Jack Thursday – Your Land Investing Niche Chooses You Not the Other Way Around (LA 1646)

Transcript:

Steven Jack Butala:
… Steve and Jill here.

Jill DeWit:
Hi.

Steven Jack 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 the Valley of the Sun.

Steven Jack Butala:
Today is Jack Thursday, and I’m going to talk about your land investing niche that actually chooses you, not the other way around. This is not the first time we’ve discussed this on the show, I guess as is with most things, since we’re on episode 1,646.

Jill DeWit:
There might be some duplicates in here.

Steven Jack Butala:
There’s some overlap.

Jill DeWit:
But you know what, though? I would argue there’s a reason they come up, because we’ve figure out something new. I’m sure on show 646 we had different things to say about niche than we do 1,646, and know that’s not a typo.

Steven Jack Butala:
This is a very common theme that you hear in business all the time, about how the business that you ultimately are involved in, or choose… You think we make all these choices, and honestly, there’s a lot of things that just chooses us-

Jill DeWit:
Like women?

Steven Jack Butala:
Like Jill chose me.

Jill DeWit:
Exactly. I was just going to say that. Let’s see, let’s think about, what are a few things that you don’t get to choose? You don’t get to choose your children.

Steven Jack Butala:
Boy, that’s for sure.

Jill DeWit:
And you don’t get to choose your parents. And you don’t get to choose your siblings, I wish I did.

Steven Jack Butala:
But you can choose your friends, which is why you spend the most time with them.

Jill DeWit:
Yeah. You can choose where you live. What you drive. You can choose how you look. You can choose your hair color. Wait, what do you have?

Steven Jack Butala:
I don’t know, we’ll figure it out as we go here.

Jill DeWit:
Oh, good. That’s [inaudible 00:01:54].

Steven Jack Butala:
Before we get into it, let’s take a question post about one of our members on the landinvestors.com online community. It’s free, and don’t forget to subscribe on the Land Academy YouTube channel, and comments on the shows you liked.

Jill DeWit:
Anthony wrote, one topic I would like to hear about is what people get… Oh, please. We’re having a little, what’s the word I’m talking about?

Steven Jack Butala:
[inaudible 00:02:20].

Jill DeWit:
Technical error. Okay. One topic I’d like to hear about is how people get wrecked in the land business. Oh, this is hilarious. Especially if you could add a cautionary tale. My take is that staying away from too much leverage is probably the key to not getting wrecked. I like the term wrecked.

Steven Jack Butala:
[inaudible 00:02:41].

Jill DeWit:
I never use that. It’s tempting to finance a purchase or two with credit when your acquisition budget is maxed out. Property values go up and down, most of the time they go up, but if you are over leveraged during a downturn, that debt could be working against you on a leveraged basis. Not saying that we will see a downturn soon, in fact, I see the opposite, with inflation as a dominant narrative ATM, but it’s prudent to know where the risks lie.

Steven Jack Butala:
So I’ve been communicating with Anthony about this, and other things in Discord.

Jill DeWit:
Wrecked?

Steven Jack Butala:
I have a lot to say about this.

Jill DeWit:
This is good, go ahead.

Steven Jack Butala:
Because Jill and I were just about flat broke in 2009-ish.

Jill DeWit:
Yeah.

Steven Jack Butala:
Which is about the time we met-ish. Prior to that, I had a yacht, and so we really, really, got wrecked by that downturn, and the only reason that we made it out of it, and I say this in every time we do a live event, multiple friends who were in the same business, not necessarily land, but somehow in real estate, in Phoenix at the time, either ended up dead, or filing bankruptcy, or both. And so, we didn’t have to do that. And it was for one reason, we just didn’t have any debt.

Jill DeWit:
Right. It saved us.

Steven Jack Butala:
So what we did was-

Jill DeWit:
And property, we sold those assets.

Steven Jack Butala:
And we had tons of property. We had a good amount of cash saved up individually, and we had all kinds of fallback plans, and everything else. So what saved us is we took that cash, we sold a lot of the properties for cash, and we lost money on it, but we were able to just liquidate it all, and go and buy a bunch of houses and turn that all around ourselves. So it’s not what I want to do, it’s certainly not what we do now, but we got out of that recession around 2011 or ’12, because we made some really acquisition choices, both the houses and the land, and that would never have been possible if we leveraged stuff. So please take this seriously if you’re young, or young in the business, use equity to finance deals, not debt, I cannot express this enough. “Oh, Jack, but it’s so expensive. If I go get a credit card debt, or tertiary debt, or you do a second mortgage on my house, it costs nothing, it costs 3%, are you nuts?”

Jill DeWit:
Yeah, “And not to split the profits of anybody.”

Steven Jack Butala:
“Are you nuts?” Yeah.

Jill DeWit:
“Yeah, well, I’ll make more money doing it that way. Yeah, this is better.”

Steven Jack Butala:
So follow me on this. Great, now you’ve got an acquisition, that’s 10 properties, or you have 10 acquisition candidates that make sense to you-

Jill DeWit:
Right.

Steven Jack Butala:
You have two choices, you can find somebody, deal funding partners within the Land Academy community, or you can do what I just said, and split the profit with something, the numbers, let’s say, if you can make $100,000 on these 10 deals, you make 50, the other person makes 50, now you’ve got $50,000 instead of zero. Or you could go borrow all kinds of money to do the deal, and make the entire $100,000 profit, which is very tempting, and most finance instructors at the college level are going to say, “Yeah, you should use debt as leverage, not equity.” I disagree with that. Because if something goes south, and it always does, always, you can go back to that equity partner and say, “Yeah, we kind of knew this was possible, but we’re in this together, so let’s figure it out together.” And now you don’t have creditors calling you, and banks repossessing things, and all kinds of terrible stuff that can happen that I’ve through. Not since I’ve known Jill, but I’ve been through that stuff in my life. And again-

Jill DeWit:
And I have too, separately.

Steven Jack Butala:
You’re here to learn-

Jill DeWit:
Yeah.

Steven Jack Butala:
From us.

Jill DeWit:
[crosstalk 00:06:47].

Steven Jack Butala:
I’m just really glad that Anthony asked this question, because a lot of times it’s all peaches and cream on the show, and that’s all, this is great, and we’ve got expensive cars, who cares? The fact is, we’ve been down and out, and we’ve been down and out together, and that’s one of the reasons… We built an empire that crumbled, and when I met Jill, we built it back up together. And it’s one of the reasons that we work great as partners, both socially and professionally, is because we’ve been through a lot together-

Jill DeWit:
It’s true.

Steven Jack Butala:
Wouldn’t you want to do that with a partner? Or do you want to do it with Bank of America?

Jill DeWit:
Yeah. You know what’s it’s interesting too? I was thinking about affordable housing. We moved into what we could afford.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah.

Jill DeWit:
And it was what? Maybe 1,000 square feet, I can’t even remember, with kids too-

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah.

Jill DeWit:
By the way. That was…

Steven Jack Butala:
We did it.

Jill DeWit:
Bunk beds, but that was okay.

Steven Jack Butala:
Please just don’t leverage anything with debt.

Jill DeWit:
Yeah.

Steven Jack Butala:
You eventually will get stung pretty hard.

Jill DeWit:
Yeah.

Steven Jack Butala:
And it’s very, very hard to undo.

Jill DeWit:
Yeah.

Steven Jack Butala:
If a deal goes south, all you’ve got to do is pick up your phone with your deal funder and say, “This thing went south.” We have a couple, and we’ve phoned them.

Jill DeWit:
I took them back. Yeah, I’ve phoned them, I’m like, “Okay, great, and that’s fine.” So it happens. Actually, one’s about to close.

Steven Jack Butala:
In a good way.

Jill DeWit:
Yeah.

Steven Jack Butala:
Today’s Jack Thursday, your land investing. And I’m going to talk about your land investing niche chooses you, not the other way around, this is why you’re listening. I’ll start with you at another story. Very recently, I went into a market, Jill and I do separate land deals sometimes, and I’m going to just tell you my story, she’s probably got it a couple too. And bought a property that I found out, during the acquisition process, it was conducive to putting a mobile home on it. And that the municipal environment was very pro-mobile homes, I didn’t know this. I bought the property anyway, I think we paid 12 or $14,000 for it, I was going to sell it for 45 or 50, very successfully, and very quickly.

Steven Jack Butala:
And that’s what happened. We did. I rolled it all into Jill’s stuff, she sold it. It was a very fast deal. She sold it based on a sign we had a photographer put up, and we all high-fived each other like we usually do, and “Wow, that’s great. We made a lot of money.” What I found out later is that if we put a mobile home on it, it would’ve been 300,000. Granted that’s a different animal, there’s well drilling, and there’s a bunch of stuff involved, but you can really hire that out very effectively with layers of people, and still make way more than what we made. So this mobile home niche, which everybody loves now-

Jill DeWit:
Yeah.

Steven Jack Butala:
Probably because we talk about it on the show a lot, and on the Thursday calls, and by the way, will be the topic of the next Career Path, which starts in January, is a niche that found me. I didn’t go out there and say, “I want to buy mobile homes with their own land.” I didn’t do that at all. And so there’s all kinds of niches. There’s something going on in Discord with recreation land right now, it’s specifically in the south-eastern parts of the country, is because they’re going into this realizing that it cannot be built on, it’s only for fun, and there’s a niche for that. These people have been Land Academy members for a while, actually Career Path members, both of them. And they’re realizing how much land is this shit, can’t be built on it because it’s wet. But-

Jill DeWit:
But there’s a use for it.

Steven Jack Butala:
There’s massive use.

Jill DeWit:
There’s stuff you can do with it. You know one of my niches is that I love? One of my niches is building a whole little side thing around a broker that I love.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah.

Jill DeWit:
And now-

Steven Jack Butala:
Oh, that’s a great example.

Jill DeWit:
Uh-huh (affirmative). And when I found this guy… I was hearing things about this part of the country, I’m like, “I’m going to test this, and find some deals, and I’m going to make some calls, and see who I connect with.” And I connected with this guy, and now he’s like, “We need to get these zip codes, and this price for acre. I can sell it all day long.” And that’s a beautiful niche. But there’s lots of different variations of this.

Steven Jack Butala:
Too many to list. That’s one I didn’t even think of, what Jill just said. So it’s not necessarily a land type niche like mobile homes, or recreation land, now she’s building an entire operation around one good real estate agent.

Jill DeWit:
And you could have three of them, you could have five of them by the way. Have one in every state, or one in the states that you love.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah.

Jill DeWit:
And that’s what’s so great too. This could be your whole business model. All you do is send out mail, you don’t fund a thing, you use people in our community for that, and you don’t sell a thing because you use brokers. How great is that?

Steven Jack Butala:
There’s a lot to be said for how well you get along or communicate with a vendor.

Jill DeWit:
Right.

Steven Jack Butala:
I’ll tell you, Jill and I just renovated this house, no, we didn’t renovate it, we heavily redecorated it, and there were probably seven or eight vendors involved. One guy was a personal recommendation from a buddy of mine who lives in the same neighborhood-

Jill DeWit:
Yeah.

Steven Jack Butala:
And he’s an electrician/audio systems installer/wifi installer, all of that, televisions, just that part. And he and I just hit it off, the first time I met him we just got along, so now we’re doing all this other stuff. And then the other vendors, it was the exact opposite.

Jill DeWit:
Yeah.

Steven Jack Butala:
If they showed up, it was like we’re lucky that they showed up-

Jill DeWit:
Exactly.

Steven Jack Butala:
And they let us know that.

Jill DeWit:
They made you feel that way.

Steven Jack Butala:
And that’s the way most of life is.

Jill DeWit:
Yeah.

Steven Jack Butala:
If you’re going to date for five women, one of them is going to be better, for you.

Jill DeWit:
Yeah. You’re lucky I showed up on wedding day. Could you imagine? Oh my gosh, oh boy, that’s a whole scary thought. I’m trying to think of other… And there’s niches that are around… You covered property type, I covered this broker thing, there’s niches around parts of the country, there’s niches around the type of deal, there’s niches around, “I do smaller deals. I only do things under $5,000.” Or it could be niches like, “I only do things above $50,000, above $100,000.” There could be things like, “I only do deals where there’s title issues, because no one wants to touch those, and I figured out how to solve them in whatever state.”

Steven Jack Butala:
I mean, we haven’t even talked about zoning.

Jill DeWit:
Right. Oh, zoning niches.

Steven Jack Butala:
There’s several-

Jill DeWit:
Yeah.

Steven Jack Butala:
Classes of commercial zoning in tertiary markets around every city that it’s shocking what you can use them for. The commercial, like C3, and the market that we’re in, is anything from a restaurant to an auto dealership, to, one of my personal favorites, self storage, and then RV storage. If you do the math on those types of business, they’re very, very profitable. They’re expensive to get into, but really, once it’s all set up, very, very cash flow rich, and low maintenance.

Jill DeWit:
There’s people in our community right now that are [inaudible 00:14:08] pros, that’s their niche, with all the building going on. They found a pocket, and they found a builder, and they’re just going bananas. So there’s just so much-

Steven Jack Butala:
Yep.

Jill DeWit:
I love it. Happy you could join us today. Five days a week, you can find us here on the Land Academy Show.

Steven Jack Butala:
Tomorrow is Jill Friday, she’s going to talk about doing deals during the holidays. You are not alone in your real estate ambition. I should you do a deal during the holiday?

Jill DeWit:
I was just imagining a Christmas tree with deeds hung all over it. You think I’m kidding?

Steven Jack Butala:
No, I don’t.

Jill DeWit:
I think that would be the coolest thing, maybe I should do that. That’d be kind of fun.

Steven Jack Butala:
Actually, you know what you could do? Is make a… You know how when you do a large economic transaction as an investment banker you get a plaque, or it’s called a tombstone-

Jill DeWit:
Yeah, no, I don’t know that it was never an investment banker.

Steven Jack Butala:
It’s okay. A document-

Jill DeWit:
Okay.

Steven Jack Butala:
Make it really small, and then case it in [inaudible 00:15:00].

Jill DeWit:
Oh, okay. And hang that on the tree?

Steven Jack Butala:
So it’s like the size of a man’s wallet. Yeah.

Jill DeWit:
Oh, there you go, that would be nice. Maybe we’ll do a deed tree. I would need several trees for all the deeds that go through this-

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah.

Jill DeWit:
Business.

Steven Jack Butala:
God, I can just see our kids rolling their eyes, like, “What are they doing now?”

Jill DeWit:
Oh God.

Steven Jack Butala:
“Now we have a deed tree?”

Jill DeWit:
“This is stupid.”

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah. “I got up early for this?”

Jill DeWit:
Right. And guess what I got you sweetie? A property.

Steven Jack Butala:
Every child wants a vacant piece of land.

Jill DeWit:
[inaudible 00:15:38], I love you, so I will pay the taxes until you graduate.

Steven Jack Butala:
Until you’re 18.

Jill DeWit:
Yeah, exactly.

Steven Jack Butala:
Now you have to pay for something you don’t want.

Jill DeWit:
Exactly. Thank you for tuning in. We hope you find our content valuable, and we really appreciate your support. If you haven’t already, please check out our YouTube channel, and hit the subscribe button.

Steven Jack Butala:
We are Steve and Jill.

Jill DeWit:
We are Steve and Jill.

Steven Jack Butala:
Information.

Jill DeWit:
And inspiration.

Steven Jack Butala:
By undervalued property.

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Rational Growth and Cash Flow in the Land Business (LA 1644)

Transcript:

Steven Jack Butala:
Steve and Jill here.

Jill DeWit:
Good day.

Steven Jack 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 the Valley of the Sun.

Steven Jack Butala:
Today, Jill and I talk about rational growth and cashflow in your land business.

Jill DeWit:
What if I don’t want rational? I think I want through the roof growth.

Steven Jack Butala:
Well, that’s one of the reasons you’re the girl for me.

Jill DeWit:
There’s nothing rational about anything that I do, is there?Actually, that’s a whole nother show.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yesterday, we answered a question from a person who said, “I just sent out a thousand mailers. I got five calls back after about two weeks.” And you can go back and listen to the question, and the first 10, five calls or whatever were from people that-

Jill DeWit:
Not interested.

Steven Jack Butala:
… We call it the hate. Just get me off the list. So this person, for whatever reason, that is within their comfort zone to send out a thousand mailers.

Jill DeWit:
Our comfort zone is 20,000.

Steven Jack Butala:
20 to 80.

Jill DeWit:
I know. At a time. He just lets them rip, by the way. I don’t even know they’re coming.

Steven Jack Butala:
Would I do that my first week in the business? No.

Jill DeWit:
Nope.

Steven Jack Butala:
So, that’s what we’re going to talk about here. 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. And don’t forget to subscribe on the Land Academy Channel on YouTube and comment on the shows you like.

Jill DeWit:
Luke wrote, “I think it’s going to be interesting to start a poll for everyone’s average deal timeline from start to finish, meaning from the seller’s signature to the end of the buyer’s wire hitting the bank. Seems it’s been longer with the corona backing up everyone, combined with forbearance ending, to jumpstart more investors buying homes.” Is this home related or land related or anything related?

Steven Jack Butala:
It’s land. And I know … This is Luke, right?

Jill DeWit:
Yeah. Which Luke is it?

Steven Jack Butala:
It’s not the Luke you know.

Jill DeWit:
Okay. Got it. All right. So, it’s funny because I still have it all over the place. I have deals still where I put a sign in the ground and you go out and take pictures, and you have your photographer. If you’re not doing this, please do this. You’re in the process of buying the property. So while you’re buying the property, you’re already getting the photographer out there. So A, you get eyes on it by the way. Get your drone stuff done and you have everything ready to go. So when you own it, man, you can start marketing it right away. So one of the things that we also do too is put a stupid sign in the ground, as silly as this is. And I get calls and I’ll sell property with a sign on the ground. I never even get to post a property for sale. So it’s kind of all over the map.

Steven Jack Butala:
So let’s apply some deconstructive logic here. Jill covered the sales part, as she always does.

Jill DeWit:
Thank you. That’s all I know. I’m sorry. This is all I know.

Steven Jack Butala:
In every deal, there’s constants and variables. So let’s very quickly take a look at the variables. Variables are all about you. Well, I’m going to assume you bought it for a great price, because that’s what we do here, in a great area that has been vetted through the red, green, yellow test and the whole darn thing. So, you know it’s going to sell quickly, and it is. So now you’ve taken out all the stress of 100% of it. Here’s the constants.

Jill DeWit:
Constant. That’s a tough word.

Steven Jack Butala:
The constants, S-T-A-N-T-S, I think. The issue is freaking title agent. That’s the problem. Because we’ve had title agents … We have one right now in one specific state that can get a deal done easily-

Jill DeWit:
In days.

Steven Jack Butala:
… and with a smile on her face in about seven days.

Jill DeWit:
Days, yeah. She’s great.

Steven Jack Butala:
With title insurance and the whole thing. And what Jill’s referring to, we’ve done deals in two weeks from start to finish. Is that the norm? Heck no. In the end, it’s those constants that are tough. It’s not the price.

Jill DeWit:
Not you.

Steven Jack Butala:
If you buy it right and then you list it for the right price, not for a … That all is going to have happen very quickly. And you know how to market it, by namely putting a sign in the ground. It’s that title agent. So you need to spend a lot of time, it’s not going to happen overnight, finding the right one. It’s taken us about 20 years.

Jill DeWit:
You know what another variable is we’re not even talking about? Is how hot is the area.

Steven Jack Butala:
Well, that’s what I just said.

Jill DeWit:
Look at these-

Steven Jack Butala:
With the red, green, yellow test takes care of all that.

Jill DeWit:
Assuming you did it right.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yes. Yes.

Jill DeWit:
And you bought something in an area that things are just, you go on Zillow and you see, look, there’s only 20 for sale and 120 sold in the last six months. I think I should send mail here.

Steven Jack Butala:
It has nothing to do with corona. Nothing. I’ve been doing this since the ’90s. It’s the same amount of time and has nothing to do with forbearance.

Jill DeWit:
I agree.

Steven Jack Butala:
This forbearance thing is a drop in the bucket compared to what happened between 2007 and 2011 in this country with foreclosures.

Jill DeWit:
We have done homes start to finish in 30 days, like on the day.

Steven Jack Butala:
We’ve done rehabs in 45 days start to finish.

Jill DeWit:
Yeah. So you could do some crazy stuff. And I would argue too, that back then, things wasn’t even as hot as the market when you’re doing homes that it is now. So I mean, this will be fun to se. And I appreciate this. Everybody-

Steven Jack Butala:
This is a great question, by the way.

Jill DeWit:
Everyone now and then comes up with these interesting ways of looking at things, and then they’re pleasantly surprised when they realize how fast it really is moving. So that’s good. I was thinking back to the one that a guy did a whole thing on his own. He tested his, do I mail only back tax property. Let’s test back tax property versus let’s test the way Jack and Jill do it. And his results were don’t do the back tax properties. Let’s do the way Jack and Jill do it.

Steven Jack Butala:
Here’s the takeaway.

Jill DeWit:
But you need to do that and find out.

Steven Jack Butala:
Two final points here, for whatever reason, and it’s us, I’m sure, this group-

Jill DeWit:
We’re the problem.

Steven Jack Butala:
No, this group really attracts analytical people. So this is a very analytical and a very, very good question again. Just know that your job is to buy cheap property in great areas. So that’s easy because you’re a Land Academy member, and it’s going to take you some time to find the right title agent. It might take years. And always, always put a sign on the property as soon as you … If you can get out there yourself or if you’re going to get a drone shot or the photographer, get the photographer to drop a sign out there. You’ll be shocked and amazed. If it’s priced correctly, it might just sell right there.

Jill DeWit:
I’m not talking a fancy sign. You don’t need to call the local printing company because-

Steven Jack Butala:
In fact don’t do that. That defeats the purpose.

Jill DeWit:
I want a Home Depot sign nailed to a stake-

Steven Jack Butala:
With a Sharpie.

Jill DeWit:
… that says investor special and your phone number on it.

Steven Jack Butala:
Exactly.

Jill DeWit:
Not the price, by the way. Don’t put the price on there. You want them to call you.

Steven Jack Butala:
There’s stories all over Discord, where people, in the success stories area, about signs, and how properties were for sale for a year on the MLS and then they happened to be there on vacation one time, dropped a sign in the ground and sold it that day.

Jill DeWit:
Right.

Steven Jack Butala:
That is a story on there. Today’s topic, rational growth and cashflow in your land business. This is why you’re listening. Go ahead, note taker. Jill takes notes-

Jill DeWit:
I do.

Steven Jack Butala:
… about, I don’t know, 30 or 40% of the shows. She takes notes. She took a lot of notes on this one. So I’m always interested. Some of these topics sing to you and some of them are probably like a listener. Some topics are great. Some topics are, nope.

Jill DeWit:
This I actually think-

Steven Jack Butala:
My cohost is the first one to let us all know how that goes.

Jill DeWit:
Let’s just take a step back here. Shall we? Let’s think about what kind of students we were.

Steven Jack Butala:
I bet you, we were different types of students.

Jill DeWit:
We were very different types of students. I was the president of the National Honor Society. You were the president of the Student Body. Very different things. You had the social part covered. I had the academic part covered.

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s true.

Jill DeWit:
I’m very good at taking notes. You’re very good at talking to people. That’s the difference.

Steven Jack Butala:
I sat in the back of the class and Jill sat in the front.

Jill DeWit:
That’s exactly right. And it’s funny. And we ended up together. It’s all good. So, here’s my thoughts about this. First of all, you’ve got to figure out what your goals are. I think it’s good to have short term and long term goals, but know you’re going to change them, because once you get into it, they will change, I promise you. Some people say, “No goal is too crazy.” Yeah, some are kind of crazy. We don’t need to have a B, billion in there. I mean, you could, but I mean, I like to be realistic, but yet stuff I’m going to push myself for. So anyway, set goals is my first comment here. Really spend some time and think about why you’re here, what you want to do, what you want to get out of this, how much money you want to make. That’s it. It’s really how much money you want to make, how many deals you want to do, how hard you want to work. That’s really my main points.

Jill DeWit:
And then what you have to do, and this is in your equity planner that Jack created, which is awesome, that you work it backwards. You plug this number in at the end. In 12 months, I want to make this much money. I want to do this many kind of deals, because this is how hard I want to work. I only want to do a deal a month or one a week, whatever it is, and you could work it backwards. And then it’s really great because when you plug this in and you work it backwards, then you can really look at how hard you’re going to have to work.

Jill DeWit:
Like okay, so if I’m going to do this many deals a month to bring in this much money, this is how much mail’s going to have to go out. Now I can think about can I even handle the volume of the phone calls? Can I handle this? Can I handle that? So you can really set yourself up and adjust right away. Excuse me. Because you might do that right away and go, “Ooh, that’s too much for me right now. But in six months, I bet I can do it.” Good. Factor all that in.

Jill DeWit:
And then my third point, and I’ll let you have this back, is you’ve got to push through your fears. So, that’s a biggie that I see people do. They’re skittish. They’re afraid of some of these big goals. And I don’t want you to be. If you do what we just said, you put it in there, work it backwards, and see it as a monthly thing and a weekly thing and baby steps, then you can breathe and go, “All right, I got this. I can see how this can work.” Another way I want you to think about pushing through your fears, a great, great resource that you have is this community. That’s probably the number one thing I think of. If you’re fearful, like I don’t if I can do this, how did you guys do this? I mean, there’s people you can ask right now today. There’s always someone who’s six months ahead of you, and you could have a conversation with them and with us, and push through it.

Steven Jack Butala:
Let’s take a deconstructive analytical view at this now that we’ve covered the people happy part.

Jill DeWit:
The people happy part. What did you call it? That’s the people happy part.

Steven Jack Butala:
We approach things so differently. We both get to the same place. It shocks me every time.

Jill DeWit:
All right. You’re going to say, this should hurt. I’m just kidding.

Steven Jack Butala:
No, no, no.

Jill DeWit:
You should not sleep. Just kidding.

Steven Jack Butala:
There’s two real variables in anything that you want to accomplish, time and money. I’m going to throw a third one in sort of, talent.

Jill DeWit:
I like that.

Steven Jack Butala:
If I set out and said, “I am going to be a rockstar,” and I threw the money at it and the time at it, I wouldn’t have the talent to do it. I just don’t have the talent to get into that upper echelon part.

Jill DeWit:
Let’s think about this.

Steven Jack Butala:
Land Academy, and I’ll tell you this, my company, all the companies that I’ve had up to maybe three years ago were tied to cashflow. So think about that. Because I refuse to take on any debt of any kind. Equity, no problem. Debt, nope. For a lot of personal reasons, Jill and I have never taken on any type of debt at all, business and personal. So, the cash part of this, managing a company that’s limited by cashflow, meaning I’ve got $12,000 to spend on acquisitions this month. I spent all 12. My bills are paid for because I still have a job. I’m not going to do any more acquisitions. And that’s rational management and cashflow and that’s why I wrote the title this way.

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s no longer the case at all. We have deal funding. We have a massive number of people in our group that this is their whole entire process, is to find people that want to fund their deals. So now one of the two variables is completely removed from your life. So it becomes time, and that’s something you’re going to have to figure out with you and your family. How much time you want to devote to this. If you’re further on in your career, maybe even retired, we have a lot of people that are retired, they have all kinds of time. Now you’re all set. It just comes down to talent.

Steven Jack Butala:
You don’t need to be Eddie Van Halen here. You don’t need to be that level of a rockstar. You can do two or three deals a month pretty easily. So it all has to do with what gear you want to be in and how much gas you’re going to put into it. I really have spent a lot of time trying to put it together. I’ve spent my entire life, now that I think about it, trying to put together a group like Land Academy, where I’m removing these blocks, these huge obstacles. They’re not speed bumps. They’re brick walls.

Jill DeWit:
Yeah, that’s true. I’m back on the rockstar thing. You know what you would make? You would be a great manager.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah.

Jill DeWit:
Do you know what? Remember Milli Vanilli? They couldn’t sing either.

Steven Jack Butala:
No Jill, I don’t actually.

Jill DeWit:
You don’t?

Steven Jack Butala:
No.

Jill DeWit:
Are you being sarcastic?

Steven Jack Butala:
I mean, I remember … No, I don’t. I mean, I have a picture in my head of Hall & Oates, but I think it’s kind of the same.

Jill DeWit:
No, Hall & Oates had talent. These guys totally faked the whole thing. And they did very well until it came out. They were lip syncing somewhere and they figured out these guys can’t really sing. They really aren’t doing anything. But they clearly had a great manager and got them there. So I was thinking, okay, you too could be a rockstar just like Milli Vanilli.

Steven Jack Butala:
So, one of Jill’s middle names is workaround Jill.

Jill DeWit:
See? Yep.

Steven Jack Butala:
You just found a workaround.

Jill DeWit:
I totally did.

Steven Jack Butala:
How to be a rockstar with no talent by Jill.

Jill DeWit:
Exactly. Because they did it. For those of you listening, A, you know how old I am, Milli Vanilli. Everybody else is looking up like what the heck is she talking about. So yeah, that was them.

Steven Jack Butala:
I do remember this now. It was a class action lawsuit.

Jill DeWit:
Girl, you know it’s true.

Steven Jack Butala:
Oh, Jill.

Jill DeWit:
Sorry.

Steven Jack Butala:
The singing.

Jill DeWit:
I know I can’t. Sorry. I would be Milli Vanilli lip syncing it because I can’t sing.

Steven Jack Butala:
That was a terrible thing back then.

Jill DeWit:
It was. It was a big deal.

Steven Jack Butala:
Since then, I think it’s very normal.

Jill DeWit:
Because it was like a scam. Everybody was pissed off, like how dare they.

Steven Jack Butala:
It’s very normal now to have all, with the … That was before electronic music really kicked in. Now if you look at-

Jill DeWit:
It was kind of disco-y.

Steven Jack Butala:
There’s track behind everything now in a live venue.

Jill DeWit:
That’s true. That’s true. All the EDM.

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s what I mean.

Jill DeWit:
We all know there’s nobody up there.

Steven Jack Butala:
Absolutely.

Jill DeWit:
We all know it’s him doing the same.

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s what I mean.

Jill DeWit:
Nobody’s playing it.

Steven Jack Butala:
It’s very expected now. It’s normal.

Jill DeWit:
That’s true too. God, they were just 20 years too early.

Steven Jack Butala:
I wonder. You know what I’d like to know now? Why did that really come out for them?

Jill DeWit:
I think everybody got pissed.

Steven Jack Butala:
No, hold on. Did it work out in the end? Are they sitting in a jail cell somewhere? Or are they sitting in a-

Jill DeWit:
Did they refund everything?

Steven Jack Butala:
… seven bedroom Beverly Hills mansion laughing and saying, “You know what? Yeah, we got sued. So what? And we had to pay it out, but in the end it” … like a bank robber.

Jill DeWit:
Well, I’m going to look it up now. I’ll get back to you on this. It’s so funny. Oh, boy. Talk about off topic, but that was fun. Thank you. Happy you could join us today. Five days a week, you can find us here on the Land Academy and/or House Academy Show, which is coming up tomorrow.

Steven Jack Butala:
Tomorrow, the episode on the House Academy Show is called affordable housing versus affordable Cadillac Escalades. You are not alone in your real estate ambition.

Jill DeWit:
Oh, I’m going to take some good notes for that one. All right. I have a few things to say about that. That’s good.

Steven Jack Butala:
If you can’t afford a Cadillac Escalade, and most of can’t, do you complain about that? Do you say, “I can’t afford a Cadillac. It should be cheaper, darn it.” No, you don’t do that.

Jill DeWit:
You march on down there.

Steven Jack Butala:
You go buy a Honda like the rest of the planet. But that’s not what happens with houses.

Jill DeWit:
True.

Steven Jack Butala:
It’s someone else’s fault that you can’t live where you live. I don’t understand that.

Jill DeWit:
That’s so funny.

Steven Jack Butala:
Believe me, we’re going to talk about it tomorrow.

Jill DeWit:
That’s funny. Thank you for tuning in. By the way, if you’ve not checked it out or found this yet, go to Offers 2 Owners and find the page for concierge data. We will pull your data, scrub your data, queue it up for you to accurately price your data, and just take all the mystery out of it. It’s awesome. We are Steve and Jill.

Steven Jack Butala:
We are Steve and Jill. Information.

Jill DeWit:
Information and inspiration.

Steven Jack 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:

https://BuWit.com

https://offers2owners.com

https://landinvestors.com

https://landacademy.com

https://landpin.com

https://parcelfact.com

https://countywise.com

https://deedperfect.com

https://ownersdata.com

https://houseacademy.com

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.

Career Path and Mobile Homes (LA 1643)

Transcript:

Steven Jack Butala:
Steven and Jill here.

Jill DeWitt:
Good day.

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

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

Steven Jack Butala:
Today, Jill and I are going to talk about Career Path, a new product that we launched last year, or I guess in 2021.

Jill DeWitt:
This year.

Steven Jack Butala:
That we’re going to pretty dramatically expand in 2022 in mobile homes.

Jill DeWitt:
Yep.

Jill DeWitt:
I would like to note, we are committed with a capital C. If you are picking up on a little like, oh, I don’t know a hoarseness or raspiness to my voice. No, I have not taken up smoking. I’ve never smoked and I won’t go there, but we’re coming off the holiday weekend and I’ll tell you right now, it’s early for us. We are here recording way off our normal schedule because of the holiday.

Steven Jack Butala:
Still people in our house actually.

Jill DeWitt:
Are sleeping and they’re sleeping. We’re not, and here we are.

Steven Jack 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. And if you are already a member, please join us on Discord.

Jill DeWitt:
Scott wrote just a question of curiosity. I have sent out almost a thousand mailers so far and received five calls all from people who want to be taken off my list, LOL. How many times on average does your phone ring from about a thousand mailers? Just curious about the averages since it seems to be right at the edge of my first mailer being received.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah.

Jill DeWitt:
I don’t want to be overwhelmed in the calls while I’m still working through, during the day, or leave too many to go to voicemail. Just curious, what kind of average on phone calls I may get and have to deal with. Thanks.

Steven Jack Butala:
So a lot of people commented on this and it’s a very popular question. It’s not one of my favorite questions because it’s on Jill’s side of the whole thing, but everybody.

Jill DeWitt:
Because you don’t like the phone.

Steven Jack Butala:
Everybody kind of agreed, that it’s about 2% is what you can expect. You’re going to get a 2% response and for every 1500 mailers that you send out, if you do it correctly. Choose county correctly and do it all the way that it’s all in the content of the education program, you should get anywhere between and five transactions for every 1500. You might just get one great one.

Jill DeWitt:
Meaning buy it.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, buy it.

Jill DeWitt:
Pull the trigger, buy it. So I’ll take, so what is 2%? I’ll take, I don’t know, 40 calls, I’m going to say maybe calls, letters, things like that. People reaching back out and maybe even more with the hate, to be honest with you.

Steven Jack Butala:
Two percent is 20 per thousand.

Jill DeWitt:
Okay. So I almost say I get a little bit better average than that by the time we ripped it out.

Steven Jack Butala:
Because you’re chill.

Jill DeWitt:
Well I know, but I’m answering the phone too. So like my team we make sure we get those calls. That’s pretty good. The first wave too Scott, don’t worry about it. The first wave is always people that are kind of mad at you, take me off your list, I’m not interested. Because the next batch is the ones that they’ve been thinking about it. They get at it, they put it on the fridge, it’s on the counter, it’s on their desk. They’re like, okay, they open up your letter. They take it seriously. They’re like, I need to look at this and I need to talk to my wife or whatever it is before I make a decision.

Jill DeWitt:
And then a couple days, or maybe a week or even a month, they’re going to either sign it and send it back or they’re going to call you, and you’re going to go from there. I do like you to send out a little bit more. I want, I know you have a day job, because I want you to get some good deals out of it. The less mail you send, the more you have to choose from. And I want you to have a lot to choose from. So it’s really easy to go. Well, this one’s the one I have to buy. This is a home run I can tell right, away kind of thing.

Steven Jack Butala:
Look, sending out a ton of mail is a major insurance policy. It’s casting a net over the entire lake instead of throwing one line in. [crosstalk 00:04:10]

Jill DeWitt:
Yeah, that’s true.

Steven Jack Butala:
For fishing. Like always we’re not here to sell you something. This is just a fact we ha. [crosstalk 00:04:15]

Jill DeWitt:
We’re here to make sure you just do it right. Get a deal.

Steven Jack Butala:
There’s a person that, in career path, which is kind of a lead into this, that who is brand new and chose to send out 50,000 letters. Just caution to the wind and they are doing amazing.

Jill DeWitt:
What’s the first initial of their first name?

Steven Jack Butala:
I don’t remember. I remember the scenario. [crosstalk 00:04:39]

Jill DeWitt:
I’m like who sent that?

Steven Jack Butala:
I remember they were not present for all of the episodes. This is in the second of the modules.

Jill DeWitt:
It was number two? Session two?

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah.

Jill DeWitt:
Okay. Got it. Cool. Well, let’s get into this and talk about it.

Steven Jack Butala:
Today’s topic, career path and mobile homes. This is the meat of the show.

Jill DeWitt:
So here’s the deal. If you haven’t heard of it before, career path is one of the products that we launched in 2021 based on customer requests, based on everyone asking, Hey, we want to spend more time with you. We want to pick your brain. We want one-on-one time with you, and that’s include by the way, there is some of that too. Really get to know this, because some people, the whole land academy, the way we do things is kind of, self-taught basically, but there’s people that wanted to do this. And then for other reasons they just wanted to, this is their career.

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s what this is about. It’s people that want this to be their career, or it already is.

Jill DeWitt:
They’re like, you’re taking it to the next level. Or they’re deciding that, I’m retired, or I want to do this on the side, whatever you want to say. The good news is, we launched it in the second quarter, it went smashingly well, we had no idea. And we had so much fun too. So we did second quarter this year. We did third quarter this year and now, we took the fourth quarter off to ramp up to really come at it in the first quarter next year.

Steven Jack Butala:
Here’s the truth of it. We launch a lot of products and they’re not products that where we necessarily make money. In fact, the vast majority, including the show, we don’t make a dollar on it.

Jill DeWitt:
That’s true.

Steven Jack Butala:
What we’re doing is funneling through a lot of members at all different types of levels to find the ones that are darn serious about this, and that’s what career path did. There are other products that we launched that didn’t necessarily, Jill and I can agree on this actually, it didn’t necessarily serve the member the way that it should. Like O-to-O is an amazing product, Offers to Owners is an amazing service, a specialized direct mail service, and concierge data is too. It allows you to, which is what I do, outsource the entire data process and the mail process entirely. So some of these products, those two specifically had done really well. [crosstalk 00:07:15]

Jill DeWitt:
Some work, some don’t, what are you trying to get at?

Steven Jack Butala:
And we constantly ask members, what do you want? Do you want this? Do you want this? Do you want this? Do you want this? And they overwhelmingly say, we want an advanced level. Show me how to make a million bucks a year, let’s stop horsing around. That’s what Career Path is.

Jill DeWitt:
So let’s talk about this for a minute though. Let’s go back to the topic, Career Path and mobile homes. So what we’re going to do, we’re actually toying with a new mobile home product because you know, land academy and our house academy, we’ve been toying around with mobile academy. Mobiles have different, definitely different, it’s a wildly different product. When you get to putting a mobile on a piece of property, it’s not like a stick built house. There’s DMV stuff involved, and the things that you have to do is very different.

Jill DeWitt:
So we decided that as a test for this next, we decide for these career paths. Well, here’s the thing too. For the both groups, there’s few people in every group that say, we just want to hang out with you guys all the time. We’ll do every career path. We’re like, okay, well how can we make this? I know I’m like, well, how can we make this really beneficial for you? So we came up with this idea. So we thought we make every career path, like a little bit, have a different nuance. And then two it’ll maybe the mobile home nuance will sing to you or maybe it won’t. But the next quarter, whatever we go into that will sing to you kind of thing, because you’re really into commercial property, info lots. I don’t know.

Steven Jack Butala:
Industrial, commercial, it’s endless, info lots, rural vacant land for recreation or cabins. There’s all kinds of products, houses even.

Jill DeWitt:
And we can really help you perfect and get better at whatever is your niche?

Steven Jack Butala:
So as a test, this most recent career path, I did a short little module in mobile homes and everybody loved it. All they kept saying is, all right now let’s get an in depth. Let’s do a really in depth, hours and hours to kind of study on it. That’s honestly what we’re doing today, right after this, Jill and I is going to look at a bunch of mobile home property that we’re buying.

Jill DeWitt:
Without going onto a long conversation about it here. Can you give us a couple of the differences. Let me save you, without spending an hour on this, can you give us a couple little differences? If I’m looking for a hot area for mobile homes, what are some of the indications that it’s a good area for me to buy land that would be mobile home friendly?

Steven Jack Butala:
Well the first thing, without spending an hour on it.

Jill DeWitt:
Thank you.

Steven Jack Butala:
Look for places where there’s mobile homes that are on their own land, that are not in a mobile home park. That’s going to be a great indication of whether or not there’s a demand or natural demand, number one for that area. And number two, it’s allowed. There’s a lot of places that it’s just over. Many, many, many places in this country where. [crosstalk 00:10:21]

Jill DeWitt:
Meaning no, they won’t do it?

Steven Jack Butala:
The municipalities or the county authorities, whatever the municipality is, a jurisdiction, is no longer interested in, in hosting mobile homes there.

Jill DeWitt:
Which is sad.

Steven Jack Butala:
The more urban it is, in general, the more the case, the more rural, the more that’s not the case. Believe me, there’s no shortage of land where mobile homes are. I don’t know the exact raw numbers. I’m right now sitting down to write the entire program that starts in January, I guess. So we have a bunch of time, but

Jill DeWitt:
A bunch of time. This is great. [crosstalk 00:10:56] It’s November 29th.

Steven Jack Butala:
We have a bunch of time put together. [crosstalk 00:10:58] Amazing. I think that’s a lot of time.

Jill DeWitt:
Okay.

Steven Jack Butala:
You know, well it’s not starting next week.

Jill DeWitt:
You are so funny. I’m the optimistic one. But on this one you’re like, oh I got, well, I got six hours what are you talking about? I got this. Like what the heck?

Steven Jack Butala:
I don’t have to factor in time to do my hair and I don’t know. There’s a lot of other things that go on Jill with you. That don’t go on with me.

Jill DeWitt:
No, like running a household, anyway, and raising children, but we’ll leave that out. You just worry about your sweet career path of mobile homes. Babe.

Steven Jack Butala:
Last time I check it’s working out okay.

Jill DeWitt:
Exactly. You stay out of my lane, I’ll stay out of yours. And that is how we get by.

Steven Jack Butala:
No, it’s going to be a great program. I’m looking forward to teaching it, and I don’t always say that.

Jill DeWitt:
It’s really cool. Happy you could join us today. Don’t forget, five days a week. You can find us here on the Land Academy Show.

Steven Jack Butala:
Tomorrow the episode in the Land Academy Show is called rational growth and cashflow in your land business, you are not alone in your real estate ambition.

Jill DeWitt:
Okay? I like this rational thought because rational to me and rational to somebody else are very different.

Steven Jack Butala:
Exactly. That’s the thought behind this.

Jill DeWitt:
Rational to me ten years ago. [crosstalk 00:12:22]

Steven Jack Butala:
What do you mean somebody else meaning like me?

Jill DeWitt:
No, no, no, no, no. Not you. Well, yeah, you too. But anyway, I figured that one out best I can, but no, but even rational 10 years ago me, and rational me now are very different too. So that’s going to be really cool. The deals that I went for 10 years ago and my comfort level and then five years ago and three years ago, it’s funny how it changes. It’s really cool.

Jill DeWitt:
By the way, if you have not checked it out, Steven mentioned a few minutes ago, check out our direct mail service offers to owners. We take care of everything. Exceptional service. We do the mail merge for you. It is industry specific mailers, and give us a call. We can solve it all you like that. We are Steve and Jill.

Steven Jack Butala:
Information.

Steven Jack Butala:
And inspiration.

Jill DeWitt:
To buy undervalued property.

Jill DeWitt:
I swear I got this Demi Moore thing that’s driving me nuts.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

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:

https://BuWit.com

https://offers2owners.com

https://landinvestors.com

https://landacademy.com

https://landpin.com

https://parcelfact.com

https://countywise.com

https://deedperfect.com

https://ownersdata.com

https://houseacademy.com

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.

Jack Thursday – Challenges of the Times We Live In (LA 1641)

Transcript:

Steven Butala:
Steven, Jill.

Jill DeWit:
Happy Thanksgiving.

Steven Butala:
Oh my gosh. I hadn’t thought about that.

Jill DeWit:
Yep.

Steven Butala:
Welcome to the Land Academy Show and welcome to Thanksgiving. If you’re listening to this, shouldn’t you be doing something else right now?

Jill DeWit:
You are sick of your family. Aren’t you?

Steven Butala:
You’re obtaining land investment talk. I’m Steven Jack Butala.

Jill DeWit:
And I’m Jill DeWit broadcasting from the valley of the sun and hosting a big meal.

Steven Butala:
Today is Jack Thursday. I’m going to talk about the challenges of the times we live in, Thanksgiving style.

Jill DeWit:
This is the biggest one I’ve ever done.

Steven Butala:
Shouldn’t you guys have something better to do than recording a show and talking to us on Thanksgiving. Ah, we recorded that way weeks earlier.

Jill DeWit:
I know.

Steven Butala:
Right Jill?

Jill DeWit:
But I’ll post something. I’ll do some stuff on social media today. So you can see our little bash in our event. This is the biggest bird we have almost 26 pound bird. It’s awesome.

Steven Butala:
That’s one of two.

Jill DeWit:
That’s true.

Steven Butala:
She’s got a, Jill’s a pilot. So she’s got –

Jill DeWit:
Backup.

Steven Butala:
Redundancy.

Jill DeWit:
Oh, I do. Yeah. There are backups.

Steven Butala:
There’s two of everything in case one fails.

Jill DeWit:
That’s true.

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. And don’t forget to subscribe on the Land Academy YouTube channel. Comment on the shows you like.

Jill DeWit:
Greg wrote. So listing on eBay question here, when I’m listing land for sale on eBay, what is the best day of the week and time of day for the auction to end? This is awesome.

Steven Butala:
Here’s my actual response. This is a question in discord. I’m going to, this is what I typed in. I’m going to read it to you and then Jill’s going to make fun of it.

Jill DeWit:
You have decades of, you have a lot of, years of experience.

Steven Butala:
It said, hello, eBayers. Yeah. If you post or schedule a $1, no reserve 30 day auction on any Friday, any given Friday, it’ll close on 30 days later on a Sunday. For a point of reference, we posted about at about 6:00 PM Eastern time or scheduled it. So it would close at that same time on a Sunday, 30 days later. With a decade long strategy, we sold about $20 million of property at an overall 60% gross margin. It took a staff of about eight people working full time and all that’s associated with that, the expense and the drama. You can imagine. As a simple reference point now, and I’m going to make the, this is the point of the show. Fast forward to this year as a simple reference point, we’ll generate about $2 million net, that’s net, not gross this year, buying and selling land with a part-time staff of two, 10 and 90 nines, happily working at home.

Steven Butala:
I’m not bragging here at all, but all of us in this land academy environment have all the tools, including all the money you would ever need and all the relationships to make millions of dollars a year with very little effort and risk and commitment.

Jill DeWit:
I hope Justice you saw that post and read that, because that ties into what we were talking about last week on clubhouse.

Steven Butala:
I spent decade –

Jill DeWit:
That’s really cool.

Steven Butala:
We always had food on the table, Jill and I. I’ve always had food on the table, but we spent collectively and individually a lot of time failing at real estate and other stuff in life, so you don’t have to. It’s Thanksgiving, so that’s what I want. I want to send that, convey that I hope you’re as thankful whether you’re Land Academy member or not, for everything, how this works. Today’s Jack’s Thursday. I’m going to talk about the challenges of the times that we live in. This is why you’re listening.

Jill DeWit:
I like the thankful conversation. Are you going to talk about that more?

Steven Butala:
Yeah. I’m going to list some stuff. Some of the challenges that we have in our world right now, and I want you to think about as a land investor or hopefully a person that maybe buy and selling land is a side gig for you. Maybe it’s a full time gig and you got, you’re staring at a big turkey because you had a good year. But I want you to think about, I’m going to list the stuff that I think is going on in the world and think about whether or not you are subjected to it, personally or professionally. We have a dramatic lack of workers right now. Do you? I don’t think so because you don’t need that many. We are subject to hyperinflation. The entire world is, specifically this country. You know what the greatest hedge for inflation is? Land.

Jill DeWit:
Cool.

Steven Butala:
Because everybody wants to work from home. Congratulations. That’s where we work. That’s what this business model is all about. We have a decimated supply chain. Well, we don’t need anything except a couple of computers and a chair to sit on and a cell phone. There are companies like Ford who have billions of dollars in inventory that they can’t release because it’s not done yet. They still need chips. We don’t have any of those issues at all. Future uncertainty. I’ve never felt future uncertainty in my entire life in this career. Have you?

Jill DeWit:
Nope.

Steven Butala:
I know exactly how many letters we’re going to send out next month. I can tell you plus or minus 10%, how many transactions we’re going to get back and depending on Jill’s mood, how many deals we’re going to do? That’s the uncertainty in my life. Jill’s mood.

Jill DeWit:
It’s hilarious. I love it.

Steven Butala:
COVID. Does COVID affect us? I don’t think so.

Jill DeWit:
If anything, it helps us because people are on their computers and they’re online. They’re seeing our properties and our home.

Steven Butala:
It’s driving everybody to the rural scenario.

Jill DeWit:
They want to buy the dirt. They want to make their dream ranch.

Steven Butala:
Polarity in politics, we’re all subject to it whether we like it or not. Does that have anything to do with what we do? Do we have any politicians deciding that what we do? Not really. Not in the immediate future. No. Last time I checked buying and selling land, it’s probably not going to be come illegal or politicized, like many things. So Happy Thanksgiving. You chose the right career.

Jill DeWit:
Yeah. I love how you work things. It sounds bad. But then you’re like, no, but it’s good. I’m like, okay, got it. Is that it?

Steven Butala:
Yeah.

Jill DeWit:
Oh, okay. Well…

Steven Butala:
You want to talk about Thanksgiving or? I just feel very, very, very fortunate and the truth is when this COVID thing hit and everything that followed it including inflation and all kinds of stuff, work at home. I honestly thought it was over. I thought and if you go back and listen to those podcasts or of that time or just batting the hatches down because we’re in for a 2010 like recession and the exact opposite happened.

Jill DeWit:
And then we bought a pizza place to add insult to injury. We’re like, okay, now what’s going to happen with this?

Steven Butala:
Yeah.

Jill DeWit:
So, and it all worked out.

Steven Butala:
Right?

Jill DeWit:
It did work out. I want to have more of these conversations between now and the end of the year. So let’s talk. I want to, just a minute. It’s Thanksgiving. This is a time to be thankful and really appreciate what we have. Even if you’re just getting started in this, hey, you found us you’re here. You have something to look forward to. You got oodles of people that can show you the way and that will help you and loan you money. If you really want to do this and they’ll get you there because it’s happening, we’re all doing it. I’m very thankful for our team. I’m thankful for you. I’m thankful for you. I’m thankful for Land Academy members, the whole community.

Jill DeWit:
What an amazing group that we have. We did it and we’re doing it. And we, I can’t, I don’t want to jinx anything, but I think we’ve got this.

Steven Butala:
I do too.

Jill DeWit:
And I’m excited for next year. All I keep hearing is people running out of inventory.

Steven Butala:
Me too.

Jill DeWit:
That’s our only issues.

Steven Butala:
Me too.

Jill DeWit:
Shoot. I wish I would’ve bought five more of those kind of thing. I’ve even done that. Like recently we go, we’ve I’ve gone back and looked at some deals. I kicked to the curb and I might go back and buy that. Now that price that they said is not so crazy. I can make this work because I need more dirt because now I see what’s possible and I see what’s coming. So I hope you have a great holiday. This was good. Thank you. And I’m happy you could join us today. Five days a week. You can find us here on the Land Academy Show.

Steven Butala:
Tomorrow is Jill Friday. And she’s going to talk about what Joe learned from her CEO club. You are not alone in your real estate ambition. It’s funny thinking of you in a CEO club, in a good way.

Jill DeWit:
Thank you. Why is it funny?

Steven Butala:
I don’t know.

Jill DeWit:
I don’t get it.

Steven Butala:
It’s just, it’s, you know what? Funny is not the word. It’s like I feel pride, is what I mean.

Jill DeWit:
Oh, thank you. Thank you very much. And thank you for tuning in. We hope you find this valuable and boy, do we appreciate your support. If you haven’t already, please. I know it’s a broken record, but check out our YouTube channel. Hit the subscribe button. We are Steven Jill information and inspiration to buy

Steven Butala:
Undervalued property.

Jill DeWit:
Happy Thanksgiving.

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:

https://BuWit.com

https://offers2owners.com

https://landinvestors.com

https://landacademy.com

https://landpin.com

https://parcelfact.com

https://countywise.com

https://deedperfect.com

https://ownersdata.com

https://houseacademy.com

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.

Failed Anatomy of a Spec Home Deal (HA 1640)

Transcript:

Steven Butala:
Steve and Jill here.

Jill DeWit:
Hello.

Steven Butala:
Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining real estate investment talk. I guess this is the house academy show. I’m Steven Jack Butala.

Jill DeWit:
And I’m Jill DeWit, broadcasting from the valley of the sun.

Steven Butala:
Today Jill and I talk about the failed anatomy of a spec home deal.

Jill DeWit:
So this is interesting, because now where we are with housing, right? People are talking about housing shortages. People are talking about getting things rezoned, so you could have more homes, like LA county, have more homes on a lot to make it for, so there’s more places where people to live, right, and affordable. And it’s interesting. And there’s a lot of building going on. Not just renovating now since COVID and people are home, but a lot of people are moving and choosing to buy land. Yay! Happy for us. And put houses on there. And it’s just mind boggling to me, some of these, I think very risky decisions that they’re making. Especially, it’s one thing to buy your own piece of dirt and hire your own architect. And it’s your own money. You’re not going to sell it. You’re buying it to build for you and you’re going to move in. That makes sense to me.

Steven Butala:
Jill’s emotional about this topic. Let’s take a question first. And then we’ll get into the show.

Jill DeWit:
Save it. [crosstalk 00:01:25]

Steven Butala:
Let’s take it. Question posted by, members on LandInvestors.com. Online community is free, and don’t forget to subscribe on the Land Academy YouTube channel and comment on the shows you like.

Jill DeWit:
Host wrote, how would you price a mailer if the sold comps are 50% low than the for sale comps? So, sold is $40,000, for sale right now is $80,000. And each data set consists of approximately 200 comps. Well, first of all, I’d be high fiving myself because this is going up. It’s becoming more expensive area. Is there more to it or is at the end?

Steven Butala:
That’s it?

Jill DeWit:
Okay, got it. So, what do you want to say?

Steven Butala:
There is brilliance and simplicity. And this is an absolute brilliant question from somebody in Discord that I have never heard of. I think they’re new, and they’re clearly smart. What they’re saying is, I pull the data set and what we teach is you got to look at everything that’s for sale, you got to look at thing that’s sold, and this person’s saying, there’s 50% variance in this stuff. All the sold comps say they’re 40,000. All for sales comps say they’re 80,000. One of the moderators came in Kevin and said, first thing I check for is an error in data. Meaning, you might be the error Host, but I don’t think that. It’s what Jill said. Jill’s initial thought was, hey, the market’s going up so fast.

Jill DeWit:
It could be.

Steven Butala:
So that’s one… No matter what, we can all agree this is a data exception. This is not usually what happens. So it fascinates me innately. Data exceptions fascinate me, not the normal stuff. We all know the normal stuff. So, maybe it’s a hotness, market hotness thing like Joe says. Maybe it’s a data exception like Kevin, our moderator says. Or maybe, you just do what I say all the time and follow the program. You take the $40,000, you take the $80,000, you average them out. That’s 60,000, and you offer 10 or 20% of 60, 10% of 60,000 is six. So if you offer between six and $12,000 and you’re right or wrong, at between 40 and $80,000 on the sale side, you win

Jill DeWit:
That’s easy. I would make sure too, that they sold $40,000 comps, one thing I forgot to add. I go in and toggle and back and forth and play with the… When was that? Because if all your sold comps and it’s going back to the beginning of time, that’s not good. But it’s the last 12 months, now I’m feeling good. And everything for sale, because it really could be going up. Some areas it is this nuts.

Steven Butala:
So what we’re doing is deconstructing this problem, this data problem. And we’re providing reasons and solutions and doing some smart stuff. We’re inherently not even knowing it. In front of a camera, deconstructing this problem. And by doing so, we are inherently reducing our risk. Which leads me right into this show topic. We don’t want risk. Every time a dollar comes out of your pocket, there’s risk associated with that. Some of it’s, I’ve lost the dollar entirely forever, like when you buy something at a convenience store. All the way to, I know with extreme amount of confidence that I’m going to get $2 back when I spend this dollar. Which is what we do for a living, when we buy and sell land. Spec houses? I don’t think so.

Jill DeWit:
Let’s go to the show.

Steven Butala:
I was.

Jill DeWit:
Okay, good.

Steven Butala:
Today’s topic, the failed anatomy of a spec home deal. This is the meat of the show. Let me define spec him real quick. Cause I know you want us to talk and then you should jump in for sure. Spec is short for speculation. The nature of the word speculation is, let’s see what happens.

Jill DeWit:
That’s like end of show. Who does that? [crosstalk 00:05:19] Let’s spend 8 million and let’s just roll those dice and see how that goes, okay.

Steven Butala:
So, I don’t speculate at anything.

Jill DeWit:
No.

Steven Butala:
Let me define how houses and real estate gets developed. And I’m not talking about a company like Toll Brothers or Shea Homes that goes in and buys 2000 acres of agricultural land on the fringe of a major metropolitan area. Subdivides it, goes through entitlement process, puts all the infrastructure in and goes vertical on thousands and thousands of homes with office buildings of teams of marketing people. That’s not a speculation. They know exactly what’s going to happen. They spent millions of dollars on a feasibility study and they have all the capital to do it.

Steven Butala:
They’re not speculating on anything. Within a great degree of certainty they know what’s going to happen and they know how much they should sell the houses for and how much they’re going to, what they’re going to yield. They better because they have a hundred thousand shareholders behind them wondering with, how they’re spending their money. So there’s a great system of checks and balances there. And I’m not talking about renovating a house like on HGTV. I’m talking about buying a piece of land, and building a house on it. But, and when you’re done with it, it’s for sale.

Jill DeWit:
Without, and you don’t know who the buyer is yet. So that’s your definition, of spec homes. Okay. Well then, okay. You just cover the Toll Brothers thing. Then there’s the other version of it, which is the one offs and the custom builders. This is a part I’m just scratching my head, going-

Steven Butala:
Me too.

Jill DeWit:
… How do they justify this? And here’s why. I’m getting drinking coffee this morning. And I’m kind of just looking online. We get in the car, we drive around and I’m watching this one go up. And I’m just thinking to myself, what huevos these, that’s not the right word.

Steven Butala:
No, that’s the right word.

Jill DeWit:
That’s the right word? Okay. To take on this risk. Let me tell you the numbers I’m talking about. This particular site that we know of, they spent between one and two million. That’s like 1.5 for the dirt. And when I say dirt, I mean dirt. It wasn’t a tear down. There was nothing there.

Steven Butala:
It’s never been developed.

Jill DeWit:
The beginning of time. They have had to bring in everything including, and it’s not level. We all talk about the grading and everything, they are jack, they are drilling and bringing in excavators. And, the rocks, it’s not gravel. The rocks… We thought they were going to have to blow up some stuff. I’ve yet to see blowing up anything. But they’re sure digging and drilling and cutting into the side of a mountain almost to make this happen. Again, this is a spec home. This is not someone who bought the dirt and they love it, and they’re going to live there and they’re building their dream home. These guys are, think are trying to build somebody’s dream home. And I’m just like, I just, I don’t know how they do it. So, they’re going to spend, they’re going to probably be in probably two million before they start building.

Steven Butala:
That’s a good number.

Jill DeWit:
So, now, and, the architect and the plants and the materials. And of course, when you’re spending two million dollars just to make it ready and to get the dirt, boy you better believe it better be good, what you’re putting on there. So maybe they put another half million to a million into the construction.

Steven Butala:
Well, it’s a 7,000 square foot house at, let’s say $300 a foot now.

Jill DeWit:
Right.

Steven Butala:
So that’s $2 million. 2.1, 2.3 for soft and hard costs.

Jill DeWit:
You know what’s so amazing to me too? I just like, no one’s writing checks for this. I’m sure of it.

Steven Butala:
Yeah. It’s a bank.

Jill DeWit:
So, yeah. So they did all this and they convinced people to loan in the money. I’m pretty. I think I’m a good salesperson. Whoever did talk people into that one, they’re a fantastic sales person. I’m like, that’d be hard to really sell that, and say, this is what’s going to happen. This is what we’re going to do. And we’re going to sell it for six, or more. So, I think if you could… They start to pre-sell these things. If you haven’t noticed, some areas of the country when they do these custom spec homes, they’ll start to post them for sale, not even being done and only having plans done. I’ve seen with cabins, haven’t you seen that too? Plans with dreamy cabins and they’re selling you the property and the plans.

Steven Butala:
That’s not a spec. And, I’m not saying anything negative here. That’s not a spec deal. What it is is they own the land. They have a-

Jill DeWit:
And they show it’s possible.

Steven Butala:
They have a pre-approved, that nobody broke ground on anything. They have a pre-approved structure by the municipality and it’s all ready to go. All they need is for you to buy it, as the end user. [crosstalk 00:10:07]

Jill DeWit:
That makes more sense to me.

Steven Butala:
That makes complete sense to me.

Jill DeWit:
Right. But this one, they’re going for it. So I guess my whole point is, I just want to talk about how many things could go wrong in this. And my other example is, there’s a home that we know that we walked in and looked at. I’ll never forget pulling up to, it was beautiful. It was just like I’m talking about. They bought the dirt, they spent like 500, [inaudible 00:10:28] here we go, 900,000. I’m sorry. Yeah. And they spent $900,000 on the dirt. That’s right. And I think it might have, I don’t know if it was a dirt or a tear down, doesn’t really matter. I don’t know what was there. And they, basically though, they ground up, built something new, and put it on the market for 6.5. We were walking up to the open house and I was trying to find the front door.

Jill DeWit:
I’m like, something’s wrong with this picture. It’s because the pool is in the front yard. The way the view is and the way you want to see, the wat you want to look at the view, you have to kind of twist the house a little bit on the lot. And I’m like this isn’t right. Well, I went back and looked at it, and this is an example of all the things that couldn’t go wrong. It’s the spec home, and they did it. And they’ve been trying to sell it since 2017 and they still haven’t sold it. So there is one- [inaudible 00:11:16]

Steven Butala:
In the hottest market in the real estate history.

Jill DeWit:
Exactly. And it’s a beautiful home.

Steven Butala:
In a, hottest national market, in this country’s history, in the top three hottest towns.

Jill DeWit:
Yeah.

Steven Butala:
In the Phoenix area, and they can’t sell the property.

Jill DeWit:
Yeah. And I’m sure they sold them all the things that this other spec home, I want to tell you, that’s where that’s being built now is happening. And so, boy, if I was a lender, whoo, I’d be watching that one. Right now sweating it.

Steven Butala:
So here’s a point. You have choices. As an investor, you have a lot of choices about what to do with your money more than ever. You have choices. Now, you can go to Vegas. You can go to the stock market and start trading. Those two things aren’t that different. But you can do what we do, which makes sense to me for some reason. You can send out a mailer, a very well thought out, well priced mailer. Blind offer mail campaign for houses or for land, that are materially undervalue for what you know you can resell the property. So now there’s like nine things we already know. We know where we’re sending it. We know how we price it. We know that we’re sending prices that are maybe 80% less in some cases, 70% less what the market value of the property is. We know how hot the market is, because we went through the Red Green. You always has to. Check the list, by checklist, by check on this list, we’re reducing risk. So, no property comes back in.

Steven Butala:
As if that’s not good enough, all these letters go out. The 10 or 15 people that decide they’re sellers, you didn’t decide that they were, they decided themselves at they’re sellers. They come back, and whether Joe talks to them on the phone or they just signed the offer and it comes back and you’re staring at it, you check to see. You check, you have the purchase agreement in your hand. You check on the internet to see whether or not you’re going to make any money on this thing. Well, how do you know if you’re going to make money? Let’s remove the check, the final check on the checklist. Am I actually going to make money on this? Well, I have an purchase agreement in my hand for $42,000. I think that was this today, or yesterday. All the properties around it are selling for $200,000. Is this a risk or not? I don’t see any risk at all.

Jill DeWit:
Exactly.

Steven Butala:
None.

Jill DeWit:
That’s my whole point here. We sleep really well at night.

Steven Butala:
And if I do, and this happens often in real life, I don’t see a risk in the deal or the pricing. We’re all done with that. The seller is a willing seller. They chose himself, I didn’t choose them. Nobody’s selling anybody anything, but maybe there’s access. Maybe there’s one little thing. That, I don’t know if there’s access to this property or if there isn’t. In three phone calls I figure that out, I find out there’s access. So now, in my opinion, this is about as riskless as you can get. And a spec home is about as risky as you can get in a real estate environment. Why not build an office building that’s empty and see if you can lease it. It’s about the same level of lack of intelligence in real estate that I…

Jill DeWit:
Don’t even go there with me. Don’t even start. Let’s end it on that.

Steven Butala:
There’s a concept called, air quotes, for sale real estate. You never want that.

Jill DeWit:
Nope.

Steven Butala:
You never want to get your head behind for sale real estate or for lease real estate. And I completely agree with that.

Jill DeWit:
Happy to join us today. I’m going to save you right now.

Steven Butala:
Save me?

Jill DeWit:
Oh no, I’m saving… No, not saving you. I’m saving our listeners. Five days a week, you can find us here on the Land slash House Academy Show.

Steven Butala:
Tomorrow the episode on Land Academy Show is Jack Thursday, and I’m going to talk about the challenges of the times we live in. You are not alone in your real estate ambition.

Jill DeWit:
I hope it’s very uplifting because the show’s going to drop on Thanksgiving.

Steven Butala:
It’s very very positive.

Jill DeWit:
Oh good.

Steven Butala:
Every single point that I have to make is positive.

Jill DeWit:
Oh good. Okay. Thank you for tuning in. By the way, we would love to connect with you and we are on Clubhouse. Go find us. So, get on Clubhouse, number one, join the land investing club and then follow us and you’ll get alerted when we go live. It’s usually the first and third Thursday at 10:00 A.M pacific time.

Speaker 3:
We’re 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:

https://BuWit.com

https://offers2owners.com

https://landinvestors.com

https://landacademy.com

https://landpin.com

https://parcelfact.com

https://countywise.com

https://deedperfect.com

https://ownersdata.com

https://houseacademy.com

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.

Land Academy Shifts into Third Gear for 2022 (LA 1639)

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 DeWit. Broadcasting from the valley of the sun.

Steven Butala:
Today Jill and I talk about how Land Academy is shifting into third gear for 2022.

Jill DeWit:
You just brought this up on Clubhouse last week.

Steven Butala:
I have. I have this thing about there are stages in everything. Usually four stages. Three or four stages in everything. So Land Academy is getting into stage three. Which, stage three of everything is the most exciting for me. It’s like, “Yeah, we know what works!” I’ll explain it all, but stage four is where it all works and you’re just eating bonbons and hanging out. It’s not that fun.

Jill DeWit:
By the way, I was going to thank everyone who suffered through yesterday’s show. It was kind of a hodge podge of topics. I think it was funny though. I just wanted to get that out of there.

Steven Butala:
Oh yesterday’s podcast?

Jill DeWit:
We were all over the place. It’s kind of like, “Who are these people?”

Steven Butala:
You know, if your girl’s like mine, the holiday season is here. So everything is a distraction from that. See, Jill’s whole life right now is about Thanksgiving. By the time this airs, Thanksgiving might even be on.

Jill DeWit:
It will be Tuesday.

Steven Butala:
And then it’s about Christmas after that. And then it’s about New Year’s. We have a tremendous amount of decorations for all of these holidays. It really starts with Halloween. So working for Jill is no fun.

Jill DeWit:
What?

Steven Butala:
Because it gets in the way of decorating and getting turkeys and stuff.

Jill DeWit:
You don’t work for me. You don’t work for me.

Steven Butala:
I didn’t say that.

Jill DeWit:
Oh, okay.

Steven Butala:
I said, working for Jill is a real distraction against what she wants to spend time on, which is the holidays.

Jill DeWit:
I didn’t understand the way you worded that, but I think I know where you’re going.

Steven Butala:
It’s a backwards compliment. So really Jill sitting here just doing the show is getting in the way of what she wants to do for Thanksgiving.

Jill DeWit:
Oh! I’m like, where are you going with this.

Steven Butala:
Mm-hmm.

Jill DeWit:
I understand.

Steven Butala:
That started yesterday with the podcast. 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 and don’t forget to subscribe on the Land Academy YouTube channel and comment on the show as you like.

Jill DeWit:
Nick wrote, “I got a 50 acre … Are we going to use this word?

Steven Butala:
Fifty acre access list.

Jill DeWit:
Thank you. Parcel for 42,000. He used the word that started with an L for those of you who are listening and I just hate that word. We both do. Before acquiring, we spoke with property owners around it until we came across a nice lady who was willing to give us an easement for next to nothing. Now we’re under contract to sell. What did we buy for again?

Steven Butala:
Fifty.

Jill DeWit:
Fifty thousand.

Steven Butala:
Forty two.

Jill DeWit:
Now we’re under contract to sell for $210,000.

Steven Butala:
Buy for 42, sell for 210.

Jill DeWit:
Because he made a call and found a nice lady who would give access.

Steven Butala:
Because they got on the phone, ran down Joe’s checklist for when you buy a property. Talk to the neighbors. And they made $158,000. More than that.

Jill DeWit:
Ding ding.

Steven Butala:
One-hundred and seventy.

Jill DeWit:
Beautiful. Is there any more to it?

Steven Butala:
Nope.

Jill DeWit:
Okay. That was awesome. So there was really no question.

Steven Butala:
No.

Jill DeWit:
That was just a statement.

Steven Butala:
This whole week is really a celebration of, because it’s Thanksgiving.

Jill DeWit:
Good.

Steven Butala:
A celebration of …

Jill DeWit:
Me?

Steven Butala:
Yes, Jill.

Jill DeWit:
I’m thankful for you. Are you thankful for me?

Steven Butala:
Yesterday, we were at … Yes, I’m very thankful. Yesterday we were at Costco trying to beat the rush for all this Thanksgiving stuff, and mission accomplished there by the way. And Jill leaned over the Costco jewelry case and said, “I would like this one, and this one, and this one.” To which I said, “Let’s just buy it all now, and I’ll wrap it and put it under the tree.” And she said, “Okay.”

Jill DeWit:
Perfect.

Steven Butala:
Is it going to make it that long?

Jill DeWit:
Oh yeah, I’m good about that.

Steven Butala:
Okay.

Jill DeWit:
I’ll forget about it. It’s really kind of nice. I’m good. I can keep secrets and I’m good about … I love surprises. If you tell me, “Don’t open that door, because your present’s in there.” I won’t open it.

Steven Butala:
So it got me thinking, women like jewelry. Or Jill does anyway. And there’s no limit it seems to how much shoes and stuff, for Jill anyway. What’s the man version of that. What’s my version of “There’s just no limit to what I would …”

Jill DeWit:
Fishing equipment?

Steven Butala:
No, I don’t have any. Honestly, I have all the guns I want. I have all the outdoor stuff I really want.

Jill DeWit:
Really?

Steven Butala:
With few exceptions. Sometimes you need little parts and stuff. I’ll tell you what I limitlessly collect, and I was thinking about this as we were checking out of Costco, and it’s land. Limitlessly collect land.

Jill DeWit:
That’s your man candy.

Steven Butala:
As long as it’s really cheap on the buy side.

Jill DeWit:
Right.

Steven Butala:
Man candy. I’m thinking maybe man jewelry.

Jill DeWit:
Okay.

Steven Butala:
Man candy. How do you come up with stuff like man candy?

Jill DeWit:
I don’t know.

Steven Butala:
Jill likes to cross phrases like what she meant was eye candy and man jewelry.

Jill DeWit:
Man jewelry.

Steven Butala:
Man candy. Maybe you want some man candy.

Jill DeWit:
Maybe I want that. How do you know that’s … You know what babe? I said exactly what I meant to say.

Steven Butala:
Then you said, “Hey, Jack, maybe it’s your man candy.” Trust me, I don’t need any man candy. You might need some man candy.

Jill DeWit:
Maybe I do. I could use a little man candy. All right.

Steven Butala:
Today’s topic, how Land Academy is shifting into third gear for 2022. This is why you’re listening.

Jill DeWit:
This is how we stay G rated.

Steven Butala:
It is.

Jill DeWit:
No kid got that.

Steven Butala:
Yeah they did. These kids know everything these days.

Jill DeWit:
Oh, okay.

Steven Butala:
Every once in a while, probably once every six months we do a show called the stages of wealth. And it’s usually me, and Jill sits there quietly. The first stage of wealth I think is … I’ll coincide the four stages of Land Academy. Again, we’re sliding into number three here.

Steven Butala:
The first stage of wealth for me is make more than you spend. Both of us have separately had times in our lives where we spend more than we make. And that’s no freaking fun.

Jill DeWit:
Nope.

Steven Butala:
It’s terrible.

Jill DeWit:
Yep.

Steven Butala:
You get out of first gear, or the first stage of wealth I should say. You’re finally making more than you’re spending. Your rent is less than your paycheck. Stage two is you’re actually saving money. You’re at a point where where whatever revenue you have coming in, or income you’re having come in, you’re accumulating some of it. Stage three is you start to have a balance. You have a balance sheet. You know what you’re doing now. You have a career or you have a job or you bought a house. So you’re starting to really accumulate a balance sheet, create a balance sheet. You’re planning for the future. Then stage four is, “I got it.” I’ve institutionalized this whole thing. We’re making tons and tons of money to the point where you start thinking about giving it away or inheritance or legacy.

Jill DeWit:
That’s it. I think that’s stage five. You think it’s all stage four? I think stage five is like, now you’re giving back and you’re not necessarily buying a hospital wing, but you’re doing stuff [crosstalk 00:07:35]-

Steven Butala:
Yeah, hospital wing’s good.

Jill DeWit:
Okay.

Steven Butala:
Some people don’t need to go past four. Some people can get a hospital wing.

Jill DeWit:
Right.

Steven Butala:
There’s one of two of those people in this group right now.

Jill DeWit:
Are there really?

Steven Butala:
Yeah, you’re the hospital wing person.

Jill DeWit:
I’m not a hospital wing. That’s hilarious. I thought you meant in Land Academy. I’m like, “Who are they?” I’m like trying to guess. I’m like, “Huh, I wonder who that would be.” I’m not a hospital wing person. But you know what I want? I want to feed every kid that can’t afford breakfast kind of person. That’s my hospital wing.

Steven Butala:
We’re pretty close to that.

Jill DeWit:
Mm-hmm.

Steven Butala:
Anyway. In Land Academy, when Jill and I started Land Academy, I never knew it was going to this far. What I really wanted to do is create a group of people that are well educated about how to buy and sell land by our way so that they can become our partners and we can all work together. And that’s stage three.

Steven Butala:
The first stage was just, I don’t know. Just to see if it works. See if anybody was interested in it. And yeah, it worked. It was actually an overnight success once we launched it. To getting it up to launch took a year. So that was stage one. Stage two was, “Wow, people are actually listening to the show. They’re interested in what we have to talk about.” I enjoy doing it.

Jill DeWit:
[crosstalk 00:08:48]

Steven Butala:
We decided early on, it’s like, “Yeah. I mean, I don’t hate doing this.”

Jill DeWit:
They’re making money. They started to do deals and it’s working.

Steven Butala:
Right.

Jill DeWit:
Mm-hmm.

Steven Butala:
So we’re finally shifting into third gear now because of deal funding.

Jill DeWit:
We spent five years in gear two, I want to just say that too.

Steven Butala:
I agree.

Jill DeWit:
It was five almost six years in second gear. So if you’re getting new, whatever you’re doing? These don’t go fast necessarily. Or I would argue, the more time you spend on them, the better it’s going to be.

Steven Butala:
The better stage four, or Jill’s hospital wing’s going to be. So we’re shifting into third gear, and here’s specifically why. Because of deal funding. And I don’t mean our deal funding at all. I don’t mean us funding deals. What I mean is we have a lot of people in our group now funding other peoples’ deals and they’re all forming partnerships together. So we’re full blown shifting this into third gear because it’s taken on a life of its own now. We do this show, we do a bunch of stuff to support it. And half entertain, half educate, I guess. But the fact is that there’s story after story after story like today. Of people making hundreds of thousands of dollars. Joining partnerships on both sides. Both the money side and then the deals side. So I’m proud is my point.

Jill DeWit:
Yeah.

Steven Butala:
I think this is going to air the day before Thanksgiving. It is for sure.

Jill DeWit:
This is on Tuesday.

Steven Butala:
Oh, it is? Okay. Two days.

Jill DeWit:
Yes, yeah. What were you going to ask?

Steven Butala:
So I love stage three. Stage three, it’s a huge reward. I’m just in reward happiness mode with Land Academy. Stage four is probably many years from now, where people are donating money now. Or whatever works. So we’re doing something big, really big together like buying farmland all together as an investment or some …

Jill DeWit:
I like it. Third gear you’re still … I don’t know. You’re 55, 65 miles. Not age. Miles an hour. I’m thinking in a car. That’s the speed that you’re going let’s just say. And now you’re on the highway.

Steven Butala:
And higher RMPs.

Jill DeWit:
Yeah.

Steven Butala:
Fourth gear, that’s the top gear.

Jill DeWit:
Yeah.

Steven Butala:
Hopefully, your RMPs go down.

Jill DeWit:
I like that. That’s a great way of saying it. Happy you could join us today. Five days a week you can find us here. Including on Thanksgiving on the Land Academy Show.

Steven Butala:
Tomorrow the episode on the House Academy Show is called The Failed Anatomy of a spec Home Deal. You are not alone in your real estate ambition. Do spec homes make sense?

Jill DeWit:
This topic, because came of me, standing looking as an observer of a spec home going up. And just scratching my head going, “This is nuts.”

Steven Butala:
I agree.

Jill DeWit:
And we’ll talk all about it. Talk about taking a gamble.

Steven Butala:
Couldn’t agree more.

Jill DeWit:
It’s more than I’m willing to do.

Steven Butala:
Great word. Great word.

Jill DeWit:
Thank you. Thank you for tuning in. By the way, if you’re a Land Academy member be sure you join us on Discord.

Steven Butala:
We are Steve and Jill. Information.

Jill DeWit:
And inspiration.

Steven Butala:
To buy undervalued property.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

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