Be a Producer Not a Consumer (LA 1484)

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.

Jill Friday – So Much Fun Looking at Our Properties (LA 1483)

April 16, 2021 / Jack Butala / Podcasts

Jill Friday – So Much Fun Looking at Our Properties (LA 1483)

Transcript:

Steven Butala:
Steve and Jill here.

Jill DeWit:
Hey.

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 sweet Scottsdale, Arizona.

Steven Butala:
Today, Jill and I talk about how it’s Jill Friday and how much fun we have looking at our properties right now.

Jill DeWit:
Kind of eating your words.

Steven Butala:
I thought you said never go look at your properties. You should never leave your desk.

Jill DeWit:
Yeah, you lose money.

Steven Butala:
Well, this is the way we do it, it’s kind of fun. 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. If you’re already a member, please join us on Discord.

Jill DeWit:
Of Land Academy. That’s right.

Steven Butala:
You will learn stuff. I learn stuff every day.

Jill DeWit:
Cool. Dave wrote, I’ve got several sellers lined up from my first mailing and I wonder which deed to create and mail to the notary for the transfer? The initial deal is from a seller who’s owned the property since the early 90s, and the county website says he purchased a quick claim deed following a public auction. I just told him I would send him a deed to sign without bothering to figure out what kind of create. How do you decide which deed to use? I use DeedPerfect.

Steven Butala:
Whatever it spits out.

Jill DeWit:
Yeah. For the most part. For the most part, hold on a moment.

Steven Butala:
DeedPerfect is a site that we own.

Jill DeWit:
Let’s just say, because most of the time, you do need to check and make sure, but usually most of the time it’s a normal transfer. Where’d you go? And it’s saying California. It’s a grant deed. Other places, it’s a special warranty deed. That’s usually what we’re doing. I’m not going to do another quick claim deed, that’s used for a certain situation. [inaudible 00:01:52] back up, Dave, first just kind of researching, it’s really easy to, research in google types of deeds and what they mean.

Steven Butala:
It’s very state specific.

Jill DeWit:
You need to first understand what is a warranty, what’s a quick claim deed, what’s a trust deed. There’s different kinds of deeds, treasurers deed. Just because they obtained the property that way, this is one of the mistakes that I made originally. I had a property, I’m looking at a treasurer’s deed, and I was brand spanking new at this. And I thought, okay, you always copy the same deed before. So I’m redoing it and I called it a treasurer’s deed. I’m not a treasurer, I don’t do a treasurer’s deed. So, you just need to understand what the deeds are, first of all, and who uses them.

Steven Butala:
Thank you for not asking me which one to use.

Jill DeWit:
Oh, you’re welcome.

Steven Butala:
I really appreciate that you don’t ask me that.

Jill DeWit:
I learned, I learned, like, oh, so I’m not a treasurer so you don’t use a treasure’s deed. That’s just how they bought it. Now, when I sell it, now it goes to a special warranty deed. Say if it’s that appropriate state, California might be a grant deed. So my cheat sheet, first of all is, I use DeedPerfect because for the 99% of normal transactions that you’re doing, the deed is universal and it can be found in deedperfect.com. And we made this site to solve this problem for everybody. If you’re a Land Academy member, it’s free. Everybody else is like a hundred bucks. Rocket Lawyer, and those guys are like 200 bucks, or it’s like a couple hundred bucks for one deed. Ours are $99, that’s it.

Steven Butala:
We got tired of doing our own deeds. We were doing so many deeds that we said, you know what, we need to build a site and we’re not going to pay Rocket Lawyer or whatever else. The way that those sites are set up, it’s not set up for what we do.

Jill DeWit:
It’s not to spit out a deed, I don’t know what it’s used for, to gather your information, to sell you other stuff I guess.

Steven Butala:
I don’t know.

Jill DeWit:
I just want a flippin deed.

Steven Butala:
That’s how all these tools that we have, Offers to Owners-

Jill DeWit:
I just need a deed, man.

Steven Butala:
Offers to Owners was created by us out of frustration with dealing with bulk mail companies that didn’t understand what the hell we were doing.

Jill DeWit:
And Mail Merge Drama.

Steven Butala:
Yeah. All these tools. DeedPerfect was created because we were so tired of doing our own deeds that we just wanted to put in some information into a website and have it kick the deed out for us.

Jill DeWit:
And it does. So you just go in and you fill in grantor, grantee, legal description. And then it just spits it out for you. And it also spits out the supporting documents, which for me is a nice sort of checklist. Some states have affidavit of property value, extra little documents that they need for the treasurer or the recorder or the assessor. P Corp, things like that, it spits all those extra things out for you. That’s what I say, Dave. Do a little, few minutes, google it, double check if you need to do anything special in this situation. And I’m guessing you don’t. And then go to DeedPerfect and you could create really easy, and you don’t have to sit and type and get the format right. By the way, the font size, the format, the actual font, everything like that is set up for you because some recorders have a very specific way that they want this done. And it’s all in there for you. Did I answer that?

Steven Butala:
Yeah, I mean, that’s always, this comes up all the time. It’s a good question.

Jill DeWit:
It’s a good question.

Steven Butala:
There’s some stuff that just never changes and it’s not good. And deed types is one of those things.

Jill DeWit:
Yeah, it doesn’t really change.

Steven Butala:
It’s been this way since the 1800s in this country, the deed drama.

Jill DeWit:
It’s interesting. My last point, if you screw it up, who cares. I know a lot of people like, it came back from the county, and I made a mistake. I don’t own it, I did this wrong. What am I going to do? Usually, there’s a quick fix, you can do a corrective deed, you can redo the deed depending what the situation is. This is why too I always say, have a great relationship with your seller. So in case you need to go back to him as I have.

Steven Butala:
Call a recorder.

Jill DeWit:
And a recorder too.

Steven Butala:
If you can speak their language and you’re really nice to them, they’ll tell you, oh yeah, this is how we do it and this is why. And the really good ones will, Jill, sometimes when we’re really new in an area, she’ll say, look, can I just send you this deed on the email, and you can just look at it and make sure it’s okay, and then I’ll get it signed and go through all the stuff because I want to make sure we’re doing it right for you. They’ll appreciate that.

Jill DeWit:
I call them. I usually call them and just say, I call them and say, here’s what I’m sending in, I have a two page document and I have this, this, and this. Am I missing anything? And my check’s made out to this in the amount of this. And they’re going to go perfect, done. Thank you. And then even as an extra insurance, I put a sticky note in there with my phone number and saying, in case I missed anything or I screwed anything up, please let me know, and they’ll call you.

Steven Butala:
They’re going to treat you how you treat them. So if you’re super nice to them-

Jill DeWit:
Super cool.

Steven Butala:
Let them know that you care, you want to do it right, it matters to you to do this correctly. I’ve gotten deeds from sellers, this is way before jail that were just handwritten. All just scribbly, can’t read it, and they’ve recorded it.

Steven Butala:
Today’s topic is Jill Friday. So much fun looking at our properties. This is the meat of the show.

Jill DeWit:
So I wanted to talk about this today because I wanted to clarify what Steven said a minute ago, what do you mean you left your desk? So we, for a couple reasons, all business related, well, not all business related, and fun related, have purchased a new rig to go out and look at stuff and just have some fun. So, we went out for the first time last weekend for four days and went to areas that happened to contain property that we own. So it was twofold. A, just get the heck out of the house, get away from the kids, get away from life and just be out in nature, have some fun. B, see if this is, so it’s threefold. B, see if we can handle this, are we these kind of people. And then C was, let’s look at some of our property, why not? And we had so much fun.

Steven Butala:
We’re going to make a show out of it.

Jill DeWit:
Yeah. So we’re going to use this for business for a couple reasons. I went out and took some extra pictures standing on, me standing on our property, which is kind of cool. And then we did some videos. And then just showing us out loving the land. This is what happened to me. So I’m out there going, I didn’t even know we were these people. I’m out there, we’re out rolling around in our RV, and it’s a class C, it’s 24 feet, it’s a Mercedes chassis kind of thing. We’re not roughing it folks. We’re not intense. We’re out there boondocking for part of it. One place we had hook ups, the other places we did not. And it was great. We had so much fun. I didn’t know that.

Jill DeWit:
And it was really an eye opener for me because we’re out there driving around at some of our properties and seeing how it’s being used by our buyers. And what a nice, easy, simple, inexpensive, happy life these people have created for themselves. Maybe they have built mobiles and put them on there. Some of them they built homes on there. There’s all kinds of different ways that they’re using these properties that we obtain and sold at a great price. A, it makes me rethink, wow, what are we doing, we’re over here. This is not a bad life. And then also, it made me rethink that our business model is awesome. I love it.

Steven Butala:
I do too. I love looking at land.

Jill DeWit:
I have such a sense of pride now too. Going out there and seeing people that bought property for me and having a nice life living off this property makes me feel awesome.

Steven Butala:
Me too.

Jill DeWit:
So I wanted everyone, I brought this up in the ladies group last week, and I brought this up a little bit I think in Career Path. I hope you enjoy and appreciate what you do as a business like I do, because you really are helping people. We’re buying property at a good price and selling it at a great price too. So these people can now afford to have the life they want and live wherever they want.

Steven Butala:
One of the people at Career Path yesterday said, she said, on the weekend, my husband and I just go look at land, not even our land. We love land. I’ve always been that way. When you couple that just innate interest in real estate and land specifically, and the fact that you understand numbers and math, and you’re a very logical candidate to be a Land Academy member or land investor, not necessarily a Land Academy member. I’ve always been that way.

Steven Butala:
I sold some property one time to a guy, this is long before Jill. We bought a ton of property from a nonprofit. Over the years, people would donate property when they pass away in their will to this nonprofit in Northern Arizona. And this guy, I posted it all on the internet, he called me and said, I want all of it. And I did end up selling all of it to him. And it turns out, none of it had access. But that’s what he wanted. He wanted to be not found. And so, he got one of those Jeep crawlers, and he’s like, I have never had so much fun in my life ever. Finding these properties with GPS coordinates and then just camping on it.

Jill DeWit:
Exactly. So it was awesome. I love it. And I can’t wait to go again. So that’s what we’re doing now. We’re thinking, all right, how far do we want to go?

Steven Butala:
The intention is to make a weekly show out of it on YouTube. We’ll get it all miked and camerad up.

Jill DeWit:
Half of it is comical.

Steven Butala:
Yeah. Us failing.

Jill DeWit:
Oh my gosh.

Steven Butala:
When I say us, I mean me.

Jill DeWit:
The first day. I have shared this, I will share it publicly now. The first day, we wanted to kill each other. Oh yeah. It was great. Who was driving the RV back because the other person was going to be left alongside the road.

Steven Butala:
First night we stayed in a hotel.

Jill DeWit:
Oh no, it wasn’t a hotel.

Steven Butala:
Jill said, I feel like I should be dyeing my hair because we just committed felonies.

Jill DeWit:
It was that kind of wood panels, you call this a towel, this is a washcloth motel.

Steven Butala:
I slept with my clothes on. It’s that bad. I don’t have any standards. I don’t have any cleanliness standards in life.

Jill DeWit:
With the car keys in his pocket because we couldn’t figure anything out. And we were like, this rig is awful. It’s brand new.

Steven Butala:
Nothing works in it. Nothing works. It turns out there was nothing wrong with the RV at all and everything wrong with us.

Jill DeWit:
It was great.

Steven Butala:
It’s brand new. We don’t ever buy anything new. I’ve had one new car in my entire life and then this thing. And we intentionally bought it brand new because it’s like, I call it Barbie’s dream camper because it’s all clean inside, it’s all Jillified.

Jill DeWit:
If you’re thinking about doing this, let me tell you the actual progression. Day one, you’re going to want to kill each other, send it back, it’s a stupid idea. Whose idea was this? We spent way too much money. Nothing works. We’re selling it, I don’t care if we give it back. Those are the emotions that go through your head. Then the next day.

Steven Butala:
You figure one thing out.

Jill DeWit:
The next day you wake up, you do start calling the dealer [inaudible 00:13:51]. You got the dealer and you got the warranty in your hand. And you’re working on this while you’re trying to solve a few things and you realize, oh, okay, that worked, because you got paperwork in your hand now you’re slowly figuring this out. Day three, you feel like a pro. And day four, you can’t wait to go out again.

Steven Butala:
Day four, you’re planning the next trip. It all starts with conquering one thing, like turning on the water.

Jill DeWit:
Like getting the fridge to work. This is a cheap TV anyway. I guess it needs power. Oh gosh. That was fun anyway. You’ll see. We’re going to document this better as we go along. It’ll be funny. My goodness. Happy you could join us today. Five days a week, you can find us right here on the Land Academy Show.

Steven Butala:
Please join us next for another interesting episode. You are not alone in your real estate ambition.

Jill DeWit:
When are we leaving, Saturday morning?

Steven Butala:
Yep.

Jill DeWit:
Okay, good. Oh, that’s tomorrow cameras.

Steven Butala:
We need some cameras. Oh, it is tomorrow, yeah.

Jill DeWit:
It is tomorrow. This is going to be good. I can’t wait. Thank you for tuning in. We hope you find our content valuable and we really do appreciate your support. If you haven’t already, please check out our YouTube channel. You might by now, who knows, see some RV images up there. We’ll see. It’ll be coming soon. And if not, hit the subscribe button and give us feedback on the shows you love.

Steven Butala:
We are Steve and Jill, information-

Jill DeWit:
… inspiration …

Steven Butala:
… to buy undervalued property.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

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

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

The BuWit Family of Companies include:

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

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

Jack Thursday – Just for Engineers and Business Owners (LA 1482)

April 15, 2021 / Jack Butala / Podcasts

Jack Thursday – Just for Engineers and Business Owners (LA 1482)

Transcript:

Steven Butala:
Steve and Jill here.

Jill DeWit:
Hello.

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

Jill DeWit:
And I’m Jill DeWit, broadcasting from sweet, sunny, Scottsdale, Arizona.

Steven Butala:
Today Jill and I talk about how it’s Jack Thursday, just for engineers and business owners.

Jill DeWit:
Bye-bye.

Steven Butala:
We have a tremendous number of business owners and engineers in our group, and I’m going to talk about why, and so is Jill.

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 if you’re already a member, I urge you to join us on Discord.

Jill DeWit:
Okie dokie. Chris wrote, “Hi, my name is Chris B., and I’ve only been a member for maybe two weeks and I’ve watched all the videos.” Chris, those are two weeks you’ll never get back. Just kidding. Good for you. I am happy, you blew through that. “I didn’t know if there was a place on the website to make myself available to fund deals. Any input is appreciated.” There is. There’s two ways.

Steven Butala:
Well, there’s two that I know of, but let’s see if they’re the same.

Jill DeWit:
One is where you could be watching for deals via LandTank and HouseTank. When people need money, that’s where they post them. And you can just go in there and grab them.

Steven Butala:
Get on LandTank and make sure that you turn your notifications on, because every single deal without exception, that goes to Land Tank, it gets gobbled up within minutes by other funders. That’s one way. What’s your other way?

Jill DeWit:
Well, every January, we put out a master list where we … You’ll get on the next one, Chris. We publish who you are, all your contact information, any details about how much money you’re willing to spend per deal, how much money you’re willing to spend in total. If there’s any parts of the country that you like, any nuances about how much you’re willing to help or not help or whatever it is, funding other people’s deals. That’s it.

Jill DeWit:
The other way I’d say put it in, maybe Land Investors? I’m trying to think where else he could-

Steven Butala:
Nobody listens to that funding deal, and it comes out once a year anyway. It’s just cool to know that there’s $100 million available to people who were in the Land Academy to do good deals.

Jill DeWit:
Well, I look at it.

Steven Butala:
So, it’s a cool thing. I look at it, too, but it’s once a year.

Jill DeWit:
Okay.

Steven Butala:
There’s a section in Discord called Would You Fund This Deal. And people who need transactions funded, us included sometimes. We do some deals that are so big that we don’t want to bite it all ourselves.

Steven Butala:
There’s a section called, Would You Fund This Deal. If I were you, and there’s other people in this group that have no intention of ever sending out a mailer, they just want to fund other people’s deals, which is fine. People from institutions and hedge funds and stuff, actually, are members. I would go be real loud about it in Discord and say, “I fund deals. And they better be damn good deals. And you better be really intelligent or else I don’t want to work with you.” And I would really be that clear about it. Because you will-

Jill DeWit:
Not you, Chris. You tell them that if you want.

Steven Butala:
Tell them. Yeah.

Jill DeWit:
Yeah.

Steven Butala:
You better be intelligent and nice and have only five star deals.

Jill DeWit:
Give us your checklist. Jack’s like, “Here’s what I expect.” Come on, are we working together?

Steven Butala:
Between the two of us, Jill and I, I’m not allowed to fund deals.

Jill DeWit:
Correct.

Steven Butala:
Because of this attitude I have.

Jill DeWit:
Yeah. As you can see, he’s still on step one of my 10-step anger program.

Steven Butala:
You know what the truth is? When I get a deal funded, the deal ends. For some reason, there’s people reach out to me specifically to fund deals, which is fine.

Jill DeWit:
That is funny.

Steven Butala:
Which is fine. I go to other members, even without Jill. I don’t even talk about it with Jill. I go to other members and I asked them to come in on the funding side of it so they can actually manage the manager.

Jill DeWit:
Exactly, whatever. He has his own … But I don’t know what the word is. Willy-nilly way of getting things done. I have it in a system, but okay.

Steven Butala:
Today’s topic, it’s Jack Thursday, just for engineers and business owners. This is why you’re listening. Why, Jill? We have so many engineers, accountants and pilots in our group, but disproportionate amount of engineers, all kinds. Electrical, aerospace, mechanical-

Jill DeWit:
Data.

Steven Butala:
… software. Yeah.

Jill DeWit:
Numbers.

Steven Butala:
Data, and numbers.

Jill DeWit:
It’s a numbers thing.

Steven Butala:
I agree.

Jill DeWit:
And that they understand, they understand checklists.

Steven Butala:
This is money [crosstalk 00:04:37].

Jill DeWit:
They understand procedures, and you do this first, then you do this. And there’s a great spreadsheet called the Red Yellow and Green Test that you go extract this data. You put it in here, you add this and this, and you hit the button and bingo, you can see the top three ones. You can go, “Oh, I get it. There’s just no question. This is where I need to send the next mail based on this criteria.” And you can adjust your criteria. It’s all just how they think. It’s very natural to them, and I understand that.

Steven Butala:
We take the risk-

Jill DeWit:
It’s not a feeling. It’s not a dartboard. It’s not, “Oh, I heard a rumor.”

Steven Butala:
We take all the risk and emotion out of buying and selling real estate. There’s no dartboards anywhere in our office, there never have been. We don’t take all the risk out, we take 98% of the risk out of doing a land deal.

Jill DeWit:
You might start with a thing like, “I heard X company or X something was leaving here and going there.” You might read some articles that point in that direction, but you don’t do it. You don’t dive in based on your gut. Now you go and check it and make sure it’s right, and then you know you make a good decision.

Steven Butala:
Everybody’s moving to Austin, Texas. It’s the hottest place to move for some reason right now. If you look at Austin in a zip code map perspective … This is why engineers and accountants flock to the Land Academy. You deconstruct Austin with no emotion. You take the zip codes and you look at each zip code and you run through the system that I designed called the Red Green Yellow Test. Each one of those zip codes, it will tell you where to send mail.

Steven Butala:
So what has the lowest days on market? How many properties are actually listed for sale? All different kinds of properties, land, apartment buildings, you name it. Versus the universe of properties in that market, you want that number to be real low. You want your days on markets to be real low or in the middle range right now. And a bunch of other statistics that make it red, green, or yellow.

Steven Butala:
And so now you know, if you actually end up with a property there through the mail, what it’s going to sell for, with great predictability. How much it’s going to sell for price per square foot or price per acre, depending on what type of property you’re buying. How long it’s going to take to sell it within reason, and the exact amount that you need to send the offer out so that you make money.

Jill DeWit:
And you just hit the button and do it.

Steven Butala:
That makes sense to engineers.

Jill DeWit:
It does. It makes sense to me.

Steven Butala:
It makes sense to me too.

Jill DeWit:
Should make sense to you too, think about it.

Steven Butala:
Yes. That’s my whole point to this show, this episode.

Jill DeWit:
If you knew that-

Steven Butala:
If this doesn’t make sense to you-

Jill DeWit:
If you knew and you had data, this is the whole thing here. If you had hard data, you can go back six months a year, how far are you [inaudible 00:07:19] feel comfortable and go, “Holy cow, every single house in this zip code priced at or below $300 a square foot,” whatever it is, “in any condition, flies off the shelf within 23 and a half days.” And it hasn’t changed, it’s only improved in the last six months. What does that tell you?

Steven Butala:
So then your job quite simply becomes getting offers in the hands of all the people that have like-kind real estate in that market that you’ve analyzed over and over and over again until somebody signs … Many people sign them.

Jill DeWit:
Yeah. And if it’s a house, maybe it might be 5,000.

Steven Butala:
Yeah.

Jill DeWit:
Let’s just see, took your 5,000 to get one person-

Steven Butala:
Let’s say it’s 10,000.

Jill DeWit:
… to agree to sell this house at $80,000 below whatever, because it’s a disaster. They’re COVID nuts. Let’s just line it all up. Mom died, they’re COVID nuts. They don’t want anybody walking in there, and they don’t even want anybody to see what the garage looks like. They can’t wait to get this off and they’re willing to do that, they’re happy to do that, by the way.

Jill DeWit:
It’s not like … This is one of the things too I have to just let people know that this really does happen. There are a lot of people out there, I’d rather … You and I almost did this, we were going to take a … There’s things that we’ve almost sold and taken a hit because I just want it done right now and done fast.

Steven Butala:
We do this all the time.

Jill DeWit:
Yeah.

Steven Butala:
All the time.

Jill DeWit:
Think about your last garage sale, everyone. How many times have you at the end of the day said, “I don’t care if somebody gets it for free, get it off my yard.”

Steven Butala:
That’s it. And we’re about to do that [crosstalk 00:09:01].

Jill DeWit:
Share, I could take pictures of it and get it on eBay-

Steven Butala:
sure.

Jill DeWit:
… or OfferUp or whatever, Nextdoor or something like that.

Steven Butala:
Hey, I’m going to give you an example.

Jill DeWit:
Sure. I could spend some time and make 20 bucks. Do I care? No.

Steven Butala:
Here’s a great example of … I’m going to throw Jill under the bus.

Jill DeWit:
Oh-oh.

Steven Butala:
Jill has a girlfriend in California that said this over drinks a year ago. “Oh yeah, when we moved from Texas, it didn’t make sense for us to move down here the furniture.”

Jill DeWit:
Correct.

Steven Butala:
“Because the moving cost was more expensive than the actual value of all the furniture, so we just bought all new stuff. New silverware, everything.”

Jill DeWit:
Yep.

Steven Butala:
So guess what? Jil did a spreadsheet. And she had her personal assistant do all the research and calculated that it costs about the same to move all of our stuff versus getting new stuff, from California to Arizona.

Jill DeWit:
That’s assuming nothing gets damaged.

Steven Butala:
And all the other variables in that time, like time wasn’t even a factor, our time.

Jill DeWit:
Yeah, yeah.

Steven Butala:
So, hey, someone’s going to get a house full of really good beachfront stuff for very, very little to nothing.

Jill DeWit:
Lightly used, because we’re not there.

Steven Butala:
Yep.

Jill DeWit:
But so that’s the point. So this group, it just … We knew it, but it’s good to talk about. If you’re a data person, you’re a numbers person, you fall into these categories, this will come really easy to you. And if you really understand … You live in Excel, you don’t know how to do anything outside of Excel, then this will come really easy to you.

Jill DeWit:
And for everyone else, you can get there. You can learn it, and you just … And it’s so nice knowing that you will have data to keep you from making any big mistakes. And we teach you and show you how to use that data, and double-check your thoughts and your gut and make sure you’re doing it right.

Steven Butala:
So what can go wrong in that Austin example I just did? What can actually go wrong?

Jill DeWit:
I’ll have to think-

Steven Butala:
It’s not all peaches and cream.

Jill DeWit:
Okay-

Steven Butala:
There’s always a catch to something.

Jill DeWit:
Let me think here. So at what point of the process? Give me an example.

Steven Butala:
Here’s what I think can go wrong. Austin is such a hot market specifically. When you have such low days on market, there’s a bunch of MSAs, a bunch of big cities around right now that … I would never send mail personally to Austin because the market’s too hot. There’s too much stuff going on. People are too in-tune with their houses and their land and the values.

Jill DeWit:
So you have to send more mail then.

Steven Butala:
So sending somewhere, if you do a Red Green Yellow Test around Austin. Let’s say there’s three rings. There’s the, the city itself, then the outer ring and then the-

Jill DeWit:
Five miles out, 10 miles out.

Steven Butala:
Yes, yeah.

Jill DeWit:
Something like that.

Steven Butala:
I’ll tell you what, 10, 20 miles out of Austin, you’re going to make some dough.

Jill DeWit:
Yeah.

Steven Butala:
And I’m just using Austin as an example, but most MSAs.

Jill DeWit:
Well, here’s another possibility too, because I talked to somebody about this. You’re hitting a market that’s really, really, really hot. And you’re used to making $80,000 a deal. You might make 60.

Steven Butala:
Yeah.

Jill DeWit:
You might have to come in a lot higher-

Steven Butala:
Exactly.

Jill DeWit:
… because the market’s so hot, but if you do the volume and you do it right, you’re still going to make some good money.

Steven Butala:
Jill and I, we’re famous, famous.

Jill DeWit:
Ans it’ll happen faster, so there’s a trade-off.

Steven Butala:
Up to the COVID time, we’re scraping the bottom from a price standpoint.

Jill DeWit:
Right.

Steven Butala:
If I concluded that $800 an acre was retail, we would go in at 100. Ever since COVID and this how hot this markets are, we don’t do that anymore. And we’re making way more money than we ever had. We’ll come in now at two or three or four or $500 an acre.

Jill DeWit:
Because you know what’s nice what’s happening? Here’s some little truth time. So we come in higher, by the time I’m putting it up for sale I can even sell a little bit higher.

Steven Butala:
Yeah.

Jill DeWit:
So it’s working out.

Steven Butala:
Right.

Jill DeWit:
And we’ve always known that. When these markets, you could … Within reason, the spread won’t change, but how much you buy it and what you sell it for will be … You buy a little higher, you sell a little higher. You buy it lower, you sell it lower. So that’s kind of the goal.

Steven Butala:
There’s always four or five people in our group at any given time that obsess on this percentage.

Jill DeWit:
Oh yeah.

Steven Butala:
“What percent of the sale price that I’ve determined through scraping or whatever, the retail price of the property, should I make an offer?” I have never understood that. I don’t understand obsessing on 15% or 20%.

Jill DeWit:
Because everybody wants one number.

Steven Butala:
I know, and there’s not one number.

Jill DeWit:
Because here’s the reason why, you know-

Steven Butala:
And Austin’s different than Phoenix, different than Los Angeles, different than Manhattan.

Jill DeWit:
Well, you’re different, your threshold. “What if Steven’s doing 25%? I’m going to do 30. What if I’m come right behind him with 30%, I might get some more stuff.” [crosstalk 00:13:39].

Steven Butala:
The answer is, how much confidence do you have in your sales ability? That’s the answer.

Jill DeWit:
That too.

Steven Butala:
And how hot the market is. If every single piece of property … We’re in a market right now, we’re sending mail where every property, it goes up for sale and with the day somebody buys, it’s under contract.

Jill DeWit:
It’s really just numbers and timing and-

Steven Butala:
So you got to believe that I’m going in really high, because I have so much sales confidence on the sell side.

Jill DeWit:
Right. I’m never going to mailer behind you though.

Steven Butala:
It got really off topic.

Jill DeWit:
We did.

Steven Butala:
Really happy you could join us today.

Jill DeWit:
Yeah, as am I. And five days a week you can find us right here on the Land Academy Show.

Steven Butala:
Tomorrow the episode on the Land Academy Show is called Jill Friday. So much fun looking at our properties. You are not alone in your real estate ambition. Jill and I bought a new toy.

Jill DeWit:
Yes, we did.

Steven Butala:
According to the IRS though, it’s a tool.

Jill DeWit:
It is a tool.

Steven Butala:
It’s a tool.

Jill DeWit:
It is. Hey, you need to send out a few thousand offers to property owners like us. Check out offers, the number two, owners.com, offers2owners.com. No setup fees, free mail merge, and exceptional service. We should know as it is our company. Give Offers 2 Owners a call today.

Steven Butala:
We’re Steve and Jill.

Jill DeWit:
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:

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.

Web Scraping for Accurate Mailer Pricing (LA 1481)

April 14, 2021 / Jack Butala / Podcasts

Transcript:

Steven Butala:
Steve and Jill here.

Jill Dewit:
Hi.

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

Jill Dewit:
And I’m Jill Dewit, broadcasting from sunny Scottsdale, Arizona.

Steven Butala:
Today, Jill and I talk about … really, I talk about web scraping for accurate mailer pricing. Jill adds some flair to it.

Jill Dewit:
Truth time. This was my topic. I love this.

Steven Butala:
You like web scraping?

Jill Dewit:
Yes. I just said, “Can we please talk about this? I just can’t talk about it enough.” I think this is the greatest thing. Ever since I’ve learned this trick, I do it for everything. I web scrape to make sure I’m buying the right mascara, hair products.

Steven Butala:
You know what? Friday, tomorrow’s Jack Thursday.

Jill Dewit:
Okay, got it. Do I get a Friday? Oh, I get my … okay.

Steven Butala:
On Friday, it’s Jill Friday. So much fun looking at our properties, so you can talk about-

Jill Dewit:
Okay. I can talk about that. Oh darn. Okay.

Steven Butala:
Yeah, so taking the [crosstalk 00:01:03]

Jill Dewit:
Fine. I’ll let you have web scraping this time. I might roll that into mine on Friday.

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. Oh, and if you’re already a member, you should join us on Discord. Seriously, I’m not joking. It cracks me up that a lot of people in our group aren’t on Discord. That is 50% of the education value of being in Land Academy is Discord.

Jill Dewit:
It gets distracting though, because I mean, we have that, and then we have the land investors online community. Both are great. Both are great. Okay.

Steven Butala:
What I’m noticing since we started the Discord thing is that the people on land investors are all not in our group. Even though there are a lot of people that answer questions on land investors that are in our group, but the questions are from new people that are not yet members, but all the real questions and education goes on in Discord.

Jill Dewit:
Understood. Hello, Bobbie. Bobbie wrote, “Still new here and getting my bearings. First off blessings to you all, Steven and Jill and the entire Land Academy team.” Thank you, Bobbie.

Steven Butala:
That’s nice. I never get tired of hearing that.

Jill Dewit:
Aww. She says, “Thank you for creating such an amazingly helpful community and offering so much of yourselves to all of us. After a lot of research I have yet to stumble across this info. I just wanted to find out what’s typical with regard to the purchase agreement when selling land. Is it as simple as using the same purchase agreement to buy it? If so, do you all have suggestions on any necessary modifications when converting the agreement? Thanks in advance.” I use the same one.

Steven Butala:
Same one.

Jill Dewit:
It doesn’t really matter.

Steven Butala:
If you go to offers, the number 2, owners.com, and you go to forums-

Jill Dewit:
Forums.

Steven Butala:
… This is all free and it’s all open to the public. Click on purchase agreement, and whether you’re in the group or not, you can use it to buy and sell real estate, and here’s why. Jill and I just bought a house. We’re going to flip it, but it’s an extremely expensive high-end house that Jill got for an amazing price. I have never … And we got a mortgage on it, because it was less than 3%, because I couldn’t make the math work otherwise.

Steven Butala:
I have never signed so many documents in my life. I bet we signed our names-

Jill Dewit:
Tell me. I know. A hundred times.

Steven Butala:
… probably a hundred times. You know how many times we sign that purchase agreement when we buy and sell land? Once, and the seller or buyer signs it once.

Jill Dewit:
Right. I sign that, I sign off on one-

Steven Butala:
So it’s just my way of sticking my middle finger up to real estate agents and the lawyers behind them. It is ridiculous. How many times? This is not for a mortgage, even. This is just to buy the damn asset.

Jill Dewit:
Right.

Steven Butala:
And it gets worse and worse and worse.

Jill Dewit:
My favorite is not … since we’re ranting here, I had to sign a COVID thing for a piece of dirt that I never even stepped on and got near anybody. I’m two states over.

Steven Butala:
Yeah, we never … yeah.

Jill Dewit:
I’m two states over, and I had to sign the COVID release form. I’m like, “What the heck is this? It’s a piece of dirt. We’re not going in anybody’s house. I’m not even there.” It’s so funny.

Steven Butala:
The real estate agent that dealt with this house … We dealt with the listing agent. We don’t carry a real estate agent of our own in our back pocket. We deal with the listing agent.

Jill Dewit:
Correct. Right.

Steven Butala:
And she had no idea that there is another way to do this.

Jill Dewit:
Correct.

Steven Butala:
None.

Jill Dewit:
She did not understand.

Steven Butala:
She’s an idiot, just truly on knowledge about real estate.

Jill Dewit:
She didn’t know. “You mean, I could submit the offer? We could just do it?” And I’m like, “Yeah, I don’t have to have someone on my side.” It’s weird. Anyway, that’s not what this is about.

Steven Butala:
I’m not going to even tell you what she made on this house, the amount of money.

Jill Dewit:
I don’t even want to know. I know. So anyway, let’s get back to this.

Steven Butala:
Sorry.

Jill Dewit:
And back to the purchase agreement, it is this easy. Don’t ever think it. Use the same one. And by the way, you can even cross stuff off and write it in and then they’ll still take it. For example, I sent an offer out to someone. Say it’s $4,392 and 55 cents, and they say, “Make it five grand, you’ve got a deal,” or 5,500, whatever it is, it’s close enough. “You know what, Mr. Smith? I’m totally cool with that.” But just cross that off, write in 5,500, initial it, send it in, and that’s going to be just fine. And sign the thing at the bottom. It’s going to be fine. Okay. And that’s what I take to open escrow. And they say, “Okay.” There you go.

Steven Butala:
Today’s topic, web scraping for accurate mailer pricing. Good night, Jill.

Jill Dewit:
Is that written in there? Because it should be. It should be written in there, like “Jill’s day off.” This is what happens.

Steven Butala:
Web scraping, philosophically now, forget about the tech piece-

Jill Dewit:
Yeah. Please describe this for us.

Steven Butala:
… is going on to a website and telling a tool, a web scraping tool, what you want to extract. So, like a crawler, it creeps and crawls throughout this website to extract the data that you want, in our case, so that we can get it into a spreadsheet so we can price a mailer accurately. If you go on to Zillow and let’s say you say, “I’m going to-”

Jill Dewit:
Back up, prices and size and any details.

Steven Butala:
And dates, days on market.

Jill Dewit:
I can say, “Okay,” say I’m doing it on Amazon.

Steven Butala:
Acreage, prices.

Jill Dewit:
Say I want to do it on Amazon. Let’s just say I may want to price all the … I want to compare all the mascaras. You think I’m kidding. I can have it extract all the mascaras, all the manufacturers’ names, all the prices, whether they’re Amazon prime or not. I could do that, in theory.

Steven Butala:
And which one, like let’s say which seller has-

Jill Dewit:
The highest ratings.

Steven Butala:
What you’re mining for is which seller has the cheapest brand-new Chanel mascara.

Jill Dewit:
Right. So you extract them all to line them up and pick one. Thank you [crosstalk 00:07:12]

Steven Butala:
So for real estate, there’s an infinite number of applications here, but what I use it for and what we now teach is going out into Zillow, looking at Mojave County, let’s say. I always pick on Mojave County. Please don’t send mail there.

Jill Dewit:
That’s why we use Mojave?

Steven Butala:
Just to use it as an example, Mojave County, Arizona. Then I scrape all the postings, whether they’re active or sold. And let’s say I only want five to six-acre properties, or five to 10-acre properties. I want to know what they’re listed for, the price, how big they are, so I can calculate a price per acre, how long they stayed on the market, and what areas they’re in, very specifically what areas they’re in. Maybe let’s say what zip code they’re in.

Steven Butala:
So now, when this is all done, I’m staring at a spreadsheet that tells me in 85, fill in the blank, zip code, 42 properties sold in the last year. There’s 12, let’s say, active in between the two. The price per acre is $822 in that zip code. You know, that’s incredible information. So when I go to send mail to the other property owners that are in that zip code, who own properties between five and six acres, I know pretty darn with confidence that I can sell properties, not because … if the price per acre I found out it was 82? I know I can sell property there, if it’s good property, for 500 an acre.

Steven Butala:
So what am I going to offer? 250, 200, some number like that that’s a lot less than wholesale price, which in this case, is 500. So am I dramatically oversimplifying this? Yeah, I am. There’s a lot to this. It’s complicated, but there’s a ton of education out on YouTube. There’s a lot of web scraping tools. If you’re a member, we have a universal key code which we purchased from the developer for WebHarvy. You get it for free with the Land Academy subscription, but there’s a lot of them out there.

Jill Dewit:
Okay. Let’s just say I’m brand new. I understand this concept. I want to do this. What do I do first? Go sit on YouTube and watch a bunch of videos?

Steven Butala:
Yes. Yeah.

Jill Dewit:
And see which WebHarvy, whoever it is, sings to me and makes the most sense to me and looks the easiest to use, within reason? Because I’m guessing that’s number one. And I’m guessing number two is now spend a weekend on it.

Steven Butala:
You’re right. Yes. There’s always-

Jill Dewit:
That’s the thing that I see people getting hung up on. They’re like, “Well, I got the key. Why is it not working for me?” Because you need to learn it.

Steven Butala:
Well, that’s a personality flaw. That’s with all software.

Jill Dewit:
Well, people do that. I want to let everyone know you are not nuts. You do need to plan on spending a weekend on this stuff. Please, please, let’s just sit back and accept it.

Steven Butala:
No one’s going to do this for you. I don’t care how you slice it. I don’t care what group you sign up for, you need to look at yourself straight in the mirror. What she’s getting at is that this takes a lot of time. It’s hard, but it’s very, very rewarding financially if you learn how to do this correctly.

Jill Dewit:
Give it a weekend and you’ll get it.

Steven Butala:
And it’s going to always change. We just started using web scraping since the COVID.

Jill Dewit:
The [crosstalk 00:10:31] yeah.

Steven Butala:
It’s not related at all. It’s just the timeframe. It was probably the middle of last year when I really started to use it for mailer pricing, and I used it enough to that … now we instruct it. There’s lots, and it’ll be something else next year.

Jill Dewit:
It’s very true. Think they got it?

Steven Butala:
Yeah.

Jill Dewit:
Okay. Happy to join us today.

Steven Butala:
If you got it. Did I explain it?

Jill Dewit:
Yes.

Steven Butala:
Did I bring it down to the eighth grade level?

Jill Dewit:
Yes. I now know where to best buy my Chanel mascara.

Steven Butala:
It doesn’t work on every website. There are certain websites, like LoopNet, for example, have the anti-scraping software in them. LoopNet gave me a timeout last year. They said, “You don’t need to be logging onto our website for a while.” They slapped me on the hand.

Jill Dewit:
So, excuse me, back up. It is possible to do it, but they don’t condone it and they will come find you and say, “Nope.”

Steven Butala:
Yup. That’s exactly right.

Jill Dewit:
Ah. What’s the workaround?

Steven Butala:
For some reason, Zillow, there isn’t one. Oh, listen to you, “What’s the workaround?” That’s Jill’s first question. Not, “Are they right? Is it okay? Let’s talk about it.” It’s their data, by the way. It’s not my data. What’s the workaround? You are so the right girl for me.

Jill Dewit:
I have one in my head. I don’t know if I should share it.

Steven Butala:
Go ahead.

Jill Dewit:
What if I just hired my VAs overnight to do it?

Steven Butala:
VPN is the answer, absolutely. VPN is the answer.

Jill Dewit:
Okay. All right.

Steven Butala:
I’m going to kiss you.

Jill Dewit:
Thanks. Happy to join us today. We got to go. Monday through Friday, you can find us right here on the Land Academy Show.

Steven Butala:
Tomorrow, the episode on the Land Academy Show is called, It’s Jack Thursday, just for engineers and business owners. You are not alone in your real estate ambition.

Jill Dewit:
Yeah, I’ll miss that one too.

Steven Butala:
I don’t know why so many members in the Land Academy are engineers.

Jill Dewit:
I know why, and I’ll share it tomorrow. You know why. If you need access to any sort of ownership or property details, including owner phone numbers or FEMA flood map overlays, check out neighborscoop.com, created by investors, that’s us, for investors, that’s you.

Steven Butala:
We are Steve and Jill.

Jill Dewit:
We are Steve and Jill.

Steven Butala:
Information-

Jill Dewit:
And inspiration.

Steven Butala:
… to buy undervalued property.

Jill Dewit:
You got me all flustered.

Steven Butala:
You teased me.

____________________________________________________________________

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

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

The BuWit Family of Companies include:

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

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

Land Academy Career Path is Not Just for Pros (LA 1480)

April 13, 2021 / Jack Butala / Podcasts

Land Academy Career Path is Not Just for Pros (LA 1480)

Transcript:

Steven Butala:
Steve and Jill here.

Jill DeWitt:
Hello.

Steven 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 sunny Scottsdale, Arizona.

Steven Butala:
When will we be back in California to do this?

Jill DeWitt:
I don’t know.

Steven Butala:
In the middle of May.

Jill DeWitt:
Maybe. You’ll be there and I’m going to go back for a couple of days in a week or so I think.

Steven Butala:
Oh, I didn’t know that.

Jill DeWitt:
Yeah. It’s on the calendar.

Steven Butala:
Today, Jill and I talk about how Land Academy career path, it’s not just for pros. Before we get into it though, let’s take a question posted by one of our members on the landinvestors.com online community. It’s free, and if you’re already a member, join us on Discord.

Jill DeWitt:
You know what I should’ve said is I’ll be back when it warms up.

Steven Butala:
Yeah.

Jill DeWitt:
It’s been cold there, like not even 60. I’m like, no, I’m good. Ross wrote, “Hi everyone. I’m interested in possibly not selling a land property with seller financing, but actually buying one from a seller. My intent is to sell it though and, of course, when I sell it I want to write it into the contract that the seller will make whole once I-“

Steven Butala:
Will be made whole.

Jill DeWitt:
“I’ll make him whole once I sell it, just like a traditional montage would be.”

Steven Butala:
Mortgage.

Jill DeWitt:
Oh, okay.

Steven Butala:
It’s okay. it’s not you.

Jill DeWitt:
All right.

Steven Butala:
It’s a puzzle.

Jill DeWitt:
Okay.

Steven Butala:
This question is written in puzzle format.

Jill DeWitt:
Oh, good. You’re going to help put this all together. Thank you. “In order to be legal, I understand that my name needs to be on the title in order for me to market it for sale. Otherwise I’m marketing property that I don’t legally own. So I’m not sure how, what kind of contract or deed instrument I should use in this situation. For example, I buy this hundred thousand dollar property from you, but you have to provide owner financing. I pay you $3,000 per month in monthly payments and when selling the property, the next buyer you’ll be made whole at that point. Is this possible? Anyone would have a contract that could see or use or hire someone to write me the contract in the legal way? Thank you for all you do.”

Steven Butala:
So what you’re, if you do this and there’s a contract in the Land Academy program, the first one, to do this. So it’s in there. I don’t recommend doing this at all. I think you’re getting yourself into a mess, but if you want to do it, I understand. You’re not breaking the law at all, in my opinion, you’re not representing someone else in the sale of their property because what you’re doing when you sign this is creating equitable interest in a property. And so if you buy the property on a contract, you own it. You just have a lien, there’s a lien on it, just like you do with a mortgage. So if you go buy a house and Bank of America provides a mortgage for you, you will move in, paint it, do whatever you’re going to do to it, clean it up, renovate it. If something goes sideways and you stop making payments, the bank comes and gets it. It’s the same situation here. So I don’t believe that there’s any legal issues here with this at all.

Steven Butala:
You own the property. There’s a lien on it. You have equitable interest. The real problem here is there’s just a lot of stuff that can go wrong. Let’s say you don’t, if you don’t sell the property, you’re going to stop paying. So there’s some huge financial concerns that I have. But if this is the way you want to start, knock yourself out.

Jill DeWitt:
Yeah, I’m not a fan. If it’s that good, here’s the bottom line, if it’s that good, somebody will fund it, like us.

Steven Butala:
If it’s a great deal.

Jill DeWitt:
Yeah. Say let’s all back up for just a second here.

Steven Butala:
Go to landtank.com and put it in there and somebody will fund you.

Jill DeWitt:
It should be that good that you’re saying, Jill, I need a hundred thousand dollars to lock this in. It’s worth 270 right now in it’s current condition. I’m going to sell for 200. You and I are going to split this. Done, done, and done.

Steven Butala:
Exactly. Well said.

Jill DeWitt:
That’s the way to do it. We buy it. We own it. We’re not doing any 3000 month funniness kind of thing because it’s that great of a deal. We control the whole thing. Nothing can go sideways, it’s ours.

Steven Butala:
It’s interesting because as we go down our career path, Jill and I, we’re doing less and less transactions that make more and more money.

Jill DeWitt:
True.

Steven Butala:
And there are other people in our group that seem to be doing more and more deals that are more and more questionable.

Jill DeWitt:
They’re smaller numbers. Oh that.

Steven Butala:
Their theory is, I’m talking about Luke Smith, his theory is I’m going to do all these deals.

Jill DeWitt:
And it just works out in the wash.

Steven Butala:
Yeah.

Jill DeWitt:
True. I understand.

Steven Butala:
What Jill and I do is like with houses specifically, we have to net a hundred thousand dollars on a house or we won’t start down the path.

Jill DeWitt:
I hadn’t thought about that. We get more picky. Some people get less picky. We get more picky.

Steven Butala:
I don’t think we’ve ever like sat down and talked about this.

Jill DeWitt:
No, that’s just who we are.

Steven Butala:
Consciously said, this is our approach. We’re just on the same page about it.

Jill DeWitt:
We do. Because I still, even though … I’ll be honest, our bank account balance doesn’t usually limit me from what I want to do. But I still look at every transaction like, do I want to outlay that much money? What’s this baby really worth, what’s going to happen? I’m not rolling the dice.

Steven Butala:
We probably got 20 new individual APNs in this month. Or let’s say last 60 days, each of them will net-

Jill DeWitt:
This is a good one, we’ve got more than that, but the good ones.

Steven Butala:
Between 30 and 100,000 dollars.

Jill DeWitt:
Right. And it’s not counting deal funding.

Steven Butala:
Each APN, right. Yeah. This is our deals.

Jill DeWitt:
Right.

Steven Butala:
And so I’m happy with that. Are you? I’m not-

Jill DeWitt:
Well, of those 20, there’s 100 that were kicked to the curb. Like, nope, nope, no access, too bad of that, the slope stinks. How many people are on this deed and who all still alive? Nope.

Steven Butala:
Because there’s two of us, I actually can go out and look at them. And when I go, I get there after it passes all the screen tests, on the desktop test, there’s some of them I go to and I’m like, nah, this just isn’t going to work because I know that.

Jill DeWitt:
Yeah, you have said that. You call me like, this area is rough.

Steven Butala:
Yep.

Jill DeWitt:
Yeah.

Steven Butala:
Today’s topic. Land Academy career path is not just for pros. This is why you’re listening. Jill and I did the first, can you describe a career path for everyone please?

Jill DeWitt:
Sure. Last week we launched for the first ever a customized, intimate, small group product, where we take investors from any level to where they want to be in 10 weeks. And we’re either going to get them there or get them darn close to where they want to be. Every single person too, has come to us with a very solid, realistic plan. It’s not cheap and they are serious, as I would be. And they’re showing up, I’m excited.

Jill DeWitt:
And so what it is is we meet every week for 10 weeks and then there’s breakout sessions, depending on what each person needs, hiring help, scheduling help, pricing help, picking a county help, ramping up help, getting over fears of adding a zero or two zeros or five zeros, whatever it is, learning how to work with brokers, taking down bigger deals, being a funder. These are all different things that we’re tackling with the group. And one of the best things is too, everybody comes up with something a little bit different. They have a little bit different goals and they have a little bit different obstacles and we are learning from everyone, each other and we’re sharing that. It’s not going to be made public. It’s very private in between this group. And we share, even with our personal stuff, we’re sharing some things about some of our personal deals. We’re here to help fund deals, whatever they need.

Steven Butala:
I mean, here’s my truth time. Every time we launch something like this, including like live events, I have at least two weeks of massive anxiety about who’s going to show up. And every single time it’s like, wow, this is the greatest group ever.

Jill DeWitt:
It’s not like who’s going to show and not show, it’s like, what kind of people are they going to?

Steven Butala:
Yeah, well, the profile of the people that are show. And so it ended up that these are like incredibly intelligent people. Even the brand new ones are like, here’s the profile, of the 15 people, 10 of them are engineers. Even the new people, every single person in that group owns another business. Most of them, multiple businesses, except one person who is an engineer.

Jill DeWitt:
Tons of life experience, just solid, good stuff to bring to the table. The age range is awesome. It’s not one gender. It’s all different. It’s really cool.

Steven Butala:
Really, really bright, interested, dedicated people, which is, we call it career path for a reason. It’s not, this is your career. I mean, if you want to make this your career, this is a program. So they’re also, at least half mentioned signing up with Land Academy from another land education source.

Jill DeWitt:
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I love that.

Steven Butala:
And all of them cited, well, this is the real one, like Land Academy is the real one. That was just the starter one.

Jill DeWitt:
Very cool. I found you after I hit the wall with X person and I wasn’t getting answers I needed over here. I knew there was more to build my business kind of thing. I love being in that position. I think that’s the greatest thing. Honestly, I think side note, it worked out great. I love that there’s other people in our space and a lot of people get started with some of these different programs, like the Jackson, the Marks and the SAS. And then there’s a bottleneck usually, they want to grow their business. They need the tools. And then they come to us. They’re like, all right, now I’m ready to take it seriously. That’s where you guys come in.

Steven Butala:
Right. All of them said that.

Jill DeWitt:
They really did. And that makes me so happy. I’m like, yay. This is great. It’s a beautiful thing we all have. And then now we’re doing that even, now we’re upping the game again. We’re already been helping people really grow their business, now we’re making it a career. And that’s who these people are.

Steven Butala:
One guy said I made half a million bucks last year. And for the last five years I’ve been doubling my money. And last year I made half a million bucks and I feel really lucky. So now I want to learn how to do it the right way.

Jill DeWitt:
It was hilarious. I’m like, Brandon, I wouldn’t call that luck. He went from like 2017, 50 grand.

Steven Butala:
So he’d been lucky for five years.

Jill DeWitt:
Then he made 100.

Steven Butala:
He made a million dollars.

Jill DeWitt:
Then he made 240. Then he made 550. He’s like, I’m here to make a million. I’m like, ah, you’re kind of doing it. So funny. He’s really good.

Steven Butala:
And the new people in the group where their jaws are on their desks. They’re like, what?

Jill DeWitt:
That’s what’s possible? Yeah. And then we have the guys doing crazy numbers a month that want to tweak that. Or even sometimes it’s just, I want to do it more efficiently. And I’ll tell you too, we even have someone in the group, I’m so excited, that has really very reasonable goals to make 40 or 50 grand and just work a couple hours a week because I just want to enjoy my kids and my life. I want to retire and be done. And I know this is going to do it for me. And it’s great.

Steven Butala:
We have a couple of people in there that have tiny little kids. And so, our kids are all, the last one’s almost out of the house. And can you imagine if we started together?

Jill DeWitt:
Sorry I was cheering. Sorry, sorry. I celebrate that.

Steven Butala:
If we started this when the kids were real tiny, like where we would be now.

Jill DeWitt:
Oh, I can’t even imagine.

Steven Butala:
It’d be amazing.

Jill DeWitt:
Yeah. That’s okay. We’re catching up. And that’s what career path is.

Steven Butala:
We’ll get there.

Jill DeWitt:
And that’s what career path is and I’m not saying that people have told this to us, look, I could do what you guys did and spend 10 years figuring this out. Or I could cut to the chase and get involved and just work right with you guys and shave nine and a half years off my career. Yep. That is true. And I’ll end it with this for me, I wish I had me. I wish I had us when we were starting, but that’s okay. We’re here to help you.

Steven Butala:
Exactly.

Jill DeWitt:
Happy to join us today. Five days a week, you can find us right here on the Land Academy Show.

Steven Butala:
Tomorrow the episode on the Land Academy Show is called web scraping for accurate mailer pricing. You are not alone in your real estate ambition.

Steven Butala:
Oh my god Jack, what the hell is that?

Jill DeWitt:
I can’t wait for that one.

Steven Butala:
I didn’t write this title. This is a title that was written by our lead customer service person in the context of this, can you please, please describe what web scraping is because my fingers are fallen off trying to explain it to everybody in the customer service channel, Land Academy customer service channels.

Jill DeWitt:
I understand. That’s so funny. By the way, if you’re interested in learning more about us or what we do, please check out landacademy.com or houseacademy.com. We provide the education, tools and support, as you can tell, you need to be flipping property like the pros.

Jill DeWitt:
We are Steve and Jill.

Steven Butala:
We are Steve and Jill. Information.

Jill DeWitt:
And inspiration.

Steven Butala:
To buy undervalued property.

________________________________________________________________________

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

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

The BuWit Family of Companies include:

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

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

Are You a Recovering Landlord? (LA 1479)

April 12, 2021 / Jack Butala / Podcasts

Are You a Recovering Landlord? (LA 1479)

Transcript:

Steven Butala:
Steve and Jill here.

Jill DeWitt:
Hello.

Steven 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 sunny Scottsdale, Arizona.

Steven Butala:
Today, Jill and I are talking about are you a recovering landlord?].

Jill DeWitt:
That’s funny, because we have a few.

Steven Butala:
Since the COVID, it seems like it’s optional to pay your rent now. Do you feel like paying your rent? Go ahead. If you don’t, don’t. If you feel like wearing a mask, go ahead. If you don’t …

Jill DeWitt:
Well, wait a minute. And if you don’t want to fill out the paperwork to get rent aid, I’ll do it for you.

Steven Butala:
That’s what’s so bad.

Jill DeWitt:
I feel bad for these poor … No, it’s true. The landlords are allowed to do it.

Steven Butala:
Oh, man.

Jill DeWitt:
It’s like what’s funny, with the person’s permission. It’s like, “Yeah, I’m too busy sitting on my couch. Will you do that for me?”

Steven Butala:
Never. And on top of that, institutional real estate companies, specifically class A apartment building REITs and stuff are reporting the best earnings ever, like record earnings. So I think some of the smaller landlords, some of these smaller apartment buildings in really specific states, California is one of them. California, New York and Michigan are having huge, huge problems with people not paying their rent. And every politician on the television is saying it’s okay.

Jill DeWitt:
And it’s extended again and again and again.

Steven Butala:
Yeah.

Jill DeWitt:
Yeah. I’m glad we’re not in that business.

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 if you are already a Land Academy member, join us on Discord. It’s a party every minute.

Jill DeWitt:
So silly. Steven’s Discord is my Clubhouse.

Steven Butala:
I love Discord.

Jill DeWitt:
I know you do. Ann Marie wrote, “I’m working my way through the course and also listening to the podcast while driving. I have a mailer question. I think I’ve understood to send a tri county area a 1500 unit volume of mailers with 500 to each of the three.” Got it. “Then today the podcast was about getting really knowledgeable with one county and how to price it. Should I interpret this, that me, that I should send on my first batch to only one county with 1500 units going to the one county and drill down on two or three nearby counties and then go 500 each to those? Thank you.”

Steven Butala:
This is all you.

Jill DeWitt:
Me, why? Why? You’re the mail guy.

Steven Butala:
Because Jill and I-

Jill DeWitt:
Differ.

Steven Butala:
… Jill and I are enjoying instructing our first career path class, Land Academy Career Path.

Jill DeWitt:
True.

Steven Butala:
And we divided the whole entire group, it’s a group of 15 people, between brand new people and not brand new people. And the not brand new people could be, I’ve done anywhere between 10 or 20 transactions and I get it and I want it to be my career now, all the way up to I’ve done thousands and thousands of deals but I want to grow my business from 500,000 a month to a million a month. And she got the new people and I got the not new people. So, Ann Marie’s a new person.

Jill DeWitt:
You’re so funny. We might have different answers. This is going to be funny.

Steven Butala:
We do have different answers, and yours is the right one.

Jill DeWitt:
Here are my thoughts. Ann Marie, if you want to make your life easy, I really want you to send more mail to one concentrated area, so the offers you’re getting returned are like kind. You’re comparing apples to apples, not getting to know a new area based on what comes back. Are you sighing because you don’t like that?

Steven Butala:
No, I’m not sighing.

Jill DeWitt:
You’re breathing heavy like, huh.

Steven Butala:
Well, my answer is you can’t do this wrong. Whichever ones-

Jill DeWitt:
Okay. Well, let me finish my one. So here’s my thinking, Ann Marie. I want you to start with five areas, tool it down to three, and then you’re doing your red, yellow, green test. And one just really jumps out at you, like, wow this is great. Even better. These other two are also good, but boy, this one really looks hot. So that one area is where I’d like you to concentrate first because the reasoning is all the offers that are going to come back are going to be neighbors of the parcels in the one area in the same maybe zip or two zips really close to the target that you’re going for, the size and the acreage and the price. There’s obviously the zoning. You probably picked all that stuff specifically because you did what you were told. So you’re going for all that stuff. And it’s just so much easier.

Jill DeWitt:
So now when the offers come back, all you really care about is am I dealing with the right guys? Are we alive? Is there access? The numbers work because I already ran them, but I’ll check and make sure again. I know the size works because that’s all I mailed are those size, so that’s easy. And then the last thing is maybe an attribute. Oh, wow, this one’s really good because of X. And you can then line them all up really easily and buy the best ones, versus if I got 500 over here and 500 over there and 500 here, I got two over here, one over here and one over here. Okay, now I’ve got to really dig in and get to know these areas a little bit. I kind of do, but I didn’t really spend all my time on it. So is this one better than this one? I’m not sure. Now I’ve got to reach out to a realtor in this area. And you get where I’m going with that. And then you can expand. That’s my plan.

Steven Butala:
If you send 1500 mailers out that are priced correctly, whether it’s a single county or three counties, you’re going to do fine. That’s what I think. If it’s priced right.

Jill DeWitt:
Exactly the opposite.

Steven Butala:
I mean, I would actually send out 3000.

Jill DeWitt:
Well, there is that. Do 1000 in each one.

Steven Butala:
Yeah.

Jill DeWitt:
The more you do in each area, the more success you’re going to have. If you whittle it down to three that you really, really love, why wouldn’t you just send more mail and get the offers out there? I agree. Even if you have to stagger the mail. Maybe you can’t handle all the calls at one time. All right, fine. I got 3,500 units and I love all three of them. First batch is going to be this area. Second batch, it’s going to be this one. Third one’s going to be this one. There you go. I’m happy with that. And you’ve got a month’s worth of work there.

Steven Butala:
Today’s topic … And by the way, you should probably buy, if you can send out 1500, if they’re priced right, not too low, not too high, you should buy one or two properties and do pretty well.

Jill DeWitt:
I concur.

Steven Butala:
If you send out 3000, it’s just more insurance.

Jill DeWitt:
True.

Steven Butala:
You’re insuring that you’re going to get one-

Jill DeWitt:
A couple good ones.

Steven Butala:
… beautiful picture perfect deal hopefully, if it’s priced right.

Jill DeWitt:
Exactly.

Steven Butala:
Today’s topic, are you a recovering landlord? This is the meat of the show.

Jill DeWitt:
Can I ask a question?

Steven Butala:
Sure.

Jill DeWitt:
What made you think of this today?

Steven Butala:
It’s a topic, pretty hot. So Jill and I are teaching career path for the first time. It’s an advanced Land Academy taught by us live kind of thing over the camera.

Jill DeWitt:
It’s a custom program, 10 weeks long, that we do have recorder to take anyone from point A to point Z hopefully, or at least on the path, maybe to T so you know how to get to Z.

Steven Butala:
Later this week we’ll record a podcast all about it. But there’s a profile. I mean, I couldn’t help but notice the consistencies with the shifting people, and at least half of them are recovering landlords. They love real estate, the members. I love real estate, hate being a landlord. I hate it. It’s two different things completely. I love land.

Jill DeWitt:
You’re talking to landlords with tenants, not just owner financed properties.

Steven Butala:
Yep. And for some reason, people think, and I think it’s because of our parents, that buying a house, a single family, freestanding residence, and renting it out to somebody, that’s like be getting into the real estate business. And I feel bad because I don’t know how that got to be so prevalent. It is such the absolute wrong way to make tons and tons of money in real estate.

Jill DeWitt:
You know what I think? It’s not necessarily bad-

Steven Butala:
It’s bad.

Jill DeWitt:
… if you have the stomach for it. Well, let me back up here, because I don’t think this is bad. What if I’m a new kid in college? I’m a college kid. Instead of paying rent to somebody else, I scrape together enough to get a down payment, buy a house, and I rent out three rooms and I pay no money and they’re paying my mortgage.

Steven Butala:
Worst idea ever.

Jill DeWitt:
Why?

Steven Butala:
Because why wouldn’t you … Okay, so I scrape … What can go wrong? Everything can go wrong in a situation like Jill just described.

Jill DeWitt:
But I live there.

Steven Butala:
Why wouldn’t you, as a kid in college, get educated on how to buy and sell rural vacant land, buy a piece of property every month for 5,000 bucks and sell it for 15,000? You tell me those three people, if you do that every … Let’s just do the math. If you do that, you make 10 grand a month now by doing one deal, especially if you’re in college, because you have tons of time, because nobody goes to school in college.

Jill DeWitt:
Especially not now.

Steven Butala:
Now you made $120,000 a year and you’re a college kid. And with no risk. There’s no financing. You didn’t scrape together a down payment. You’re not chasing people or trying-

Jill DeWitt:
Your parents aren’t cosigning.

Steven Butala:
… yeah, looking for money in the couch to pay the rent.

Jill DeWitt:
That’s true. And then one person skips out of town.

Steven Butala:
All your friends hate you.

Jill DeWitt:
Oh, that’s true.

Steven Butala:
Stuff doesn’t work in the house. All your friends hate you because you own it.

Jill DeWitt:
Because you’re that guy.

Steven Butala:
And so this other way, nobody even knows it, and you’re buying a Porsche, because you’re making a … And when you’re a kid in college, that matters, the car you drive matters. So no, I think almost always owning a freestanding SFR and renting it out is ridiculous.

Jill DeWitt:
You know what’s funny about that? I was at Starbucks today.

Steven Butala:
Wow. There’s a sentence I never thought I’d hear you say.

Jill DeWitt:
I was at Starbucks this morning at eight o’clock because I had a dentist appointment at seven o’clock. Anyway, and this kid rolls up, I’m not kidding, in a bright orange McLaren.

Steven Butala:
Oh, man.

Jill DeWitt:
In his 20s. And his girlfriend gets out. She’s got her hair in a ponytail up on the top of her head. And it’s just like skipping into Starbucks.

Steven Butala:
Why do women do that?

Jill DeWitt:
I don’t know.

Steven Butala:
What is with that?

Jill DeWitt:
I don’t know. She had cute shirts on and ponytail up high, and she’s skipping. And I’m looking at this kid and I’m like, I just don’t get it. I mean, I’m glad … I don’t know. That’s not what you should be doing with your money.

Steven Butala:
I agree.

Jill DeWitt:
You should be doing other … especially at that age. You should be-

Steven Butala:
What part of town was it in? Because it might’ve been dad’s car.

Jill DeWitt:
Arcadia.

Steven Butala:
Yeah, it was dad’s car.

Jill DeWitt:
There you go. That could be. I hope it was dad’s car. You know what, I hope it was dad’s car. I’m not sure. It’s kind of funny. Anyway, you just brought out the car thing, so I had to bring that up.

Steven Butala:
So let’s say that’s not an SFR. Okay, Jack, cynical Jack.

Jill DeWitt:
What’s smarter then?

Steven Butala:
How about a duplex? Nope. How about a quad, four properties and you rent it out under one roof so there’s only one HVA system and all that? Nope.

Jill DeWitt:
What about an apartment building where you have a property manager.

Steven Butala:
Absolutely. If you want to buy a class A, a class B, class C apartment building that’s 20, 30 units and you get it for an amazing price in the right state … As we go on in life from a political environment standpoint, this gets harder and harder and harder. You can’t do this in California, what I’m describing. You can’t because people just don’t pay.

Jill DeWitt:
Or New York maybe.

Steven Butala:
No, New York’s worse.

Jill DeWitt:
I was thinking about the articles I was reading today about that and the tax situation and who might be leaving.

Steven Butala:
You want to buy a 25, 28 unit property in Dallas, I’m all for it. And it’s got to be an amazing price. I just read a study that the federal government put out about less than a year ago that said apartment buildings make 50%. So if you’re collecting $100,000 in rent a month and you have no debt, you’re going to put in your pocket 50,000 bucks. If you add debt to that, you’re going to put about $5,000 to $10,000 in your pocket after maintenance and everything.

Jill DeWitt:
I understand.

Steven Butala:
Why would you do that? Why would you do that to yourself?

Jill DeWitt:
I can see why people, they think it’s good because it’s enough you can live on. You’re like, “I’m living off it. How great is this?” Slash however you could be making more money and building up your nest egg or whatever you want to call it, your portfolio faster.

Steven Butala:
A single person sitting at the kitchen office that they set up, one person very easily buy and sell wholesale now. If you love the houses, I get it. You could buy a single house and resell it every month after you get the hang of everything. It can maybe take you … Can you even spend eight hours a week on one deal like that, eight hours a months, I mean?

Jill DeWitt:
Eight hours a month, that’s pretty good. Two hours a week.

Steven Butala:
Yeah, that’s about right.

Jill DeWitt:
Yeah. That’s good.

Steven Butala:
Buy a single house, mark it up, $25,000 net. This is extremely realistic. So now you’re making 250 to $300,000 a year working four to eight hours a month. Why would you ever, ever rent stuff out? I just don’t get it. The only way that works is when you are building an institutional company that owns 150 apartment buildings somewhere or mobile home parks or something like that. Then I understand that.

Jill DeWitt:
I get it.

Steven Butala:
It takes just as long to buy a mobile home park as it does a house.

Jill DeWitt:
Happy you cleared that up.

Steven Butala:
So, career path is packed full of recovering landlords, to answer your question.

Jill DeWitt:
That’s where this all came from. Happy you could join us today and happy you could join Jack’s rant, brought to you by-

Steven Butala:
That’s the feeling.

Jill DeWitt:
… Anger Anonymous. It’s the new 10 step program to make you happy. Join Anger Anonymous today.

Steven Butala:
Is that our sponsor?

Jill DeWitt:
Yeah, that’s our sponsor.

Steven Butala:
It’s free.

Jill DeWitt:
Heck yeah, it is free. Oh God, yes. I have so many people throwing money at this nonprofit. Please take my husband into Anger Anonymous.

Steven Butala:
Turn the TV off.

Jill DeWitt:
He’s a recovering anger management whatever.

Steven Butala:
Turn the TV off and come with me.

Jill DeWitt:
That’s right. Yeah. This is the whole campaign. Does your TV have a football in it?

Steven Butala:
Put the Jack Daniels down.

Jill DeWitt:
Exactly.

Steven Butala:
Turn the TV off.

Jill DeWitt:
Exactly.

Steven Butala:
Put those guns away.

Jill DeWitt:
Exactly.

Steven Butala:
Come with me.

Jill DeWitt:
That’s right. Stop scaring the children. Go to AA, Anger’s Anonymous.

Steven Butala:
10 step program, that’s funny, because I think it’s 12 steps, Jill.

Jill DeWitt:
Well, this one’s only 10. This one’s easier. We take all the religion out.

Steven Butala:
Oh my God, stop.

Jill DeWitt:
Okay. Now that we’ve got that covered, hey, by the way, five days a week, you can find us right here on the Land Academy Show.

Steven Butala:
We are Steve and Jill. Information.

Jill DeWitt:
Oh, join us tomorrow. Tomorrow the episode on the Land Academy Show is Land Academy Career Path is not just for pros.

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

Jill DeWitt:
I still do have a sponsor.

Steven Butala:
Oh man.

Jill DeWitt:
That was good.

Steven Butala:
You’re something else, Jill.

Jill DeWitt:
That was great. Hey, by the way, here is the real sponsor. If you need access to any sort of ownership or property details, including owner phone numbers and FEMA flood map overlays, check out neighborscoop.com, created by investors, that’s us, for investors like you. We are Steve and Jill.

Steven Butala:
We are Steve and Jill. Information.

Jill DeWitt:
And inspiration.

Steven Butala:
To buy undervalued property.

________________________________________________________________________

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

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

The BuWit Family of Companies include:

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

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

Jill Friday – The People Side of Real Estate Investment (LA 1478)

April 9, 2021 / Jack Butala / Podcasts

Jill Friday – The People Side of Real Estate Investment (LA 1478)

Transcript:

Steven Butala:
Steve and Jill here.

Jill DeWit:
Happy Friday.

Steven Butala:
Welcome to the LandAcademy show, entertaining real estate investment talk. I’m Steven Jack Butala.

Jill DeWit:
And I’m Jill Dewitt broadcasting from sunny Scottsdale, Arizona

Steven Butala:
Today. Jill and I talk about… Well, it’s Jill Friday, and she’s going to talk about the people side of real estate investment.

Jill DeWit:
What’s this thing on my head?

Steven Butala:
Before we get into it and talk about the thing on Jill’s head, let’s take a question posted by one of our members on the landinvestors.com online community. It’s free. And if you’re already with us, check us out on Discord.

Jill DeWit:
Dave wrote, all right, so I have a question and a comment, it looks like. Dave wrote, “Anyone downloading Redfin data for their red, yellow, green test and finding days on market data to be arbitrarily and incorrectly set to 19 or 22 days on market for 80 to 90% of properties in a county. Not sure what’s up with this, as I’ve tried several counties now, and I’m finding this for the listed data. When I go into an individual listing, they’re showing the correct date of the listing, which is often sometimes last year, but in the data I downloaded, it’s showing 22 days on market. Anyone else have this happen? At first, I thought it was just a bad county, but a few of them have been like this.”

Jill DeWit:
So Chuck replied and said, “Regarding days on market and Redfin-”

Steven Butala:
This is days later.

Jill DeWit:
Okay. “I have confirmed that the data shown on the Redfin data download is incorrect as posted here previously. It is days since the property sold, not days on the market to sell. I called Redfin and they confirmed this and say that they’re aware of the problem and it’s being worked on.” Got it.

Steven Butala:
Boy. This question could not be more inappropriate for the show title. There’s nothing people business about this. It’s all the tech side, the data side on mine.

Jill DeWit:
Well, I guess it’s people, because Chuck is helping him. Chuck’s like, “Don’t worry about it. I called Redfin and I can help to save you some stress. They know there’s a problem. And it’s coming.”

Steven Butala:
There’s a couple of points here and we’ll move on to Jill’s happy place. Number one, Jill just made my point. The people component is the fact that we’re in a community, we’re all interacting together and solving each other’s problems. I would have never caught this.

Jill DeWit:
And I wouldn’t.

Steven Butala:
You know, I check days on market through two to three sources before we make a decision on sending mail somewhere. So kudos to both of these guys for figuring this out and sharing with the group and saving us a ton of time and energy and potentially some money loss on sending mail out to counties that we didn’t have good data on. So thank you fellows. It’s awesome. That’s what this is all about.

Jill DeWit:
Tech support, Chuck.

Steven Butala:
Today’s topic. It’s Jill Friday. She’s going to talk about the people side of real estate investment. This is the meat of the show.

Jill DeWit:
You brought up a good point as we were sitting down to record. And you said, the reason you came up with this title was so many brainy tech people in our group, and which is, like you, and you were saying-

Steven Butala:
Not necessarily tech people, just people with technical backgrounds, counting, aerospace-

Jill DeWit:
Numbers.

Steven Butala:
Yeah. Numbers.

Jill DeWit:
Analytical, research driven, staring at computers in dark rooms, kind of things. And not necessarily working with customers, at least in person or on the phone and things like that. And it was really nice, you said, I wrote, “Are they missing it? Are they missing out on this?” Because you had said you… will you back up and preface your whole thing again?

Steven Butala:
I started this in the early 90s. Jill joined forces around 2009 and immediately… I all but ignored and neglected the people side of this. It was my philosophy back then was buy the properties as cheap as you possibly can, resell it on eBay and a couple of other auction type channels for years and years and years.

Jill DeWit:
And no talking.

Steven Butala:
And there’s no talking, there’s no communication.

Jill DeWit:
No phone numbers.

Steven Butala:
We never put a phone number in the posting. And we only sold on price. And, I was a laissez faire, let the market set the price. Hopefully for me, more than half the time, we sell it for more than we bought it. And it worked out great. I did $20 million of profits during that time. And then I met Jill and I heard her on the phone with her regular job.

Steven Butala:
I think you had a sales position. I think you were recruiting people for college degrees or something like that. And super long story short, it just clicked in my head one day. I’m like, what if she sold real estate this way, and she talked to sellers? What if I sent a mailer out and she answered the phone and treated these sellers, our acquisitions, the same way that she talks to these people, their children and their kids parents about education? And then ultimately when the property gets resold, there’s someplace that the people that are interested in buying it could call. It was Jill back then. And we smashed it out of the park. She introduced me to the whole component, this people thing. I don’t know why or how I missed it. But when I wrote this title, said, “Hey,” my thought was, “how many other of these tech people are completely missing this component of the business?” So, it’s magical. That has some kind of magical components that I’ll never understand.

Jill DeWit:
That’s funny. I never realized it. I didn’t realize it until recently, in the last year or two, like what you just said, you put me in this position. I just did what I do best, which is, I don’t know. You want to get the deal done, I’ll get the deal done. I didn’t even realize what I was doing at the time. I didn’t like, “Well, how come you guys aren’t having the same yield I’m having?,” or, “How come this person… I can talk to them all. How do you want this to go?” I used to always come to you. I’m like, “All right, just tell me how you want this to go. I’ll make it happen,” kind of thing. And you would say, “I love it at this price. I can handle it at this price. This price is no go.” I’m like, “Done. That’s all I needed.”

Steven Butala:
We still do that. It’s a smash it out of the park deal at 10 grand. We can easily pay 20. And that’s okay. Anything above 30,000, it just isn’t going to work.

Jill DeWit:
Right.

Steven Butala:
We just did that this morning-

Jill DeWit:
Right.

Steven Butala:
… on a deal.

Jill DeWit:
So it’s so funny. And I didn’t even realize I was doing it. So fast forward to recently, now that our community… Because you know, I didn’t have anybody to compare myself to. That’s a lot of it, too. Back then, it was just me being the voice on the phone for a lot of stuff. And now fast forward to we have a bigger company and fast forward to all the other members of LandAcademy. They’re doing just like what I do. And then I’m like, “Wow.” I took a step back, and I realized how important relationships are, because I’ve talked to other people and they may not be the best on the phone. And they know that. So I’m going to tell you right now, if you know that about you, like Steven does about him. You need to get somebody on your team.

Jill DeWit:
You need to partner with somebody who is that person, because you’re going to get better deals and you’re going to get more deals and it’s going to come easier. Don’t try to reinvent the wheel. Don’t try to make it into something that you’re not. For example, if I was all by myself coming into LandAcademy, I know the part that I’m good at. I know who I am in this relationship. If I think I’m going to… Why would I try to spend a month in a dark room to do data as well as him? I never will. I don’t care how long it takes. I’m never going to be as good as him. It comes naturally to him. So, you know what? I need… If it were me by myself, I would be right now trying to, in our community, partner up with somebody who I’m their missing piece.

Steven Butala:
Or partner up with four people and choose the one you really get along with.

Jill DeWit:
Test it. That’s fine. Test it with some people. It doesn’t matter. Do a couple of deals with each person, whatever it is. Just try to find that person, because you’re just better together. Number one, you’re going to get more done. So, my thing is, though, that the people side of real estate is what this is about today. I had to take a step back and I’m really working on a lot of this. I have a lot of people that have been asking me for more content and talking like, “Can you teach some of this?” And you know, it’s almost, I can. I really can teach this.

Jill DeWit:
I can give you a couple of things to take a step back and have a different mindset and maybe you even need to work on your voice. Maybe you even need to work on your speech. Maybe you need to work on how you answer the phone. Maybe need to work on answering the phone. I know some people are afraid to answer the phone. So there’s a lot of little moving parts, but the basic thing is you have to connect with these people and fast. So, that’s what I’m really working on right now. I’m going to get five quick sentences. It might be three. I think in three to five sentences, you can establish rapport with a seller or buyer. And then the rest is easy.

Steven Butala:
It’s a first impression thing.

Jill DeWit:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Steven Butala:
Here’s what I used to think, for a lot of good reasons and I’ll explain it. I thought that people with your talent, I don’t know what to call it, but the word sales is always first and foremost, for some reason. Jill’s, it’s always, you end up being a salesperson with your personality type, but I don’t think sales is accurate.

Jill DeWit:
No, I’m not trying to sell anything. I’m just trying to get someone on my team.

Steven Butala:
Yeah. I think it’s more like customer management or account management.

Jill DeWit:
I just think it’s building rapport. Here’s the thing, too. It’s not even like I’m trying to buy something. Let’s just say I’m dealing with sellers all day long.

Steven Butala:
Let me finish this point real quick.

Jill DeWit:
Okay.

Steven Butala:
And then, because I do want to hear this. I used to think that people on your side of this and not necessarily in real estate, this is all you could do. So you just defaulted to it.

Jill DeWit:
Say that again.

Steven Butala:
And then the fact is, Jill was absolutely born with this. She was born with this talent. It’s very natural to her. So when I hear you say things like, “Hey, maybe you need to change your voice. Hey, maybe you need to do this. Maybe you need to do this.” That starts me down that old school, mental path of, you weren’t born to do this. You’re just putting yourself through it for some reason, because you don’t want to do the technical part.

Jill DeWit:
Me?

Steven Butala:
No, just anybody. Can you clarify that? Because I really think that you’re either born with one or the other. Some people have both, but they just hate one or the other. They want to do only one thing.

Jill DeWit:
Right.

Steven Butala:
Now, because of LandAcademy, you can partner up with somebody pretty effectively, or multiple people, and get that other piece done.

Jill DeWit:
Right. I hate the term people person. I think that’s overused, but there are definitely people that can quickly engage and quickly connect and have a meaningful conversation with others. That’s what this is all about. And, what I started to say was, it’s not necessarily that I want to get every seller on the phone and like get my price, whatever it is. That’s not what I’m doing, at all. My number one goal is to, in three or five sentences, connect with that person on the phone and just find out if we’re a good fit period. Do I have what you need? Or do you have what I want. And, maybe you do, maybe you don’t, and if you do have something I want, are you in a position to sell it? And if you’re not, I wish you the best.

Jill DeWit:
I’m not going to sit here and talk you out of it. That’s what’s the funniest thing too. We talked about earlier this week, about calling people on their pain points and [inaudible 00:11:41] stress property. That just makes me… That’s the funniest thing on the planet. Do I really want to talk somebody out of their property that they love and I’m going to tell them why they can’t possibly… Could you imagine, “Oh, you can’t possibly afford to live there for rest of your life. What’s going to happen when this happens and what’s going to happen when you get sick.” I’m not going to do that.

Jill DeWit:
If they’re interested and you want to sell great, “Let’s work this out. And if the number works for me, awesome. If it doesn’t, I wish you all the best.” It’s like… What’s so funny is, it’s like your front end. You go, you send out a lot of offers. And by you sending out so many offers, it gives me so many great people to talk to. I need to be efficient. I need to find out if it’s going to work or not.

Steven Butala:
You’re not going to change anyone’s mind. They’ve already decided that they want to sell the property by the time they pick up the phone and call us. What they’re checking for is how easy it’s going to be. Is the person a ass that I’m talking to? Is the price for real? Is this person for real? So you need to answer their questions and you’re not going to change their mind.

Jill DeWit:
Well, hold on a moment.

Steven Butala:
You need to… They’ve already made up their mind, maybe they don’t know about price yet, but they do want to sell it. So that’s what Jill does. This is a tech person’s opinion of why this works so well for you, is you don’t get them to change their mind. You just get them comfortable with the process and make it even slightly fun and interesting. And then, they’ll eat out of your hand.

Jill DeWit:
Well, hold on a moment. I want to say this though. There are some people that are slimy and good, and they might get you to change your mind. They might… [crosstalk 00:13:17] Hold on a moment. Let me finish that. They might talk you into something that you don’t want. That’s the last thing you want to do, because you know what’s going to happen. That person is going to realize it in two days and go dark. And you’ve wasted all that time, all that energy.

Steven Butala:
That’s my point.

Jill DeWit:
And, you’re not a good person. So let me back up. So I carry this through to every part of our company. Anybody who’s a member of LandAcademy knows how we are. We don’t sell anything. Anybody who calls in and asking for information, we provide information. I don’t have my sales team. I don’t really have a sales team, but I don’t have them say like, “Find their pain points and are they not putting food on the table? Did they lose their job, because of COVID, and sell them. You need to hard sell LandAcademy.”

Jill DeWit:
Oh my goodness, no. No, but I’m serious.

Steven Butala:
That’s awful.

Jill DeWit:
But there’s companies and things out there that do that, and that’s wrong, because all you can do is… What are you going to do? You’re going to have all the wrong people mad at you. And this is not a good fit for them. And they don’t know what they’re doing. They’re getting in over their heads. And then, 80 refunds later, that’s not what you want. And so, that’s always been our underlying theme in everything that we do. And I would, at the end of the day, argue, it’s the best. I know it’s the best. Sure, do I have to answer twice as many phone calls? Yep. So flipping what? I get the right people and we go off and have a wonderful business relationship together. Thank you.

Steven Butala:
You want to take a bow.

Jill DeWit:
Yeah, exactly. [crosstalk 00:14:53]

Steven Butala:
I have gray hair, so I’m going to just kind of call it like I see it. And, if somebody said this to me, when I was really young, I would have said what an idiot. I really just think you’re born with one of these. You’re either a Jack or a Jill. I got through the Jill part with reasonable success, because I sat down and devised and schemed a way about how I could sell a piece of real estate without talking to anyone, both on the buy side and the sell side, which is unheard of at the time. The internet was just getting rolling. And there were sites like eBay, those original ecommerce sites.

Steven Butala:
So, I wasn’t born with that part. I schemed my way out of doing this and very successfully. And I’m not saying I scammed anybody. I shouldn’t use the word scheme. I just built a business based on a foundation of no talking.

Jill DeWit:
Right.

Steven Butala:
And so I don’t think you can learn this stuff. You’re either one or the other. And if you’re… I can get my way through it. But I do think you need to partner with somebody to get the ball rolling.

Jill DeWit:
Nature/nurture. I hear you. And I believe that too. There are people it just comes easily to, but there’s a lot of people that they can tweak it and do a darn good job and I can help them.

Steven Butala:
Yeah. And you know what I’ve seen Jill do a mailer, and she gets through it great.

Jill DeWit:
I can do it.

Steven Butala:
You know, maybe-

Jill DeWit:
Not as good as you.

Steven Butala:
And I could never-

Jill DeWit:
Not as fast.

Steven Butala:
… have the relationship-building skills that you have. I have them. We went to a dinner party a couple of days ago and I might-

Jill DeWit:
You do. You were on.

Steven Butala:
My stand-up comedy thing was on that night. And, I had everybody in tears for a while, for more than an hour.

Jill DeWit:
That was funny. The waiter was laughing. It was hilarious.

Steven Butala:
It’s not that it’s not in there. I’m not going to do that all the time. And Jill can do it all the time. And it’s just natural. She’s got multiple examples of childhood experiences in grade school where she had to sit at the back of the room and face the wall, because she was making everybody laugh, including the teacher. And then she made a business out of it. So, and I’ve gotten multiple experiences about why I had to get up and teach math to people, because the teacher was like, “You know what? I think you should teach this right now.” And then I did.

Jill DeWit:
Yep. That’s true.

Steven Butala:
So why fight it?

Jill DeWit:
Thanks, babe. Happy you could join us today. Monday through Friday can find us right here on the LandAcademy Show. Join us next week for another interesting episode.

Steven Butala:
You are not alone in your real estate ambition. I went off script a little bit, because I was thinking about you when you were little and I think it’s just really, really funny to me.

Jill DeWit:
Oh. Yeah, you can just imagine

Steven Butala:
How much fun would we have had.

Jill DeWit:
Oh, man. That would have been good. Thank you for tuning in. We hope you find our content valuable and we really do appreciate your support. If you haven’t already, please get on over to our YouTube channel, hit the subscribe button and please leave some comments on the episodes that you love.

Steve and Jill:
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:

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 – You Have to Start Somewhere (LA 1477)

April 8, 2021 / Jack Butala / Podcasts

Jack Thursday – You Have to Start Somewhere (LA 1477)

Transcript:

Steven Butala:
Steve and Jill here.

Jill DeWit:
Hey.

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

Jill DeWit:
And I’m Jill DeWit broadcasting from sunny Scottsdale, Arizona.

Steven Butala:
Today Jill and I talk about it’s Jack Thursday, and you have to start somewhere. Jill and I just started doing Jack Thursday and Jill Friday, and all of our people, our Land Academy employees, love it. For some reason, it’s generating a lot of questions. It’s clarifying a lot of things in a human perspective, instead of talking about data and real estate and mail and stuff like that.

Jill DeWit:
Cool.

Steven Butala:
So, you got to start somewhere. And this is a culmination of me being in this business since the early ’90s and all this gray hair that you see, and then Jill and I starting Land Academy in early 2015, so we’ve got a good six years, a full six years of experience teaching people. I’m starting to feel like we know what we’re doing sort of. Are you?

Jill DeWit:
Your hair is not that gray.

Steven Butala:
That’s what you got out of that?

Jill DeWit:
That’s what I got out of that.

Steven Butala:
Before we get into it, let’s take a question posted by one of our members on the landinvestors.com community. It’s free. And if you’re already a member, join us on Discord, please.

Jill DeWit:
Luke wrote, “Mailed a bunch of commercial vacant properties across a couple of states, most of all of the West,” most all the West, maybe not all of the West, but in the West. Got it. “Boy, a lot of them accepted. I’m dreaming of building warehouses, fast food, Dollar General, tractor supply store, gas stations, auto repair shops, storage, trailer parks, medical, et cetera.” This is all commercial stuff here. “Not much of any multi-family or office space-looking ones. I would’ve guessed it was going to be all office space-looking commercial land taking me up on my offers.” Interesting.

Jill DeWit:
“Trying to …” I already have some things to say about this, “Trying to verify lots of the pricing on these with third-party brokers. I think I’m in over my head. Looking for the sweet, obvious ones that are just priced way wrong. I’m sure they’re in here.” You know, it’s funny. I was just reading an article on this, with the whole 2020, how the year went, everybody working from home and now staying at home. There’s still a huge office component. I am seeing and hearing office space not going away. And if anything, it might even be maybe a little bit better because those dear sweet people who still want office space now are wanting more room. The days of cramming people in one room and cubicle after cubicle after cubicle might be gone.

Steven Butala:
I read a similar article that said, “We all know what happened in 2020. And despite that, institutional landlords, specifically multifamily, are killing it. They had the best year ever.”

Jill DeWit:
Yup. Yup, so there you go.

Steven Butala:
So, where’s the tragedy?

Jill DeWit:
I know. I love this though. So, what Luke is talking about is, “Hey, I went into it thinking I was going to get all the office stuff. I didn’t, number one. Number two, this is such a new venture for me, so I’m just looking for the low-hanging fruit,” which I totally get. And I’m sure they’re in there. Yeah. Grab them and go and then figure it out. He’s very good at that. That’s one thing about this person. Luke’s nuts.

Steven Butala:
Luke Smith. If you follow-

Jill DeWit:
He’s like me. He’s nuts.

Steven Butala:
If you follow land investing and the people that are involved, Luke’s one of our-

Jill DeWit:
Long-time members.

Steven Butala:
He’s number 22 or something like that. And he’s taken Land Academy to a place I didn’t even know where it would go, and he’s fearless. And so he obviously said sent out a massive mailer to commercial property owners, which Jill and I have done full shows and mailers on it and had a lot of success with it.

Jill DeWit:
Love it. You can get some good numbers in the commercial stuff. Crazy stuff.

Steven Butala:
Oh, we’ve got a crucial piece of property in Sonoma County right now that I expect will generate a pretty tremendous amount of money.

Jill DeWit:
Cool.

Steven Butala:
Today’s topic is Jack Thursday. You got to start somewhere. This is the meat of the show.

Steven Butala:
Surprise, surprise. I’m going to tough love this a little bit. You have to start this. I don’t care how far out of your comfort zone you are, you have to just get started. And it might be painful and look ugly and you might get yelled at and all of it. But if you made it this far where you’re listening to these podcasts and you’re joined or are thinking of joining our group and you understand the data component … And Jill’s going to talk about the people component of this business tomorrow … if that’s all kind of jiving in your head, you just got to get it started.

Steven Butala:
Don’t let fear, don’t let emotion be involved in this at all. Tony Robbins is famous for saying “The single biggest thing that stops people from being who they really are and reaching their potential is emotion.” And I mean, any kind of emotion, anger, fear, happiness, drunkenness, celebratory, anything, all that stuff gets in the way of being emotionless and efficient and getting this stuff done. But you have to start. You have to start by picking a county and pricing it.

Jill DeWit:
I remember I did that. I used to do those on Facebook Live a couple years ago. I had a weekly show on there and that was my tagline at the end. And it was, I was really trying to reach out to the beginners and help overcome these hurdles. And so at the end of every show, I said, “I’m here to help you get started because that’s the hardest part.” And I mean that. Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Steven Butala:
Oh yeah, I forgot about that.

Jill DeWit:
That was my little slogan at the end. You’re not alone in your real estate ambition. Because it is the hardest part for people sometimes. Even just pushing that button, because there’s so many … I don’t know if it’s a fear of the unknown because I don’t think that’s … I want to sound like a professional. I don’t want to make a mistake and buy something wrong.

Jill DeWit:
You know, there’s all kinds of things that are, sure, running through your head before you do this. But the good news is having this group and this community, I had no idea it would grow into this too. We did not set out-

Steven Butala:
Oh man, jeez.

Jill DeWit:
We didn’t set out knowing we were going to have a community. The community said, “We want a community.”

Steven Butala:
That’s what happened.

Jill DeWit:
We’re like, “All right, I guess we’re all going to do this together. I didn’t know we were going to do this all together.” And here we all are, and what a wonderful thing because I can tell people, like, “Don’t worry.” I tell everyone here, I’m going to tell you, like I tell our kids, “We’re not going to let you fall that far,” but you have to ask. I’m not going to babysit you. I’m not going to micromanage you. But if you have a question, I don’t care what it is, it’s not stupid, and it’s not too small. Just ask it. We’re here, but you got to get going.

Steven Butala:
I think I notice with our own kids and with a lot of people recently is that they think everything’s supposed to be perfect right out of the box. And I think that’s the … My generation had that because television made things, everything, look so pretty and easy. You know, I grew up-

Jill DeWit:
Brady Bunch.

Steven Butala:
… watching people surf and picking up a guitar and then 10 seconds later on the show, they’re picking out a tune, and that’s just not how life is. This generation has to endure 10 times that, maybe a hundred times that, with the silly internet and YouTube and all of this noise about how everybody [crosstalk 00:07:35]

Jill DeWit:
How easy and great things are. Yeah.

Steven Butala:
Yeah, and fast.

Jill DeWit:
Yeah, you too can have one of those stupid money shooting machines, that’s dumb, and sit on a Lamborghini. That’s dumb. Really, do you know what we should do? I was just thinking, we should make it a game. Maybe our next new accountability group, the game should be, How Fast Can You Fail? Let’s brag about it. We need to get those first couple of failures out of the way. They’re going to happen. Just be ready for them.

Steven Butala:
Well, Matt, yesterday, is an aerospace engineer, he’s a rocket scientist. If you go through, get a master’s degree in something like that, or you have any type of technical background, you know what it takes to study. You don’t breeze through programs like that, or like accounting. You study and you have to put your time in it and you’re going to fail at it. You’re going to get some Cs along the way. Whoever started this, “You need 4.0,” I want to crush that person.

Jill DeWit:
I know.

Steven Butala:
Because it’s so silly. That’s just not … Perfection is not why we’re here. We’re not here to send out a perfect mailer or price it perfectly, or be perfectly successful. We’re here to trip over our own feet as much as is required, and so you start to have a little bit of success and then some more success and maybe some medium amount of success. And then maybe you can actually feed yourself and fill in the blanks from there, until you’re where you want to be from a financial standpoint up to and including a couple million bucks a month. We have many members that are doing that, but Matt’s been doing this for four years. He’s finally got a team that is allowing him to approach addressing his W2 job. Four full years.

Jill DeWit:
He did the slow, methodical, good, solid, not go crazy way. You don’t have to spend four years on it. But some do, some don’t.

Steven Butala:
I would choose that way over just-

Jill DeWit:
Oh, yeah. That’s what I’m saying.

Steven Butala:
Okay.

Jill DeWit:
Yeah, no. It’s good, consistent growth, that kind of a thing. No, I’m not pooh-poohing it. I think it’s great, but I just want to, you know.

Steven Butala:
Well, he chose that way, like, “What other choice is there?” Because you implied, there’s a faster, easier way.

Jill DeWit:
Go nuts, Luke Smith it.

Steven Butala:
Or Jill DeWit it. That’s what she does.

Jill DeWit:
Yeah, that too.

Steven Butala:
Jill’s a huge fan of sending out 10,000 mailers and just dealing with what comes in.

Jill DeWit:
I do. I’m okay with that.

Steven Butala:
And she will find a deal in there.

Jill DeWit:
Oh, I will.

Steven Butala:
She’ll pick through it. She’ll sweet talk these people. She’s going to talk about this tomorrow.

Jill DeWit:
I do things a little bit backwards sometimes.

Steven Butala:
And that’s okay. I mean, that’s what makes us good partners, I think.

Jill DeWit:
I almost bite off a little more than I can chew at times, because then that makes … I pull myself up to the occasion.

Steven Butala:
Do you know what? If you want to ensure your success, and you can follow through, bite off more than you can chew, and follow through and deal with it.

Jill DeWit:
Yeah. You-

Steven Butala:
Are you out of your comfort zone on the phone with these people anymore?

Jill DeWit:
No. I got to tell you, I love the fire hose.

Steven Butala:
Yeah, you do.

Jill DeWit:
Some people will freak out about it. I mean, I love the fire hose effect, sincerely, and here’s why. It’s so much easier to sift through 50 phone calls and letters and put them all into a spreadsheet, spend the weekend, put them all in the spreadsheet, line them all up, do all the five As, figure out which are the best ones, pick the cream of the crop, and buy those. You’re going to sleep great, because you know, I reviewed 50. I picked the best three. These things are awesome. I have no concerns.

Steven Butala:
I mean, those are amazing numbers.

Jill DeWit:
Right? Versus-

Steven Butala:
You’re going to get wealthy.

Jill DeWit:
Right?

Steven Butala:
If you do that, take that approach.

Jill DeWit:
And that’s the fire hose effect. That’s the fire hose, just go for it, and have so much look for versus shoot, I only got three back. Darn, I got these three.

Steven Butala:
I only got three back because I only sent out 1500 units.

Jill DeWit:
Or 600 or something and like, “Shoot, now I got to … All right, which is the best? Well, that’s better than that one, and that’s better than that one. I’m still not sure about this part of it, but, well, I only got the three, so I got to do something here. I don’t want to waste my money.” You would need to send out more mail. It’s just, your life is just so much easier, so that’s why I like that way.

Steven Butala:
You got to start somewhere. I can’t say it a simpler, shorter sentence, and there’s something stopping you. So, maybe that’s where you start, find out what’s stopping you and address that.

Jill DeWit:
Thank you. Happy you could join us today. Five days a week you can find us right here on the Land Academy Show.

Steven Butala:
Tomorrow, the episode on Land Academy Show is called, it’s Jill Friday, and she’s going to talk about the people side of the real estate business. You are not alone in your real estate ambition. I overlooked the entire side of people when I started this in the early ’90s, and we didn’t join forces until 2009ish.

Jill DeWit:
2009. Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Steven Butala:
And I just realized I was sleeping for almost 20 years.

Jill DeWit:
Aww.

Steven Butala:
I didn’t realize what we were missing from a money standpoint and an enjoyment standpoint, and I actually planted the seeds to start Land Academy way back then.

Jill DeWit:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Hey, you need to send out a few thousand offers to property owners like us. Check out offers, the number two, owners.com. No set-up fees, free mail merge, and exceptional service. We should know as it is our company. Give offers2owners a call today.

Jill DeWit:
We’re Steve and Jill.

Steven Butala:
We’re Steve and Jill.

Jill DeWit:
Information-

Steven Butala:
And inspiration-

Jill DeWit:
… to buy undervalued property.

_____________________________________________________________________

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

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

The BuWit Family of Companies include:

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.

Interview with Long Time Member Matt Bailey (LA 1476)

April 7, 2021 / Jack Butala / Podcasts

Interview with Long Time Member Matt Bailey (LA 1476)

Transcript:

Steve:
Steve Butala here for Land Academy. Jill’s not with us today. Lucky for her. She’s actually out having some fun. So I wanted to take this opportunity, this kind of vacant opportunity to introduce, I think, a long time member, Matt Bailey, a member of Land Academy. Matt came to us from another member, Lori Phillips, who said, “Look, you got to, I just talked to this guy. He’s been a member for a long time, a lot longer than I have. He’s really got his stuff together. And he’d be a great guy to have on the show because I think a lot of new people specifically would get a lot out of this.” We are Steve and Jill.

Jill:
Together we’ve been buying and reselling land since the 90s.

Steve:
Our data centric approach leaves our buyers asking, “How can you sell it so cheap?”

Jill:
Here on the Land Academy show-

Steve:
We answer that and more. Welcome, Matt. Thanks so much for being on the show. I’ll start off right away and just ask you, how’d you find us? How long have you been with us? What are you working on? If you can just introduce yourself and give us a little flavor, that’d be great.

Matt:
Yeah, sure. So I’ve been at this for about four years now. I got into it, like I think a lot of people did, listening to BiggerPockets and then Seth had a podcast early on in there and I got started on his course shortly after I jumped in. And did your course. I think that both have a lot to offer. I’m glad that I had done both. And so, yeah, I mean, I’ve been with you guys for four years, working and lately really this year kind of scaling the company up. So now we have four full-time employees. Lori was the person who introduced us and suggested we jump on the podcast and I’d kind of come to her because I was working on trying to build the processes out, scaling the company, training. And I didn’t really have a ton of time to price a mailer. And she had a bunch of mailers priced, but not a lot of bandwidth to do the overhead and the actual execution on it and that’s exactly what my business is kind of designed to do.

Matt:
I’ve kind of built it from the beginning to be designed for scaling, so I focused a lot on business processes and developing a CRM with automations and stuff to kind of like help streamline everything. And that’s how I started working with her. And I think we did like five or six deals off of that mailer. And, most of them have kind of come full circle now and yeah, I mean, it’s just land’s been pretty good. I’m really enjoying it and it’s nice to be able to be on the podcast with you.

Steve:
That’s great, man. So what’s a typical deal look like for you right now with Lori or without Lori or what’s a typical deal look like?

Matt:
Yeah. So, I started on some of the smaller deals and as I’ve done more deals, even though I built this for volume, I think that if you build your business from the beginning to be able to handle volume, you can do fewer deals and not have to work so hard on each one because all of your stuff is streamlined. Right? So, I started doing smaller deals and right now, my minimum threshold is $5,000 profit is what we’re looking to do. So I’d say most of them are probably in that five to $20,000 range and we’re starting to work on larger ones. So like I mentioned, I’ve got now four full-time employees that work with me and I know exactly what we’re going to convert in the markets that we’ve done before if we mailed a certain percentage of offer price to these five to $20,000 deals, right?

Matt:
So I’m keeping those as the bread and butter, but I’m looking to scale up to larger deals, but I don’t want to jump into those larger deals and find out that, okay, it turns out you convert one in 7,000 if you’re trying to get more than a $50,000 profit or something. Right? And I assume that it’s going to be closer to one in 1000 or 2000 or whatever it might be. So now that I’ve got all these people underneath me, it’s like, “Okay, let’s keep the stuff that we know what we’re going to get if we mail it and start looking to the bigger numbers.” And then if I find out it is one in 7,000, okay, great. I’ve got a guy doing data and mailers for me now, let’s just tell him, “All right, now you got to hit 50,000 letters a month or whatever it is so that we can do 10 deals that are really large versus 20 or 30 deals that are $5,000 a month or whatever.”

Steve:
I mean, I can tell you with confidence that the larger the deals, the easier they are. And I think, this is just my opinion and other people in the group I don’t think share this opinion, when you send mail out in the $50,000 range because you know it’s worth 150, you get a darn good response. I used to, a lot of years ago I had the exact same concern, the bigger deals that we do, that it’s going to be harder. They’re harder to find and all of that. But I think as crazy as it sounds, it’s easier to sign your name and get 50,000 than it is 5,000. And land owners seem to be more excited and more motivated to sign stuff for 50 grand versus five.

Matt:
Yeah, definitely. It’s a bigger chunk of change. Right? They just see that number. So yeah, I agree. I just, like I said, I just know what my overhead’s going to be and I know that if I do all these bread and butter deals for now, I know I’ll be able to hit that confidently. Right? So it’s like, let’s keep that, let’s learn the new markets and then we can shift a little bit, you can kind of dip your toe in the water there. So it’s like half of our mailers are now that smaller stuff, half of them are the bigger stuff. And we’re mailing pretty good volume right now. So I think it’s all going to take care of itself if you get enough mail out the door and our data guy that we just hired, he started a week ago, he can do this full time. Right? I do mailers specifically and data probably 20% of the time, right?

Steve:
Great.

Matt:
So it’s like just on hours alone, he should be able to easily double our output. And then what I plan on is probably only needing one more acquisition manager to handle that doubled output. And we have a transaction coordinator who also kind of does due diligence for us. There’s a chance she might get filled up on having to do due diligence for so many properties that maybe we split that off into two roles. But for now I think that that role specifically, I think, is a good fit. I think the same characteristics that make you a good transaction coordinator, that attention to detail, following process, procedures, filling things out correctly, I think loan themselves nicely to doing the due diligence for the property. So we’re kind of combining that for now.

Steve:
That’s great. So you mentioned you have four people working with you. What are their roles? I think you have transaction coordinator, data person. Do you have a full-time sales person?

Matt:
So right now my dad’s filling in doing the sales just because I find that sales in this business is more like customer service than it is sales. It’s like the property’s price to sell. It’s the best one on the market. I just got to pick up the phone and tell that person, “Here’s the number for zoning. Go double-check your question.” ? Or I keep a video on my website that basically just gives them directions to the property. So when everybody says, “Hey, how do I get to the property?” It’s watch the video. It’s a two minute video. Here’s the address nearby to the property. Here’s how you can kind of ID the parcel boundaries and that’s it. So he does that for me. And it’s pretty straightforward. Sales is not the hard part of the business. It’s like, we’re good at finding the deals and I make them sell quickly by pricing them at a great price. So he does that.

Matt:
The other two people that we have, one’s a long time acquisition manager for us. She’s pretty much done everything in the business. She’s been with us for three years. She came on kind of as a part-time thing at when I was like one year into it. So now we’re trying to get her back to that part-time. She has some, what’s the word called? I’m blanking on it. But she does some agricultural stuff on her family farm and it’s all give back to the community type stuff. So she wants to get back and do half and half again. So we’re scaling her back. Our acquisition manager, the other one that we hired was back in November. He’s full time, just kicking butt and that’s really the whole squad. So it’s these two acquisition managers, data analysts who’s scrubbing mail and picking mailers and stuff like that. He’s getting trained right now. And then transaction coordinator, who’s just a rock star. She has been doing it for 10 years and, she knows her stuff, so I’m really happy that we got her onboard.

Steve:
Do you use real estate agents on the south side at all?

Matt:
I’m starting to now. I’m thinking that it’s becoming more, it makes a lot more sense to start doing that. It’s that or I have to hire somebody to do all of that. It’s like my dad helps out, but he’s just kind of doing it in the interim right now. So it’s like, am I going to hire somebody for that? Or I can kind of outsource it to agents. And it seems to make some sense. They can kind of gut check some of your properties on the buy side, and even at six to 10% commission, it’s like, well, if they did a million dollars worth of properties for us, that’s a hundred grand. That’s like basically a salary. Right? But I get a little bit more insight on the buy side potentially to learn a little bit more about the area and kind of gut check those acquisitions too, because I’m super busy too.

Matt:
So now it’s like maybe it would be nice to have those people, but that’s all kind of what the plan might be. I haven’t really put it into practice. I have some agents that we list with and it’s been generally okay. But I think if it was full-time listing with agents and trying to work them into the business somehow, I think there’d be a lot of learning to do there on how to pick good agents and things of that nature. But it is nice to just kind of DocuSign a purchase agreement and just give it back to them and be done with it.

Steve:
We use agents on all of our new deals now, and I’ll tell you at 150 plus thousand dollars sale price, I had the exact same logic that you had when we kind of made that decision to go a little bit bigger. And what ends up happening is with the right real estate agents, they’re going to come back and say, “Yeah, I don’t think I’d list this for 70,000. I think I can probably get 110 for it in about a week or a week and a half.” So that 70, that we would have, if we sold it ourselves, generated now 110 way easily pays for the 10% commission, so it just ends up being, you do 10 deals like that. You’ve made a million bucks. So, and it’s not hard to do 10 deals one a month. It’s not hard to do 10 deals in a couple of months actually. So yeah. I mean, I understand your point. So what’s missing? it sounds like you’ve got this all figured out. Is there anything missing?

Matt:
Yeah, so when I was talking to Lori and she’s a member of the advanced group and talking about that, I was just kind of telling her and trying to pick her brain because she’s got a lot of business acumen herself and sort of the next thing for me is like building this company, right? I have the roles filled. I have a good sense of process and a good sense of what you’re supposed to do, but really, I think the next thing for me is building this team. So I’ve read a lot of books, like Five Dysfunctions of a Team’s a really good one. Traction by Gino Wickman I’m currently reading again, that one’s good. So all those books to kind of like get these people pointed and rowing in the same direction and getting to understand and know one another and especially communication. So we’re all over the place. We got a person in Houston, Austin, St. Louis and Arkansas, right?

Matt:
So nobody’s in person. Everybody’s communicating electronically. So when we hire all these people, we do this personality profile tests and that kind of helps us know, “All right, this person’s going to be a good fit for the job.” For instance, like a sales or acquisition manager role, you want them to be a high DI. They need to be out there pulling the trigger, but they love talking to people. And if you’re trying to hire for that role, and somebody has a really low I, that interpersonal, want to talk to people, type personality characteristic, they’re going to burn out just real fast, especially in this role. So, but what’s nice about that is it also kind of gives you a hint as to how people like to receive information and give information.

Matt:
So when we bring people on, we look at those personality assessments and we say, “Okay, I’m a high DC and you’re a DI, and that means that you’re probably going to want to be like moving and making deals happen, but you might not fill out all of the information on our CRM, which then gets used later in the due diligence process or something, for instance.” Right? So we’re kind of trying to meet some of these off, head them off at the pass and try to figure out where might we butt heads or things like that so that we know when we’re communicating just by text, me giving a real quick short answer is me thinking I’m saving time and moving on to the next thing, because that’s how I think. And somebody else who’s maybe more touchy-feely, “He’s being short and rude.” Right?

Steve:
Yep.

Matt:
So it’s good to kind of talk about those things ahead of time and figure out where are we going to have points of friction and things like that. So I’m looking to kind of, the next step is as I’m looking more at like house wholesalers, who’ve really scaled businesses and they do multiple markets and they’re wholesaling 20 houses a month. And what kind of systems do they have in place? What kind of hiring methods do they use? How are they doing retention and compensation and things like that? How do I take it to the next level and not have to be the person kind of pioneering that in our, because I’m in a couple of different mastermind groups, but I think I’m probably, when I say mastermind, I’ve got two land focused groups that we meet biweekly and I think I’m probably the person pioneering, at least the hiring and the building of the company part of that.

Matt:
And it would be nice to maybe find people who’ve been there before had done that before. So that’s kind of what I’m looking at next is what are these house wholesalers doing? Or where can I find another real estate investor who’s scaled the company that does 10 flips a month and what does that look like? And where are some pitfalls that I can avoid by getting and networking with these kinds of people?

Steve:
That is my single most difficult thing that I’ve had to and the highest learning curve that I’ve had, and Jill and I’ve had tons of companies in the past, and it’s that is hiring and keeping staff happy is the most challenging thing that I’ve ever gone through. So I’m fascinated with this personality test thing. Where do you get the tests? And I mean, share as much as you’re comfortable with.

Matt:
Yeah. So, I mean, you can have people take free ones with, like Tony Robbins has a free profile. You’ll end up on his email list and you’ll get invited to his events and stuff, but it’ll give you a free DiSC test. Right? And if you, I mean, just anything you can Google about, if you just start Google searching for like, what is a good DiSC profile for a sales person? There’s like articles who are like, “I think it should be an I and then a D or a D and then an I,” but then you can just tell people as part of the hiring process, “Hey, take this free personality assessment. It’s going to take you 30 minutes and it’ll kind of give us an idea of if you’re going to be a good fit for the job.” So for instance, like for transaction coordinator, you probably want somebody who’s like a C and an S and that kind of combination gives you somebody who’s like thoughtful, moderate pace, like calm, methodical, careful, that’s what a CS is going to bring to the table.

Matt:
So when we were looking for transaction coordinators, we had two who both had 10 years of experience who were our final two candidates and both of their profiles were almost identical and almost exactly what I would have expected from somebody who would succeed at that role and it was that high C and the high S. So if you find somebody who doesn’t fit those, that S and the C is that structured and steady type profile, they’re probably just not really hardwired to be successful in that kind of transaction coordinator, label all the files correctly, file them in the right place. Tell me where to sign, dot your I’s cross your T’s, and you can kind of weed those people out early. Same thing, like I said, with acquisitions people, that DI, if somebody’s got a low I, they can’t be on the phone all day. It’s just going to burn them out.

Matt:
I know I’m not, I got a low I, and talking to sellers and talking to buyers, it’s like, I’ll do it. I’ll put on a face and I’ll , whatever, but I get off that call and I’m shot. And if you try to make me do that 40 hours a week, I’m just not going to succeed.

Steve:
Same here.

Matt:
So you’re saving the person you’re hiring trouble, you’re saving yourself trouble. And it just puts them in a place for success. So I would say if somebody is trying to look how to get into that stuff, lots of Google, lots of YouTube, just figure out what the profiles mean. And then there’s other more complicated tests that can get into like driving forces and, and things like that. But just as a starter, think about the DiSC profile, right? Acquisition’s going to be DI, transaction’s is going to be SC. Data analyst will also be SC. That’s attention to detail type stuff. And it’s just a good starting thing. And then if you can look at each other, so what’s interesting is when you find those combinations of personality profile tests, there’s whole write-ups about this is what they’ll succeed at, this might be their pitfalls, things like that. That’s what I’m talking about. That’s what we compare is, after that assessment is done, you just look at that, like, where are your blind spots going to be? And where are mine going to be? And where might they overlap when it comes to the land business?

Steve:
So these four people. You know what’s really interesting? Anytime I’ve ever interviewed anyone, I don’t do it anymore, I just kind of do the last phase of the interview process when we hire, I never talk about real estate ever. It just doesn’t come up because I just don’t think it’s important. It’s all personality stuff.

Matt:
Yeah. It’s all attitude.

Steve:
Attitude and how long they’ve been with the previous positions that they’ve had. And I constantly ask questions like, “Did you get along well with your supervisor in your last position?” and the speed at which they answer the questions and the enthusiasm it says a lot. So these four people that you have, have they been replaced, were the original people that you hired for the positions?

Matt:
So these are all original people, but three of them haven’t been here for more than four months.

Steve:
Okay.

Matt:
So, our original acquisition manager has been with me for three years. And I think that’s probably more remarkable than I give it credit for, just the fact that she’s still here and she hasn’t burned out on me. I’ve burned out on her. It’s like, all right, that’s a good sign. But what’s interesting is as we’ve gone and hired people, we do, the last phase of our interview is what we call a motivational interview. And it’s basically just asking people like, what is important to you, where do you want to be in five years in four different quadrants of their life. And basically if I can’t get them where they want to be in five years, we’re not going to hire them because they’re not going to stay with us, but that involves the whole team. And the second to last and the last person I hired kind of caught me off guard because even the people who’d only been with me for like a couple of months at that time, the logical question for the candidate was like, “So how’s it like working with Matt?”

Matt:
And everybody had the most glowing things to say. And I was really taken aback. I was like, “Oh my gosh.” I’m not trying to toot my own horn or anything, but I was just like, “All right, I guess we got a good crew. Everybody’s really enjoying the process.” So I think that we’ve got a lot of hope that things, people are going to stick around and I’m pretty forward with everybody, trying to make sure I know what people’s needs are and things like that. If you’ve read that Five Dysfunctions of a Team book, the base of the pyramid that Lencioni has is the absence of trust. And it’s like without trust your team can’t challenge each other and ask questions without knowing that the reason someone’s following up with the question is because they’re doing it for the best interest of the team, not to make you look bad or anything.

Matt:
So that’s what’s next for us is trying to work on those kinds of things to remove those five dysfunctions that Lencioni talks about and the base of it is trust. So, I think we have that already sort of, which is really nice and I think that’s why things are going so well.

Steve:
Yeah, Jill and I, I’m thinking back while we’re talking about this, I’m sure Jill and I have fired each other multiple times. It’s just, even if you have the greatest trust in the world, there’s just stuff happens. So, it’s hard to keep and manage a team, way harder than I ever thought. And now we’ve got someone in place that does all of it for us. And it’s just taken maybe eight, probably more than that, probably 12 years. A couple of the people that we’ve had have been with us for more than 10 years. So, but it’s taken that long to really, really establish where I don’t worry about anything anymore or they can really, whatever problems occur, they can solve them long before it ever gets to me, if it ever gets to me at all anyway.

Steve:
So when you have that in place, people are constantly asking me like, how, how do you have enough time to start Land Academy? How do you have enough to start NeighborScoop? And it’s all because we have the right people buying and selling land for us. So really, I’m just making the decisions. And just recently I hired a person to do my mailers for the first time in my career ever and he and I are getting along great. His output is three times what mine was when I was doing it. And honestly, I think he does a better job pricing and everything else.

Matt:
Yeah, that’s kind of what I envision is if it’s somebody’s full-time job just to stare at data and mail, like they’re going to have time to do things that I don’t, because I’ll take stuff on and be like, “This is good enough.” And then a lot of times that’s good for mailers is good enough, but I think this person could maybe get back, get down in the weeds a little bit more and really kind of find niche areas and pay attention and stuff like that that I just don’t have the time for. So there’s always that question of do you get your mailer 50% of the way there and then do 20 of those or do you get them a 100% of the way, but only get to do two of them? We’ll pay attention to that with him and be a little bit more purposeful with it. But yeah, I agree you having that, that person to scrub some data for me is pretty nice so far. And it’s only been a short time.

Steve:
We just had this discussion in Discord because somebody, I don’t know if you’re on Discord with Land Academy, but somebody brand new said they just can’t seem to finish their mailer to which I said, “Art’s never finished.” And I think Leonardo da Vinci said that or something. And it’s just, if you don’t put yourself on a schedule, nothing’s ever going to get done.

Matt:
Yeah, for sure.

Steve:
I’m a huge proponent of scheduling everything out and then being on time and following through. So did you have any type of real estate background before this? What is your background? What would you like to share with us? And then what I’m going to ultimately ask you is everybody started somewhere, so what’s your advice for new people?

Matt:
Yeah, that’s a good question. So my background was not in real estate. I have a master’s degree in aerospace engineering, full-time job with the army doing aerospace research, just experimental research, structures type background guy. So, I mean, you don’t need a real estate background to do this. I think that it’s been said that even almost having a real estate background is like a hindrance, right, because you’re kind of stuck in your ways. We were considering hiring somebody who had a ton of real estate experience. And I said, “You know what? I think I just want to teach this guy what I think.” So it’s almost a hindrance. What I would say is for somebody who’s looking to get going is just dive into the material and execute on it. Right? So just set yourself timelines, like you said, “All right. I got to finish my educational course by this date. I got to finish my mailer by this date and just get it in the mail and see how it does.”

Matt:
The one thing that I would say is you probably, and the same number there, but he says, you got to get at least 2000 letters out. I think if you can afford it, get three or four or five out, don’t do them all at once. Just do them like a thousand a week for a month, and then just see what comes back. Because one of the toughest things that it took me to get was I think I had this like one in 500 number stuck in my head for too long where I was like, “I’m sending out 2000 letters a month and I’m only getting one or two deals.” Right. And then that felt like it was just kind of covering my overhead at that point. And when I eventually said, “You know what? I don’t know what’s going on with my conversion rate, but I’m just going to send twice as much mail,” and then it just takes care of itself. So if you’re starting, send more male than you think you need to send, because something will stick.

Matt:
And if you don’t send enough mail, a bad one will stick and you’ll buy it. So the more deals you can have on your desk the better. And it just makes everything else so much easier, just more mail. So just get out there and take action. I mean, it’s a numbers game to a certain extent. And I think the one thing that I dwelled on for probably a year or two too long was just thinking that I had the right amount of mail going out instead of just accepting what my conversion rate was and saying, “Well, therefore I must send twice as much, whatever it might be.”

Steve:
Yep. Boy, I could not have given better advice. I could not agree with you more. I think it’s imperative to send out a ton of mail and I’m probably the one who’s, because our conversion rates were, I’m sure you heard that from me, one in 500.

Matt:
Probably way back in the day when you were doing smaller deals. Right?

Steve:
Yep.

Matt:
I think that I had scaled up to like five to $10,000 deals and I was probably thinking of the buy for 1,000, sell for 3000 or 4,000 type conversion rates. So it’s true to a certain extent, right? It took me a while to put it together that, you know what, maybe I’m not going for the same asset class. Right? I’m looking in different areas. I wasn’t doing desert squares. And I think that’s what it was. It was like, this number makes sense, but there’s a lot of other caveats before it that have to be true for that conversion rate. I bet you that if you talk to people who do the buy for one, sell for five on terms with 99 down 99 a month, it probably is like one in 500. So I think, yeah, I would just stick by what I said, just send a bunch of mail, man. That’s going to get it done.

Steve:
Matt, it was a pleasure talking to you. Do you have any more advice for anyone starting out or any questions for me?

Matt:
No. I think for people starting out, just get on the forums, ask your questions. They were super helpful. I’m probably one of the people that you mentioned, just goes dark after a while because it’s just like, I got too much stuff to do.

Steve:
Because you’re successful.

Matt:
Yeah, exactly. You’re just like, “I got to take care of all this stuff,” but in the beginning, the forums are super helpful. That’s really helpful. I haven’t jumped on Discord yet, but I keep hearing it and I’m going to do that now because I preparing for this call, I listened to a couple of extra weekly member calls. And I usually just listen to the first 15 minutes because I love the stuff that you do in the beginning on the market and things like that. But yeah, just get on the forums, ask your questions and don’t try to be a perfectionist. Just get the mail out the door and I think you’ll be all right.

Steve:
I agree completely. Pleasure to talk to you. Thanks, man. I hope we do it again sometime soon.

Matt:
Yeah, definitely. It’s been a pleasure.

Steve:
Okay. See you soon.

Matt:
See you.

Jill:
We hope you find our content valuable and we appreciate your support. If you have not already, please check out our channel and hit the subscribe button.

Steve:
And your comments and suggestions help us to create the content you’re here for, hitting the like button helps to support our channel’s algorithm and gauge your interests for future shows.

__________________________________________________________________

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: