique to the table and I’d like to think we do, too. And it’s all based in experience.

Jill DeWit: Exactly.

Steven Butala: So we have several lines of business like this, and now’s not the time to bring it up, with members who have proven themselves-

Jill DeWit: It’s true.

Steven Butala: … and it’s cash flowing and they’re happy and we’re happy and they’re using their resources. We’re using ours. And in every case they brought something to the table where they’re already better at it than we are.

Jill DeWit: Right.

Steven Butala: And I’d like to think we did on our end, too. That’s not a red flag situation.

Jill DeWit: I would, for me, I’m going to end it on this. Our group is 99.999% awesome, trustworthy, fantastic. And I feel great about them.

Steven Butala: Yep. Next, we’re going to introduce-

Jill DeWit: And I’m very lucky.

Steven Butala: Yeah. I’m proud. I’m proud to be the ringleader.

Jill DeWit: Yeah.

Steven Butala: Next week, we’re going to do a show about the typical Land Academy member profile and I can’t wait. We’re going to interview some of our staff because they’re on the front lines. And I have a lot of questions. Some of the questions I have are like even with brand new members, what’s the difference in their personality type? And I think it’d be really interesting.

Jill DeWit: That’s a good show.

Steven Butala: Hey, we know your time’s valuable. Thanks for spending some of it with us today. Join us next time for an episode called Run to the Bank, Notary Close, and Then Get Title Insurance Afterward.

Jill DeWit: Interesting. And we answer your questions posted on our online community found at landinvestors.com. It is free.

Steven Butala: You are not alone in your real estate ambition. That crazy title that I came up with there. We’re going to talk about it tomorrow is based on an actual deal that Jill is doing that’s closing. Well, it’ll be closed by the time this airs, for sure.

Jill DeWit: Yep.

Steven Butala: It’s a really, really interesting deal. This doesn’t happen to us very often, but once in a while we do deals that are… This deal happens to be very financially feasible for us, but it also is really helping to seller out and it’s ensuring that… It’s just a little bit unorthodox the way we’re doing this deal, but we’ll share all the details. I find these deals extremely interesting.

Jill DeWit: Exactly. Wherever you’re watching, wherever you are listening, please subscribe and rate us there.

Steven Butala: 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.

If you enjoyed the podcast, please review it in Apple Podcasts . Reviews are incredibly important for rankings on Apple Podcasts. My staff and I read each and every one.

If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to email me directly at steven@BuWit.com.

The BuWit Family of Companies include:

I would like to think it’s entertaining and informative and in the end profitable.

And finally, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts.

Member Travis Jenkins Land Academy Success Stories (LA 1061)

September 4, 2019 / Joey Chavez / Podcasts

Member Travis Jenkins Land Academy Success Stories (LA 1061)

Transcript:

Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here.

Jill DeWit: Hi.

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

Jill DeWit: And I’m Jill DeWit, broadcasting from sunny Southern California.

Steven Butala: Today, we have member extraordinaire Travis Jenkins from I think Dallas, Travis?

Travis Jenkins: Houston.

Steven Butala: Houston, okay [crosstalk 00:00:18]. Travis is and has been our number one O2O Offers 2 Owners user and taken The Land Academy Program, in my opinion, to places that Jill and I have taken and really has used it as Jill and I intended for it to be used at like an institutional business level since the beginning. Travis, most of the questions that I have for you today center around that exact concept.

Travis Jenkins: Welcome, by the way. Thank you.

Steven Butala: We had the good fortune to have a little bit of a pre-show discussion, but when you joined Land Academy, did intend to use it as a super user and send out the level of mail that you’re sending out? Did you intend for this to be this successful for you?

Travis Jenkins: I hoped so. I saw the potential of the business, and I’ve been studying business models for several years and I used to teach business. I’m going to give you a very indirect answer. The goal was, yes. From a business standpoint, there is a value triangle and I saw that there is… this is one of the few business models where you can fulfill all three sides of a value triangle, which is quick, fast, and cheap.

Jill DeWit: Love it.

Travis Jenkins: Most times, you can either do it quick… I said quick and fast, so quality, fast, and cheap, that’s actually what it is, so you can either do it fast with quality and it’s not going to be cheap, or any of those other two sides. When you can fulfill all three of those sides, it puts you in a different stratosphere as far as a business is concerned. I owned a construction company, and so we sold value so we didn’t sell to the cheap home improvement remodeling, we sold to the quality-minded people, which meant we were not cheap, right?

Jill DeWit: Right.

Travis Jenkins: We always fulfilled those two parts of that triangle, and so that precluded us from slowing down during tough economic times because people with money still was doing remodeling. They were still doing remodeling. It’s just a way of looking at a business model. I saw that early on. I also systemized my business to where I didn’t have to work in it, and it may sound like I’m brilliant with it and I come up with that on my own [crosstalk 00:03:35]-

Steven Butala: You don’t sound brilliant. Don’t worry.

Travis Jenkins: Thank you for that, but I have to tell you that these ideas and these discoveries come from losing everything. I had built a very successful business, and then I lost somebody in my family and it took a very dramatic turn to where I wasn’t able to be present in the business the way I should. We were doing seven figures a month, and so that business wouldn’t operate or couldn’t operate the way that it needed to operate without me being present. Ultimately, I tried to get it back on track. Couldn’t, lost everything, and so went from being affluent, self-made, and I started out with nothing, so I made it on my own the first time. I thought it was the end of the world for me, and it was for a brief period of time.

Travis Jenkins: My discovery or my real growth came when I made it back, and then I had clarity that success in business is actually a very flawed process. It’s if you’re not making mistakes, you’re not trying hard enough, and so on a deeper level, I knew that. My real business acumen came when I had to make it. It took me 15 years to reach a level of affluence. After I lost it I built it back in 15 months-

Jill DeWit: Wow.

Travis Jenkins: And it’s not because I’m special, it’s because of a mentality and also the people that I surrounded myself with. I still had those connections. I still had the people that were willing to follow me for over a decade, and so I built on those things. I give you that background to say I’ve had my rear handed to me and that’s where my skills came from. My high level of assessing of what’s going on, of tracking, of KPIs, of all of those other things, and then I started mentoring. I built back a multi-million-dollar business and I built another one after that. Then, I started mentoring business owners because I really come to the conclusion that I only fit around other business people. If someone is not a business owner, they typically bore me because they have nothing to say that interests me.

Steven Butala: It’s such a different mindset, especially if they’re high up in a corporation. It just takes a totally different view of how things go.

Travis Jenkins: I didn’t agree with the victimhood mindset. I don’t agree with “Thank God it’s Friday”. Practically anything they say is absurd to me, and so I just started mentoring people and I thought, “Well, I love helping business owners”, and then I started mentoring high-level business owners. That’s kind of how I’ve got to a point where I moved from working in the business working on the business. That freedom to not work in the business anymore, one day I just said… I had the nicest office. I said, “Take my office.” My wife at the time is like, “What?” I said, “Take my office. I don’t need it anymore.”

Travis Jenkins: I just quit coming in, and through [crosstalk 00:07:48] systemization, I just had an awakening to where I was there and people asked me questions because I was there. I just systemized everything. I started writing out flowcharts. “This is how we turn the lights on. This is how we open the shop in the morning. This is how we do this.” For a little while, people would call and ask me and I’d say, “Look at the SOP. Look at the SOP.”

Steven Butala: We have nine lines of revenue right now, and I came to the realization about a year ago that when I show up in the office, I think we make less money, we’re less effective, and I just wasn’t providing operations value anymore, so now I run what we call, or what I call anyway, the think tank. I’m three or four or five months out front with these new products, and I agree with you on a personal note.

Steven Butala: This is the third time for me personally getting wealthy, and the first time was just terrible that I didn’t lose it all, but man, I’ll tell you, it took a punch to the gut. The second time, I knew I could get back on my feet again, but that first time that that happens to you, that’ll make a man out of you. It’s a tough thing to go through, but it was necessary for me, too, for some reason. I don’t know, I’m not sure why, but I totally identify with what you’re saying.

Travis Jenkins: You think it’s the end of the world because you [crosstalk 00:09:14]-

Steven Butala: Your identity is wrapped up in it.

Travis Jenkins: In order to be really, really good at it, you need to take it personal. Some people say it’s not personal, no, it is personal. It is personal. I eat, breathe, and sleep this stuff.

Steven Butala: So do we.

Travis Jenkins: The acumen level has to be there, and so acumen normally doesn’t come without you getting your rear kicked.

Steven Butala: How many properties are you buying? Can you give us some raw numbers? How much mail are you sending out a month? How many properties are you buying? What’s a typical deal look like for you? Then, where do you see it all in six months? I know how fast you’re growing.

Travis Jenkins: Well, I’ll throw around some numbers here and try to track as many things as possible. We did a little over 22,000 mailings in the month of August. I didn’t know that we were the number one when we were with O2O. That’s good to know. We’ve done 124,000 mail-outs. I don’t really track the response rate. I do in every other type business, and I don’t in this one because the sales lead gets better on the acquisition side, gets better with time, and so that… it’s always improving. The ROI on mailing is off the charts, so there’s no need for me to worry about that.

Travis Jenkins: The last six months has been us just trying to get out of our own way. It’s trying to set up staff members, SOPs, best practices. We moved from Trello to Airtable. Lost… major things fell through the cracks, deals, all kinds of stuff, and so it’s like driving a hundred miles an hour with your hair on fire. It’s a lot of fun, it’s very stressful, and it’s scary at times, but a good life.

Steven Butala: Jill and I, once the mail goes out, and this happens every month, we get some deals back in. Some of them rise to the top because they’re so amazing that we forget about tracking the statistics. This happened on Friday, it’s Monday now, but we get this property in and the woman didn’t know that she owned the property adjacent to it, and so Jill tacked on another couple of grand on the acquisition price because she [crosstalk 00:12:20]-

Travis Jenkins: She is so happy [crosstalk 00:12:20]-

Steven Butala: Because she rolls that way. We’ve created $350,000 of value this month so far, it’s like the 26th, so I stopped tracking the success rate after that happens also.

Jill DeWit: Travis knows, it’s because I’ll get calls… I still get calls from 2005. You can’t track that. I just found the letter and they’re so happy.

Travis Jenkins: I find myself… I’ve joined… there’s a call that I show up on sometimes. It’s an advanced call and sometimes I’m geeking out on stuff that everybody already knows there, but I can’t help but wonder if everybody understands how profound this lead generation source is to generate. I started Google when Google was brand new. We had pretty much perfected radio and TV in tracking conversions through unique phone numbers and stuff. I have a lineage. I’ve been in business for 28 years and so I was in business way before the internet and so the amount of time and effort that goes into generating this amount of leads on other platforms is off the charts and most people don’t realize it. I used to spend 130,000 a month on radio and TV alone-

Jill DeWit: Wow.

Travis Jenkins: And so we dominated in the home improvement industry. I spent a fraction of that on these leads, literally a fraction, and those leads are very fickle. They start going bad, they’re like fruit. I mentioned this to you guys. They have a lifespan of a day or two and if you don’t get ahold of them… We’re very focused on getting back with these people, asking the questions, all of those things. You don’t have those barriers in this business, and that’s a very, very big deal. This business allows people with a lower level of business acumen to get into it.

Jill DeWit: That’s a great point.

Steven Butala: What I love about this business model is that as a teenager and in my early 20s, I was always around manufacturing, which is such a fixed cost-oriented business. You got to plow in so much dough before you even get off the ground at all. What I love about this business is it’s almost a hundred percent variable cost. If for whatever reason you don’t want to send some mail out next month and you don’t want to buy some real estate next month, let’s say you want to go to Tahiti, I don’t care whatever your reasons are, I can’t think of a reason why you wouldn’t do it, but you can turn it on and off, and as you know, you can do this out of your back bedroom really effectively.

Steven Butala: It sounds kind of weird when you say it, but you have complete and total control over how much money you make and it’s predictable and consistent. I don’t want to sound like a commercial, but if there was a better business, I would buy it. I would be involved in it.

Travis Jenkins: I second that. The decades it took me to set up a business that runs without me, a couple of decades, so this business, there’s four stages of competence and I had to be in the fourth stage of competence of business within that industry and within business before I would let a business run without me or work remote. This business model, you can be in the early stages of competence, stage three, and work remote or collapse the overhead down. There’s just so many moveable things with this business model that a lot of people and don’t understand.

Travis Jenkins: The four stages is unconsciously competent, incompetent, which means you don’t know what you don’t know, consciously competent, and I’m sure you guys know this already, is you now know what it is you don’t know. Three is unconsciously competent, you know how to do something, you don’t know how to teach it. Then, stage four is consciously competent. You know how to do it and yo know how to teach it.

Travis Jenkins: You don’t need to be able to teach this business model to other people to start prospering and to start making the type of money that it took me eight years to make off of my business. I could go on and on and on about the many different benefits of this business model, but I completely agree with you. There’s just not anything out there that can hold a candle to it, and so that’s one of the reasons why I saw it for what it was early on. Just like I saw Google coming.

Travis Jenkins: I was on an airplane when I read about it in a magazine, and as soon as I landed I called my wife and I said, “You’re not going to believe this. We can capture customers in the buying cycle. They have their wallets out.” She was like, “Oh, that’s great, hon.” I said, “No, you don’t understand.” I had my laptop and I sat up a campaign and so we had tracking numbers back then. We used a specific phone number and that would tell me where that lead came from. The next day I had two leads from Google and I knew… this was that type of thing. When I saw the business model, I saw the potential there for what could happen. Bless you.

Jill DeWit: Thank you.

Travis Jenkins: I completely agree with you. It’s not a commercial, it’s a fact.

Jill DeWit: It’s true.

Steven Butala: I have business epiphanies all the time I charge into whatever room Jill is in [crosstalk 00:18:34]-

Jill DeWit: That’s true.

Steven Butala: And I explain it just like that and she says, “That’s great. Why don’t you just crack open a beer and sit down and calm down and try not to have a heart attack because it’s going to happen again in two hours from now?”

Jill DeWit: Exactly. It’s true.

Travis Jenkins: You need to start texting me with those ideas [crosstalk 00:18:51]-

Jill DeWit: I will [crosstalk 00:18:51]-

Steven Butala: Yes.

Jill DeWit: I will tell him that.

Steven Butala: Yeah, we should take it out on each other, Travis [crosstalk 00:18:54].

Jill DeWit: Exactly.

Travis Jenkins: I get it, I get it. You need somebody to disappear off the end with those things. My strength and weakness is I’m myopic at times. I will drill into something and I will stay on it and stay on it, and I’m a right brainer, so I train myself to do that. Most right brainers don’t want to do things like that. I completely understand where you’re coming from.

Travis Jenkins: Getting back to your question earlier, we’re stabilizing at right around 150 a month in revenue. We’re very, very close to jumping to those next levels of 250, 350 a month-

Jill DeWit: Awesome.

Travis Jenkins: I fully expect and I’ve told you this before, I expect that we’ll be at a million a month hopefully within the next six to eight months.

Jill DeWit: Love it.

Travis Jenkins: Again, there’s no throughput issues in my construction company if we sold $5 million worth of… or 2 million tomorrow. I couldn’t produce a million tomorrow, or 2 million or 5 million. I can sell a million or 2 million tomorrow without having a crew of 40, right?

Steven Butala: Yeah.

Travis Jenkins: There’s no throughput issues. That’s another benefit of that business model. It’s very easy to scale as long as you are willing to ante and part of the ante is sending mail.

Steven Butala: Our biggest challenge from day one to yesterday, our biggest challenge is staffing.

Jill DeWit: Totally.

Steven Butala: Do you share that concept? Or what’s your biggest challenge let’s say?

Travis Jenkins: It depends on what you mean by staffing. We’ve got some really good people finding… Everybody is remote, and so we really like that. That when you hire people remote, it makes it easier to find the best of the best because most people want to work from home and so I don’t care what you’re doing as long as you’re effective with your time. It allows us to go into different areas. It’s just opened things up whenever you hire remote, and I’ve done that across other businesses and so that’s kind of where I’ve gotten that awareness from.

Steven Butala: I’m going to take that as a piece of advice, actually. I just wrote it down. We have some of our best people… are remote, but they started in the office with us, so maybe we’ll try that on this next road [crosstalk 00:22:03]-

Jill DeWit: I think so, too. Exactly.

Steven Butala: We need to hire like five people right now. That’s exactly what I’m going to spend my day on after this.

Travis Jenkins: We’re very, very candid, very blunt up front. We say, “Listen, this is a great opportunity. We’re willing to put you in a position to where you make good money, you have freedom, all of these other things, but we’re going to hold you accountable.” Time theft, might as well be stealing something from my house, right?

Jill DeWit: Yep.

Travis Jenkins: Stealing time, you steal money. We don’t deal with thieves, and misrepresenting something. We lay those things out. We’ve very candid about that during the interview process.

Jill DeWit: Yes. I [crosstalk 00:22:54]-

Travis Jenkins: People that are concerned about that flinch during the interview process and that’s our litmus test. We get them out right then.

Jill DeWit: We just had a transaction coordinator that I was that way. I was very upfront and honest with her about it. I don’t think she took me seriously and at week three very nicely said, “I can’t keep up with guys.”

Steven Butala: She couldn’t take it.

Jill DeWit: She resigned, and it was all good terms. It was very sweet, she just said, “I didn’t know you guys were serious.” I’m like, “Yeah. That’s how we roll.” Just the volume, she wasn’t really ready for it, and it worked out fine, but I’m with you. Even like with all of our members, we do that, too. We want to let them know up front that, “Hey, if you’re afraid of a spreadsheet, if you can’t answer the phone, there’s all kinds of little things that you need to be [crosstalk 00:23:49]-

Steven Butala: It’s not going to work.

Jill DeWit: Ready for. I want you to know what you’re getting into.”

Steven Butala: Is there a personality type, Travis, that you look for when you hire?

Travis Jenkins: From like a Kolbe standpoint?

Steven Butala: Yeah.

Travis Jenkins: No, I used to do the personality test and so I’m really leaning more towards… Almost all the staff members are women because they’re much better at multitasking [crosstalk 00:24:20]-

Steven Butala: Jill, we just had this conversation this weekend? The best people I’ve ever had and even now [crosstalk 00:24:25]-

Jill DeWit: Well [crosstalk 00:24:26]-

Travis Jenkins: I know that’s not very PC. I couldn’t give two you know what about PC anyways, so the fact is women are just… they can set the ego aside. Our prospects would rather hear a female voice in my opinion. They’re just a better team member for what we’re doing here, and so I almost hired a guy for some analytical stuff, just coding and other things, but pretty much I… Also finding someone that needs a job rather than wants a job is critical to me. People that say they’re high paced and they want a job tend to flake whenever they’re pressed on, whereas if they need to show up and they have that drive, and so those are the things that we’re looking for.

Travis Jenkins: The interview is a full contact. We’re either going to scare you by talking to you, or they’re going to be excited. Part of where my construction business went so far awry is we become this gigantic, commercial entity that doesn’t say what it thinks and everything meant to be fluffy and doesn’t hurt people’s feelings. When you’re very candid about your passion, your integrity, your business model, all of those other things, it either attracts them or repels them. That was a big lesson for me is I quit doing what got me there and starting doing what I thought needed to be done rather than being more candid and just forthcoming about the whole thing.

Steven Butala: We do an interview with a member just about every week and it’s not often that I actually like take notes and learn, so that’s what I’ve been doing this whole time. I’m with you [crosstalk 00:27:02]-

Travis Jenkins: I love [crosstalk 00:27:02]-

Steven Butala: We’re going to change our hiring practices because of this.

Travis Jenkins: When you say problems with staff, does that mean investing time with them only for them to flake a little bit later?

Steven Butala: No, quite candidly, on my personal end, for whatever reason, and we’re allowing this, it’s not them, they feed us a bunch of lines about what they’re capable of, and then we find out after it’s a little bit late that they’re just not capable or interested at all in what they actually said they can do. They just wanted to get a job. Now, we’ve got this whole thing where there’s a trial period and all of that because undoing and doing W-2, it’s just there’s a lot of stuff to it. I really like this. This scare tactic thing, you’re either going to be intrigued by how hard we come at you or, you’re absolutely right, or it’s going to scare the hell out of you, so I’m going to try that.

Travis Jenkins: I like it. I like it. It’s kind of the way my father was, is he would bump into you, and it took me years to figure this out. He’d bumped into you just to kind of check your temperature and see who’s in there. You can see when it’s a “hell yes” for somebody, and you can see when it’s a “hell no” for them, and that’s okay, too, you know?

Jill DeWit: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Steven Butala: Using this as a specific example with this last transaction coordinator, she wasn’t afraid of anything upfront.

Jill DeWit: No she wasn’t.

Steven Butala: I was still trying to figure out where we went wrong there.

Jill DeWit: I think that she was really good at learning one system at a time, not six at a time, and that’s where it went and needing to go that fast.

Steven Butala: I mistaken [crosstalk 00:28:51]-

Jill DeWit: Ramp up quickly [crosstalk 00:28:51]-

Steven Butala: I believe, and I’ve done this my whole life for some reason, I just believe that real estate transactions should be like you’re born with it. It’s like drinking a glass of water. When I met Jill, I never explained anything to her [crosstalk 00:29:04]-

Jill DeWit: I think [crosstalk 00:29:04]-

Steven Butala: The first day, she just… This is before YouTube and stuff, and I just think everybody is innately like that and it’s just not the case at all.

Jill DeWit: I know.

Steven Butala: People aren’t used to a high level of training and that just annoys the hell out of me, quite honestly.

Travis Jenkins: Well, I think what you’re referring to is Jill’s just naturally inquisitive, right?

Jill DeWit: Yeah.

Travis Jenkins: I think that that’s part of the formula of success. I’m naturally inquisitive. I want to know why.

Jill DeWit: THat’s what [crosstalk 00:29:35] Jill is.

Travis Jenkins: I don’t have an agenda. I don’t need… I’m not trying to make a fake relationship with somebody over here. Why do you park like that? Why do you do that? Do you always order that? You’re just naturally inquisitive, right?

Jill DeWit: Yeah.

Travis Jenkins: I think that’s a great trait for somebody that is going to be successful is they had a desire to understand, and so that [crosstalk 00:30:04]-

Steven Butala: Professional career is one big research session. That’s all I really actually do for a living is research and implement.

Travis Jenkins: Well, and so you’re the left brainer of the group, Jill is the right, right?

Jill DeWit: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Travis Jenkins: You’ll find that any businessperson, if they haven’t found their counterbalance, they had to learn to develop that other side because you started out mostly one side or the other. For me, I’m a natural right brainer, and so early on I thought other salesmen were half-heartedly trying when they couldn’t sell as much volume as me. I took personal offense to it because I’m like, “Why are you only selling 50,000 a month? What’s wrong with you?”

Jill DeWit: Exactly. Shouldn’t be that hard.

Travis Jenkins: No [crosstalk 00:31:06]-

Jill DeWit: Us-

Travis Jenkins: Right, right, and so even me and two of my other guys could… three of us could outsell 21 reps, and it’s just the Pareto principle, 80-20, right?

Steven Butala: Yeah.

Travis Jenkins: It’s the 80-20, and so those guys wanted to be salesmen. They’re not naturally salesmen. There was a competence issue. There was a confidence. There was a whole lot of other things going on with that.

Steven Butala: Could you teach a sales course today? If someone said, “Hey-

Jill DeWit: Sure.

Steven Butala: “Here’s a microphone, stand up in front of this room and just”… could you do a whole sales course-

Jill DeWit: Yeah [crosstalk 00:31:47]-

Steven Butala: For like two hours?

Jill DeWit: People have been asking me to do that, too, even in books and things. That’s one of the things that comes up. Heck yeah.

Steven Butala: That’s great.

Travis Jenkins: Well, somebody that naturally has the talent, once you’re taught tactics you can become lethal. Once I learned closes, once I learned tiebacks using their own words against them, all of those things, you’re not going to convince somebody to do something that they don’t want to do-

Jill DeWit: Exactly.

Travis Jenkins: But you can close them using their own words.

Steven Butala: That’s [crosstalk 00:32:27] what Jill does.

Travis Jenkins: Right [crosstalk 00:32:29]-

Steven Butala: I know this because I’m married to her.

Travis Jenkins: Right. She’ll circle back to something you said a few days ago.

Jill DeWit: Oh yeah.

Travis Jenkins: “You said yourself you were tired of XYZ”, right?

Jill DeWit: Exactly. Talk to [inaudible 00:32:41] for you.

Steven Butala: Jill came home yesterday, it was Sunday.

Jill DeWit: Uh-oh, here we go.

Steven Butala: She showed me… she went to a jewelry store [crosstalk 00:32:47]-

Jill DeWit: I did.

Steven Butala: With her girlfriend. She showed me a picture on her phone of a ring [crosstalk 00:32:51]-

Jill DeWit: I did.

Steven Butala: And she said, “What do you think of this ring?”

Jill DeWit: Or then what did I do this morning? I woke up and I said, “Don’t buy me anything, by the way. I don’t need any more rings.” He was already going, “Where’s the store? What do I do?” I’m like, “No, no. I really was just kind of [crosstalk 00:33:02]-

Steven Butala: Guess what I’m going to go do later?

Jill DeWit: No, no. I was just showing it to him. I don’t [crosstalk 00:33:05] need another ring.

Steven Butala: That’s not [crosstalk 00:33:08]-

Jill DeWit: He’s on the path to his car [crosstalk 00:33:09]-

Steven Butala: If that’s not sales at it’s most perfect moment [crosstalk 00:33:13]-

Jill DeWit: I didn’t even know [crosstalk 00:33:13]-

Steven Butala: I don’t know what is.

Jill DeWit: I wasn’t really trying to, I just like-

Steven Butala: Yes you were.

Jill DeWit: But I don’t need [crosstalk 00:33:17]-

Steven Butala: Absolutely you were.

Jill DeWit: I don’t need it.

Steven Butala: Let’s just call a spade a spade now.

Travis Jenkins: What happens is once you learn persuasion, the art of persuasion, once you become so good at it, it just becomes part of your DNA.

Steven Butala: It’s subconscious [crosstalk 00:33:30]-

Jill DeWit: Oh, no-

Steven Butala: Totally. I don’t even think she… it’s [crosstalk 00:33:32] totally subconscious.

Jill DeWit: You don’t know it.

Travis Jenkins: I mean [crosstalk 00:33:35]… That’s just the way… you’re born with the natural gifts, but once you learn those other tactics and strategies… Our salesperson is Dana and so I would listen to her and so after the calls I would critique her. People would call in and counter and she would not get an agreement from them. Most people want to be in alignment with their own integrity. We may be asking $30,000 for a piece of property and so they would say, “Give me $25,000.” She would come to me and say, “Would you accept $25,000?” I said, “No”, and we didn’t sell the property. Then, I said, “Now, next time negotiate with him. Same scenario, we’re selling it for 30. He says 25, now phrase it like this. Say, ‘I can’t do 25, but if I go to Travis and I get him to agree to 28, do I have a deal with you today?'”

Travis Jenkins: He thinks about it, “Yes.” Okay, now, I’m going to put myself on the line for you here. Let me go do that. Now, he’s given buy-in to his offer, and so that is a way that you tie him back to his own word, right?

Jill DeWit: Uh-huh.

Travis Jenkins: Now, when you’re calling him back, if he isn’t ready to pay that $28,000, then she’s been empowered to say, “Now, wait a minute, David, you told me that you were willing to pay $28,000. I went and put myself on the line, got an agreement to this.” Normally, you don’t even have to do that. You just call back or she calls back and says, “Good news, you’re approved. How do you want to pay?” Right?

Steven Butala: “You’re approved”, I like it. “You’re approved [crosstalk 00:35:48]-

Travis Jenkins: Yeah, and so she is basically went to bat for him. If you don’t do that, people will flake on you. They’ll say, “Okay, okay, thank you for letting me know that.” Well, you can hold them accountable for their words. I hear people and I’ve heard on some of the calls and I even forget the context it was in… I think there’s a misperception that people believe that sales strategies can convince someone to buy, and sales strategies don’t convince someone to buy, it compels them to buy, right? They were already going to buy [crosstalk 00:36:28]. They’re going to buy from somebody.

Steven Butala: That’s right.

Jill DeWit: Exactly.

Travis Jenkins: Your tactic has compelled them to buy from you, and so that’s just one of the many pieces of the puzzle of sales, of business, of all of the things that we’re kind of talking about here.

Jill DeWit: Exactly.

Steven Butala: There’s no place that that is more true than actually on Land Academy And House Academy membership because everybody finds us. They’re already looking for some solution and they’re usually business owners like you, other business owners. They’re looking for a better product to buy and sell and that has greater efficiency and less fixed cost and all of that and we just… my whole business model for Land Academy and House Academy itself is just to provide so much free information that you have to do it. I guess that’s the way… it just sells itself. I hate to say that because it sounds like a weird sentence but it really does.

Steven Butala: Well, if it doesn’t make sense to you, then that’s fine, but if it does, it does, and you’re a perfect example. You’re exactly the type of person that we want in our group, exactly, which is one of the reasons I wanted to have the interview with you.

Travis Jenkins: Well, I think people are either going to get it or they’re not.

Jill DeWit: Exactly.

Travis Jenkins: It’s just end of story.

Jill DeWit: That’s it. That’s what my team does is just finding out, is this a good fit for them or not? If it’s not a good fit, then I don’t want to undo anything in six months or two months or [crosstalk 00:38:01]-

Steven Butala: Exactly.

Jill DeWit: Whatever it is and I don’t want them unhappy, so let’s just not do it. That’s why all of our… we just got properly lead them with your hiring, whatever you’re doing, even selling a property. We tell people, “You’ve got to properly convey what the property really is.” You’re selling a property, you know this. You don’t want them calling you in 90 days going, “Hey, there’s no trees. I saw trees in the photos. There are no trees.” You don’t want that.

Travis Jenkins: We give a 30-day money back guarantee.

Jill DeWit: I love it. We kind of have an [crosstalk 00:38:29]-

Steven Butala: We don’t advertise it, but we do. People come back years later and say, “You know, we just didn’t use it.” We’ll buy it back for a certain price.

Travis Jenkins: Well, for me, all I’m trying to do is just eliminate any friction from the buying processes. Some of the older folks are really worried, “This is online, I’m sending my payment”, all of that other stuff. Listen, 30-day money back guarantee. Now, we wait 30 days before we convey the property to them, obviously, where we give them the opportunity. “Listen, if you want to wait [crosstalk 00:39:03]-

Jill DeWit: Good idea [crosstalk 00:39:06]-

Travis Jenkins: “30 days [crosstalk 00:39:06]-

Steven Butala: That’s interesting.

Travis Jenkins: “You want to waive your 30-day money back guarantee, then we’ll go ahead and convey it to you right now. Here, sign this document and we’ll sign it over to you immediately.”

Jill DeWit: That’s good [crosstalk 00:39:16]-

Steven Butala: As a percentage, which one do they choose?

Travis Jenkins: 50-50.

Steven Butala: Wow.

Jill DeWit: Wow.

Steven Butala: That’s really interesting.

Jill DeWit: I like that idea. I haven’t thought about that.

Steven Butala: Me too.

Jill DeWit: That’s a really [crosstalk 00:39:28]-

Travis Jenkins: We have… Most people that reserve the 30-day money back guarantee are people from out of state, and so they’re moving to Texas. It just eliminates that barrier for them in buying the property. We’ve had one person take us up on it and he just went to another property of ours.

Steven Butala: Jill does that [crosstalk 00:39:58]-

Jill DeWit: We’ve done that [crosstalk 00:39:58]-

Steven Butala: All the time.

Jill DeWit: Swap out.

Steven Butala: It’s great.

Travis Jenkins: Yeah, and so just eliminating those things like that. I think as far as the trying to bring people into your organization, the good ones are going to get drawn to you and just don’t sweat the rest.

Jill DeWit: Exactly.

Steven Butala: That’s it.

Jill DeWit: Exactly.

Steven Butala: Our membership, the retention rate is unbelievable. There’s just no other way to describe it. I think we offboard maybe one or two people a month, max. Usually it’s zero.

Jill DeWit: What’s funny, too, and we’ve had… I just watched it happen this month, too, but people that sometimes life happens and they kind of take a break from us, but then they come back. It’s so amazing and awesome to see members coming back because whatever was going on, they solved it or now they’re committed. I’ve had so many calls of people that said, “I didn’t take it seriously, and now I’m going to and I’m in.”

Steven Butala: Really [crosstalk 00:41:01] ask them, too, why they’re leaving, it’s always life. It’s not like it doesn’t work, or, “I just can’t put the time into it that I need to right now.”

Jill DeWit: It’s life in the way.

Travis Jenkins: This business model is the lubricant of live and-

Jill DeWit: It is.

Steven Butala: That’s what I think [crosstalk 00:41:15]-

Travis Jenkins: Come on, I mean-

Jill DeWit: It is. You have to [crosstalk 00:41:18] some people can’t get that, though. They have to…

Travis Jenkins: It’s insane. Granted, I have a construction business that runs without me, but this business… I’m working in this business on a regular basis until we get it to the level that… I enjoy the business so I don’t mind working in it, but I’ve done it… we travel all over the place. Rarely is any place we want to travel to, we’re looking at land as a business expense.

Jill DeWit: Exactly [crosstalk 00:41:54]-

Steven Butala: Us, too. It’s [crosstalk 00:41:55] all we do.

Travis Jenkins: As far as Uncle Sam is concerned-

Jill DeWit: Oh yeah-

Travis Jenkins: I was looking at land on the beach in Puerto Rico and a beautiful home, you name it.

Jill DeWit: Totally.

Travis Jenkins: We were looking at land everywhere and Uncle Sam is proud of me. He’s funding all of it.

Steven Butala: They help us out, too, that way.

Travis Jenkins: It’s backwards. I think what everybody doing this should do is cut the crap, quit making excuses and take imperfect action.

Jill DeWit: Exactly. That’s beautiful [crosstalk 00:42:38]-

Travis Jenkins: This [crosstalk 00:42:38]-

Steven Butala: That’s perfect.

Travis Jenkins: All of this waiting for what’s the right answer for this? How many am I going to get if I do this? Take some action. Learn. That’s what wrong with school is learning is not memorization. Wisdom is the distillation of knowledge, so you got to apply it. You have to apply it. When you apply it, wisdom comes out of that. I shared… Again, this was something too basic for the advanced people, but it’s a micro in a macro thing is the IMEAR, implement, measure, evaluate, adjust, and repeat. Implement, measure, evaluate, adjust, and repeat. That’s part of my DNA. I don’t look at that acronym on a daily basis, but that’s how we do things. The micro creates the macro, and so start doing those little things. Anything other than that is just nonsense.

Jill DeWit: Awesome.

Steven Butala: That’s outstanding advice, actually, for anybody who’s thinking about getting into this or who’s been in it and is not seeing the results that they want. We have a lot of questions like that. We used to do this program called Add A Zero, and you just answered the question completely.

Jill DeWit: That’s awesome.

Travis Jenkins: I told you before, I think this could be a billion-dollar business.

Jill DeWit: Oh yeah.

Steven Butala: We’re in the process of… we’re talking to several private equity groups right now. We’re going to start with a hundred million dollars. We’re not exactly sure how we’re going to structure it, whether it’s debt or equity, and we’re going to do a whole program with houses specifically and try to turn a hundred million dollars every 90 days, which we’re using our own money now and a couple of people in our group are funding some of the deals we do, but we’re turning… I don’t know what the limit is, let’s just put it that way. I’m not sure there is a limit. At the moment, we’re only limited by the people that are turning our deals. It’s not the deals themselves, it’s the actual transactional coordination. That is our bottleneck, which is staffing.

Travis Jenkins: The agents, we call them agents, and the agent handles the lead all the way up to the point of acquisition, and so we have three people doing that right now. We’re building it in a modular way so that we can drop more [crosstalk 00:45:24] and more people in.

Steven Butala: Excellent.

Travis Jenkins: We had to put a titled person in that all they did every day was call and babysit and coddle the title deals in title. Where does your agent or… What do you guys call them?

Steven Butala: Transaction coordinator.

Travis Jenkins: Where do they start and stop in the entire process for you guys?

Steven Butala: The transaction coordinator actually does the mail merge. They start that far from the beginning, and we’re doing this in a modular way, too, so that the actual transaction coordinator that we have now, we’ll hire the next one and train them. They do the mail. I choose the counties and I choose like let’s say the acreage and I set the price, but outside of that, they take it from there all the way to the point where the property is acquired and I approve the acquisition price at the end. Usually it’s what’s on a purchase agreement or very, very close to it, and then we’re out. All of our staff members take it from there and they’re held accountable to sell the property within 90 days, which I think is actually a lot of time, but this is both for houses and for land.

Steven Butala: What do you think about that model? What do you think about that, Travis?

Travis Jenkins: Well, I do something similar. I have a blown up map over here to the left of me of the counties, and so I spend a lot of time cogitating on where I’m going to go next. Even though I’m a right brainer, I love numbers. I have a natural tendency for numbers, and so I’ve been good at it. I’ve created a spreadsheet where I’ve kind of dialed in all of the counties, a hundred people per acre or per square mile and all these things. I do just like you. I target the counties. I do the mailers. I do the pricing. I do all of those things. Our agents handle everything up to the… even gathering, is there utilities on the property? They gather all of that information and then we have a team that promotes it that’s completely separate [crosstalk 00:47:58] because that’s a whole nother thing.

Steven Butala: We do, too. We separate it, too.

Travis Jenkins: It’s really funny. Our business models are… I know you don’t teach those aspects, those things because it can get so complicated, right?

Jill DeWit: Right.

Travis Jenkins: Depending on how fast you want to scale this. It’s simple if it’s just you and your spouse, but my model is very, very close to yours.

Jill DeWit: It’s true.

Travis Jenkins: I’m hoping that me and you can put our heads together and start doing some of the commercial acquisitions because I’m going to need to get my average dollar value turn up considerably to start hitting the numbers that I want to hit.

Steven Butala: That’s our answer with houses. That’s why we started House Academy because especially in California, you can buy properties… we’re buying properties at about 7 or 800,000 and selling them for just shy of a million. Trying to turn a hundred-thousand-dollar profit on each wholesale transaction, and that’s without improving the property in any way, I mean not even paint, and it’s working so that’s my answer to get to a billion to place that hundred million and just continually add to it.

Travis Jenkins: Well, I don’t know if this is the right setting for it, but what would keep you from applying that thinking to commercial? That’s where the big dollars come in per acre.

Steven Butala: I’m totally open to that. I’ll tell you what, I cut my teeth in commercial real estate back in the early ’90s and as a transaction, getting a commercial real estate property acquired successfully, there’s so much stuff involved. That hasn’t been something we’ve focused on, but it’s not something you couldn’t overcome. It takes… To buy an office building or an apartment building, it takes a good 60 to 90 days if there’s a lender involved.

Steven Butala: If there’s not, that’s different, and then the other thing is that, and you know this more than most, that decision to sell a piece of property from a land owner or a home owner, are most successful deals are people that, “Thank God you called. I need to get this done and out of my life.” I don’t think Class A apartment building owners are really looking at it that way. I haven’t tested it completely, but I’ll tell you, we used to buy and sell long-term care facilities, nursing home and assisted living buildings, and I don’t ever recall someone saying, “Wow, thanks for calling. I really do need to sell my skilled nursing facility today.” None of that stuff… you can overcome it all.

Travis Jenkins: Well, so what if we put a finer point on it and we went after unimproved raw commercial acreage?

Steven Butala: I love it.

Jill DeWit: I’m doing [crosstalk 00:51:07]-

Steven Butala: I love that we do have deals like that [crosstalk 00:51:09]-

Jill DeWit: I’m doing it right now [crosstalk 00:51:09]-

Steven Butala: In our inventory right now and they are from a dollars and from an ROI standpoint are top performers for commercial land because the property… one single superstar we have right now was that exact thing.

Jill DeWit: Exactly.

Steven Butala: We bought it from someone who was just like, “You know what? I’m done with this.”

Jill DeWit: That’s it. It’s true.

Steven Butala: Yeah, I’d love to do some kind of commercial land venture and [crosstalk 00:51:31]-

Jill DeWit: Absolutely.

Steven Butala: Seek it out. We’re doing a smaller version of it with Mike Marshall in our group right now in Los Angeles.

Travis Jenkins: Well, that’s more of what I’m talking about. I think other opportunities are going to open up with the apartments with accelerated depreciation. There’s a reason for businesses to move something out of their inventory and into another inventory, and that’s a whole another conversation, that’s a whole another business cycle, buying cycle, all of those things. Just taking a page out of what we’re doing, I look at commercial stuff now that it falls into the same category as what you’re talking about. “Oh my God, we’re $200,000 behind on taxes on this property. This is a Godsend.” I think those are the ones that we could… Well, whether it’s they’re behind on taxes or whether they want to sell it or whatever, right now we’re getting those properties just coincidental.

Steven Butala: That’s right.

Travis Jenkins: Whereas, we could be more strategic-

Steven Butala: Exactly.

Travis Jenkins: About where those are, and with our acumen, we amaze ourselves when we go back four months from what we were doing four months ago [crosstalk 00:53:04]-

Jill DeWit: Agree [crosstalk 00:53:04]-

Travis Jenkins: Because I’m looking at Dana like, “Why are we buying this thing?”

Steven Butala: We do the same thing.

Jill DeWit: Exactly.

Travis Jenkins: How did [crosstalk 00:53:12]-

Jill DeWit: Now it’s beneath us. What the heck?

Travis Jenkins: How did this get in here? We’re seeing new things. We constantly are talking about these different levels and then I’m thinking on new levels of mailers, of ways to go in. There are untapped markets all over the place.

Jill DeWit: Exactly.

Steven Butala: We call them [crosstalk 00:53:43] lines of business. We’re constantly opening lines of business. My personal goal is to open a new line of revenue every month until we get to a certain financial goal we have, and we’re on track. It’s working.

Jill DeWit: Exactly.

Travis Jenkins: If we took the same thought process and went after very targeted commercial property, there shouldn’t be any reason that we couldn’t generate many, many millions of dollars a month doing [crosstalk 00:54:12]-

Steven Butala: I agree.

Travis Jenkins: Just [crosstalk 00:54:12]-

Jill DeWit: Exactly.

Travis Jenkins: That alone, right?

Jill DeWit: Last time I checked, we have the data.

Steven Butala: We have the data and the capital and all of it, so there’s… we should just send a mailer out together, you and I. That’s what I think and just see what comes back.

Jill DeWit: Perfect.

Steven Butala: I think I would love to do that, like high-end commercial property, like urban commercial property.

Travis Jenkins: We’re regularly moving into more and more high-end areas. I’m unfazed by nasty letters or comments. We get a tickle out of it. Dana still reads some of them. I’m like, “Why are you doing that? It’s a waste of time.” All I want to know is, “Do you want to sell?”

Jill DeWit: Exactly.

Steven Butala: We accidentally hit an oil and gas area in Eastern New Mexico in this last mailer, and-

Jill DeWit: It’s funny.

Steven Butala: One guy said to Jill in a very light-hearted way, “The amount that you’re offering for my 20-acre property wouldn’t cover the cost of the porta potties [crosstalk 00:55:08]-

Jill DeWit: He did.

Steven Butala: “That we have on the property right now.”

Jill DeWit: It was so awesome.

Steven Butala: That’s how I know I priced it right.

Travis Jenkins: Exactly. Doesn’t offend me at all. Matter of fact, if people don’t squawk enough, I’m concerned. Right?

Jill DeWit: Yeah.

Travis Jenkins: I’m concerned, so [crosstalk 00:55:28]-

Steven Butala: Unfortunately, man, we’re out of time, but I will [crosstalk 00:55:32]-

Jill DeWit: We’ll talk more [crosstalk 00:55:33]-

Steven Butala: I’ll put like a basic term sheet and get it over to you on email and we should send a mailer out together. I think it would be a lot of fun. I think we have a lot to offer each other at the level where we are.

Travis Jenkins: Okay, yeah [crosstalk 00:55:45]-

Jill DeWit: That would be awesome.

Travis Jenkins: I agree with you. We need to kind of flesh that idea out because I’m going to have to invest in some staff members that can be dedicated to those types of things. I don’t know if we’re still rolling. Are we having a side conversation? Or did you want to [crosstalk 00:56:11]-

Steven Butala: I got to end it here.

Travis Jenkins: Okay, go ahead [crosstalk 00:56:13]-

Steven Butala: Then, we can…

Jill DeWit: Then, we’ll talk.

Steven Butala: Yeah.

Travis Jenkins: Okay, all right.

Steven Butala: We know your time is valuable. Thanks for spending some of it with us today anyway. Join us next time for another interesting episode-

Jill DeWit: And we answer your questions posted on our online community found at landinvestors.com. It is free.

Steven Butala: You are not alone in your real estate ambition.

If you enjoyed the podcast, please review it in Apple Podcasts . Reviews are incredibly important for rankings on Apple Podcasts. My staff and I read each and every one.

If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to email me directly at steven@BuWit.com.

The BuWit Family of Companies include:

I would like to think it’s entertaining and informative and in the end profitable.

And finally, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts.

Infill Lots and Title Insurance (LA 1060)

September 3, 2019 / Joey Chavez / Podcasts

Infill Lots and Title Insurance (LA 1060)

Transcript:

Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here.

Jill DeWit: Good day.

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 infill lots and title insurance.

Jill DeWit: For somebody, this is a great show. For some people, other people, for the people in the… This is when… If you’re driving around right now because your kids need to fall asleep, this is perfect. Just be careful because you might fall asleep.

Steven Butala: I can make it real quick if you want.

Jill DeWit: No, this is good. I know there are plenty of people who sought out this show because they’re like, “I need to know.”

Steven Butala: Oh, yeah.

Jill DeWit: Exactly.

Steven Butala: Because they need to know. Here’s the thing so I’ll get right to it. This is a condensed version, in case you’re putting the kids to bed.

Jill DeWit: And you don’t need to listen after this.

Steven Butala: Infill lots, by very definition are lots that are, they’re infill lots in a subdivision where there is already houses or structures and some stuff going on there already. Chances are utilities are available or close. And it’s financially advantageous for a builder to buy a lot from you and build a house on it or whatever they’re going to build. So you need title insurance. You can’t buy and should never buy, in my opinion, infill lots that are, with the intent of reselling them to somebody who’s going to improve the property, without title insurance. And so that could be the whole show there. This came up. You’ll see it in the question here in a second when Jill reads it and, well, we’ll talk about it a little bit further.

Jill DeWit: Great.

Steven Butala: So before we get into it, let’s take a question posted by one of our members on the LandInvestors.com online community. It’s free.

Jill DeWit: Joe S. wrote, “I’ve done some reading online and somewhat know the difference between title insurance and title opinion. I’m wondering what other investors are using. Do you use an insurance after a certain dollar threshold has been met? Basically, I’m purchasing lots, anywhere from 7,000 to $20,000. A local attorney recommended using a title opinion on cash deals. Anyone have advice from personal experience? If not, what’s your business’s policies for closing with title and escrow? Thanks, guys.” This is very smart.

Steven Butala: This is a great question.

Jill DeWit: I like it.

Steven Butala: I haven’t had this question in years. Years and years and there’s a reason for that. Because I think a title opinion is silly.

Jill DeWit: I agree.

Steven Butala: I don’t think it’s silly, silly. I think in certain cases, you could order a title plant, form your own opinion, because I have Jill and she has a title opinion on every deal before it ever goes to get title insurance. So I’ll explain what the difference is here in a second. If you go onto LandInvestors.com and look this up, look up keyword title opinion. I have a link posted there in my response to this where somebody on the internet gives them really a description of exactly what the difference is between these two, almost without our opinion.

Jill DeWit: Right.

Steven Butala: We’re packed full of opinions on on this show. If you just want the facts that, go check that out. A title opinion is a lawyer typically who charges a lot per hour, probably 500 bucks, which really concerns me about this. Because I think this lawyer is selling their services to our member here. They go and look at what’s on the deed. Oh, John Smith is on the deed. Then they look, pull the vesting deed, which is the deed before this one. John Smith owns a property there. He’s owned it since 1958. Okay, that’s good. My title opinion… This is the lawyer speaking to himself in the mirror. “My title opinion of this is very, very good.”

Jill DeWit: You’re good to go.

Steven Butala: Here’s a $500 bill, please. That’s the title opinion. It’s a lawyer’s opinion of the condition of the title. So for commercial properties and stuff, it gets way more complicated than that. What a title agent or a title policy, they order sometimes, depending on the state, a title abstract, but they get a title plant and it looks back further than that and it looks at more things than that. And then once more, I’m not a big title insurance advocate, by the way.

Jill DeWit: Correct.

Steven Butala: Once more they go, if it meets their criteria, they write an insurance policy on it. Just the way the same person, same thing on your car or your house, and if something goes wrong within this stipulations of what they said there, they’re going to insure you against that. Is it really valid? Not that much, but I’ll tell you what the big difference is.

Jill DeWit: Is which one valid?

Steven Butala: Title insurance.

Jill DeWit: Okay. Thank you.

Steven Butala: There’s a lot of exceptions.

Jill DeWit: I was going to add to that, too.

Steven Butala: But I’ll tell you what the deal is with the title insurance, and this is not in the article’s opinion. This is our opinion. It’s what I said earlier. If you’re going to sell this property to somebody who’s going to use it, like a homeowner or a home builder or anything that has to do with potential lending scenario, because lenders demand a title insurance policy, for whatever reason. We could debate that all day, why they do it, but they do. And so we’ve gotten it to the point rather than spend academic time figuring this out, we’ve gotten it to the point where we’re paying four and $500 for a full blown title escrow insurance situation in Arizona right now. So you’d be better off to align yourself with a title insurance people and escrow people in where you’re buying real estate and get a good rate from them and then do what Jill does, which is a dual close. Can you explain that?

Jill DeWit: Yeah. Well, I was going to go back to a couple things in there, from the beginning.

Steven Butala: Okay. Sure. Sure.

Jill DeWit: So a title opinion, you can do your own opinion, like Steven said. It’s like it’s really nothing you can take to the bank or is really going to hold up in court. And I’m sure this attorney will have all that written in there. Like this is just an opinion, like a broker’s opinion. What I think the property is worth. You can’t quote me on that, but here’s what I think it’s going to sell for based on these factors. So, and then, and I’m sure the attorney will state where he looked and what he looked at and the documents that he pulled. Traditionally, title insurance, good ones, I mean, they go a little further and they usually go 35, 40 years back, depending on the company. Depending on the state. They have their own protocol as what they’ll do and they’ll dig up everything they can on the property. They will probably look for liens and things like that. So they go a little bit further traditionally. And that’s why. They’re going to go and they’re going to issue an insurance policy. But again, you have to read the fine print. It’s still against everything that they found. If you really look at title insurance policies, it’s so funny. They say, if I didn’t find it, we can’t insure against it. And I always go, well, wait a minute.

Steven Butala: That’s always cracked me up.

Jill DeWit: And I’m like, well, wait a minute, why am I paying you? But it is what it is. And we don’t need to debate this now because we could talk about this for a very long time. Anyway, so that’s the difference. And like Steven said, it’s just a blanket, feel good, extra step that lenders request. And, most of the time, require that you spend the extra money. It makes them feel good knowing somebody looked into the property and did the best that they could to confirm. And the only thing that you’re doing right now, by the way, is just confirming that the guy who’s selling you the property really owns it. You’re just confirming that you have all the details right. And it was transferred over the years the right way so there’s no surprises that you go build a house and find out six generations ago, it wasn’t transferred correctly or something like that. That’s what you’re making sure. And they really do own it. So.

Steven Butala: Yeah.

Jill DeWit: Now, when Steven mentioned a dual escrow, what we do is to save yourself some time and some money, especially if you’re an investor like we are. You’re not buying this property to hang onto it for 20 years. You’re buying this property to turn and sell it really fast. So I go into it that way with our title companies and say “Hi, I want to do… ” Sometimes they call it a bridge policy. I might say-

Steven Butala: Hold open.

Jill DeWit: Hold open policy.

Steven Butala: Lots of different words for it.

Jill DeWit: Things like that and I explain to them, “Here’s the deal. I’m buying it from you. I expect to come to you, hopefully, in a week to 30 days with a buyer all ready. So I want to pay a little bit extra on the front end to keep this policy basically on your desk. Keep it kind of half open.” They’re going to issue a full policy, but keep it there on the top of their desk is how I describe it. So when I come to you in 30 days with a buyer, you go, “Oh, hi, Jill. Here you are. You’re back. You have your buyer. Great. It’s already right here. There’s nothing more special than I need to do because nobody owned it since the time I issued you that policy. You’re the only guy right there in the middle, so now it’s going to go really fast as you sell it to this person.”

Jill DeWit: And they like it. We like it and then it saves so much money, too. So I use this as a huge advantage for my buyer when I say, “Hey, by the way… ” And I’ve done this with houses, it’s great. I’ve had buyers come to me and they’re traditionally investors and I say, “Not only can we close this really fast now, you’ve got cash, you’re ready to roll. Your closing costs are going to be less than $500.”

Steven Butala: Yeah.

Jill DeWit: “Because I did this hold open policy.” They’re like, “What?” So they’re saving money, too, and then we all win.

Steven Butala: Yep.

Jill DeWit: Thank you.

Steven Butala: I have nothing to add. I mean, if you’re going to buy property that’s on the higher end and it’s usable in a traditional sense, you need title insurance.

Jill DeWit: Yes. This is kind of funny. It’s pretty much describes the meat of the show. Is that what you were thinking?

Steven Butala: Yeah. Oh, did I not say that?

Jill DeWit: It’s okay.

Steven Butala: Oh, we’re in the topic.

Jill DeWit: We’re still in the question. We’re still answering the-

Steven Butala: Oh, my gosh.

Jill DeWit: It’s okay.

Steven Butala: Well, the question and topic are the same.

Jill DeWit: Exactly. So what does this have to do with infill lots?

Steven Butala: Well, infill lots, above all other land property types, in my opinion, are there with an intended use already. The use has already been assigned to the property. If it’s between two houses, there’s a pretty darn good chance that it’s going to be used to build a house on it. If you’re a real estate professional, you drive around, you see these industrial parks that are all developed out and you’ll see a sign that says build to suit on there and then the lot’s all ready to go for some type of warehouse or whatever it’s zoned for. Manufacturing. Can you imagine a manufacturing deal without title insurance policy? The lender would just laugh.

Jill DeWit: Exactly.

Steven Butala: In fact, what they’d do is go back through the chain and get one.

Jill DeWit: Call me when you have it.

Steven Butala: And there’s a question coming up later this week about that.

Jill DeWit: Yeah.

Steven Butala: So infill lots and title insurance go together. That’s the whole topic.

Jill DeWit: Even if your end buyer… I was just thinking. So like what you just said. Traditionally an infill lot is going to be built on. It’s one that’s just available for whatever reason. Maybe the person who was hanging on to it forever, who knows, to make some money out of it and now someone’s going to build on it. That’s because it fits. It’s right there in the neighborhood. You’re not going to put a park or something there. It’s that or nothing. But once in a while you have nothing. Like you’ll have people that do want to just expand their property. I remember, there’s often you find people buying adjacent property or property behind their homes because they want to expand just their footprint, have their whole yard be twice that size and just make sure no one’s going block their view. Something as simple as that. Even you just can’t go into it knowing that. So we do recommend getting title insurance that way you’re covered either way. So if you sell it to the neighbor who’s just doesn’t want it being in his view, he’ll sleep that much better knowing you did the title insurance for him and it’s all included in the sale.

Steven Butala: So if you’re buying five acres in northern, let’s say, Mojave County or way north Maine or some property that’s truly rural vacant land, someone’s probably going to use it to their benefit. Maybe for for hunting or just to say I own it and the whole thing costs 1000 bucks. Do you need title insurance? No, you don’t. And that’s where this whole question comes from. Do I need title insurance or do I just need an opinion, usually my own opinion, about whether this person can actually legally convey this property to me. I know it’s in the father’s name, but the son’s got it and it’s still the father’s name, but the dad’s supposed to sign it. That’s what this lawyer was talking about. That’s not going to pass a title opinion and you can do that yourself.

Jill DeWit: Right. I think it’s one of the things that’s kind of funny that with our members, once they get into it and they see how much data that we have at our fingertips, I’m often helping out my title agent. By the time I’m opening escrow, I have the vesting deed. I’ve done all my homework. Here you go, here you go, here you go. And they’re like, “You kind of did my job for me.” I’m like, “I know that, but A, I want to save you time. I want to get this done faster and B, I don’t want to open escrow without knowing it, because it’s right at my fingertips. I have it all.”

Steven Butala: If we sent them the transfer deed and a title plan from like DataTrace-

Jill DeWit: Right.

Steven Butala: … we would do like 98% of their job.

Jill DeWit: Exactly. What’s so funny is I don’t think that would change their procedure at all. Most of them are kind of old school and they have a checklist. Oh, boy. That’s a whole nother show.

Steven Butala: Hey, we know your time’s valuable. Thanks for spending some of it with us today. Join us next time for an episode called Member Travis Jenkins Tells Us Extremely Successful Land Academy Stories.

Jill DeWit: I want to say he talks about his hiring best practices and there was something else in there.

Steven Butala: He’s scaling from… He just joined us. He’s not that old of a member. He’s at 150,000 a net per month with six employees and he’s trying to scale to 1.5 million, I think, in six months.

Jill DeWit: By the end of the year, he says he’ll be at about a million a month. So, yep, it was-

Steven Butala: It was an extraordinary interview.

Jill DeWit: … a really good show. We had a good time. And we’re going to answer your questions posted on our online community found at LandInvestors.com. It is free.

Steven Butala: You are not alone in your real estate ambition.

Jill DeWit: I didn’t. I was going into that… Who knew I had that much to say about title insurance?

Steven Butala: I didn’t. You just saved me, though. I was all ready to… I had researched pulled up.

Jill DeWit: Yeah.

Steven Butala: And you did a better job than the research I did on Google.

Jill DeWit: Because I’m doing my own title insurance every single day.

Steven Butala: I know. I know you are.

Jill DeWit: I tell you, some day if we decide to circle back around. I know we talked about it, but some day it’s in the works. We’ll be doing it. Wherever you’re watching or wherever you are listening, please subscribe and rate us there.

Steve And Jill: We are Steve and Jill.

Steven Butala: Information.

Jill DeWit: And inspiration.

Steven Butala: To buy undervalued property.

If you enjoyed the podcast, please review it in Apple Podcasts . Reviews are incredibly important for rankings on Apple Podcasts. My staff and I read each and every one.

If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to email me directly at steven@BuWit.com.

The BuWit Family of Companies include:

I would like to think it’s entertaining and informative and in the end profitable.

And finally, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts.

Power of Habits (LA 1059)

September 2, 2019 / Joey Chavez / Podcasts

Power of Habits (LA 1059)

Transcript:

Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here.

Jill DeWit: Good day.

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

Jill DeWit: And I am Jill DeWit, broadcasting from sunny Southern California.

Steven Butala: Today. Jill and I talk about the power of habits. So I’m going through the grocery store line last week, maybe a week before. By the time this airs, it’s the week before for sure. And the cover of either Life magazine or Time magazine, which I didn’t even open and didn’t really look any further into, was called The Power of Habits.

Jill DeWit: Really?

Steven Butala: And because I was forced to have a bunch of time to think about this standing in a line, I’m like, this could be a show.

Jill DeWit: What if it was Us magazine or what if it was like National Enquirer?

Steven Butala: It wasn’t.

Jill DeWit: Are you sure?

Steven Butala: Yeah.

Jill DeWit: Are we sure.

Steven Butala: I’m sure it was Time or Life.

Jill DeWit: Come on. Come on. Steven, what were you really reading in line at a grocery store?

Steven Butala: You know, I don’t have any guilty pleasures like that? Do you?

Jill DeWit: No.

Steven Butala: Do you read any of those magazines?

Jill DeWit: I used to. Now I really don’t care. And you know, it’s not like I don’t care. Care. It’s like I don’t know them. It’s not as interesting. I don’t know. Is that fair to say?

Steven Butala: Yeah.

Jill DeWit: Okay.

Steven Butala: I don’t know why, since you brought it up, that when I read the printed word, not so much in books, but like in a newspaper specifically or a magazine, I just have this gut feeling that it’s exactly what the author wants me to hear. Especially if it’s like a local news. And it’s totally skewed and I could be, in the time that it takes me to read, let’s say one quarter or 25% of the article, I could have been on Google and I could have read-

Jill DeWit: Read the whole thing.

Steven Butala: 15 points of view very, very quickly. You know, and usually they’re smart about SEO, so I’m reading smart stuff and so I just stopped. I just don’t read. I feel too captivated and held in place by an author or a writer in a magazine or newspaper.

Jill DeWit: I understand. I would like to point out that I’m very proud to say the only time that I caught myself in the last six or 12 months reading about a Kardashian was because she’s one of the youngest, if not the youngest. I don’t even know the order. And she’s an incredible business woman. She’s killing it. Like her online presence has launched her into her own makeup company, and I don’t even know if I’m getting it all right, but it’s just phenomenal.

Steven Butala: She’s merchandising.

Jill DeWit: Yeah. So now I’m only reading up for that part. I’m like, all right, good for you. Go girl with your own business and being your own boss and that kind of thing.

Steven Butala: It’s almost impossible to have a conversation without that name coming up.

Jill DeWit: Isn’t it funny.

Steven Butala: Even with incredibly intelligent people. I always wondered what the hell they do. I mean, I don’t want this to become the topic about this. At least they’re like, there’s a reason.

Jill DeWit: Let’s not promote it anymore than we already have.

Steven Butala: Before we get into the topic, let’s take a question posted by one of our members on the landinvestors.com online community. It’s free.

Jill DeWit: Marilyn S. asks: Besides sending mail regularly and keeping consistent, what resource tour process did you add to your business that accelerated your land business and how did it change your business? Was it a particular automation process you added? Was it hiring a VA? Was it a CRM program? Was it a marketing technique implemented? What was your game changer? That’s a great question.

Steven Butala: There’s a lot of responses that are actually really good.

Jill DeWit: All right, I’m going to go and read. So yeah, it looks like a lot of our members have weighed in. So I’ll read some here. So Kevin wrote, Marilyn, the two biggest things for me. were getting the answering service and paying for more advertising. My paid advertising tends to bring in more calls and better quality buyers. This helps me sell the properties a bit faster and for more money. I don’t run a real high volume business, so I can’t comment on the advantage of automation or using VA as much as others might. Do what you are good at and then outsource the rest.

Jill DeWit: So then another member, Andy, wrote: One, hiring VA’s to post properties and remove after they are sold.

Steven Butala: Absolutely.

Jill DeWit: Two: Getting super organized with the CRM. I use our table.

Steven Butala: Same here.

Jill DeWit: Three: Subscription with lands.com and I list my properties on Luke’s site, which is another one of our members. So just getting the word out there more.

Steven Butala: More advertising.

Jill DeWit: Yep. Four: Simplifile. He put a lot in here. This is great.

Steven Butala: What is Simplifile?

Jill DeWit: We use that on our recording.

Steven Butala: Okay.

Jill DeWit: Yep.

Steven Butala: I thought it was called Zimplifile.

Jill DeWit: Nope. No, it’s actually Simple.

Steven Butala: Okay.

Jill DeWit: Yeah, yeah. We say it like that often and that’s where you were getting it from. You’re right. I jumped up to high gear at the beginning of 2018 and I have completed 309 deals since.

Steven Butala: That says it all right there.

Jill DeWit: Nice job. That’s a lot.

Steven Butala: That’s a bunch of dough.

Jill DeWit: That’s a lot. They say average is even like, I don’t know, 5 – $10,000 a deal. That’s pretty good. Probably higher.

Steven Butala: There’s two things that were absolutely earth shattering in decisions that I made. One decision was made for me, and one I made consciously, that shattered my world positively since I started this whole thing. Number one, I got my butt handed to me in around 2011 by the market because we had a single channel of marketing, which we’ve changed. At about that same time, which it’s just a weird chain of events, Jill and I met and started working together.

Jill DeWit: I was hoping one was me.

Steven Butala: That was overnight, probably quadrupled our revenue. And it wasn’t necessarily associated with the marketing. We just have different talents and how Jill talks on the phone and how she gets property purchased and then resold for the right financial amounts just rocked my world.

Jill DeWit: Thanks.

Steven Butala: So, you know, get yourself a partner. That’s my point. What’s that old saying, a hundred percent zero. You know, 50% of a lot is better than a hundred percent zero and I lived through that.

Jill DeWit: Thank you.

Steven Butala: Do you have any?

Jill DeWit: I can’t talk, but you just did. Thank you.

Steven Butala: Today’s topic, the power of habits. This is the meat of the show.

Jill DeWit: Don’t worry. I have a lot to say here.

Steven Butala: Okay. Good.

Jill DeWit: Do you want me to dive in?

Steven Butala: Yeah.

Jill DeWit: All right. So here’s what I was thinking about. Okay, I love how you found this topic too. I think it’s quite funny cause I obviously wasn’t there and/or paying any attention. That’s what’s so funny about us too.

Steven Butala: [inaudible 00:06:38] do the grocery shopping.

Jill DeWit: Not as much. And if I do, when I walk around, I think this is one of the things that you really enjoy about me, is I’m not as observant as most women. Like I’ll walk over something and not really realize what’s going on.

Steven Butala: I love that you’re not observant about anything.

Jill DeWit: Thank you.

Steven Butala: That’s why we’re together.

Jill DeWit: Yeah. I can’t smell, I don’t remember anything and I’m not observant. So there you go. That’s me.

Steven Butala: I win on all of those.

Jill DeWit: Exactly. Okay, so I was thinking about it and I kind of broke it up on like the power of habits. I kind of think of it as in three ways. One is you have your daily habits. Two, you have your personal and lifestyle habits, and three you have professional and business habits. So I thought I’d kind of give you like an example of each one and see what you think and see what do you have to say about it.

Steven Butala: It’s this a perfect example of what we were talking about on a question earlier. How you see this question and how you’re going to answer it is diametrically different than how I wrote it. And how I’m going to answer it after you, which is good. I think it’s great. You buy and sell dirt different than I do too.

Jill DeWit: Okay. All right. So here’s what I see. I see we have daily habits. That’s how much sleep you get and that’s how you start your day. Are you ready for the day? Do you work out? Do you have a routine or is every day a jumbled mess kind of thing? That says a lot about you and sets the tone really for how your day’s going to go in your business and then ultimately your life. So you really got to get a handle on that. I think it starts there. So then my second part is your personal and your lifestyle habits. And I think of it like is work first or is play first? You know, you have to really think about it. And I know how we are. We’re more, we used to be, I used to be a lot of play. I mean I used to have a set schedule where I’d work, work, work, work, work and then flip the switch and goof off.

Steven Butala: Before you were working for yourself.

Jill DeWit: Correct. Correct. Now that I work for myself … You know it’s funny, now that I work for myself, I kind of mix them together. Work always does come first at the end of the day because I’m responsible, we are responsible, for not only ourselves, but we have a pretty good staff and gosh, our Land Academy members. I’m not gonna let them down. So that all comes first. But when I can mix in fun and play, Oh heck yeah. But you’ve got to balance that. You’ve got to find the right balance. And you have to know when to stop and say, all right, reel it back in. No, you can’t go and live on an island for a month and just disappear. You can/however things might suffer. You got to do this, right? So that’s that part of it. And then the third aspect is the professional and the business habits.

Jill DeWit: And for me, this means how I run my business. What kind of boss I’m going to be. What kind of employee I’m going to be. How I interact with people. And then my core underlying thing, which this ties into a lot of stuff that’s going on this week in these shows, which is doing the right thing. You know how I run my business. And we talk about this often. We just had a situation the other day where, you the seller would take any price, but I wanted to be fair and good and say, look, I wanna I want to really feel good. And I talked to my team person about this at the time. And I said, look, is $500 going to make a difference to us at the end of the day? Heck no.

Steven Butala: Maybe close.

Jill DeWit: Right. But for her it means a lot. So I said, let’s offer her this because it’s just the right thing to do. So it’s stuff like that, doing the right thing. And that carries over into, I mean, it’s everything that we do. All of our Land Academy. Everything from Land Academy to talking to people, to our personal transactions, everything. And that’s a habit. Because you know what? You could get in the habit of not being a good person. Let’s just all go there for a minute. And then you don’t even realize you’re stepping on people and you’re hurting people and you’re doing the wrong thing if you get too comfortable there. Please don’t do that. Do the right thing. It’s a good habit.

Steven Butala: So I think that habits, there’s good habits and there’s bad habits. That’s two separate things. And then there’s a whole separate thing about not having habits at all. And Jill really alluded to it all the way through. She just separated it into her lifestyle. But this was really for me just about work habits and succeeding in hitting your financial goals. So it all starts with setting a goal. If you set a goal in Excel and you want to hit it within 12 months, then you’ve got to divide what you need to do by 12. And then further divide it per week. So a month by week, I think it ends up being 4.2. And so I need to send out X amount of mail per week or per month or however you break it up. And I need to have all the systems in place to generally hit my financial goals.

Steven Butala: So that is setting up a system and inadvertently, if you continue to do that, you’re going to form a habit. I think the definition of a habit is doing the same thing every other day for 30 days or something like that. So you know we get charged for making things too simple sometimes. So that sounds really simple, but you know, that’s great. I’ve got two kids and all kinds of other stuff. So the backend of that is you have to move other stuff around. Something’s got to give.

Jill DeWit: I should [inaudible 00:12:16].

Steven Butala: And what happens is, you know, if you don’t want to take it to that step and really move some stuff around, you just forget about it all together. And then you’re in that land where you don’t have any habits anymore and your life is controlling you and you’re not controlling your life. You’re not going to hit your goals. Number two, if you don’t have a compliant people around you, whether it’s your staff or your spouse or your business partner or whatever, or even your kids in a lot of cases, especially when they get older, they’re going to stop you from forming these habits. They’re going to push your buttons somehow or steal your time. So no matter what you do before you start any of this, you’ve got to make a habit. Before you make a financial commitment to, let’s say even Land Academy, you should be a person that’s already forming some habits or having some version of habits, or at least thinking about it. And that’s a lot more boring than Jill’s version, but it’s necessary.

Jill DeWit: I want to add a comment about that second one, what you just said. If you … You used the word compliance. I like to stay on the same page.

Steven Butala: Spousal compliance?

Jill DeWit: Yes, exactly. I’m not sure. For most men, or women even, well, let’s just say whoever it is, you set your significant other down and go, I need you to be compliant because this is what we’re doing. You know, it’s probably not going to go that way. But if you sit them down and say, Hey, I like to get on the same page with you, now you have their attention.

Steven Butala: Well said.

Jill DeWit: Thank you. But it goes to what you’re saying about the habits. If I watched you, let’s just say I watched you for a month researching, doing this, doing something, really listening like, Sweetie, I know you want to watch a movie, but I’m really working on a thing right now that I think is really going to get us ahead in life. You’ve got my attention by the way, that’s your new habit. I watch you not going out so much and I watch you being serious about our family, and our whatever, and extending those habits. You better believe when you sit me down and talk, I’ll probably be compliant. I had to get that in there.

Steven Butala: You know what I do every single day, this is a habit I have and it’s a real good habit I formed not that long ago in the scheme of my career. I have every single piece of information that comes in. I have Outlook on my phone and so if an email comes in through Outlook or if I’m in a meeting or Jill says some crazy stuff, you know, even way after hours I’m in there, and I have a whole system about when I’ll address it and it gets into my schedule.

Steven Butala: So I wake up the next day, the next week, the next month or the next year. Literally I’m scheduled out that far in a lot of this stuff and I don’t, for me this is so important, I don’t stress about what’s going to happen tomorrow cause I just wake up and look at what to do. It’s all in there in Outlook for me and it’s all attached to the files and the filing system. I don’t care if it’s something I really don’t want to do that day, I usually put it in the up in the morning just to get it done.

Steven Butala: But everything gets done. There’s nothing in my inbox, Jill. Every once in a while Jill is sitting with me and my inbox is on the screen and she’s like, what the heck? Like why are there three emails in your inbox? You know, those are the ones that I haven’t scheduled yet.

Jill DeWit: That’s a whole nother habit, which is good.

Steven Butala: I call it chasing zero. I want to get to the point where, you know it’s at zero. Like we don’t have any personal debt, so I won there. There’s a lot of ways to form habits that work for you and sing to you to get stuff done.

Jill DeWit: Thank you.

Steven Butala: Hey, we know your time’s valuable. Thanks for spending it with us today. Join us next time for an episode called Infill Lots And Title Insurance.

Jill DeWit: And we answer your questions posted on our online community found at landinvestors.com. It is free.

Steven Butala: You are not alone in your real estate ambition.

Jill DeWit: Compliance. Compliant. Do you have a compliant spouse? Well that’s the funniest thing. I’m going to use that.

Steven Butala: How often do I say stupid stuff like that?

Jill DeWit: Every day.

Steven Butala: And not catch myself?

Jill DeWit: Just kidding.

Steven Butala: And then they bite the inside of your tongue or something, or just tell me every single time?

Jill DeWit: I don’t. I really don’t.

Steven Butala: You should tell me.

Jill DeWit: I say silly stuff too. Don’t worry. You’re not alone. You’re not alone in your …

Steven Butala: In my silly stuff sayings.

Jill DeWit: Yes. Wherever you’re watching or wherever you are listening, please subscribe and rate there.

Steve and Jill: We are Steven and Jill.

Steven Butala: Information.

Jill DeWit: And inspiration.

Steven Butala: To buy undervalued property.

If you enjoyed the podcast, please review it in Apple Podcasts . Reviews are incredibly important for rankings on Apple Podcasts. My staff and I read each and every one.

If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to email me directly at steven@BuWit.com.

The BuWit Family of Companies include:

I would like to think it’s entertaining and informative and in the end profitable.

And finally, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts.

1.25 Acres vs 40 Acres to Build Equity 101 (LA 1058)

August 30, 2019 / Joey Chavez / Podcasts

1.25 Acres vs 40 Acres to Build Equity 101 (LA 1058)

Transcript:

Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here.

Jill DeWit: Hello.

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

Jill DeWit: And I’m Jill Dewit, broadcasting from sunny Southern California.

Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about one and a quarter acres versus 40 acres to build your own equity, 101. What the heck does that mean? Is that even a sentence?

Jill DeWit: More importantly, the question should be saying: Jill, how do you keep up with this guy, and what is he talking about? That’s what goes on. I’m the interpreter today.

Steven Butala: You have a lot of choices about what types of property to buy and sell. You have a tremendous amount of control over your real estate investment career, mailer by mailer. So that’s what this show is intended. It’s intended to inform you, or to encourage you, to look at what different types of property to buy, and specifically land, and how it fits in your equity plan.

Jill DeWit: You know, that’s good point because some people think that they heard about a deal. I’m an investor. I need to make every deal work and try to get this done. I just heard about this job. And there’s $30,000 in it. We’ve got to figure it out. No, you don’t. Pick what you want to work on. You really do have the control. And you’ll get there faster, by the way, if you calm down and focus on something, and do it right and well.

Steven Butala: You should always have, we’ll get into it here in a second, but you should always, always, always have an acquisition criteria. That’s what’s so beautiful about sending these mailers out because that is your acquisition criteria. And someone, theoretically in a perfect world, is going to sign it and send it back, and you’re going to check to see if it fits your acquisition criteria. Opportunism is out there. So when I hear the word opportunistic, that’s a really negative thing for me. What do you think-

Jill DeWit: I was going to say too, that’s a very big word.

Steven Butala: Opportunistic to me is, I’m open for anything, man. I’ll take a look at any deal. Just send it over. I think that’s the worst thing that could happen.

Jill DeWit: That’s wrong.

Steven Butala: And that’s going to end in a fiery ball of tragedy.

Jill DeWit: Could you imagine if you went around that way? I mean, you could maybe research three deals a week trying to figure out that area and that thing and that market because someone threw something to your way, versus we send out mail and review three deals in 15 minutes.

Steven Butala: That’s right.

Jill DeWit: And then we move on. We’re buying it or we’re not. And then we move on, and there you go.

Steven Butala: So I’ll paint the perfect picture of your acre and a quarter operation and your 40 acre operation, and maybe even your like 4,000 acre operation, and why you should never do that. Before we get into it, let’s take a question posted by one of our members on the landinvestors.com online community. It’s free.

Jill DeWit: Armin says, “Many of the properties I acquire are [inaudible 00:02:59] lots with several homes in the area. There are at least 200 people driving by every day, and I think a sign can make a difference. How do I put up a physical for sale sign on my property? Is there a cheap and easy way for me to create a sign, have someone plant it on my property? Steve talks about using WeGoLook to have someone visit the property to click photos. But isn’t it equally important to have a for sale sign for those that drive by?”.

Jill DeWit: I love those, and that’s the perfect solution, even Craigslist. I’d just say, you can hire-

Steven Butala: That’s what I would do.

Jill DeWit: Wonderful photographers and drone pilots that can do, and you pay them after, so you see the quality of work after, right out of Craigslist. And you sure could say, “Hey, by the way, when we’re done, bill me the $20 for the … And I want you to take a picture of it, of the Home Depot for sale sign.” If you go grab one of those, put it on a stick in the ground for me, that’d be great, with this phone number on it.

Steven Butala: I mean, I’m going to make it easier for you than that. And that’s very viable. Real estate agents themselves never put signs in the ground themselves. They have, air quotes, a sign guy. In every metropolitan area, there’s at least one company where the guy owns a warehouse full of signs. And real estate agents don’t actually own those posts. They just own the flat piece that goes on the post. Mostly, the sign guy owns the post. And he charges, I’ve seen her anywhere from $10 to $50 to to set it up and remove it. And it can be there as long as you want. I would start, I would do that. I would put a quality sign up. I wouldn’t put a silly little bandit. We call them bandit signs in Arizona.

Jill DeWit: We’ve done that on houses though, and I kind of like it.

Steven Butala: Yeah. But you know what, because we only needed it to be there for about a week.

Jill DeWit: That’s true.

Steven Butala: So the first rain, it’s just going to be a mess. I don’t care what anyone says, You’re leaving an impression of yourself. If it’s ratty old sign, it looks like a ratty old deal.

Jill DeWit: I don’t want a ratty old sign.

Steven Butala: It’s going to get ratty after the first rain.

Jill DeWit: Okay.

Steven Butala: We’ve all sat in our car at traffic lights and looked at these bandit signs. We buy houses, and it’s all written in with a magic marker. It’s like, “Come on now.”.

Jill DeWit: That’s true.

Steven Butala: You don’t want a part of that. If you’re going to do it, do it right. That’s what I say.

Jill DeWit: I understand.

Steven Butala: Might cost you 100 bucks to do the whole thing right. But the place to start is that there’s tons and tons of these service companies that help real estate agents. They love to take real estate agents’ money.

Jill DeWit: You’re so funny. I love to take real estate agents’ money.

Steven Butala: So do I. We can start a company that would take real estate agents; money, I would start it today.

Jill DeWit: I have to tell you, that is usually the second line right now with what I’m doing in my current day job, if you’ve been listening all week, has been really going back to 2010 for us and taking calls, even before. And gosh, it was even before 2010. But anyway, taking the calls and talking to the sellers, and getting a signed purchase agreement back saying things … I tell them things like: Does that price work for you? Sign it, send it to me, let’s all do it. And we’re not agents, we’re not brokers. And they love that. That’s one of my typical second sentences. And they’re like, “Oh, I can really talk to you.” Yep. It’s really me. I’m really the buyer. It’s my money. Do you want to sell? That’s it. And they love it. Thank you.

Steven Butala: Today’s topic, acre and a quarter. Sorry. One and a quarter acres, versus 40 acres to build your own equity empire. This is the meat of the show. You have complete control over what you buy and sell, complete control. You don’t have a boss. You’re not going to report to anyone. And if you love acre and a quarter properties more than you love 40 acre properties because they’re cheaper and the margins are higher, the percentage margins are higher, the dollars are probably a little bit less, then go for it.

Steven Butala: We have built since day one, a 40 acre empire. And we’re still doing it. We are purchasing 40 acre properties in multiple states right now. We generally, in the Southwest, buy properties for around the $100 per acre mark in lots of different places, through lots of different methodologies, and sell it for double. So we buy them from maybe four or five, and wholesale them out for between eight and 10, in some cases, 12. and around every third to eight, maybe let’s just say five, every five properties, we know it’s worth 80,000 bucks or 150,000 bucks.

Steven Butala: We just bought one yesterday, actually. It’s worth 140 grand. We’ll list it on the MLS and wait. Then we’ll sell it. We’ll retail it out and just wait. So you can do that methodology to build. You can choose what product type suits you and where your comfort level is, where your equity partner’s comfort level is, and take it from there. But I’ll tell you this, that’s a sweet spot for us. Between five and 40 acres really works for us because we can, for sure, can double our money. And when you start doubling $5,000 every week, it doesn’t take long. It takes less than a year to have a million bucks in your bank.

Jill DeWit: It’s true.

Steven Butala: So my point to this whole show is have an equity plan. Have a goal. I remember, Joe Martin saying, “I need to make a million bucks in a year,” and he did. So if you have a goal, and you keep telling yourself, “I’m going to make a million bucks in a year, and this is how I’m going to do it. I’m going to back and do this many 40 acre transactions.” Back it all out for yourself.

Jill DeWit: Yeah, they need to yield this much. This is how much mail I’m going to send out to make it happen. I already know.

Steven Butala: Or maybe your model is to buy smaller acreage property in Northern Michigan for $5,000, and sell it for $12,000, or $12,000, and sell it for $24,000. I will say this, the larger … Once you pass around $50,000 as a sale price, it’s a whole different animal. You’re really now separating because there’s not a lot of financing in these properties. There are not a lot of banks that will loan you money to purchase it against the actual property. You can do it with home equity and some other creative stuff.

Steven Butala: But after writing a $50,000 check, the higher that amount gets more than 50,000, you’re going to separate yourself, and really kind of, in my opinion, shoot yourself in the foot a little bit on who buys a property. The pool of buyers after 50 grand shrinks dramatically, in my opinion, through my experience.

Jill DeWit: You’re right. I like that.

Steven Butala: So have a plan. We talk in Atlanta Academy 1.0, we talk about equity planner. It’s a spreadsheet. So if you’re a member, dust that off and really work it backwards to see how much money you want and can make. And then it’ll tell you how much mail to send out, and how much it’s going to cost, and the whole thing. It’s all right there. If you’re not a member, you really need to sit down in front of a spreadsheet and plan the rest of your next 36 months out, and try to hit your equity goal because it’s all about that.

Jill DeWit: Do you like this nail color? I’m just about to start on my toes now.

Steven Butala: Oh, my God. I just spent 10 minutes talking just now.

Jill DeWit: You did.

Steven Butala: I just looked at the time. I’m like, “That’s 10 minutes that I just talked.”.

Jill DeWit: You did. Thank you. Thank you, sweetheart. I needed the break. [crosstalk 00:10:41]

Steven Butala: Any flaws in that logic? Do you see any flaws?

Jill DeWit: None. No. It’s just all about knowing you have options. Check. And then, and the reasons why, and some good information about who your buyers are. Just think about it. With these over $50,000 numbers too, it’s like you said, you’re separating yourself, I think in a very good way. Those deals might take longer to close, so be ready for it, slash however, there’s bigger numbers there. So you’re going to buy it for 50 and sell it for 150.

Jill DeWit: And you know what, maybe that took 90 days or something like, that versus all your other ones. You know, that’s okay, just be ready for it. Plan for it. Some people make that their whole business model. We have several members that started doing that, buy for $2000, sell for $5,000. And then they went buy for $5,000, sell for $12,000. And now they’re in that. I just buy six a year, and I buy them for $5,000 or $50,000. and then I sell them for $150,000, and that’s my whole business model. I only have to manage those, that number of deals, and I do just great. And I know they’re going take some time, and that’s all I do, which is great.

Steven Butala: We send a mailer out for $50,000, if you’re going to write a $50,000 check, and you send a mailer out, and you’ve determined that, that amount of work is 50 to 150, you’re going to kill it because imagine how many people are going will be willing to sell their property for 50,000 bucks. There’s a ton.

Jill DeWit: Do you know what else is great?

Steven Butala: If you incrementally increase your price on the same mailer even 10%, it really pretty dramatically increases the number of people you get to sign the thing and send it back.

Jill DeWit: You know what’s nice too is the traditional person, that what’s nice is you’re going to deal with more professional, serious investors when you’re dealing with properties that you’re selling for over $100,000. I personally love it. Another thing that you are very likely doing, is over that price point, it might be worth it to bring in a broker, and just plan on it. Budget for it because they’re going to know those buyers, and then they do a lot of the work for you.

Steven Butala: We have some people in our group that they have established a relationship with a single broker that they, for whatever reason, connect with, and one that’s statewide, and that’s all they do. That’s their whole business model now. As they buy these properties, they turn it straight over to their broker. And then they go buy another one. They’ve removed half of the responsibility of selling a piece of property, and they’re fully accepting the 10% that it takes. Usually costs 10% to list a piece of land with a broker. It’s not the typical house situation.

Jill DeWit: Right.

Steven Butala: And speaking of houses, you can do the same thing with houses. You know by now, we have a House Academy program. The difference is this, you’re going to buy a house for, let’s say $150,000, $200,000. You’re going to mark it up 20 grand, and resell it almost immediately.

Steven Butala: It’s way, way, way less problematic. There’s less brainpower in the mailers that you send out. And it’s a lot faster and a lot … Well, it’s very, very, very predictable. I call it hitting singles. You’re going to hit singles all day. So it costs a little bit more money. You’re going to have to give some money away to get the financing to start it all, but it’s a great way to make 20,000 bucks a week. So with land, it’s a little bit less to get involved, but we do both. And they’re different. Hey, we know your time’s valuable. Thanks for spending some of it with us today. Join us next time for another interesting episode.

Jill DeWit: And we answer your questions posted on our online community, found at landinvestors.com. It is free.

Steven Butala: You are not alone in your real estate ambition.

Jill DeWit: Did you cover what you wanted to cover there?

Steven Butala: Yeah, I hope it was clear.

Jill DeWit: It was good. No, it was, it was informative. I was very happy. Thank you.

Steven Butala: It’s kind of a heavy topic for a Friday.

Jill DeWit: It kind of was. Yeah. Go enjoy your weekend now. Have a beer and relax. You worked. Wherever you’re watching, or wherever you’re listening, please subscribe and rate us there. We are Steve and Jill.

Steven Butala: Information.

Jill DeWit: And inspiration.

Steven Butala: to buy undervalued property.

Jill DeWit: Can I not say beer?

Steven Butala: You can say beer.

Jill DeWit: Okay.

If you enjoyed the podcast, please review it in Apple Podcasts . Reviews are incredibly important for rankings on Apple Podcasts. My staff and I read each and every one.

If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to email me directly at steven@BuWit.com.

The BuWit Family of Companies include:

I would like to think it’s entertaining and informative and in the end profitable.

And finally, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts.

Deals Dont Close Themselves (LA 1057)

August 29, 2019 / Joey Chavez / Podcasts

Deals Dont Close Themselves (LA 1057)

Transcript:

Speaker 1: Steve and Jill here.

Jill DeWit: Guten tag.

Steven Butala: Welcome. You look up different ways to say hello?

Jill DeWit: I only know about four in case you haven’t noticed.

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 deals don’t close themselves.

Jill DeWit: Oh, I wish they did. And it’s funny how many people think that once you just get the ball rolling it’s just going to happen. Yeah, yeah right.

Steven Butala: Jill and I have actively chosen, we can choose what to work on. We’re at that point in our career. We can choose to develop new websites that we can sell to private equity companies, which we’re doing. We can choose to work on real estate deals, which we’re doing. What we’ve actively chosen for the next few months, to sit in an office together, for better, for worse. And I create and generate real estate transactions and Jill does them. And what I’ve learned, and then thus the title of this show, is how much freaking work goes into purchasing a piece of property. Just on the phone and there’s a lot of time and a lot of manipulation and just a lot of stuff to do to get somebody to sign, to get a deal done. Let’s just put it that way and we’ll talk all about it.

Steven Butala: Before we get into it. Let’s take a question posted by one of our members on the landinvestors.com online community. It’s free.

Jill DeWit: Daniel shares. “Hi everyone. I know that the majority of the people in this community sell land for cash and I usually do as well. However, I have a piece of land in Utah that I’d like to sell on terms. I’m hoping that someone can share a good template for a land contract that they’re using. Cheers, Daniel.” Well, that’s probably in chapter eight, nine. I don’t know.

Steven Butala: Yeah, there’s-

Jill DeWit: We have one in there.

Steven Butala: Yeah, in the cash flow … The original program, Cash Flow from Land program. There’s contracts.

Jill DeWit: Exactly.

Steven Butala: It’s all at the end. There’s a bunch of agreements and tools and a dictionary and all kinds of stuff. But I’ll tell you this, I’m glad you mentioned Utah because every state’s very, very different on this topic. And as people get more creative from how they invest in real estate, us included, there are more and more rules being developed state by state. So check Utah and they may say, I’m sure that they’re going to have a lot to say on how you sell a property on terms.

Steven Butala: For example, we used to do a lot of term sales in Arizona and California and they’re so dramatically different, and Colorado. Really dramatically different on how you’re supposed to sell property on terms. So step one is not so much a contract. Step one is to really pull the statutes and talk to some people who are already doing it successfully. Which is what you’re probably doing here and glad.

Jill DeWit: Thank you.

Steven Butala: Did he stop it? Deals don’t close themselves. This is the meat of the show.

Jill DeWit: You were talking to the intro, you heard … It was making me think of the call that I had with the sweet lady named [Mai 00:03:15] yesterday, who you heard about oh, six phone calls back and forth.

Steven Butala: Yeah.

Jill DeWit: “How about this?” “Okay, I’ll talk to my husband. I’ll call you back.” “And how about that?” “Okay, I’ll talk to my husband and call you back.” So sometimes it takes that. And then there’s those deals, it’s so funny. Sometimes there’s those deals that they call up and it’s one phone call and you’re sitting at your computer like … I have ParcelFact open all the time anyway. And they call in. I already know the area, I look at it, give them 30 seconds. I say, “Does that work for you? It works for me.” They say, “Yes, done. Send me the purchase agreement,” and here we go. That’s the perfect scenario.

Jill DeWit: Then we have the middle where there’s maybe a few phone calls back and forth, talking over with the family mixture. Nobody wants it kind of thing. Alright, now we’re ready to go. Then we have the ones like the one I just described, Mai, where it’s a bunch of phone calls back and forth. I guess she just had to feel it.

Steven Butala: It’s okay.

Jill DeWit: She needed to wrap her head around selling the property. She knew she wanted to. They had to be in agreement and you know, there we go.

Steven Butala: Yeah. Everybody’s different in general. They look to you then see how you want to do it.

Jill DeWit: Right.

Steven Butala: And so on a couple shows ago, I think we talked about how Jill embraces these sellers and why they almost immediately within seconds, start down the path of trusting her. That’s really what this is all about. Establishing trust at the seller so that you can get the deal done in all the steps that it takes. And it’s really true, these deals don’t close themselves. Everybody’s got … When you first get into this business, everybody has preconceived notions about it. Usually from real estate deals that they’ve experienced or they watched their parents do that involved their primary residence. And my, and this is the nicest way I can say that, I mean we spent a lot of time undoing those perceptions.

Jill DeWit: So I think people hear, all they hear is, “Oh my parents bought for 400,000 and sold for 1.2.” So that’s what they walk around knowing. They don’t know what all went into that by the way.

Steven Butala: Exactly.

Jill DeWit: And then getting the deal done. And we’re guilty of that too. I mean, that’s what we talk about. Initially we will share, “I bought it for this and I sold it for that.” And we are really good at making things look easy. That’s part of it I think too.

Steven Butala: You know why? Because it is easy for us.

Jill DeWit: It’s true.

Steven Butala: Because we’ve done almost 16,000 transactions.

Jill DeWit: That’s true.

Steven Butala: And so what I have to remind myself sometimes of is that not everybody’s done 16,000 deals.

Jill DeWit: Exactly.

Steven Butala: Not everybody’s done five deals. So-

Jill DeWit: That’s why we’re here though.

Steven Butala: Exactly.

Jill DeWit: Because we can help. We can share, we’ve done it.

Steven Butala: Yeah.

Jill DeWit: Exactly. You were going to add something?

Steven Butala: No.

Jill DeWit: My thing is people think that, a couple of things about deals don’t close themselves. Number one, you have a deal. Everybody’s on the same page. You open Escrow, you think you can just sit back and let it happen. That could not be further from the truth. The times that … I would love to have one person call me, I don’t think I’ve ever experienced a perfect scenario where I did not have to reach out and push a deal along. I’ve never … Can you think of one?

Steven Butala: I can back in the day, because of the way that we rolled before you were here was very much unlike how we roll now. But since you’ve started, like there’s a house-

Jill DeWit: Well, am I the problem?

Steven Butala: No, no, no. I mean a perfect example of how a deal doesn’t close itself is the most recent Mesa, Arizona house deal we did.

Jill DeWit: Oh yeah.

Steven Butala: Where it just sat there on the MLS for quite some time. And then Jill got angry one day because-

Jill DeWit: I did.

Steven Butala: … the people who were managing the transaction I think just lacked a little bit of experience, they’re totally motivated, just lacked a little experience. And what it takes is this, going through every single call that’s been received on the property, call them back, seeing if they’re still interested, whether they’re a seller or a real estate agent in that case. And then trying to say, “What’s it going to take to get this deal done?”.

Jill DeWit: What’s it going to take? Are you in or are you out?

Steven Butala: And so people call it these land deals, [inaudible 00:07:19] in 20, 30, 40, 50 phone calls a day. And it’s all different version of the same thing. “What’s it going to take to get this deal done Mrs. Smith, what’s your point? What’s your press point? You want to get it done fast, because you want some cash, you want a little bit more money. I’m listening. I’m here. We’ll put something together as long as it works for both of us.”

Jill DeWit: Well, you have to decide too for yourself what’s your threshold, whether you’re on the buy side or the sell side. Like deals don’t close themselves, okay. Say on the buy side, I will have a certain number that I’m willing to spend and I won’t go above it. And I will walk away and I’ll put it out there and say, “This is my highest and best offer. If you’re interested, great. If you’re not, I wish you all the best.” And I just told this woman this yesterday, “I’m not going anywhere. If you wake up in a panic two, three days from now going, ‘I wish I would’ve taken that offer,’ call me. I’m going to be here, I’m not going anywhere.”.

Jill DeWit: And then on the sell side, you’ve got to know what number you’re willing to go below, and set the expectation and make it reasonable. Don’t be greedy. And aggressively, like you’re saying, try to work with everyone. If you have a really good potential buyer, you make it happen. That makes sense. And the other thing I was even thinking when I think of deals don’t close themselves, I just thinking the whole transaction process, that part’s tricky. That’s kind of what I was alluding to. You can’t just throw it in an Escrow agent, sit back and let it happen. Because you look up and go, “Nobody’s doing anything. I thought we’re supposed to close yesterday. No one sent me anything.” That’s very common. You have to continually push these through the system.

Steven Butala: This is not a passive business. Passive income is this catch phrase apparently on the internet right now.

Jill DeWit: That’s true.

Steven Butala: And then now people are saying passive income through real estate. If you’re a landlord, you know how not passive that is. There’s no such thing as passive real estate. You’re kicking your heels back-

Jill DeWit: Yeah, [crosstalk 00:09:18].

Steven Butala: … and sitting down on a beach back there and counting your money. At no level is that ever going to happen.

Jill DeWit: I own 10 rental homes. No one’s ever been late and they never call me. You’ll never hear that.

Steven Butala: Or sometimes I hear people say, “Oh my, I have a management company, they handle all that stuff. I’m going to go to Tahiti.” No, you’re going to manage the management company.

Jill DeWit: That’s true.

Steven Butala: All the management company does is take the actual phone call when the stuff explodes.

Jill DeWit: Yeah.

Steven Butala: You’re ultimately going to-

Jill DeWit: Pay.

Steven Butala: You’re going to pay and you’re going to be involved.

Jill DeWit: Exactly.

Steven Butala: Or the business is going to die. I learned that the hard way. Long before Jill.

Jill DeWit: Yeah. Heaven forbid you get my credit card number and say don’t call me. I hate to see what would happen. Could you imagine.

Steven Butala: So I just want to be … Here’s my big picture point. This is very, very time consuming and extremely profitable if you do it right. So like I said earlier, we all have choices about what we can work on. I think it was yesterday, I said that.

Jill DeWit: That’s perfect.

Steven Butala: We have choices. You have a choice. You can buy and sell real estate for a living. You can work at a job or you can do both. Or you can buy and sell companies for a living, if this real estate business is too small for you. So we do all this stuff. Right now Jill and I are actively really cranking back up our rural vacant land acquisition and sales program. I mean, I would like to see us, we’re at about 250 grand a month now. I would like us by the end of the year get to a million. And what’s between 250 and a million? Three individuals. Three people that we need to hire that are superstars like Jill.

Jill DeWit: Thank you.

Steven Butala: We need young Jills.

Jill DeWit: Thank you. I’m on it.

Steven Butala: Because I could send out a million offers a minute.

Jill DeWit: I know you can.

Steven Butala: Hey, we know your time’s valuable. Thanks for spending with us today, or some of it anyway. Join us next time for an episode called One and a Quarter Acres Versus 40 Acres to Build Equity.

Jill DeWit: Love it. And we answer your questions, post it on our online community found at landinvestors.com, it is free.

Steven Butala: You are not alone in your real estate ambition.

Jill DeWit: I did not see when you wrote these titles, you have me intrigued. I can’t wait to hear what you’re going to talk about.

Steven Butala: You think bigger is better in land?

Jill DeWit: Not always.

Steven Butala: Not always.

Jill DeWit: Not always.

Steven Butala: Do you think consistency or inconsistency is better?

Jill DeWit: Consistency.

Steven Butala: Do you think throwing more money at it or less money at it is better?

Jill DeWit: Less. Am I okay?

Steven Butala: I think you’re batting a thousand here-

Jill DeWit: Okay, good.

Steven Butala: … and I think that there’s a huge misconception about how this all works when you build equity.

Jill DeWit: Well, I’m intrigued. Wherever you’re watching or wherever you’re listening, please subscribe and rate us there. We are Steve and Jill.

Steven Butala: We are Steve and Jill. Information.

Jill DeWit: And inspiration.

Steven Butala: To buy undervalued property.

If you enjoyed the podcast, please review it in Apple Podcasts . Reviews are incredibly important for rankings on Apple Podcasts. My staff and I read each and every one.

If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to email me directly at steven@BuWit.com.

The BuWit Family of Companies include:

I would like to think it’s entertaining and informative and in the end profitable.

And finally, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts.

Its Time to Hire AGAIN (LA 1056)

August 28, 2019 / Joey Chavez / Podcasts

Its Time to Hire AGAIN (LA 1056)

Transcript:

Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here.

Jill DeWit: Good day.

Steven Butala: Welcome to the Land Academy show with my microphone in front of me now, entertaining land investment talk. I’m Steven Jack Butala.

Jill DeWit: And I’m Jill Dewitt and I came fully prepared and we are broadcasting from sunny Southern California.

Steven Butala: Today’s topic, Jill and I talk about how it’s time to hire again, all caps.

Jill DeWit: Do you want my notes are? My notes I made to myself, it’s a happy face and then it’s a sad face and then it’s a happy face and I’ll explain that in a minute.

Steven Butala: I’m going to quote Steve Jobs here, at some point in your career, if you do everything right, you become a full time recruiter. And we are very close to that point, if not there. Yeah, we’re there. The only thing holding us back from making $1 billion literally is good talented people. I never that would [crosstalk 00:00:54]-

Jill DeWit: And 10 of them. And 10 of them. Okay, before we get into it-

Steven Butala: Let’s take a question posted by one of our members on the landinvestors.com online community, it’s free.

Jill DeWit: Crazy day for you here. It’s all good. Marcus says, “What would you do if you only have $2,000? My capital is tied up in another property and I want to stay active. I could, A, keep saving and mail when I have more. Or, B, mail for cheaper lots a and partner on accepted offers. Or, C, by over the counter lots and Ebay them. Option B has been my goto since I got started and after 4,000 offers since, since March 2019, and only one deal,” I don’t know what that’s about, “I’m not too fond of trying it again.” I’m totally confused. “But this time I’d be mailing for properties with an acquisition price under $10,000.” Oh, because he probably couldn’t afford it. That’s why.

Steven Butala: Oh, I see, he went real specific.

Jill DeWit: Got it. “Not 30,000 plus dollars like I’ve done in the past.” So it sounds like couldn’t do that many. So okay, let me back up. May I dive in here?

Steven Butala: Yeah.

Jill DeWit: Okay, so my goal number one is not to tie all your money up in one deal. I really want you to have… Because it’s probably a bigger deal. And then you have all your eggs in one basket and you’re just sitting there watching that one deal and you have to wait for that one deal to close before you have money to do more. So if you have $6,000 please buy six $1,000 properties. Because, hopefully, one will close tomorrow and one will close on Tuesday, one will close in a week, one will close… and then the two others will closed right after that. And who cares at that point because you’re already putting that money that you’ve already made back into play and and now you’re rolling. What do you got?

Steven Butala: This is a very intelligent question. This Friday we have scheduled, we haven’t recorded it yet, a show called Equity 101, how to build equity 101. So I want you to take a couple of steps back and get your head kind of… put your academic hat on, your drawing board hat, not your implementation hat because this is an implementation question. But I think the answer to the implementation question lies in the academic part of this.

Steven Butala: If you have $2,000, your goal should be to create 4,000 and that’s it. If buying over the counter property and selling it on eBay is the fastest way for you to do that, then do that. If buying a $4,000 property, go back to your mailer, go through your phone messages and stuff and finding a property in there probably you could breathe some life back into and buy, then that’s what you do.

Steven Butala: Your whole goal, and we’ll talk all about this on Friday, is 2,000, 4,000, 8,000, 16,000, 30,000, and it gets to be in the millions within 24 months if you start like that. So every single property investor on this planet started with the first deal. I don’t care if it’s Donald Trump, [inaudible 00:03:55] or us. We started with one single… I started with one single 80 acre property in Navajo County, Arizona and doubled my money and since then have generated tens of millions of dollars. Jill and I are creating almost a quarter of a million dollars of equity for ourself every month buying and selling in real estate, and it’s all on that methodology I just described.

Steven Butala: So you have 2000 bucks? I would spend it on mail.

Jill DeWit: I would too.

Steven Butala: There’s all kinds of programs. Jill and I have a deal funding program.

Jill DeWit: That’s what I would do.

Steven Butala: Another member who has… Forget about how much money you have. You should be going out there just being a deal maker, man.

Jill DeWit: It’s land tank.

Steven Butala: Yeah, land tank.

Jill DeWit: All you got to do, if we don’t want to do it, just put it on land tank and someone else would pick it up and fund it for you. That’s exactly what I would do.

Steven Butala: Every day, our members put property on it.

Jill DeWit: Send it on mail.

Steven Butala: They don’t have the dough, just like you.

Jill DeWit: Exactly.

Steven Butala: And they put property on land tank, a great acquisition-

Jill DeWit: And they’re grabbed.

Steven Butala: … and somebody like Luke Smith in our group or there’s many other people who snag that property right away. They become your equity partner and you split the profit.

Jill DeWit: Yeah, and they pay for it, then you don’t have to worry about it.

Steven Butala: There’s a lot of people out there that say some version of this, “Hey, you don’t need any money to start real estate,” which I hate. I think that’s silly, you need some money.

Jill DeWit: Yeah, you do.

Steven Butala: You don’t need a ton of money. Jill and I, to my knowledge, are the only people and we don’t really advertise it because I don’t like silly little slogans like that. You don’t need any money to do this. If you get the program, understand what you’re doing, send a bunch of mail out, which you need money for.

Jill DeWit: True.

Steven Butala: But to buy the actual property, that’s why we created land tank. Go out there and check it out. It’s made for just the exact same… this exact situation.

Jill DeWit: Exactly.

Steven Butala: Today’s topic, it’s time to hire again. This is the meat of the show.

Jill DeWit: I’ve decided this is my life now.

Steven Butala: I swear.

Jill DeWit: It’s true.

Steven Butala: It’s one of my least favorite things to do.

Jill DeWit: I know. Here’s why I said happy face, sad face, happy face. Happy face because wow, we just jumped back in and really upped our acquisition efforts, we have new people. I hired one person, right, one new transaction coordinator. Well it’s going so well, now I need three people to support them. That’s what happened. So just this one little area that we’re now focusing on. And so my sad faces, oh boy, it’s hard, it takes time. It really does take time to interview and screen and find and hire the right person and get them ramped up. But then, happy face again.

Steven Butala: I like this.

Jill DeWit: Thank you.

Steven Butala: It’s like a relationship. What’s today? A happy face or a sad face?

Jill DeWit: Oh gosh. You want to talk about relationships?

Steven Butala: It’s happy today.

Jill DeWit: Okay, all right. I’ll cover this in relationships here in just a minute.

Steven Butala: A couple of days last week that were unhappy faces.

Jill DeWit: Oh I’ll cover that too. But then happy face is, yay, now we’re all moving along smoothly until the next thing blows the open wide and now I’ve got to hire again. So that’s kinda how it goes. And we just decided, right now, while I’m training one person, I should be training three or more. So that’s what’s going on.

Steven Butala: Yeah, we’re going to hire three people.

Jill DeWit: Yeah, I’m going to have them all sitting in my office and we’re going to have some fun.

Steven Butala: Yup, exactly.

Jill DeWit: Until I’m not needed anymore. And that’s what’s going on.

Steven Butala: I’m actively trying to hire a paralegal type or a paralegal type of person. They don’t have to be a paralegal, but they need to think that way. So if you want, if you’d like a job and you’re a paralegal, please send your experienced, extremely experienced career in a resume form to jack@landacademy.com.

Jill DeWit: Hey, is this just for your hiring efforts this week? Listen, you. All right, so here’s my relationship one. Happy face, I’m in a relationship. This is so great, oh, I’m so excited. I love it. Sad face, crap, I’m putting on weight, my friends haven’t seen me. Now I got to check-in with this guy if I ever want to go anywhere or do anything.

Steven Butala: What? Check-in with this guy?

Jill DeWit: Well, when you’re single and it’s just you, you call the shots. You have to think about anybody but you. But you’re in a relationship, this is actually what caught me the first time I had a boyfriend. My boyfriend told me, “By the way, you have a boyfriend now. It might be nice to let them know you’re leaving town.” Because that’s what I do. I get on an airplane and I’m gone for the weekend. They’re like, “Where are you?” I’m like, “I’m in Texas.” They’re like, “What are you doing?” I’m like, “I just went.” They’re like, “Kind of would’ve been nice to tell me.” I’m like, “Oh, sorry.”

Steven Butala: I can absolutely see you doing that.

Jill DeWit: Yeah, that’s exactly how it went.

Steven Butala: That’s totally stuff you still do that, like that.

Jill DeWit: I kind of forgot, oh, oops, sorry, my bad. And then happy face again when you finally settle into a groove, if it’s the right person and you work through those things and you have a good communication, then it’s happy face again. So that’s how that relates to-

Steven Butala: I look at that whole thing like it’s either 51% or 49%. So if you’re in a relationship and you’re getting 49%, then you’re probably done. And I don’t mean one against the other. I mean my life is… my life before you was-

Jill DeWit: Oh, this is good.

Steven Butala: … was great, everything was just fine. And now I’m at 50%, so it’s a give and take. But if it’s 49%, that’s not going to be good.

Jill DeWit: Oh, I don’t think it should be like that.

Steven Butala: It’s a very sad, depressing topic, this whole thing.

Jill DeWit: It is. I hope that you meet someone that makes your life better and you’re happier and you’re more fulfilled and you’re working on stuff together. You’re supporting each other.

Steven Butala: You got to go through a lot of people to get to the right person.

Jill DeWit: To get to that point, right.

Steven Butala: It’s like deals, like real estate deals. You’re going to get 10 or 20 calls back where it’s like, “Oh man.” But you’ll get some signed greens back and you still don’t want to buy them. And then eventually if you get one.

Jill DeWit: Well that is like dating.

Steven Butala: Yeah, that’s what I mean.

Jill DeWit: It’s just like that.

Steven Butala: It’s like hiring.

Jill DeWit: Four guys ask you out, so what do you do? You go to dinner with all four. Some are okay, some are not okay. Some go to dinner with you another time. Some you weed out right then and there.

Steven Butala: You got to go into it like that.

Jill DeWit: Yeah, you realize that, “oh, this will never work.”.

Steven Butala: You got to go into real estate deals like that that and you to go into hiring like that.

Jill DeWit: Right, so four became three and then three becomes two and then if it’s not going well, two might become four again.

Steven Butala: Yes, or zero.

Jill DeWit: Exactly.

Steven Butala: Sometimes you got to go all the way to zero and stare at the bottom of the tank.

Jill DeWit: Right, the tank.

Steven Butala: It’s all black and monkey down there.

Jill DeWit: Like you’re in a tank? Where are you?

Steven Butala: I don’t know. Some area called the black.

Jill DeWit: Oh my goodness. Do you know my brother told me? Sometimes you do you have to reset. And he said there were girls that he would hide from. He said and he would just tell them he was out when he was home playing video games.

Steven Butala: Oh yeah, wow. Well I remember when I got… There was a time, this is long before cell phones, when you had a copper wire telephone. And there was a day where you got… you could get this to plug in. You could plug it in, called Caller ID, and then you knew who was calling and that changed my social life forever.

Jill DeWit: I remember those days.

Steven Butala: I am not going to get stuck with this girl again.

Jill DeWit: Could you imagine when you had to phone and it’s like, “Hi,” Oh, darn.

Steven Butala: There’s people that will call you like 28 times a day.

Jill DeWit: Yeah.

Steven Butala: They just flip out on you.

Jill DeWit: That was called middle school?

Steven Butala: No, this is after college for me.

Jill DeWit: Oh really?

Steven Butala: Yeah.

Jill DeWit: Oh.

Steven Butala: Jill never understands how-

Jill DeWit: Excuse me.

Steven Butala: … crazy nuts certain people can be.

Jill DeWit: You were just a hot commodity.

Steven Butala: No, no, I attracted ding-dongs, it was nothing about hot commodity.

Jill DeWit: Hold a moment, I’m not a ding-dong, most of the time.

Steven Butala: I think we’ve all established how low your standards are with men.

Jill DeWit: Oh, thanks. No, that is not true at all. I don’t how we got on this topic went from hiring to finding a life partner.

Steven Butala: Here’s why, all kidding aside, if you think you’re just going to hire somebody and it’s going to work out and they’re going to be working with you for a really long time, you’re going into it all wrong. You should go into it like you’re probably gonna have to hire for this position between five and 10 times before you actually find the right person that’s going to stick. And that’s the truth of it.

Jill DeWit: We’ve been interviewing, just the interview process, you go through a lot. I can’t tell you how many resumes I go, “No, no, no, no.” I go through 20.

Steven Butala: Just like dating, people lie.

Jill DeWit: You can just find one, I’m like, “Ah, thank you.” Sometimes it’s like, “Did you read the posting?” Sometimes they don’t, but whole nother thing.

Steven Butala: I think somebody somewhere teaches a class that tells people when they’re looking for a job to apply for every single job-

Jill DeWit: Must be.

Steven Butala: … every single one, like aerospace engineer, “I was a waiter one time, I’m going to apply for this aerospace engineering job.”

Jill DeWit: Exactly, yup.

Steven Butala: Or, I saw an airplane when I was six years old.

Jill DeWit: I’ve been on a plane. I’ve been on a plane. I kind of know it. There’s a lift thing involved. Does that count? I got this.

Steven Butala: I’ll never understand that part of this.

Jill DeWit: That’s very true.

Steven Butala: Once you get one person that’s really good to work with, then you can task them to start hiring people and even then you don’t know if it’s going to work. It’s a very specific skill.

Jill DeWit: It’s hard. We’re at it again. It is going to be good. We’ll keep you posted.

Steven Butala: We know your time is valuable. Thanks for spending some of it with us today. Join us next time for an episode called Deals Don’t Close Themselves. Jill wrote that.

Jill DeWit: I love the snarky way you say that, that’s so good. We answer your questions posted on our online community found at landinvestors.com, it is free.

Steven Butala: You are not alone in your real estate ambition.

Jill DeWit: Oh, we haven’t gone off on a tangent like that in awhile.

Steven Butala: I know.

Jill DeWit: That was pretty funny, I like that. Wherever you’re watching or wherever you are listening, please subscribe and rate us there. We are, Steve and Jill.

Steven Butala: Information-

Jill DeWit: And inspiration-

Jill DeWit: To buy undervalued property.

If you enjoyed the podcast, please review it in Apple Podcasts . Reviews are incredibly important for rankings on Apple Podcasts. My staff and I read each and every one.

If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to email me directly at steven@BuWit.com.

The BuWit Family of Companies include: